“You told him you wanted to go to a place in the Black Hills.”
“Owayásuta . . . I had no choice. He would have killed me. But I was . . . stubborn and . . . wouldn’t tell him anything else. He doesn’t know . . . why we’re going there.”
Preacher would have liked to know that himself, but he didn’t figure this was the time or place to try to convince Merton to tell him. The use of the Sioux name was proof that Merton really had been here in the past, though.
Preacher asked, “How come Ryker stopped and made camp here in the middle of the day?”
“I don’t know . . . I blacked out again . . . for a long time.”
Ryker knew where they were going but not exactly how to get there, Preacher thought. With Merton unconscious and unable to give him specific directions, Ryker had decided it was better to wait, rather than risk getting hopelessly lost in country unfamiliar to him.
“How bad are you hurt? Do you have any wounds?”
“My head . . . bled a lot . . . when Ryker hit me. I haven’t really felt right . . . ever since.”
“But you can walk?”
“I don’t know. I feel . . . awfully weak. I can . . . I can try, though. Are we going to . . . get out of here?”
“Not just yet,” Preacher told him. “I hate to say it, but there ain’t no way to get you out of here right now, Mr. Merton.”
The man groaned softly.
“But that don’t mean we won’t come back for you,” Preacher went on. “We’ll figure out a way to get you loose from Ryker. You just got to hang on until then.”
“All right,” Merton said, although it sounded like it took quite an effort to get the words out. “Not . . . too much longer, though. I’m not sure . . . how much longer I can last . . .”
Preacher wasn’t sure about that, either. He was determined to get father and son back together, though, and to see that Hoyt Ryker got what was coming to him for his treachery and brutality.
A second later, though, that determination hit a rough spot in the trail as a footstep sounded at the back of the wagon and a harsh voice demanded, “What’s goin’ on in there? Merton, who the hell are you talkin’ to?”
CHAPTER 33
Preacher didn’t recognize the voice. It didn’t belong to Hoyt Ryker. More than likely, the guard who had been sitting over next to one of the supply wagons had heard him and Merton talking.
He tensed, his hand tightening on the knife’s handle as he readied himself to whirl around and spring through the opening at the rear of the wagon. If he could kill the guard without too much commotion . . .
“Wha . . . what?” Merton said, sounding completely confused. “Is that you, Father? . . . No, I haven’t seen Mother . . . Here’s my little dog.”
The man at the back of the wagon snorted contemptuously and muttered, “Bastard’s out of his head and talkin’ to himself. Ryker shouldn’t have knocked him around so much.”
Footsteps receded into the darkness.
Preacher let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Edgar Merton fumbled at his arm in the darkness, caught hold of it, and squeezed it without much strength but hard enough to make Preacher aware the man knew what he was doing.
That had been a clever gambit on Merton’s part. Preacher wouldn’t have thought Merton was coherent enough to pull off the deception, but he had.
Leaning closer again, Preacher whispered, “That was quick thinkin’, Merton. Now I’ve got to ask somethin’ of you that you probably ain’t gonna like.”
“What do you . . . want me to do?” Merton asked.
“Cooperate with Ryker. Keep tellin’ him how to get where he wants to go.”
“If I . . . tell him everything . . . he won’t need me anymore. He’ll kill me!”
“Don’t tell him what the secret is. Hold back enough to keep yourself safe. But as long as the bunch is camped here, we can’t get you away from him. We need a better spot before we make our move.”
For a long moment, Merton didn’t say anything. Then he replied softly, “I understand. We have to . . . bide our time. It’s . . . not easy.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“I can’t let him . . . have it. I worked . . . too hard . . . waited . . . too long . . .”
Merton’s voice was just a breathy murmur now. Preacher figured he was on the verge of passing out again—or maybe just falling asleep. Natural sleep might be the best thing in the world for him right now. Preacher patted the older man’s shoulder in the darkness and told him, “Hang on, Edgar. We’ll get you out of this, and you and Oliver will be together again.”
