Preacher’s Fury

by Johnstone, William W.

  Plenty of things, Preacher thought, but she probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he said that.

  He realized that she was taking things a lot more seriously between them than he ever had. She was a smart, attractive young woman, and he was more than happy to spend the winter with her … but he wasn’t going to marry her. He had met one woman in his life who he might have considered marrying, and that hadn’t worked out well. He didn’t intend to ever have to mourn another woman the way he had mourned Jenny.

  Raven’s Wing likely wouldn’t understand any of that, though, even if he had been the sort to talk about such things, which he wasn’t.

  Instead he said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Then you must kill Two Bears. Or he will kill you.”

  “I know that.”

  She leaned closer, put her hands on her shoulders. He felt her warm breath on his face.

  “And tonight … tonight you must love me.”

  “Not a good idea,” Preacher forced himself to say. Raven’s Wing was hard to resist, as always. “You should leave now, before Bent Leg figures out you’re gone.”

  She shook her head.

  “He sleeps. When he does, the mountains could get up and walk around, and he would not know it.”

  “What about his wives?”

  “My aunts?” She smiled. “They want me to be happy.”

  “So they’re helpin’ you get away with this. But you don’t know that Two Bears or some of his friends ain’t keepin’ an eye on my lodge. He might’ve seen you come in here.”

  “If he had, don’t you think he would have made it known by now?”

  She had a point there, he supposed.

  “No one knows I am here, Preacher,” Raven went on. “No one but you. And truly, do you wish to send me away?”

  She had pulled up the skirt of her buckskin dress when she dropped to her knees on the robe in front of him. Now she reached down, grasped the garment’s hem, and peeled it up and over her head. Preacher’s jaw tightened as he saw the reddish glow from the embers playing over her skin.

  “No,” he growled. “I’m not gonna send you away.”

  But even as he reached for her, he still thought this probably wasn’t a good idea.

  Raven’s Wing slipped out of the lodge some time during the night. Preacher knew when she left, but pretended to be asleep. In a way he was glad they’d had at least one more night together.

  After several days of welcome sunshine, the morning of the third day dawned with a thick overcast covering the sky. When Preacher stepped out of the lodge and looked up at the gray clouds, he thought that within another day or two the snow would return. He wondered idly if he would be alive to see it.

  Bent Leg had said that the showdown would take place when the sun rose this morning. The overcast made it difficult to tell for sure, but Preacher thought that time had already come and gone. Close enough, though, he thought.

  The people of the village were converging on a large open area near the creek. There would be plenty of room there for the battle between Preacher and Two Bears. The Assiniboine gathered in a half circle, with the stream cutting off one side of it.

  Preacher carried his rifle and two of his pistols as he approached the battleground with Dog padding along behind him. He saw Lorenzo, Audie, and Nighthawk waiting at the edge of the crowd and angled toward them.

  Audie said, “Preacher, I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of a way to avoid this bloodshed, but I just haven’t been able to come up with anything.”

  “That’s all right,” Preacher said with a smile. “Sometimes things just got to be, whether you want ’em to or not.” He looked over the crowd. “I don’t see Raven’s Wing.”

  “She’s in Bent Leg’s lodge,” Audie explained. “She won’t come out until the fight is over, Bent Leg says. I don’t know if that was her decision or his.”

  It didn’t matter either way, Preacher thought.

  He handed his rifle to Nighthawk.

  “I want you to hang on to this for me,” he told the Crow. “If I don’t come back to get it later … well, you just keep hangin’ on to it, all right?”

  Nighthawk nodded and said, “Umm.”

  “I appreciate that,” Preacher said. He turned to Audie and pulled the pistols from behind his belt. “I’ll trust you with these.”

  Audie took the guns as if being handed them was an honor.

  “Thanks, Preacher. I’ll take good care of them.”

  “I know you will.” To Lorenzo, he went on, “There’s another brace of pistols in the lodge where I’ve been stayin’. They’re yours if I ain’t around no more.”

