Preacher's Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  It was Hoyt Ryker standing there on the loading dock telling the clerks how to load the supplies into the wagons.

  Hawk had recognized Ryker, too. “There is the man with the mustache,” he said as Preacher slowed and then stopped.

  “Yeah,” the mountain man said. He scratched his beard-stubbled jaw and frowned. Would Ryker recognize him, too, he wondered? Preacher was a little more grizzled now than he had been a few years earlier, but he still looked pretty much the same. And he didn’t imagine Ryker would have forgotten their confrontation.

  On the other hand, Preacher wasn’t in the habit of letting anybody stop him from going where he wanted to go, and he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of Hoyt Ryker. His mouth tightened into a grim line as he strode toward Fitzgerald’s with Hawk beside him.

  Ryker glanced in their direction, then looked at them again, more sharply this time. That answered the question of whether or not Ryker had recognized him, Preacher thought. Ryker wasn’t paying any attention to what was going in the wagons anymore. He was watching Preacher, instead.

  Preacher and Hawk went up the steps to the loading dock, which also doubled as a porch for the store. Ryker moved a little, not in any hurry, but Preacher noted that the shift put Ryker between them and the store’s entrance. If they wanted to go inside, they had no choice but to come to a halt facing Ryker and tell him to step aside.

  Ryker’s mouth twisted in a smirk as Preacher and Hawk came up to him. He said, “Never thought you’d see me again, did you, Preacher?”

  “Well, I was hopin’,” the mountain man said. “We’re goin’ in the store, Ryker.”

  Ryker ignored that and nodded toward Hawk. “Who’s the redskin?” he asked.

  “I am Hawk That Soars,” Hawk said. “Preacher is my father.”

  Ryker laughed and said, “Is that so? Spawned a whelp with some fat little squaw, did you, Preacher?”

  Hawk took that badly, which came as no surprise. Ryker had meant to be offensive. Hawk started to step toward Ryker, but Preacher put a hand out to stop him.

  “You know, you ain’t any more pleasant to be around than you were the last time,” Preacher said as his eyes narrowed in anger. “If you want to take up where we left off, you’re makin’ a good start on it.”

  Ryker lifted both hands, palms out. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “I’m not looking for trouble. I’m willing to forget all about what happened between us in the past. In fact, if you come right down to it, I’m grateful to you for what you did.”

  “Grateful?” Preacher repeated. He didn’t believe for a second that Ryker was being sincere. “Why would you be grateful?”

  “I was drunk that night,” Ryker said, not telling Preacher anything he didn’t already know. “Now, mind you, I was mighty good with a knife and I still am . . . but I might have missed because of all the whiskey I’d had, and that would’ve been terrible. I might not have had to answer to the law—she was just a tavern girl, after all—but I would’ve carried that guilt around with me for the rest of my life. So I owe you a debt, Preacher, for saving me from that.”

  Preacher didn’t believe Ryker was capable of feeling guilt. He ignored what the man had said and told him, “We’re goin’ inside. You need to get out of the way.”

  “Before we’ve finished our talk?”

  “We don’t have anything to talk about,” Preacher snapped. He took a step forward. He and Ryker were the same height. His chest was about to bump Ryker’s chest when a heavy footstep sounded in the store’s doorway. Ryker laughed and stepped aside.

  Preacher saw that the entrance was still blocked, this time by a massive man who towered over both him and Ryker. A black beard jutted halfway down the man’s chest, but the top of his head was bald as an egg, a fact revealed by his lack of a hat. Thick slabs of muscle on his arms, shoulders, and chest strained the homespun shirt he wore. He had a large, apparently heavy barrel perched on one shoulder like it didn’t weigh anything at all.

  “You want me to put this in the wagon, Hoyt?” he asked Ryker in a voice that rumbled like a rockslide.

  “No, just set it to the side for now, Pidge,” Ryker told him. “I want you to meet a couple of friends of mine. This is Preacher and his half-breed son, Hawk.”

  “We ain’t your friends, Ryker,” Preacher said coldly.

