Read Black Hills (9781101559116) for Free Online

most streams and rivers. Usually pulled by a team of four or six oxen, with its white top flopping gently in the breeze, it was a sight. His pa had said some folks called the wagons land sailors because they resembled a ship with sails; he sure couldn’t see it.
    â€œGood luck,” Cormac told her, shifting in the saddle and gesturing toward her approaching wagon; he watched her leave. He had learned in a short period of time, as she was going to learn, that life does not always come in a sweet and pretty package all tied up with a nice ribbon. He had also learned that womenfolk looked at things differently than menfolk. He had no desire to listen to her folks being told what had happened, what a terrible person he was, and being stared at like he was Lucifer himself.
    â€œBoy! You blow the heads off four people and right away you’re a bad guy,” he said to himself. Apparently, the recent events had hardened him. He could almost hear his pa. “Very funny,” he would have said, just before cuffing Cormac on the back of the head. “You just killed four people, and you’re trying to be funny.”
    Cormac didn’t agree. They weren’t people; they were animals and deserved to be treated as such. No, that wasn’t true. Animals deserved better treatment. Watching until she reached her wagon, he started home; he had more graves to dig. He was becoming a regular mortician.

    It was near dark when they rolled through Cormac’s front gate. He said it aloud just to see how it sounded. “My front gate.” He didn’t care for it much. He liked “our front gate” much better, but offhand he could think of nobody who particularly cared what Cormac Lynch did, or did not, think. The hole was mostly dug when he first heard their wagon. Recent rains had kept the ground from packing down, but the rich Dakota soil, normally a joy to work, this time was not. It was a downright shame to contaminate it with the rot that he was putting into it. If the one hadn’t been so all-fired big, the grave would have already been done.
    Well , Cormac thought, it was to be expected. He had hoped they would just keep on going and leave him be, but apparently that was too much to ask, what with a woman’s natural instinct toward mothering and all. After all, there he was, a poor child recently orphaned, miles from other people, lost, and not knowing what to do next. Poor thing. How could she possibly leave that be? At least that’s how he figured she must have figured. Cormac had no such inclinations his own self.
    He had worked through much of his mourning period digging the graves for his mother, pa, and Becky. Cormac’s pa had taught him how to work, and he had always found it to be a good salve for his mind, a good time for thinking. Whilst his hands were busy, his mind could work out whatever was bothering it. This was going to take a lot of working out.
    He had talked to his family a lot while he was burying them and asked them what he should do now. They hadn’t had much to say. Cormac’s pa was the most help. It had been a comfort talking to him. When the hole was mostly dug and Cormac was standing in the bottom looking out—he had dug them all plenty deep, there weren’t no animals gonna get them—he felt a calmness come over him. His pa would have told him to get on with it. “You can’t do anything about what’s done,” he had said on several occasions. “Just brush the dirt off your britches and keep a goin’.”
    A time or two, Cormac had just curled up into a ball in the bottom of a grave in misery, and as he packed the last dirt on each grave, he told them how much he had loved them and how much he was going to miss them.
    When the chore had been completed, he had fallen asleep; but when he came out of it and had his crying binge, he had accepted the situation as much as such a situation could be accepted. He was still