“Yeah, I…I think so.”
Preacher knew the dying man couldn’t tell him anything else that was important. He took the canteen from Crazy Bear, pulled the cork with his teeth, and held the neck of it to Spaulding’s mouth.
“Here’s the water. Drink as much as you want.”
Spaulding gulped greedily at the cool liquid. When he had swallowed quite a bit of water, he licked his lips again and sighed. “That’s better,” he said, his voice slightly stronger. “Are you gonna go after them?”
“We are,” Preacher said. “We’ll do everything we can to rescue those women and settle the score with Mayhew and his bunch.”
“How many of you…are there?”
Preacher smiled. “Just the two of us.”
“Just…two? You can’t—”
The old man’s voice broke off abruptly as his face twisted in pain and a spasm shook him. His hands moved to his bloody midsection. He gasped, said, “Oh…Lord!” and then died. Preacher saw the light go out of his eyes and the lines of agony on his face ease.
“There was nothing you could do for him,” Crazy Bear said. “He was dead before we got here, only his body did not know it yet.”
“Yeah, I know,” Preacher said as he eased Spaulding’s head to the ground. “Maybe I should’ve lied and told him there’s more than two of us. He might’ve gone out with a little more hope that we’d be able to help those women.”
“The two of us will have to be enough.”
Preacher gazed off to the north, his eyes following the tracks of the wagons.
“Those captives’ll have to hope so, anyway,” he said.
Chapter 6
There were twenty-eight bodies scattered around the burned-out hulks of the wagons. Preacher and Crazy Bear couldn’t take the time to dig graves for all of them, or even a mass grave big enough to hold all the luckless pilgrims. But Preacher had noticed a ravine in the foothills with a lot of loose rock on its sides. It would have to do, since the only other option was to leave the bodies for the scavengers and he wasn’t going to do that.
He unloaded the supplies from his pack animal, then draped a body over the back of each horse and led them to the ravine. While Preacher was doing that, Crazy Bear found the corpse of the young warrior Storm Cloud and covered it with rocks to protect it until men from the village could retrieve it and take it back to be placed in a tree in the proper Crow custom.
It took ten trips to transport all the corpses from the wagon train. Once they had been rolled down to the bottom of the ravine, Preacher picked out a likely looking rock. He and Crazy Bear put their shoulders to it and shoved. It took some grunting and straining, but the boulder finally moved and began to roll down the slope. It picked up speed and knocked other rocks loose, and soon there was a miniature avalanche of rocks and dirt sliding down the side of the ravine. The debris came to rest with a rumble and a roar, and when the dust cleared, Preacher saw that all the bodies were covered.
“One hell of a way to lay folks to rest,” he muttered as he gazed down at the immigrants’ final resting place.
“It is not the Crow way,” Crazy Bear said, “but I think they would have chosen it over being left where they fell.”
“Yeah, I expect you’re right.” Preacher looked up at the mountains looming to the west. The sun was touching the tops of the peaks. “We’d better get on the trail. We’ve got a little light left. Those wagons will be moving slow enough that we can shave off a lot of the lead they have on us.”
The two men followed the tracks left by the wagon wheels until it was too dark to see anymore. They stopped to let their horses rest and to talk over the situation.
“If those ol’ boys are dumb enough to build a fire, we can probably find them tonight,” Preacher said. “If they’re not, we may have to catch up tomorrow and follow them just out of sight until nightfall again. I’d just as soon not have to do that. The longer those women and girls are in their hands…”
His voice trailed off. He didn’t have to go into detail about what he meant. Crazy Bear understood as well as he did the risks that the prisoners faced. It was possible that some of the captives had already been assaulted. But the longer the outlaws had them, the worse it would be.
“If we go ahead in the dark, we risk losing their trail,” Crazy Bear pointed out.
“If we do, it ought to be easy enough to pick up again in the morning. They’ve been runnin’ parallel with the mountains all the way from Owl Rock.”
