Preacher's Quest

by William W. Johnstone

  He was gazing narrow-eyed at Faith and Hodge when movement beyond them caught his eye. Jones must have noticed the same thing, because he suddenly straightened from his casual pose and caught up his rifle as he stared in the same direction Sinclair was looking.

  Several buckskin-clad figures had emerged from some trees and were coming toward Faith and Hodge. The two of them had their backs to the strangers. A ball of cold fear exploded in Sinclair’s stomach as he recognized the men as Indians. They broke into a run, charging silently toward Faith and Hodge, who were unaware of their danger.

  “Miss Carling!” Sinclair shouted. “Look out!”

  At the same moment, Jones yelled, “Injuns! Run, you damn fools!” He brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

  The shouted warnings and the blast of the rifle got the attention of Faith and Hodge, all right. Faith jerked her head around and looked behind her, and a scream ripped out from her as she saw the warriors with their painted faces rushing toward her and the journalist. Hodge let out a startled yell, too, and grabbed Faith’s hand. He broke into a run, dragging her with him.

  Jones’s shot must have missed, because none of the Indians broke stride. Sinclair dashed over to his horse and reached into a saddlebag where a couple of pistols were kept. He pulled the guns out one at a time and then spun around again, ready to race to Faith’s aid. As he broke into a run, he cocked the guns.

  He had only gone a couple of steps when he tripped and fell. Both pistols discharged as he struck the ground, and the roar of the exploding powder was deafening to Sinclair. Worse still, he was now unarmed unless he wanted to use the empty pistols as clubs. He scrambled back to his feet and looked around wildly, hoping that the Indians hadn’t caught up to Faith and Hodge yet.

  They hadn’t. Terror had lent wings to the feet of both of them. They sprinted across the meadow toward the spot where the horses had been halted. Their pursuers were closing the gap behind them, though. Sinclair stared in horror as the Indians began to shout and brandish tomahawks.

  More help was on the way. Switchfoot and the Ballinger brothers were running in from other parts of the meadow. Switchfoot paused long enough to fire his rifle, and his aim must have been more accurate than Jones’s because one of the Indians stumbled. The warrior didn’t go down, though, just clapped a hand to a grazed arm for a second and then charged forward again, still shouting war cries.

  “Oh, my God!” Willard Carling said as he dropped his palette and brush. “Savages!”

  This was all wrong, Sinclair thought. While Giddens had warned them that not all of the Indians out here on the frontier were friendly toward whites, he had promised that he would avoid the areas where the more hostile tribes were known to roam. For that matter, where was Giddens? He had said that he was going off to scout, but he should have been back by now.

  This was no time for pondering such questions, Sinclair realized. Still gripping the empty pistols tightly, he ran to meet Faith and Hodge. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to Faith if he could prevent it. He would sell his life dearly to protect hers.

  “Keep running!” he called to them as they came closer. “Hurry! Hurry!”

  They hurried, all right. They sprinted right past him. Sinclair skidded to a stop, planting his feet and bracing himself for the inevitable assault.

  One of the warriors lunged out in front of his companions and came straight at Sinclair, his paint-streaked face contorted in a scream of hate. He swung the tomahawk in his hand at Sinclair’s head.

  Sinclair ducked, only to discover that was exactly what the Indian wanted him to do. The warrior’s knee rose sharply and drove into Sinclair’s jaw. The blow staggered Sinclair and sent him falling to one knee. The tomahawk whipped at his head again, but this time the blow was no feint. It was intended to crush his skull and dash his brains out.

  He jerked up the pistol in his left hand and felt the impact shiver up his arm as he blocked the tomahawk with the barrel of the gun. At the same time he rammed the barrel of the other pistol into the Indian’s belly as hard as he could. The warrior grunted in pain and doubled over. Sinclair swung the left-hand gun against his head. The weapon landed with a dull thud. The Indian pitched to the ground.

