What did he have to lose?
“You’d better not shoot me,” he said. “You’ll be mighty sorry if you do.”
“I don’t think so,” Garity responded. “Why in the hell would you say that?”
“Because if you kill me,” Preacher said, “the spirit of my brother the bear is gonna come after you and tear you apart.”
Garity and the outlaws stared at him. “Your brother the bear?” Garity repeated. “What in blazes are you talkin’ about?”
“It’s true,” Preacher insisted. “Me and the grizzly bear are brothers. He’s my totem animal, as the Injuns would say. He follows me around and protects me.”
“And you had the gall to call me loco! That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“If you don’t believe me, go ahead and shoot me,” Preacher said calmly. “The spirit bear won’t just get you, though.” He raised his voice as he looked around at the other outlaws and went on, “He’ll come in here and kill all the rest of your men, too. Rip ’em into little pieces, that’s what he’ll do. If you don’t believe me, ask them.” He jerked his head toward Casey and Roland and the other prisoners. “They’ve all seen it with their own eyes.”
“It’s true,” Casey said quickly. “The biggest bear I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s terribly ferocious, and . . . and it follows Preacher around!”
She wasn’t stretching the truth by much, Preacher thought. The bear had certainly seemed to be following him for hundreds of miles.
“I saw it,” Roland put in. “The thing is a monster, and you can’t kill it. Before we knew about its connection to Preacher, we shot it again and again, and it just kept coming. It . . . it killed my father.”
Roland’s voice broke, and there was no doubting his sincerity. He and Casey had caught on so quickly to what Preacher was doing. Several of the bullwhackers chimed in as well, telling Garity how fierce and massive the beast was.
They probably thought Preacher was stalling for time, clinging to life any way he could for as long as he could, just as he had done all those years ago when the Blackfeet took him prisoner and planned to burn him at the stake.
But there was a big difference. Preacher was stalling, sure, but he was also waiting to see if his crazy hunch might be true. No reason why it shouldn’t be, he told himself. The oxen were nervous . . . and Garity’s men were starting to get that way, too. He saw the furtive, worried looks they exchanged with each other.
“There’s only one way you can kill me and keep the spirit bear from seekin’ revenge,” Preacher said.
“Yeah? How’s that?” Garity asked with a sneer.
“In a fair fight. Turn me loose and you and me can settle this man to man, Garity. If I die fightin’, it’ll be an honorable death and the ghost bear won’t have to avenge me.”
Garity shook his head. “That ain’t gonna happen.”
One of his men spoke up. “Why not, Garity? You said yourself that Preacher’s half dead. Hell, you can finish him off easy.”
The other men nodded in agreement.
“Damn it, have you forgot who’s givin’ the orders here?” Garity snapped at them.
“Their lives are ridin’ on it, too,” Preacher said. “The ghost bear will kill ’em all.”
“Shut the hell up about some stupid ghost bear!” Garity roared. “There ain’t no such thing!”
“Then go ahead and shoot me,” Preacher challenged. “See what happens.”
Garity glowered at him for a long moment, then muttered, “Son of a bitch.” He drew the knife at his belt and used it to point at two of his men. “Point your rifles at him while I’m cuttin’ him loose. If he tries anything funny, go ahead and kill him.”
“You’re gonna fight him, Garity?” one of the outlaws asked.
“No, I’m gonna cut him loose and then kill him,” Garity said. “It ain’t gonna last long enough to call a real fight.”
They would see about that, Preacher thought.
Garity moved closer to him and started sawing on the ropes that held him to the wagon wheel. After a moment, the ropes parted. Without them to hold him up, Preacher’s strength deserted him momentarily and he fell to his knees.
Garity laughed. “See what I mean?” he told his men. “What’s about to happen ain’t a fight at all. It’s gonna be pure slaughter.”
With his hands tied behind his back, Preacher struggled to his feet. He dragged a couple deep breaths into his lungs, turned sideways, and held his bound hands away from him.
