Oliver chuckled and said, “Chessie, I do believe that you’re blushing.”
“She is covered in red dust,” Hawk said with a solemn frown. “How can you tell?”
Preacher thought that he was going to have to have a talk with the boy about taking everything so literally. But before he could say anything, he spotted a reflection from the rising sun on something in the distant hills.
“Look yonder,” he said, pointing it out to the others. “That’ll be where the rest of the bunch is waitin’ with the wagons.”
“Thank goodness,” Oliver said. “We shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.”
That simple thing, the sun glinting on metal, seemed to boost not only their spirits but their strength. Their strides had renewed energy as they walked toward the hills.
The trek seemed to take longer than it should have, but Preacher knew that was because they were all worn out. Also, in this clear air, things usually appeared closer than they really were.
The day grew warmer as the sun rose higher in the sky. Finally, the wooded, rocky slopes were close. Preacher happened to be looking up at the area where he had spotted the sun glinting on something earlier when he saw a puff of gray smoke shoot out from the trees.
“Down!” he ordered.
He flung himself forward. At the same time, Hawk leaped at Oliver and Chessie, spreading his arms to grab both of them and pull them to the ground with him. As Preacher landed on his belly, he heard the distant report of a shot and the hum of a rifle ball passing close by. The sound wasn’t followed by the thud of lead striking flesh and bone, so he knew the shot had missed.
That didn’t mean it would be the last shot, though. Where there was one ambusher, there was usually at least one more.
“Hawk!” Preacher said. “Give ’em somethin’ to think about!”
From his prone position, the young man was already drawing a bead with his rifle. “I saw the powder smoke,” he told Preacher just before he squeezed the trigger. The long-barreled flintlock boomed.
“Oliver, Chessie, you two stay down and crawl backward,” Preacher called to them. “Maybe you can get out of range.”
“All right, Preacher, we understand,” Oliver replied. He sounded a little shaken, but he had already demonstrated his ability to stay coolheaded under fire, so Preacher hoped he would continue like that.
With Oliver and Chessie backing off, the mountain man powered to his feet and sprinted to the left, figuring he would draw the ambushers’ fire. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Hawk was on his feet and heading right.
Another shot blasted from the hillside. Dirt kicked up a few feet to Preacher’s right. He dodged in that direction, then instantly back left, and the feint worked. A second shot ripped past his right ear.
Then there was a lull as Preacher continued running toward the base of the hill. Two men up there, he thought, based on the timing of the shots.
Instinct made him veer again. This time the ball plowed up ground to his left.
Another lunge carried him into the brush at the bottom of the slope. He dived low and kept his head down as he crawled through the growth. A rifle ball whipped through the brush and cut off some branches, but it didn’t come close to him.
So far all the ambushers’ shots seemed to have been aimed at Preacher, which made him hope that he was the main target and the hidden riflemen wouldn’t make a try for Oliver and Chessie. The brush was thick enough that he couldn’t see Hawk anymore, but he had a hunch the men would gun the young warrior down if they got a chance.
Preacher could think of only one person in this neck of the woods with any reason to want him dead: Hoyt Ryker. Ryker could have posted men here to ambush them if they showed up, while taking Edgar Merton and the rest of the expedition deeper into the hills. Preacher wouldn’t put something underhanded like that past Ryker. Not for a second.
The guns had fallen silent except for an occasional shot that rattled harmlessly through the brush. The ambushers were firing blindly now. They were probably getting nervous, too, since they couldn’t see Preacher and didn’t know whether they had hit him. For all they knew, he could be creeping up the hill toward them right now . . .
Which was just what he started to do.
Nobody was better than Preacher at moving through undergrowth without making a sound or giving his presence away in some other fashion. He couldn’t rush, but he didn’t waste any time, either, since he was all too aware that Oliver and Chessie were out there in the open. He hoped they had been able to pull back far enough that the rifles could no longer reach them.
