More shots sounded, coming close enough together Preacher knew there was more than one bushwhacker. He scrambled around to the other side of a thick-trunked pine and rested his back against the rough bark. He tried to take a deep breath, but that made the pain in his left side worse.
All right, he told himself, he had a busted rib, or a cracked one, anyway. Probably just cracked. If it actually was broken, all that falling, rolling, and jumping around surely would have plunged the jagged end of a bone into his left lung and he’d be drowning in his own blood. So, he decided, the rib was cracked. It hurt like hell, and could still break easily if he wasn’t careful.
His left side was covered with warm, sticky wetness. He thought he might bleed to death if the hole wasn’t bound up soon. Any time a fellow was shot, he had to worry about the wound festering. There were all kinds of ways to die on the frontier.
Holes—more than one—he corrected himself as he gingerly poked around on his side. The rifle ball had struck him in the back, on the left side, glanced off a rib, and torn its way out the front of his body. He was lucky the bone had deflected it outward, rather than bouncing it through his gut. He really would have been a goner then.
Breathing shallowly through clenched teeth, he pulled up his buckskin shirt and used the heavy hunting knife that was sheathed on his hip to cut two strips from his long underwear—not easy to do, because his left arm was still partially numb. He managed to wad one of the pieces of woolen fabric into a ball and shove it into the exit wound. Since he couldn’t reach the spot with his right hand, he gritted his teeth and forced his left arm to reach around his back to where the bullet had entered. The few minutes it took seemed more like an hour, but finally he pushed the wadded-up cloth into the bullet hole.
That helped slow down the bleeding. He knew if he lost too much blood, he would pass out. If that happened, chances were he would never wake up again. His enemies would slip up on him and cut his throat.
He didn’t know how many there were. The shooting had stopped, but from the sound of the volley a few minutes earlier, he figured five or six.
Nor did he know who they were. He had spent five decades on the earth, testified by the leathery skin of his face and the numerous silver strands in his dark hair and beard. Few men lived that long without making enemies. Preacher had probably made more than his share, although he had left many of them dead behind him, either in shallow graves or out in the open for the scavengers and the elements to take care of. It depended on how put out with them he’d been when he killed them.
There were still plenty of folks carrying grudges against him, and obviously he had just crossed trails with some of them…unless the bushwhackers were no-good thieves who wanted to kill him and take his outfit.
He had a good horse, a sizable batch of supplies on the pack horse he’d been leading, and some fine weapons. No pelts yet; it was too early in the season for that. Those days, not many people would bother stealing furs. The mountains weren’t trapped out yet, far from it, but the fur trade wasn’t what it used to be. The last great rendezvous had been eight years earlier, in ’42. A lot of the mountain men had gone back east to be with their long-neglected families. Others had headed west to look for gold in California.
Preacher had no intention of leaving the mountains for good. When his time came, he intended to die there.
He listened intently. The woods were quiet. The shooting had scared off all the animals. If the bushwhackers started skulking around, he would hear them.
He was disgusted with himself for letting somebody shoot him in the back. He didn’t know where they’d been hidden or how carefully they had concealed themselves, but he didn’t care. He should have known they were there, lying in wait for him.
Was a time when he would have known, because Dog would have smelled the sons of bitches, and Horse probably would have, too. But the big wolf-like cur was gone, and so was the gray stallion that looked a lot like Preacher’s current mount.
Over the years, Dog had tangled with outlaws, savages, grizzlies, panthers, and lobo wolves. He had gotten chewed up, shot, half-drowned, and mostly frozen. None of that had killed him, but time had. The years always won in the end.
Horse, at least, was still alive as far as Preacher knew. He had left the stallion in Missouri with an old friend who had promised to make Horse’s final years as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Preacher wasn’t sure he had done the right thing. Being put out to pasture was a hard destiny. Maybe he should have brought Horse back to the mountains with him one last time.
If he had, he woudn’t be sitting there with a couple of bullet holes in him, he told himself. Because Horse’s keen senses would have alerted him there were enemies nearby.
Off to his left a ways, something rustled in the brush.
A grin that was half-grimace drew Preacher’s lips back from his teeth. He reached to his waist and drew out one of the Dragoons. It was a fine weapon, well balanced, with a seven and a half inch octagonal barrel and a cylinder that held six .44 caliber loads, although Preacher always left one chamber empty for the hammer to rest on. Engraved on that blued steel cylinder was a scene of Texas Rangers battling Comanches. Preacher figured it was based on the fight at Bandera Pass a few years back. Captain Jack Hays, who’d been in command of the troop of Rangers involved, had told Preacher all about that ruckus one time when he was down in San Antonio de Bexar.
Yes, sir, a mighty fine gun. It shot straight and true, and between the two revolvers and the flintlock rifle, he had eleven rounds ready to go. More than enough to kill every one of those damn bushwhackers.
Of course, they’d probably kill him, too, Preacher reflected, but they wouldn’t live to brag about it.
Another rustle, to his right that time. They had him surrounded. They were so confident they had him trapped, one of them was bold enough to call out, “We’re gonna kill you, old man, if you ain’t dead already. You got anything to say?”