“Finish it, Garity,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll finish it, all right,” Garity said meaningfully. He moved behind Preacher and roughly sliced the bonds around the mountain man’s wrists, leaving a stinging cut on Preacher’s arm in the process. Preacher pulled his hands in front of him. They were like chunks of dead meat. He shook them and flexed them. A million tiny knives pricked him as the blood began to flow again, but it was welcome torture. It meant that he would be able to use his hands again.
“All right,” Garity said. He held out a hand to one of his men. “Gimme your knife.” The man did so, and Garity threw the knife into the ground at Preacher’s feet. The handle quivered a little as the weapon stood upright. “Whenever you’re ready, Preacher,” Garity said. “Just don’t take all night about it. I’m gettin’ a mite anxious to carve you into little pieces.”
Preacher looked down at the knife, then up at Garity. “I don’t think I can do it,” he said. “I’m too beat up. I can’t take you on.”
“I knew it,” Garity sneered. “What a damn coward.”
“But I got a substitute,” Preacher went on. “Somebody you can fight instead of me.”
“Oh? Who’s that?” Mockingly, Garity waved a hand at Casey. “The whore? Or that boy?” He pointed at Roland.
“Nope,” said Preacher. “Him.”
He nodded toward the far side of the circle, where the grizzly that had just climbed over a wagon tongue reared up to its full height and let out a soul-shattering roar.
CHAPTER 23
The oxen began to scatter, moving as fast as the massive brutes could move, as the bear charged through them and headed across the circle toward the fire and the humans gathered around it. The outlaws yelled in fear as they swung around and started firing toward it. Their pistols and rifles boomed, adding to the terrible racket as the bear continued to bellow out its rage and hate.
Preacher had no doubt it was the same bear, and he was more than halfway convinced the damn thing was some sort of avenging spirit. But it was flesh and blood, too, and as it reached the nearest man, it slapped him aside before he could get out of the way. The man flew through the air and came crashing down on the ground with his head twisted on his neck at an impossible angle.
As Garity watched the bear, Preacher leaped forward and snatched the knife from the ground, intending to plunge the blade into Garity’s back. Sensing the movement Garity twisted aside and slashed at Preacher with the knife he still held.
Preacher jerked back. The tip of Garity’s blade raked across his bare chest, leaving behind a fiery line that oozed blood into the thick dark hair on the mountain man’s chest. Garity was off balance for a second because of the near miss, and Preacher’s knife sliced across his forearm, but not deeply enough to make Garity drop his knife.
Garity howled in pain. “You bastard!” He came at Preacher, slashing wildly back and forth. In the face of the furious assault, Preacher had to give ground.
He was light-headed from exhaustion, hunger—it had been well over twenty-four hours since he’d had anything to eat—and the effects of being knocked out twice in that same period of time. He needed a few thick steaks, a jug of whiskey, and some real sleep.
Instead he had a vicious madman coming at him with a knife. Preacher’s back bumped against the wagon wheel where he had been tied. He couldn’t retreat any further. Garity thrust his knife at Preacher, who twisted aside and barely avoided the blade. Garity’s arm went through the gap between tw
o of the wheel’s spokes. Preacher reached behind the wheel, grabbed Garity’s wrist, and yanked it down as hard as he could. Trapped, the bones in Garity’s forearm snapped with a crack like a tree branch breaking. He screamed and slammed a punch to Preacher’s head with his left fist.
The blow knocked Preacher away from the wagon wheel. He watched as the bear lunged back and forth among Garity’s men, mauling them. The claws dug so deep into one man’s neck that his head was torn right off his shoulders. His body stumbled around for a second with blood spouting from the ragged stump of a neck before it collapsed. The head rolled into the fire and started to burn.
Cradling his maimed arm against his body, Garity dropped to his knees and fumbled behind the wheel for the knife he had dropped when Preacher broke his arm. He came up with the blade and leaped at Preacher again.
Jerking aside to keep from being gutted, Preacher kicked Garity in the chest and knocked the outlaw underneath the wagon. He would have dragged him out and finished him off, but at that moment, Casey screamed, “Preacher, look out! The bear!”
