Today, that seemed to be true in these badlands.
He mounted up and rode back to where the twin spires towered over the prairie’s edge. From here he could see the wagons approaching, less than half a mile distant now.
But no more than two miles behind them, the thick dust cloud that marked the war party’s location rose toward the cloudless sky. They couldn’t have cut it much closer than this, Preacher thought. As it was, they would barely have time to prepare before the Sioux arrived.
He rode out and waved the expedition on between the spires. As the wagons rolled past, he saw that both Edgar and Oliver Merton looked pale and frightened now. They had seen the dust and realized that Preacher was right about the deadly danger on their trail. In the supply wagon with the wounded Pidge, Chessie Dayton looked scared, too. Preacher gave her an encouraging nod but didn’t know if it did any good.
Hoyt Ryker rode up and reined in. With obvious reluctance, he said to Preacher, “You were right. That’s a big bunch, and they’re after us.”
“That ain’t all,” Preacher said. “Some renegade Injuns are sort of squattin’ in these badlands, and they ain’t happy about us bargin’ in on ’em.”
Ryker cursed bitterly at that news. “More Indians? What are we going to do?”
“Only thing we can do. Keep an eye out for them while we’re fightin’ off the Sioux.” Quickly, Preacher explained the layout of the canyon. He didn’t like or trust Ryker, but for the moment they were allies against overwhelming odds and had to rely on each other. “Put men with rifles up on those ledges just inside the canyon. Since Pidge is hurt, he’ll be a good one to keep watch for those crazy Injuns. Give him a couple of pistols and plenty of powder and shot.”
Ryker nodded in understanding. “You want the rest of us to put up a fight and draw the Sioux through the gap after us?” he asked, showing that he had a quick grasp of the tactics Preacher had in mind.
“Yep. We’re gonna pin ’em down in there and whip ’em bad enough that after a while they’ll be happy to head back south and leave us alone.”
“Might work,” Ryker said. He turned his horse to see about setting up the defense.
Hawk came trotting up on foot, carrying a rifle. He had two powder horns and two shot pouches slung over his shoulder. One of Ryker’s men, equipped in the same way, was with him. This man was reed thin, with a lantern jaw and a thatch of dark hair under his hat.
“This is Simon Bishop,” Hawk introduced his companion. “He has volunteered to climb up onto the other spire.”
Preacher nodded and said, “Appreciate that, Bishop. Be careful. It’ll be a long fall if you slip.”
“’Tain’t likely I’ll slip,” Bishop drawled. “I grew up in the Appalachians, so I been climbin’ rocks as far back as I can remember.”
Preacher had to grin at that. He wished Hawk and Bishop luck, added, “Stay out of sight up there until the war party’s gone on past.” Then he turned and rode quickly to the canyon to see how things were going there.
The wagons were inside the canyon. Preacher pointed and told the drivers to line them up across the opening so they would form a barricade. “Get the teams unhitched and move them back,” he ordered briskly. No one objected that he had taken command in this situation, not even Hoyt Ryker. The threat was too great for any pettiness now.
Pidge was sitting on a rock with a couple of pistols beside him. He still looked pale and shaky, but his eyes were clear and alert as he said to Preacher, “Hoyt told me to keep an eye out for some other redskins who might be in here.”
“That’s right,” Preacher said. “And these redskins are as red as they can be. You’ll know ’em if you see ’em, that’s for sure.”
“Are they . . . monsters?”
“No, they’re human,” Preacher assured the big man. “They’ll bleed like anybody else if you shoot ’em.”
“Well, that’s good, then.” Pidge nodded. “I’ll watch for them.”
Preacher clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Good man. Where’s Chessie?”
“I dunno. Mr. Oliver Merton came and got her a few minutes ago.”
Preacher went to look for them and found them at the covered wagon. Oliver and his father were checking their guns. They looked terrified, but they were holding their fear in check, at least for the moment. Chessie was inside the wagon, peering out from the opening at the front of the canvas cover.
