The rifle’s booming report rolled across the valley. A cloud of powder smoke gushed from the barrel, so for a second Preacher couldn’t see anything. As he lowered the rifle, the smoke blew away and he spotted the man he’d aimed at lying motionless on the ground.
Preacher thrust the empty rifle into Birdie’s hands and leaped into the saddle on Horse’s back—the quickest way he could go to his son’s aid. Responding to Preacher’s heels digging into his flanks, the stallion leaped ahead in a gallop. Dog raced along beside them, equally eager to get into the fracas.
Up ahead, Hawk That Soars whirled with blinding speed, his tomahawk flashing back and forth as he parried the attacks with the skill and grace of a European fencing master. It was no sport for dandies, though. It was a battle of life and death.
Preacher guided Horse with his knees and drew both pistols as he rode. He closed within range of the weapons but bit back a curse as he realized he couldn’t fire with Hawk right in the middle of the melee. He jammed the pistols back behind his belt, pulled out his knife, and left the saddle in a flying leap that carried him toward the mass of struggling figures in buckskin. Twisting in midair, he drove both feet into the small of one man’s back with such force the backbone snapped with an audible crack!
That kick propelled Preacher into another man and knocked him off his feet. Preacher landed on top of him. Faster than the eye could follow, the knife in the mountain man’s hand lanced into the Blackfoot’s back, pierced his heart, and darted out again. Preacher rolled, came up slashing, and ripped another warrior’s throat open.
A few yards away, Horse’s hooves thudded into the battered corpse of the man he had trampled to death after Preacher leaped from his back. Dog’s muzzle was bloody again from the ruin of the Blackfoot throat he had ripped out.
The sudden, furious attack by Preacher and his trail companions scattered the attackers. They no longer clustered around Hawk. Preacher glanced at the young man, saw some bloody scrapes and scratches on him, but it appeared Hawk wasn’t badly hurt. Preacher yanked out his tomahawk, whipped it back and forth, and opened a path to his son’s side.
They would fight side by side, he thought, and he had just moved into that position when back down the valley, Bird in the Tree screamed.
CHAPTER 6
Preacher turned in that direction and saw Birdie struggling with several more Blackfoot warriors who had been lurking nearby. Fear the likes of which he never felt for himself leaped into his breast. “Dog, go!” he ordered, figuring the big cur could reach Birdie faster than either he or Hawk could. “Protect!”
Dog raced back down the valley, moving so fast he was low to the ground and little more than a gray streak. Preacher would have followed, but the surviving warriors he and Hawk had been battling closed in again.
With Bird in the Tree in danger, Preacher and Hawk fought with an added ferocity. Preacher waded into his enemies, splitting skulls and slitting throats as he lashed out right and left, again and again. He weaved out of the way as the Blackfeet tried to fight back, seeming almost like a phantom through which their weapons passed harmlessly when they tried to strike him down.
His knife stuck in a man’s breastbone when he planted the blade deep in a Blackfoot chest. Instead of trying to wrench it free, Preacher just let go of it and used that hand to pluck one of the pistols from behind his belt. He thrust the barrel into another warrior’s face as he pulled the trigger.
That close-range blast shredded flesh and turned the man’s face into a red smear as the double-shotted load bored through his brain and made the back of his head explode outward in a grisly pink spray.
Preacher spun and used the empty pistol to crush another man’s skull. Suddenly, there were no more enemies in front of him.
He looked to his left and saw his son smash his tomahawk into the side of a man’s neck with such strength it sheared all the way to the spine. Hawk ripped it free as the last of the men he was battling collapsed to bleed to death.
Surrounded by corpses and dying men, Preacher and Hawk leaped over the bloody, mangled heaps of flesh and ran toward Bird in the Tree.
Dog had reached her side and brought down one of the warriors, ripping his throat out. He had hold of another’s arm, powerful jaws and teeth rending flesh and crushing bone as the screaming Blackfoot tried to fight his way loose.