Preacher wheeled around and saw the bear charging toward him, leaving the bodies of Garity’s men in a scattered shambles behind it. Blood welled from a dozen wounds in the grizzly’s body, but it seemed as fierce and unstoppable as ever.
Far from being a totem animal that wanted to protect Preacher, like in the wild yarn he had spun to stall Garity, the bear was obviously out for Preacher’s blood. The only reason it had torn into the outlaws was because they were between it and the mountain man.
“What the hell did I ever do to you, you son of a bitch?” Preacher yelled.
The bear’s only answer was another earsplitting roar. Preacher dived under a sweeping blow from one of the massive, claw-studded paws. The claws were stained red from all the blood they had shed.
Preacher darted in close to the bear. The knife in his hand flickered in and out. Bear blood dripped crimsonly from the blade. The grizzly lurched after Preacher.
They were well-matched, he thought. Both of them more dead than alive. The bear had to be on its last legs, fueled only by its unshakeable, unfathomable rage.
Preacher wasn’t just fighting for himself. He knew if the bear killed him, it would likely turn on Casey, Roland, and the other prisoners next. Tied to the wagon wheels like they were, they wouldn’t be able to avoid the slashing claws and teeth. The bear would rip them to shreds.
So it had to end at long last. The bear wasn’t going to get away from him. Or, in another way of looking at it, he thought, he wasn’t going to get away from the bear. Whatever grudge the varmint had against him, it was time to settle it.
He wasn’t quick enough to avoid everything the bear threw at him. A glancing blow knocked him off his feet and left a set of claw marks on his side. Preacher rolled as the bear reached for him. Overbalanced for a second, it fell to all fours.
Preacher seized the opportunity. He leaped onto the bear’s back and locked his left arm around its neck. The grizzly reared up again, trying to throw him off, but Preacher hung on desperately.
He had been in that position before, when he was fighting the bear in the dry wash far to the northeast, but he’d had a pistol instead of a knife in his hand. He slammed the blade into the bear’s body again and again and again, trying to drive it as deeply as he could. The bear clawed at the arm around its neck and roared. Preacher roared, too, an inarticulate cry of rage that was as animalistic as any sound the grizzly made. Blood flew in the air, some of it Preacher’s, some of it the bear’s.
Preacher pulled himself higher on the bear’s back and plunged the knife into the side of the creature’s neck. He ripped it free, drove it home again. Blood spurted in a hot flood over his arm. Preacher struck again and again as the bear began to stagger back and forth.
Even in his berserk fury, a small part of Preacher’s brain was rational enough to realize he would be crushed if the bear fell on him when it collapsed. He reached around as far as he could, slammed the knife into the front of the bear’s throat, and then let go, leaving the weapon where it was. He dropped to the ground but lost his footing as he slipped in a puddle of blood. He fell as the bear turned toward him.
The grizzly let out one more roar, but the sound was a lot weaker. Preacher scrambled backward as the bear took a tentative step after him. It pawed futilely at the air as if striking at something only it could see.
Then, like a huge tree that’s rotted at the base, it began to topple forward.
Preacher got out of the way just in time. The bear crashed to earth right beside him, and Preacher would have sworn he felt the ground shake under him. He pushed himself along the ground until he reached one of the wagon wheels. Reaching up, he grasped a spoke and tried to pull himself upright.
Iron will could push a human body only so far, and Preacher’s body, slick with blood and leaking more of the precious stuff with every passing second, had reached its limit. He slid to the ground and fell onto his side. That left him looking directly into the face of the dead bear a few feet away. As he stared at the lifeless eyes, he felt a strange kinship, almost a sadness that the grizzly had reached the end of its trail at last, as someday he inevitably would, too.
“You and me, old son,” Preacher whispered. “We’re . . . a lot alike . . . ain’t neither of us . . . fit for anywhere except . . . the wild places . . .”
The world went away again, and Preacher was sure it was never coming back.
A gentle swaying was the first thing he was aware of. He was rocking back and forth a little as he lay on something soft. A pile of blankets, maybe.
