Preacher's Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  Given that, it was time to go on the offensive again. He let out a yell of his own and charged straight at several of the outcasts who were closing in on him. They flinched in surprise, and before they could stop him, he was among them.

  One man tried to thrust a lance at him, but Preacher knocked it aside with the tomahawk, and his knife drove in and out of the man’s chest with blinding speed. He swung the knife around and slashed it across another man’s face, laying it open to the bone and almost severing his jaw. The man’s shriek of agony was a bubbling horror. Preacher ducked under a swung tomahawk and brought his knife up under the man’s chin, angling the blade up into his brain. With his broad shoulders, Preacher bulled between two more men and thrust his knife into the back of one of them before ripping the knife free.

  He found himself in the open again, and that gave him a chance to look across the camp and see that Hawk had cut the bonds holding Chessie and Oliver. Both of them were on their feet, running away, while Hawk and Dog held off a group of the outcast women who tried to pursue the escaping prisoners.

  One of the creatures leaped at Preacher’s back and wrapped arms and legs around the mountain man. The impact made Preacher stumble forward a couple of steps. The outcast let go with one hand and clawed at Preacher’s face. Preacher felt the sting of its teeth on his neck. Feeling the same sort of primitive horror he would have felt if a rabid animal was trying to bite him, Preacher raised his knife and stabbed behind him, hoping to catch the outcast in the face with the blade. The creature let go of him and fell back, and when Preacher glanced over his shoulder he saw the outcast pawing at a ruined right eyeball that dangled from its socket, scooped out by the knife’s tip.

  Preacher threw one more look toward the far side of the camp and didn’t see Hawk, Dog, Oliver, or Chessie. He hoped that meant all of them had gotten away successfully and were even now fleeing through the night, away from this hellish den of subhuman fiends.

  Then the outcasts closed in around Preacher again, forcing him to pay attention to them as they tried to kill him.

  As he had indicated to Hawk, he’d had every intention of surviving this rescue attempt. He had believed that he could hold the outcasts at bay long enough for Hawk to free the captives and get away from the camp, and once that was accomplished, Preacher would fight his way free.

  He was beginning to see that maybe he had underestimated the number of enemies he would be facing. All the outcasts who had been standing guard around the camp had been drawn in by the commotion, and with them added to the warriors who were already there, the odds against the mountain man were simply overwhelming. Preacher had gotten himself out of plenty of dangerous situations in the past, but this spot might just be too tight.

  That didn’t mean he would stop fighting, or that he regretted his actions. If he wound up trading his life for those of Chessie and Oliver, then so be it. He’d had to try to save them. Even though he bore no responsibility for any of this, Preacher had long since learned that he couldn’t turn his back on folks in trouble. The Good Lord had made him that way, and who was he to argue with the Lord?

  That was the last thought that went through his brain before something smashed into his head and sent him spiraling down into a darkness from which there was no escape.

  * * *

  That was what Preacher had figured, anyway, in that last fleeting instant of consciousness, but as it turned out, the black void that claimed him wasn’t the endless oblivion of death after all. A tiny light flickered far in the distance and ever so gradually grew larger until it struck against Preacher’s consciousness like a physical force. Pain surged up inside him and was most welcome, because it told him he was still alive.

  His eyes were closed, but he could see the light anyway and he felt heat beating at his face. His eyelids slitted the tiniest bit but he didn’t see anything except a fierce orange glare. Thunder boomed and pealed inside his skull, but it was just the sound of his pulse, he realized. He was upright somehow, his head hanging forward loosely. He forced his eyes open more and finally figured out that he was looking at the fire in the outcasts’ camp. He was tied to something behind him, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

  He was the prisoner now of these horrible creatures.

  Dreadful screeches went up from somewhere nearby. He must have moved his head just enough to demonstrate that he had regained consciousness, and some of the outcasts had noticed it. They wouldn’t have wanted to carry out any of their bizarre, barbaric practices on him while he was passed out. That wouldn’t have been good sport at all. But now that he was awake, he was fair game again, he supposed.

