He gave it a few more minutes, just to be sure, then resumed his approach to the lone sentry. When he was close enough, Preacher drew his knife silently from its sheath and then rose to his feet without making a sound. His left arm shot out and looped around the warrior’s throat, jerking back and clamping down across the Indian’s throat like a bar of iron. That prevented the warrior from crying out or even grunting in pain as Preacher’s other hand drove the blade of the hunting knife deep in his back. Preacher felt the steel scrape on bone for a second; then it slid on through the ribs and into the luckless sentry’s heart. The man stiffened in Preacher’s grasp, arching his back from the sudden, unexpected burst of agony that must have gone through him.
For good measure, Preacher pulled the knife out and then cut the Indian’s throat, feeling the hot gush of blood on his arm. There was only a limited amount of blood, though, an indication that the man’s heart had already stopped beating.
Quietly and carefully, Preacher lowered the corpse to the ground. Now came a much harder job—waking up the prisoners and getting them to sneak out of here without rousing the rest of the Sioux.
If there had been any way to stage a distraction of some sort, Preacher would have done so. Unfortunately, out here in the open terrain like this, there wasn’t much he could do to divert attention elsewhere. He had to rely totally on stealth, his own and that of the captives, and while he trusted himself to be able to move quietly, he wasn’t so sure about them.
But he had no choice, so he dropped back to the ground and eased forward on his belly, moving only a few inches at a time and stopping often to make sure the Indians were still sleeping.
The moon had not risen yet, but the starlight was strong enough so that he was able to make out which of the dark shapes on the ground belonged to Rip Giddens. Rip was bigger than anyone else in the party, even Chester Sinclair. Preacher eased up alongside the sleeping man. He put his hand over Rip’s mouth and brought it down quickly, shutting off the big frontiersman’s air. At the same time, he put his mouth next to Rip’s ear and hissed, “It’s Preacher!” His voice was so quiet that it couldn’t have been heard more a foot away.
Rip jerked a little as he woke, but he didn’t try to cry out or get up. Preacher continued in a faint whisper, “Don’t move just yet.”
Rip gave a minuscule nod to show that he understood. Preacher took his hand away from Rip’s mouth. Rip turned his head a little so that his lips were next to Preacher’s ear as he whispered, “Got any help?”
“No, just me. Wake up the other fellas, but be as quiet as you can about it. I’ll rouse the pilgrims. We’re gonna crawl outta here.”
Rip nodded again. He rolled slowly and silently onto his side, then on over so that he lay on his belly like Preacher. They went in different directions, crawling toward the other sleeping forms.
Instinct made Preacher head for Sinclair first. If all hell broke loose, he wanted Sinclair awake and aware of what was going on, so the man could take part in the fighting. He followed the same procedure he had employed with Rip Giddens, crawling up next to Sinclair and then getting ready to clamp a hand over his mouth.
Sinclair shifted suddenly. Preacher thought Sinclair was moving around in his sleep, but without any warning, he grabbed Preacher’s wrist and shouted, “You won’t kill me in my sleep, you damned red savage!”
Instantly, the whole camp was aroused, the warriors springing to their feet and calling questions to each other. Preacher cursed, knowing that Sinclair had seen him creeping closer and taken him for one of the Indians. With his plan to sneak the captives out of the camp ruined, now there was only one thing Preacher could do.
Hit the Indians hard and fast.
He uncoiled from the ground, pulling both pistols from behind his belt as he did so. “Run!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Rip, get everybody the hell outta here!”
The Tetons were startled and confused, but they knew something was wrong. Their harsh shouts filled the air. As several of them lunged toward Preacher, he leveled the pistols at them and pulled the triggers. The guns roared and bucked in his hands as their heavy charges of powder exploded. Both pistols were double-shotted. The deadly lead balls thudded into flesh, and three of the charging warriors went down. Preacher didn’t know how bad they were hit, whether they were killed or just wounded, and he didn’t have time to check. He leaped forward, landing among the Indians and slashing right and left, using the empty guns as clubs.
