“Yeah, I know. Last I heard the Pawnee were pretty peaceful.”
“You never know when something’ll get them stirred up,” Russell said. “I—Look out!”
This time it was a veritable storm of arrows descending on the riverboat, not just one. Preacher tackled Warner and knocked him to the floor as the missiles began to thud against the pilot house. Some of them came through the open windows and landed on the floor. One even stuck in the wheel.
“It’s like those damned pirates all over again!” Warner yelled.
Actually, it was worse than that, thought Preacher. Less than two dozen pirates had attacked the Sentinel back at Cougar Bluffs. There was no telling how many Pawnee warriors were out there.
Another difference worked in their favor, though. They were in a fairly wide, straight stretch of the river. They didn’t have to worry about crashing into a bluff.
“Keep us in the middle of the stream,” Preacher snapped at the captain.
Warner nodded as he reached up to steady the wheel. He said, “I should be able to do that.”
Preacher had his rifle with him. The first volley of arrows seemed to be over, so he cautiously lifted his head above the window. He bit back a curse as he saw Pawnee pouring out of the trees on both sides of the river. There had to be fifty or sixty of the warriors on each bank, maybe more. They pulled canoes out of the brush, shoved the lightweight craft toward the riverboat, hopped in and started to paddle.
This was a full-fledged attack, Preacher realized, not some isolated incident. And that didn’t make any sense. The Pawnee didn’t have any reason to come after the riverboat like this.
Guns blasted down below as the crew began to mount a defense, but they had to dive for cover as more arrows slashed through the air at the boat. Preacher slid his rifle over the window sill and drew a bead on the warrior in the front of the canoe closest to the Sentinel. He fired and saw the lead ball drive the Pawnee backward into the man behind him.
The canoe didn’t slow down, though. None of them did.
On the other side of the pilot house, Russell’s pistol roared. He cursed and said, “Why are they doing this?”
“Don’t know,” Preacher said as he reloaded, “but I reckon we’d better get down there. They’re gonna be swarmin’ all over the boat in a minute.”
As he stood up, a desperate tactic occurred to him. He grabbed the wheel, said, “Sorry, Cap’n,” and spun it. The Sentinel veered sharply to the right.
“What the devil are you doing?” Warner demanded. “You’ll wreck us!”
“I’m gonna wreck some of them canoes first,” Preacher said.
It was true. As the paddle wheel dug in the muddy water and sent the boat surging ahead, now its prow was aimed at the closest canoes. The Pawnee paddlers tried to get out of the way, but they didn’t have time. The boat struck them, overturning some and splintering others. Warriors had to dive frantically into the river or were dumped in the water and trapped as the riverboat passed over them if they were too slow. Preacher figured some of them wouldn’t survive being caught in the paddlewheel.
He spun the wheel back the other way to try to straighten the boat. Earlier in the journey, Warner had offered to let him try his hand at steering, but Preacher figured the captain hadn’t meant like this!
He let go of the wheel, grabbed the rifle he had leaned against the wall, and plunged out of the pilot house with Russell right behind him. Down below, some of the Pawnee warriors who’d been in the river were now clambering onto the cargo deck.
From here on out it would be a hand-to-hand fight, with no quarter asked or given.
CHAPTER 23
As Preacher reached the passenger deck, he saw a Pawnee warrior with a painted face leap from a canoe onto the cargo deck and brandish a tomahawk as he charged toward a crewman who had taken cover among the supplies. The crewman was trying to reload a pistol but would never make it in time.
Smoothly, Preacher brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The ball ripped through the Pawnee’s torso and spun him over the side. He went into the water with a big splash.
Unfortunately, several more warriors were already there to take his place.
Preacher dropped his rifle and pulled his pistols from behind his belt. Each pistol was double-shotted, with as heavy a charge of powder as it would bear. The way the Indians were pouring onto the boat, he didn’t really have to aim. He just cocked the pistols, pointed them in that general direction, and pulled the triggers.
