Dark Hand had bellied down on the ground before the first yell had passed Vic’s lips, presenting no target at all for Preacher, and he was certain it was Preacher lurking in the dark brush and timber around the camp. The men started shooting wildly, hitting nothing and accomplishing only the wasting of lead and powder. Dark Hand suspected that Preacher had turned and slipped away as soon as he saw the arrow strike its mark. That was what he would have done, and Preacher could be as much Indian as he was white when he had to be.
When no more arrows came silently and deadly out of the brush, the men slowly began crawling to their knees and reloading. The cooks and servants of the gentry remained where they were, belly down on the ground, eyes wide with fear.
“Halp me!” Vic bellered. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, halp me.”
There was nothing anyone could do for the man. The arrow had torn through his stomach and when they laid Vic out on the ground and cut away the back of his jacket and shirt, they could see that the point was very nearly all the way through his back.
“Go ahead and shoot him,” Jimmie Cook said. “I don’t want to have to listen to all that hollerin’ for days and nights.”
Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor waved to one of his men. “Franklin here has received some medical training. See what you can do for this unfortunate wretch, Franklin.”
Franklin knelt down and inspected the puncture wound. “I will have to push the arrow out the back, remove the barbed point, and then pull the arrow out from the front. But I fear the lining of the stomach has been penetrated front and back so all that would accomplish is a great deal of agony for the man. He will die no matter what I do.”
“Oh, very well,” Elmore said. “Wilson,” he called to one of the cooks. “Be a good fellow and fix some tea, will you? I feel the need for something warm and soothing. Something to calm the nerves, don’t you know?”
Preacher’s big rifle boomed and Elmore’s plumed hat went sailing about twenty feet away. His Lordship yelped and unceremoniously hit the ground, belly down in the mud.
The Frenchmen, Louviere and Tassin, jumped behind a fallen log and landed right on top of the Prussian, Rudi Kuhlmann, knocking the wind out of him. Preacher’s rifle boomed again and the Austrian, Willy Steinwinder, got a faceful of bark splinters as the heavy ball smacked into the tree he was trying to hide behind. One of Bones’s men, Cal Johnson, sprinted for cover just as Preacher fired one of his pistols. Cal turned a flip in the air as the ball slammed into his right leg and sent him sprawling and hollering. Preacher fired again and the ball whined off the big iron cook pot and went ricocheting wildly and wickedly around the camp. One of the servants ran into a tree and knocked himself silly. Van Eaton jumped for cover and landed squarely in a big pile of horse crap. He was so afraid to move that he lay in the dung and suffered the indignity, cussing Preacher loud and quite emotionally. Bones had jumped behind a boulder as the rest of the camp sought cover wherever they could find it. Dark Hand lay safe behind a fallen tree and took silent satisfaction in watching the panic of the white men.
Just before Preacher took off for safer territory, figuring he had done enough damage for one day, he turned and unloaded his pistols into the panicked camp. The sound was enormous and the double-shotted barrels spewed lead in all directions.
Baron Wilhelm Zaunbelcher was just getting to his fancy, hand-made boots when Preacher cut loose and Horace Haywood jumped into the slight ground depression and landed right on top of the Baron. The Baron did not appreciate that at all and began roaring in German. Horace figured rightly that Wilhelm was giving him a sound cussing and rared back and slugged the Baron right on the royal snoot. Horace and Wilhelm, ignoring the whining lead balls, began rolling around on the ground, cussing and punching and kicking and biting and gouging, the blood and the mud and the snot flying in all directions.
Bones rose to his knees and looked at the fist-swinging, bleeding, cussing men, rolling around in the dirt. He shook his head in disbelief.
Horace tried to knee Wilhelm in the groin and then gouge him in the eye with a thumb.
“Oh, I say now!” Burton Sullivan called. “That’s a foul. Unfair. Unfair. Fisticuffs is one thing, but ungentlemanly behavior simply won’t be tolerated here. I must protest this. Why ...”
Jack Cornell busted the duke in the chops and Burton went down, his mouth bloody. He jumped to his boots and assumed what was then considered a proper stance for bare-knuckle fighting—the left arm stretched out, left fist knuckles to the ground; the right fist held close to the face. “I’ll thrash you proper!” Burton said.