“All for Oliver . . . Did it all for him . . .”
Merton was quiet then, but Preacher could still hear his faint breathing. Better to let him rest for now.
He wondered if Merton would remember any of this conversation in the morning. That beating Ryker had given him could have broken something in the man’s head. It was possible Merton might not ever be right again.
They would have to wait and see about that, Preacher told himself. Right now, his main concern was getting back out of the camp without being caught.
He went out the front of the wagon this time, keeping the vehicle between him and the guard. Once he was on the ground again, he dropped to hands and knees, then his belly, and began crawling toward the cliff. Reaching it without incident, he stood up and tried to make out the handholds and footholds he had used coming down. The mountain man could see in the dark almost as well as a cat, so after a moment he started up confidently.
The climb up took just as long as the one coming down. Finally, Preacher grasped the rim, pulled himself up and over the edge. He rolled away and was well clear before he stood up, because he didn’t want his moving shape to blot out any of the stars if one of the men below happened to be awake and for some reason looked up.
It had been a successful foray into the enemy camp, and Preacher was relieved to have found Edgar Merton still alive. But at the same time, it was frustrating that he’d had to leave Merton behind as a prisoner. Merton had suffered greatly at Hoyt Ryker’s hands, and while Preacher knew Ryker intended to keep Merton alive, Ryker’s temper had gotten out of control before and might again at any time. It might not take much more abuse to finish off Merton.
They were another day, maybe a day and a half, from the narrow valley the Sioux called Owayásuta, with the twin gulches with their fast-flowing creeks running off to the west. Those gulches were choked with brush and dead trees, Preacher recalled from the last time he had passed through these parts. He had no idea why that spot was important to Edgar Merton, but it seemed to have a powerful hold on the man.
Preacher tried to recall if there was a good place between here and the expedition’s destination where he and his companions could try to rescue Merton. He remembered a long ridge with a narrow cut through it that was the only way to get through without going a dozen miles east or west. If he and the others could get ahead of the wagons, they could set up a trap there. He, Hawk, and Oliver could leap from the cutbanks down onto the wagons and kill or knock out the drivers. That would swing the odds in their favor before Ryker and his men knew what was happening.
Those thoughts went through Preacher’s head as he made his way back to the spot where he had left the others. By the time he got there, he had decided that the rough plan forming in his mind represented their best chance of saving Edgar Merton and dealing with the threat of Hoyt Ryker and his men.
Dog lifted his head and whined as Preacher stepped out of the trees. Hawk came lithely to his feet and told Oliver and Chessie, “Preacher is back.”
Oliver scrambled up and asked anxiously, “Is he alive? Is my father all right?”
“He’s alive,” Preacher said. “I ain’t sure you could say he’s all right, though. He took quite a beatin’ from Ryker.”
Oliver cursed in bitter fury and said, “I’ll kill that bastard. I swear I will.”
“You may get a chance,” Preacher told
him. “I had to leave your pa with them. I didn’t want to, but the shape he was in, there was no way I could get him out of that camp and up the cliff. I have an idea how we can get him back and deal with Ryker and his bunch, though.”
“You mean kill them,” Hawk said.
“I imagine it’ll come to that, yeah.”
“They’ve got it coming,” Oliver said. “Tell me what he said. You did talk to him, didn’t you?”
Preacher said, “Yeah, I did.” He gave Oliver the highlights of the conversation. Chessie came to Oliver’s side, and when Preacher talked about Ryker’s abuse of Edgar Merton and how the older man was barely coherent, she slipped an arm around Oliver’s waist and hugged him to comfort him.
“He may be in bad shape, but he still thought fast enough when he had to,” Preacher went on, telling them about Merton’s ploy when the guard came over to the wagon. “He’s bound and determined to make it through this. Whatever he’s after here in the Black Hills, he intends for you to have it, Oliver. He says he’s done all of this for you.”
