“I will pray to the Great Spirit to keep them coming toward us.”
“You do that.” Preacher didn’t know if ol’ Gitche Manitou—who he figured was the same God the sky pilots hollered about—involved Himself that deeply in the petty affairs of men, but he’d take any help he could get.
They had to be careful not to dislodge any small rocks as they worked their way toward the top of the slope. They were in the open for the moment, but a bend in the creek protected them from the sight of the Blackfeet below. If by chance the hunting party came around the bend in time, they would be likely to spot Preacher and Hawk, and then the jig would be up.
They reached the top and scrambled behind the boulders. At the moment Preacher looked down the slope, the first of the hunting party came around the bend into view. The others followed, holding their bows ready in case they spotted any game.
Preacher studied the boulders and figured out which two looked like they would be the easiest to dislodge. The rocks were massive, maybe too massive for a man to budge, but he knew that if he and Hawk could start them rolling, they would tumble down the slope toward the Blackfeet and cause a pretty big slide.
He grinned. Something to be said for using nature itself as a weapon.
With hand signals, he indicated which boulder Hawk should push and set himself behind the other one. Preacher braced his feet, placed his hands and shoulder against the rock, and looked over at Hawk, who’d settled himself into the same position. With a nod to the young man, Preacher began to push, throwing all his weight and strength against the rock.
CHAPTER 16
Preacher’s heart slugged heavily in his chest and his pulse hammered inside his skull as he strained against the boulder. A low grunt of effort escaped from his mouth.
Hawk was struggling the same way, but neither rock moved an inch.
Dog sat to one side and whined as if trying to encourage both men, but there was nothing else he could do to help.
Then, with a grating of stone against stone, Preacher’s rock shifted slightly. He took a deep breath and redoubled his efforts, trying not to groan. A few yards away, Hawk did likewise, even though his boulder hadn’t moved at all.
Preacher felt his give a little more. It tried to rock back, but he kept it moving forward.
With no more warning than a sudden cracking sound, Hawk’s boulder gave way first and toppled from its perch. He sprawled forward, barely catching himself and regaining his balance. Preacher’s went over a heartbeat later. He too, sprawled before catching himself. With an ever-growing rumble, the boulders turned over and over, taking smaller rocks with them as they rolled toward the creek.
Even over that racket, Preacher heard the alarmed shouts from the Blackfeet below.
He and Hawk scrambled to their feet and looked down the slope. The rock slide was raising enough dust that it was hard to see.
Preacher spotted one of the warriors dashing into the clear and called to Hawk, “There!”
Hawk had already seen the fleeing man and whipped an arrow from his quiver. He launched it in an arching flight that ended between the Blackfoot’s shoulder blades and sent him forward onto his face. The warrior had never even seen the doom flashing down at him from above.
“Come on!” Preacher gripped his tomahawk as he started bounding down the slope after the tumbling rocks. He hoped the rock slide would crush the rest of the hunting party, but if any of the Blackfeet survived, he and Hawk and Dog would wipe them out. He had been prepared to let some of them escape, but with the way circumstances had worked out, he didn’t want any of them making it back to the village.
The cloud of dust choked and blinded them, but as the rocks stopped sliding and the rumble died away, the dust began to thin. Preacher heard a startled shout and turned in that direction to see one of the Blackfoot warriors drawing a bead on him with an arrow.
Preacher dropped to a knee as the feathered missile whipped through the air just above his head, then he was up and leaping forward again. The warrior used his bow to block the mountain man’s tomahawk stroke and then grabbed Preacher by the throat with his other hand. Preacher barreled into him, and they went down among the smaller rocks that had piled up along the edge of the creek.
Tearing loose from the man’s grip, Preacher chopped with the tomahawk at the warrior’s head. The warrior jerked aside from the blow just in time and pulled his knife out. Preacher reared back and avoided the slash that came within an inch of ripping open his throat.
