Preacher's Bloodbath

by Johnstone, William W.

  With the same sort of reckless arrogance they had displayed so far, the Indians charged back into the camp a moment later, led by the chief. Boone stood up and heaved the spear at the head man as hard as he could.

  The throw was a good one and would have found its target, but the man saw the spear coming and twisted aside just in time to let it go past him. The deadly missile buried its sharp point in the chest of the man directly behind the chief. The warrior’s momentum kept him running for a couple steps before he collapsed.

  In avoiding the spear, the head man brought himself within reach of Preacher, who put a foot on the rock where he had been hidden and bounded over it as he swung the war club. The blow clipped the chief on the side of the head and dropped him. Preacher leaped over him and on the backswing smashed the skull of another man.

  Boone’s pistol roared and dropped a man with a lead ball in his chest. That left just two of the Indians on their feet. Preacher ducked a spear thrust from one and brought the war club up to catch the man on the jaw. Bone splintered under the impact and the man turned a backward somersault. Moving too fast for the eye to follow in the shadows, Preacher batted aside the last man’s spear and brought the war club crashing down on his forehead. The man’s skull was so misshapen it didn’t even look human anymore as he collapsed.

  All the Indians were down. Preacher slashed the throat of the man whose jaw he had shattered, putting him out of his misery and removing him as a threat. He checked the others, found they were all dead except for the chief, who was out cold from the glancing blow Preacher had struck.

  “Aren’t you going to kill him, too?” Boone asked.

  “Nope,” Preacher replied. “Got something else in mind for him. Give me a hand tyin’ him up. We’d best make sure he’s bound good and tight, too. He’s a big, strong cuss, and we don’t want him gettin’ loose.”

  Boone wondered what Preacher intended to do, but he didn’t argue. Within a few minutes, they had the chief tied securely. With that done, Preacher set Boone to gathering up all the spears and war clubs while he had a look around the camp.

  He found his pistols, knife, tomahawk, powder horn, and shot pouch in a bag made of animal hide. It appeared that his captors hadn’t brought his rifle with him. He hated to lose the weapon, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Maybe later, he could go back to the place where they had jumped him and find it, he thought.

  Having the pistols and his other weapons made him feel better. Although he had no way of knowing for sure, he had a strong hunch the members of the war party weren’t the only hostiles in the vicinity. Such a small group probably wouldn’t have been responsible for all the deaths and disappearances in Shadow Valley in recent weeks.

  He and Boone dragged the dead men into the brush for scavengers to dispose of, then came back to the fire. Preacher put more wood on it and waited until the flames were leaping a little higher. “All right, Boone, tell me what you’re doin’ here. It ain’t that I’m ungrateful for your help, but I told you to stay with O’Grady and those other fellas.”

  “Well, I’m a little sorry about that, but I’ve always been pretty bad about doing what I was told to do. I admit it. Just about drove my pa to distraction, it did.”

  Preacher had to chuckle. “This is one time your stubbornness came in handy, I reckon. I’d have gotten loose one way or another if you hadn’t come along, but what you did made it easier. What if that bunch had caught up to you while you were decoyin’ ’em away from here, though?”

  “I reckon I’d be dead now,” Boone said. “Or wishing I was, anyway. You reckon these fellas are the ones who’ve been going around ripping out hearts?”

  “I don’t see how it could be anybody else. What I want to know is where they came from and how many more of ’em we’re gonna have to deal with.”

  “Deal with?” Boone repeated with a frown. “Aren’t we going to head back over the ridge and get out of Shadow Valley?”

  Preacher shook his head. “Not hardly. Or at least I’m not. I think those varmints are holding a couple friends of mine prisoner, and I don’t intend to go off and abandon them.” He reminded Boone about how Audie and Nighthawk had disappeared, then told him about the pages he had found from the novel Audie had with him.

