CHAPTER 27
Preacher sent Hawk to check on Oliver and Chessie. While the young man was doing that, Preacher rolled the unconscious ambusher onto his back and then sat down on the log to wait for the man to regain consciousness.
It didn’t take long for Preacher to grow impatient. He started prodding the prisoner’s shoulder with the toe of his boot. After a few of those none-too-gentle nudges, the man groaned a little and moved his head from side to side. Preacher would have dumped a bucket of water in the man’s face if he’d had one, but failing that, he continued the prodding until the ambusher rolled onto his side and started cursing bitterly. The man abruptly fell silent when he lifted his head, opened his eyes, and found the mountain man grinning down at him.
It wasn’t a friendly grin.
“Best not get rambunctious, mister,” Preacher warned. He lifted the tomahawk he held. “Try anything funny and I’ll stove your head in. You know I’ll do it, too.”
The cursing resumed. Preacher let it go on for a moment, then said, “You and me are gonna have a talk.”
“I don’t have a damn thing to say to you,” the man responded. A hate-filled grimace pulled his lips back.
“I reckon you do.”
“Go ahead and kill me!” The man let out a humorless laugh. “I can’t talk then, can I?”
“I don’t plan on killin’ you unless you don’t give me no choice.” Preacher paused. “But I might let my friend here gnaw on you for a while. Dog!”
The big cur stepped forward and snarled. Slobber dripped from his muzzle as he thrust it over the man’s face. The razor-sharp fangs were only inches away.
The ambusher’s bravado vanished. He tried to cringe away from Dog, but his head was right up against the log and he couldn’t move.
“Get that beast away from me!” he cried in a shaky voice.
“So you’re thinkin’ about tellin’ me what I want to know after all?” Preacher said.
“Just . . . just keep him away!”
Dog snarled. He looked like he was ready to rip the man’s face to shreds . . . although he would never do that without an order from Preacher.
“I don’t know if he’s gonna listen to me,” Preacher drawled. “Once a wild animal gets a taste for blood, it’s mighty hard to keep him from goin’ after it again.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” the prisoner wailed.
“Dog!” Preacher said sharply.
Instantly, Dog stopped snarling and stepped back. He was still close enough to attack in the blink of an eye, though, and the tense way he stood, with the hair ruffled up on the back of his neck, revealed just how much he wanted to do exactly that.
“I don’t recall your name, mister,” Preacher went on.
“It’s Hopkins. Thad Hopkins.” The man swallowed hard and couldn’t take his eyes off Dog’s threatening stance.
“Who was your friend?”
“Brill . . . Jim Brill.”
“Ryker left you here, didn’t he?”
Hopkins swallowed again. “Yeah. It was all his idea.”
“To ambush me, if I showed up.”
“That’s right. We were supposed to kill you . . . and the Indian. Your boy.”
“I know who you mean,” Preacher said, his voice cold and hard now. The ambush directed at him didn’t bother him so much; people had been trying to kill him for more years than he could count. But Hopkins and Brill had intended to murder Hawk, as well, and that rubbed Preacher the wrong way. “What about the other two?”
“You mean young Merton and . . . and the girl? We weren’t supposed to hurt them, just grab them and bring them back to Ryker.”
“And where is he now? Deeper in the hills?”
Hopkins hesitated and licked his lips. Preacher had a hunch the man was about to try to lie.
“Dog.”
The one word was enough to make the big cur lean closer to the prisoner and bare his teeth again.
“No, they . . . they were going on,” Hopkins said, in such a hurry to get the words out that they stumbled from his lips. “To where Merton planned to go all along.”
“Where’s that?”
“Some place called . . . the Black Hills.”
Preacher frowned. The Black Hills were still several days’ journey to the north. Folks had started calling them by that name because of how dark they were with their thickly wooded slopes. They weren’t actually black but more of a dark green. Preacher knew them better, though, as Pahá Sápa, a region held sacred by the Sioux. They believed the hills were the center of the universe and the spirits that guided their lives dwelled there, and no outsiders were ever permitted to set foot in them.
Edgar Merton’s expedition had already clashed with the Sioux. Trespassing in the Black Hills would put a gigantic target on them and have every warrior for five hundred miles eager to lift their scalps.
“What the hell is in the Black Hills that Merton’s after?” Preacher asked.
Hopkins shook his head. “I dunno, Preacher. I swear. Now, how about gettin’ this beast away from me?”
