Read Online Black Hills (9781101559116) by Rod Thompson - Free Book Online Page B

down, a rattlesnake in the brush near her leg rattled his tail and struck. Cormac heard Mr. Schwartz’s gun go off and saw the snake’s head disappear into the brush and the snake flop to the ground before realizing that the gun was somehow in his own hand. It was he who had pulled it from Mr. Schwartz’s holster with his right hand.
    â€œOh!” Lainey cried, running to hug him. “You’re wonderful! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Mr. Schwartz just stared at him as if he’d seen damnation. Later, when Cormac had gone to bed, he heard the Schwartzes voices as they passed outside his window.
    â€œI never seen nutten in my life move that fast,” Mr. Schwartz was saying. “The gun yust appeared in his hand and his von shot tooked the head cleand off.”
    It had taken Cormac as much by surprise as it had Mr. Schwartz, and he wasn’t too sure what to think about it his own self. All that practicing hand movements to pick taters as fast as he could had apparently come in handy in more ways than one.
    â€œThat’s the second time he has saved her life,” Mrs. Schwartz responded. “She would have died if the snake had bitten her. His folks would have been mighty proud of him.”
    Cormac liked that thought and hoped that his parents were somewhere, somehow, proud of the man he was becoming. He hoped Becky was, too.

CHAPTER 4
    N either of the Schwartzes was much for education, but Cormac continued the study habits his mother had given him, reading and rereading her books.
    â€œCormie,” his mother had told him one evening while selecting their next book, “you should never stop reading and learning. You are going to get an education if I have to pour it into you.” She hadn’t had to do much pouring. He had learned to love reading at an early age. His pa agreed with his mother and wished that he, too, had more “book larnin’,” but he said there were many places from which to get an education.
    â€œWatch how the trees and plants grow,” he told Cormac one day when they were tracking a deer. “See how animals react to each other and what their trails and droppin’s look like. Study people and be aware of how they move and when their mouth says one thing and their eyes another, or when the smile on their lips doesn’t reach all the way to their eyes.”
    Lainey’s mother had also been educating her, and she missed it. It only followed that she would slip into studying with Cormac. It gave them something to do on evenings and days when it was too cold to do much of anything outside other than make sure the stock had food, keep the ice broken off the stream and water tanks so the stock could get to the water, keep the cows milked, the hogs and chickens fed, and repair wagons and harnesses in preparation for spring planting. They read, talked, and argued over their opinions on what they had read.
    Lainey had been after Cormac to teach her to shoot. For her fifteenth birthday present he agreed and found her to be a good student, only needing to be shown something one time. He began teaching her to shoot with his pa’s pride and joy: the rifle he called GERT. Lainey was somewhat intimidated by it, but got over it quickly enough. The gun had been given to Cormac’s father by a German gun-maker to repay a debt. Most of the name had been gouged off a few years earlier by a bullet that ricocheted off it instead of killing his pa. All that remained of the name was GERT, so the rifle became a she, and his pa affectionately called her GERT.
    â€œShe looks funny,” his pa had told him. “But she was made slowly and with pride by the hands of a skilled craftsman taking pride in his work. It was made to use the new cartridge ammunition and will put the bullet right where you aim her at a range bordering on the unbelievable. She’s one of a kind.” Then his eyes lit up. He was not school