The guns roared thunderously, and when the powder smoke cleared a couple of seconds later, Preacher saw the bodies of several Pawnee sprawled on the cargo deck. More were coming on board, though, and some of them fired arrows at the mountain man. Preacher ducked as the missiles whipped over his head.
He didn’t have time to reload, but he could use the empty pistols as clubs, which is what he did as he launched himself at a trio of warriors who charged up the stairs. He waded into the enemy, blocking a tomahawk as it descended toward his head, feeling bone crunch under a pistol as he smashed it against the skull of another Pawnee. He kicked one man in the belly and sent him tumbling back down.
It was a brutal fight, and Preacher’s speed, skill, and experience were the only things that kept him from dying several times over during the clash. He hammered the empty pistols into the heads of his enemies until the weapons were knocked out of his hands.
Bodies had piled up on the stairs below him, some dead, some knocked senseless, and they began to serve as a line of defense because they kept more of the Pawnee from getting at him as easily.
Unfortunately there were other ways onto the passenger deck, including stairs on the far side of the boat. Some of the Indians even leaped up, caught hold of the railing, and climbed onto the Sentinel ’s second level. Preacher heard shots and screams and angry shouts as the fight spread from down below, but he couldn’t turn his back on the attackers right in front of him to see what was going on.
One of the warriors took a swipe at his head with a tomahawk that Preacher barely avoided. He caught hold of the man’s wrist and twisted until he heard bones crack. As the Indian dropped the tomahawk, Preacher snatched it out of midair with his other hand and crashed it in the middle of the Pawnee’s face. The man fell backward, dead, as Preacher wrenched the tomahawk free.
He pulled the tomahawk he had taken from one of the dead pirates from behind his belt and with one of the weapons in each hand charged down the stairs, stepping on corpses, feet sliding in pools of blood, staying on his feet somehow as the ’hawks whipped back and forth, shattering bone and ripping open flesh. Blood flew around Preacher in a sticky crimson spray.
By the time this fight was over, he was going to look as gruesome as those corpses he was tromping on—assuming he wasn’t one of them!
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the Pawnee who had still been battling with him gave up the fight and turned to flee. Some ran along the deck while others jumped back in the river. Several of the canoes were headed back to shore.
Preacher’s heart slugged hard as he spotted flashes of bright hair in one of those canoes. Margaret and Sarah Allingham were both in the craft, struggling with a Pawnee warrior who was trying to push them down into the bottom of the canoe. The Indian lashed out with a fist that caught Margaret on the jaw and dropped her in a limp heap, apparently unconscious.
Seeing that happen to her mother caused Sarah to scream and redouble her efforts to escape, but the Pawnee backhanded her and flung her down on top of her mother.
Preacher drew back his arm, whipped it forward, and let fly with the tomahawk. The ’hawk revolved through the air, going so fast it was only a blur, and struck perfectly with the blade lodging in the back of the Pawnee’s head. He pitched over the side, dead, and Preacher had the satisfaction of knowing that the varmint wouldn’t be hitting any more women.
Unfortunately, that did nothing to rescue Margaret and Sarah. They were still prisoners of the raiders, and the two
Pawnee still in the canoe paddled hard to put the craft out of reach. It reached the shore a moment later and the Indians dragged the stunned women out of the canoe.
All the Pawnee were abandoning the fight now, as if they had gotten what they came for. Still holding the two tomahawks, Preacher ran along the deck, weaving around bodies of crewmen and Indians. As he reached the bow he saw that the Pawnee had taken more captives. Gretchen Ritter and Roderick Stahlmaske were in one of the canoes, looking terrified, and the count was in another, slumped down with blood on his head where he had been knocked unconscious.
Men with horses were waiting on shore for the Pawnee. Some of them were warriors, but a shock went through Preacher as he realized that some of the men waiting to take charge of the prisoners were white. That just made the mystery behind this attack deeper. Were the Pawnee working with river pirates now? Preacher found that idea almost impossible to believe.