Then he took the time to be surprised that he was still alive.
His eyes opened. He saw something white arching over him. The great vault of heaven? Maybe he wasn’t alive after all. Was he lying on clouds instead of blankets?
No, that wasn’t possible, Preacher decided. A rapscallion like him wasn’t going to wind up in heaven, and even if he did, he wasn’t convinced it would be like the psalm-singers said, floating in the clouds with a bunch of angels in robes who flew around playing harps. Not hardly! For a man like him, heaven would be a beautiful morning in the high country, with a good rifle, a good horse, a good dog . . .
That white thing above him was the canvas cover stretched over the hoops of a big freight wagon, he realized as he forced the crazy thoughts out of his head. He was alive, and he was in the back of a wagon.
Lorenzo leaned over him and said, “I knowed you was too damn stubborn to die. I just knowed it.”
“You . . . old coot,” Preacher whispered. “Where . . .”
“You’re in one of the wagons,” Lorenzo answered, telling Preacher what he had already figured out. “We’re on our way to Santa Fe.”
“How . . . long . . .”
“Were you out? More’n two days. It was three nights ago you killed that ol’ bear. Of course, you ain’t been out cold the whole time. You’d come to ever’ now and then and start to ravin’ about this and that, but this is the first time you’ve made any sense. You was just so beat up and lost so much blood, it took you a while to rest up and start to recuperate. You’re still a long way from bein’ able to get up and dance a jig,” Lorenzo added.
“How did you . . . find us?”
“Well, we sat around them springs for a couple o’ days. The fellas decided you wasn’t comin’ back for us, so we set off on foot along the trail. The gent who was wounded the worst had passed away by then, so we buried him and the rest didn’t want to stay there no more. The hurt ones claimed they was healed up enough to walk, so they did.”
“And you found . . . the wagons?”
“Hard to miss ’em, there was so many damn buzzards circlin’ overhead. Dead bodies ever’where, and folks tied to wagon wheels about to die o’ thirst and hunger and exposure. We got ever’body loose, doctored up them what needed it, and started tryin’ to figure out what to do next. We didn’t have enough bullwhackers to handle all the teams, so we doubled up
on some of ’em. Hitched two wagons together and used two teams to pull ’em, so it’d only take one man. That was Roland’s idea, and so far it’s been working.”
“Roland . . . he’s all right?”
“I’ll go fetch him,” Lorenzo said. “He’ll want to know you’re awake.”
Preacher started to tell the old-timer to wait. He wanted to find out about Casey, and Horse and Dog, too. But Lorenzo had already swung a leg over the tailgate. He dropped out of the wagon and disappeared.
Preacher lay there and waited. There was nothing else he could do. He felt as weak as a day-old kitten. His head was fairly clear, though, and he was grateful for that. With all the punishment he had absorbed, he could have wound up a drooling idiot.
Of course, some might say he wasn’t far from that at his best, he thought wryly.
A few minutes later, Roland climbed into the wagon, followed by Lorenzo. The young man had his left arm in a sling, and Preacher could tell by the bulkiness under his shirt that bandages were wrapped around Roland’s wounded shoulder. He knelt beside Preacher and smiled.
“I’m glad to see you’ve come back to us, Preacher. I was worried that bear had done too much damage to you, on top of everything else.”
“I’ll be . . . fine,” Preacher told him. “Just need to . . . rest up a mite more.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Roland said with a nod. “You’ll be glad to know, too, that your horse and your dog are fine. They came into Garity’s camp looking for you, and we’ve been taking care of them.”
“I’m . . . obliged for that,” Preacher said. Between what Lorenzo and then Roland had told him, he was pretty well up to date on what had happened since he blacked out . . . except for one thing.
“Where’s . . . Casey?” he asked.
The smile vanished from Roland’s face and was replaced with a bleak expression. “We don’t know,” he said grimly. “We never found Garity, either. I think he got away, Preacher . . . and he took Casey with him.”
CHAPTER 24
Preacher's Assault Page 18