“But the bear—”
“The bear’s done for,” Preacher said. “You reckon he’d do that if he didn’t know it was over?”
Lorenzo scratched his jaw. “Well, I dunno. Maybe not. What’re we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna go back to the wagons, and tomorrow we’re headin’ to Santa Fe.”
Preacher might not be a superstitious man, and he knew it was going to bother him to let the bear go after making that promise to Roland Bartlett, but he was beginning to think of the grizzly as a force of nature, just like the tornado that had almost wrecked the caravan earlier in the journey. Some things it was a waste of time to fight. A smart man picked his battles.
And God help him, Preacher was done with that one.
CHAPTER 19
Dog didn’t care much for having the rope tied around him like a sling and being lifted out of the wash by Horse. He whined as he began to rise into the air.
“Up you go,” Preacher told the big cur. Lorenzo waited atop the bank for him.
Preacher had checked Dog for injuries and found some deep scratches where the bear had grabbed him and flung him away. The mountain man had some medicine made from roots and herbs in his saddlebags that would help the injuries. He intended to rub a healthy dollop of the stuff on his left shoulder and arm where the bear had clawed him. That arm was already getting a little stiff.
Lorenzo pulled Dog in, got the rope off him, and tossed it back down to Preacher. “There you go,” he called. “Now get outta that hole in the ground. I don’t like this place. That bear might come back.”
Preacher thought that was unlikely, but he didn’t waste any time getting the rope fastened around him, tucking his rifle under his arm. Horse backed up, taking most of Preacher’s weight as he climbed out of the wash.
“Looks like that varmint got you pretty good,” Lorenzo said as he gestured toward Preacher’s wounded shoulder. “Get that shirt off and we’ll clean it up.”
Using water from their canteens, Lorenzo got the blood washed away. Preacher saw that the scratches were deep enough to be gory and painful. He took the medicinal ointment from his saddlebags and rubbed a handful of the black, foul-smelling stuff on the wounds, then gave Dog the same treatment.
“That’ll help heal up them scratches?” Lorenzo asked.
Preacher nodded. “Injuns been usin’ things like this for hundreds of years. They generally know what they’re doin’.”
“Didn’t you tell me that some of ’em will chant songs and dance around and then claim it gave ’em some sort of magic that’ll stop a rifle ball?”
“Well . . . I never said they got ever’thing right,” Preacher drawled.
He pulled his ripped and bloodstained shirt back on and they mounted up. After taking a good look at the sky and judging how much daylight was left, Preacher said, “Let’s ride along this wash a little farther. I want to see if that bear collapsed and died.”
“You sure we got time?”
“I’m gonna take the time. I made a promise to Roland, and I intend to keep it if I can. I’d like to be able to tell him I saw that beast’s carcass with my own eyes.”
A short distance farther on, the arroyo branched out into a maze of gullies and little canyons. The tracks had petered out as the floor of the wash became rockier, so they couldn’t be sure which way the bear had gone.
Preacher reined in and sighed. “Might as well head back to the springs,” he told Lorenzo. “We don’t have the time to waste lookin’ for that ornery critter. It’d take a couple hours to search all them gullies and canyons.”
“You figure he’s dead or soon will be, anyway, don’t you?” the old-timer asked.
Preacher nodded. “As many times as he’s been shot, as much damage as we’ve done to him, I don’t see how he could survive for much longer. He smelled like he was rottin’ away from the inside out.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s so damn ornery.”
“Could be,” Preacher agreed. He swung Horse’s head around. “Let’s go.”
He wished he was as confident as he had sounded when he answered Lorenzo’s question. The grizzly had to be dying. It simply had to be.
But Preacher sure wished he could have seen the thing’s carcass.
The sun had set but the western sky was still awash with gold and orange light as the two riders approached the springs near the bend of the Cimarron. Preacher had been expecting to spot the wagons up ahead, but so far he hadn’t seen them.
A vague uneasiness began to stir inside him. It was possible Roland had ordered the men to move the wagons to another location, but Preacher had told the young man to stay put at the springs. He couldn’t think of any reason why Roland would have gone against that suggestion . . . unless they were trying to get away from trouble of some sort.
As they drew closer to the springs, Preacher could tell the wagons definitely weren’t there. Lorenzo saw that as well and asked, “Where the hell did they go?”
“I don’t know,” Preacher said, “but I don’t like it. Come on!”
He heeled Horse into a run. The big gray stallion responded instantly, pulling ahead of the mount carrying Lorenzo. Preacher pulled his rifle from its sheath as he galloped toward the springs.
A shot rang out from the scrubby trees along the river. The ball kicked up dust a considerable distance in front of Horse. Preacher was about to veer the stallion in that direction and return the fire when he heard a man’s voice shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s Preacher!”
That was Roland Bartlett, Preacher realized. He headed for the trees, convinced something had gone wrong while he was gone.
By the time he reached the trees with Lorenzo trailing about fifty yards behind him, several men had emerged from their cover and were waiting for him. Preacher recognized them as some of the bullwhackers. They were grim-faced and carried their rifles. One of them had a bloody bandage tied around his arm, and another man sported a similar binding on his thigh. They had been in a fight, no doubt about that.
