“Yes, well, that’s true.”
“I know it is,” Corliss said with a nod. “That’s why I’m going to change. If we can save Deborah, you’ll see, Jerome. I’ll do what’s best . . . even if it means giving her up and letting her be with you.”
“She doesn’t want to be with me. She wants you, Corliss. ” Jerome nodded. “That’s really all she’s ever wanted, don’t you see? Her brief flirtation with me came about only because she thought you didn’t care about her as deeply as she cares about you.”
“I know.” Corliss put an arm around his cousin’s shoulders, being careful not to hurt Jerome’s wounded arm. “I’ve got a lot of fences to mend. I just hope I have the chance to mend them.”
Antelope looked at Preacher and asked in Arapaho, “Do those two always talk like a flowing river about nothing?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Preacher replied, trying not to grin.
“Gimme some more arrows,” Jake said. “I want to shoot that tree some more.”
* * *
Preacher knew that traveling by horseback, they could have caught up to the wagons before the day was over. He didn’t want to do that, however, so he kept the group moving at a deliberate pace that ate up the ground yet didn’t bring them too close to their quarry. Whatever they did, it would be better to wait until after night had fallen to make their move.
Darkness settled quickly over the rugged landscape once the sun dipped behind the peaks to the west. Even though it was mid-summer, the elevation was high enough for a cool breeze to spring up. It blew from the west, down from the mountains, and that was good because it would carry their scent away from the thieves’ horses, Preacher thought. As they reined in at the edge of some trees that ran along the top of a rise, he caught a faint tang of wood smoke on the air, carried by the breeze from a camp not too far ahead.
“Blackie, you and Pete and Jake will stay here,” Preacher said.
“Hell, no,” the one-eyed man shot back. “Pete’s too crippled up to do any fightin’, but I ain’t. I can still squeeze a trigger, dad-gummit!”
“So can I,” Carey insisted. “I want in on whatever you’re plannin’, Preacher.”
Preacher shook his head. “With that wounded leg, you’d have to do your fightin’ from horseback, Pete, and the sound of hooves would give us away. Anyway, I don’t intend to fight a pitched battle tonight. I just want to spook those bastards and cut down the odds a mite while I’m doin’ it.” He turned to Jerome. “You’ll stay here, too. Corliss and Antelope and I are the only ones goin’.”
Jerome looked like he wanted to argue, but after a second he gave a reluctant nod. “You know what you’re doing, Preacher,” he said.
“Let’s hope so,” Preacher replied with a chuckle. “Corliss, get one o’ them bows and about half-a-dozen arrows.”
“I can shoot a bow,” Jake piped up. “Pretty good, too. You said so yourself, Preacher. Let me come along.”
“Not this time, younker. You may get your chance later, though.”
Jake grumbled about it, but accepted Preacher’s decision. A few minutes later, Preacher, Corliss, and Antelope were ready to leave. The stars had come out overhead, but the moon wasn’t up yet, so the night was still quite dark.
Preacher led the way as the three men advanced on foot. The day of riding had been tiring for Antelope, but the Arapaho was able to walk now. The wind had died down some, but a whiff of wood smoke drifted to Preacher’s nose from time to time, enough so that he knew he was going in the right direction.
They climbed a hill, moving as silently as possible. Before leaving the others, Preacher had stressed the need for stealth to Corliss. Being quiet might be a matter of life and death before the night was over.
When they reached the top of the slope, they crawled over and looked down into a hollow where the wagons had been drawn into a circle. A campfire was blazing in the center of that circle. Men moved around it, coming between the flames and the three stalkers on the hill. Preacher tried to count them and estimated their number to be around twenty-five.
His eyes narrowed as he spotted the two men Antelope had described as the leaders of the gang. Even though he couldn’t be sure, he felt like there was a good chance they were the same men who had tried to kill him back in St. Louis and murdered Abby instead. How they had come to be out here, stealing the cousins’ wagons, Preacher had no idea. What he did know was that he was close enough to kill them with his rifle.