  “Until I know they’re dead, I’m gonna believe they’re still alive,” Preacher concluded, “and some of those other fellas who have vanished may be, too. I’m gonna find them and find out what the hell’s goin’ on in these parts, too. These Injuns aren’t like any I’ve ever run across before, so there’s no tellin’ what sort of mischief they may be up to.”

  “You don’t recognize what tribe they’re from?”

  Preacher shook his head again. “No, and I never heard the sort of lingo they talk, neither. It’s got me plumb puzzled . . . and I don’t like the feelin’.” He paused. “But that don’t mean you have to throw in with me, Boone. I appreciate what you’ve already done, but you can light a shuck out of here and I sure won’t hold it against you.”

  Boone grinned. “No, sir. I came west because life back on the farm was too tame for me. I want to get to the bottom of this with you, Preacher. But how do you figure on doing that?”

  Preacher looked over at the unconscious figure of the chief. “That’s where keeping that big one alive comes in.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Preacher didn’t think it was very likely there were any other war parties roaming Shadow Valley, but since he didn’t know that for sure, he put out the campfire. He and Boone took turns standing guard during the night, which passed without any further trouble except when the chief came to and started yelling. Preacher gagged him to keep him quiet, just in case any fellow warriors were around.

  In the morning, Preacher and Boone breakfasted on tortillas from the war party’s supplies, but they skipped the peppers. After they had eaten, Preacher went over to the chief and knelt beside him.

  The man started to yell as soon as Preacher removed the gag, but he fell silent when the mountain man pressed the blade of a flint knife to his throat.

  “That’s right,” Preacher said with a grin as the chief glared up at him. “You may be a doggone polecat, but you ain’t totally stupid.” He pressed a little harder, just enough to draw some blood. “It wouldn’t take much proddin’ for me to go ahead and cut your throat, old son, so you best listen to me. Do you speak English?”

  The man didn’t respond, but Preacher thought he saw a flicker of understanding in his eyes.

  “Habla español?” That didn’t result in anything except a seemingly genuine blank stare, so Preacher stuck with English. “I’m lookin’ for two friends of mine. One of ’em’s a big ol’ Crow Indian”—he stood up and held out a hand to indicate Nighthawk’s height—“and the other fella’s really short-growed.” He lowered his hand to Audie’s height.

  Once again he thought he saw a flash of recognition in the chief’s eyes. The man knew who he was talking about.

  “Where do you come from? Where’s your home?”

  The man’s eyes flicked toward the cliffs before he could stop them.

  That didn’t make any sense to Preacher. The Sawtooth Cliffs ran in an unbroken line for miles and miles. Honestly, he didn’t know how far north and south they extended. He had never explored their farthest reaches. There were no passes he was aware of, and the cliffs were too steep and rugged to climb.

  Convinced the chief had at least a general idea of what he was talking about, Preacher increased the pressure on the knife again. “If you won’t tell me what I want to know, I don’t have any reason to keep you alive, you varmint.”

  The man responded in just about the way Preacher expected him to. He pursed his lips and tried to spit in the mountain man’s face. He missed.

  Preacher was looking for it and had moved his head back.

  The chief’s movement made the knife dig into his neck even more. A drop of blood welled from the cut and rolled down his skin. He started talking, but the word
s were loud, angry ones that made no sense to Preacher. He choked them off by shoving the wadded-up piece of buckskin that served as a gag back into the man’s mouth.

  As Preacher stood up, Boone Halliday shook his head. “I don’t think he’s ever going to cooperate, Preacher.”

  “Don’t look like it,” Preacher agreed. “We’ll give him some time to think it over, though.” He glared down at the man. “Then if he still won’t talk, we won’t have any choice but to kill him.”

  He inclined his head in a signal for Boone to follow him. They drifted over out of easy earshot of the prisoner. Quietly, Preacher went on. “I think he can speak a little English. Probably picked it up from those trappers he and his friends have captured. I want to know where they took those fellas.”

  “How are you going to find out if he won’t talk?”

  “He’s gonna lead us there.”