  Before this night was over, he might be wishing that they had killed him earlier.

  But while breath remained in his body, hope lingered, too. Several of the naked, crimson-daubed figures began to caper around in front of him, showing that they held him in contempt . . . at least as long as he was tied up. If he had been free, likely it would have been a different story. Preacher ignored them and concentrated instead on figuring out as much as he could about his situation. He had to know what was going on if he was going to have any chance of getting out of this.

  He paid no attention to the pain throbbing inside his head, either. He had been hurt plenty of times in his life and knew he wasn’t going to die from this injury. It was an annoyance more than anything else.

  He moved his head and felt the rough surface behind it. His arms were pulled back around something thicker than a tree trunk—not that there were any trees in this wasteland other than some stunted, gnarled ones—and his wrists were tied together. The backs of his hands rubbed against stone. The outcasts had tied him to a rock. His ankles were bound, too, by what felt like a strip of rawhide.

  Given enough time, he might be able to scrape those bonds over the rough surface enough to wear through them, but that would take hours, if not days, and he doubted if the outcasts would let him live that long. He had ruined their plan to bring all four captives together and make them watch as one by one they met grisly fates, so Preacher figured these twisted creatures would go ahead and take out their anger on him for that.

  Since they already knew he was awake and more and more of them were gathering around him, he lifted his head and gave them a defiant glare, then looked around the camp. The only thing he was worried about was discovering that he wasn’t the only captive, so he was greatly relieved when he didn’t see Hawk, Dog, Oliver, or Chessie anywhere in the outcasts’ village.

  At least they had gotten away. Preacher had known he could count on Hawk.

  The crowd of hopping, jabbering renegades that had gathered in front of Preacher suddenly fell silent and parted ranks. One of the crimson warriors strode through the opening toward the mountain man. This newcomer was taller and somewhat straighter than the others in body, but his face held the same brutal bestiality. The outcasts came from many different tribes, so it was difficult to determine which band one of them had belonged to originally. Something about the look of this man made Preacher believe he was a Cheyenne, though.

  That was confirmed when he spoke. Preacher understood the Cheyenne tongue as well as he did those of all the other tribes, and he recognized it immediately when the man began talking, although being around the outcasts had garbled the language somewhat and given it a strange accent.

  “You are man called Preacher,” the man said in a guttural voice. “I see you one time many moons ago. You kill many of my people.”

  “I kill anybody who needs killin’,” Preacher replied. “Red, white, it don’t matter none to me.”

  “You kill many of... my people,” the leader of the outcasts, for that was what he appeared to be, repeated as he gestured to indicate the creatures gathered around him. That went along with what Preacher had heard in the past, that the outcasts considered themselves their own tribe now, regardless of their origins. “Now my people . . . kill you.”

  “You’re welcome to try, old son,” the mountain man replied. Hi
s voice was calm, without even a trace of bravado. “If you really want to be sportin’ about it, though, you’ll untie me and give me a knife or a tomahawk. You could bet on how many more of you I’d kill before you finally put me down.”

  The outcast stepped forward and hit Preacher across the face. Although he wasn’t as tall or heavy as Preacher, he was powerfully built and the openhanded blow rocked Preacher’s head to the side. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  “You never hurt any of my people again,” the man said. “We cut you apart, little bit at a time. Toes first, then fingers. Burn the cut-off place so they not bleed.” A hideous smile curved the outcast’s lips. “You live long time, Preacher. You hurt long time.”

  “Do your worst, you crazy son of a bitch.” Preacher said the last part of that in English, since there wasn’t really a Cheyenne equivalent.

  The head man turned away and waved his arms as the crowd pressed in behind him. He yelled something Preacher couldn’t make out. The words sounded like nonsense to him. The other outcasts understood it, though. They scattered, scurrying away. The leader looked back at Preacher and sneered one more time, then walked toward the fire and circled it to go to one of the huts.

