“You son of a bitch!” Lupton bellowed. He had a pair of flintlock pistols in his hands. One of them roared, sending a ball whistling past Preacher’s head to splatter on the canyon wall behind him.
Before Lupton could fire again, Preacher’s right-hand Dragoon blasted. The shot drove into the outlaw’s chest and knocked him back on his ass. Gasping in pain and shock, Lupton tried to raise his second pistol, but he didn’t make it. The weapon slipped out of his fingers, and he toppled sideways as death claimed him.
Red Moccasins threw his lance at Crazy Bear. It was an awkward throw because of the angle, and Crazy Bear knocked the lance aside with his bow. He dropped the bow, let out the gibbering laugh that had given him his name, and leaped off the ledge, as he yanked out a knife. Crazy Bear crashed into Red Moccasins, and both men went down.
Preacher was busy trading shots with Clint Mayhew. “Preacher! You bastard!” Mayhew shouted as he fired a pistol. “I should’ve known it was you!”
Preacher felt the ball’s passage through the air only inches from his ear and ducked in the other direction. Mayhew fired the pistol in his other hand and got lucky. The ball creased Preacher’s upper right arm, ripping the buckskin shirt and plowing a shallow furrow in the flesh. The impact was enough to numb Preacher’s arm and knock him back a step against the canyon wall.
Mayhew grabbed up a pistol that one of the wounded men had dropped and lined the sights on Preacher’s chest. With hate contorting his face, he pressed the trigger, but even as smoke and flame gushed from the barrel, a shot from Preacher’s left-hand gun smashed into Mayhew’s body and threw off his aim.
At the same instant, a rifle cracked behind the man and a ball struck him in the back. The two impacts coming together from opposite directions held him upright for a long moment as blood gushed from both wounds. Then his knees unhinged and he fell straight to the ground. Preacher saw Mala standing behind Mayhew with a rifle at her shoulder. Smoke still curled from the barrel.
Before Preacher could call down his thanks to her, she lowered the rifle and rushed forward. Preacher saw that Red Moccasins was on top of Crazy Bear and about to plunge a knife into the Crow chief’s chest. Preacher couldn’t fire because Mala was in his way.
Mala reversed the rifle and grasping it by the barrel, swung it like a club. The stock slammed into the back of Red Moccasins’ head, knocking him forward. As his knife swept down, the blade dug into the ground next to Crazy Bear’s head instead of burying itself in his chest.
Crazy Bear’s hands shot up and locked around the Sioux chief’s throat. With a heave, Crazy Bear rolled over and put Red Moccasins under him. Red Moccasins flailed and thrashed but was no match for Crazy Bear’s strength. Crazy Bear’s hands twisted one way, then the other, and Red Moccasins’ neck snapped with a crack like that of a breaking branch.
The shooting had stopped. Preacher’s right arm still hung numb at his side, but he tracked his left-hand gun from side to side of the canyon mouth, his eyes searching for more threats. All the attackers were down, either dead or mortally wounded.
Crazy Bear lumbered upright, leaving the body of Red Moccasins at his feet. Mala ran to him. For a second Preacher thought she was going to throw her arms around Crazy Bear, but she stopped herself and stood looking up at him.
“You are all right?” she asked in English.
Somehow he understood. He nodded and smiled. He was still ugly as hell, Preacher thought, but the smile helped a little.
“I hate to intrude,” he called down to them, “but I’m shot and somebody may have to help me down.”
The feeling came back quickly to Preacher’s wounded arm, so it hurt right smart when Mala used some of the outlaws’ whiskey to clean the furrow and then bound it up.
They gathered up all the rifles, pistols, and ammunition from the dead outlaws and armed the women. “Reckon you could hold off an army for a while now if you needed to,” Preacher told Mala, “but I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. Shouldn’t be anybody else around to bother you before Crazy Bear and I get back.”