He backhanded the tomahawk against the warrior’s forearm and heard bone snap. The man’s suddenly nerveless fingers dropped the knife. A second later, his skull caved in under the tremendous impact of Preacher’s tomahawk.
Preacher pushed himself to his feet and looked around for Hawk. The young man was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle with another Blackfoot. Bigger and heavier, the warrior forced Hawk back a step and one of his feet came down on a rock that shifted underneath him. Thrown off balance, he fell and hit his head on another rock.
Preacher could tell the impact stunned Hawk. He knew he couldn’t close the gap in time, so he flung his tomahawk. It struck the warrior on the shoulder and bounced off, but that was enough to knock the man back a step and keep him from braining Hawk.
As soon as Preacher made his throw, he leaped to the top of a boulder and launched himself in a diving tackle at the Blackfoot.
His shoulder rammed into the man’s midsection and drove him backwards off his feet. They landed among the rocks, but if Preacher hoped the Blackfoot’s head would hit one of the stones and crack open like an egg, he was disappointed. The warrior writhed and twisted, fighting like a wildcat.
Preacher blocked the Blackfoot’s tomahawk with a forearm and shot a punch into the man’s face. At the same time, he dug a knee into the warrior’s belly. An instant later, the man brought the elbow of his free arm up under Preacher’s chin and jolted the mountain man’s head back.
They grappled and rolled over among the rocks. Preacher caught hold of the warrior’s tomahawk and tried to wrench it away from his enemy, but the man had a death grip on it. His face contorted in a hate-filled snarl only inches away from Preacher’s. Preacher could feel the hot breath against his cheek, like he was battling a wild animal.
He slashed a side-hand blow to the Blackfoot’s throat and made the man gag; then the heel of his hand caught the man under the chin, and he returned the favor, bending the man’s head back so far it seemed like his neck would crack.
The warrior continued to battle.
Preacher landed a knee in the Blackfoot’s groin, making his grip on the tomahawk slip. Preacher tore it loose and whipped it across the man’s face, breaking his nose. A swift follow-up blow cracked the warrior’s cheekbone.
The fight was rapidly slipping away from the Blackfoot, and he knew it. He bellowed in rage and jackknifed his body. The top of his head crashed into Preacher’s face. The mountain man fell back. The warrior tried to come after him, but Preacher drew both knees up and launched a double kick that smashed his heels into the middle of the man’s face.
The crack as his neck broke was loud and decisive. The warrior went over backwards, flopped loosely among the rocks, and then lay still as his eyes glazed over.
Preacher had had his hands full with that varmint, so he didn’t know what else was going on around him. He rolled over quickly and came up on one knee to look back and forth.
“It is all right,” Hawk said. “That was all of them. The others are buried under the rock slide.”
It was true. They had killed two of the Blackfeet, and the others were nowhere in sight, at least at first glance. However, Preacher didn’t think any of them could have gotten away. They had been directly in the path of the tumbling rocks.
“How about you?” he asked Hawk, who stood on top of a small boulder a few yards away. “You whacked your head pretty hard on that rock. I heard it all the way over where I was.”
Hawk lifted a hand and probed gingerly
at the back of his head. “There is a big lump . . . like a turkey’s egg. But I think I am all right.”
Preacher clambered over to him. “Let me see.”
“I said I am—”
“And I said let me see.” Preacher’s voice was sharper than he intended, sharp enough to make Hawk glance at him in surprise. Using just his fingertips and as gentle a touch as he could manage, Preacher explored the injury.
Hawk had a lump on his head, as he had said, but it wasn’t bleeding and he winced only the normal amount somebody would after getting a wallop like that.
“Reckon you didn’t break your skull,” Preacher said. “How come you looked at me like that a minute ago?”
“Because when you spoke you sounded like my mother.”
“I did, did I? Well, don’t get used to it. I know I’m your pa and you’re my young’un, but what’s between us ain’t like it is for normal folks.”