  “Now, don’t go to talkin’ like that,” the old-timer said. “We all know you’re gonna be just fine. Fine and dandy.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Preacher said with a smile. “But if I ain’t, I’ll be dependin’ on all you fellas to see to it that Dog and Horse are took care of proper-like.”

  Audie nodded.

  “Of course, Preacher.”

  The mountain man scratched at his beard-stubbled jaw.

  “I reckon that takes care of everything. All the rest of my possibles, divvy ’em up amongst yourselves however you see fit. And don’t never forget … you fellas are the best friends a man could ever have.”

  He shook hands with them one by one, and each handshake ended in a back-slapping embrace.

  Then a murmur from the crowd made Preacher look around. He saw Two Bears striding toward him, followed by Bent Leg. The warrior carried a knife.

  Preacher drew his own knife. He faced Two Bears, who regarded him with a cold scowl. Preacher kept his own expression neutral. He didn’t hate Two Bears, not by a long shot. But he couldn’t turn his back on the warrior’s challenge, either.

  Bent Leg snapped an order, and the crowd parted to let Preacher and Two Bears walk into the open area where they would do battle. As the Assiniboine closed ranks around them again, Bent Leg said to Two Bears, “Do you withdraw your challenge?”

  “I do not,” Two Bears snapped without hesitation.

  The chief looked at Preacher.

  “And you still wish to answer it?”

  “Not much else I can do,” the mountain man drawled.

  Regret flickered for a second in Bent Leg’s eyes, but other than that he maintained the same stony expression.

  “Very well,” he said. “Each of you has a knife. These are the only weapons permitted. You will fight to the death, and if one surrenders … his life will not be spared.”

  “Can’t put it any plainer than that,” Preacher said. “Bent Leg, thank you for the hospitality you and your people have extended to me and my friends. I ask that you continue to honor it for them.”

  “Of course. You have my word.” Bent Leg looked at Two Bears. “Do you wish to speak?”

  “No,” Two Bears said. “I wish to kill.”

  Bent Leg sighed and inclined his head. He backed away. Preacher and Two Bears raised their knives and began a slow, wary circling as each man looked for an opening, an advantage that could be seized.

  Suddenly, Two Bears leaped forward and slashed at Preacher with the knife. The mountain man twisted away, moving with blinding speed.

  And because of that, Preacher’s back was to the creek when a rifle shot suddenly blasted and what felt like a giant fist slammed into his body.

  CHAPTER 20

  The impact drove Preacher off his feet and sent him rolling across the ground. He was so stunned that he was only vaguely aware of hearing more shots, mingled with shouts of surprise, anger, and fear.

  He tried to push himself up, but pain radiated out from his left side where he had been struck and made that arm useless. It collapsed under him and he fell. That just made him hurt worse.

  But he knew he had to get up. If someone was attacking the Assiniboine village, as seemed likely from all the chaos going on around him, he would make an easy target for the
raiders just lying on the ground like this.

  Suddenly a strong hand closed around his arm and hauled him upright.

  “Go!” a voice urged him. “Head for the lodges!”

  It took Preacher a second to realize that the voice belonged to Two Bears.

  He wasn’t surprised that the war chief was trying to save his life. Two Bears wanted to be the one to kill him.

  He felt the hot wetness on his side as he stumbled toward the lodges. He had dropped his knife when he was shot, so he had to get his hands on some other weapons. Two loaded pistols waited in his lodge.

  Preacher would have fallen a couple of times if Two Bears hadn’t gripped his arm to steady him. Hoofbeats pounded, causing Preacher to jerk his head around to see what was going on. He saw men on ponies riding through the village, firing what looked like new rifles. They were gunning down every Assiniboine they saw: men, women, and even children. Other members of the band went down screaming under the hooves of the raiders’ ponies.

  “Preacher!”