The wagons were staying on the prairie, about half a mile from the edge of the foothills, and heading in a generally northward direction, curving gradually to the west to follow the Big Horn range. There weren’t many places for them to go. The mountains were too rugged for the outlaws to take the wagons across them.
A couple more days of travel in the same direction would put them in the Montana country, where they could rendezvous with the Blackfeet or the Sioux. The Mayhews and their companions were running a considerable risk. It was possible the Indians they encountered would kill them, scalp them, and take the prisoners and the goods from the wagon train.
Unless the men the Mayhews had joined up with had some sort of previous arrangement with the hostiles, Preacher mused. For years there had been certain white men who traded guns and whiskey with the Indians. He figured trash like that wouldn’t mind expanding their enterprise to slaves and stolen goods.
He and Crazy Bear discussed the possibility for a few minutes, and the Crow chief agreed it might be true. He said, “I think we should go on and try to find their camp tonight.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Preacher said. “We’ll take it slow and easy, so they won’t hear us comin’.”
After resting the horses for a short time longer, the two men mounted up and rode northward again. The stars had come out, and the millions upon millions of pinpricks in the night sky cast enough illumination for them to see where they were going. The Big Horns loomed blackly on their left.
Preacher and Crazy Bear weren’t in any hurry. The worst thing they could do was ride right into the middle of the enemy camp without knowing it was there. That wouldn’t accomplish anything except get them dead in a hurry.
Their eyes constantly searched the darkness for the light of a campfire. There was nothing like that to be seen, so their other senses came into play. It was Preacher’s nose that warned him they were getting close to their quarry. He caught a faint whiff of wood smoke in the air, along with the smell of tobacco. He reined to a halt and put out a hand to signal Crazy Bear to do likewise.
The Crow chief was already bringing his pony to a stop. “I smell it, too,” he whispered. “But I see nothing.”
“They probably stopped just before dark and built a fire to cook their supper, then put it out,” Preacher replied, his own voice quiet enough that it couldn’t be heard more than a few feet away. “They’ve got their pipes goin’, too, but those don’t give off enough light for us to see them.”
“We should go forward on foot now.”
“Just what I was thinkin’.”
Since it was likely the outlaws had made their camp at the edge of the foothills where there was more wood for a fire, Preacher and Crazy Bear dismounted and led their horses toward the hills. When they reached a small grove of slender trees, they tied the animals there and worked their way along the line of hills that curved to the northwest.
Preacher and Crazy Bear moved in almost complete silence. Like shadows flitting through the darkness, they followed their noses toward the enemy camp. The smell of wood smoke faded, but the aroma of tobacco drew them on. As it grew stronger, they dropped to the ground and proceeded on their hands and knees.
The sudden sound of voices nearby made them sink to their bellies in the grass and lie motionless. A man said, “Jord, leave that gal alone. I think she’s had enough.”
“Damn it, Clint,” another man responded. “You and Walt had your turns with her. Now I oughta get a chance.”
&nb
sp; “Take one of the others,” Clint Mayhew responded. Preacher recognized his voice as the one that had given the orders the day they had ambushed him three weeks earlier.
“All right,” Jord Mayhew said. “I’ll see if I can find one nobody’s got at yet.”
His brother Clint grunted. “You do that.”
Anger burned brightly in Preacher as he listened to the conversation. The idea that those skunks talked so casually about assaulting women made him wish he could just stand up and empty his Dragoon Colts into the varmints. But there were too many outlaws for him to do that. He couldn’t hope to kill them all before they killed him and Crazy Bear. If that happened those prisoners would be as bad off as they were.
He took his hat off and lifted his head so that he could look over the grass. His keen eyes spotted three wagons parked at the edge of some trees that grew down the slope of a foothill to the plains. A dark mass off to one side was the oxen and saddle horses belonging to the outlaws. He looked for guards posted around the camp. Those men would have to be taken care of first, and quietly.
