While he ate, Judith sat down at the other end of the table. The scrutiny with which she regarded him made Preacher a little wary. He could tell something was on the lady’s mind.
She asked abruptly, “What are the chances we’ll survive this?”
So she wanted reassurance, he thought. He supposed he could do that. “We’ll be fine. This fort’s well built. The walls are plenty sturdy, and we’ve got plenty of powder and shot. We can hold out until that boat gets here from Fort Union with more men and those cannons your husband was talkin’ about.”
“Yes, Ethan told me the same thing. He seemed quite confident.” Judith paused. “But I could see the fear in his eyes, Preacher. He thinks there’s at least a chance the Indians will overrun us.”
Preacher shrugged. “Anything’s possible, I reckon.”
“In that case, I have a favor to ask of you. I want you to promise to protect me.”
That took Preacher by surprise. “That’s more along the lines of somethin’ your husband ought to be doin’. Or even . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Judith obviously knew what he meant. “I’m afraid neither Ethan nor Wiley would actually do what I have in mind. You see, when I say that I want you to protect me, I mean that I want you to protect me from being captured by the savages.”
“Oh,” Preacher said, understanding now.
“I’d take care of it myself, but I’m afraid that at the last minute I . . . I might falter in my resolve. And I don’t want that to happen, Preacher. I really don’t. So if you see there’s no hope, perhaps you could come to me and . . . and . . .”
Feeling uncomfortable now, Preacher said, “It’s best not to think about such things.”
“I have to think about it now. Later, there may not be time.”
She was right about that. And he could sympathize with her desire not to be taken prisoner by the Blackfeet. If he were to be captured, he would be facing a long, excruciating death by torture. But at the end of things, death would be waiting. That might not be true for Judith. She might endure years of misery and degradation at the hands of her captors.
Finally he said, “You never know how a fight’s gonna go until you’re in the middle of it. I can’t make no promises except that if I can, I’ll do what you want, ma’am.”
She smiled again. “Thank you. That’s a weight off my mind.”
“But you better keep a pistol close at hand, just in case.”
“And save it for myself?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I think I can do it. I just . . . wanted to be sure.”
Preacher nodded and resumed eating. Neither of them said anything else.
When he returned to the parapet a little later, he didn’t say anything to Langley about what he and Judith had talked about. He didn’t see any point in it.
The day continued to crawl by. The spring sun was warm, and the growing stench from the bodies of warriors and horses got pretty bad. Preacher ignored it; he had smelled worse in his time.
Courtland asked, “Should we send out scouts, just to make sure the war party hasn’t left? We’d feel rather foolish if we stayed holed up in here for a week or two until the boat gets here and it turned out the Indians were all gone.”
“I’d rather feel foolish than be dead,” Preacher said dryly. “Anyway, sendin’ out scouts wouldn’t accomplish anything except to get ’em killed. Red Knife’s bunch is still out there.”
“But how can you be sure?”
Preacher nodded toward the bodies. “They won’t leave those poor varmints behind. They got to be tended to and given a proper send-off to the spirit world.”
“I suppose you’re right. I just hate this waiting.”
“Red Knife’s countin’ on that.”
Finally, the sun slipped below the horizon. As soon as it did, Preacher knew the danger increased. Every instinct he possessed told him the Blackfeet would try something before morning.
Darkness settled in and thickened quickly. Preacher suggested Langley have a fire built in the center of the compound, creating light to see by when it came time to fight again. Soon, flames were leaping high and casting their flickering glare around the inside of the fort.
Preacher, Langley, Courtland, Freeman, and Harrigan stood together on the parapet, crouching slightly so their heads wouldn’t be silhouetted against the glow from the fire behind them. The Blackfeet might not be very good shots, but there was no point in giving them easy targets.
“I’ll bet they try to sneak up to the wall and climb over it before we can stop them,” Langley said quietly. “They’re stealthy bastards. We have to be ready for them.”