He started to run back up to the passenger deck to retrieve his rifle, then realized there was no point in it. The other canoes had reached the shore, and the prisoners were being hauled out already. They would be out of range before Preacher could reload.
He leaned over to look back at the barge behind the riverboat. Several of the horses were down, skewered with arrows, but it looked like most of the animals had survived the attack, including Horse. That gave Preacher hope.
Because there was nowhere out here those bastards could go with the captives where Preacher couldn’t track them down.
Simon Russell stumbled up to him.
“Preacher! Good Lord, man, are you all right?”
“Believe it or not, none of this blood is mine,” Preacher said. “How about you?”
Russell held up his left arm to display the torn, bloody sleeve of his coat.
“An arrow nicked me,” he said, “but the wound doesn’t amount to much. What the hell happened here? The Pawnee wouldn’t have done this on their own. They’re not at war with us!”
“Somebody prodded ’em into it.” Quickly, Preacher told Russell about the white men he had spotted on the riverbank, waiting with horses for the fleeing Indians. “Whoever those fellas are, they put the Pawnee up to jumpin’ us. From the looks of it, they were after the count. They probably took Roderick and the women along to use as hostages when we come after ’em.”
“So they know we’ll come after them,” Russell said.
“I reckon you can bet on that,” Preacher said with a decisive nod.
The only Indians remaining on the boat were either dead or dying. Like most tribes, the Pawnee didn’t like to leave any of their fallen comrades behind. The mission they’d been on must have been pretty important for them to have done so, Preacher thought.
He and Russell checked on the crewmen who had been wounded during the battle and did what they could for the men, tying rags around the worst of the wounds as makeshift bandages to slow the bleeding. Then they headed up to the passenger deck to find out what had happened there.
The first thing they saw was one of the Ritter twins kneeling over the body of the other one, who lay on his back with a pair of Pawnee arrows protruding from his chest. His eyes stared sightlessly at the sky.
Gerhard Stahlmaske stood close by, wringing his hands. He appeared to be upset but unharmed.
“Hobart!” the surviving twin said as tears rolled down his cheeks. That meant he had to be Heinrich. He went on in German, evidently pleading in a grief-wracked voice for his brother not to be dead. Unfortunately, it was too late for that.
Russell put his hand on the youngster’s shoulder and said, “There’s nothing you can do for him, Heinrich. I’m sorry.”
Heinrich looked up and said something else in German. Preacher had no idea what it was. He moved on past to Gerhard and said, “What about you, Herr Stahlmaske? Are you hurt?”
“Nein,” Gerhard replied as he shook his head. “No, I . . . I am unharmed. The savages did not come after me.” He clutched at the sleeve of Preacher’s buckskin shirt. “But they took Albert and Roderick! And ach, poor Gretchen . . . When Hobart tried to help his sister, they . . . they killed him.”
“I’m sorry,” Preacher said. “But we’ll get your nephews back safe and sound, I promise you that.”
“How can you promise?” Gerhard cried. He waved a hand at the prairie southwest of the river. “They are gone! The savages have taken them, and Gott only knows where!”
The old man was correct that the Pawnee and their prisoners were out of sight now. Only a faint haze of dust hung in the air to show where the horses carrying them had galloped away.
“I know this country. I’ll take a search party and go after them.”
“But you will be outnumbered.”
“Won’t be the first time,” Preacher said.
“And they have those poor ladies.” Gerhard’s eyes were wide with horror. Preacher figured he was thinking about what might happen to the female prisoners. It was true that might complicate any rescue efforts.
But it wouldn’t stop them. One way or another, Preacher was going to get those folks back and find out the reason behind what had happened.
Captain Warner came down from the pilot house with Allingham leaning on him. The senator still had the arrow stuck in his arm. His voice was panic-stricken as he said, “Preacher, they took Margaret and Sarah! I saw them! The Indians have them!”
Preacher nodded and said, “I know, Senator. I saw ’em, too. I reckon Simon and I will be goin’ after ’em pretty soon.”