“No, it is not,” Hawk agreed immediately. “I will fight beside you against the Blackfeet, but we are allies against a common enemy, that is all.”
“Damn right.” Preacher wanted to believe that.
But he wasn’t sure if either of them did.
* * *
The rock slide had covered up quite a bit of the creek bank and even caved it in in places. Some of the boulders had landed in the stream but hadn’t blocked it, so it continued flowing. Eventually it would probably carve out a wider bed around the remaining small, rocky ridge.
Preacher and Hawk searched among the boulders and found a few grisly remains. For the most part, the Blackfeet were buried and would remain that way.
“Let’s get those other two, drag ’em among the rocks, and cover ’em up,” Preacher said. “They’ll be so beat up, even if anybody finds ’em, they’ll think the rock slide killed ’em like it did the others.”
“How many of them have we slain since we met?”
Preacher shook his head. “I’ve lost count, and I ain’t gonna go back and try to figure it up. I never been that fond o’ cipherin’.”
“But many Blackfeet have died because of us?”
“Yep, I’d say so.”
“Not enough.”
“No,” Preacher said. “Not enough.”
“Why do you not want Tall Bull to know we killed these warriors? Why make it look like an accident?”
“I’d just as soon keep him confused as long as possible,” Preacher said. “With everything else that’s happened, he’ll regard the loss of this huntin’ party as bad luck.”
“And he will start to believe his medicine is turning on him,” Hawk said, nodding slowly. “You would fight his mind as well as his body.”
“Sometimes a fella’s worst enemy is what’s inside his own head,” Preacher said, grinning wearily. “Come on. Let’s get that chore done, then get back to ol’ White Buffalo.”
He turned and saw a Blackfoot warrior standing at the edge of the rock slide, aiming an arrow at him.
CHAPTER 17
A fraction of a second before the warrior loosed the arrow, a gray streak flashed through the air and crashed into him. That was enough to throw off the man’s aim, and the arrow flew between Preacher and Hawk, narrowly missing both of them.
At the same time, the Blackfoot toppled into the creek with Dog on top of him, snapping and snarling furiously. The man tried to scream but sputtered as he gulped down water. Splashes flew up around them as they struggled.
Then the struggle subsided and the water began to turn pink. Dog climbed out of the creek, stood on the bank, and shook some of the moisture off his shaggy coat, filling the air around him with spray.
The Blackfoot warrior stayed in the creek except for his feet, which still lay on the bank. They twitched a couple times and then were still.
A grim chuckle came from Preacher. “Looks like White Buffalo was right. We needed Dog with us. He saved our bacon.”
Hawk looked confused. “Where did that Blackfoot come from?”
“I reckon he was another one who didn’t get caught in the rock slide. His buckskins were wet, even before Dog knocked him in the creek. He must’ve been hidin’ in the water, just waitin’ for a chance to take a crack at us. He might’ve been able to put an arrow in me if it hadn’t been for Dog.”
“If he had killed you, I would have killed him,” Hawk declared.
“Well, I’m mighty obliged to you for that,” Preacher said dryly. “We got one more carcass to cover up now, so I reckon we’d best get at it.”
* * *
It took a while for them to carry the bodies into the rock slide, then cover them with stones. Preacher and Hawk worked together to pick up some of the larger rocks and drop them on the corpses. The sounds they made as they hit weren’t pretty, but the damage would help conceal the fact these men had died from knife and tomahawk and arrow if their remains were ever discovered, which was unlikely.
With that done, they headed back toward the cave where they had left White Buffalo, steering well clear of the Blackfoot village. Preacher didn’t think it was likely they would run into any more hunting parties, but there was no point in risking it.
Hawk wouldn’t have minded, of course. That would have just meant another chance to kill more of his enemies, and he would always welcome that.
Preacher couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be that young and full of piss and vinegar.
When they reached the cave, Preacher called out, “It’s us, White Buffalo. Everything all right in there?”
There was no answer.