A faint noise from his left made him look in that direction. A gray muzzle poked through a gap in the branches. Dog whined.
Preacher was glad the big cur was all right. He knew Dog was eager to get in on the action. With a grin, he said in a low voice, “Dog, hunt!”
Dog moved through the brush as silently as Preacher himself, a gray ghost gliding through the shadows. Preacher resumed his stealthy advance toward the top of the hill.
The shooting stopped completely, which made Preacher think maybe the ambushers had given up and decided to retreat while they still could. He hoped that wasn’t the case. He wanted some answers, and grabbing at least one of the riflemen would be the best way to get them.
Preacher had lost sight of Dog, but he wasn’t surprised when a startled yell suddenly erupted above him on the hill, followed by a snarl and a burst of cursing. The ambushers hadn’t gone anywhere after all, and clearly Dog had hold of one of them.
Preacher leaped to his feet and bulled through the brush, no longer caring whether he made any noise. He almost paid for that when a pistol went off practically in his face. The roar clapped against his ears like giant fists, and he felt the sting of burning bits of powder against his face.
The next instant, he rammed his shoulder into the man who had fired the pistol and bowled him over. The gun went flying, but the man grabbed hold of Preacher’s leg and gave it a desperate heave. The mountain man tried to keep his balance, but he went down, too. The man yanked a knife from his belt and thrust it at Preacher’s face.
Preacher knocked the blade aside with the tomahawk and would have smacked the man on the head with the backswing if the ambusher hadn’t writhed around and buried a knee in Preacher’s belly. The blow drove the air out of his lungs and doubled him over for a second.
That was long enough for his opponent to grab the wrist of the hand holding the tomahawk, roll on top, and clamp his other hand around Preacher’s neck.
The ambusher was big and strong. Preacher looked up at him and saw the sunlight that came through the trees casting a dappled pattern over a rugged face. Preacher recognized him as one of Hoyt Ryker’s men, just as he’d suspected. He couldn’t recall the man’s name, but it didn’t matter. The varmint was doing his dead-level best to choke the life out of him.
With the man’s weight pinning him down, Preacher couldn’t reach the knife stuck behind his belt. But he was able to ball his left hand into a fist and launch a short, sharp punch that drove solidly into his opponent’s jaw. That knocked the man to the side. Preacher bucked up from the ground and threw him off. The man rolled, came up on his knees, and then tried to scramble upright and flee rather than continuing the battle. Preacher tackled him around the knees from behind.
This time when the man fell, his head thudded against the trunk of a fallen tree. He went limp, and for a second Preacher though the ambusher had managed to bust open his skull and kill himself. Then he saw the man’s back rising and falling. The fella didn’t seem on the verge of regaining consciousness anytime soon, though.
Preacher stood up and listened. Dog’s snarling and growling had gone silent. “Dog, where are you?” Preacher called. A quiet little bark answered him.
Preacher pushed through the brush and found Dog sitting beside the body of another man. This one’s throat was a bloody ruin. He wouldn’t be answering questions or doing anything else ever again, except
providing a meal for scavengers.
“Preacher?”
That was Hawk’s voice. Preacher turned and went back to the man who’d been knocked out. Hawk stood over him, holding a loaded pistol ready.
“Are there any more of them?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t think so. Didn’t sound to me like more than two rifles goin’ off.”
“The other one?”
“Dead.”
“But this one lives. I assume you want to find out why he and his friend tried to kill us.”
“I reckon I know why,” Preacher said, his voice flat and grim. “Because Hoyt Ryker told ’em to.”
CHAPTER 27
Preacher sent Hawk to check on Oliver and Chessie. While the young man was doing that, Preacher rolled the unconscious ambusher onto his back and then sat down on the log to wait for the man to regain consciousness.