“Risked his life and probably lost it, you mean.” Oliver sounded bitter again. “We should have stayed back East. We were doing fine there. Nothing is worth what we’ve gone through on this expedition.”
“If you had stayed in the East, Oliver,” Chessie said quietly, “you and I never would have met.”
“Well, that’s true, I suppose.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “And I wouldn’t want that. I can’t imagine not being with you, now that I’ve gotten to know you. I just wish things had turned out differently.”
“That’s my fault,” Chessie said, sounding miserable now. “I’m the one who got your father involved with Ryker. I . . . I really didn’t know what kind of man he was.”
Preacher thought she sounded sincere. He could have told them all along that Hoyt Ryker was a snake, and had in fact tried to do so. But there was no point in dwelling on that now. They needed to deal with the situation the way it was, not the way they wished it might have been.
“Best get some more rest,” he told the others. “We’re gonna be movin’ out as soon as there’s enough light to see . . . and I don’t need much light for that. We have to get in front of Ryker’s bunch. I’ve got an idea about how we can jump them.”
He gave them a quick summary of the plan that had formed in his head, and then they all turned in. Preacher knew where their enemies were, and it hadn’t appeared that Ryker or any of his men would be budging from their camp tonight. It was possible some Sioux warriors could come along, but that was unlikely as well since they rarely entered the hills except for religious ceremonies. If they had seen Ryker’s big campfire earlier, though, they might come to investigate and see who was interloping on sacred ground.
If any Indians came around, Dog would alert them, Preacher knew, so he rolled up in a blanket as well and fell asleep immediately, with the frontiersman’s knack for that. He wouldn’t need someone to rouse him. He had the knack for waking up whenever he wanted to, as well.
Because of that, when he opened his eyes and sat up sometime later, just the faintest tinge of gray lightened the eastern sky as the stars began to fade. Preacher got to his feet, touched Hawk lightly on the shoulder, and when the young man sprang up, also fully awake in an instant, Preacher said, “See to the horses. We’ll be hittin’ the trail in just a little while.”
Hawk tended to the chore without saying anything. Preacher let Oliver and Chessie sleep a few minutes longer, then woke them as well. Both yawned in weariness. Emotionally, they were eager to pull ahead of Ryker and his men and get ready to rescue Oliver’s father, but their bodies were still in a state of near exhaustion after everything they had gone through.
If they could hang on for awhile longer, Preacher thought, maybe sooner or later there would be a chance for all of them to get some real rest. Until then they would just have to find the strength to go on.
Preacher was standing off to the side and gnawing on a small piece of jerky when Chessie came up to him. Quietly, so that Oliver and Hawk wouldn’t overhear, she said, “You think I’m a terrible person, don’t you?”
“After you risked your life to help me get away from those blasted outcasts, that ain’t very likely.”
“But I got us into this mess to start with by urging Mr. Merton to hire Ryker.”
Preacher shrugged in the predawn gloom. “You said you didn’t know what sort of fella he was. I ain’t got any reason to believe you’re lyin’.”
“I had my suspicions,” Chessie said, “but Hoyt could be so charming when he wanted to. I . . . I honestly didn’t believe Oliver could ever be interested in . . . someone like me . . . at least seriously. I wanted to find out, but I thought that . . .”
“You thought you’d hedge your bet by playin’ up to him and Ryker both,” Preacher finished for her when her voice trailed off. “Plenty of women have done that in the past. I reckon men probably do it, too, sometimes. After all the grit you’ve showed, I ain’t holdin’ no grudges against you, Chessie, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“And what about Hawk? I can tell by the way he looks at me sometimes that he . . . he . . .”
The mountain man chuckled. “He’s been smitten with you ever since he first laid eyes on you back in St. Louis. I reckon he knows you don’t feel the same way about him, but that don’t mean he has to like it. A man’d have to be damn lucky to have every gal he falls in love with during his lifetime feel the same way about him. That just ain’t gonna happen. Sooner Hawk learns that lesson, the better.”
“What about you, Preacher? Have all the women you’ve ever loved been in love with you, too?”
