CHAPTER 35
The big man saw him coming and gaped up openmouthed at Preacher. Preacher’s boots struck Pidge on the left shoulder. It was almost like trying to budge a redwood tree, but the impact was enough to knock Pidge to the right on the driver’s seat. He slid off the seat and one knee went down to the floorboard.
“Preacher, wait!” Pidge bellowed in a voice like thunder as the tomahawk flashed up and started down.
No matter how long he lived, Preacher would never know for sure why he paused. Most times, when he launched a killing stroke nothing could hold it back.
But today, the tomahawk stopped before it fell all the way and split Pidge’s skull. Then Pidge surged back up, slashed the reins against the mules’ behinds, and roared at them. The team responded, bolting ahead against their harness. The wagon lurched heavily as it picked up speed, throwing Preacher back against the arched canvas cover.
A mad flurry of impressions followed. Pidge kept whipping and shouting at the mules. Preacher saw the two men on horseback ahead of them jerking their mounts to the side to avoid being knocked down and trampled. He caught a glimpse of Hoyt Ryker’s face with its long, curling mustache. Ryker looked shocked to see Preacher alive, but his features were also flushed with rage as he flung up a pistol and fired.
Preacher felt the ball rip through the air close to his ear. The way he was being thrown back and forth by the careening wagon, any kind of accuracy was impossible, for him as well as for Ryker, but he jerked his pistol toward the man and pulled the trigger anyway. The weapon boomed and bucked in his fist.
Then they were past Ryker and the other rider, and Preacher had no idea if his shot had found its target. A particularly hard jolt made him lose his balance. He tumbled backward into the wagon bed.
“Preacher!”
That thin cry came from Edgar Merton. He was still alive, and that came as a relief to Preacher. The mountain man rolled over, caught a glimpse of Merton propped up on one elbow in the bunk, and scrambled on hands and knees to the back of the wagon so he could peer out at the other vehicles.
The first supply wagon, which was in the middle of the little caravan, had come to a stop, halting the wagon behind it as well. Oliver stood on the driver’s box, struggling with the man who had been at the reins. As Preacher watched, unable to do anything, the man struck Oliver down and grabbed a pistol from behind his belt.
When a shot blasted, though, it came from the third wagon, where Hawk appeared to have taken care of his man. The pistol in the young warrior’s hand gushed flame and smoke, and the man about to kill Oliver was thrown backward by a heavy ball smashing into his chest. That sent him crashing down onto the backs of the team hitched to that wagon.
Mules didn’t spook easily, but the smell of powder smoke and blood, as well as the terrible racket from gunfire echoing in the cut, was enough to make these beasts stampede. They charged ahead, trampling the man who had fallen among their legs and making certain he was dead.
Oliver couldn’t do anything except pull himself up on the seat and hang on for dear life as the runaway team followed the lead wagon out of the cut.
Behind him, Hawk had grabbed the reins of the third wagon and begun whipping the team. He ducked low as pistol balls fired by the trailing riders whistled overhead. From where Preacher was, he couldn’t hear that, but he knew what was happening. So far, things hadn’t gone exactly as they had planned, but he, Hawk, and Oliver were still alive and they had the wagons and Edgar Merton.
Ryker and at least three more men were also still alive, though, and that meant they were a long way from out of trouble. Plus there was Chessie to consider. They couldn’t leave her behind to be captured by Ryker and his men, who were already giving chase.
Preacher went back to the front of the wagon, and as he knelt behind Pidge, he saw Chessie burst out from the trees where they had left her, riding one of the horses and leading the other. Dog raced along behind them.
Chessie must have been watching and seen what was happening. Preacher had to give her credit for realizing right away what she needed to do in order to salvage the situation. At the angle she was headed, she would intercept the wagons in another hundred yards.
Preacher drew his knife and leaned forward to say over the thunder of hoofbeats, “Pidge, does this mean you’re throwin’ in with us?”
Instead of answering the question directly, Pidge said, “Preacher, I was never so glad to see anybody in my life! I figured for sure you were dead!” He didn’t take his eyes off the mules and the ground in front of the racing wagon as he spoke.
“Well, I ain’t dead,” Preacher replied, “and I’d sure be obliged right now if you’d give me a reason to trust you!”
“Haven’t I already done that? Didn’t I just help you rescue Mr. Merton?” The giant frowned and shook his head. “Hoyt never should’ve hurt Mr. Merton like he did. That wasn’t right. There just weren’t no call for it.” Finally, Pidge glanced over his shoulder at Preacher. “And you tended to me when I was hurt. Maybe even saved my life.”
“I’m glad you didn’t make me hurt you, Pidge.” Preacher didn’t mention that things would have been simpler if he and his allies had been able to wipe out all of Ryker’s bunch, as they had planned. Pidge’s impulsive action had disrupted that and left living enemies behind them, so they weren’t by any means out of danger.
Even so, Preacher was glad he hadn’t stoved in the big fella’s head.
Chessie drew alongside them with the galloping horses. Preacher climbed over the seat and stood on the box, clinging to the framework supporting the canvas cover as he looked at her. Her eyes were big with fear, but she wasn’t panicking. She had the horse she was riding under control.