But that wasn’t what he had set out to do tonight, so he pushed that tempting thought aside. Instead, he let his keen eyes search the darkness for the sentries that the thieves were bound to have posted. It took him a while, but he finally located three men spread out around the camp, well out of the circle of light cast by the fire.
Silently, he pointed them out to Corliss and Antelope, and then they waited as time dragged by and one by one the men down below turned in for the night, crawling into their blankets that were scattered around the camp. Only when everyone except the guards appeared to be asleep did Preacher reach over and tap Corliss and Antelope on the shoulder.
The Arapaho didn’t need to be told what to do. He crawled off toward one of the guards. Preacher motioned for Corliss to take the nearest man; then he headed off to his left to dispose of the guard in that direction.
When he was close enough, Preacher stopped, came up on one knee, and nocked one of the arrows he had brought with him to the bow. He drew the string taut, aimed at the patch of deeper darkness that marked the guard’s location, and let fly. The only sound was a faint whickering as the feathered shaft flew through the air.
Then he heard the soft thud as the arrow drove through the sentry’s body. The man let out an almost inaudible groan as he fell to his knees and then slumped forward on his face. A savage smile tugged at the corners of Preacher’s mouth. The man had died without making much noise, just as Preacher had planned.
He hoped that Corliss and Antelope had disposed of the other two guards, but he didn’t wait to find out.
Preacher crawled forward, straight into the camp of the enemy.
Twenty-eight
The whisper of steel against leather as the knife came out of its sheath couldn’t have been heard more than a foot away. Preacher’s left hand clamped hard over the sleeping man’s nose and mouth, shutting off any sound at the same time as it jerked his head back and drew his throat taut. The knife in Preacher’s right hand swept across that throat and cut deeply. Preacher felt the hot gush of blood across his fingers as the man bucked and spasmed, arching his back off the ground for a second, then died.
It was cold-blooded murder and nothing less, Preacher knew, but these bastards had called the tune when they ambushed the wagon train, killed Gil Robinson and Lars Neilson, and kidnapped Deborah Morrigan. He wasn’t going to waste any sympathy on them or lose any sleep over their deaths.
They had it comin’.
The fire had died down to a faint red glow, so Preacher was able to crawl from sleeping man to sleeping man without much risk of being discovered unless someone just happened to wake up at the wrong moment. But he knew his luck would run out sooner or later, and so it did after he had slit the throats of four of the men. One of them kicked out as he thrashed around in his death throes, and even though Preacher’s hand over his mouth kept him from crying out, his foot hit something and knocked it over with a clatter.
Preacher didn’t waste any time. He leaped to his feet, bounded over a wagon tongue, and sprinted off into the darkness as men woke up, realized something was wrong, and started shouting questions. Those questions turned to bellowed curses as the bodies were discovered.
“Over there!” somebody yelled, and several rifles boomed. The shots didn’t come anywhere near Preacher. He grinned as he ran through the night.
Those bastards would be even more shocked when they found the bodies of the sentries with arrows in them. They would realize that the enemy had been right there among them, and that it could
have been any of them who had died. That would be as unnerving as all hell to them.
That was just what Preacher wanted.
He reached the spot where he had left Corliss and Antelope. Both men were there waiting for him. “Let’s go,” Preacher said. He led the way down the far side of the slope.
“Will they come after us?” Corliss asked. “They’re bound to come after us.”
“Not tonight, they won’t,” Preacher said. “They’ll be too spooked. They’ll build up the fire and then sit around it all night, too nervous to go back to sleep, wonderin’ when death is gonna come for them...”
* * *
“It had to be Preacher!” Fairfax stormed. “By God, it had to be that bastard!”
Schuyler felt like his blood had turned to cold water in his veins. “What are we gonna do now?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he looked at the seven dead men who had been laid out on the ground inside the circle of wagons. Half-a-dozen men were on guard now, standing beside the vehicles as they peered out fearfully at the night.