  The huge man called Pidge ignored that and lowered the barrel to the loading dock, handling it easily. A grin wreathed his face under the bushy beard as he said, “Howdy, Preacher. Howdy, Hawk. I’m named after a bird, too, you know. Well, it ain’t my Christian name, I reckon. I don’t rightly remember what that was, but my ma always called me Pigeon when I was a boy, on account of I was so little and reminded her of a bird.”

  Preacher didn’t see how Pidge could have ever been small enough to remind anybody of a bird, but he supposed anything was possible. He could tell that Pidge wasn’t quite right in the head, so he said, “We’d be obliged if you’d step aside so we can go on in the store. We got to buy supplies.”

  Pidge didn’t seem to hear him. He was fascinated by Hawk. He asked, “What kind of a Injun are you?”

  “Absaroka,” Hawk replied with a note of pride in his voice.

  Pidge shook his head and said, “I don’t know nothin’ about them. Are they good Injuns or bad Injuns?”

  “The Absaroka are an honorable people,” Hawk said.

  “Well, that’s good, I reckon. We’re gonna see a bunch of Injuns, Hoyt says. We’re goin’ west on a espy . . . exper . . .”

  “Expedition,” Ryker supplied.

  “That’s why you’re loadin’ up those wagons?” Preacher asked.

  “That’s right,” Ryker said. “Although it’s not really any business of yours, is it?”

  It wasn’t, but knowing that didn’t stop Preacher from bristling at the man’s tone. He was already inclined to dislike Ryker because of what had happened several years earlier, and seeing him with Chessie the night before hadn’t helped matters. Preacher wasn’t jealous, by any means, but he suspected that Ryker meant to trifle with Chessie’s affections and he believed she deserved better than that. Maybe having him out of St. Louis, away from the girl, was a good idea.

  “I don’t care about your business, Ryker,” Preacher said. “Just stay out of my way—that’s all I want from you.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t want to be friends?” The sly smile that tugged at Ryker’s lips told Preacher the man was up to something.

  “Damn right I’m not your friend,” Preacher said, repeating his declaration from a few minutes earlier.

  Pidge frowned and reached out with a hamlike hand. He rested it on Preacher’s chest as the mountain man tried to go around him.

  “Wait just a doggone minute. How come you don’t want to be friends with Hoyt? He’s my friend.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that,” Preacher said, “because he’s a no-good polecat and lower than a snake.”

  A thunderous roar came from Pidge as an angry frown darkened his face. “You can’t talk that way about my friend!” he bellowed. He reached out and grabbed the front of Preacher’s buckskin shirt.

  Pidge heaved . . . and Preacher found himself flying wildly through the air.

  CHAPTER 8

  Preacher sailed off the loading dock and landed in the back of a wagon. His fall was cushioned by a pile of blankets stacked on top of some crates, but the impact was still enough to rattle his bones. He rolled off the goods and fell to his knees in the wagon bed.

  Up on the dock, Hawk had moved in and was hammering punches to Pidge’s head while Hoyt Ryker stood off to one side with a satisfied smirk on his face. Unfortunately, Pidge didn’t seem to even feel Hawk’s fists. With another roar, he swung an arm the size of the trunk of a young tree. The backhanded blow swept Hawk off his feet and sent him sliding along the planks.

  Preacher pulled himself up, planted a foot on the wagon’s top sideboard, and shoved off in a leap that carried him onto the loading dock again. He charg
ed Pidge.

  “Look out!” Ryker shouted to his man.

  Pidge turned lumberingly toward Preacher and threw a roundhouse punch that might have taken the mountain man’s head off his shoulders if it had landed. Instead, Preacher ducked under it and drove ahead with all the strength in his powerful legs. He lowered his shoulder and rammed it into Pidge’s ample belly.

  It was a little like tackling a redwood tree, but Preacher packed a lot of power in his lean frame. He was gratified when Pidge staggered backward. Pidge’s back slammed into the wall of the store, which shivered from the impact. Pidge’s head bounced off the wood.

  That would have been enough to knock most men out of the fight. Pidge was far from a normal man, though. He ignored the punches Preacher began hooking into his belly and reached down to grab him by the right arm and left thigh. Pidge’s hands were big enough to go all the way around Preacher’s arm and almost all the way around his leg.