“That’ll be the damn day!” Jack replied and bored in. Much to his surprise, Burton Sullivan knocked him flat on his butt.
Dark Hand lay behind cover and smiled at the antics of the white men. With danger all around them, the fools were making war against each other. To Dark Hand’s way of thinking, it had to be some sort of a miracle from Man Above that the white race had survived this long.
“Break them up!” Bones yelled to his men. “Right now. We can’t afford this. Preacher might be back at any moment. Do it, damnit!”
The cussing and fighting men were hauled apart and led off, to be widely separated from each other until they cooled down. Cal Johnson’s leg was bathed and bandaged by Franklin; but Cal was going to be out of action for a time.
Vic was moaning and carrying on something awful. Van Eaton walked over to the man. He stood looking down at him for a moment, then cocked and lifted his pistol.
Vic yelled, “No, Van! Don’t do it, man. Please, no. For God’s sake!”
Van Eaton coldly shot him in the head, abruptly silencing the moans. “Gettin’ on my nerves,” Van Eaton said, recharging his pistol.
The camp was silent for a moment. “Oh, well. What the hell? He wouldn’t have lasted the night noway,” Mack Cornay said. “I’ll get a shovel.”
“No!” Bones called. “We don’t have the time. Just roll him over the side of that ravine yonder and let the buzzards have him. We’re breaking camp.”
“Where to this time?” Van Eaton asked.
“The scouts found a much better place. It’ll be harder for Preacher to slip up on us.” He looked around him. “I sure don’t want a repeat of this day.”
10
By the time the man-hunters ended the confusion in their camp and stopped fighting among themselves, Preacher was long gone. When Bones asked Dark Hand if he was going to attempt to pick up Preacher’s trail, the Pawnee looked at the man as if he had taken leave of his senses.
“That’s what Ghost Walker would like some of us to do,” he told Bones. “I tell you, those who pursue Preacher now will not return.”
“By God, I’ll pursue him!” Tatman said, picking up his rifle and moving toward his horse. “That Injun’s yeller. I knowed it all along.”
Dark Hand shrugged that off and turned his back to the ignorant loudmouth.
“Take Brown with you,” Van Eaton told him.
“I shall accompany the men,” the Frenchman, Jon Louviere said.
“Suit yourself,” Bones told him.
“I’ll go with them,” Burton Sullivan said. “I just don’t believe this man is the will ’o’ the wisp you people claim him to be.”
“Good show, Burton!” Sir Elmore shouted.
“Hip, hip, hooray!” Robert Tassin yelled.
Dark Hand grimaced at the very premature congratulatory shouts and poured himself a cup of coffee. The Pawnee watched the four men ride out and thought: Some of you will not return.
* * *
“Hell, he’s a-foot!” Tatman said, reining up about a thousand yards out of camp, leaning out of the saddle and studying the ground. “We got him now, boys. He’s ourn for shore.”
“Splendid!” Louviere said.
“Do push on,” Burton urged.
About a mile from camp, a rattlesnake, as thick as a man’s forearm and made as a hornet, came sailing out of the brush and struck Brown’s shoulder and landed stretched out from saddle horn to
Brown’s thigh. Brown, terrified out of his wits, let out a wild whoop and left the saddle just as the snake bit him on the leg. The snake left the saddle with the frightened and yelling man, biting him several more times before Brown hit the rocky ground. Preacher screamed like a panther and the horses went into a panic and began pitching and bucking, doing their best to throw off their riders.
Burton Sullivan’s butt left the saddle and he went rolling and squalling down the steep grade to the left of the trail. Jon Louviere dropped his rifle and grabbed onto the saddle horn as his horse became more panicked and started bucking more fiercely. His rifle discharged when it struck the ground and the ball struck Tatman in the shoulder, knocking him out of the saddle. He hit the ground, screaming and cussing the Frenchman. Brown was dying beside the trail, the rattler having bitten him a dozen or more times, the last few times on the neck and face. The bounty-hunter was already beginning to swell grotesquely.
