Black Hills (9781101559116) Read Online Free PDF

checked the loads in the rifle and stuffed a six-gun in his belt and extra shells in his pockets.
    Through the crack in the shutters, he could see the riders passing through the front gate. Riding four abreast, one was holding the reins of the fifth rider: a girl his own age. Straight and tall for her age, she was riding alertly on a small horse and looking all around, as if for a plan of escape. Gutsy , Cormac thought.
    He had no more than had the thought when she bolted. As they passed through the gate, a slender board with which Cormac had been hitting rocks and laid down on the upper board of the gate a couple days before came within reach. While going through the gate, the outlaw leading her horse was saying something to the others and not paying attention to her when, with one quick motion, she leaned over, grabbed the board, and swung it with both hands. Connecting with his shoulder, she knocked her captor out of his saddle, grabbed up her reins, and spun her horse around into an immediate run. She was out the gate and running flat out before her captors realized what had happened.
    â€œWell, get up and go get her, damnit, Raunchy,” Gator laughed. “Don’t just lay there. You lost her, now go get her.”
    Cormac watched as the outlaw clambered back into his saddle while holding his shoulder in pain and launched into a chase of the girl on the little horse while the other outlaws, welcoming the entertainment, laughed and hollered encouragement. Riding his pa’s horse, Lop Ear, it was no contest for the outlaw; he caught up to the girl easily. Her horse was little, but it was quick, and she could ride. Every time the man called Raunchy caught up with her, she spun her horse in a different direction. The other riders laughed and shouted derisive remarks until the man threw his lasso around her horse’s neck and led her back after first slapping her off her horse and then making her remount.
    Cormac was tempted to knock him out of the saddle again, only using a rifle bullet instead of a board, but he wanted them all. Guns in hand, Cormac slipped quietly out the back door. Confident there was nobody to stop them; the outlaws were relaxed and conversing with no signs of fear or worry. Their line of travel to the barn would have them pass around the corner of the house.
    When Cormac’s father had been teaching him how to fight, he had taught him to fight fair, give the other person a fair chance, don’t kick him when he’s down. In this case, Cormac felt neither the need nor desire to fight fair. Outnumbered and outsized, the thought of mercy never entered his mind. They were going to die . . . today . . . now.
    Carefully leaning the guns within reach against the wall, Cormac placed the lid on the rain barrel in which his mother and Becky had caught rainwater to wash and make their hair soft, and climbed up to stand on it. Already tall for his age, by standing on the barrel, he would be at an elevation equal to the riders. He picked up the double-barreled shotgun and cocked both barrels, pulled it to his shoulder, and waited, surprised at his own calmness.
    The outlaws would be following a curve as they came around the corner of the house. His pa had taught Cormac to hunt doves by flushing them, whenever possible, toward a group of trees. As the doves flew away, they would have to turn to avoid the trees, and in so doing, two or three would come into alignment and could be felled with one shot. His pa had not been one to waste ammunition.
    The horses’ heads would come into Cormac’s view no more than fifteen feet away. Standing on the rain barrel put the barrels of the shotgun in near-perfect alignment with where the outlaw’s heads would appear as they came around the corner. If he held high, the buckshot spread would not hit the horses. The girl was far enough behind to be out of danger.
    Around the corner they came, and Cormac waited. Their attention focused on the barn