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

  “What I hear he’s getting into,” O’Riley tossed in, “is Cassie Saint John.”

  His bawdy remark triggered laughter on the slope. Meantime, Stratton and Beckman were drawing closer. Stratton was hatless and wore a vermilion ranch suit. Beckman wore a felt campaign hat and neat starched khakis, his badge glinting in the sun.

  Again the steam whistle blasted, announcing the end of the morning break. The slusher line— a thick steel cable with big metal muck buckets hanging at fifteen-foot intervals—shimmied and groaned as it started up again.

  “Time to hit it, boys,” Wild Bill called out. His muscles screamed in protest when he stood up.

  The men all lined up at the “jump station,” a spot just outside the mine entrance. Each man hopped into a muck bucket as it eased slowly out of the mine. Each worker had about three minutes to sort through the waste material, tossing any valuable ore out. Then he had to leap out only seconds before the buckets swung out over a vast waste pit. A fixed grapple caught a hook on each bucket and opened it to dump the contents.

  “O’Riley!” Bill snapped out. “Every man to the jump station.”

  Brennan O’Riley had just begun a huge hunk of blackberry cobbler when the whistle sounded. Now he lingered on the slope to finish it.

  O’Riley deliberately ignored his new crew chief, smacking his lips and licking his fingers.

  “O’Riley!” Bill shouted a second time. “You bolted to that spot? Get to work!”

  “Blow it out your bunghole,” the big man snarled, though he did finally rise and amble up to the jump station.

  Bill caught the edge of a bucket, swung in, and began sorting through the muck. By now Deke Stratton and Earl Beckman had paused to watch the slusher-line crew in action.

  Hickok had noticed, all morning long, that O’Riley was a lazy worker—the real reason why he had never made crew chief. He tended to toss out too many worthless rocks, which meant he was also leaving good ore to waste. O’Riley also liked to leap out of the bucket early so he didn’t have so far to walk back.

  So far, though, Bill had said nothing. But now, with Stratton and Beckman on hand, was a good time to act.

  “O’Riley,” he said next time the two men were waiting for a bucket, “I want you to toss out gold, not rocks. And don’t leave the bucket until it reaches the pit.”

  “I don’t give a big one what you want, Lofley,” O’Riley growled. “You damned Johnny-come-lately pipsqueak.”

  O’Riley folded his brawny arms over his chest, staring belligerently at his boss. Hickok could feel Stratton’s eyes on him, gauging how he handled this.

  “You’re docked one day’s pay,” Bill announced. “You keep on malingering, I’m firing you.”

  Rage smoldered in O’Riley’s eyes. “Fire a cat’s tail, you skinny piece of crap.”

  “That’s it,” Bill told him. He pointed at the office with his thumb. “You’re canned, mister. Go draw your pay and then clear off the property.”

  “Suits me fine. But first me and you are going to waltz, boss man.”

  O’Riley lunged at the smaller man, sending a looping blow toward his jaw. That blow would have knocked Bill out cold if he had not easily sidestepped it.

  Hickok was a shooter, not a brawler. He could not afford to trade blows with a man-mountain like Brennan O’Riley. So instead the lithe and agile Hickok counted on fancy footwork and a series of fast, well-aimed blows.

  Once, twice, again, yet again Hickok’s straight-arm punches and jarring uppercuts sent sweat and blood flying from his adversary’s head. By the time O’Riley managed to land a blow, he was weakened. Bill was easily landing five good punches for every one of O’Riley’s clumsy ones.

  Finally, the hulking Irishman collapsed to his knees, gave a mighty sigh, then sprawled on his face, unconscious.

  Cheers went up from the workers who had witnessed this.

  “Don’t worry, fellow,” Stratton called out to Bill. “We’ll send a replacement over. And I’ll have security haul O’Riley off the property. You handled that big galoot with real style, Mr. ... ?”

  “Lofley, Mr. Stratton,” Wild Bill replied. “Ben Lofley. Just hired on yesterday as crew chief.”

  “And I can see why,” Stratton praised. “Good work, Ben. I never much liked O’Riley.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stratton.”

