The two men and the big cur turned and trotted off at right angles to the course the group had been following. Hawk asked, “Are we far enough out that they will not see us if they wait at the edge of the hills?”
“Yeah, at this range they wouldn’t be able to make out any details, even with a spyglass.”
“And you are convinced they might be watching this approach?”
“That notch is the best way into the Pahá Sápa,” Preacher said. “If Edgar Merton’s been here before, and if Ryker’s forcin’ him to show the way, that’s most likely the way he’d go. You can’t plan for everything, though. Just take your best shot and move on.”
Hawk said nothing in response to that. Most fathers gave their sons advice on various subjects, Preacher thought wryly. When he found himself giving advice to Hawk, it was usually on ways not to get killed.
But then, he had never been one to do things the way most folks did.
At first glance, the prairie appeared to be flat and open, with no hiding places, but actually there were swales and creases to it that allowed Preacher and Hawk to approach the Black Hills with less chance of being seen, especially if they kept low. They trotted for a mile or so after leaving Oliver, Chessie, and Hopkins, then turned and began working their way toward the mountains. The course they followed approached the notch at an angle. A ridge thrust out just west of there and gave them some cover.
The climb up the west side of the ridge wasn’t easy. Dog had more trouble than the two men. Preacher had to help the big cur from time to time, but he wasn’t going to leave his trail partner behind. It already bothered him enough that he had been away from Horse for several days now. He hoped that Ryker hadn’t tried to mistreat the big, rangy stallion.
Of course, anybody who tried to bother Horse was probably letting himself in for some bad trouble. Horse could take care of himself.
They reached the top and bellied down behind some rocks to watch the trail that went through the gap in the thickly wooded hills. Preacher looked to the south, his eyes narrowing as he studied the landscape intently. After a few minutes, he grunted and told Hawk, “Here they come.”
“I see them,” the young man said. “Oliver and Chessie look like prisoners, the way their heads are down and their shoulders droop.”
“Yeah, they’re puttin’ on a good show,” Preacher agreed. “And Hopkins is doin’ his part.”
“Do you really intend to let him live?”
“I gave him my word, didn’t I?”
“He tried to kill you.”
Preacher shrugged. “Lots of folks have tried to kill me. I’ll admit, most of ’em I put under. But some either got away or I let ’em go. I never lost any sleep over it.” The mountain man shook his head. “Anyway, a varmint ornery enough to throw in with Hoyt Ryker is likely to try somethin’ sooner or later. A snake ain’t a snake just ’cause he says he ain’t. If Hopkins double-crosses us, I’ll kill him and won’t lose no sleep over that, neither.”
A few minutes later, the three riders moved through the notch without being challenged or met by any of Ryker’s men. Atop the ridge, Preacher motioned for Hawk and Dog to follow him and moved to intercept Oliver, Chessie, and Hopkins.
CHAPTER 30
The riders had disappeared into a thick stand of trees. It took a while for Preacher, Hawk, and Dog to work their way down from the ridge and reach those trees. As they walked through the growth, Preacher’s keen ears heard the sound of horses stomping and blowing up ahead.
As Preacher and Hawk emerged into a clearing, Thad Hopkins said sharply, “All right, you two, that’s far enough.”
Preacher stopped short. His hand went to the tomahawk stuck behind his belt, and beside him, Hawk started to lift his rifle. Both of them froze when they saw Hopkins standing there with a pistol pressed against Chessie’s temple. His other arm was wrapped tightly around the girl’s midsection, nudging upward against the undersides of her breasts.
Oliver lay sprawled on the ground nearby, senseless, with blood oozing from a welt on the side of his head where something had walloped him, probably the gun that was now in Hopkins’s hand, threatening Chessie.
“Put all your weapons on the ground,” Hopkins snapped. “Don’t try anything, or I’ll blow this little whore’s brains out.”
“Remember what I said about a snake bein’ a snake?” Preacher said to Hawk. “Varmints just can’t help theirselves.”
Hopkins said, “That’s enough talk. Do what I told you.”