Preacher frowned. He wasn’t sure he had actually been in love except for Jennie, all those years ago, and that had been a boy’s love for the first girl he had known intimately. What he’d had with Hawk’s mother, Bird in a Tree, might have turned into love if they had been together longer, but Preacher’s fiddle-footedness had prompted him to move on even before he knew about the baby growing inside the young Absaroka woman. So he didn’t have an answer for Chessie’s question, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t feel like sharing it.
“We need to get on the trail,” he said, knowing that he sounded gruff. “Ryker ain’t gonna wait around, and we got to get ahead of him if we’re gonna have a chance to save Oliver’s pa and ever find out what this whole blasted mess is about.”
CHAPTER 34
Oliver and Chessie rode the two horses while Preacher, Hawk, and Dog ranged ahead on foot, finding the best route through the rugged terrain. Preacher swung to the east of the spot where Ryker’s camp was located, giving it plenty of room. He figured that he and his companions had gotten started earlier than Ryker’s bunch likely had, and they could move faster, too. Taking wagons through the mountains was a slow process.
By midmorning, Preacher believed it was safe to assume they were now ahead of the expedition. He angled back slightly to the northeast. That took them toward Owayásuta and also toward the long ridge where he planned to spring a trap on Hoyt Ryker and rescue Edgar Merton.
When he called a halt so they could rest, Oliver objected. “We should keep going,” the young man said. “We can’t afford to waste any time. The sooner we jump Ryker and his men, the sooner we can free my father.”
“The rest is more for the horses than for you,” Preacher said. “We’re liable to need them. I hope we don’t have anybody comin’ after us, but if we do, your pa will have to ride. He ain’t in shape to do anything else.”
“I thought we were going to kill all of them.”
“That’s the plan . . . but plans have a way of not always workin’ out.”
When they started again, Hawk asked Oliver, “Are all white men as bloodthirsty as you?”
“Why don’t you ask Preacher about that? He’s white. And you’re half-white, remember?”
Hawk shook his head. “Preacher may have been born white, but now he is just Preacher, not white
or red or anything else. And I know nothing of that side of my own heritage. I was raised Absaroka. As far as I am concerned, they are my people, not anyone else.”
“Well, I can’t answer your question,” Oliver said in a surly voice. “I just know I’ve got a score to settle with Hoyt Ryker, and any of his men who get in my way are going to regret it.”
Preacher let that bit of bravado pass without responding to it. So far, with the one exception when he had fallen for Hopkins’s trick, Oliver had come through and performed well when he needed to. With any luck, he would continue to do so.
By midafternoon, Preacher was able to point out the ridge. Beyond it, more of the thickly wooded mountains rose. Looking at them, Preacher spotted the pass above the little valley that was their ultimate destination.
“Once we’ve got your pa away from Ryker, it’ll take us most of a day to get there,” he explained to Oliver.
Hawk spoke up. “If we do not kill Ryker and all his men, the ones who are left alive will come after us.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Preacher said with a nod. “But we’ll stomp them snakes when we come to ’em.”
Later, when they drew near the ridge, Preacher saw the cut that he remembered and led his companions toward it. It looked like someone had taken a giant knife and slashed through the ridge, leaving a narrow passage about a hundred yards long and barely wide enough for a wagon and a team of mules to pass through it.
Preacher walked through the cut first, followed by Oliver and Chessie leading the horses, with Hawk and Dog bringing up the rear. Once they were on the other side of the ridge, Preacher looked around and found a good spot for the horses in a clearing hidden by trees and brush.
“You’ll have to stay here and keep an eye on them,” he told Chessie. “The three of us will be up on those banks, waitin’ to ambush Ryker. Hawk, you take the west bank. Oliver and me will be on the one to the east.”
Oliver pressed one of the extra pistols they had gotten from the dead Hopkins and Brill into Chessie’s hands. “It’s loaded,” he told her. “I’m not going to leave you here without some way to protect yourself.”
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