  They were going to let him stew in his own juices for awhile, Preacher thought. They might even wait until morning to get started on their torture.

  Many years earlier, the Blackfeet had tried something similar. The mountain man’s mortal enemies had captured him and tied him to a stake. When dawn came, they intended to heap wood around his feet and set it on fire, burning him alive.

  Preacher had had something to say about that, however. In fact, he’d had a lot to say. Remembering a street preacher he had seen in St. Louis before he ever came west the first time, he began to spew words, “preaching” nonstop to the Indians for hour after hour. They feared harming a crazy man, since they believed that such individuals were protected by the spirits, so in the end they had let him go. That was how he had gotten the name Preacher, and it had stuck with him ever since.

  In this case, such a tactic wouldn’t help him. The outcasts wouldn’t be leery of hurting him if he pretended to be insane. They were so warped that if he tried it, they would just enjoy torturing him to death that much more.

  Taunting them into letting him fight for his life might be the best way of insuring a quick death. But if there was the slimmest chance of turning the tables on them and getting away, he wanted to take it. The outcasts’ leader might be too cunning for him to pull that off, though.

  For now he tested the strength of the bonds that held his wrists and ankles. He had to be discreet about it, because two outcasts stood fifteen feet away, holding lances and watching him with utter hatred on their faces. They looked like they would be happy to ram those weapons into him if he gave them the slightest excuse.

  Whoever had tied him up had done a good job of it. The rawhide was tight and had no give to it. Preacher knew he couldn’t scrape through it in time to save himself from the agonizing, ignominious end the outcasts had planned for him. He wondered, however, if he could scrape his wrists enough to make them bleed. The moisture might make the rawhide stretch enough for him to twist out of it. That would take hours, too, but not as long as the other way.

  He began rasping his wrists against the rock to which he was tied, but since he could barely move his hands, it didn’t take him long to realize that he had set himself an impossible task. Preacher wasn’t the sort of man to despair, but if he had been, a feeling of hopelessness might have been creeping into him right about now.

  The fire died down, and the outcasts didn’t feed more wood into the flames to build it up again. Probably their supply was limited. There was no real threat in these badlands that needed to be kept at bay by a big fire, so Preacher figured by morning it would be burned down to embers. Many of the outcasts were lying down on the bare ground and going to sleep, but he knew some of them would be standing guard over him for the rest of the night. They didn’t want to take a chance on being cheated out of their fun.

  He let his head hang forward again, not out of any sense of giving up but rather from sheer exhaustion. The pain inside his skull had subsided to a dull ache, and it no longer sounded like someone was hammering on a drum in there every time his heart beat.

  A howl made him open his eyes and lift his head. He looked up, toward one of the jagged cliffs that surrounded the camp. That seemed to be where the sound came from. A hint of movement caught his eye. Preacher’s muscles stiffened as he saw an animal of some sort up there. The creature sat down, tipped its head back, and howled again. None of the outcasts paid any attention to it. They acted like it wasn’t uncommon to hear wolves in this wasteland.

  But that was no wolf, Preacher thought. That was Dog. He had recognized the big cur’s howl as soon as he heard it. Now, as he watched, Dog stood up, whirled away, and disappeared from the top of the rock.

  He would be back, though. Preacher was confident of that. And there was a good chance Dog wouldn’t be alone . . .

  CHAPTER 24

  Preacher didn’t know whether to cuss or feel relieved. He had told Hawk to take Chessie and Oliver and get out of the badlands as fast as they could. He supposed it was barely possible that Dog had come back to the outcasts’ camp on his own, but in his gut, Preacher didn’t believe that at all.

  Hawk was somewhere nearby, waiting for an opportunity to rescue him, and there was a good chance Chessie and Oliver were with him.