Rip and the other three frontiersmen leaped up and joined in the fray, fighting desperately with their bare hands as they grappled with their captors. The Easterners sat up, roused from their sleep by the commotion, but they didn’t take part in the battle. They probably weren’t exactly sure what was going on.
Preacher had known as he slipped into the camp that the odds were mighty long against him being able to pull off this daring maneuver. He had needed a lot of luck—a year’s worth of luck—and he hadn’t gotten it. Now all he and the others could do was fight.
Several more warriors fell to the crushing blows that he landed with the pistols, but then someone leaped on his back and knocked him forward, onto his knees. The Indian who had jumped him howled angrily in his ear.
Preacher dropped the guns and reached up and back to tangle the fingers of both hands in the warrior’s long hair. Even though the hair was slick with bear grease, Preacher managed to hang onto it as he bent forward even more and hauled hard with both hands. The warrior’s howl of anger became a screech of pain as he flew over Preacher’s head, flipped over in the air, and came crashing down on his back.
As Preacher surged to his feet, he pulled his knife from its sheath. Whirling around, he slashed at one of the Tetons and made the man jump back to avoid the blade. Starlight glittered on steel as Preacher twisted and went after another man, driving him back as well. None of the warriors wanted to get too close to him. He backed away from them, and as he did so he realized that Rip and the others were closing ranks, too, all of them coming together around the four pilgrims from Boston.
Unfortunately, even with the damage they had done, they were still heavily outnumbered. The war party had had at least thirty men in it, and although several of them were down, injured or worse, more than twenty warriors still surrounded the five frontiersmen. The only weapon the defenders had among them was Preacher’s knife.
“Sorry, Preacher,” Rip Giddens said in the tense silence that fell over the standoff. “I don’t know how come you to follow us, but I reckon you should’ve stayed somewheres else.”
“Preacher!”
The surprised exclamation came from one of the Indians. He stepped forward, tomahawk clutched in his hand, and in the starlight Preacher recognized the ugly features of Bites Like a Badger.
“You!” Badger spat in his own language.
A tight smile played over Preacher’s lean face. “Yeah, it’s me, all right, Badger,” he replied in the Sioux tongue. “Didn’t figure on seeing me again, did you?”
Badger’s breath hissed between clenched teeth. “I hoped that I would,” he said. “I prayed to the Great Spirit that I would have another chance to kill you, white man!”
Preacher moved the knife in his hand back and forth, taunting the chief. “Here I am,” he said. “Come on if you feel lucky, Badger.”
For a long moment, Badger didn’t say anything. Then he grunted contemptuously and said, “Not here, not now. When we return to the village of my people, so that all may see.”
“Problem is, I ain’t goin’ to the village of your people, and neither are these folks. They don’t mean you any harm, so you’re gonna let ’em go.”
In a worried, quavery voice, Willard Carling asked, “What are they saying? What’s going to happen to us?”
Before anybody could answer him, Badger smiled, which just made him uglier in Preacher’s opinion. He snapped a guttural order.
“Take them! But do not kill Preacher!”
The Indians closed in. F
aith let out a terrified scream. That galvanized Chester Sinclair into action at last. The big man leaped into the middle of the warriors and began flailing his fists at them in malletlike blows. Preacher, Rip, and the other frontiersmen were right behind him, yelling as they carried the attack to their would-be captors.
That move took the Indians a little by surprise, but its effectiveness vanished swiftly as they were overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers that the warriors had on their side. A tomahawk knocked the knife out of Preacher’s hand, and once it was gone, fully half a dozen of the Tetons piled on him, grabbing him and forcing him to the ground. One by one the other men were pinned down as well.
“Tie them all,” Badger ordered. “Make sure Preacher, especially, cannot move.”
Within minutes, Preacher was hogtied. The bonds were so tight that he couldn’t even wiggle his fingers, let alone have any hope of getting free. The other prisoners were tied up as well, even Sparrow. She bore up under that stoically, but Faith sobbed as rawhide thongs were pulled painfully tight around her wrists and ankles.