  Bill prepared to hop the next muck bucket. Despite Stratton’s praise, however, Hickok could feel Earl Beckman’s gaze studying him with silent speculation.

  The rest of that first workday dragged on without further incident. However, toward the end of the shift, first word reached Deadwood of the robbery and killing of teamster Butch Winkler—supposedly by Sioux warriors who had jumped the rez.

  So Hickok took notice when Merrill Labun and Danny Stone didn’t show up until late afternoon. Again it made him wonder: What did Owen McNulty know that got him killed?

  Bill decided it was high time, on his first day off, to visit the Sioux at Copper Mountain.

  Chapter Six

  “‘Out West,” Bill read aloud from Joshua’s most recent dispatch, “you’re just a face with a name. Nobody cares about your history. Unfortunately, that same apathy means nobody cares about your existence, either. On the American frontier, fewer things are cheaper than a man’s life.’”

  Hickok finished reading and looked up from the draft. It was Sunday morning, and both men were shoehorned into Bill’s tiny room. Bill sat on the bed, Josh on the only chair.

  “Well?” the young reporter demanded. “You told me I had to clear every story through you. I kept everything general and didn’t mention anything to give us away. Is it all right to file it?”

  Bill looked at the kid. “Sure, go ahead. It’s damn good, kid. You write like I shoot—straight to the heart.”

  Bill handed the foolscap pages back to the youth and added, “But I’m worried, Longfellow.”

  “Why?”

  “You might upstage me one of these days, you sneaky little runt! This is excellent scribbling. You’re getting a name for yourself. Hell, I can’t be sharing my women with you.”

  Both men laughed. Josh beamed proudly at this rare praise from his hero.

  “Unless,” Bill added, “you’d be willing to take Calamity Jane off my back?”

  “Hunh! I wouldn’t even be a snack for her.” Josh shivered at the images his imagination conjured up. “You think,” he added, serious now, “that she’ll show up here?”

  “Last I knew,” Bill replied, “Jane was down in the old Spanish land-grant country, breaking in camels for the U.S. Cavalry. But I got a God-fear, kid, that she’ll show up in Deadwood. If she ain’t already here.”

  Bill stood up and picked up the scattergun he’d propped against the wall. He broke open the breech to make sure it was loaded. His Colt Peacemakers were still tucked out of sight in his saddle bag. Hickok missed wearing them as if he were separated from family.

  “C’mon,” he told Josh. “Elsie’s got breakfast ready. Outside guests are welcome for two bits, so you can eat here. That woman sets out good grub. I swear, her biscuits’re so light they need holding down.”

  “Will we have enough time to make it out to the Copper Mountain Reservation and back?” Josh asked. “If we don’t show for work tomorrow, that’ll ruin our cover.”

  “The rez is just a whoop and a holler from here,” Bill assured him.

  “Exactly how do the Sioux figure in?” Josh pressed as they took the stairs down.

  “That one’s got me treed,” Bill admitted. “But I’ll wager one thing. The big bosses at Harney’s Hellhole don’t really believe, for even one minute, that the Indians are heisting any gold ore.”

  “That’s not what I’m hearing in the front office,” Josh disagreed. “Beckman swears it’s the Sioux.”

  Wild Bill gave the kid a pitying look. “They always talk who never think. You write like an angel sings—how can you be so consarn ignorant? If Indians were really stealing from white men,
would Beckman just bitch about it?”

  Josh mulled that as they approached the double doors leading into Elsie’s dining room.

  “Nah, you’re right,” the kid conceded. “There’d be Indian fever sweeping Deadwood six ways to Sunday.”

  “Damn straight. Those mining bosses would be howling crazy for Indian blood. But there hasn’t been even one attack against the rez.”

  After a delicious breakfast of eggs, potatoes, biscuits, and side meat, the two men—using separate sides of the street—walked to the livery stable at the edge of town.

  They found Lonnie Brubaker swamping out the stables.

  “Hey up, Lonnie,” Bill greeted the youth. “Our horses still alive, son?”

  The half-wit kid grinned, revealing rabbit teeth. “They’re just fine, Ben. You’ll find ’em out in the paddock. Just like you asked, I ain’t been stalling them nights.”

