CHAPTER 26
“Whose idea was it to make you look like one of them red devils?” Preacher asked Chessie as they walked toward the rising sun. The mountain man could already see the low, dark, irregular line in the distance that marked the location of the hills where he had told Edgar Merton, Hoyt Ryker, and the others to wait.
Before Chessie could answer the question, Oliver said, “It was all her idea. Hawk and I tried to talk her out of it, but nothing we could say changed her mind.”
“It just made sense to me,” Chessie said. “I couldn’t sneak up on the guards and . . . and dispose of them the way Hawk did, and we needed Oliver up on the cliff to throw the rocks down. He’s a lot stronger than I am. But I was able to cut those bonds holding you, Preacher.”
“You sure did,” he said with a nod. “Did a fine job of it, too.”
He held up his hands and flexed the fingers. He had already used the knife to cut the rawhide straps off his wrists, being careful about it because he didn’t want to nick an artery, but the ugly marks they had left were still visible on his skin. His boots had protected his ankles.
Hawk dropped back from time to time and checked their back trail, but there was no sign of the outcasts coming after them. Out here on the open prairie, it would have been difficult to approach without being seen. The outcasts were creatures of rocks and crevices and shadows, and Preacher was glad to leave them there.
He told Chessie, “We can stop anytime you want, so you can get your, uh, what you got left to wear back on.”
“What I’d really like is to wash off all this dust,” she said. “Will there be a stream in those hills where I can bathe?”
“We’ll do our best to find one,” the mountain man promised.
“I think I’d rather wait until I’m clean, then. Even though I know it’s absolutely scandalous for me to be in this . . . disheveled condition . . . around you gentlemen.” She sighed. “Not that there’s much left after all the times I’ve had to tear off part of my garments for some other purpose.”
Oliver chuckled and said, “Chessie, I do believe that you’re blushing.”
“She is covered in red dust,” Hawk said with a solemn frown. “How can you tell?”
Preacher thought that he was going to have to have a talk with the boy about taking everything so literally. But before he could say anything, he spotted a reflection from the rising sun on something in the distant hills.
“Look yonder,” he said, pointing it out to the others. “That’ll be where the rest of the bunch is waitin’ with the wagons.”
“Thank goodness,” Oliver said. “We shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.”
That simple thing, the sun glinting on metal, seemed to boost not only their spirits but their strength. Their strides had renewed energy as they walked toward the hills.
The trek seemed to take longer than it should have, but Preacher knew that was because they were all worn out. Also, in this clear air, things usually appeared closer than they really were.
The day grew warmer as the sun rose higher in the sky. Finally, the wooded, rocky slopes were close. Preacher happened to be looking up at the area where he had spotted the sun glinting on something earlier when he saw a puff of gray smoke shoot out from the trees.
“Down!” he ordered.
He flung himself forward. At the same time, Hawk leaped at Oliver and Chessie, spreading his arms to grab both of them and pull them to the ground with him. As Preacher landed on his belly, he heard the distant report of a shot and the hum of a rifle ball passing close by. The sound wasn’t followed by the thud of lead striking flesh and bone, so he knew the shot had missed.
That didn’t mean it would be the last shot, though. Where there was one ambusher, there was usually at least one more.
“Hawk!” Preacher said. “Give ’em somethin’ to think about!”
From his prone position, the young man was already drawing a bead with his rifle. “I saw the powder smoke,” he told Preacher just before he squeezed the trigger. The long-barreled flintlock boomed.
“Oliver, Chessie, you two stay down and crawl backward,” Preacher called to them. “Maybe you can get out of range.”
“All right, Preacher, we understand,” Oliver replied. He sounded a little shaken, but he had already demonstrated his ability to stay coolheaded under fire, so Preacher hoped he would continue like that.
With Oliver and Chessie backing off, the mountain man powered to his feet and sprinted to the left, figuring he would draw the ambushers’ fire. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Hawk was on his feet and heading right.
Another shot blasted from the hillside. Dirt kicked up a few feet to Preacher’s right. He dodged in that direction, then instantly back left, and the feint worked. A second shot ripped past his right ear.
Then there was a lull as Preacher continued running toward the base of the hill. Two men up there, he thought, based on the timing of the shots.
Instinct made him veer again. This time the ball plowed up ground to his left.
Another lunge carried him into the brush at the bottom of the slope. He dived low and kept his head down as he crawled through the growth. A rifle ball whipped through the brush and cut off some branches, but it didn’t come close to him.
