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 working 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.
“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.