Preacher watched as a man grasped the arm of a woman who’d been lying on the ground and jerked her to her feet. He marched her over to one of the wagons and told her, “Climb inside for now.” From the way she was weeping, Preacher knew she was in pain or terrified. Probably both.
Another man followed, a swagger in his step. He leaned into another wagon and said, “You there. Get out here.” When the prisoner didn’t respond quickly enough to suit him, he reached into the wagon. A scream came from the woman as Jord Mayhew pulled her out of the wagon by her long, dark hair.
The scream cut off abruptly as he threw her on the ground. When she fell silent Preacher thought for a second she had been knocked out by the fall. But she bounded to her feet and a torrent of angry words spewed from her mouth in a language he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t any Indian tongue he had ever heard, although there were certain similarities.
Whether he understood the words or not, he could tell from the tone of the woman’s voice that she was giving Jord a good cussin’ out. When a few English obscenities slipped into the flow, he was sure of it. Jord laughed and reached for her, but she slipped away, darting out of his reach with a graceful agility.
“Damn you, gal, come back here,” Jord said and lunged after her. Laughter came from some of the other men gathered around the camp as she eluded his rush with apparent ease and he stumbled as he grabbed for her and missed.
Being laughed at made Jord angrier. “You’re gonna be sorry you gave me trouble,” he warned the woman. “You’re just makin’ it worse for yourself.”
She spat more curses at him in that unknown tongue.
Jord charged her again, and Preacher had a feeling she would have continued to avoid him if one of the men sitting nearby hadn’t stuck a leg out without warning and tripped her. With a cry of dismay, the woman went down hard, tumbling to the ground and rolling over. Jord pounced on her.
A second later, he let out a yell and leaped back up. “Look out! The bitch has got my knife!”
Preacher heard a soft grunt from beside him, then another, and realized that Crazy Bear was laughing. “The white woman has much spirit,” the Crow chief whispered. “She will make them pay for whatever they do to her.”
Preacher heard admiration in Crazy Bear’s voice and understood why he felt that way. Preacher couldn’t help but admire the woman himself. As the outlaws jumped to their feet and began to shout in alarm over the fact that one of their prisoners was armed, several of them grabbed at her but had to jump back to keep from being slashed by the blade she held. She whirled and leaped and danced, keeping her captors at bay with the flashing knife.
Clint Mayhew strode up and leveled his arm so that the pistol in his hand pointed straight at the woman. “Drop it,” he ordered, “or I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t shoot her, Clint,” one of the other men objected. “She’s the prettiest one of the bunch!”
“Yeah? Well, what good’s that gonna do you if she’s liable to geld you if you get anywhere near her? All these bitches better learn right now, they don’t have any say in what happens to ’em!”
The woman with the knife didn’t drop the weapon. Instead, she backed away and directed her curses at Clint.
“Blast it, I mean it,” he told her. “I’m gonna kill you.”
A hundred yards away, Crazy Bear whispered to Preacher, “We cannot allow him to harm her.”
“I can drop him from here with a rifle shot,” Preacher said, “but that’s gonna make it a lot harder to get her and the rest of the prisoners free.”
It was a difficult decision, balancing the life of one woman against the lives of all the other captives. Preacher and Crazy Bear guessed there were probably a couple dozen women and girls being held in those wagons.
At that moment, the sound of hoofbeats made itself heard in the night air, and they didn’t have to make the decision. The pounding rumble meant many horses, and the large group seemed to be coming straight toward the camp. Some of the outlaws turned toward the sound and lifted their rifles.
The newcomers distracted the woman with the knife, too. One of the men was able to get behind her. He tackled her, wrapping his arms around her waist as he drove her off her feet. “I got her, Jord!” the man shouted.