  “Good man.”

  Bill slipped a coin from his pocket and pressed it into the kid’s hand. “Lonnie, do you know who Merrill Labun is when you see him?”

  The kid nodded. Bill knew that no one could head west, out of town, without passing this spot.

  “I need to know when he comes and goes. Can you write down numbers?”

  The kid nodded again.

  “Good. Each time he arrives in town, or leaves, just write it down, wouldja? Just write down the day and time.”

  Lonnie hesitated, perhaps unsure of Bill’s motives.

  “Lonnie,” Bill confided, “I’m not a crook. I swear on my honor.”

  Lonnie searched Bill’s eyes. Whatever he saw in them satisfied him. He nodded and took the coin. Bill and Josh grabbed their saddles and bridles and went out to the paddock to rig their mounts.

  “Well groomed and well fed,” Bill approved as his roan trotted over to nuzzle him in greeting.

  “Bill?” Josh said while he centered his saddle. “Do you know anything about the Sioux at Copper Mountain.”

  “Not enough to brag about it,” Bill admitted. He raised a stirrup out of his way and tightened the girth. “Pinkerton only knows the name of their leader, a sub chief named Coyote Boy. Supposedly he palavers good English.”

  “We’ll be trespassing if we go on the reservation, right?”

  Bill stepped into a stirrup and vaulted into the saddle. “Yup,” was all he said.

  As the two men rode past the Lutheran church at the end of town, the sound of singing filled the street: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

  Josh still worried about their reception at the reservation.

  “Well anyhow,” he said out loud, “they can’t have guns by law.”

  Bill snorted, then shook his head in amazement at the kid’s faith in paper laws.

  “Joshua, neither red man nor white has abided by a single treaty to the letter. There’s guns, all right. But even if there ain’t, if a Sioux wants to kill you, he’s got many ways to do it without bullets. Matter of fact, a bullet would be merciful.”

  ~*~

  The Copper Mountain Indian Reservation comprised a few thousand acres of rolling scrubland no white men wanted. It lay fifteen miles south west of Deadwood, connected by a good road established two decades earlier by the short line stage between Deadwood and Lead.

  The day was sunny, breezeless, and hot. Two horsebackers sent dust rising in brown swirls under their horses’ hooves. The swirling plumes quickly crumbled to dust that powdered the road side growth. Ragged tatters of cloud drifted across a sky as blue as a lagoon.

  Now and then Bill took off his hat and whacked at flies with it. With his usual constant vigilance, he continuously scanned the surrounding terrain, watching for movements or reflections. Again Josh noticed how Bill had to squint close to see past the middle distances.

  Finally they reached a fork in the trail. The right fork marked the beginning of the reservation. A sign in English declared this property off-limits to whites and instructed them to take the left fork.

  “It could come any time now,” Wild Bill told his companion as they bore right. “They’ve been watching us for a long time.”

  Josh was about to ask how Bill knew that. But almost the very moment they passed the warning sign, a series of yipping war cries made the hair on Josh’s nape stand up.

  At least a dozen well-armed, mounted braves suddenly descended from the tree cover and surrounded them. Josh stared at the angry, clay-colored Indians, his mouth dry with fright.

  Bill, however, merely raised one arm high with the hand open—the universal sign for peace. He kept his face calm and impassive. Seeing him, Josh followed suit.

  A warrior snatched the scattergun from its boot. Wild Bill ignored him.

  “Which of you calls himself Coyote Boy?” Bill demanded in English.

  A brave with perhaps thirty winters behind him rode forward. He wore doeskin leggings and a bone breastplate. His bridle was woven from buffalo hair, and his saddle was a sheepskin pad. Josh gaped at his big-bore German hunting rifle. The brave poked the muzzle into Bill’s chest.

  “I go by that name you said,” he replied in excellent English. “But who said you may speak it aloud and steal my magic? You are nothing but a wasichu intruder. Which of us have you come to murder this time?”

  “We have not come to kill,” Bill assured him. “I do not kill the Lakota people. Ask about me at the council fires and the Spring Dance. I give life to the Lakota.”