  Sinclair started to rise to his feet, but one of the warriors tackled him before he had a chance to straighten. He went over backward. The Indian crouched on top of him, howling out his hatred, tomahawk poised to sweep down and end Sinclair’s life.

  A rifle boomed somewhere, and the warrior was driven backward by a ball that struck him in the left shoulder. Something hot and wet splattered across Sinclair’s face, and it was a second before he realized that it was blood from the Indian’s wound. Feeling sick, he rolled away from the wounded man and came up on hands and knees. Somehow he had managed to hang on to both of the pistols.

  When he lifted his head and looked around, he saw one of the Ballinger brothers—he had never been able to tell Tom from Ed—locked in a desperate struggle with one of the remaining Indians. The other brother was trying to reload his rifle. Sinclair realized that it had been Ballinger’s shot that had saved his life.

  To his horror, he wasn’t able to repay the favor. One of the remaining warriors leaped at the man, whirling his tomahawk, and with a ghastly thud it crashed against Ballinger’s head. Ballinger went down, blood streaming from the wound.

  Sinclair threw himself at the warrior who had just struck down one of the brothers. The Indian tried to whirl to meet this new threat, but he wasn’t in time to stop a pistol from crashing against his skull. The warrior went down, and Sinclair hoped with a newfound savagery of his own that the red-skinned bastard was dead.

  Stumbling a little, he turned to see what was going on. The other Ballinger brother was down, and Sinclair’s stunned eyes saw more of the painted figures in buckskin emerging from the woods. Six, eight . . . no, more than that, a veritable horde of savages, sweeping down on the hapless party of whites. Sinclair jerked his head around, trying to locate Faith. He spotted her near the horses, still screaming, while her brother and Jasper Hodge fumbled ineffectually with pistols. Switchfoot and Hammerhead Jones had retreated, too, and were grabbing the reins of the packhorses. They wanted to get out of here, and Sinclair didn’t blame them.

  “Run!” he shouted at the other men. “Take Miss Carling and go! I’ll hold off the Indians—”

  He didn’t get any farther because someone tackled him from behind. He tried to catch his balance but failed. As he fell to the ground with the stink of bear grease in his nostrils from the attacker who clung to his back, he thought that he had only seconds to live. The Indian would probably jerk his head back and cut his throat.

  Sinclair twisted his body desperately, unwilling to just lie there and be slaughtered like a pig. He was bigger than all the Indians, but their wiry strength was a match for his more plodding musculature. He felt more than one set of hands clawing at him, trying to hold him down on the ground. He drove an elbow into the stomach of one of his enemies, slashed at another with one of the pistols, and felt the barrel rip across flesh. The war cries filled his ears, which already rang maddeningly from all the shooting.

  Even over that racket, he seemed to hear Faith’s screams, which grew more terrified by the second. Whether he imagined her shrieks or really heard them, he didn’t know, but his fear for her sent fresh strength into his muscles. With a bellow of rage, he threw off his attackers and surged to his feet, ready to do battle no matter what the odds.

  One of the Indians swung a tomahawk at him. He twisted out of the way but couldn’t avoid the blow completely. The flat of the flint head struck his left shoulder with such force that his entire arm went numb and pain shot through his side. He dropped the gun in that hand.

  From the other side, a warrior crashed a fist into Sinclair’s jaw. He struck back with the gun in his right hand, swinging it in a backhanded blow that sent the Indian tumbling on the ground.

  There were just too many of them. They were a
ll around him now, his vision filling with lithe, buckskin-clad bodies and painted faces. Hard fists hammered him to the ground. He tried to get up, but his strength deserted him. Raging inwardly because he had failed Faith, he struggled to get up until repeated blows to the head left him dazed and unable to move. He lay there, pinned down by the weight of several warriors.

  Time passed, but Sinclair had no idea how much of it had gone by before he was finally lifted to his feet by his captors. Dizzy and sick, he would have fallen again if not for the cruelly tight grips they had on him. He felt like sobbing as he saw that the others had been taken prisoner, too, even the Ballinger brother who had been wounded. The man wasn’t dead, though, Sinclair saw to his surprise. All of the whites were still alive, just helpless prisoners of these savages.