“You stay low in there, miss,” Preacher told her. “You have a gun?”
“Yes, Oliver gave me a pistol,” she said.
Preacher started to tell her to save the last ball for herself, but then decided not to. She already knew that.
“You two stay close to the wagon and defend Miss Dayton,” he said to the Mertons.
Edgar Merton said, “We’re all going to die in this godforsaken place, aren’t we?”
“We’ve got a good chance of makin’ it out of here,” Preacher said. “If you have to shoot, make every shot count.” He turned to Hoyt Ryker and went on, “Send another man to help Pidge watch our backs. The rest of us are gonna head for the other end of that gap to be the first line of defense.”
“You sound like a military man, Preacher,” Oliver said.
The mountain man shook his head. “Nope. The only army I’ve ever been part of was the one Andy Jackson gathered up to fight the British down in New Orleans, way back a long time ago. But it seems like I’ve been fightin’ my whole life, one way or another.”
“If we do have a chance, it’s because of you.”
Ryker glared at Oliver’s words of praise. Preacher saw that but ignored it. He motioned with his head toward the gap and said, “Come on.”
Nine men moved into the gap on foot: Preacher, Ryker, and seven of Ryker’s companions. It was a pitifully small force to take on a hundred or more angry Sioux. Preacher knew that. Everything would have to break just right for any of them to survive . . .
At the far end of the gap, he dispersed his forces behind rocks near the opening and told them, “Open fire whenever the Sioux are in rifle range. It’s more important that we lead ’em into this trap, but every one you kill startin’ out makes the odds against us better. When I give the word, we’ll pull back through the gap and head for the canyon. Ryker, I’ll need a couple of men to climb up on those ledges just inside the canyon mouth. You got two more men who can climb?”
Ryker looked around and said, “Plemmons, how about you and Watson?”
The two men nodded their agreement.
“I guess everybody knows what they need to do, then,” Preacher said, then added as he glanced between the spires, “and not a minute too soon, because here they come!”
CHAPTER 16
The members of the Sioux war party had begun to be distinguishable as individual figures at the base of the dust cloud their horses kicked up. They couldn’t have been galloping those ponies full speed the entire time they’d been chasing the wagons, or else the poor animals would have collapsed by now. But they had been pushing their mounts pretty fast, Preacher knew.
Now the warriors began to slow as they approached the edge of the badlands. They had to know that was where their quarry had gone, and they weren’t just about to give up the hunt for vengeance.
But a wariness seemed to seize them now, and Preacher couldn’t have that. He nestled the rifle’s butt against his shoulder, rested his cheek against the smooth wood of its stock, and drew a bead on one of the riders in the lead, a warrior with a big feathered headdress.
Preacher squeezed the trigger.
The rifle boomed and kicked against his shoulder. Through the gush of powder smoke, he saw the rider throw his arms in the air and fall off his pony. Preacher heard the shrill whoops of rage that greeted the results of his shot and saw the war party surge forward again.
Ryker and the other men followed Preacher’s example. A ragged volley of shots rang out. The war party was big enough that it was difficult to miss. As Preacher was reloading, he saw s
everal more men fall. A couple of Indian ponies went down, too, causing others to stumble and fall, and in seconds there was a wild pileup that blunted the attack and caused it to falter.
The delay was brief, however. The Sioux regrouped in a matter of seconds and charged again. The new casualties left them even more maddened with hate and rage than they had been. Preacher and the other defenders had reloaded by now, and another hail of lead scythed into the war party’s front ranks.
Preacher knew they couldn’t manage more than another volley or two, so he called to Plemmons and Watson, the two men who were going to climb to the ledges just inside the canyon mouth, and told them to fall back and get to those posts. The men took off at a run through the shadowy gap.
“Let’s slow ’em down again!” Preacher called to his companions.
More shots blasted, more Indians fell. Preacher saw puffs of smoke coming from scattered places along the line of charging Sioux and knew some of them had rifles, just as he expected. Most of the firearms were probably old trade muskets that were wildly inaccurate, but a stray bullet could kill a man just as dead as a perfectly aimed one.