“You all right, girl?” Preacher called to her.
She nodded, then pointed behind them. “They’re coming after us!”
“I know! Ride on ahead just a little!”
She looked confused by that order, but she did what Preacher told her and urged her mount to a faster pace that brought her alongside the mules.
That made the horse she was leading gallop along beside the driver’s seat. Preacher leaned down and told Pidge, “Just keep headin’ north! Mr. Merton knows where we’re goin’!”
“Preacher, what are you gonna do?” Pidge asked.
“Try to buy us some time!”
With that, Preacher braced himself on the edge of the driver’s box, then leaped from it into the saddle of the riderless horse. A jump like that had to be timed perfectly, and even when it was, it was dangerous. Preacher landed square in the saddle, though, and found the stirrups while he was grabbing the reins. Chessie let go of them.
He hauled back on the reins, slowing the animal and turning it as the other two wagons rolled toward him. They were well out of the cut now, in a stretch of rolling ground dotted with clumps of aspen. As Preacher looked back toward the ridge, the terrain made Ryker and the other pursuers pop into view for a second, then disappear again, only to repeat that pattern a moment later.
Preacher waited until the wagon Oliver was driving rattled past him, then heeled the horse into motion again and rode alongside the vehicle with Hawk at the reins. He brought the lunging horse closer and closer until he was able to kick his feet out of the stirrups and dive again, this time from horseback onto a wagon. He landed on the supplies in the back.
Preacher pulled himself forward and vaulted over the seat back onto the driver’s box next to Hawk. “How are you, son?” he called over the noise.
“How are you?” Hawk repeated. “In the middle of all this chaos, this is what you ask?”
“Well, I want to know,” Preacher replied with a grin. “You hurt?”
“No! I am fine! But why did you not kill the driver on the lead wagon?”
“Because it was Pidge, and he’s decided that he’s on our side. Besides, he turned on Ryker and took off too fast for me to do much about it. We’ll just have to change our plan to suit the way things are now.”
“This is mad! We should make a stand against Ryker and the other three.”
“You’re probably right,” Preacher admitted, “but there’ll be a lot of pistol and rifle balls flyin’ around if we do that, and I ain’t sure Oliver and Chessie can stay outta the way of all of them!”
Hawk didn’t say anything to that, which was good because he needed to concentrate on his driving, not arguing. Preacher looked down and saw a rifle lying on the floorboard at their feet. It must have belonged to the man who had been driving the wagon—who was no doubt lying dead back there in the cut where Hawk had jumped him.
Preacher had powder and shot. He reached down, grabbed the rifle, and took a look at it. Already loaded and ready to fire, he saw. He turned and climbed back over the seat into the wagon bed, then knelt next to a crate of supplies. He aimed the rifle behind them and looped his thumb over the hammer to draw it back.
As soon as the four riders topped a swell and came into view again, Preacher pulled the trigger.
The rifle boomed. Through the cloud of smoke that came from the muzzle, Preacher couldn’t see the men on horseback, and by the time the smoke cleared, they were gone, having dipped back down into another swale. He began reloading.
The range had been long, and a bouncing wagon was no place from which to be shooting. Any hit would be almost pure luck, and Preacher knew it. He wasn’t counting on hitting any of the pursuers, though. He just wanted to make them aware that they were risking their necks by coming any closer to the fleeing wagons.
Preacher finished reloading and cocked the rifle again. He considered resting the barrel on some of the supplies, but his grip was steadier than that would have been.
The riders popped back up. Preacher pressed the trigger as soon as he saw their hats, aiming a little high and giving the ball time to travel before the targets were fully revealed.
This time the four men stayed in sight longer . . . long enough for Preacher to see one of them fling his arms out to the side and go over backward off his horse.
“Got one of the sons o’ bitches!” the mountain man exclaimed.
He grinned as he saw the others slow down and veer away. The wagon went over the crest of a rise and he couldn’t see them anymore, but that last glimpse had been enough to tell him that they weren’t as interested in giving chase anymore.
He hoped the man he had shot out of the saddle was Hoyt Ryker. It would have been more satisfying to kill Ryker up close, but he would take that varmint being dead any way he could get it.
Hawk kept the wagon moving at a fast clip. Up ahead on the second wagon, Oliver had finally managed to retrieve the reins, but he wasn’t doing much good at controlling the mules. Luckily, they continued to run the same way the other teams were going, as did the loose horse. Chessie still rode beside the lead wagon, Preacher saw when he glanced over his shoulder.
Most of his attention was focused behind them, though. He reloaded while waiting for the riders to show up again. When they didn’t, he called to Hawk, “Looks like they gave up—for now!”
“You believe they will come after us?” Hawk asked.
“Depends on whether or not Ryker’s still alive. If he is, he’s crazy-mad enough to keep comin’. If he ain’t, the others might decide to cut their losses the way the Sioux and the outcasts did. Right now, though, we need to keep movin’ and put as much ground between us and them as we can.”