Horse had joined in the battle as well, knowing that Birdie was Preacher’s friend. The stallion had reared up and lashed out, his hooves breaking one man’s ribs and driving him to the ground, where Horse proceeded to stomp him into something barely resembling a human being.
But there had been half a dozen of the attackers, and even though Birdie had tried to fight them off by using Preacher’s empty rifle as a club, three of them had managed to grab her, tear at her clothing, and strike her with their tomahawks.
One man stepped back away from her, which was a fatal mistake. Preacher yanked out his other pistol, took swift aim, and shot him through the body. The man staggered and opened his mouth, but only blood came out in a bubbling stream as he twisted around and collapsed.
Birdie tried to push the other two men away, but she was too weak. A tomahawk rose and fell, striking her in the head.
Hawk shouted, “No!” He lunged ahead of Preacher and barreled into the man who had just struck Birdie. Both of them spilled off their feet.
Preacher, a few yards behind, tackled the other warrior going full speed. The impact as they hit the ground jolted the pistol out of Preacher’s right hand, but he still had the tomahawk in his left and raised it for a killing stroke.
The Blackfoot seemed to be stunned, but he recovered before Preacher could smash his brains out and jerked his head aside as the mountain man’s tomahawk swept down. The flint head hit the ground an inch away from his ear.
He writhed and brought a knee up into Preacher’s belly. The blow landed with enough force to make Preacher double over and gasp. The Blackfoot grabbed his throat with both hands and rolled over, taking Preacher with him so the mountain man wound up on the bottom. The warrior dug his thumbs into Preacher’s throat in an effort to crush his windpipe.
Preacher grabbed hold of the tomahawk’s shaft with both hands and rammed it up under the man’s chin, forcing his head back. That loosened the Blackfoot’s grip on Preacher’s throat. Preacher jerked loose from him and kept up the pressure on the tomahawk. The man went over backwards, and Preacher lunged after him.
Preacher’s knee came down hard in the man’s belly, pinning him to the ground. The tomahawk rose and fell again, and there was no escaping it. The edge landed between the man’s eyes and split his head open like a ripe melon.
Preacher pulled the tomahawk out of the wreckage of the man’s skull and leaped to his feet. He looked around to see Hawk slamming his weapon again and again into the face of his defeated and already dead enemy. With each blow that fell, Hawk let out a savage grunt. Blood was splattered all over his chest and face in a grisly mosaic.
Looking past him, Preacher saw Birdie’s slumped figure lying on the ground. He ran to her and dropped to his knees.
Her buckskin dress was dark with blood in several places, and she had a large gash on her head where the last blow had fallen. Preacher slid his hands under her shoulders and gently lifted her bloody head into his lap.
She was gasping for breath and he knew she was badly hurt, probably broken inside. Crimson threads trickled from her ears and nose and mouth, and that told him her skull was likely fractured as well.
“Birdie,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Birdie, can you hear me?”
Her eyelids fluttered a little and then opened. She peered up at him without seeming to see him for a moment, but then her eyes focused on him.
“Preacher,” she whispered. “Our son . . .”
“Hawk’s all right,” he assured her. The young man had been wounded in the battle, but as far as Preacher could tell he wasn’t hurt seriously.
He glanced over, saw that Hawk ha
d finally dropped the tomahawk, and was now sitting astride his vanquished enemy, sobbing.
“Hawk,” Preacher said. “Get over here.”
He had to call the young man’s name again before Hawk looked around and saw the mountain man cradling Birdie’s head in his lap. Hawk started to crawl toward them, then scrambled to his feet and ran.
He knelt beside them and said in a choked voice, “Mother.”
She found the strength to lift a hand and rest it on his arm. “Do not . . . worry. Soon I will be . . . with the Great Spirit.”
“No!” he cried. “No, this cannot be!”
“Take it easy, son,” Preacher said softly. “There’s nothin’ we can do for her, so let’s make her passin’ as easy as we can.”
“No! You do not love her! If you did, you would try to help her!”
