Black Hills Hellhole (A Wild Bill Western Book 6) Read online

  “Yeah,” Josh conceded. “Speaking of bloody ... have you heard that the Indian agent was murdered? Owen McNulty?”

  Bill nodded. “Whether they want to or not, looks like the local Sioux figure into the mix, too. We’ll have to talk to them as soon as we can.”

  For a moment, something about the stout bartender at the far end of the counter caught Bill’s notice. That gray Stetson, it seemed familiar somehow ...

  A little prickle of alarm tickled his scalp. That gray Stetson ... but before Bill could solidify the thought, the stunning faro dealer again caught his attention.

  In the mirror, he watched her remove a cigarette from a slim gold case. She pulled it through a hole drilled into a gold coin, packing the tobacco before she inserted the cigarette into an ivory holder. That’s no soiled dove who makes trips upstairs, Bill realized. There were really only two social classes in the frontier West: the Quality and the Equality. She was definitely Quality.

  For a moment Bill felt her glance touch him and move away. It would have lingered, he reminded himself, if she knew who he really was. He was no longer the center of attention, just another common roustabout with his pants worn to a shine. Now that he couldn’t count on it, Bill sorely missed his fame.

  “Listen, Joshua,” Bill said, still watching the faro dealer in the mirror, “I want you to be good to that simpleton-looking kid at the livery. Lonnie Brubaker.”

  “Why?”

  “I want him on our side. He’s in a good position to notice a lot. And he’s not likely to be seen as a threat by anybody. We might have to communicate through him if things heat up.”

  But in fact, Bill realized, things were heating up right now. Merrill Labun, with his drunken friend in tow, was headed toward Hickok’s spot at the bar. Bill recalled Labun’s odd behavior earlier, at the hiring office, when he had abruptly changed his bullying manner to one of gruff friendliness. The thug was up to something.

  “Stand by,” he warned Josh. “And remember we’re not together. If all hell breaks loose, don’t back me.”

  “Howdy, Ben,” Merrill Labun greeted Bill, giving him a hearty whack on the back. “Ben, meet one of our security men, Danny Stone. Danny, this is Ben Lofton, our new slusher line crew chief.”

  “It’s Lofley, Mr. Labun,” Bill corrected him politely, sensing that Labun’s “mistake” was fully intended. “Not Lofton.”

  “Sure, sure. Sorry, bud. Ben here is real polite and squared away, Danny. Called me ‘sir’.”

  “Do tell? Now where I come from, politeness is all right for women and weak men.”

  Stone, too, was a big man, thick in the shoulders and chest. He gave the smaller, more slightly built Hickok a sneering once-over.

  “Maybe he was a soldier boy?” Stone suggested. “See how he’s got—whatchacallit?—military bearing? Did you go for a soldier, Lofton?”

  “Lofley,” Bill repeated quietly. He finished his beer and set the heavy schooner down. But Hickok kept his fingers wrapped around the thick handle. “Yes, I served.”

  “You fight in the war?” Stone demanded.

  “Which one, friend? I believe there’s been several.”

  “Which one?” Stone snarled. “Ain’t he the big war chief! I’m talking about the war, you damned blockhead! The one to whip the Yankees.”

  This last comment came out loud and belligerent. The men nearby turned to watch and listen. Many had instantly taken the quiet stranger’s side—Stone was too far north to openly brag about whipping Yankees.

  “I fought in that one,” Bill confirmed. “But I was on the side that dictated your surrender.”

  Hickok chose that goading answer carefully, realizing this highly public moment was a crucial test of his authority. An authority he must establish quickly if he meant to infiltrate the illegal operation at its core. Even without his famous .44s, this was the crucial moment to follow his credo: Shoot first, ask questions later.

  “Oh, you did, huh?” Stone’s breath reeked of rot-gut whiskey as he pushed up against Hickok. “You know what that makes you, blue belly? A god damn stinking—uuh!”

  Bill put all of his considerable upper-body strength into a swing with the schooner. It struck with a sickening thud, smashing across the bridge of Stone’s nose. He loosed a bray of pain, and Bill watched his eyes lose their focus.

  A heartbeat later, Stone was an unconscious, bleeding heap on the floor.

  The entire saloon seemed to hold its collective breath, waiting to see what Labun would do. After all, the quiet stranger in the floppy black hat had just cold cocked a security man—the same as assaulting a law officer, in these parts.