Preacher didn’t respond, except to draw his other Dragoon. His left arm was still weak, but he was able to hold the revolver fairly steady.
“You should’ve minded your own business back at that trading post, old man. You must be soft in the head. Who in his right mind would kick up such a fuss over a damn Indian whore?”
So that was why they wanted him dead, Preacher thought. They had trailed him all the way out there, a week or more, over some fracas at a trading post? He supposed that the fellow whose guts he’d spilled on the ground meant something to them. A friend or maybe kinfolk. Even so, the man had been a sorry son of a bitch, hardly worth dying over. Seemed like they were bound and determined to do just that, though.
“Shut up, Riley,” another voice, older and harsher, said. “That’s enough. Let’s get this done. You boys ready?”
Preacher was ready. He braced his back against the tree trunk and raised both Dragoons in front of him, as a cry rang out through the trees. A half laugh, half scream, jagged, nerve-scraping sound that was one of the craziest things Preacher had ever heard.
Chapter 2
The eerie cry made some of the bushwhackers let out surprised yells. Getting ready to charge Preacher had drawn their nerves pretty tight, and that shriek startled them into pulling triggers. Shots blasted through the woods, but the wail continued. It didn’t sound human.
Bullets whipped through the branches and thudded into tree trunks, but none of them came close to Preacher. He spotted a muzzle flash off to his right and reacted instantly, angling the Dragoon in that direction and dropping the hammer. The heavy revolver roared, smoke and flame erupting from its muzzle. Somewhere in the woods, a man screamed. Preacher didn’t know if his shot had found its target, or if whatever was making that unholy noise had gotten hold of the man.
With his back against the tree to brace himself, Preacher pushed to his feet. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but there was a good chance he would die right there. If that turned out to be true, he planned to go out standing on h
is own two feet with shooting irons in his hands.
“What the hell is that?” a man shouted. There was a great thrashing in the brush. “Look ou—yahhhhh!”
The howl of pain made the bushwhackers shoot again. A grim smile tugged at Preacher’s mouth again. If they kept it up, they’d all ventilate each other and save him the trouble, he thought. That would be just fine with him.
The older voice he’d heard giving orders earlier bellowed, “Head for the horses! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Preacher aimed at the voice and thumbed off two more rounds from the Dragoon. He figured the chances of him hitting anything in those thick woods were pretty slim, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to try. There were still so many guns going off, the bushwhackers likely wouldn’t notice two more shots.
The gunfire died away, but Preacher could hear men crashing through the brush. He let them go without sending any more lead after them. Blood still oozed from the holes in his side, and he was starting to get a little dizzy. Best to let those varmints take off for the tall and uncut, he decided.
Once he got his strength back, he might try to track them down. He didn’t cotton to the idea of letting anybody get away with shooting him.
There was also whatever kind of wild creature had made that sound, he reminded himself. He might have to deal with it, too.
The swift rataplan of hoofbeats drifted through the woods to his ears. The bushwhackers had reached their horses and were putting some ground behind them. The hoofbeats faded into the distance until he could no longer hear them and silence settled once more over the valley.
Preacher felt his legs weakening underneath him. His head spun, and each of the guns in his hands seemed to weigh a ton. It was all he could do to hold them up. When he felt himself slipping, he tried to stiffen his legs, but it didn’t work. He’d lost too much blood, and his strength had leaked out of him along with the crimson fluid. Slowly, inexorably, he slid down the tree trunk until he was sitting on the ground at its base again.
He heard a crackling in the brush. Something was moving toward him. Something big, from the sound of it. The thing came closer, stepping around trees and pushing brush aside.
A gray veil seemed to have slipped down over Preacher’s eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He could make out the massive, looming shape, but that was all. The Dragoons had sunk to his lap, his thumbs still looped over the hammers. He struggled to lift the weapons. If he could manage to raise the guns, when the thing stooped to reach out for him with its clawed, misshapen paws, he would blow a couple of fist-sized holes in it. Anything that big had to be a grizzly bear, his fevered brain decided…but he had never heard a griz make that kind of a noise.
He was wrong. The looming shape finally came to a stop directly in front of him, and as Preacher gazed up at it, his vision cleared enough for him to realize that it wasn’t a grizzly bear after all.
It was the biggest, ugliest Indian Preacher had ever laid eyes on…and the last thing Preacher saw as consciousness fled from him. He didn’t feel a thing when his head fell back against the tree trunk with a solid thud.
The aromatic smell of woodsmoke filling his nostrils was the first thing Preacher recognized as awareness began to seep back into his brain. Then, not surprisingly, he heard the crackle of flames and felt warmth on his face. After a moment he figured out he was lying on something soft, near a fire.
He kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular. Although he had just come to, his instincts were already working. Since he didn’t know where he was or what was going on around him, the smart thing to do was to not let on that he was awake.
He moved a hand slightly and felt something soft yet bristly. A thick fur robe of some sort, he decided. He sniffed the air and under the woodsmoke smelled bear grease and something else, a faint musky scent.