  Preacher let out an alarmed shout as Pidge lifted him. Suddenly Preacher found himself above the behemoth’s head, poised so that Pidge could heave him again, like a doll being cast away by a giant child. Pidge stomped toward the edge of the loading dock. A toss from there would carry Preacher into the street and might well result in some broken bones.

  Before Pidge could do that, Hawk hit him from behind, low, at the knees. Pidge wasn’t prepared for that. His knees buckled, and as he sagged, he couldn’t hold Preacher up anymore. All three men fell in a tangled heap on the loading dock.

  Preacher and Hawk scrambled free before their bigger but slower opponent did. Hawk lunged at Pidge and swung his legs to lock them around the big man’s neck in a wrestling hold that cut off Pidge’s air. At the same time, Preacher rammed both knees into the man’s belly and kept them there as he crashed his fists into Pidge’s face.

  Pidge’s eyes began to roll up in their sockets. Preacher knew the man was about to pass out. He stopped punching and was ready to signal Hawk to let off on the pressure on Pidge’s throat. They didn’t want to kill the big varmint, but rather just make sure he was no longer a threat.

  From the corner of his eye, Preacher saw Hoyt Ryker slip a knife from its sheath at his waist and draw his arm back. Ryker was going to take advantage of this chance to plant the blade in him, Preacher realized. His hand flashed to the butt of one of the pistols stuck behind his belt. He pulled the gun, leveled it, and eared back the hammer before Ryker could make his throw. Ryker might have gotten away with it if he had hurried more, but clearly he hadn’t expected such a swift reaction from Preacher.

  “That arm of yours moves even a fraction of an inch, this pistol ball’s goin’ right between your eyes, Ryker,” Preacher warned. “Drop that knife.”

  Ryker’s lips drew back from his teeth in a hate-filled grimace that was visible even through the thick mustache. He didn’t respond immediately to Preacher’s command, but after a couple of heartbeats, Ryker’s fingers opened and the knife dropped onto the loading dock just behind him, landing point first so that it stuck there, upright and quivering.

  “Step away from it,” Preacher went on.

  “You’re going to be sorry you ever laid eyes on me again,” Ryker said.

  “I already am. Now move.”

  Ryker took a couple of steps to his left. Preacher could tell he was seething with rage, but as long as the mountain man’s pistol was pointed at his head, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not without getting killed, anyway.

  The clerks who had been on the loading dock when the fight began had all drawn back out of the way, but they were still standing near the building, waiting to see what was going to happen. More people, customers and employees alike, peered through the open double doors. The ruckus had drawn a crowd of spectators in the street, too.

  “Hawk, are you all right?” Preacher asked without taking his eyes off Ryker.

  “Yes. The man Pidge has passed out.”

  “You didn’t choke him to death, did you?”

  “There was no need to kill him,” Hawk replied with a touch of disdain in his voice. Like Preacher, he didn’t hesitate to take a life when it was necessary, but he didn’t believe in wanton slaughter, either.

  The crowd in the street suddenly parted as a man said in a loud, commanding voice, “Let me through. Step aside, blast it. Out of the way.”

  The words had a haughty, imperious tone, as if the speaker was accustomed to being obeyed instantly and without question. The man went on, “Ryker, what the devil is going on here?”

  Ryker still looked angry, but he hid the out-and-out rage his expression had displayed a moment earlier. He said, “I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Merton. These fellas attacked us for no reason, and now that one’s threatening to kill me. I reckon you should summon the law.”

  Merton?

  Despite the fact that Preacher didn’t trust Ryker, when he heard that name he had to glance toward the newcomer. Instead of Oliver Merton, he saw a stocky, middle-aged man with dark hair and a florid face. He was well-dressed, though, like Chessie’s suitor of the night before, and wore an expensive silk hat, the new fashion that was bringing down the price people were willing to pay for furs. That right there was enough for Preacher to be not too fond of the gent.

  The man went on, “You were supposed to be buying supplies for our journey, not getting into brawls. I was hoping we’d be able to make our departure today.”