It didn’t take long for Preacher to grow impatient. He started prodding the prisoner’s shoulder with the toe of his boot. After a few of those none-too-gentle nudges, the man groaned a little and moved his head from side to side. Preacher would have dumped a bucket of water in the man’s face if he’d had one, but failing that, he continued the prodding until the ambusher rolled onto his side and started cursing bitterly. The man abruptly fell silent when he lifted his head, opened his eyes, and found the mountain man grinning down at him.
It wasn’t a friendly grin.
“Best not get rambunctious, mister,” Preacher warned. He lifted the tomahawk he held. “Try anything funny and I’ll stove your head in. You know I’ll do it, too.”
The cursing resumed. Preacher let it go on for a moment, then said, “You and me are gonna have a talk.”
“I don’t have a damn thing to say to you,” the man responded. A hate-filled grimace pulled his lips back.
“I reckon you do.”
“Go ahead and kill me!” The man let out a humorless laugh. “I can’t talk then, can I?”
“I don’t plan on killin’ you unless you don’t give me no choice.” Preacher paused. “But I might let my friend here gnaw on you for a while. Dog!”
The big cur stepped forward and snarled. Slobber dripped from his muzzle as he thrust it over the man’s face. The razor-sharp fangs were only inches away.
The ambusher’s bravado vanished. He tried to cringe away from Dog, but his head was right up against the log and he couldn’t move.
“Get that beast away from me!” he cried in a shaky voice.
“So you’re thinkin’ about tellin’ me what I want to know after all?” Preacher said.
“Just . . . just keep him away!”
Dog snarled. He looked like he was ready to rip the man’s face to shreds . . . although he would never do that without an order from Preacher.
“I don’t know if he’s gonna listen to me,” Preacher drawled. “Once a wild animal gets a taste for blood, it’s mighty hard to keep him from goin’ after it again.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” the prisoner wailed.
“Dog!” Preacher said sharply.
Instantly, Dog stopped snarling and stepped back. He was still close enough to attack in the blink of an eye, though, and the tense way he stood, with the hair ruffled up on the back of his neck, revealed just how much he wanted to do exactly that.
“I don’t recall your name, mister,” Preacher went on.
“It’s Hopkins. Thad Hopkins.” The man swallowed hard and couldn’t take his eyes off Dog’s threatening stance.
“Who was your friend?”
“Brill . . . Jim Brill.”
“Ryker left you here, didn’t he?”
Hopkins swallowed again. “Yeah. It was all his idea.”
“To ambush me, if I showed up.”
“That’s right. We were supposed to kill you . . . and the Indian. Your boy.”
“I know who you mean,” Preacher said, his voice cold and hard now. The ambush directed at him didn’t bother him so much; people had been trying to kill him for more years than he could count. But Hopkins and Brill had intended to murder Hawk, as well, and that rubbed Preacher the wrong way. “What about the other two?”
“You mean young Merton and . . . and the girl? We weren’t supposed to hurt them, just grab them and bring them back to Ryker.”
“And where is he now? Deeper in the hills?”
Hopkins hesitated and licked his lips. Preacher had a hunch the man was about to try to lie.
“Dog.”
The one word was enough to make the big cur lean closer to the prisoner and bare his teeth again.
“No, they . . . they were going on,” Hopkins said, in such a hurry to get the words out that they stumbled from his lips. “To where Merton planned to go all along.”
“Where’s that?”
“Some place called . . . the Black Hills.”
Preacher frowned. The Black Hills were still several days’ journey to the north. Folks had started calling them by that name because of how dark they were with their thickly wooded slopes. They weren’t actually black but more of a dark green. Preacher knew them better, though, as Pahá Sápa, a region held sacred by the Sioux. They believed the hills were the center of the universe and the spirits that guided their lives dwelled there, and no outsiders were ever permitted to set foot in them.
Edgar Merton’s expedition had already clashed with the Sioux. Trespassing in the Black Hills would put a gigantic target on them and have every warrior for five hundred miles eager to lift their scalps.
“What the hell is in the Black Hills that Merton’s after?” Preacher asked.