“We’re going to find him and kill him, that’s what we’re going to do,” Fairfax said. “We’ll leave the wagons here with a few men to guard them, while the rest of us hunt him down!”
Schuyler shook his head. “No.”
Fairfax frowned at him for a moment, then demanded, “What did you say?”
Schuyler summoned up his courage and said, “That’s just what he wants us to do. While we’re gone, he’ll slip in here and take the wagons back, along with the girl. You’d see that, Colin, if you weren’t so mad that you ain’t thinkin’ straight right now.”
“Damn it, Schuyler, I’m the one who does the thinking around here!”
“Yeah,” Schuyler agreed, “but that don’t mean you’re always right. And now you ain’t.”
For a second, Schuyler thought his partner was going to strike him. Fairfax was red in the face and shaking with fury. But then, with a visible effort, Fairfax controlled himself. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “Preacher knows we outnumber his group, even after he slipped in here and killed half a dozen of us. It’d be to his advantage to split us up somehow.”
Schuyler nodded. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“All right. Come morning, we’ll push on toward South Pass. We’ll be more alert than ever, and we won’t let Preacher pull a trick like this again. But if we haven’t dealt with him by the time we get where we’re going . . .”
“Then we hunt him down and kill him,” Schuyler said.
* * *
Antelope Fleet as the Wind was breathing hard by the time he and Preacher and Corliss Hart reached the hill where they had left the others. Corliss put a hand on the Arapaho’s arm and said, “Let me help you,” but Antelope shrugged him off.
“Antelope needs no help from a white man,” the chief said in a weak but haughty voice.
“I’m white,” Preacher said as he took hold of Antelope’s other arm. “And you lost a lot o’ blood the past couple o’ days.”
“Preacher’s skin may be white, but his heart is that of a true human being,” Antelope insisted. “Antelope will let you help.”
Corliss said, “Suit yourself. I just figured, now that we’ve fought side by side against the same enemies . . .”
Antelope hesitated, then put out a hand. Corliss grasped it and moved up on his other side. Between him and Preacher, they supported the Arapaho chief on their climb up the hill.
“What do we do now?” Corliss asked before they reached the top.
“Keep an eye on the wagon train,” Preacher replied. “If those varmints come after us like I’m hopin’, then we can get around them and grab the wagons back before they know what’s goin’ on. If they’re smart enough not to fall for that, then we’ll keep harassin’ ’em until they don’t have any choice but to come after us. Otherwise, we’ll whittle ’em down to nothin’.”
“Either way, we have to kill the rest of them.”
“Yeah,” Preacher said. “Either way we kill the rest of them.”
Antelope was badly winded by the time they reached the crest. The moon had risen by now, and Preacher saw Jake and Jerome step out of the trees to greet them. “Thank God you’re back,” Jerome said. “Is everyone all right?”
“As all right as we were when we left,” Preacher replied. “Except for Antelope bein’ a mite wore out. He needs some rest—”
Preacher would have gone on, but at that moment, unable to contain himself, Jake burst out, “Preacher, somethin’ happened! There’s Injuns, a whole bunch of Injuns!”
Preacher didn’t need Jake to tell him that. He had already spotted the shadowy figures drifting out of the cover of the trees, arrows nocked to their bowstrings, ready to kill. Dozens of them.
“I see ’em, Jake,” Preacher said. His voice was calm. There was no need to panic now, because if those warriors were hostile, then it was too late for him and his companions to do anything except die.
* * *
By morning, the members of Shad Beaumont’s gang who were still alive had settled down considerably, since nothing else had happened during the night and it was easier not to be scared when the sun was up. They buried the men Preacher had killed—nobody entertained the slightest doubt that Preacher was responsible for their deaths, although it was possible he might have had help—then prepared to get the wagons rolling again.
The woman refused to eat when Schuyler tried to give her some breakfast. He knew her name was Deborah Morrigan. She had admitted that much before falling stubbornly silent. So now he said, “Miss Morrigan, you’ve gotta eat. You’ll die if you don’t.”