  A smile spread slowly over Boone’s face. “You have some sort of trick in mind, don’t you?”

  Preacher scratched at his beard. “Yeah, but it’ll be a mite dangerous. We’ve got to turn him loose without him knowin’ we’ve done it.”

  A frown replaced Boone’s smile. “Won’t he just try to kill us again?”

  “Maybe, but I’m bettin’ he’ll take off for the tall and uncut. He’s an arrogant cuss, but he ain’t a fool. He’ll want to fetch some more warriors and then come after us.”

  “What if he puts up a fight?”

  “Then we kill him,” Preacher said with a shrug, “and try to find where he came from by ourselves. But I reckon it’ll be a lot easier if he shows us the way. We’ll let him stew a while longer.”

  He and Boone talked over the plan, then Preacher made a show of scouting around the camp, knowing the chief’s eyes were on him the whole time. Finally he went back over and removed the gag. “Are you ready to talk?”

  The man just glowered at him.

  “All right. I reckon it’s fair to treat you the same way you done for the folks you captured.” He took the flint knife and began cutting the chief’s tunic open.

  The man’s eyes widened. Clearly, he understood why Preacher was doing that. When he had made a slash in the buckskin, Preacher ripped the tunic apart, baring the bronzed, heavily muscled chest, and laid the blade’s edge against the chief’s skin.

  Not even the man’s stern self-control could stop him from reacting. He began to squirm as much as he could against his bonds, and a torrent of incomprehensible words poured from his mouth. He was furious, but he was also scared.

  “Preacher!” Boone called suddenly. “I hear something!”

  Preacher stood up. He set the knife on a rock and grabbed one of the war clubs. “What is it?” he asked in a tense voice.

  Boone pointed. “Somebody’s sneaking around out there in the brush.”

  “Probably some of this hombre’s friends. Let’s get ’em!”

  Brandishing the war club, Preacher stalked away from the camp and into the thick brush. Boone was right behind him, holding one of the pistols ready to fire.

  When they were out of sight of the camp, Preacher looked over his shoulder at Boone, grinned, and nodded. They kept moving, stomping through the brush so the chief could hear them.

  “I put that knife down well out of his reach,” Preacher said, “but I reckon he can get to it if he works hard enough. We’ll give him time to do just that.”

  “If he takes off like you think he will, how will we know where he went?” Boone wanted to know.

  “I’ll have to trust to my trackin’ ability. It’s pretty good most of the time. He’ll be in a hurry, and maybe won’t be as careful as he might’ve been otherwise. It’s a gamble, sure . . . but most of life is, ain’t it?” Preacher shrugged.

  “I’m learning that more and more, the longer I’m out here on the frontier,” Boone said.

  “You didn’t happen to see my dog and horse anywhere hereabouts, did you?”

  Boone shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Preacher nodded, concerned but not really worried. He knew Dog and Horse could take care of themselves, and they wouldn’t stray too far from the place they had last seen him.

  He and Boone kept up the pretense of moving around in the brush for a while, then returned cautiously to the camp. There was always a possibility that the chief might be lurking somewhere close by, waiting to ambush them.

  When they got there, the area appeared to be deserted. The strips of rawhide they had used to bind the prisoner lay on the ground, obviously sawn apart by the flint knife, which was gone. Preacher looked around and found a few faint tracks indicating that the man had fled northward along the base of the cliffs, the same way the group had been going the night before when they’d stopped and made camp.

  “Now we follow him?” Boone asked.

  “Now we follow him.”

  CHAPTER 12

  They followed the trail throughout the morning. Preacher spotted an occasional drop of dried blood and figured it came from the chief’s wrists, which had probably gotten sliced up some while he was cutting himself loose. Preacher’s own wrists had several scratches on them for the same reason. Such work required a delicate touch, or else a man might wind up opening a vein and bleeding to death before he could get loose.

  As he had pointed out to Boone and the young trapper had agreed, life was a gamble.

