Preacher's Frenzy

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “And it sounds like they’re fightin’ a war,” Preacher said. “We can’t wait around for it to get any lighter.”

  “I know. We can see well enough.” Long Sam grabbed his horse’s reins. “Somebody give me a hand, blast it!”

  One of the men lifted Long Sam so he could scramble into the saddle. The rest of them swung up onto their mounts. With Long Sam leading the way, they galloped off toward the sound of the guns.

  The sky continued to brighten as the shots grew louder. By the time Preacher and his companions were close to the Osborne plantation, a few streaks of gold had begun to appear in the heavens to the east. The sun would rise in another half hour.

  In the meantime, there was enough light for the men to see Preacher when he held up a hand and signaled for them to stop. He said, “Sounds like we’re within a quarter mile or so. I’m gonna scout ahead on foot with Chimney and Long Sam. The rest of you fellas stay here. Tyler, you’re in charge again.”

  “All right, Preacher,” Tyler replied with a nod. His face was haggard. Maybe it was just the gray light that made it look like that, but Preacher didn’t think so. The youngster needed to hang on for a little while longer, and then, with any luck, this whole affair would be over.

  Chimney started to help Long Sam down from his horse, but the dwarf swung a leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground, staggering a little as he landed. “I can manage that part of it,” he snapped.

  “Don’t get touchy,” Chimney told him. “I was just tryin’ to help. Didn’t mean no offense.”

  “Come on, you two,” Preacher said, impatient to have a look at the situation. Guns were still going off. That was good, the mountain man told himself, because it meant the forces led by Jabez Sampson and Abner Rowland hadn’t taken over the plantation yet. If they had, the early morning air would be quiet.

  Other than maybe some screaming as those two varmints indulged their taste for torture.

  Preacher, Chimney, and Long Sam stole forward through the shadows that still clustered beneath moss-draped cypresses. They came to a lane that turned off and ran between two rows of pine trees. At the far end of it, three hundred yards away, the plantation house with its white-columned portico was dimly visible.

  Flashes of muzzle flame spurted from several of the house’s windows and were answered by shots from the trees and other places of concealment around the front of the house. From where Preacher was, he couldn’t tell if the house was completely surrounded, but from what he could see, that seemed possible.

  “That swamp you talked about,” he said to Long Sam, “how close does it come to the house?”

  “It’s maybe five hundred yards away, around on the other side. The bayou that runs through it comes even closer, though. It runs right behind the house.” A note of excitement came into Long Sam’s voice. “Are you thinking we could sneak up on them that way?”

  “Not all of us. But I reckon I could. If you fellas gave me time to get into the house, I could have Simone’s men ready to charge out and counterattack that bunch at the same time as you’re hittin’ from behind. We’d have ’em caught between us.”

  “That could work, all right. But Sampson’s liable to have men behind the house, too.”

  “I’d have to deal with ’em,” Preacher said.

  Chimney put in, “That could wind up bein’ pretty bad odds.”

  “I’ve had the odds stacked against me before. I’m willin’ to risk it.”

  Long Sam asked, “How are you going to find your way through the swamp?”

  “One wilderness is pretty much like another, I reckon. I’ll just steer toward the shootin’ and try not to step on a gator.”

  * * *

  Preacher, Chimney, and Long Sam returned to the others, and Preacher explained the plan to them.

  “You shouldn’t be going alone,” Tyler objected.

  “I’ve had a lot of experience at slippin’ up on fellas.” Preacher didn’t take the time to tell them about all his deadly nocturnal visits to various Blackfoot camps. “I’m gonna have to move fast and quiet, and I can do that best by myself.”

  “How long you reckon it’ll take you to get in position?” Chimney asked.

  Preacher considered the question. “Give me until half an hour after sunup. I ought to have made it into the house by then.”

  Long Sam gave him some rough directions to follow, but the dwarf couldn’t be too specific. He didn’t know the terrain all that well, either. Just had a general idea of the lay of the land. Preacher would have to rely a great deal on his instincts, but they had never let him down so far and he didn’t expect them to now.