She gave him a look that seemed to say that was exactly what she wanted.
Schuyler kept at her. “What can I do to talk you into eatin’?”
“Let me go,” she said.
“I don’t reckon I can do that,” he replied with a shake of his head. “My partner wouldn’t like it.”
“You mean that bald little man who gives all the orders?”
“Yeah.”
“Then tell me what you’re planning to do with me.”
Schuyler was glad she was talking again, even if she wasn’t eating. “Nothin’ bad is gonna happen to you,” he promised. “We’re gonna take you back to St. Louis and let our boss decide what to do with you.”
“And just who is this boss of yours?”
Schuyler opened his mouth to answer the question, then thought better of it. He didn’t know if Shad Beaumont would want him telling people that Beaumont was really responsible for what had happened to the wagon train. Just in case things didn’t work out.
“Go away and leave me alone,” Deborah snapped when she saw that Schuyler wasn’t going to answer her question. “I wouldn’t believe anything you told me anyway.”
After a few minutes, Schuyler gave up. When he left the wagon where Deborah was being held prisoner, Fairfax asked him if he’d had any luck getting her to eat. Schuyler shook his head.
“She’ll cooperate when she gets hungry enough,” Fairfax said with a smirk. “She’ll do anything we say when she realizes that she’s not going to get away.”
“She probably thinks Preacher’s gonna come to save her.”
“Well, we won’t let that happen, now will we?”
The wagon train got under way again. It was a beautiful, crisp, high-country morning. Schuyler could tell, though, that they would soon be working their way down out of the foothills and back onto the flats before the next range of hills and mountains rose. That was the one where South Pass was located, according to the maps he had seen. That was where they were headed.
The trail took a downward slant before Schuyler was expecting it. The wagons rolled around a hill and then started down a gentle slope, at the bottom of which the terrain flattened out into a broad, grassy plain.
Also waiting at the bottom of that slope was a line of buckskin-clad, feathered-decorated, painted figures mounted on nimbl
e ponies. There were at least forty of the warriors. They made no move to attack, simply sat there blocking the path of the wagons.
“Oh, hell,” Schuyler said from the seat of the lead wagon as he hauled the team of oxen to a halt. He glanced over at Fairfax, who was even paler than usual. “Oh, hell, Colin.”
“Take it easy,” Fairfax grated. “Maybe they’re not hostile.”
“Not hostile? Look at them!” Schuyler had never seen a more bloodthirsty-looking bunch in his life.
Fairfax swallowed hard. “Maybe we can bargain with them.”
One of the warriors suddenly edged his pony forward a couple of steps. He sat stiffly, and if Schuyler and Fairfax had been close enough, they would have seen how gray and strained his face was underneath the streaks of war paint. Antelope Fleet as the Wind had endured a great deal to reach this moment alive. The burning deep inside him told him that he didn’t have much more time remaining. So he was going to take savage pleasure in what happened next.
“See?” Fairfax said, never recognizing the man on the pony. “That must be their chief. He wants to negotiate.”
The Indian carried a rifle. He thrust it into the air over his head, cried out a command, and swept his arm forward.
The rest of the war party charged, the hooves of their ponies thundering as they raced up the slope toward the wagons.
For these evil men who had fouled the frontier with their presence, there would be no negotiation, only death.
* * *
Preacher burst out of the trees on Horse as the shooting started. Dog raced along after him. Corliss and Jerome Hart, Pete Carey and Blackie all followed as well. They were to one side of the wagons, launching a flank attack. Closer than the Arapaho warriors led by Antelope Fleet as the Wind, they would reach the wagons first.
They had traveled all night to get ahead of the wagon train and set up an ambush of their own. Preacher intended to leave the bulk of the fighting to the Arapaho war party that had been brought back by Eagle Flies High. His own goal was to strike quickly, get in and out, and bring Deborah Morrigan to safety. If along the way they could kill a few of the bastards who had taken over the wagon train, then so much the better.
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