CHAPTER 24

Preacher didn’t know whether to cuss or feel relieved. He had told Hawk to take Chessie and Oliver and get out of the badlands as fast as they could. He supposed it was barely possible that Dog had come back to the outcasts’ camp on his own, but in his gut, Preacher didn’t believe that at all.

Hawk was somewhere nearby, waiting for an opportunity to rescue him, and there was a good chance Chessie and Oliver were with him.

During their war against the Blackfeet, Preacher had seen plenty of evidence of how stealthy and dangerous Hawk could be. And Hawk had heard all those stories about how his father had slipped into Blackfoot camps and slit throats without being discovered. The youngster probably had something similar in mind tonight, Preacher thought.

But the outcasts were even more crazed and deadly than the Blackfeet. If Hawk were to be captured, he and Preacher were probably doomed, and that meant Chessie and Oliver were doomed as well, because the two of them would never be able to make it out of the badlands on their own.

So everything was up to Hawk now. Preacher pretended to be asleep, because he wanted the outcasts to think he was no longer a threat of any kind. That way more of them would doze off, and the ones who remained awake might not be as alert.

The way Preacher’s head drooped forward, his thick, dark hair hung down and partially concealed his eyes. He was able to leave them open slightly, just enough for him to see the two men with lances, who were watching him. They leaned on their weapons, and he could tell that lassitude was stealing over them. They were still awake, but they weren’t as focused on him as they had been at first.

It took every bit of his self-control not to react at all when he felt something tug at the rawhide strips binding his wrists. The movement was faint but persistent. Someone was using a knife to cut through those bonds. Had to be Hawk, he thought.

The boy was going to turn him loose so they could fight side by side. That wasn’t a bad idea. Preacher’s hands were a little numb from being tied so tightly. He began to flex his fingers in an attempt to get more feeling back into them. The rawhide around his wrists would still be just as tight, because Hawk was cutting the strip that ran between them, but at least his arms would be free. He would force his hands to work if it meant getting hold of a weapon again.

The rawhide parted. Preacher’s arms sagged slightly, but not enough for his guards to notice. He kept them pulled back so the creatures wouldn’t realize what had just happened. A moment later he felt the same sort of tugging on the rawhide around his ankles and knew Hawk was cutting through those bonds as well.

Then he got a shock. Something moved behind the two guards. A dark shape rose, seemingly out of the ground itself, and hands suddenly shot out and gripped their necks. A dull thud sounded as their skulls clunked together. The guards dropped their lances, which clattered against the ground and made enough noise to cause Preacher to wince. The guards slumped down, unconscious, and they would never come to because the shadowy figure bent over them had slashed their throats with two swift moves.

Hawk. Preacher recognized his son now. But if Hawk had just killed the two guards, who was setting him free?

The bonds holding his legs to the rock came loose, and a second later a familiar voice whispered, “Here,” as the handle of the knife that had accomplished that task was pressed into the mountain man’s hand. The voice belonged to Chessie Dayton, even though Preacher had a hard time believing the girl was capable of pulling off such a dangerous job.

He didn’t doubt the evidence of his own ears, though—or the welcome feel of the knife’s bone handle in his fist.

Hawk faded back into the shadows, which made Preacher believe the young warrior’s plan was just starting. He stayed where he was, pretending to still be tied to the rock, just in case any of the other outcasts woke up enough to glance toward him. The two men Hawk had killed looked like they were sleeping, and the faint noises of their deaths didn’t seem to have aroused any of the others.

Minutes crept past with maddening slowness. Preacher didn’t know if Chessie was still there behind the rock to which he was tied or if she had slipped away. Nor did he know where Hawk and Oliver were or what they were doing.

Then he heard an unmistakable sound he had heard hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times in the past: the fluttering whisper of an arrow flying through the air. It was followed instantly by a soft thud. Preacher looked in that direction and by the fading light of the fire saw a shaft sticking up from the back of a sleeping outcast.

The man wasn’t sleeping anymore, however. Preacher could tell from the arrow’s location that it had pierced the creature’s heart, killing him in his sleep.

Another arrow flew and a second outcast died without ever knowing what had hit him. What Hawk was doing would be discovered eventually, but clearly he intended to cut down the odds as much as possible before that happened. A grim smile tugged at the mountain man’s mouth as he watched four more of the outcasts meet their fate. Hawk’s aim was lethal.

But then one of the arrows striking home was enough to wake a nearby sleeper. That man pushed himself up a little, gazed around, and then stiffened as he spotted the arrow protruding from the chest of a man a few yards away. He leaped to his feet and opened his mouth to yell.