“Fall back!” he ordered. “Get to the canyon and fort up behind the wagons!”
Preacher glanced up at the spires. He didn’t see any sign of Hawk or Simon Bishop on the stone pillars, but that was good. If he couldn’t spot them, the Sioux couldn’t, either.
He finished reloading as the other men peeled away from the rocks where they had taken cover and raced between the looming walls of the gap. He had just lined his sights on the war party and taken another shot when he heard a matching report from a nearby rifle. A glance to his left revealed that Hoyt Ryker was still there, kneeling behind a boulder.
“Ryker, I said pull back!”
“Not until you do!” Ryker responded as he started to reload. “I’m damned if I’ll let you be the last one to retreat and grab all the glory!”
“A damned fool, that’s what you are!” Preacher reached for his powder horn. The Sioux were almost on top of them. He didn’t know if he had time to reload for one more shot.
“I’ll go when you do!” Ryker shouted over the rumble of charging hoofbeats.
Preacher let his powder horn drop on its strap and grabbed a pistol from behind his belt instead. The Indians were within range of the pistol now. He pointed it at the war party and fired, then yelled, “Let’s get outta here!”
He turned and dashed toward the gap. Arrows flew around his head. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ryker pounding alongside him. They raced into the gloom of the tunnel-like passage. Their swift footsteps echoed from the walls. Arrows whipped through the air around them.
When they reached the far end, Preacher glanced over his shoulder and saw that the first members of the Sioux war party had entered the passage’s far end. The charge had narrowed down so that they were riding four or five abreast. All of the Indians would fit in the gap.
And once they were in there, Preacher didn’t intend to let them out again, at least for a while.
As he and Ryker emerged into the bowl and legged it toward the canyon mouth, he saw the other men scrambling behind the wagons and getting ready to fight again. He looked up toward the ledges on each side of the opening, where Plemmons and Watson were pulling themselves into place. They needed to hurry. It wouldn’t be long before those fighting-mad Sioux came boiling out into the open.
Ryker was huffing and blowing by the time they reached the wagons. Preacher wasn’t out of breath, but his heart was beating pretty fast. Ryker ducked through the narrow gap between the two supply wagons and Preacher followed him. The other men had arranged themselves behind the wagons as Preacher had ordered, and they had their rifles aimed at the gap.
Preacher heard a whoop and looked around to see several Sioux warriors breaking out into the open. A shot blasted from somewhere above the mountain man’s head. One of the Indians went over backward.
“Open fire!” Preacher shouted to the men behind the wagons. “Pour some lead in there!”
A wave of gunfire slammed out. The echoes bounced around the high walls of the bowl and combined into a thunderous roar that shook the very earth beneath Preacher’s feet. Sioux warriors and ponies went down in a welter of flesh and began to pile up in front of the opening. The Indians had the advantage of numbers, however, and as more of them emerged from the opening, they leaped their ponies over and around the chaos and continued the attack.
Preacher fired and knocked one of the Sioux off his pony. While he was reloading, the mountain man glanced to his left and right and saw that the defenders seemed calm as they went about their business, which was good. Keeping a cool head in battle greatly increased a man’s chances of coming out alive.
Even Edgar and Oliver Merton were putting up a good fight. Edgar stood at the back of the covered wagon while Oliver had posted himself at the front. They reloaded somewhat clumsily between shots, but they didn’t appear to be getting flustered.
Preacher hoped Chessie was hunkered down low in the wagon bed, with as many trunks and crates piled around her as she could get. If circumstances had been different, Preacher would have sent her to hide in the rocks somewhere deeper in the canyon, probably with Pidge to watch over her. But with the threat of those grotesque outcasts looming back there, he had decided she might be safer here.
When you came right down to it, nobody in this canyon today was really safe, on either side, wherever they were. They all had to take their chances . . .
