Black Hills (9781101559116) by Rod Thompson Page B

pointing dead center at the white blaze on its forehead. All that was necessary was to let the hammer fall. The deer was magnificent.
    Cormac stepped out from behind the trees. “Go on, big boy,” he said. “Be on your way.” Before the words were out of his mouth, the deer was gone. His muscles were like tightly coiled springs suddenly released. His first leap was every bit as magnificent as he. Cormac listened to it crashing through the brush. He really didn’t need meat as badly as he thought.
    He rode through the night. Although the moon came up less full than the night before, there was still plenty of light with which to see well. They startled a few night creatures out scavenging for supper, and a couple of beavers waddling toward a stream scurried for cover, scolding him as he passed for disturbing them.
    The sun came up right on time, its warm rays more than welcome. The saying, “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” could also be said as, “It’s always coldest before the dawn.” He decided riding at night is only fun for a short time. He would have to get through the day with a couple of catnaps so he would sleep when night came. Cormac stopped for breakfast and coffee—lots of coffee—in a hilltop grove of trees. Sitting on the sunny side of one of the trees after finishing his breakfast, leaning back and enjoying the sun with no particular place to go and no particular time to get there, Cormac let himself drift off to sleep.
    Lop Ear woke him with a soft whinny. If they were going to be traveling companions, they were going to have to have a talk about Lop Ear waking him up all the time. Checking the position of the sun, he realized that sleeping so long had killed the morning and scared the heck out of noon. He finished off the coffee cold, left some bread for the camp-robbing jays, and they got on their way. He guided Lop Ear into the arroyo at the bottom of the hill and followed it all the way around the next hill before finding a way out. Skirting a rock outcropping, they topped out into a campsite with a small herd of cattle being held by three riders. A fourth rider was throwing a loop around a calf. Resting in the fire was an instrument Cormac had heard described as being used by rustlers to change brands. It was called a running iron. He could see at a glance that these men were changing a double P-Bar brand to a double R-Bar.
    â€œOh, for Pete’s sake,” he told Lop Ear and Horse. “I don’t care what they’re doin’, but the least they could do is keep an eye open for travelers. How dumb can they be?” He started the big gray back into the arroyo.
    â€œHold it right there!” A man in a sheepskin coat almost identical to his own stepped out of some thick bushes next to the camp, holding up his pants with one hand and covering Cormac with a gun in his other. Nope, not too bright, doing what he had obviously been doing not twenty-five feet from where they would be eating.
    â€œWe’ll just see who’s dumb here. You sit right still and just maybe I won’t shoot you. And that’s a big maybe.” He was long getting along in years, as was the pistol in his hand, but the steady manner in which he held that pistol spoke of more than a casual relationship.
    â€œLook,” Cormac said, “I really don’t give a hoot what’s going on here. I’m not interested in other people’s problems. I’m just traveling through. I have no idea who the Double P-Bar belongs to, and I don’t care to. I have no interest in you or your friends or those cattle. So I’ll just go on my way, and you can keep right on doin’ what you’re doin’.”
    Cormac nudged his heels into Lop Ear, and the horse obliged by stepping forward.
    â€œIf your horse takes another step, he’ll be missing a rider.”
    The tone in the man’s voice suggested Cormac would do well to pay it