“Hawk That Soars,” she whispered. “Listen to me. When your father helps our people . . . when he helps you . . . he does this for me as well.” Her eyes turned toward Preacher. “You will promise . . . to do these things? To protect the Absaroka? To protect . . . our son?”
“I do not need him to protect me!”
Preacher ignored Hawk’s protest, bent his head so his face was close to Birdie’s, and smiled at her. “I promise, my beautiful Bird in the Tree. And I thank the Great Spirit for letting us see each other again after all these years.”
Her lips curved in a smile, too, as she breathed, “Preacher . . . I go . . .”
“Go in peace, my love.”
She had one more thing to say, though. Her head turned slightly as she said, “My son . . . love your father . . . as he and I . . . love you.”
The breath of life went out of her in a long, gentle sigh.
Tears ran down Hawk’s cheeks, but he didn’t make a sound. He rose to his feet and looked down at his mother’s body. His face was like stone. “She is gone. We must tend to her.”
“Yeah,” Preacher said. “I’ll fetch the blanket she used last night and wrap her in it. Reckon you can go look for a good tree we can use.”
“Farther up the valley. Closer to our home.” Hawk glanced down disdainfully at the dead Blackfoot warriors. “Away from this carrion.”
Preacher couldn’t argue with that sentiment.
* * *
With a rag he’d soaked in the creek, Preacher carefully and tenderly cleaned as much of the blood from Birdie’s face as he could; then he wrapped her body in the blanket.
Normally, a few trinkets or other possessions that meant something to her would have been placed in the shroud as well, but she had nothing like that with her.
Hawk found a suitable branch in a tree, farther up the valley toward the Absaroka village. They could have built a scaffold for her body, but a tree would work just as well if some of the branches were arranged right. He trotted back to where he had left Preacher and Birdie.
Together, they lifted her body and carried it wordlessly to the tree Hawk had selected. Dog and Horse followed, and the pack mule trailed along, too, without having to be led.
Hawk climbed into the tree and Preacher lifted the body so Hawk could take hold of it and raise it to the proper place in the branches. Satisfied his mother’s remains were secure, he dropped lightly to the ground. He pulled out his knife, reached behind him, and grasped his long hair, gathering part of it so he could bring it around in front of him. While he chanted a song of mourning, he hacked off a long length of the raven strands. Given that an Absaroka warrior’s most valued symbol of his manhood was his hair, cutting off part of it was mutilation of a sort and showed the depth of his grief.
Preacher took off his hat and gazed up at the body.
Hawk scowled. “Do not say a white man’s prayer for her.”
“Wasn’t plannin’ to,” Preacher said. “I was just thinkin’, she really is a bird in a tree now. She’s gone home.”
“I will return here someday, gather her bones, and return them to the earth.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“There is no need for that. She spent nearly all of her life without you. She can spend her time in the Great Beyond without you as well.”
“Now, look here,” Preacher began. “She wanted the two of us to get along—”
“Will you help me kill Tall Bull and as many of the Blackfoot as we can?”
“You know I will. I gave her my word, and I keep my promises.”
“Then we will fight at each other’s side to avenge her. But know this, Preacher.” The emphasis Hawk added to the mountain man’s name made obvious the contempt he felt. “She said for me to love you . . . and that will never happen.”
“Fine by me. Somebody else can worry about that. You and me . . . we’ll handle the killin’.”
CHAPTER 7
“Do you know Tall Bull when you see him?” Preacher asked Hawk as they walked away from the tree where they had laid Birdie to rest.
“No. Do you think he might be among those we killed?”
“I reckon it’s possible. Let’s take a look and see if we can figure out whether one of ’em might be a war chief. If the varmint’s already dead, it might take the wind outta the sails of the warriors who’ve been followin’ him.”
“I do not understand this . . . wind out of sails.”
“You never seen a boat?”
“Like a canoe?” Hawk’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I can paddle a canoe faster than anyone else in our band.”
“I don’t doubt it. But a sail is a piece of cloth you put up on a mast—that’s a pole in the middle of a boat—and the wind pushes against it and blows you along.”