  The mountain man looked around and spotted Lorenzo, Audie, and Nighthawk standing together, fighting some of the raiders at close quarters. Lorenzo was the one who had shouted his name, and the old-timer was being hard-pressed to hold off a pair of attackers who flailed at him with tomahawks. He blocked the blows with his rifle, but any second now, one of the ’hawks was going to get through and cleave his skull.

  Preacher tore loose from Two Bears and lunged toward the melee. His left arm still hung useless, but there was nothing wrong with his right. As one of the raiders lifted his tomahawk to strike again, Preacher reached up and locked his right hand around the man’s wrist. A savage twist snapped bones and made the man cry out in pain as he dropped the tomahawk.

  Preacher snatched the weapon out of midair and drove it deeply into the side of the raider’s neck. Blood spouted in a crimson fountain as Preacher wrenched the tomahawk free. He swung it in a backhand that ripped across the other raider’s face, leaving it a gory ruin.

  “Praise the Lord!” Lorenzo said. “I thought I was a goner for sure!” He looked down at Preacher’s bloodstained shirt. “You’re hurt!”

  “I’m all right,” Preacher said. And for the moment he was, because he was so caught up in the battle that his mind was forcing his body to do things it shouldn’t have been capable of.

  More raiders crowded between him and Two Bears, causing him to lose sight of the war chief. With his three friends at his side, Preacher began fighting his way across the village. He wanted to reach Bent Leg’s lodge and make sure Raven’s Wing was all right.

  The other men had emptied their guns, including the ones Preacher had given them, and there was no time to reload in the middle of this pitched battle. Instead, Preacher fought with the tomahawk he had grabbed, and Lorenzo, Audie, and Nighthawk used knives and employed their empty guns as clubs. The Crow had a tomahawk of his own, and he wielded it with deadly efficiency, cleaving skulls and slashing throats.

  This was up-close killing, the sort that left a man splattered with his enemies’ blood. Because of that, Preacher got a good look at the men with whom he struggled, and there was no doubt in his mind that they were Gros Ventre. Snake Heart had lived up to his name and sent another raiding party against the Assiniboine, even though such things traditionally were not done after the first snowfall.

  But tradition and treachery were two different things, Preacher thought as he tried to catch his breath during a momentary lull in the fighting around him.

  Something else bothered him even more. The Gros Ventre were armed with shiny new rifles, not the old, unreliable trade muskets they were supposed to have. The firepower that gave them made a difference, too. They had inflicted a lot of damage on the Assiniboine with those first couple of volleys. The timing could not have been better for them. Most of Bent Leg’s people had been assembled to watch the battle between Preacher and Two Bears, and they hadn’t been expecting an attack. They were perfect targets.

  Screaming in hatred, several Gros Ventre warriors kicked their horses toward the little knot of defenders. Audie finally had managed to reload the pistols Preacher had given him, and both guns roared as he fired. Two of the charging raiders were blown backward off their ponies.

  Nighthawk leaped high and dragged another man to the ground. The desperate struggle between them ended a heartbeat later with Nighthawk’s tomahawk buried in the raider’s skull.

  Preacher did the same, pulling a man from horseback and bludgeoning him with the tomahawk, but as he straightened, a runaway horse rammed into him with its shoulder and knocked him spinning off his feet. He rolled across the ground and looked up just in time to see another horse about to trample him.

  This was no Indian pony, and Preacher’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw the face of the rider. The man was white, with ugly, rawboned features and a shock of yellow hair under his hat. Preacher just had time to recognize him before one of the horse’s shod hooves clipped him on the head as he tried to fling himself out of the way.

  But even though he knew he had seen the man before, he couldn’t put a name with the face, and there was no time to think about it. The hoof’s impact was stunning, even though the blow was a glancing one. Blood flooded into Preacher’s eyes, blinding him with a crimson wave. He struggled desperately to hang on to consciousness, but that was a fight he was destined to lose.

  Oblivion claimed him.

  As awareness began to seep back into Preacher’s brain, at first he knew only that he hurt. In fact, he seemed to be engulfed in pain from head to toe.