He was glad he could use his right arm when he and Crazy Bear got on their horses and rounded up the animals they had stampeded that morning before dawn. By midday they had driven enough mounts to the canyon so the women could ride instead of walking.
Once they returned with the horses, Preacher and Crazy Bear dragged off the bodies. There was no question about what would be done with them. The scavengers would feast. Some varmints didn’t deserve buryin’, to Preacher’s way of thinking.
They rode out that afternoon, leaving the grisly scene behind them, and made camp that night several miles away.
The question remained: what were they going to do with twenty-five women and girls who no longer had families and found themselves hundreds of miles from civilization?
“Seems to me there’s only one answer,” Preacher said to Crazy Bear and Mala as they sat beside their campfire that evening, having made a meal on the supplies they’d found in the outlaws’ saddlebags. “I’ll take y’all back down to the Oregon Trail. There are wagon trains comin’ along there every week or so at this time of year, so it shouldn’t be long before you can catch on with one of them and head on west. I think you’ll like Oregon better’n you would have Montana, anyway. It’s a lot more settled.”
“You will not guide the women alone,” Crazy Bear replied when Preacher had translated the plan into the Crow tongue. He looked at Mala. “I will come with you.”
Preacher shrugged. Crazy Bear had his own people to lead, back in the Big Horns, but he supposed the village could get by without him for a while longer.
Mala explained everything to the other women, who were happy to go along with the idea. Some of them would have a hard time putting their ordeal behind them, but a new life in Oregon would be a start.
The whole party left the next morning, riding south. Preacher wouldn’t have been surprised if they ran into more trouble along the way, but for once, that didn’t happen. They reached the North Platte River and the landmark known as Independence Rock a week later. Preacher looked at the deep wagon ruts alongside the stream and knew it was only a matter of time until more immigrants came along.
Crazy Bear stayed that night, but the next morning he went to Preacher and said, “It is time for me to go.”
Preacher nodded. “I know. You have responsibilities you need to take care of.”
“But I will not be going alone.”
Preacher glanced toward the spot where Crazy Bear’s pony waited. Another pony stood beside it, with Mala holding the reins.
“She’s goin’ with you, is she?” Preacher grinned. “I can’t say as I’m surprised. I’ve seen the way you two been lookin’ at each other right along. Learnin’ how to communicate, are you?”
“Yes,” Crazy Bear said solemnly. “Very well.”
“She won’t mind livin’ in a Crow village from now on?”
“She says she wants to be with me, and I want to be with her. What more is there in life?”
“I reckon you’re right about that.” Preacher held out his hand. Crazy Bear had saved his life, and they had fought side by side. Those things created a bond that could never be broken. As they clasped hands, Preacher went on, “If you ever need my help, Crazy Bear, let me know and I’ll come a-runnin’.”
“And the same is true for you, my friend,” the Crow chief said.
Mala ran over and threw her arms around Preacher’s neck, hugging him tightly in farewell. “Thank you for everything,” she said. “Without you, none of us would be here.”
“You held your own in that fight,” Preacher told her. “Reckon you did even more’n your share. You’ll make a good wife for a warrior, right enough.” He paused, then added, “I just hope the young’uns take after you when it comes to their looks, not their pa.”
The mention of children brought a blush from Mala, which surprised him a little. He would have thought she was too bold to blush, but he had long since
learned that gals were an infinite source of surprises.
“I meant what I said, Crazy Bear,” Preacher called as his friends mounted up. “If you need me, put the word out. It’ll find me.”
Crazy Bear lifted a hand. “Farewell, Preacher.”
“So long.” Preacher stood and watched them as they rode away, adding softly, “Live a happy life.”
Interlude
“I reckon that’s just what they’ve done, for the most part,” Preacher said in the heat of the little cabin where he was holed up with Smoke and Matt. “Had a little trouble from time to time, the way most folks do, but they’re still together all these years later.”
“That’s right,” Smoke said. “I can vouch for that.”
“So can I,” Matt added.