“And if there is no wind?”
“Well, you don’t go very far or very fast.”
Hawk shook his head. “Foolishness. A paddle is better. All it depends on is a man’s strength.”
“I reckon that’s one way to look at it.”
“Do not try to teach me things,” Hawk said. “I do not need instruction in the ways of the world, especially from a stranger.”
Preacher’s first impulse was to slap some sense into the boy, not to mention some respect. Hawk had just lost his mother. He ought to be mourning her instead of getting his dander up over things that meant nothing, like some damn sailboat.
Preacher knew he would have a fight on his hands if he tried to do that, and while he certainly wasn’t afraid of Hawk, he didn’t want to hurt the youngster. “Let’s just take a look at them Blackfoot carcasses and see if we can tell anything about ’em.”
The name Tall Bull didn’t necessarily mean the war chief actually was tall. Indian names could be symbolic as well as literal. Preacher figured he might be able to tell from the beadwork and other decorations on the clothes, not to mention the painted faces, if any of the dead warriors had been the leader of the Blackfeet.
It was a grim chore, and when they finished Preacher had to admit they still didn’t have the answer they had sought. He didn’t think Tall Bull was among the dead warriors, but he couldn’t be certain of that.
All they could do was push on toward the Absaroka village. The answer might be waiting for them there.
* * *
They made camp atop a brushy knoll that could be defended if it came to that. Even though Preacher and Hawk had killed many of the Blackfeet so far, still more were out searching for them.
Not only that, but Tall Bull could have had an even larger war party waiting somewhere in reserve. There was no telling just how many enemies wanted to kill them.
They made no fire and had a meager supper of jerky from Preacher’s saddlebags. He noticed that Hawk winced and grunted in pain when he sat down.
“You might want to let me take a look at them wounds you got,” he suggested.
“They are nothing. I do not even feel them.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You looked like you were in a mite of pain just now.”
Hawk scowled, which seemed to be his only expression other than one of cold disdain. “I said they were nothing.�
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“Suit yourself. You appear to have some pretty bad scratches, though. If some o’ them fester up on you, they’re liable to cause a problem.”
“I suppose you know what to do about such injuries.”
“Well, as a matter of fact . . .” Preacher said with a grin.
Hawk got to his feet again. “I know how to make a poultice of moss and herbs that will heal those wounds. I can find what I need.”
“Fine. Just keep a sharp eye out for more o’ them Blackfeet. I can send Dog with you if you want.”
“Why would I want that beast to accompany me?” Hawk’s lip curled. “Curs are best for the stew pot.”
Dog growled softly as if he understood the implied threat. As smart as the big fella was, Preacher wouldn’t put it past him.
The mountain man chuckled. “I wouldn’t advise tryin’ anything like that. Your intended meal might eat you instead.”
Hawk grunted and walked off into the darkness.
“I swear, that boy’s just askin’ for a good hidin’,” Preacher said quietly to Dog. “If I didn’t feel so kindly toward his ma, I’d be just the one to give it to him, too.”
Hawk came back a while later with an armful of moss and other plants. He ground it with rocks, used water from the creek to make poultices of the stuff, and plastered it on his injuries.
“Get some sleep,” Preacher told him. “I’ll stand first watch.”
“I do not need—”
“Look, there are only two of us, and somebody’s gotta stand guard first. It don’t mean a blasted thing which one of us does it, so quit lookin’ for things to argue about and get some sleep.” The words came out sharply.
For a moment Hawk looked like he was going to argue anyway. But then he turned away and stretched out on the ground.
Preacher would have offered him a blanket, but he figured the kid would bite his head off and it just wasn’t worth it.
* * *
Hawk seemed to be getting around a little stiffly the next morning, but that soreness loosened up as the two men prepared to resume their journey. He wasn’t quite as surly, either. “If nothing happens to delay us, we may reach the village late this afternoon.” He paused. “There will be great sadness when my people learn what happened to Bird in the Tree. She was a friend to everyone.”
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