  He checked the loads in his pistols, then said his farewells and loped away, leaving his horse with the others. He would circle through the swamp and make his approach to the plantation house on foot. For a moment, he wished that Dog was with him. The big cur was an invaluable ally in a fight. Dog was back in St. Louis, though, safe at Patterson’s livery stable.

  Preacher followed the trail back the way they had come, and after a while, he cut off through the trees to his right. The shadows instantly closed in around him. Strands of moss hanging from the branches over his head brushed against his face as he moved along.

  After a few minutes of making his way through the trees, a particularly thick and heavy strand of the moss came loose and fell onto his shoulder. At least, that was what he thought at first. But then it continued to writhe around, and Preacher realized with a surge of horror that a snake had dropped from a tree limb as he passed under it. He doubted if it was a deliberate move on the snake’s part, but that didn’t really matter.

  He jerked his shoulder, reached across his body with his other hand, and caught hold of the scaly body. In the dim light, he saw the snake’s mouth open wide with fangs ready to embed themselves in his flesh. A vicious rattling sound told him the snake was deadly.

  By a stroke of luck, he had caught hold of the snake only a short distance behind its head. It couldn’t whip its body around and bite him on the arm. He pulled his knife with his other hand and with a swift stroke of the blade beheaded the blasted thing. The jaws were still trying to bite as the head fell to the ground at his feet. With a grimace of revulsion, he kicked it away. The rattles at the other end of the part he still held buzzed faintly and then fell silent. Preacher flung the snake’s body away.

  Preacher didn’t really hate any of the Good Lord’s creatures, but if he was going to, snakes would be high on his list.

  The mountain man wiped the snake’s blood off on his trousers, sheathed the knife, and moved on. He was more careful as he brushed the moss aside, and he watched where he put his feet, too, remembering what Long Sam had said about tripping over an alligator.

  The trees, which crowded close together alongside the trail, began to spread out more, and the ground became softer under Preacher’s feet. The rank smell of rotting vegetation grew stronger. Preacher hadn’t spent much time in swamps, but he knew that smell and didn’t care for it. One of his feet sank into water and mud. He withdrew it carefully and searched for more solid ground for his next step.

  Having to search for a good path slowed him down. The light around him grew brighter, telling him that the sun was up, but it had a green, unearthly tinge because of the trees. He circled around pools of water that were a sickly black in the strange illumination.

  He saw other snakes but avoided them. Insects buzzed around his face and came right back no matter how often he batted them away. Even early in the day, heat hung in the air like a physical thing. He missed the cool, clean air of the mountains.

  After traveling through the swamp for what seemed like a longer time than it really was, he came to the edge of a stream that flowed sluggishly from his left to right. That was the bayou Long Sam had told him about, the one that ran behind Colonel Osborne’s plantation house. As Preacher stood on the bank, he listened to the gunshots coming from that direction. They were more sporadic as the siege entered another lull. />
  He hoped that Simone was all right. For one thing, he wanted to see her face when she first laid eyes on him again. She probably wouldn’t know who to be more scared of, him or Sampson and Rowland. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but she wouldn’t know that.

  Preacher looked closely at the water in the bayou, searching for any suspicious “logs.” He had heard that sometimes alligators would plunge right out of a stream if they spotted potential prey on the bank, and the critters moved a lot faster than most people gave them credit for. Not seeing anything that appeared dangerous, he started along the bank to his right.

  Something black wiggled through the water. A cottonmouth snake, Preacher decided. They would chase a fella, too, but this one stayed in the bayou. He heard a splash, and when he looked, he saw a turtle swimming. Birds flitted around in the trees. Swamps might smell like they were full of death—and in many ways, they were—but they were full of life, too, right down to huge, colorful flowers that began to open as the light grew stronger and a new day began.

  Preacher heard a rustling ahead of him and paused again. A man stepped out from behind a tree fifteen feet away. He had a rifle tucked under his left arm and was tying a rope belt around his waist, giving Preacher a pretty good idea what he’d been doing behind that tree.