  For a long moment Labun just stood there, fingering the heavy brass studs on his belt. Then he grinned at Bill.

  “Hell, Danny gets a little rowdy when he’s had a skinful. He’s a former miner himself. They’re a scrappy bunch. But he won’t hold a grudge when he sobers up, Ben.”

  The tension had built up inside Bill like a coiled spring. Now he released it in a long sigh. He shrugged.

  “Scratch a miner and you’ll find a brawler,” he said quietly. “No harm done.”

  “You’re a good man, Ben,” Labun said, thumping him again. “See you tomorrow at work.”

  Labun recruited a few helpers and hauled his still-dazed comrade from the saloon. Fights were as common as cockroaches in Deadwood, and almost immediately this brief encounter was for gotten. But Hickok felt the faro dealer’s seawater eyes linger on him this time, as if taking his measure.

  “Good work, Bill,” Josh praised him in low tones. “Looks like you’ve made a good impression on the very people we need to fool most.”

  “You start thinking that way,” Wild Bill warned the youth, “and we’ll both end up wearing those suits with no back in them.”

  “But you just saw—”

  “Stick your ‘buts’ back in your pocket,” Bill cut him off. “I think I convinced the hiring boss today, sure. But the security crew must be on guard for more infiltrators. Merrill got a little too friendly all of a sudden. He might be setting me up, testing me.”

  Bill decided it was time to turn in. Sunup would come around damn quick, and he had some hard labor ahead of him. Labor he was not conditioned for.

  As he turned to leave, however, Wild Bill again noticed that stout bartender in the gray Stetson. And this time, the bartender was studying him right back.

  ~*~

  By Godfrey, Calamity Jane told herself, that is Wild Bill, sure as cats fighting.

  “Hey, Jim Bob!” demanded a miner in red-stained work clothes. “You work here or just visiting? I ordered a goddamn beer!”

  “Order it in hell, you loudmouthed pecker-wood,” Jane shot back, sliding a beer toward him along the counter.

  “Tell me something,” the miner added when he was safely out of range—a sawed-off pool cue dangled by a thong from one of the bartender’s wrists. “Did a plow do that to your face, or was you just borned ugly?”

  “Your scrotum will make my next ammo pouch,” Jane promised in her rusty voice. The miner wisely faded into the crowd.

  Calamity Jane watched, her heart sitting out a few beats, as the love of her life made his way out the door.

  Yes, it had to be Wild Bill! There was Joshua Robinson trailing out, too—that cute little newspaper fellow who tailed Bill like a shadow. Clearly Hickok was in Deadwood under a summer name, and Jane knew why.

  Indeed, that’s why she was here right now, her hair shorn off to pass for a man. Lately, every newspaper in the country was covering news out of the Black Hills Badlands. Why? A hunch had told her Wild Bill Hickok would be dusting his hocks in this direction. And that hunch panned gold.

  “I said whiskey!” snarled a voice in Jane’s ear. “You deaf or what?”

  An angry, beefy-faced crew foreman glowered at her.

  “Here’s your goldang whiskey, liver lips,” Jane replied, smashing a half-filled bottle of Old Crow over his head. Two Chinese employees promptly hustle
d over to drag the unconscious man outside.

  Of all the dangerous watering holes on the vast frontier, thought Jane, this was the one she dreaded most. For Bill’s sake, not her own. That ancient palmist down in Old El Paso was the best in Mexico. And she had assured Jane, even swearing it on the Holy Bible, that Wild Bill Hickok would be killed at the Number 10 saloon in Deadwood. An astrological doctor in Amarillo confirmed that prediction.

  When would the black deed happen? That question Jane could not answer. And perhaps—especially if the Creator’s hand was in it—she couldn’t do one thing to prevent it. But J. B. Hickok, in Jane’s love struck opinion, was one of the only true men in America. And those gun-barrel blue, direct-as-searchlight eyes of his ... why, Jane felt loin warmth just thinking about that purty critter.

  “A sarsaparilla for Cassie, Jim Bob,” called out the case-tender from the faro table.

  Jane scowled as she pulled a bottle from a hogs head of ice behind her. She poured the soda pop into a tall glass for the pretty faro dealer. Jane had noticed the attractive blonde eyeballing Bill after he dropped that big security man in his tracks. Even shorn of his good looks, that man attracted comely gals like iron filings to a magnet.