  This foolish boast made Coyote Boy laugh out loud in scorn. He translated this for the others. They, too, howled in derisive scorn.

  “And how,” Coyote Boy demanded, “do you work this miracle, white-eyes?”

  “You know of me,” Bill assured him. “I am known to the Lakotas as the Ice Shaman.”

  For a moment Coyote Boy’s stern face clearly looked startled. The Ice Shaman was the name Wild Bill Hickok had earned among Sioux down south in Nebraska. This was after he and an eccentric German inventor used a new invention, the ice-making machine, to save a dozen Sioux Indians dying of fever plague. They packed the sick in ice and thus brought their fevers down.

  “You are the Ice Shaman?”

  Coyote Boy’s voice was skeptical. But Josh also noticed the hatred was gone.

  Bill now played the ace up his sleeve—he produced the brightly dyed blue feather that Chief Yellow Bear had given him after saving his people. This feather denoted that Hickok was a valued friend of the Lakota peoples.

  No translation was needed once the feather came out. The braves all lowered their weapons. The warrior who took Bill’s gun now handed it back.

  “You are welcome here, Ice Shaman,” Coyote Boy assured him. “You and your friend.”

  Everyone dismounted and retired to the temporary camp in a covert among the trees. A smiling, awestruck squaw served the famous hair-face and his companion strong white man’s coffee laced with crude brown sugar.

  “You have good English,” Bill remarked to the sub chief.

  “I was sent to the mechanical arts school in Denver,” Coyote Boy replied. He added scornfully, “They taught me how to salute the flag of my enemies. And to repair wagon wheels when we do not use wagons. I can also repair the furnaces we do not have. Why have you come to our remote home, Ice Shaman?”

  Bill quickly explained that he was trying to get to the bottom of the “robberies” and killings taking place lately.

  “Only a fool,” Hickok concluded, “would believe that red men are stealing gold ore. Are you eating the ore wagons afterward?”

  Coyote Boy translated and the people howled with mirth.

  “I believe the white miners are taking it themselves. And I believe Owen McNulty”—here Bill politely made the cutoff sign for speaking of the dead—“found that out. That’s why he was murdered.”

  Coyote Boy nodded. “As you say.”

  “I’m on your side,” Bill assured him. “If this keeps up, the yellow legs will be sent to kill you.”

  At this reference to the cavalry, Coyote Boy spat with cont
empt. “Soldiers! Pah! Boys with their pants tucked into their boots.”

  “They are no Lakotas,” Bill agreed. “Never could they win one-on-one with Indian fighters. But the hair-faces have the big-thundering guns. They will kill your women and children. We must end this trouble before your people do the Hurt Dance.”

  Coyote Boy saw the truth of all this. He nodded.

  “You speak solid words an Indian can place in his sash. What do you suggest, Ice Shaman?”

  “I say teamwork will see us through,” Hickok replied. “These miners, like white men everywhere, they are well organized. The time may come, and soon, when a battle with them will be necessary.”

  Coyote Boy only nodded, acknowledging the truth of this.

  “Therefore,” Bill continued, “I have come today to ask if you and your braves will join me when that time for battle arrives. There can be no victory without Lakota men to side me.”

  Coyote Boy said nothing at first. But pride was evident in his face, though he kept it stern as a warrior must.

  “My people are doomed otherwise. It will be an honor to fight beside the savior of Chief Yellow Bear’s people.”

  “Meantime,” Bill advised, “lay low. Don’t give the hair-faces cause to move against you. The worm will turn, Coyote Boy. We can win this battle if we use cunning and bravery.”

  Bill patted the walnut stock of his scattergun. “And a little well-aimed ammo,” he added.

  Chapter Seven

  “Well, God kiss me,” Wild Bill said out loud. “Look who’s coming, junior.”

  Josh, still mulling their reception by the Sioux, focused his eyes ahead on the trail. A buggy with its top up against the dust approached from the direction of Deadwood.

  The female driver wore a crisp white bonnet. But there was no mistaking the beautiful blond hair the color of ripe Kansas wheat.

  The two riders cleared the trail to let the faro dealer pass, politely touching their hats as she drew near. Instead of rolling past, however, she reined in the big blood bay.