  The man came to a sudden stop when he spotted the mountain man and exclaimed, “Who in blazes are you?”

  Preacher thought fast. He stepped forward and thrust his jaw out belligerently. “Who in blazes are you? You ain’t one of Cap’n Sampson’s men. I’d recognize you if you were one of us!”

  He knew the man hadn’t been on the Calypso. Preacher figured he was one Sampson and Rowland had recruited when they got back to New Orleans.

  Tall and rawboned, with a thatch of yellow hair under a pushed-back hat, the man finished tying the rope belt and said, “I am so workin’ for Sampson.”

  Preacher strode forward, squinting. “Let me take a better look at you. It’s hard to see in this light. It’s so blamed murky.”

  The man, who obviously wasn’t too bright, wasn’t suspicious. As soon as Preacher was within reach, he launched a right-hand punch that crashed into the stranger’s jaw. The blow landed cleanly with enough power to jerk the man’s head to the side and buckle his knees. Preacher caught the rifle as the man dropped it and collapsed.

  The man wound up lying facedown. Preacher took the rope belt off him and cut it in half, using one length to tie the man’s hands together behind his back, the other to bind his ankles. Spotting a bandana tucked into the man’s pocket, Preacher pulled it out and crammed it into his mouth. Satisfied that the man wouldn’t be a problem for a while, Preacher left him there.

  He hoped some snake wouldn’t come along and sink its fangs into the fellow—but when you signed on with murderous, no-good varmints like Sampson and Rowland, you sort of deserved whatever happened to you.

  Preacher hurried along the bank, taking the man’s rifle with him. The increase of light in the swamp was so gradual that it was impossible for him to tell how high the sun was. Enough time had gone by that it seemed like Chimney, Long Sam, Tyler, and the others would be making their move against the enemy soon, and Preacher had to be ready to take advantage of it.

  That was what he was thinking when the water suddenly stirred to his left, ripples spreading, and then exploded with no more warning than that. He caught a glimpse of a rough, scaly hide and long, gaping jaws filled with teeth as he dropped the rifle and leaped for his very life.

  CHAPTER 43

  After battling the gator and killing the beast, Preacher found himself looking up into the ugly, grinning face of Abner Rowland. Keeping the pistol trained on Preacher he said, “It’s a good thing I came back here to check on Fitzgerald. Otherwise you might’ve been able to sneak up on us. What in the world are you doin’ here?”

  Preacher shook his head to get his wet hair out of his eyes. “Figured you’d know that. I came to kill you.”

  “And help Simon LeCarde? He tried to send you away to your death, you fool!” Rowland toyed with the pistol’s trigger. “Of course, you’re fixin’ to die anyway, ’cause I’m gonna blow your brains out—”

  “Not if that gator eats you first, you won’t,” Preacher said.

  Rowland frowned. “You don’t think you can fool me with an old trick like that, do you? I watched you kill that gator. I was sort of hoping he’d rip you to pieces, but then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of shootin’ you, so I suppose it worked out all right.”

  “Well, I don’t know that much about gators,” Preacher drawled with astounding self-possession for a man with a gun stuck in his face, “but I reckon they must travel in pairs, because there’s sure enough one comin’ up behind you right now.”

  Rowland’s grin disappeared as he snarled, “I’m tired of this. Time for you to die, you—”

  The alligator behind him opened its mouth wide and let out a loud, throaty, bloodcurdling bellow as it lunged forward.

  Rowland yelled in sudden terror and leaped into the air, twisting so he could look back over his shoulder and see the giant reptile charging at him. As he landed, he brought the pistol around and fired. Preacher didn’t know if the ball struck the gator, but the boom and the gush of powder smoke must have disoriented the beast. It slewed to a stop a few yards short of Rowland and thrashed its tail.

  Preacher surged up on hands and knees and then powered to his feet. He rammed his shoulder into Rowland from behind and drove the tattooed man forward. Taken by surprise, Rowland couldn’t keep his balance. He tripped and fell—right on top of the gator.