“I’m coming, too,” Allingham declared. “I can use both a pistol and a rifle.” He moved his wounded arm and grimaced at the pain. “Just yank this damned arrow out of my arm and let’s get started!”
“Hold on, Senator,” Russell said. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to—”
“Damn it, man, we’re talking about my wife and daughter! Of course I’m coming along.”
“Und I as well,” Heinrich Ritter said as he wiped away his tears. He no longer looked so young and innocent and enthusiastic. “Those savages, they have taken mein sister. Und they . . . they haff killed mein bruder. Er ist todt!”
Preacher wasn’t sure if taking along a politician and a German youngster—neither of whom knew much of anything about the frontier—was a good idea. On the other hand, if Allingham really could use a gun, it might not hurt to have him along. Preacher didn’t know how many of the crewmen had survived, so he wasn’t sure how much of a rescue party he could assemble.
“Cap’n, why don’t you go see to your crew?” Preacher suggested to Warner. “I’ll take a look at your arm, Senator.”
When he bared Allingham’s arm, he saw that the arrow was lodged in the fleshy outer part of the upper arm. It hadn’t penetrated all the way through, so Preacher took hold of the shaft.
“This is gonna hurt like hell, Senator,” he warned.
“Just do what you need to do,” Allingham told him through clenched teeth.
Doing it as quickly as possible, Preacher rammed the arrow the rest of the way through Allingham’s arm so that the bloody flint head emerged from the front. He snapped off the head, then withdrew the shaft from the wound.
Allingham was even more pale now, and he had let out a groan when Preacher pushed the arrow on through. But he nodded and said, “All right, now you can bind it up. It won’t stop me from riding.”
While Preacher was doing that, Ludwig and Egon, the count’s servants, came up to him.
“Herr Preacher,” Egon said, “we are told you are forming a party to go after the savages who abducted the count.”
“That’s right,” Preacher said.
“We would like to volunteer,” Ludwig said.
“You boys know anything about fightin’ Indians?” Preacher asked.
“Well . . . no,” Egon said. “But we are good at following orders.”
“We have been doing it all our lives,” Ludwig added.
Again, having them along might help with the odds, but they cou
ld also cause problems.
“If you come with me, you’ll have to keep up,” Preacher cautioned them. “And if you get in any trouble, chances are you’ll have to get yourselves out of it ’cause the rest of us will be busy tryin’ to stay alive.”
“We understand,” Egon said.
“We must help the count,” Ludwig said. “It is our duty.”
“All right, go see if you can rustle up some guns.” Preacher finished tying a strip of cloth from Allingham’s shirt around the politician’s wounded arm. “Once that arm stiffens up, you ain’t gonna be able to use it much, Senator.”
“I know that. But I can fire a pistol one-handed. And all I want is the opportunity to do so at the men who stole my wife and daughter.”
Margaret Allingham’s infidelity seemed to have been forgotten. That wasn’t surprising. When it was a matter of life and death, other things often didn’t matter anymore.
“When will we be leaving?” Allingham went on.
“Just as soon as we can,” Preacher said.
He was all too aware that with every minute that passed, those prisoners were getting farther away from the river.
CHAPTER 24
Some of the horses had been wounded but not killed, something Preacher hadn’t realized earlier. There were eight animals either unharmed or in good enough shape to ride, including his own stallion. That limited the size of the rescue party even more, because they had to be mounted.
Not only that, but if they succeeded in freeing the captives, some of the party would have to ride double as they made their escape. That would slow them down.
So, Preacher mused, he was going after a hundred or more Pawnee warriors with a politician, a German youth barely out of his teens, and a couple of servants who had no experience fighting Indians or anybody else. At least the two crewmen who would be going along were both big and strong from their work, even if they weren’t veteran Indian fighters. And of course he and Russell had been to see the elephant, many times.
Yeah, the odds against them were pretty overwhelming, he decided. But they had no choice in the matter. As long as those prisoners were out there and in danger, Preacher had to try to help them.
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