  The four guides were bloody and battered from the fight. Faith, Carling, and Hodge appeared to be unharmed, but they were pale and wide-eyed with fear, especially Faith, who seemed to be on the verge of hysterics. Sinclair hoped she would control the reaction. She didn’t want to do anything that would provoke their captors even more.

  The Indians chattered excitedly among themselves in their own language. Sinclair had no idea what they were saying, but they seemed to be happy about all the supplies they found on the packhorses. They were less impressed with Willard Carling’s paints and canvases, which they tossed aside as if the items were worthless.

  “Here now!” Carling objected. “Be careful with those!”

  “You’d better not anger them any more than they already are, Willard,” Hodge advised. “Who knows what these murderous savages will do?”

  Faith let out a little sniffling sob. Sinclair’s heart went out to her, and the rage he felt inside toward the Indians grew stronger. He was too beaten up to do anything about it, though.

  Several more Indians came up, dragging someone with them. Sinclair wasn’t too surprised when this unconscious prisoner was dumped on the ground and he saw that it was Rip Giddens. They must have jumped Giddens first while he was out scouting, then backtracked him here to the meadow.

  Odd how such a beautiful place had so quickly become a scene of fear and horror.

  The Indians gathered up all the horses. The still-senseless Giddens was tossed roughly over the back of one of the animals. The prisoners were grouped together and prodded into motion. Sinclair had no idea where the Indians were taking them, but he supposed they ought to be grateful that they hadn’t all been murdered outright.

  Unless, of course, the savages were taking them somewhere to torture them to death.

  That thought made a shudder go through Sinclair, but he managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He fought down his own fear and told himself that as long as they were alive, they had a chance. They would have to wait for a good opportunity to escape, and if one came along, they would have to seize it. In the meantime, he would try to recover as much as he could from the thrashing he had received, so that he would be in good enough shape to fight if he got the chance.

  Their survival was up to them now, he thought. No one was going to come to help them. He wished Giddens had gotten some more men to come with them, maybe even that ruffian Preacher. But Preacher was doubtless miles away by now, not giving them another thought.

  One thing was certain, Sinclair vowed grimly. If the savages tried to hurt Faith Carling, they would have to come through him first. He would die before he would let them harm her.

  Of course, that might be exactly what they had in mind....

  Chapter Eleven

  Horse responded gallantly anytime Preacher asked him for his best efforts, and today was no exception. Preacher kept moving at a fast pace all morning as he tried to cut the gap between himself and the two groups he was after.

  He would catch up with Snell and the other men who were bent on kidnapping Willard Carling first, and as he rode Preacher asked himself whether he wanted to try to deal with them right away, or get around them without them knowing it and hurry on to warn Rip Giddens and the Easterners that they were in danger. The ten-or-twelve-to-one odds that he would face if he took on Snell’s bunch didn’t bother him all that much. He had faced high odds in battle before and come through all right.

  But anything could happen in a fight, and if he jumped Snell and the other men first, and they got lucky enough to kill him, then no one would be left to warn Rip. Somewhat reluctantly, Preacher decided that the best thing to do would be to avoid Snell’s gang and try to catch up to the group of pilgrims.

  In order to do that, and to save himself some time, he figured to take some shortcuts that he knew of. Rip probably knew about them, too, but he wouldn’t take inexperienced travelers over any of the trails Preacher had in mind. The trails were too rough for that. If Rip was headed first for Baldpate, as Wingate had said, then he would follow the nice, easy route that curved along north at the foot of the mountains. Snell would probably take the same trail, since he didn’t know anyone was aware of his plans and wouldn’t be in any particular hurry to catch up.