Smoke watched the trees in front of the cabin. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Bannerman’s hired guns were going to try something again. Waiting for nightfall made more sense, but while he was shooting it out with them during the last attack, Smoke had caught a glimpse of a man he recognized. Lew Torrance was a top man with a gun, one of the best on the frontier. He had been pointed out to Smoke once in a saloon in Santa Fe, though they hadn’t met. Smoke wasn’t surprised that Bannerman had hired a cold-blooded, efficient killer like Torrance.
Torrance had a flaw, though: he was impatient. When he took on the job of killing someone, he wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. That impatience had come close to getting Torrance killed a time or two. Smoke didn’t believe that the man would be content to wait for the sun to go down.
That last attack should have taught the gunmen they couldn’t charge the cabin in the open and expect to win. The first attempt had cost them some lives. The same thing would happen if they tried again.
Movement in the trees caught Smoke’s eye. He knew whatever they were up to wasn’t anything good.
“Those varmints are stirring around again,” he told Preacher and Matt.
“They ain’t nothin’ goin’ on back here,” the old mountain man reported.
“It’s quiet on this side, too,” Matt said.
Smoke’s eyes narrowed. He muttered, “What the hell…?” Something big loomed in the trees. It came into view through a gap in the growth and looked so odd for a second Smoke couldn’t figure out what he was looking at.
Then he recognized it as a flatbed wagon that probably had been fetched from Reece Bannerman’s ranch. Someone had built a wall on the front that rose a good six feet straight up behind the driver’s seat and extended from one side of the wagon to the other. Rifle barrels protruded from three holes that had been cut in the wall.
The wagon didn’t have a team hitched to it. The tongue had been lifted and tied to the wagon it wouldn’t gouge into the ground in front of the vehicle. It began to move, which meant men were behind it, pushing it slowly but steadily toward the cabin. Powder smoke spurted from the rifles as the gunmen concealed behind the wall opened fire.
“What’s goin’ on?” Preacher asked as the shots began to ring out and bullets thudded into the cabin’s thick walls.
“The damnedest thing you’ve ever seen,” Smoke replied. “They’re bringing their own cover with them. They’ve made a rolling wall out of a wagon.”
He cranked off several rounds from his Winchester. Splinters flew from the places where the slugs struck the boards, but he doubted if any of them penetrated. He figured that wall was several layers thick.
Matt went to one of the loopholes in the front wall and took a look for himself. “Holy cow!” he exclaimed. “How in blazes are we going to stop a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” Smoke said. Between his pa Emmett and Preacher, he’d been raised to never give up, never back down. But it seemed likely that at least one man with a torch would be riding on that fortified wagon. Once it was pushed close enough, they’d be able to throw the torch over the wall and onto the top of the cabin. They could finish off Smoke, Matt, and Preacher at almost point-blank range when the resulting fire forced them out.
The wagon was sort of like an old medieval siege engine, Smoke thought, recalling the history books he had read that described such things being used to breach the walls of castles. Immediately something else occurred to him.
“Preacher, get out of the line of fire of the door!” he called to the old-timer. “Matt, cover me! That blasted thing can’t move without somebody pushing it!”
“You got it, Smoke!” Matt said, his keen mind instantly grasping what his adopted brother had in mind. Together, they grabbed the bar holding the door closed and tossed it aside. Smoke went low, throwing himself onto his belly at the threshold, while Matt fired around the edge of the door, pouring lead at the hidden riflemen to keep them distracted.
From that angle, Smoke could look under the wagon and see all the way to the legs of the men who were pushing it. He snugged the rifle’s stock against his shoulder and began firing from his prone position. Men yelled in pain as his accurate bullets smashed ankles, shattered shins, and tore through calves. Smoke’s shots knocked their legs right out from under them, and the wagon lurched to a halt. It had covered only half the cleared distance between the trees and the cabin.