  During their war against the Blackfeet, Preacher had seen plenty of evidence of how stealthy and dangerous Hawk could be. And Hawk had heard all those stories about how his father had slipped into Blackfoot camps and slit throats without being discovered. The youngster probably had something similar in mind tonight, Preacher thought.

  But the outcasts were even more crazed and deadly than the Blackfeet. If Hawk were to be captured, he and Preacher were probably doomed, and that meant Chessie and Oliver were doomed as well, because the two of them would never be able to make it out of the badlands on their own.

  So everything was up to Hawk now. Preacher pretended to be asleep, because he wanted the outcasts to think he was no longer a threat of any kind. That way more of them would doze off, and the ones who remained awake might not be as alert.

  The way Preacher’s head drooped forward, his thick, dark hair hung down and partially concealed his eyes. He was able to leave them open slightly, just enough for him to see the two men with lances, who were watching him. They leaned on their weapons, and he could tell that lassitude was stealing over them. They were still awake, but they weren’t as focused on him as they had been at first.

  It took every bit of his self-control not to react at all when he felt something tug at the rawhide strips binding his wrists. The movement was faint but persistent. Someone was using a knife to cut through those bonds. Had to be Hawk, he thought.

  The boy was going to turn him loose so they could fight side by side. That wasn’t a bad idea. Preacher’s hands were a little numb from being tied so tightly. He began to flex his fingers in an attempt to get more feeling back into them. The rawhide around his wrists would still be just as tight, because Hawk was cutting the strip that ran between them, but at least his arms would be free. He would force his hands to work if it meant getting hold of a weapon again.

  The rawhide parted. Preacher’s arms sagged slightly, but not enough for his guards to notice. He kept them pulled back so the creatures wouldn’t realize what had just happened. A moment later he felt the same sort of tugging on the rawhide around his ankles and knew Hawk was cutting through those bonds as well.

  Then he got a shock. Something moved behind the two guards. A dark shape rose, seemingly out of the ground itself, and hands suddenly shot out and gripped their necks. A dull thud sounded as their skulls clunked together. The guards dropped their lances, which clattered against the ground and made enough noise to cause Preacher to wince. The guards slumped down, unconscious, and they would never
come to because the shadowy figure bent over them had slashed their throats with two swift moves.

  Hawk. Preacher recognized his son now. But if Hawk had just killed the two guards, who was setting him free?

  The bonds holding his legs to the rock came loose, and a second later a familiar voice whispered, “Here,” as the handle of the knife that had accomplished that task was pressed into the mountain man’s hand. The voice belonged to Chessie Dayton, even though Preacher had a hard time believing the girl was capable of pulling off such a dangerous job.

  He didn’t doubt the evidence of his own ears, though—or the welcome feel of the knife’s bone handle in his fist.

  Hawk faded back into the shadows, which made Preacher believe the young warrior’s plan was just starting. He stayed where he was, pretending to still be tied to the rock, just in case any of the other outcasts woke up enough to glance toward him. The two men Hawk had killed looked like they were sleeping, and the faint noises of their deaths didn’t seem to have aroused any of the others.

  Minutes crept past with maddening slowness. Preacher didn’t know if Chessie was still there behind the rock to which he was tied or if she had slipped away. Nor did he know where Hawk and Oliver were or what they were doing.

  Then he heard an unmistakable sound he had heard hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times in the past: the fluttering whisper of an arrow flying through the air. It was followed instantly by a soft thud. Preacher looked in that direction and by the fading light of the fire saw a shaft sticking up from the back of a sleeping outcast.

  The man wasn’t sleeping anymore, however. Preacher could tell from the arrow’s location that it had pierced the creature’s heart, killing him in his sleep.

  Another arrow flew and a second outcast died without ever knowing what had hit him. What Hawk was doing would be discovered eventually, but clearly he intended to cut down the odds as much as possible before that happened. A grim smile tugged at the mountain man’s mouth as he watched four more of the outcasts meet their fate. Hawk’s aim was lethal.