  So Preacher took to the high country, sending Horse up slopes that most mounts wouldn’t have been able to negotiate. The rangy Horse was almost as nimble as a mountain goat, though. Preacher pointed Horse in the right direction and let him pick the best path. Dog bounded along from rock to rock behind them.

  They climbed steadily but angled northward at the same time. Midday found them on a narrow, twisting ledge that followed the face of a cliff. Preacher’s left shoulder almost brushed the sheer stone wall beside him, while his right foot in the stirrup hung over a drop of several hundred feet. It was enough to make a man a mite nervous, and he would’ve been if he hadn’t been on the sure-footed Horse. Dog padded behind him, not quite as exuberant now. From time to time the big cur glanced over at the void and whined.

  “Don’t worry,” Preacher told him. “There’s only another mile or so o’ this.”

  Eventually, the ledge led back down to lower ground, but they were still hundreds of feet higher than the trail down below. Preacher dismounted on a boulder-littered shoulder to let Horse have a breather. He took his rifle and went over to the edge of the slope. Jagged juts of rock rose and fell below him, sweeping all the way down to the valley between the mountain ranges. As he stood there, Preacher stiffened at the sound of distant gunshots. They came from several miles to the north, he judged. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. Had Snell already caught up to the Easterners?

  Preacher was about to whirl around and hurry back to mount up, even though he had intended to give Horse more time to rest. But as he turned, movement caught his eye, and he stopped to peer down into the valley. A good half mile away, and several hundred feet below him, riders had come into view, also heading north. They were sort of bunched up, but Preacher thought there were about a dozen of them. He went over to Horse and dug a spyglass out of his saddlebags. Returning to the edge of the shoulder, he dropped to a knee behind a boulder and opened the spyglass. He rested the thin tube on the rock and put his eye to the end of it.

  The spyglass was powerful enough so that the faces of the riders below seemed to spring up at him. He recognized the ugly, bearded features of Luther Snell right away. Preacher’s eyes went from face to face as he noted the identities of the men riding with Snell.

  Euchre, Hardcastle, Vickery, Abner and Patch Dimock—who were cousins, not brothers—Collins, Mitchum, Singletree, and Baldy . . . Preacher knew each and every one of them, and what he knew about them wasn’t good. Euchre, Hardcastle, and the Dimocks had been partners with Snell for a long time, and they weren’t any better than he was. Vickery, Collins, and Mitchum had been friends of Stump, and probably wondered why the little trapper hadn’t joined the group. Singletree and Baldy were loners, but they were willing to throw in with other fellas if the pickings were good enough. All of them worked as trappers, but all of them had unsavory reputations and were said to have been in trouble with the law before coming west to the mountains.

&nbs
p; Preacher wasn’t one to hold a man’s past against him. The frontier changed some fellas, gave them a sense of freedom and perspective in their lives and turned them into pretty good folks. But most men who were no good in Philadelphia or St. Louis or Cairo, Illinois, were still no good when they reached the Rockies, and Preacher had a feeling that was true of the men he was looking at now.

  He closed the spyglass and turned around to sit with his back propped against the boulder. If Snell and the rest of his bunch were still this far south, he asked himself, then who had been doing that shooting to the north?

  Had Rip and his charges run into some other kind of trouble?

  Preacher frowned darkly at the thought. He was facing enough problems already, trying to get Rip and the others out of the danger they didn’t even know they were in. Now he had to worry that something else might have happened to them.

  After a moment, he stood up and went back to Horse, staying low so there wouldn’t be any chance of Snell or the others spotting him. He stowed the spyglass away and then led Horse as far back on the shoulder of rugged ground as he could before mounting up again. For a minute there, as he had peered through the glass at Snell, he had thought about how easy it would be to line up a rifle shot and blow the bastard right out of his saddle. The range was long, but Preacher had made shots like that before and was confident that he could do it again. He knew now that Snell was responsible for Mountain Mist’s death. He had been convinced of it before, but now he had heard the truth from the dying Stump and there was no longer any doubt. Snell deserved to die.