Jord Mayhew leaped forward and brought a booted foot down on the knife, pinning the blade to the ground. He leaned down and took hold of the woman, then dragged her to her feet. She fought against him, but he slammed the back of his hand across her face, stunning her. She slumped in his grip. Still holding her, he turned with the others to watch as the large group of riders came loping up to the camp.
One of the outlaws stepped forward and raised his voice. “Welcome, Red Moccasins!” he called.
Preacher heard Crazy Bear’s breath hiss between his teeth. “Red Moccasins,” the Crow chief repeated. “He is a Sioux war chief. We are too late to save the prisoners from being handed over to them!”
Chapter 7
Even at that distance, Preacher could tell an atmosphere of tension filled the camp as the dust from the arrival of the Sioux warriors settled. The darkness made it impossible to get an accurate count, but he estimated that the newcomers numbered about thirty. The white men were betting their lives the Indians would abide by whatever bargain had been struck with them.
“Greetings, Lupton,” one of the warriors said in English. “What do you have for us this time?”
“Great bounty, Chief. Fifty oxen, and nearly half that many female slaves.”
Red Moccasins made a curt gesture with the lance he carried. “Oxen!” he said with disgust in his voice. “What need do the Sioux have of oxen when there are more buffalo on the plains than there are stars in the sky?”
“You don’t have to hunt these critters, chief, and risk having some of your warriors caught in a stampede. You can slaughter one for meat any time you need to.”
Red Moccasins shook his head. “A true warrior fills his belly and the bellies of his family with his own skills! Only a woman would do as you say!”
The tension in the air grew worse. Preacher wasn’t surprised by Red Moccasins’ reaction to Lupton’s proposition. The Sioux war chief regarded it as an insult. One more such spark might set off an explosion of violence that would leave the outlaws dead and their captives in the hands of the Sioux. That might not be such a bad thing—it would cut down the odds against Preacher and Crazy Bear—except for the fact that some of the women and girls might be killed in the fighting.
“I apologize, Red Moccasins,” Lupton said. “I know better than to make an offer like that to a man such as yourself. We will keep the oxen, but the slaves are yours. We ask only safe passage through your lands, and a dozen buffalo hides.”
“And all the loot they already stole from the wagon train,” Preacher added in a whisper to Crazy Bear. The Crow chief spoke little English, so Preacher had been keeping up a running translation for him.
Crazy Bear nodded and said in his own tongue, “The Blackfeet would have taken the oxen as well as the prisoners. Those white men were ready for whichever tribe they encountered.”
Preacher agreed. The man called Lupton must have traded with the Indians before. He probably made a regular business of smuggling guns and whiskey to the various tribes, as well as preying on immigrant trains whenever he got the chance. He had slipped for a moment there with his Sioux customers, a mistake that had come close to getting him and the others killed, but that moment of danger seemed to have passed.
“You have a jug?” Red Moccasins asked.
“Of course,” Lupton replied.
The chief gestured with his lance again. He and his men began to dismount.
Lupton said to one of his men, “Build a fire. The chief and I are going to parley.”
There would be a lot of talk before Lupton and Red Moccasins settled the details of the deal they were striking. The parley might last until morning. The rest of the Sioux and the other outlaws would share the whiskey the white men had brought along, and most likely share the women as well. It would be a long, ugly night.
But it could pay some dividends for him and Crazy Bear, Preacher thought. By morning a lot of their enemies would be drunk and less alert.
The two men put their heads close together. “We cannot kill all of them,” Crazy Bear said. “Not even Ghost-Killer could do that.”
“You’re right,” Preacher agreed. “And we can’t drive off in those wagons, either. That would be too slow We’ll have to slip in before dawn and take the women out of there on foot. Then we’ll stampede the horses through the camp and scatter them. Maybe that’ll give us time to get the women into the hills and hide them.”
Crazy Bear nodded. “It is not a good plan…but with two against fifty, it is all we can do.”
The Crow chief was right about that. They’d likely wind up getting themselves killed, Preacher thought, but there was no alternative.
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