  “We will, we will, don’t worry about that,” Ryker said. “These fellas ought to be locked up, though, after they jumped us like they did.”

  “That’s not the way it happened and you know it,” Preacher said coldly. “I reckon there are plenty of folks around who’d be willin’ to speak up and verify that, too.”

  “Will you stop pointing that pistol at my man?” Merton said, visibly annoyed. “I see no need to involve the authorities in this matter, sir, unless you persist in your stubborn assault.”

  “Ryker works for you?”

  Merton sniffed. “Indeed he does.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that . . . sorry for you. He’s a dangerous son of a bitch and ain’t to be trusted.”

  “I’ll allow no such talk about one of my employees. Now put that gun down!”

  A couple of feet away, Pidge groaned and shook his head as consciousness began to come back to him. At the same time, another voice spoke up from the crowd in the street, asking, “Father, what’s going on here?”

  Preacher glanced over again as he recognized the voice. He saw Oliver Merton pushing his way through the press of spectators. As the young man broke out into the open and saw Preacher and Hawk on the loading dock, he stopped short.

  “You two again!” he exclaimed.

  The elder Merton frowned and said, “You know these troublemakers?”

  “I met them last night,” Oliver replied, “but they weren’t making trouble then. In fact, the Indian helped me out of some.”

  Preacher was glad the young man had told the truth. Oliver hadn’t acted very grateful at the time, but he seemed to understand that Hawk had pulled his fat out of the fire.

  “Ryker claims they attacked him and Pidge for no reason,” Merton said.

  Oliver cocked his head to the side and said, “I’m not sure I believe that. Who would go out of his way to attack such a gargantuan foe as Pidge?”

  Gargantuan sounded like a word Audie would have used, Preacher thought. He himself would have just said big.

  This had gone on long enough. Preacher told Hawk, “Circle around there and get Ryker’s knife.”

  “You can’t steal my knife!” Ryker protested.

  “We ain’t stealin’ it. Hawk, toss it in one of those wagons, out of Ryker’s reach. Then we can talk without me havin’ to worry about gettin’ cold steel in my gizzard.”

  Hawk did as Preacher said, staying well away from Ryker as he pulled the knife from the plank where it was stuck. Instead of just tossing the knife into one of the wagons, Hawk made an expert throw of his own that stuck t
he blade’s point into the side of a crate. Hawk was showing off a little, but under the circumstances, Preacher didn’t blame him.

  With that threat taken care of for the moment, Preacher lowered the pistol’s hammer but kept the weapon in his hand. He held it at his side as he got to his feet.

  Pidge pushed himself up into a sitting position and shook his head ponderously. He looked around. His eyes didn’t focus at first, but then they locked on Preacher and a growl sounded deep in his throat.

  “Better call him off, Ryker,” the mountain man said. “I don’t want to see the big fella get hurt.”

  Merton added, “We don’t want any more trouble.”

  Ryker nodded and said, “Pidge, come on over here.”

  Pidge climbed slowly to his feet and trudged over to Ryker’s side like a dog called by its master. He stood there with his head hanging as he glowered at Preacher and Hawk.

  “I’m Edgar Merton,” the stocky man introduced himself. “Is it true what my son said, that you two men befriended him last night?”

  It would be stretching the truth to say that they were friends with Oliver, Preacher thought. Especially Hawk, who hadn’t liked the attention that Oliver paid to Chessie Dayton. But Preacher didn’t see any point in going into all that, so he just shrugged.

  Merton went on, “I’m going to assume that this trouble between you and my men is just a misunderstanding and let it go at that. Is that agreeable to you?”

  “There ain’t no misunderstandin’,” Preacher said. “Ryker and me don’t like each other, and the feelin’ goes back a ways. But I’m willin’ to let it go, like you say. Whatever you’ve got in mind, though, I ain’t sure it’s a good idea for you to hire a skunk like Ryker.”

  “That’s none of your business,” Edgar Merton said. “But as it happens, Mr. Ryker and his friends were highly recommended to me. They’re going to serve as guides and hunters on an expedition I’m leading to the Rocky Mountains.”