As busted legs spilled the men behind the buckboard onto the ground, Smoke had even better targets. He kept firing. His bullets drove into the bodies of the fallen men, killing some of them instantly and wounding others. One of them shouted to his companions, “We can’t walk! Get us out of here, damn it!”
Men rushed from the trees to come to their aid, but Matt’s rifle fire drove them back. The wounded men began shooting back with handguns, but the range was too great for much accuracy. Smoke’s jaw tightened as he drilled another gunman through the head while the hombre tried to drag himself to safely on his bullet-riddled legs. Killing men like that was pretty cold-blooded, but they had called the tune, he thought. They could damned well dance to it.
Or rather they couldn’t, he reminded himself with a faint, grim smile, because he had shot their legs out from under them.
But any man he spared might be the one who killed him or Matt or Preacher later on. Even worse, the hired guns might launch another attack on Crazy Bear’s village and murder more women and kids. Smoke wasn’t going to lose any sleep over killing snakes like that.
The four men who’d been standing in the wagon bed gave up the fight. They leaped from the vehicle and made a dash for the timber. Matt winged one of them, shattering his elbow from the looks of the way the man’s arm jerked and flopped, but they all made it into the cover of the trees. That left the wagon sitting there empty, with the four men who’d been pushing it sprawled behind it, dead.
Smoke rolled out of the doorway and into the cabin as bullets from the trees began to kick up dirt not far in front of his face. Matt slammed the door and dropped the bar back into place.
“Well, that didn’t work out too well for ’em,” Preacher said with a dry chuckle. “That was mighty fast thinkin’ on your part, Smoke, firin’ under the wagon like that.”
“It was the only way to get at any of them,” Smoke said as he got to his feet. He took a handful of .44-40 cartridges from a pocket and began thumbing them through the Winchester’s loading gate.
“What do you reckon they’ll do next?” Matt asked.
Smoke shook his head. “There’s not much telling. We’ve managed to whittle down the odds considerable. They’ll be a little more careful from here on out, even with Lew Torrance egging them on.”
“Torrance?” Matt repeated. “I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be a really bad hombre.”
“He is. I don’t know if Bannerman has him bossing that bunch, but it’s possible. Or maybe Torrance is just one more gun-wolf. Bannerman seems to have plenty of ’em.”
Preacher snorted in disgust. “Varmints like that put me in mind of flies buzzin’ around a big steamin’ pile o’ buffalo dung. There’s always more where they came from.”
“Which would make Reece Bannerman t
hat pile of buffalo dung, I suppose,” Matt said with a grin.
“You said it, youngster, not me.” Preacher spat on the hard-packed dirt floor of the cabin. “Hard to fool a fly, though.”
Smoke ran his tongue over dry lips. None of them had mentioned how thirsty they were, nor would they. Their canteens were on their saddles, their horses somewhere in the vicinity. Before taking shelter in the cabin they had turned the animals loose, swatting their rumps and yelling so the mounts would gallop off, out of the line of fire. Smoke knew that he, Matt, and Preacher wouldn’t have any trouble finding them later.
All they had to do was get out past the guns of those hardened killers first.
To get his mind off how cotton-mouthed he was, Smoke said, “I recall the first time I met Crazy Bear. You had told me about him, Preacher, but just hearing about him doesn’t really prepare anybody for meeting him in the flesh.”
Preacher chuckled again. “Ain’t that the truth. But you run into his boy first, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Smoke said with a nod. “Not far from here, in fact, over in Buffalo Flat. That’s where I met Sandor. It was years ago, a mighty bad time in my life…”
BOOK TWO
(Note: The events in this section take place between the novels The Last Mountain Man and Return of the Mountain Man)
Chapter 11
Hatred filled the heart of the young man who rode a big Appaloosa into the settlement of Buffalo Flat, Wyoming Territory, at the southern end of its main street. Sometimes that hatred burned so hot, it seemed on the verge of erupting, like flames from his brown eyes. At other times it was a cold hate, like ice had coated the expressionless face and it would never thaw again.
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