Badger loomed over Preacher and said with a sneer, “Now we see what your brave words amount to, Preacher. Nothing! You are my prisoner, and soon my people will see you die!”
Preacher didn’t reply. There was nothing to say.
But he hadn’t given up hope, and as he lay there with his arms and legs slowly growing numb from the tightness of his bonds, he vowed to himself that he would not only find a way out of this for himself, but also that he would rescue the other prisoners as well. As long as he was alive, there was always a chance....
And there was no way of knowing when Fate might intervene and change everything.
Luther Snell fidgeted tensely as he waited for Baldy to come back from scouting up ahead. Snell had heard the shots and the angry yells, maybe half a mile away, but he didn’t know what had happened. Maybe the Indians had nabbed Baldy. Maybe the old bastard had told the savages about Snell and the others, and any minute the murdering red heathens would fall on them and wipe them out.
But then Baldy came trotting out of the shadows and hissed, “Don’t shoot! It’s me!”
“What did you find out, you crazy old coot?” Snell demanded.
Baldy laughed. “You call me a crazy old coot, but who was it you sent slippin’ up on them Injuns to see what they was doin’? Who was it, huh, Luther?”
With an effort, Snell hung on to his temper and said in a milder tone, “Just tell me what you found out, Baldy.”
“Sure, sure. There was a fight.”
“We know that. We heard the shots and the yellin’.”
“I crawled up close enough to hear what was goin’ on,” Baldy continued. “Nobody knew I was there. Not the Injuns, not them prisoners, not even Preacher.”
“Preacher!” The startled outburst came from several of the men at the same time.
Baldy chortled and nodded. “Yeah. Preacher. Best I could tell, he slipped in there and tried to get those pilgrims loose. But the Injuns woke up and there was a fight, and when it was over, they’d nabbed Preacher, too. Had him all trussed up like a pig goin’ to market.”
Snell raked fingers through his beard. “Damn it. I didn’t figure on Preacher gettin’ mixed up in this.”
“None of us did,” Hardcastle said.
Baldy said, “You shouldn’t ought to have to worry about him. Badger’s the leader o’ that war party, and he hates Preacher. Just give ol’ Badger time, and he’ll kill Preacher for us.”
A grin spread across Snell’s face. “You may be on to something there, old-timer.”
“So what are we gonna do?” Vickery asked.
“We’re gonna follow that war party and bide our time,” Snell said. “We’ll let those Injuns do our work for us and get rid o’ Preacher. Then, when the time is right, we’ll carry out the same plan we had before, to get Willard Carling in our hands and force him to pay us. We’re still gonna be rich men. Nothing’s changed . . . except that Preacher’s gonna be dead.”
Chapter Fifteen
Faith continued sobbing quietly until weariness overtook her and made her fall asleep again. That was a relief to Preacher, who didn’t like lying there and listening to her cry. Every sob was yet another reminder that he had failed in what he’d set out to do.
He and Rip Giddens carried on a whispered conversation. The Indians didn’t seem to mind. At least, they ignored the whispers and allowed them to continue.
“Why’d you follow us, Preacher?” Rip wanted to know.
Preacher could tell that the other men were listening and wanted to hear the answer to that question as well. He said, “Somebody took a shot at me this mornin’, a while after y’all had pulled out.”
“Who’d be a big enough damn fool to do that?”
“Stump,” Preacher said.
That brought a startled exclamation from Rip. “Stump! What the hell did he want to do that for? He’s always been a testy little bastard, but I didn’t think he was crazy.”
“He was afraid I’d find out that he was part of the bunch who attacked and killed Mountain Mist. He thought I’d come after him and settle the score, so he tried to get rid of me first.”
“Lord,” Rip said. “I didn’t think Stump’d do a thing like that, either.”
“I heard it from his own lips. He said it was Luther Snell’s idea to rape Mountain Mist. I don’t figure any of the others planned to kill her, though. That was mostly Snell’s doin’. But the others sure as hell didn’t try to stop him.”