“One more thing,” the mountain man said. “Merton’s been playin’ his cards mighty close to the vest this whole trip. How come he up and decided to share where he’s goin’ with Ryker just now, while me and Hawk and Oliver were gone?”
Hopkins licked his lips and swallowed again. Preacher could tell that he didn’t want to answer the question, and the implications of that hesitation made fresh anger well up inside the mountain man.
“Dog,” Preacher said in a hoarse whisper.
“No!” Hopkins cried as Dog leaned still closer. “I’ll tell you, Preacher, but I swear it wasn’t my idea and I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all Ryker’s doing.”
“Keep talkin’,” Preacher said. His voice was just as much of a growl as Dog’s.
“Ryker . . . well, he kind of roughed up the old man to make him talk. I’m not sure exactly what he did because they were inside that covered wagon, but Merton yelled like it was pretty bad. After a while he stopped yellin’ and Ryker came out and said we were pushin’ on to the Black Hills.”
Preacher had heard someone approaching through the brush and trees as he talked to Hopkins, so he wasn’t surprised when Hawk, Oliver, and Chessie arrived in time to hear what the prisoner was saying.
Oliver’s eyes widened at the mention of Ryker torturing his father. Anger darkened his face as he stepped forward and exclaimed, “You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!”
Hopkins cringed. “It wasn’t me, damn it! I never touched your pa, kid. It was Ryker and nobody else.”
“But you worked for him,” Oliver said as he made a visible effort to control himself.
“So did all the other fellas.”
“And you tried to kill Preacher just now!”
Hopkins couldn’t deny that. He didn’t even try.
Oliver tightened his grip on the rifle he carried. He looked like he was ready to lift the weapon and kill Hopkins. Preacher made an unobtrusive gesture to his son. Hawk stepped in front of Oliver.
“I don’t blame you for bein’ riled up,” Preacher said, “but this fella still needs to answer some questions.”
“He’s a murderous animal, no better than those outcasts,” Oliver said. “He ought to be exterminated.”
Oliver didn’t try to force the issue, though. Preacher clasped his hands together, leaned over Hopkins, and asked, “Did Merton tell Ryker what he’s after in the Black Hills?”
“If he did, Ryker didn’t tell any of the rest of us,” Hopkins replied. “I give you my word on that, Preacher. The rest of us are just as much in the dark about it as you are.”
Preacher looked up at Oliver. “Did your pa ever say anything to you about the Black Hills?”
“Not that I recall.” Oliver had calmed down some, and his voice was fairly steady as he went on, “Father talked about a lot of the places he’d been out here when he was younger, but nothing about anywhere called the Black Hills.”
Preacher held up a hand and said, “Hold on a minute. Your pa spent time out here on the frontier?”
“Yes, when he was a young man, before he married my mother. He went intending to make his fortune as a fur trapper.”
Preacher grunted in surprise. “No offense, Oliver, but he sure didn’t strike me as the sort of fella to do that.”
“Well, he discovered he wasn’t cut out for it,” Oliver admitted. “He returned to the East and wound up being quite successful in business. He was better suited for that, no doubt about it. But earlier, he was young, you know? Adventure and excitement held a certain appeal for him. I’m not sure that ever went away completely. I remember there would be times, when I was young, that he would get this faraway look in his eyes and say he would like to go west again, that he wanted to go back and find what he’d left behind . . .” Oliver shook his head. “But I have no idea what he was talking about, or even if it was anything specific. It could have been just . . . the feeling he had out here.”
“Maybe,” Preacher said as his eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe that Edgar Merton would have gone to the trouble, expense, and danger of outfitting this expedition and accompanying it if he hadn’t been after something in particular, rather than just trying to recapture the excitement of his youth.
The mountain man turned his attention back to Hopkins and asked, “When did Ryker and the others leave?”
“Early this morning,” the man replied. “Jim and me were supposed to wait here for a couple of days and take care of you and the Indian if you showed up.”
Oliver said, “It didn’t bother you that Ryker was telling you to commit cold-blooded murder?”
“Kid, I’ve ridden with Ryker long enough to know I didn’t want to cross him. That seemed like a quick way to wind up dead. You don’t know how snake-mean that fella can be.”
“I know, all right,” Preacher said. “Comparin’ him to a snake probably ain’t fair . . . to the snake.”