Preacher and Hawk glanced at each other, then Hawk called, “White Buffalo! Can you hear me, Grandfather?”
Still no response.
Preacher said, “I hear Horse and the mule movin’ around, so they’re still in there whether the old-timer is or not. Stay out here. I’ll take a look.”
“I can look, while you stay.”
“You’re just arguin’ for the sake o’ arguin’. Stay here, blast it, and that’s an order.”
That probably wasn’t the best way to phrase it, Preacher thought as he saw a stubborn expression come over Hawk’s face. Before Hawk could say or do anything else, Preacher parted the brush and stepped into the cave.
A couple possibilities had occurred to him when White Buffalo didn’t answer his hail. The old man could have left the cave for some reason and wandered off, then been unable to find his way back . . . or he might have died of natural causes. At his age, there was always a chance his heart or something else inside him would give out without warning.
A third possibility existed. An enemy could have found White Buffalo and killed him. In that case, it seemed unlikely the killer would have left Horse and the pack mule behind.
Preacher’s keen eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom inside the cave. Almost immediately, he spotted the motionless figure stretched out on one of the beds they had fashioned from pine needles and the blankets among Preacher’s supplies.
“Well, hell!” Preacher said out loud. It appeared White Buffalo’s destiny had caught up with him. He had dodged death back yonder in the Absaroka village, but the Grim Reaper couldn’t be denied forever.
“What?”
The word that came from White Buffalo’s mouth made Preacher frown. He’d been convinced the old codger was dead. He stepped closer. “White Buffalo? You’re alive?”
White Buffalo still hadn’t moved except to form the one word. His eyes were closed, and his ancient, wrinkled features were calm and peaceful. “I am communing with my ancestors,” he said, still without looking at Preacher. “They have many important things to tell me.”
“Didn’t you hear me and Hawk hollerin’ at you?”
“I heard some foolish noise but ignored it. My ancestors are teaching me all the secrets of the world and of life and death.”
Preacher grunted. He had seen Indians down in the Southwest get like this, unnaturally calm and hearing voices in their heads after they’d been chewing peyote. He wondered if White Buf
falo had gotten into something like that or if the old man was just plain loco sometimes.
“Well, you’d best tell your ancestors you’ll talk to ’em again some other time. Me and Hawk and Dog are back.”
White Buffalo held up a hand, palm out. “Wait.” A few more seconds went by, then he sat up and opened his eyes. “Did you find a Blackfoot hunting party?”
“We did.”
“Are they all dead?”
“They are.”
“Then it is good. My friend Dog will tell me all about it.”
Preacher called to Hawk and told him to come on in.
The young man entered the cave with Dog, and asked, “Why did you not answer us when we called to you, White Buffalo?”
“It’s a long story,” Preacher answered for the old man, who was already petting Dog and, for all Preacher knew, having a serious conversation with him. “White Buffalo can explain it to you later.”
* * *
For the next couple days, Preacher and Hawk stayed close to the cave, venturing out only to hunt. They always checked the surrounding area closely before showing themselves but saw no one.
Preacher was willing to bet the Blackfeet were sticking pretty close to home, too.
If he was counting correctly, the band had lost seventeen warriors in the past week or so. That was a dramatic loss. Throw in the warriors he and Hawk had killed down in the Absarokas’ valley south of Beartooth, and Tall Bull’s forces had been significantly weakened.
Preacher figured some of the Blackfeet were muttering among themselves. If Tall Bull was supposed to be such a great war chief, how come so many of their men had either died or disappeared?
Tall Bull would hear that discontent, and it would anger him. He would start to feel like he had to do something to impress his people again.
A man who was pressing and worrying like that often made mistakes.
After a couple days of rest, Preacher thought it was time to give Tall Bull something more to worry about. “I’m going to the Blackfoot village by myself tonight,” he announced as he and his companions made supper of some meat from a deer Hawk had killed with an arrow the day before.
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