  But never mind her jealousy. Jane was here in Deadwood to watch over Wild Bill. Hickok might die anytime now—but God better save a place in hell, Jane vowed, for any son of a bitch who harmed her Billy.

  Chapter Five

  A man’s voice, deep and wildly off-key, sang loud enough to send his words echoing through the hills and low mountains:

  And the moonbeams lit

  On the tipple of her nit ...

  It was just past forenoon. Already the August day was hot and windless. The terrain hereabouts was mostly scrub cotton wood and dwarf cedars. The hillsides were dotted with wilted bluebonnets and daisies dying in the heat.

  “Aww, hell. Just one more nip to wash my teeth,” Butch Winkler told his favorite mule.

  Butch, a big and affable teamster wearing buckskin clothing, used his few remaining teeth to pull the cork from a bottle of forty-rod. He was heading toward the big ore smelter at Spearfish, northeast of Deadwood. Harney’s Hellhole, like most of the new underground mines, was not equipped for the complex mercury-separation process required to remove gold from rocks.

  While the miles dragged slowly by, Butch accompanied himself on a banjo. Now and then he scanned the bleak countryside, on the watch for trouble. He couldn’t understand why so many ore wagons had been attacked and stolen lately—especially, so the rumors went, by Sioux Indians.

  Gold ore was virtually worthless even to white thieves much less red ones. Only big corporations could afford to pay the huge fees for smelting and mercury separation. Another thing Butch couldn’t puzzle out: With so many wagons heisted lately, why wasn’t the company sending armed guards to side the wagons? Hell, you’d almost think they wanted to get robbed.

  “I’m just a stupid mule whacker,” Butch told the beast he was riding. “The hell do I know? The rich man says ‘hawk,’ and I spit—which I could … ”

  Fwip!

  The arrow that suddenly punched into the left side of Butch’s neck pushed a streaming arc of blood and tissue out the right side. The big man swayed, choking on his own blood. A few moments after he was struck, he slid heavily to the ground. Butch’s unfired Spencer carbine was still slung over his right shoulder.

  ~*~

  “Good eye,” Danny Stone praised when the arrow shot by Merrill Labun skewered its target. “You’re gettin to be a reg’lar red warrior, boss.”

  Labun grinned as he hung the Osage wood bow back on his saddle horn. He had made sure to use an arrow fletched with black crow feathers. Most Sioux Indians used white feathers except those nearby at Copper Mountain. They had adopted black feathers from their Cheyenne cousins, who were now completely driven from this area.

  “C’mon,” Labun said, kicking his horse forward down the slope. “Let’s get this wagon headed toward Devil’s Tower before somebody comes along.”

  A third man accompanied them as they rode down to the trail. He was dressed like a typical teamster in buckskin shirt and trousers with a floppy-brim hat.

  “Now remember, Steve,” Labun told the new driver. “Anybody asks, you’re under contract to the Liberty Mining Company. This ore did not come from Harney’s Hellhole. It’s from the Phelps-Landau Mine near Rapid City.”

  By now the trio had reached the trail below. They dismounted, hobbled their horses, then set to work.

  Butch Winkler’s body was unceremoniously dumped beside the trail. The task of taking the scalp fell to Stone. He made the outline cut with his skinning knife. Then he placed one knee on the corpse’s neck and gave a sharp tug to the scalp. It came off with a ripping sound like bubbles popping.

  “Damn,” Steve said, averting his eyes. “That’s disgusting.”

  Merrill, meantime, took the sheaf of load papers from the dead man’s legging sash. These included the scale weight of the wagon as well as both the origin and destination of the load.

  Labun removed a phosphor from his pocket and scratched it to life with his thumbnail. He burned the original load papers, then handed Steve a new counterfeit set.

  “You’re sure you know the trail to the smelter at Devil’s Tower?” Labun asked the driver. This was Steve’s first ore-wagon heist.

  Steve nodded. “I just follow the old Sundance Road, then take the cutoff at Bear Lodge Mountain.”

  “’At’s it. The Phelps-Landau Mine has all but played out,” Labun explained. “And most people know that at the Spearfish smelter. But we’ve got men in key jobs at Devil’s Tower. No questions will be asked.”