Tatman landed about two feet from the horrible scene and clawed at his pistol. The snake shifted its attention from the dying man to Tatman and opened its mouth to strike. Tatman finally pulled the gun from behind his belt and shot the rattlesnake, blowing its head off.
Preacher picked up a rock and flung it, the heavy stone impacting against the side of Louviere’s jaw and slamming him from the saddle. The Frenchman, out cold, landed on top of Tatman, knocking the wind from Tatman, and bringing a scream of pain from the frightened and wounded man.
Burton Sullivan, several hundred feet below, had no idea what was taking place above him. He was frantically attempting to claw his way up the rocky incline. He had lost his fancy rifle and one of his pistols and was thoroughly disgusted. He had busted his head on a rock and it was bleeding. His safari clothing was ripped and torn and he had lost one boot. All things taken into consideration, this day was not going well at all.
And it was about to get worse.
By the trail, Preacher had taken all the guns and powder and shot from the dead and wounded men. He was waiting for Burton Sullivan when the man finally, panting and grunting, hauled himself over the side.
“You lookin’ for me, Fancy-Britches?” Preacher asked.
Burton gazed upward and into the coldest eyes the Englishman had ever seen.
“I say now, my good fellow,” Burton gasped. “Can’t we discuss this like civilized men?”
“Nope,” Preacher said, and busted the man on the side of his jaw with one big fist.
The nobleman’s feet, minus one boot, left the incline and down he went, rolling butt over elbows. He went back down the grade a lot quicker than he came up. He rolled over rocks, smashed into small sturdy trees, and uprooted bushes in a frantic attempt to halt his descent. He finally came to rest all tangled up in a pile of thorny bushes. He was so addled he thought he was a child back in England.
“Oh mummy,” he muttered. “I’m afraid I’ve poo-pooed in my nightie.”
“I’ll kill you for this,” Tatman told Preacher, pushing the words past the pain in his shoulder.
“I doubt it,” Preacher told him, settling one moccasin against Tatman’s big butt. Preacher shoved and Tatman began his journey down to join Burton Sullivan at the bottom of the incline.
After two trips, Burton had pretty much cleared the way, so Tatman didn’t really encounter much in the way of obstacles on his way down. He must have been covering about fifty feet a second when he slammed into Burton Sullivan, who was just getting to his shaky boots, his back to the incline. Burton, his butt filled with thorns from the bramble bush, and his mind foggy, was staring dreamily down at a lovely little creek about twenty feet below when Tatman slammed into him. Both of them sailed over the edge and landed in the creek.
Preacher looked down at the pair and laughed at them, wallowin’ around in the creek. Preacher knew that creek was snow-fed year round and that the water was icy cold. Them two down yonder was liable to come down with pneumonia.
Preacher hoped they did.
* * *
Van Eaton recovered the money the noblemen had paid to Brown, stuck it in his pocket, and then shoved the body over the side for the buzzards to eat. Van Eaton didn’t give a damn about Brown, or anybody else for that matter, but this meant that Preacher was slowly whittling away at their strength. And the man was still playing with them. He just didn’t seem to be taking this hunt seriously. It seemed to Van Eaton that to Preacher, this manhunt was ... well fun!
At that thought, the hired killer looked nervously around him. Van Eaton didn’t like these Rocky Mountains. He didn’t like them at all. He quickly walked over to his horse, swung into the saddle and took off.
I should have killed him, Preacher thought, on his belly about two hundred yards from where he’d waylaid the four men. That Van Eaton is one cold hombre. He sure wouldn’t give a second thought to killin’ me.
But Preacher still clung to the rapidly fading hope that the men would give up this foolishness and let him be. Deep within him, however, he knew they would not. That sooner or later, he was going to have to start killing them on sight. The problem was, he didn’t want to kill these men. Well ... maybe Bones and Van Eaton. The world wouldn’t miss them at all. These noblemen, now, that was something else. Preacher figured them to be nothin’ more than just spoiled rich boys who’d suddenly got all growed up without the maturity that came with bein’ an adult man. And he hadn’t meant to hit that man with the rattlesnake. Problem was, when you start flingin’ rattlesnakes about, you got to be careful, ’cause they can whip that head around and give you a fearsome bite. That knowledge sort of threw Preacher’s aim off some. It wasn’t that he was feelin’ bad about Brown, ’cause he wasn’t. After all, the man had been out lookin’ to kill him.
