Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Mune sticks out his lower lip like a scolded, sulking child. Paha Sapa thinks that if the drunken dimwit starts crying, he—Paha Sapa—will kill him. For not the first time in his life, he feels the terrible Crazy Horse joy rising in him at the thought of sinking a hatchet deep into the prescalped skull under that stupid derby.

— What time you comin’ for me tomorrow night, Billy?

Paha Sapa lets out a breath in relief.

— A little before eleven p.m., Mune.

— Do I get paid then?

Paha Sapa doesn’t even bother shaking his head at a question that stupid.

— In the morning. Before dawn. When we’re done. Mr. Borglum may show up to check the work and pay you himself.

— Hey, you already got the money! I saw it last week!

— That was for another job, Mune. Look, I talked Mr. Borglum into giving you this last job just as my favor to you. Don’t screw it up.

Mune tries to squint harder but his squint is as tight and narrow as it can go.

— Which winch will I be usin’?

— All four of them, I think. I’ll check with Mr. Borglum tomorrow, but I think we’ll be using all four.

— Four? There are only three winches on the face now, you stupid half-breed. I come by now and then, y’know. There’re only three on the heads.

— Only three working above the heads right now, it’s true. But there’s the one on the backside from last year. I guess we’ll be lifting some stuff from the Hall of Records canyon. Oh, and Mune?

— What?

Paha Sapa lifts his loose shirt. The long Colt revolver given to him by Curly the cavalry scout sixty years ago next week is tucked into his waistband. In the intervening years, Paha Sapa has found cartridges for it and was test firing as recently as yesterday. The nice thing about well-built weapons, he thinks, is that they’re never really obsolete.

— Just this, Mune. You call me half-breed or Tonto once again, and I don’t care how drunk you are, I’ll blow your fucking dim-witted head clean off your fucking fat carcass. Is that clear, you big, stupid sack of shit?

Mune nods docilely.

Paha Sapa goes out to the motorcycle. It starts on the first kick. The long-barreled revolver is absurdly uncomfortable in his waistband so Paha Sapa tosses it onto the leather seat of the sidecar.

A LITTLE BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Paha Sapa drives the donkeys up to the mountain first, just as he planned. Even as he shifts the gears of the screeching hulk of a truck, he knows it is a stupid plan. He should have just put the donkeys in with the dynamite and blasting caps and made one trip out of it. If the dynamite were to go up, so would most of the town of Keystone—what are two damned, lazy old donkeys one way or the other? Paha Sapa has never had much use for anything—man or beast—that doesn’t work to earn its keep in the world, and these donkeys haven’t done any labor harder than hauling Father Pierre Marie’s mail or groceries up the hill from Deadwood to the church and priest’s cabin once a week or so.

Well, that will change tonight. The asses—and the ass of the old man currently driving them up the hill—will do some serious work for a change this night.

Advocatus and Diaboli are quiet back there during the ride. They were very unhappy when Paha Sapa lashed the clumsy slippers made out of burlap over their hooves before loading them onto the truck, but apparently the two donkeys think that they are being driven back to their real life with the priest above Deadwood—or maybe they are just sleepy, unused to being rousted from their beauty sleep once the sun goes down—and perhaps they are also pleased at all the heaps of straw and bales of hay strategically placed in the back of the slat-sided truck for their riding and dining pleasure.

Paha Sapa doesn’t break it to the donkeys that the hay and straw are for the dynamite to come later.

The highway is empty. The small complex of shacks and larger buildings visible on Doane Mountain through the pines—the hoist house, blacksmith shop, compressor house—are all dark. Paha Sapa catches a glimpse of lights still gleaming from Mr. Borglum’s studio, but that home is safely away from the large dirt-and-gravel parking lot where he drives the Dodge to the far end, parks in the shadows of large trees, and unloads Devil’s and Advocate.

The trees now have shadows because the moon—two days away from being full—has risen above the peaks and hills to the east. The August night air is warmer than usual for this altitude and hour and the dried grasses underfoot are alive with leaping ’hoppers and other insects as Paha Sapa leads the confused donkeys thirty yards from the parking lot. The actual steep path to the Hall of Records canyon begins another hundred and fifty yards or so up the hill, but Paha Sapa is going to have to leave the donkeys here and he wants them to be quiet while he goes back for the dynamite. To that end, he not only ties them firmly to ponderosa pines with their tethers, but also hobbles them and ties on blindfolds.

Advocatus and Diaboli both kick out blindly in their irritation at this final insult to their dignity.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet , thinks Paha Sapa as he hauls the two animal pack frames from the truck and cinches one onto each of the astonished animals. He also brings up the folded tarps and stacks them in the dappled moonlight.

All his life, Paha Sapa has loved the scent of pine needles underfoot at night, the aroma they release while cooling after a hot day in the sun, and this night is no different. He realizes that the pain that has been growing in his bowels and lower back the past weeks is dissipating, as is the terrible fatigue he’s carried with him day and night for months now.

This is it. I’m committed. I’m actually doing this at last.

There is a freedom—almost a lightness—in this thought, and he has to remind himself, sardonically, that all he’s done so far is transport two donkeys uphill for immoral purposes. There’s a Mann Act, Paha Sapa knows… is there a Donkey Act?

There will be if you don’t sober up, Black Hills , he snaps at himself. He knows that he has not touched a drop of whiskey or any other sort of liquor or wine or beer in more than forty years—so where is this almost drunken levity coming from?

From finally doing what you’ve only thought about doing for sixty years, you tiresome moron , he tells himself as he puts the Dodge in neutral and lets it coast out of the parking lot and downhill away from the monument before finally starting the engine.

The twenty-one crates of the best dynamite he has in storage have been set aside from the rejects and are ready to load. Paha Sapa’s back has been hurting so much recently that he worried about the simple act of loading the crates—afraid his back would give way hauling the heavy crates up the ramp to the truck bed—but he has no problems at all. Each of the crates fits perfectly into the high cradle of hay bales just as he planned, and the tarps and straw set between each crate in each stack further cushion them.

Still, he lets out a breath when he’s beyond the so-called city limits of Keystone. Because so many of the town’s residents work for Mr. Borglum, and because tomorrow—no, today now—this Saturday, is a workday for most of them, the three backroom bars in town aren’t as busy as they usually are on a Friday night, but Paha Sapa would still feel bad if a bump in this potholed, unpaved-to-begin-with road were to blow him, the truck, those bars, and twenty other structures with their cargo of sleeping wives and children to atoms.