So far all the ambushers’ shots seemed to have been aimed at Preacher, which made him hope that he was the main target and the hidden riflemen wouldn’t make a try for Oliver and Chessie. The brush was thick enough that he couldn’t see Hawk anymore, but he had a hunch the men would gun the young warrior down if they got a chance.
Preacher could think of only one person in this neck of the woods with any reason to want him dead: Hoyt Ryker. Ryker could have posted men here to ambush them if they showed up, while taking Edgar Merton and the rest of the expedition deeper into the hills. Preacher wouldn’t put something underhanded like that past Ryker. Not for a second.
The guns had fallen silent except for an occasional shot that rattled harmlessly through the brush. The ambushers were firing blindly now. They were probably getting nervous, too, since they couldn’t see Preacher and didn’t know whether they had hit him. For all they knew, he could be creeping up the hill toward them right now . . .
Which was just what he started to do.
Nobody was better than Preacher at moving through undergrowth without making a sound or giving his presence away in some other fashion. He couldn’t rush, but he didn’t waste any time, either, since he was all too aware that Oliver and Chessie were out there in the open. He hoped they had been able to pull back far enough that the rifles could no longer reach them.
A faint noise from his left made him look in that direction. A gray muzzle poked through a gap in the branches. Dog whined.
Preacher was glad the big cur was all right. He knew Dog was eager to get in on the action. With a grin, he said in a low voice, “Dog, hunt!”
Dog moved through the brush as silently as Preacher himself, a gray ghost gliding through the shadows. Preacher resumed his stealthy advance toward the top of the hill.
The shooting stopped completely, which made Preacher think maybe the ambushers had given up and decided to retreat while they still could. He hoped that wasn’t the case. He wanted some answers, and grabbing at least one of the riflemen would be the best way to get them.
Preacher had lost sight of Dog, but he wasn’t surprised when a startled yell suddenly erupted above him on the hill, followed by a snarl and a burst of cursing. The ambushers hadn’t gone anywhere after all, and clearly Dog had hold of one of them.
Preacher leaped to his feet and bulled through the brush, no longer caring whether he made any noise. He almost paid for that when a pistol went off practically in his face. The roar clapped against his ears like giant fists, and he felt the sting of burning bits of powder against his face.
The next instant, he rammed his shoulder into the man who had fired the pistol and bowled him over. The gun went flying, but the man grabbed hold of Preacher’s leg and gave it a desperate heave. The mountain man tried to keep his balance, but he went down, too. The man yanked a knife from his belt and thrust it at Preacher’s face.
Preacher knocked the blade aside with the tomahawk and would have smacked the man on the head with the backswing if the ambusher hadn’t writhed around and buried a knee in Preacher’s belly. The blow drove the air out of his lungs and doubled him over for a second.
That was long enough for his opponent to grab the wrist of the hand holding the tomahawk, roll on top, and clamp his other hand around Preacher’s neck.
The ambusher was big and strong. Preacher looked up at him and saw the sunlight that came through the trees casting a dappled pattern over a rugged face. Preacher recognized him as one of Hoyt Ryker’s men, just as he’d suspected. He couldn’t recall the man’s name, but it didn’t matter. The varmint was doing his dead-level best to choke the life out of him.
With the man’s weight pinning him down, Preacher couldn’t reach the knife stuck behind his belt. But he was able to ball his left hand into a fist and launch a short, sharp punch that drove solidly into his opponent’s jaw. That knocked the man to the side. Preacher bucked up from the ground and threw him off. The man rolled, came up on his knees, and then tried to scramble upright and flee rather than continuing the battle. Preacher tackled him around the knees from behind.
This time when the man fell, his head thudded against the trunk of a fallen tree. He went limp, and for a second Preacher though the ambusher had managed to bust open his skull and kill himself. Then he saw the man’s back rising and falling. The fella didn’t seem on the verge of regaining consciousness anytime soon, though.
Preacher stood up and listened. Dog’s snarling and growling had gone silent. “Dog, where are you?” Preacher called. A quiet little bark answered him.
Preacher pushed through the brush and found Dog sitting beside the body of another man. This one’s throat was a bloody ruin. He wouldn’t be answering questions or doing anything else ever again, except providing a meal for scavengers.
“Preacher?”
That was Hawk’s voice. Preacher turned and went back to the man who’d been knocked out. Hawk stood over him, holding a loaded pistol ready.
“Are there any more of them?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t think so. Didn’t sound to me like more than two rifles goin’ off.”
“The other one?”
“Dead.”
“But this one lives. I assume you want to find out why he and his friend tried to kill us.”
“I reckon I know why,” Preacher said, his voice flat and grim. “Because Hoyt Ryker told ’em to.”