Before he could say anything, his head seemed to explode as a chunk of rock heaved from the clifftop struck it. The rock made quite a racket as it fell to the ground next to the collapsing body. That was one hell of a good toss, Preacher thought as he stepped away from the rock where he’d been tied. Several of the outcasts were awake and starting to scramble to their feet now, so the time for stealth was over.

More rocks plummeted down from the cliff closest to the fire. Oliver must have gathered quite a supply of them while Chessie was sneaking into the camp to free Preacher. Most of the falling stones missed, of course, but enough of them found their targets to crush more skulls and break more bones. The outcasts ran around madly, screeching in terror as death rained down on them seemingly from the heavens.

Death moved swiftly among them on the ground, too. Preacher darted here and there, cutting throats and plunging the knife into the hearts of his enemies. Most of them never saw him coming. They were too disoriented by the unexpected attack from above.

Then someone barreled into Preacher from the side, knocking him off his feet. He rolled and came back up just in time to duck as the leader of the outcasts swung a tomahawk at his head. The man’s face was more twisted with insane hatred than ever.

Preacher swung the knife at the man’s arm, hoping to cut him and make him drop the tomahawk. The outcast leaped back, though, avoiding the blade. He snarled, “Kill you now! Kill you all!”

“Come on and try, you son of a bitch,” Preacher said. He wasn’t completely steady because his feet were still a little numb, but he wasn’t going to let the outcast leader see that.

The man lunged at him, bringing the tomahawk up and slashing downward with blinding speed. The blow would have cleaved Preacher’s skull open if it had landed. Preacher avoided it with a neat twist and struck quickly himself. The knife raked across the outcast’s ribs on the left side. The man didn’t make a sound of pain or even seem to notice the wound as he howled, “Kill!” in the Cheyenne tongue and whirled to swing the tomahawk again.

Preacher crouched and kicked out. The heel of his boot caught the outcast on the left thigh. He’d aimed to shatter the man’s kneecap but the kick missed by inches. Even so, the impact was enough to make the creature stagger back a couple of steps. He flung his arms out to keep his balance, and that left him open for a split second.

Preacher’s arm whipped back and forward. The knife flew true. Propelled by the mountain man’s wiry strength, the blade buried itself to the hilt in the outcast’s chest. The man staggered again.

But he didn’t go down. How was that possible? Preacher wondered as he watched the man right himself and stumble forward. His heart should have stopped pumping by now. He ought to be dead.

Maybe he didn’t have a heart. Maybe he ran on pure madness and hate. Something was sure as hell driving him as he snarled again and lifted the tomahawk.

Preacher caught the outcast’s right wrist with his left hand, stopped the tomahawk as it descended. At the same time, Preacher reached out with his right, grasped the knife’s bone handle, and ripped it free. He plunged it into the outcast’s chest again, then a third and fourth time. Blood welled from the man’s mouth and ran down over his chin. He laughed, spraying gore into Preacher’s face. Preacher held fast to the man’s wrist, keeping the tomahawk away from him, as he stabbed the outcast again and again, the blade flashing back and forth.

Finally a spasm went through the leader’s body. His hand opened involuntarily and the tomahawk fell from his fingers. Preacher hung on to that wrist anyway as he changed his grip on the knife, drove the blade into the right side of the outcast’s neck, and ripped it to the left, opening up a gaping wound from which crimson flooded, mixing with the crushed sandstone on the man’s body to form a gruesome red mud. Preacher let go of him, put that hand on the man’s ruined chest, and gave him a shove. The outcasts’ head man went over backward and landed with his arms and legs flung out in the limp sprawl of death.

Preacher had had his hands so full with the battle against the leader that he hadn’t been able to tell what was going on around them. He had been vaguely aware of hearing some gunshots. Now when he looked around he saw bodies scattered on all sides of the dying fire. A figure ran toward him and he reached down to grab the fallen tomahawk from the ground before he heard Chessie exclaim, “Preacher! It’s me!”

He wouldn’t have guessed that. She was nude, or next thing to it, with only some scraps of cloth wrapped around her hips and chest. Those makeshift garments, along with all of her skin that was on display, had been coated with the crimson powder from the sandstone. That was how she had been able to crawl up behind the rock and cut him loose, he realized. Like the outcasts, she had blended into her surroundings.

“We need to go,” she went on as she reached out and grabbed his left hand.

He knew she was right. Chaos gripped the outcasts’ camp right now, and quite a few of them had been killed in the attack. But there were still a lot of them alive, and sooner or later they would come to their senses and stop running around like chickens with their heads wrung off.

When that happened, they would look to start killing again.

“Come on,” Preacher said as he ran toward the path that led out of this sinkhole. He held on to Chessie’s hand, and she did an admirable job of keeping up with him, even though it had to hurt running on the rocky ground with her bare feet. They left the tumult behind them and vanished into the shadows.