Free Black Hills (9781101559116) by Rod Thompson

educated like Cormac’s mother, but he dearly loved the turn of a good phrase or yarn.
    He had pulled GERT up to his shoulder and followed an imaginary moving target. “Man, man, man,” he said, shaking his head with feeling. “You could scare up one of your rabbits, let him run all day and shoot him at night.”
    â€œWith a pistol,” Cormac reminded Lainey one Sunday morning, teaching her as his pa had taught him, “you just point it like pointing your finger. A rifle is a whole different ball of wax; it needs to be held very steady. If at all possible, a rifle needs to be rested on something solid. If that’s not possible, lay down. Never shoot from a standing position if you can kneel down, and never kneel if you can lay down.” She learned quickly and after just a few lessons, unflinching from the kick or the noise, was hitting most things she aimed at.

    Cormac had been noticing that Lainey’s body was getting right comely in a full-blown way, and with her fire-red hair, green eyes, and an uncommonly bright-white smile, she was downright eye-pleasin’. When they were sixteen, Cormac peeked under the blanket dividing their room when they were getting ready for bed one warm night, but was very nearly caught at it and doing so made him feel guilty. He never repeated it.
    He and Lainey did chores together, studied together, played together, and had snowball fights, and once, under the pretense of trying to wash her face in the snow, he kissed her while he was holding her down and she couldn’t resist—or so he thought. Sometimes on Sundays when the weather was warm, they went for horseback rides. Cormac would saddle the grulla for Lainey, and he would ride Lop Ear bareback. Only one of the saddles was large enough for either of the big horses, and a too-small saddle would give them saddle sores on their backs. The grulla was a pretty and well-behaved mare with a smooth ride, which was good for Lainey. On those occasions, they sometimes took a lunch and ranged far.
    On one such occasion after removing a rock from Lop Ear’s shoe that left the big horse limping slightly, Lainey said he better ride behind her on the way back to rest the foot. She emptied one stirrup and he stepped up to sit behind her saddle.
    â€œOh, this is scary,” he said as they started back. “I might fall off.” He promptly wrapped his arms tightly around her waist.
    â€œOh stop it, you phony!” she exclaimed, and pushed his arms back. “You behave yourself, mister, and don’t get any ideas or you can just walk back.” She smiled half the way home thinking maybe she had been too hasty.

    Then, shortly after they turned seventeen, everything went wrong, and Cormac and Lainey began fighting. It was the darndest thing. One day they were getting along just fine, and the next they were squabbling about every little thing, tormenting each other at every opportunity, and Cormac got on a first-name basis with her Irish temper.
    She asked for no quarter and gave none . . . giving as good as she got. And when she had her Irish up and her green eyes were flashing, it was time to head for the hills. When he intentionally neglected to tell her how much the shotgun kicked before she fired it for the first time, the kick knocked her on her keister, and he laughed and made fun of her. Seeing the look on her face while she was getting up, he realized he had made a mistake and ran like the devil, but not fast enough. She bounced a frozen dirt clod off the back of his head, and he bled for ten minutes.
    â€œServes you right,” she told him when he complained about it later. “Next time I’ll throw harder and then turn you over to the wee people.”
    The “wee people,” Lainey had told him, were mischievous Leprechauns that could only be seen by the Irish, but they all had a pot of gold, and if one could be caught, he was obligated to give it to the person who