“They might try that,” Preacher agreed. “Or they might try somethin’ even worse.”
“Like what?” Langley asked.
Preacher didn’t have to reply, because the next instant they could all see the answer for themselves.
Trailing streaks of fire, blazing arrows arched high in the sky and plunged down toward the fort.
CHAPTER 23
“Look out!” Langley yelled. “Everyone take cover!”
Gathered around the fire in the center of the compound, quite a few men scattered as the flaming arrows rained down. One man screamed as a shaft struck him in the back and knocked him off his feet. The burning head embedded itself in his body, and his coat began to smolder as he lay face down, jerking in death throes.
Some of the arrows fell among Courtland’s horse herd. The flames made the animals panic, but with nowhere to stampede, all they could do was charge back and forth for a short distance.
One man got too close to the milling chaos, and a horse’s shoulder bumped him heavily, sending him sprawling on the ground. He screamed as the horses trampled him. It was an ugly sound that cut off abruptly.
One of the arrows landed next to Preacher. He stomped it out quickly and yelled, “Put out any fires that start! Don’t let the buildings burn!”
The bonfire was in the middle of a large open area of hard-packed dirt. It wasn’t going to spread. The flaming arrows, though, were falling all over the fort. Quite a few landed on the roofs of the buildings. Men grabbed buckets and raced to the ditch supplying water to the fort. They filled the buckets and ran back to throw water on the spreading flames.
The trading post was the most important structure in the compound. It held the largest supplies of food and ammunition. If it burned down, there was no way the defenders could hold out until the boat got here.
“Men on the wall!” Preacher bellowed. “Open fire on the redskins shootin’ those arrows!” He thrust his rifle over the log and triggered a round toward the streaks of flame.
Other men followed his lead. A scattered volley rang out. If they hadn’t scored any hits, at least they’d made the varmints duck. Fewer of the burning arrows flew into the air.
Then the Blackfeet changed their tactics. Instead of firing flaming arrows, they launched regular arrows, again sending them high so they arched down into the fort. The shafts impaled several men as they tried to keep the fires from spreading.
Death falling from the sky was too much for the nerves of some men. Like the horses, they began to panic and mill around.
Up on the parapet, Preacher bit back a curse and kept shooting as fast as he could reload his rifle. He wasn’t firing completely blind. He had an idea where the Blackfeet were. He had a hunch what they would be doing next, too.
That hunch was confirmed when scores of howling warriors poured out of the darkness on all four sides of the fort and charged the walls. Some of them carried trunks of trees that had been felled and stripped of their branches, although several inches of those branches had been left to serve as hand- and footholds. If the Blackfeet succeeded in propping those tree trunks against the walls of the fort, they could scramble up them as easily as most men could climb a ladder.
Preacher shouted, “Stop ’em!” and lowered his aim. His rifle boomed, and one of the warriors leading the charge
faltered and dropped his end of the tree trunk he was carrying. The trunk plowed into the ground, ripping from the hands of the other two warriors carrying it. The first man stumbled again and fell.
But even as he hit the ground, another warrior joined the other two. They picked up the trunk, and resumed running toward the fort. All along the line of attack, warriors fell as shots rang out, but more men took their place instantly.
The defenders on the parapet and in the blockhouses kept shooting, in the hope they would kill enough Blackfeet to break the back of the charge.
Preacher wondered if that was possible. The warriors were willing to sacrifice their lives to wipe out their hated enemies, and their superior numbers allowed them to die and die and die until they would finally breach the fort’s defenses.
Quint Harrigan appeared at Preacher’s side. The red-bearded mountain man was panting from exertion. “I been goin’ around the walls, makin’ sure everybody knows what to do. We’re holdin’ ’em off, Preacher!”
“For now,” Preacher replied grimly as he rammed a fresh charge down the barrel of his rifle.
Harrigan leveled his weapon and fired. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“Got another of the red devils.” He dropped to a knee and reloaded.