Preacher looked carefully around him, then rose up and began trailing Van Eaton. Which wasn’t a big deal. Any ten-year-old Injun boy could have done that with one eye closed. Van Eaton did not know this country and that would have been evident to anyone with any knowledge of the land. From all the smoke from cook fires he’d seen plumin’ up into the air, Preacher had a pretty good idea where Bones had chosen to camp. He’d try one more time to warn these men off, to stop this foolishness. If they didn’t heed his warnings, then Preacher reckoned, he’d just have to get nasty about this thing.
* * *
Jon Louviere’s jaw was swollen up something frightful. He could just barely speak. Which came as a great relief to most of Bones’s gang. Burton Sullivan sat gingerly on a pillow in front of a roaring fire, a blanket wrapped around him. The long and numerous thorns had been plucked from Sullivan’s butt, his skin had lost its blue color from the icy waters, and he had stopped shaking. Both Louviere and Sullivan had been thoroughly humiliated by what had taken place. But their eyes shone wildly and silently spoke volumes of revenge.
Tatman was not badly injured, the ball punching a hole in the fleshy part of his left shoulder and passing through without doing any major damage, except to his pride. All during the cleaning out of the wound, he had cussed and spoke of dire consequences should he and Preacher ever meet again. Bones sat with his back to a large rock and listened to it all with a disgusted look on his face. It wasn’t that any of the men lacked courage, for he knew that those who’d stuck with him thus far had more than their share of that. He was just sick of Preacher making fools of them all. Playing with them like this was some sort of kid’s game.
Problem was, Bones didn’t have a clue as to how to bring the hunt to a conclusion. He was going to use the boy, somehow get him away from Preacher and use the brat as leverage. But with the boy in the protective hands of the Utes, that was out. No one in their right mind would attack an entire Ute village; not with as few men as Bones had, anyway.
And to make matters even worse, Dark Hand had told the gang, with no small amount of satisfaction in his voice and smugness on his face, that the Indians were watching it all, spying on them. Ute and Cheyenne for sure, and probably Arapaho, too, and were making up dances and telling stories about
how foolishly this large band of white men were behaving. Now Preacher was out-foxing them all and making them look stupid. That really rankled both Bones and Van Eaton. A bunch of filthy ignorant savages making light of them all.
Bones watched as Van Eaton rode back in and stripped the saddle off his horse and rubbed the animal down. No matter how evil the men were, they knew to take good care of their horses. Horses were life in this country.
“Any sign of Preacher?” Bones asked, after Van Eaton had poured coffee and walked over to squat beside him.
“No. But I shore felt his eyes on me. I ’spect he followed me here.”
“Well, if that’s the case, we best get ready for more fun and games from him. Make sure the guard is doubled and changed ever’ two hours so’s they’ll stay fresh.”
“Will do.”
“Did you get the money from Brown?”
“Shore did. I stashed it in my gear.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Turrible sight. All swole up like nothin’ I ever seen afore.” He shuddered. “I seen that big rattler, too. Damned if I’d pick that big ugly thing up alive and fling it at anybody. Personal, I think Preacher’s ’bout half crazy. I was tole a lot of these mountain men is off the bean somewhat.”
“I can believe it. This country would drive a body loony. What are you grinnin’ about?”
“Thinkin’ ’bout his majesty over yonder rollin’ butt over boots down that hill and landin’ in them briars. I’d a give a pretty penny to seen that.”
He and Bones started snickering at the thought and had to cover their mouths so the others would not hear. Van Eaton sobered after a moment and said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Bones. I ain’t lookin’ forward to the night.”
“Neither am I,” Bones whispered. “But just maybe Preacher feels he done enough for one day.”
“I hope so. I ain’t had a good nights’ sleep in I cain’t ’member when.”
He wasn’t going to get much sleep that night, either, for Preacher had found the camp and was planning his mischief with a grin on his face.
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