“Stump told you all this as he was dyin’?” Rip guessed shrewdly.
“Yeah. At least he had the decency to say he was sorry before he passed over the divide.”
“Bein’ sorry don’t bring that poor gal back, or change the fact that he tried to kill you.”
“No,” Preacher agreed heavily, “it don’t.”
They fell silent for a moment as Rip digested what Preacher had told him, and then he pointed out, “That still don’t explain why you followed us.”
“Because Stump told me somethin’ else. He said Snell had had another idea. Him and the other fellas who’d been with him were gonna trail you and these pilgrims and then jump you and kidnap Mr. Carling so they could hold him for ransom.”
That prompted a squeak from Willard Carling. “They were going to kidnap me?”
Preacher nodded. He could still do that, even though he was tied up so tightly he couldn’t really move otherwise. “That’s right. They figured on makin’ you pay them a bunch o’ money to let you go.”
“But . . . but I don’t have a bunch of money! Not with me, anyway.”
“They would have taken you back to Saint Looey, I reckon, and made you send a letter to your bank in Boston. They would’ve kept you locked up somewhere until you got a letter of credit back and withdrew the money from a bank in Saint Looey.” Preacher paused. “Then they would have killed you so you couldn’t tell anybody what they’d done.”
“What about the rest of us?” Jasper Hodge asked.
“You would have been dead a long time before that,” Preacher replied bluntly.
“My God, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be so barbaric,” Carling said.
Rip asked, “Was Stump supposed to be part o’ that, too?”
“Yeah. But he wanted to get rid o’ me, first.” Preacher shook his head. “Didn’t work out that way.”
Silence fell again. It wasn’t broken until Chester Sinclair asked, “What happens now?”
“They plan on takin’ us to their village. Tied up like we are, I don’t see any way we can stop ’em from doin’ it.”
“And then they’ll kill us.”
“That’s what they got in mind, I reckon.”
Sinclair let out a low groan filled with despair. “This is all my fault,” he said in a choked voice. “If I hadn’t shouted and woke them up when you were trying to free us, none of this would have happened.”
“You can’t know that,” Preac
her told him. “Something else could’ve gone wrong. The odds of gettin’ away were against us to start with.”
Sinclair didn’t seem to hear him. “Miss Faith is going to die,” he said hollowly, “and it’s my fault.” Suddenly, he reared up as much as he could, tied hand and foot the way he was, and shouted, “Let her go, you damned dirty savages! Let the woman go!”
“Sinclair!” Rip said sharply. “Sinclair, stop it!”
Sinclair ignored him. “Do you hear me, you heathens? Let her go!”
Several of the Indians leaped up and rushed over, Badger among them. Preacher couldn’t do anything to stop it as the chief drew back his foot and unleashed a kick that smashed into Sinclair’s face. The Easterner was driven back down. Badger kicked him again in the side, just for good measure, then again and again. Sinclair grunted in pain as the kicks thudded into his body.
Then Badger stepped back and said in his own language to Preacher, “Keep him quiet, or I will cut his tongue out.”
“Bites Like a Badger is a brave man when his enemies are bound,” Preacher said dryly. He had hopes of goading the chief into ordering that he be untied.
Badger stiffened in anger, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He just growled, “Remember what I said, Preacher.”
As Badger and the other Indians turned away to go back to their sleep, Carling asked, “What did he say?”
“He told me that if Sinclair starts yellin’ again, he’ll cut out his tongue.”
Carling shuddered. “Would he really do that?”
“Damn right he would. Don’t doubt it for a second.”
Hodge muttered, “Dear Lord, what sort of mad universe have we fallen into? How can such things happen?”
Preacher didn’t bother telling him that it was liable to get worse before it got better.
The night was a long, miserable, pure-dee uncomfortable one. Preacher dozed a little, but not enough to do much good. He was still bone-weary when the sky began to lighten with the approach of dawn the next morning.
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