Preacher squeezed off another shot and saw one of the warriors double over as the rifle ball punched into his guts. “Any of the fires from those arrows gettin’ out of control?”
“Not yet,” Harrigan reported. “Leastways I don’t think so. But I been a mite busy.” He raised up, took aim, and fired again. “Got that one in the head!”
“Best aim for the body,” Preacher advised. “It’s a bigger target.”
Harrigan laughed. “To tell the truth, I was. Shot went a little high. But I was lucky, I reckon.”
“We can all use a little luck right about now,” Preacher muttered under his breath.
The Blackfeet were getting close. Preacher shot his rifle once more, then leaned it against the wall and pulled two of his pistols from behind his belt. He leaned forward, thrust them over the wall, and yelled, “Come and get it, you sons o’ bitches!”
Some of the warriors shouted back at him, but the thunderous roar as smoke and flame erupted from Preacher’s guns drowned out their defiant cries. The double-shot pistols and the heavy charges of powder sent four balls smashing into the forefront of the Blackfoot charge.
The damage was devastating. A couple of balls tore all the way through their targets and struck other warriors behind them. The assault broke as wounded men piled up on each other.
Some of the Blackfeet began to withdraw. Others milled around in confusion, which made them easy targets for the defenders on the wall.
Preacher tucked the empty pistols away. He left the other two in reserve and snatched up his rifle to reload it. In a matter of seconds he had the long-barreled flintlock ready to fire again. He drew a bead and dropped another warrior.
Men were shouting all over the fort, but suddenly some of those shouts took on an added note of alarm.
Preacher’s head jerked around as he looked for the source. He spotted a knot of struggling figures on the fort’s eastern wall, around the corner from where he was. In the flickering light of flames, he caught a glimpse of painted warriors among the defenders clad in buckskin and homespun.
“Quint!” he shouted to Harrigan. “Come on! They’re inside the wall over yonder!”
Preacher didn’t have time to reload his rifle, but he carried it with him as he hurried toward the spot where Blackfeet had penetrated the fort’s defenses. The blockhouse at the corner was in his way, but a plank ran along the outside of it, forming a narrow, ledge-like pathway. He barely slowed down as he negotiated the plank with the agility of a mountain goat.
As he reached the parapet on the other side, a Blackfoot warrior climbed over the stockade wall and let out a harsh yell. He swung a tomahawk at the mountain man.
Preacher stepped inside the swing and smashed the rifle butt into the middle of the warrior’s face. Cartilage tore and bone shattered under the force of the blow. The Indian went backward over the wall and plummeted to the ground below.
Reversing the rifle and gripping the barrel so he could use it as a club, Preacher waded into the melee. Quint Harrigan was right behind him.
More bones crunched and blood splattered as Preacher flailed away at the warriors. Several times he received minor cuts from knives or tomahawks wielded by his enemies, but he ignored the pain. Caught up in the heat of battle as he was, he didn’t really feel it.
One of the warriors tackled him from behind and knocked him down on the parapet. The impact jolted the rifle from Preacher’s hands. He plucked his knife from the sheath at his waist and drove the blade up and back.
There was a slight resistance as the razor-sharp weapon sliced into the Blackfoot’s belly. Preacher ripped to the side with it and felt the hot gush of blood and the slick slide of guts spilling from the gaping wound he had opened up.
He threw off the dying warrior and rolled over. As he surged to his feet he changed his grip on the knife so he held it in more traditional fashion. His left arm went around the neck of a Blackfoot about to brain a fallen defender with a war club. Preacher jerked the warrior back and planted the knife deep in his body from behind. The blade rasped on ribs and then sank into the Blackfoot’s heart. The warrior spasmed in death for a second before Preacher yanked the knife free and cast the corpse aside.
With his left hand, he picked up a fallen tomahawk. Using it and the knife, he struck again and again, right and left, doing terrible damage to the warriors who had scaled the wall and made it into the fort. The mountain man’s arms were soon smeared with blood to the elbows, and crimson gore was splattered across his chest and face.