Plemmons and Watson were doing a good job of choosing their targets, picking off the attackers who made it too close to the wagons. But they could load and fire only so fast, and it was inevitable that one of the Sioux would get through.
That happened a moment later. One of the warriors drove his pony into the canyon mouth, so close to the wagons that he was able to leap from the animal’s back, clear with a bound the wagon tongue that blocked his path, and slash at the nearest defender with a tomahawk.
Preacher was behind the Indian. He yanked the pistol that was still loaded from behind his belt and fired at close range. The ball struck the Sioux in the back of the head and blew his skull apart in a grisly spray of blood, brain matter, and bone shards. His lifeless body flopped forward.
A shout made Preacher turn back in the other direction. He saw that another warrior had breached the barrier formed by the wagons. This man was struggling with Edgar Merton. He had a knife in his upraised hand and had been about to strike Merton with it when the easterner caught hold of the Sioux’s wrist with both hands. Merton was hanging on for dear life while the warrior pummeled him with his other hand. Preacher knew Merton wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer, and all it would take was one slip for the Indian to plunge the blade into his body.
Oliver was closer and came to his father’s aid before Preacher could. He lunged in and reached over Merton’s shoulder to ram the brass butt plate of his rifle into the Sioux’s face. The Indian fell back, tripped, and sprawled on the ground as Edgar Merton let go of him. While the warrior was still stunned, Oliver slammed the rifle butt into his face three more times with all the strength he could muster. Each time he struck, Oliver yelled in incoherent anger, so caught up in the heat of battle he might not even have realized what he was doing.
The Indian’s shattered, bloody face didn’t much resemble anything human by the time Oliver came to himself and stepped back with the rifle hanging loosely in his hands. The butt was smeared with gore. Oliver looked at it in distaste and tried to wipe it off on the ground.
While he was doing that, another Sioux leaped to the driver’s box on the wagon and aimed an arrow at Oliver’s back.
Preacher’s rifle came up smoothly and boomed. The Indian flew backward off the wagon before he could loose the shaft.
Inside the wagon, Chessie screamed. That sound cut through Oliver’s half stupor. Another Sioux was trying to clamber over the tailgate into the wagon. Oliver dropped the rifle, grabbed the man, and
flung him to the ground. The Sioux was able to pull Oliver down with him, and an instant later they were rolling around, locked in a desperate struggle.
Preacher didn’t have time to go to Oliver’s aid or even to watch and see how the fight turned out. Another Sioux had reached the wagons and managed to get between them. This one had an old musket and was lining it up on Preacher when the mountain man spotted him from the corner of his eye. Preacher dived to the ground as the weapon boomed. The ball hummed over his head. He rolled and came up with his tomahawk in hand. The flint head flashed out and buried itself between the warrior’s eyes as Preacher struck. The blow was so powerful it almost cleaved the man’s head in two. He dropped bonelessly to the ground as Preacher wrenched the tomahawk free.
Shrill cries came from the Indians and cut through the continuing din of gunfire. Preacher whipped around and saw that the Sioux had had enough, at least for now. They whipped their ponies as they retreated toward the gap. Two more of them fell as the defenders behind the wagons kept firing until the last of the warriors disappeared into the shadowy passage.
More than likely, they intended to ride on through the gap and regroup outside to plan another attack on the expedition. A grim smile tugged at Preacher’s lips as he heard rifle shots crack in the distance. That would be Hawk and Simon Bishop picking off the first of the Sioux to emerge from the gap. The shots were followed by confused, angry cries. Preacher couldn’t see the surviving members of the war party milling around in there, but he could imagine it easily enough. The Sioux had no way of knowing how many rifles were waiting for them on the other side. If they rode out blindly, they might all be slaughtered. In time they would probably figure it out, but for now they would be cautious.
That was exactly the way Preacher wanted them.
He walked over to the covered wagon, where Edgar and Oliver Merton leaned against the sideboards and breathed heavily. Both men were pale and drawn. Preacher asked, “Either of you fellas hurt?”
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