He ground the pistol harder against Chessie’s head to emphasize his point, making her cry out in pain. A low growl sounded in Hawk’s throat. He leaned forward, caught up in the emotions raging through him. Preacher said quietly, “Best take it easy, son. Hopkins ain’t got nothin’ to lose. He’ll do what he says.”
“Damn right I will.”
“If he hurts Chessie,” Hawk said, “he will die, too. Long and painfully.”
Hopkins smirked and said, “I reckon that’s probably true. But the girl will be dead, too, and there won’t be a damned thing you can do about that, redskin. Now drop those weapons!”
Preacher sighed. Slowly, so as not to spook Hopkins, he pulled the tomahawk from behind his belt and the knife from its sheath and tossed them on the ground about halfway between him and Hopkins. Hawk followed suit, lowering the rifle’s butt to the ground and then letting it fall over. He tossed his pistol, tomahawk, and knife near Preacher’s weapons.
“Don’t go thinkin’ about siccing that wolf on me, either,” Hopkins cautioned. “No matter how fast he is, he can’t get me before I pull this trigger.”
“You got the upper hand,” Preacher said. “How’d you go about that, anyway?”
A gloating grin stretched across Hopkins’s beefy face. “That boy’s a damned fool. I acted like I was sick and needed to get down from the horse. He cut me loose, and I was able to grab his gun and clout him with it. That’s all it took.”
Preacher glanced at Oliver and shook his head. He’d expected better from the young man. Unfortunately, even though being on this expedition had toughened up Oliver to a certain extent and educated him as well, he was still an easterner at heart and subject to momentary lapses of reason.
“I guess you didn’t kill him because Ryker told you to bring him and the girl back. You figure he’s worth somethin’.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Hopkins laughed and tightened his grip on Chessie. “But one way or another, this little gal’s going to be worth something to me—you can bet on that.”
“You don’t reckon Ryker’s gonna let you have her, do you? There ain’t a chance in hell of that. He’s had his eye on her ever since St. Louis.”
“Maybe, maybe not. He’s liable to be grateful to me. After all,” Hopkins said, “I’m the one who’s gonna kill you and the redskin. Now back away from those guns.”
Hopkins must have realized that he had one shot in Oliver’s pistol and two enemies facing him. Even if he was able to fatally wound one of them, the other would kill him. The gun in Hopkins’s hand wasn’t really worth anything to him except as leverage while it was held to Chessie’s head.
But if he could get Hawk’s pistol as well, he might have a chance to shoot both of them. It would be a miracle if two rushed shots found their marks and brought down Preacher and Hawk, but stranger things had happened.
“You’d better think this through, Hopkins,” Preacher said. “You can still put down that gun and work with us—”
“You would let him live after this?” Hawk exclaimed in amazement.
The boy had a lot to learn about manipulating a situation to his advantage, Preacher thought. He said, “As long as he’s got Chessie, we got to do what he says.”
“That’s right,” Hopkins crowed. “Now back off!”
Preacher had seen something in Chessie’s expression. Her face was pale and drawn, and she was obviously scared, as most folks would be with a gun pressed to their head. But anger burned in h
er eyes as well. Preacher had seen for himself what sort of gumption the girl had. She was on the verge of making a move, and he would be ready when she did.
“Come on, Hawk,” he said. “Let’s back away like the man says.”
Keeping his hands half lifted, Preacher took a couple of steps back. Still growling in anger and frustration, Hawk did likewise. Hopkins forced Chessie forward, toward the guns lying on the ground.
She had taken only a couple of steps when her foot caught a dead branch lying on the ground and she stumbled heavily. Preacher knew it was an act, that she had done it on purpose. Hopkins might have realized that, too, if he’d stopped to think about it, but instead he burst out, “Damn it, watch what you’re—”
The gun muzzle had wavered away from Chessie’s head. She twisted and rammed her left shoulder into Hopkins’s chest, which made his grip on her loosen. With a cry of effort, she tore free and dived away from him.