  Preacher didn’t get in too much of a hurry. As long as he could follow the trail, he didn’t want to catch up to the chief. That wouldn’t accomplish his goal of finding out where those strange Indians lived.

  Several times during the day it appeared that they had lost the trail, but diligent searching turned it up again. Around the middle of the afternoon, the tracks turned west and led directly toward the cliffs, which were about half a mile away. The chief had been forced to move out into the valley to avoid an area of massive boulders that had fallen from the top of the cliffs during the earthquake Miles O’Grady had mentioned.

  “Where’s he going?” Boone asked. “I don’t see any way through those cliffs.”

  Preacher squinted at the cliffs. “Neither do I, but maybe their village is right there at the base or even carved into the cliffs. I’ve seen things like that, down south of here a good ways. Some of the old tribes live in what they call cliff dwellings. I saw some at a place called Mesa Verde. Been there for hundreds of years.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I never heard of such a thing, myself.”

  “No offense, youngster, but I reckon there are probably a lot of things you ain’t heard of yet.”

  Boone had to laugh at that. “I expect you’re right, Preacher.”

  As they approached the cliffs, Preacher looked for the sort of dwelling he had told Boone about, but he didn’t see any. The cliffs looked as unbroken as ever. The chief’s trail led straight toward them, however, and Preacher figured the man had to have a good reason for that.

  His puzzlement deepened as they came to an open stretch of rocky ground several hundred yards wide, with the cliffs rising on the far side. He put out a hand to stop Boone while they were still in the trees and brush. A partially broken branch told him that someone had passed that way not long before.

  “Where’d he go?” Preacher muttered as he stared at the open ground.

  “Shouldn’t we be able to see him?” Boone asked. “Even if he’s moving along the base of the cliffs, he should be out in the open where we can spot him.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I don’t see hide nor hair of the varmint.”

  It was true. It appeared that the man had vanished into thin air.

  Preacher knew better than to believe that, but he couldn’t come up with any other explanation. After a moment, he nodded. “All right. I’m going out there to have a look. You stay here.”

  “Why?” Boone asked.

  “I ain’t in the habit of explainin’ how come I say something . . . but since you’re as young as you are, I reckon I’ll make an exception. You’re stayin’ here so
if anything happens to me, you’ll have a chance to get away.”

  “I’m not going to run out on you!” Boone protested. “I wouldn’t do that, Preacher.”

  “Well, then, look at it this way. If I get in trouble, you’ll be where you can come give me a hand.”

  “Well, if you want to put it like that . . .”

  “Just stay here.” Preacher drew both of his pistols from behind his belt and stalked out into the open.

  Nothing happened. Spears and arrows didn’t rain down from the top of the cliffs, which Preacher had considered a distinct possibility. He continued toward the cliffs, checking the ground as he went.

  It was too hard to take tracks, but every so often he spotted a recently overturned rock. He was still on the right trail.

  When he was within fifty yards of the cliffs, he stopped and studied them. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a dark line running vertically from the ground to the top of the cliffs. The mark, if that’s what it was, was so thin it wouldn’t have been visible from much farther away.

  Preacher moved forward, veering to his left. The dark line got thicker. When he was twenty yards away, he realized it was a crack in the apparently solid rock wall. The way it angled into the cliff, it would be completely invisible from a distance.

  It was impossible to tell how far the fissure extended into the cliffs. Preacher asked himself if it might go all the way through to whatever was on the other side. He had never heard of such a thing and didn’t know if it was even possible.

  Then he remembered again what Miles O’Grady had said about an earthquake earlier in the year. Preacher hadn’t been in those parts when it happened, but he had heard people talk about other earthquakes and knew how massively powerful they could be. Folks in Missouri still talked about the quake more than twenty years earlier that had made the Mississippi River run backwards. Preacher had heard tales of how the ground sometimes cracked and opened up when it began to shake. It seemed to him that such an incredible disturbance in the earth might be able to crack a cliff as well.