A woman. She began to sing softly to herself, under her breath, confirming Preacher’s guess.
All those sensations were intimately familiar to him. He had spent many winters with various tribes, sharing a lodge or a tepee with a comely squaw. Sometimes when he visited those tribes again a few years later, he found little ones trailing after those squaws who’d wintered with him. He never tried to be a pa to those kids. He’d always figured that a restless varmint like him, who would probably come to a bad end, didn’t have any business trying to act like a father. Might as well ask the wind to be a good parent. It wasn’t going to happen.
As he lay on the fur robe Preacher thought about what he remembered from earlier and decided that the big, ugly Indian must have taken him to a village rather than kill him. He kept his eyes closed, shifted his body a little, and realized he had bandages wrapped tightly around his torso. His side felt stiff and hot where the rifle ball had torn through it, but whoever had tended to the wounds had packed each of them with a healing poultice. Preacher knew that with time and proper care, he would heal.
Of course, it was possible the redskins were trying to save his life so they could kill him in their own way, in their own sweet time. He knew such things happened.
Preacher hadn’t gotten a very good look at the beadwork and decorations on the big Indian’s buckskins, but he thought they indicated the man was a Crow. The Crow got along with white men about as well as any of the tribes did, and better than some. They didn’t hate everybody with a white skin, as the Blackfeet did, nor were they devoted to war like the Sioux. Preacher had always gotten along well with the Crow, and he hoped the impression he’d gotten from that brief glimpse was correct.
The woman stopped singing. He heard her moving around, and then she was beside him. He felt the cool touch of a wet cloth on his skin as she wiped his face with it. He thought he might as well go ahead and take a chance.
He opened his eyes.
The woman drew back with a little gasp when she saw that he was awake. In her own tongue, she said, “He lives.”
“I do live,” Preacher replied in the same language, which he had recognized instantly as Crow. He was fluent in the lingo. “Thanks to you.”
The woman shook her head. She was young, probably no more than twenty summers. She had a round, pretty face, with dark eyes. Her hair, as black as a raven’s wing and slick with bear grease, was parted in the center and pulled into braids on each side of her head.
“You live because of Crazy Bear,” she told Preacher. “He is the one who brought you here.”
“You bound up my wounds?”
She nodded. “Yes, after packing them with moss and herbs that will heal them.”
“Then I owe you a debt of gratitude as well. How are you called?”
The woman hesitated, then said, “Bright Leaf.”
“Thank you, Bright Leaf. I am called Preacher.”
She leaned back again. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Ghost-Killer,” she whispered.
He saw fright in her big, dark eyes and shook his head, wanting to reassure her. The movement made his surroundings spin madly around him for a few seconds. “That is one of the names the Blackfeet know me by,” he said. “But I have never been an enemy to the Crow.”
Early in his career as a mountain man, he had mastered the art of slipping undetected into a village, cutting the throats of some of the warriors, and getting out again without anyone knowing he had been there until the bodies were discovered the next morning. That demoralized his enemies and made them regard him with the respect they would give a supernatural creature. Many of the tribes thought he was special because the story had spread about how he had talked all day and all night to save himself from being burned at the stake. That incident had given him the name of Preacher.
Despite his words, Bright Leaf scooted away from him and stood up, backing around the fire ring in the center of the tepee. “I will go and tell Crazy Bear that you have returned to life,” she said. “Stay there. Rest.”
Preacher sighed. There wasn’t much else he could do except follow her orders. He felt as weak as a newborn kitten. Even
if he could make it to his feet, he doubted he could walk across the tepee, let alone go outside and wander off.
“I will stay,” he told Bright Leaf.
She nodded, then bent over and pushed aside the flap of hide that covered the tepee’s entrance. Preacher was able to look outside for a second. He saw darkness, edged with the flickering glare of a fire. Night had fallen. Since it had been the middle of the afternoon when he was shot, he reasoned he had been unconscious for several hours, at the very least.
A tide of weariness washed over him. He lay there struggling to keep his eyes open. He knew if he closed them, he would fall asleep. He wanted to stay awake until Crazy Bear got there, so he could talk to the man.
Only a couple minutes passed before the hide flap was swept aside, this time by a muscular arm as big around as the trunk of a small tree. The warrior who came into the tepee had to stoop low to make it through the entrance. When he straightened to his full height, he stood near the center of the tepee, so his head wouldn’t poke against the sloping hide wall.
In the glow of the fire, Crazy Bear didn’t seem quite as ugly as he had in broad daylight. It softened the harsh planes and angles of his face, made the scars less noticeable, and the broken, crooked lump of a nose didn’t dominate his features quite as much.
Bright Leaf came into the tepee behind the man and peeked timidly around his massive form at Preacher.
The Crow warrior regarded Preacher impassively for a moment and then said, “Bright Leaf tells me you are the one called Ghost-Killer.”
“This is true,” Preacher said, then continued, “But as I told her, the Crow are not my enemies.” He thought for a second that he saw a smile play over the man’s twisted lips.
“This is good. Our village will not have to fear you.”
The Family Jensen # 1 Page 2