Hopkins hesitated, torn between swinging the gun after her or jerking it back toward Preacher and Hawk, and that split second of indecision was enough for the mountain man to spring forward, scoop up the tomahawk, and throw it. The tomahawk revolved perfectly in the air one time, then it thunked into the middle of Hopkins’s forehead, splitting the skull and lodging in his brain. As he was dying, his eyes widened grotesquely and crossed as they tried to look at the tomahawk. His arm jerked and the pistol went off. His knees buckled. He pitched forward onto his face, driving the tomahawk even deeper in the sundered gray matter inside his skull.
A few more involuntary twitches and he was dead.
“Dadgum it,” Preacher said. “I was hopin’ to kill the son of a bitch before he got a shot off. No tellin’ how close Ryker is and whether or not he heard that.”
Hawk knelt at Chessie’s side and took hold of her shoulders to roll her over and make sure she was all right. She sobbed and threw her arms around him, clinging to him as reaction set in now that she was out of danger, at least relatively speaking. None of them would be truly out of danger until they had dealt with the threat of Hoyt Ryker and his men.
Hawk was pleased by the way Chessie turned to him, Preacher noted as he bent over and wrenched the tomahawk free from the dead man’s skull. Hopkins stared up sightlessly at him. Preacher said, “Don’t look at me like that, old son. I told you what’d happen if you tried to double-cross us.”
The opportunity for Hawk to comfort Chessie didn’t last long. Oliver suddenly groaned as he began to come to, and Chessie cried, “Oh!” and pulled away from Hawk. She sprang to her feet, ran to Oliver’s side, and dropped to her knees. She took hold of him and lifted him so she could rest his bloody head in her lap.
Preacher managed not to laugh at the disgusted frown on his son’s face.
“Oh, Oliver!” Chessie said as she leaned over him. “Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes and blinked up dazedly at her. “Wha . . . wha’ happened?” he asked.
“That terrible man Hopkins hit you and took me hostage,” she explained. “But Preacher came along and killed him.”
“I . . . I didn’t mean for him to get loose . . .”
Preacher hunkered next to the two of them and said, “You can’t trust a skunk like Hopkins, not ever. Make use of ’em if you can, but don’t never trust ’em. A sore head’s a small price to pay for learnin’ that lesson. Reckon you’ll remember?”
“I will,” Oliver promised. Some color was coming back into his face now. “I’ll remember. And I’m sorry, Preacher.”
“Do better next time,” Preacher said. “Meanwhile, how long are you plannin’ to lollygag around with your head in that gal’s lap?”
Oliver and Chessie both started to turn pink. She helped him sit up. He was clearly a little dizzy, but he insisted, “I’ll be all right.” He turned his head to look at Chessie as something occurred to him. “Did Hopkins hurt you? If he did, I . . . I’ll . . .”
Hawk said, “You will do nothing. The man is already dead.”
“I’m fine, Oliver,” Chessie assured him. “He didn’t have a chance to hurt me.”
“No thanks to me,” Oliver said as a sullen frown appeared on his face.
Preacher and Hawk walked over to the horses as Oliver and Chessie continued talking, their voices too low now to be understood. Hawk walked around the horses and checked the cinches on the saddles. While he was doing that, he said quietly to Preacher, “His carelessness could have gotten them both killed.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” the mountain man agreed. “But she’ll forgive him. Quicker than he’ll forgive himself, I imagine. But that’s their lookout, not ours. We still got to find Ryker, Merton, and the others.”
That distracted Hawk from thoughts of the conversation going on between Oliver and Chessie. He said, “Those creeks Hopkins spoke of, in deep gulches coming in from the west and joining together . . . do you truly know this place?”
“I do,” Preacher said. “It’s a ways north of here. Take a couple of days to get there, more than likely. If that’s where Hopkins and Brill were supposed to rendezvous with Ryker, we’ll find the bunch waitin’ there. One thing about it, it’s a pretty wild place. Plenty of cover, so we ought to be able to get close without Ryker knowin’ we’re around.”
“Do you believe that is where Edgar Merton was bound for all along?”
“Could be.”
“What is there about it to make it so important for him to return?”
“I reckon we’ll find out when we get there,” Preacher said.