  But his head and his side hurt especially bad, and gradually Preacher remembered that he had been kicked by a horse in one place and shot in the other.

  Clearly, neither of those injuries had proved fatal, or else he wouldn’t feel like this. He didn’t know what was on the other side of the veil or what sort of torments a soul might endure there, but he was pretty damned sure that death was the end of this world’s pain.

  With an effort, he forced his eyes open, then experienced a moment of panic when he still couldn’t see anything. Darkness still enfolded him. He tried to move …

  Then a voice said, “He’s awake,” and whatever was covering his face went away. Light struck him like a physical blow. He flinched.

  “Take it easy, Preacher,” the voice went on, and now the mountain man recognized it as belonging to Audie. He experienced a moment of relief that his friend was still alive.

  Something cool wiped across his forehead. A wet cloth had been draped across his face when he regained consciousness, he realized. His squinted eyes began to adjust to the light. He made out several figures leaning in around him.

  “We figured you was dead for sure, all covered up with blood like you was.” That was Lorenzo.

  “Umm,” added Nighthawk.

  Audie said, “Head wounds often bleed profusely, even they’re not really as serious as they appear.”

  “Does that mean like a stuck pig?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, that was the way you looked, all right, Preacher,” Lorenzo said. “Bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”

  Audie continued wiping the wet cloth across Preacher’s forehead.

  “You actually did lose quite a bit of blood from that wound in your side, too,” he said. “But I stopped the bleeding, cleaned it, packed it with moss, and bound it up securely. I’m sure you’ll hurt like blazes for a while, but barring unforeseen circumstances, I think you’ll be fine in a few days. The rifle ball just creased you.”

  But even a minor wound like that had been enough to knock him down, make him lose that blood Audie spoke of, and render his left arm useless for a while. As he thought about that, Preacher made a conscious effort to flex the fingers of his left hand. He was glad when they responded and he felt them clenching and unclenching.

  He could tell now that his shirt was off and his torso was tightly bandaged. The wrappings kept him from drawing a deep breath. He ha
d to lie there breathing shallowly.

  From the feel of it, he was stretched out on a bearskin robe. He saw the curving roof of an Assiniboine lodge above his head. The entrance flap was tied back so that light spilled into the lodge.

  That light was gray and weak, despite its apparent brilliance when Preacher first opened his eyes. The sun was obscured by clouds, which meant, he hoped, that this was the same day the Gros Ventre raiders had attacked the Assiniboine village.

  He started to push himself into a sitting position. At first Audie said, “Preacher, you should just lie there and rest.”

  Then, as he saw that the mountain man wasn’t going to listen to him, he said, “Nighthawk, give me a hand with him.”

  The Crow’s strong arm went around Preacher’s shoulders and gently lifted him. Once Preacher was upright, his head spun crazily for a moment. It seemed like the entire earth had suddenly started revolving in the wrong direction.

  The sensation eased and his head calmed down. He lifted a slightly trembling hand and touched his forehead. A bandage was wrapped around it, too.

  “When that horse’s hoof nicked you, it opened up a good-sized cut,” Audie explained. “You’ll have another scar to add to your already extensive collection, I’m afraid. But again, I’ve cleaned and bandaged the injury, and I’m confident that given your hardy constitution, it’ll be fine with time.”

  Preacher nodded. He felt an urge to stand up, but before he could do so, a dark figure appeared in the lodge’s entrance, blotting out the weak light for a moment.

  “Preacher lives?” Bent Leg asked as he came into the lodge, followed by the larger, burlier form of Two Bears. Preacher was glad to see that both of them appeared to be all right.

  “Yes, he regained consciousness a few minutes ago,” Audie said in answer to the chief’s question. “He’s still very weak, but—”

  As if to contradict what his friend was saying, Preacher pushed himself to his feet. He swayed a little, but he caught himself before Nighthawk had to grasp his arm to steady him.