Roland limped out to meet Preacher as the mountain man swung down from Horse’s back. He had a bandage tied around his right calf. His face was pale with pain.
“What happened here?” Preacher asked. “Where are the wagons?”
“Gone,” Roland replied in a choked voice.
“I can see that, damn it. Who took ’em?” Preacher knew it probably hadn’t been the Comanches. Indians didn’t have any use for wagons or slow-moving oxen.
“It was that man Garity and the other thieves with him. They must have been following us, just waiting for a good chance to jump us again.”
“Garity,” Preacher said. The name left a bad taste in his mouth. “I knew him and his bunch might still be around here, but I figured it was more likely they’d gone on to Santa Fe or wherever the hell else it was they were headed.”
Roland shook his head. “I got a good look at him. It was definitely Garity and his men. We tried to fight them off, but they hit us without any warning and killed several of the men before we knew what was going on. The rest of us were cut off from the wagons and had to retreat into these trees. Some of them kept us pinned down while the others hitched up the teams and got the wagons moving.”
A chill went down Preacher’s back as a thought occurred to him. “What about Casey?” he asked. “Was she hurt in the fightin’?”
“I don’t know,” Roland replied, his voice more tortured than ever. “She was with the wagons. Garity . . . Garity took her with them.”
Preacher went cold all over when he heard those words. Anger boiled up inside him. “What the hell were you doin’?” he demanded. “You were supposed to have guards posted, and you should’ve been with the wagons, not down here by the river !”
“I know,” Roland said, sounding miserable. “But some of the men decided they wanted to wash off, and I thought it would be better if they did that in the river instead of the pool at the springs, and . . . and—”
Preache
r stopped him with a sharp slashing motion of his hand. “That’s enough,” he said coldly. “It was a damn fool thing to do, and just the sort of chance Garity had been waitin’ for, I reckon.”
“I know.” Roland’s voice sounded dull and defeated as he nodded. “It’s my fault.” His head came up. “That’s why I’m going after them. I’m going to get Casey and the wagons back. I want Lorenzo’s horse.”
“And leave me stuck out here?” Lorenzo asked. He snorted. “Not likely.”
“Hold on,” Preacher said. “These horses been travelin’ all day already. They’re in no shape to be rode all night. Anyway, there ain’t much light left. How good are you at trackin’ in the dark?”
Roland grimaced. “I’m not a tracker at all. You know that, Preacher.”
“So you figured I’d go with you, right?”
“I supposed you’d want to help Casey as much as I do.” Anger flared in the young man’s voice as he went on, “Or do you not give a damn about her now that she’s with me?”
“She ain’t with you,” Preacher pointed out. “She’s with Garity. And you’re damn right I want to help her. We can’t do that by rushin’ off, just the two of us.”
Roland glared at him for a moment, then sighed. “You’re right, of course. Garity has at least a dozen men. But what are we going to do?”
Preacher looked at the sky, where the last light of day was fading. “We’ll stay here tonight and pick up their trail in the mornin’,” he said. “Did you at least see which way they were headed when they left?”
“They were following the trail southwest.”
Preacher nodded. “They’re headin’ for Santa Fe. Nobody there will know the wagons and the freight don’t belong to them. They can sell ’em all off and make a killin’, then take the money and light a shuck out of there before anybody figures out the deal was crooked.” Preacher tugged on his earlobe. “Maybe we can go after the varmints tonight after all. When did the raid happen?”
“Around the middle of the day.”
“So they’ve had half a day to get a lead on us,” Preacher mused. “But even on foot, men can move faster than those oxen pullin’ those heavy wagons. We can catch up to ’em before the night’s over.”
Roland shook his head. “Some of the men are hurt too bad to march like that.”
“Then they’ll stay here with a couple men to watch over ’em while the rest of us go after Garity.”
“We’ll be outnumbered.”
“Not for long,” Preacher said.
Lorenzo didn’t like it, but Preacher asked him to stay behind to help guard the wounded men. The old-timer had been in the saddle practically all day and was worn out.
“The same thing is true of you,” Lorenzo pointed out, “and you got clawed by that damn bear, to boot.”
“Yeah, but I’m a heap younger than you,” Preacher responded with a grin.
“You just want me to give up my horse so that young whippersnapper can use it.”
“Roland’s spoilin’ for a fight. We’ll see to it that he gets one.”
Reluctantly, Lorenzo agreed. “Don’t push that horse too hard. It’s already been a long way today.”
Preacher nodded. “We’ll take it as easy as we can. Most of the time we won’t be movin’ any faster than those men can walk.”
In addition to Preacher and Roland, eight men were in the party going after Garity and the rest of the outlaws. Each man was armed with a rifle and a knife, and a couple had pistols as well. It wasn’t much of an army, Preacher thought, but it would have to do.
Starting out, Roland was the only one who rode, since he had an injured leg. Preacher walked alongside him, leading Horse. The other eight men followed behind them. The stars were out and provided enough light for Preacher to follow the well-defined wagon trail.
“What about the bear?” Roland asked after a few minutes. “I saw that you were hurt. You must have found it.”