Hopkins shook his head. “I dunno, Preacher. I swear. Now, how about gettin’ this beast away from me?”
“One more thing,” the mountain man said. “Merton’s been playin’ his cards mighty close to the vest this whole trip. How come he up and decided to share where he’s goin’ with Ryker just now, while me and Hawk and Oliver were gone?”
Hopkins licked his lips and swallowed again. Preacher could tell that he didn’t want to answer the question, and the implications of that hesitation made fresh anger well up inside the mountain man.
“Dog,” Preacher said in a hoarse whisper.
“No!” Hopkins cried as Dog leaned still closer. “I’ll tell you, Preacher, but I swear it wasn’t my idea and I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all Ryker’s doing.”
“Keep talkin’,” Preacher said. His voice was just as much of a growl as Dog’s.
“Ryker . . . well, he kind of roughed up the old man to make him talk. I’m not sure exactly what he did because they were inside that covered wagon, but Merton yelled like it was pretty bad. After a while he stopped yellin’ and Ryker came out and said we were pushin’ on to the Black Hills.”
Preacher had heard someone approaching through the brush and trees as he talked to Hopkins, so he wasn’t surprised when Hawk, Oliver, and Chessie arrived in time to hear what the prisoner was saying.
Oliver’s eyes widened at the mention of Ryker torturing his father. Anger darkened his face as he stepped forward and exclaimed, “You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!”
Hopkins cringed. “It wasn’t me, damn it! I never touched your pa, kid. It was Ryker and nobody else.”
“But you worked for him,” Oliver said as he made a visible effort to control himself.
“So did all the other fellas.”
“And you tried to kill Preacher just now!”
Hopkins couldn’t deny that. He didn’t even try.
Oliver tightened his grip on the rifle he carried. He looked like he was ready to lift the weapon and kill Hopkins. Preacher made an unobtrusive gesture to his son. Hawk stepped in front of Oliver.
“I don’t blame you for bein’ riled up,” Preacher said, “but this fella still needs to answer some questions.”
“He’s a murderous animal, no better than those outcasts,” Oliver said. “He ought to be exterminated.”
Oliver didn’t try to for
ce the issue, though. Preacher clasped his hands together, leaned over Hopkins, and asked, “Did Merton tell Ryker what he’s after in the Black Hills?”
“If he did, Ryker didn’t tell any of the rest of us,” Hopkins replied. “I give you my word on that, Preacher. The rest of us are just as much in the dark about it as you are.”
Preacher looked up at Oliver. “Did your pa ever say anything to you about the Black Hills?”
“Not that I recall.” Oliver had calmed down some, and his voice was fairly steady as he went on, “Father talked about a lot of the places he’d been out here when he was younger, but nothing about anywhere called the Black Hills.”
Preacher held up a hand and said, “Hold on a minute. Your pa spent time out here on the frontier?”
“Yes, when he was a young man, before he married my mother. He went intending to make his fortune as a fur trapper.”
Preacher grunted in surprise. “No offense, Oliver, but he sure didn’t strike me as the sort of fella to do that.”
“Well, he discovered he wasn’t cut out for it,” Oliver admitted. “He returned to the East and wound up being quite successful in business. He was better suited for that, no doubt about it. But earlier, he was young, you know? Adventure and excitement held a certain appeal for him. I’m not sure that ever went away completely. I remember there would be times, when I was young, that he would get this faraway look in his eyes and say he would like to go west again, that he wanted to go back and find what he’d left behind . . .” Oliver shook his head. “But I have no idea what he was talking about, or even if it was anything specific. It could have been just . . . the feeling he had out here.”
“Maybe,” Preacher said as his eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe that Edgar Merton would have gone to the trouble, expense, and danger of outfitting this expedition and accompanying it if he hadn’t been after something in particular, rather than just trying to recapture the excitement of his youth.
The mountain man turned his attention back to Hopkins and asked, “When did Ryker and the others leave?”
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