CHAPTER 31
They left Thad Hopkins’s body where it had fallen and pushed on a couple of miles deeper into the Black Hills before finding a place to camp for the night. It had been several years since Preacher had been here. He was reminded once again what a beautiful part of the country this was, with thick forests, stark, rocky upthrusts, and cold, clear, fast-flowing streams. It was easy to see why the Sioux considered these hills sacred.
Since they weren’t out on the open prairie anymore, for the first time in several days Preacher built a small fire so they could have hot food and coffee for supper that night, using the supplies that Hopkins and Brill had brought along in their saddlebags. They had pitched camp under some overhanging rocks, so the flames couldn’t be seen from very far away and the rocks would disperse the smoke.
Oliver had been moping about the way he’d allowed Hopkins to get loose, but the meal seemed to lift his spirits some. He and Chessie sat close together as they ate, which probably made him feel better, too.
“I should give you your jacket back,” she said. “It’ll probably get cold at night here in the mountains.”
“All the more reason for you to keep it,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.”
Preacher said, “Hopkins and Brill had blankets with ’em. Either of you can wrap up in them if you need to.” He added wryly, “Might be a good idea to check ’em for crawlin’ varmints first, though.”
“What about you and Hawk?” Chessie asked. “Won’t you get cold?”
“We’ll be fine. We’re used to livin’ out in the open like this.”
Hawk said, “I am Absaroka. I do not feel the cold.”
Which was a bald-faced lie, Preacher thought. Without a doubt, Indians were more accustomed to physical hardships than folks from back East like Oliver and Chessie, but that didn’t keep them from getting cold. That was why they always had plenty of soft, thick buffalo robes in their lodges and tepees. Hawk wasn’t going to admit that in front of Chessie, though.
Preacher thought he might need to have a talk with the boy. Hawk couldn’t help it that he was attracted to Chessie, but he ought to be smart enough to see that she had her attention focused on Oliver Merton. Being determined was one thing; being downright muleheaded was another.
Preacher allowed the fire to burn down to embers after the meal was over. Chessie rolled up in a blanket and fell asleep right away, apparently exhausted by another long day and yet another dangerous ordeal that easi
ly could have resulted in her death. Preacher didn’t know what she had expected when she’d decided to come along on this expedition, but more than likely she had realized by now that she’d bitten off a pretty big chunk of trouble.
As he sat by the glowing coals of the fire, his thoughts turned from Chessie to Edgar Merton. It had come as a surprise to him that Merton had spent time on the frontier. Obviously, something important had happened while Merton was out here, or else the man wouldn’t have been so determined to return years later.
Usually, when a man was haunted by something to that extent, one of two things was responsible, Preacher reflected: love . . . or money.
He wondered which one had brought Edgar Merton back to the Black Hills.
* * *
When it came time to arrange the guard shifts that night, Oliver said, “After what happened earlier, are you sure you trust me to keep watch, Preacher?”
“Yeah, I do,” the mountain man replied. “You made a mistake. Everybody does, sooner or later. Just don’t make the same one again.”
Hawk said, “Some mistakes can get you killed. Or worse, others.”
Oliver nodded sheepishly. “I know. I’d never have forgiven myself if that bastard had hurt Chessie. If there was some way to send her back to St. Louis, just like that, where she’d be safe again, I’d do it in an instant.”
Preacher wasn’t sure Chessie had been all that safe on her own back in St. Louis, although he was confident Red Mike would have tried to look after her. If she and Oliver both survived this expedition, she might be better off than she would have been under any other likely circumstances.
If it looked like the best deal to her, would she betray them and go back to Hoyt Ryker? Preacher didn’t believe she would. Like Oliver, Chessie seemed to have grown up some during this hazardous journey. But he supposed only time would tell.
The night passed quietly, during Oliver’s watch as well as the others, and in the morning the group pushed farther north into the mountains. The supplies Hopkins and Brill had brought along were running low, but that afternoon Hawk brought down a young deer with an arrow and they had fresh meat for supper, as well as enough to take along with them for the next day.
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