“We did,” Preacher said. “Dog and me both tangled with the varmint close up, and Lorenzo shot the blasted thing again.”
“So you killed it?”
“Well . . . it was alive the last time we saw it, but as bad hurt as it was, it’s bound to be dead by now.”
“But you’re not sure?” Roland persisted.
Preacher shrugged. “I wish I was.”
He knew logically that the bear couldn’t have survived for much longer after their encounter earlier that day . . . but he had thought that on other occasions, too, he reminded himself.
Ghost bear. Spirit bear. The words forced themselves into his brain. He shoved them right back out. The bear was flesh and blood. He had felt it, smelled it, wrestled with it. Like everything else flesh and blood, it could be killed.
But he had to admit, that particular bear had been damned stubborn about dying.
“I hope Casey’s all right,” Roland said. “I . . . I hate to think about what might be happening—”
“Then don’t,” Preacher said. “Think about what we’re gonna do when we catch up to that bunch.”
“What are we going to do? We can’t just burst into their camp and start shooting. Casey might get hurt, and besides, they outnumber us, like I said before.”
“I plan to do somethin’ about that.”
“What can one man do?”
Preacher smiled in the darkness. “I’ve slipped into and back out of more than one Injun camp, and take my word for it, the Blackfeet and the Sioux and the Comanch’ are a hell of a lot harder to sneak around than those outlaws will be. I plan to find out just where Casey is—maybe even get her out of there before the shootin’ starts.”
“That would be wonderful,” Roland said. “She’s already been through enough in her life.”
“Told you about her life, did she?”
“She told me enough,” Roland snapped. “I don’t care about her past, if that’s what you’re talking about, Preacher. It’s a closed book as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s a good idea,” Preacher said with a curt nod. “I’d keep it that way, if I was you.”
They dropped the subject of Casey, which was just fine with Preacher. He didn’t know how much of the truth she had told Roland about her past, and he didn’t care. That was between the two of them.
Preacher called a halt as the moon rose to let the men and horses rest for a few minutes. Later, around midnight, he estimated, they stopped again. The moon and stars wheeled through their courses in the sky as the party trudged on. Preacher could sense the exhaustion in the men.
Finally, he held up a hand and called softly, “Hold on. We’ll wait here a bit.”
“Don’t we need to keep going?” Roland asked. “Casey’s still up there somewhere. They can’t be too far ahead of us now.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s what I want to find out. You fellas stay here. I’m goin’ ahead to take a look around.” He added, “Don’t budge from this spot until I get back.”
“We won’t,” Roland snapped defensively. He knew their failure to do that at the springs had contributed heavily to the disaster that had befallen them.
Taking Dog with him but leaving the stallion behind, Preacher disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER 20
Time and experience and some good teachers among the Crow and other friendly tribes had given Preacher the ability to move with almost complete silence when he wanted to. He used that ability in the wee hours of the morning since midnight was long past. It was the best time to slip into an enemy camp, when sleep lay heavily on most of them.
Garity and his men were confident of their ability to protect themselves, so they had built a good-sized campfire when they stopped for the night. Preacher spotted the glowing embers of it when he was still several hundred yards away. When his keen eyes saw the orange coals, he stopped to size up the situation.
Now that he knew where to look, he could see the light-colored canvas covers of the wagons. The vehicles had been pulled off the trail a shor
t distance and arranged in a circle. Garity knew enough to do that, anyway.
Preacher moved closer. When he was within a hundred yards of the wagons, he dropped to a knee and put an arm around Dog’s shaggy neck.
“Stay,” he whispered in the big cur’s ear.
Dog whined. He wanted to go with Preacher. The mountain man repeated, “Stay.”
Dog wouldn’t like it, but he would wait there until Preacher either returned or summoned him.
His boot moccasins made no sound on the hard ground as Preacher catfooted toward the wagons. He had left the long-barreled flintlock behind with Dog. It was too awkward to carry around while he was trying to be stealthy. He had his pistols, but if all went as he hoped, he wouldn’t need them.
More important, he had his knife. It was the blade that was going to come in for some work tonight.
Already in a low crouch, he dropped to his knees and then stretched out on his belly to cover the last fifty yards in a crawl. Garity surely had sense enough to have posted some sentries. As he came closer, Preacher caught a whiff of pipe smoke, confirming his hunch. He followed his nose until he spotted a dark shape leaning against one of the wagon wheels.
Grinning to himself in the darkness, Preacher began crawling in a wide circle that would allow him to come up behind the guard. He didn’t get in any hurry. Rushing things in a job like that could get a man killed. Minutes stretched by with Preacher moving only a few inches at a time.
Eventually, he was where he wanted to be: close enough to reach out and touch the guard as he silently rose to his feet. The man was still puffing on his pipe, blissfully unaware that he had only seconds to live. He had no idea what was about to happen until Preacher’s left arm came around him and clamped down on his throat like an iron bar, stifling any sound and making the guard spit out his pipe.
By the time it hit the ground, the cold steel of Preacher’s knife was buried in the man’s back, the tip sliding between the ribs and delving deep to find the heart. The guard jerked a little but didn’t struggle as he died.
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