A sweeping blow with the tomahawk crushed a warrior’s skull and knocked him off the parapet, falling to the ground inside the fort. Preacher looked around for another enemy to kill, but didn’t see any. The Blackfeet had fled. It took a few seconds for the realization to penetrate the red haze hanging over his brain.
Quint Harrigan gripped his arm. “Preacher! Preacher, the redskins are gone! They lit out! They’re pullin’ back all around the fort!”
Preacher blinked away the fog of bloodlust and gave a little shake of his head. Bodies were scattered on the parapet all around the walls, white men and Indian alike. Death was no respecter of skin color. More littered the ground inside the fort where men had fallen off the parapet as they died.
Men stood at the walls, firing rifles at the warriors as they fled into the night. Indians seldom doubled back after retreating. Once an attack was over, it was over . . . until the next time.
Preacher drew in a deep breath. “Are you all right, Quint?”
“Banged up a mite,” Harrigan replied. “How about you? You got blood all over you.”
“Most of it ain’t mine,” Preacher said. “I’ll be fine. Let’s go see what those varmints cost us this time.”
They began working their way around the walls, checking on the dead and injured. The Blackfoot casualties were five or six times as many as those of the defenders. A section of wall about twenty feet long was the only place the warriors had gotten into the fort. They had poured a lot of men into that gap, but most of them had died.
Elsewhere around the walls, a man had died here and there or been wounded by an arrow. That was true on the ground inside the fort, too. When Preacher did a quick count, he found only six of the defenders had been killed, with three times that many suffering wounds, most of them relatively minor.
Preacher and Harrigan were back on the ground when Ethan Langley came up to them. “We drove them off!” the booshwa said excitedly.
“Don’t go to celebratin’ just yet,” Preacher warned him. “They’ll be back.”
A solemn look came over Langley’s face. “Are you sure about that?”
“Sure as I can be,” Preacher answered without hesitation. “They’ve still got us
in a bad spot. They ain’t just about to give up and go away.” He looked around. “Have you seen Courtland and Freeman?”
“Not recently. And if anything happened to them, I don’t care.”
“You’d better care,” Preacher said. “If we’re gonna hold out until that boat gets here, we’re likely gonna need every man . . . and every gun.”
CHAPTER 24
Preacher found the missing men. Courtland had made it through the battle unharmed. Freeman had a bloody gash on his forehead, but insisted he was all right.
“What’s one more scar matter to a man who’s already as ugly as sin?” he asked with a grin.
Now that the shooting had dwindled away to nothing, the horses were finally settling down again. Courtland eyed them with anger and frustration. “Some of those animals are hurt, and that’s going to have an effect on their value.”
“They would’ve been a lot worse off if the whole place had burned to the ground,” Preacher pointed out. “And that could’ve happened mighty easy, too.”
The roofs of the fur warehouse, a couple of storage buildings, and one barrack were charred where flaming arrows had started small fires. Only the quick action by men risking their lives to fill buckets and throw water on the flames had saved the buildings.
“There’s got to be somethin’ we can do to keep those redskins from tryin’ that again,” Freeman said.
Preacher shook his head. “We can’t see what they’re doin’ in the dark, so we can’t stop them from shootin’ those flamin’ arrows. But we can be better prepared when they do. I’ll talk to Langley about havin’ plenty of buckets already filled before night falls again. We should go ahead and wet down the roofs real good to keep fires from startin’ so easy.”
Courtland snorted. “Good luck getting him to listen to any idea of common sense.”
Preacher bit back the angry response that sprang to his lips. Clearly, Courtland and Langley were going to continue to nurse their hatred for each other, no matter what the circumstances.
They would be smart not to turn their backs on the other one during a fight, he mused. He wouldn’t put it past either man to take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of his rival, once and for all.
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