  Devil’s Tower was located in Wyoming’s north east corner. A massive cluster of rock columns rising about thirteen hundred feet into the air. Located at the border where the mining country ended and the Thunder Basin Grassland began, it was an ideal location for a smelter.

  “What I can’t figure,” Danny Stone chimed in, “is why more people aren’t asking why Indians would steal gold ore? I mean, don’t nobody wonder what primitive, gut-eating savages even do with it?”

  Danny’s voice was affected by the tape across his broken nose, the legacy of his encounter last night with Ben Lofley, the new guy.

  Labun snorted. “Christ, you sound just like Earl. He’s so worried about that he wants us to start faking Indian raids. Yipping, wearing feathers, the whole shebang. I say who cares how it looks to some?”

  Labun pointed to the last ashes of the papers he had just burned; they scattered in a puff of wind.

  “The Army was practically demobilized after the war,” Labun reminded his toady. “Hell, there’s only fifteen hundred soldiers to cover the entire frontier. And there’s only one U.S. marshal in this area. He don’t matter on account he’s on Deke’s payroll. Truth to tell, ain’t nobody who much cares what goes on in this God-forgotten territory.”

  “Nobody except whoever’s paying Allan Pinkerton,” Danny reminded him.

  “True, but I’d wager they’ve given that up. So does Earl. Hell, we’ve put the quietus on three of Pinkerton’s men.”

  “I still think this Ben Lofley bears watching,” Danny insisted.

  “Sure you do—he busted your snot locker for you. But don’t sweat, old son, I am watching him.”

  By now Steve had transferred his personal gear to the ore wagon and mounted the lead mule. He lashed the teams into motion with a light sisal whip.

  “Remember,” Labun called out to him. “The gold is to be credited to the Liberty Mining Company.”

  “Keep an eye out for wild Indians,” Danny added, and all three men laughed.

  ~*~

  At eleven a.m. a steam whistle announced the day’s first half-hour break. Hickok, who had been busting his hump nonstop for five hours, simply collapsed on the ground outside the headframe of the mine. He was too damned tired to bother eating the roast-beef sandwich and fruit that Elsie packed for all her lodgers worki
ng at the mine.

  Although he was a crew chief, Bill was required to work just like the other two dozen men on the slusher line. And mining work, he quickly realized, required the endurance of a doorknob.

  “Tuckered out, boss?” called out a friendly Welshman everybody called Taffy.

  “Worn down to the hubs,” Bill conceded. “Gonna take me awhile to get the right muscles broke in again.”

  “So why in Sam Hill are you crew chief, Lofley?” demanded a burly man with forearms like bowling pins. “I been tossin’ ore for a year now.”

  The speaker was Brennan O’Riley, a surly Irishman who had taken an instant dislike to his new boss. Bill watched him devour a huge doughnut in one bite.

  “Damned if I know,” Bill replied, massaging his sore arms. “I just asked for a job.”

  “’T’ain’t fair,” O’Riley insisted. “It’s like stealing money from a man’s pocket.”

  Bill was too damned tired for a confrontation. He glanced around at the slusher crew as they lay sprawled on the grassless slope. Most of them wore Levi Strauss’s blue jeans with the new copper-riveted pockets that made them ideal for hard work like mining.

  Many of these miners had been saddle tramps previously and would be again if they survived Harney’s Hellhole. Others were veterans of the great war. They found this back-breaking labor a good antidote to their nightmare memories.

  “Over yonder comes the big bosses,” Taffy remarked. Bill looked where Taffy pointed—Deke Stratton and Earl Beckman were crossing from the main office toward the mine area.

  But Hickok had to squint hard to recognize them at this distance. And squinting, he told himself, was something he’d done plenty lately. No man welcomed the failing of his eyes—but Hickok knew that, for a gunman, it was a death sentence.

  “That goldang Stratton already owns most of Deadwood,” another miner remarked. “Now I hear he’s even opened up a law office in Rapid City so he can profit off the divorce trade.”

  Bill laughed although it was no joke. The “divorce trade” had become the only other real industry in mining country. Western states were unburdened by the strict morality back east in the Land of Steady Habits. They were actually courting the out-of-state divorce trade, even running big ads in Eastern newspapers. Utah and the Dakotas, especially, had gained celebrity as divorce mills.