  Howling, Rowland flailed and flopped and fought desperately to get away from the predator. The alligator twisted its head around and the gaping jaws flashed toward Rowland’s leg. He jerked it out of the way just in time. The gator’s teeth snapped together on empty air. Rowland rolled across the muddy grass with the gator in pursuit.

  Standing nearby, watching the battle between man and beast, Preacher thought about leaving Rowland to deal with the gator, but that would mean having a deadly enemy at his back if Rowland somehow survived. Preacher didn’t want that. He might have been tempted to pull out his pistols and shoot both of them, but he knew the weapons wouldn’t fire after that dunk in the bayou. They would have to be cleaned, dried, and reloaded before they were any use again.

  Rowland ran toward the nearest cypress tree. He leaped up, caught hold of a mossy branch, and lifted his feet just as the alligator snapped at him again. He tried to kick his legs high enough to get them over the branch so he could pull himself higher, but he was too burly and awkward for that. All he could do was hang on for dear life and keep jerking his feet and legs out of the creature’s reach as it snapped at him.

  Preacher figured it was only a matter of time before the gator tired of the game and started looking around for different prey—namely, him. He still didn’t want to leave Rowland alive and thought about throwing his knife at the man, but as he’d said on the Calypso, he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

  Of course, if he threw some branches at Rowland and caused him to lose his grip and fall, it would be the gator who did the actual killing, not him.

  Muttering a curse, Preacher turned and ran along the bank toward the plantation house. Rowland would just have to take his chances. Preacher figured the odds favored the gator.

  Behind him, Rowland roared curses. After a minute or so, the obscenities stopped abruptly. Preacher didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t slow down or look back.

  The ground firmed up underneath him as the bayou reached the edge of the swamp and emerged into a broad, open grassy stretch dotted with pine trees. Two men with rifles were behind those trees, one to his right, the other to his left. The man to his left was drawing a bead on the house and getting ready to fire again. The one on the right was reloading.

  The man concentrated so much on his task that he didn’t lift his head to look at Preacher, thinking he was either Rowland or Fitzgerald r
eturning from the swamp. Realizing his mistake too late, the man brought his rifle up as Preacher charged toward him, knife in hand.

  The man didn’t have a chance. Preacher drove the knife into his chest, penetrating all the way to the heart. The man’s eyes opened wide with pain and shock. His face only inches away, Preacher recognized him as one of the crewmen from the Calypso who had been loyal to Jabez Sampson.

  As the man died, Preacher grabbed the freshly loaded rifle.

  The other attacker had noticed what was going on and yelled, “Hey!” Preacher spun toward him as the man dropped his empty rifle and clawed at a pistol in his waistband.

  Smoothly, Preacher lifted the first man’s rifle to his shoulders, cocked it, and fired without ever seeming to pause to aim. The heavy ball smashed into the man’s chest and knocked him back against the rough-barked trunk of the pine behind him. He hung there for a second, then pitched forward and didn’t move.

  Preacher tossed the rifle aside. He took pistols from both men he’d killed and headed for the plantation house at a fast lope. He hoped somebody in there would recognize him. Otherwise the defenders were liable to shoot him, thinking he was one of Sampson’s men.

  Before he could reach the big white house, a fresh wave of gunfire came from the front. Too many guns were going off for it to be just Sampson’s bunch firing. Long Sam, Chimney, Tyler, and the others had launched their attack—and Preacher, having been slowed down by his battles with the first alligator and then Abner Rowland, was too late to rally the defenders and mount his part of the assault.

  He veered to his right and headed for the front of the house. He could still take Sampson and the rest of the attackers by surprise, even though he was just one man.

  He wouldn’t be the only counterattacker, though. As he rounded the house, he saw Balthazar Crowe emerge from the house and charge toward the trees along the lane. He had a huge pistol in each hand. Spotting Preacher from the corner of his eye, he slowed abruptly and swung those pocket blunderbusses toward the mountain man.