“If you go to kill more of the Blackfeet, I will go with you,” Hawk said.
“Not this time,” Preacher told the young man with a shake of his head. “You’ll be stayin’ here with White Buffalo.”
“But why?” Hawk insisted. “Have I not proven myself to be a capable warrior? Have we not fought side by side and slain many Blackfeet? Have I not saved your life?”
“All that’s true, right enough,” Preacher said, “but it still don’t change anything. When I said I’m goin’ to the Blackfoot village, I mean I’m goin’ inside the Blackfoot village.”
White Buffalo stared at him. “They will find you and kill you.”
Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “No, old one. This is Preacher you speak to. The White Wolf. The Ghost Killer. The man no one sees unless he wishes it to be so.” His lip curled slightly. “At least, this is what all the stories would have you believe.”
Preacher controlled the brief surge of anger he felt. Hawk was being a jackass, but all youngsters were like that, some of the time. It didn’t mean anything.
Without bringing up his previous exploits that had given birth to all the legends about him, he said, “That creek bank is high enough I can follow the stream all the way to the village without bein’ seen. Once I’m there, it’s just a matter of either avoidin’ or disposin’ of the sentries.” He paused. “Disposin’ of sounds better to me.”
“You think I cannot be as stealthy as you?” Hawk asked.
“I know you can’t.” Preacher held up a hand to forestall the young man’s inevitable protest. “I didn’t say you can’t sneak up on anybody. You’re mighty good, Hawk. I know that even though I haven’t been around you for very long . . . but for a chore like this, good just ain’t good enough. It requires the best.”
“And that is you.” It wasn’t a question, but the words held a certain challenge.
“That’s right,” Preacher said. “I’m the very best at what I do.”
For a long moment, Hawk stared at him in the fading light, then abruptly grunted. “Very well. I will stay here with White Buffalo while you go to kill Blackfeet and strike fear into the hearts of those left alive. But I tell you, Preacher, someday it will be me.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second.”
“Someday soon.”
“We’ll see,” Preacher said.
CHAPTER 18
The moon was nothing more than a tiny sliver in the sky. The darkness was so thick around Preacher it seemed solid enough for a man to reach out and touch it.
He rested his hand on the creek bank where it dropped off to the stream that flowed beside him. He could hear the water bubbling along, even though he could barely see it. Only an occasional pinprick of light, a reflection from one of the millions of stars above, told him where the surface was.
He had followed the creek for more than a mile, slipping through the shadows, his high-topped moccasins soundless where he stepped on the grass growing on the narrow bit of ground between the stream and the almost vertical face of the bank.
He’d had to cross the creek in places to make his way around impassable thickets of brush. Some flash flood in the past had washed up a number of logs that got caught, piled up, and formed another barrier. Here and there he’d had to wade along through the creek itself.
That his feet were wet and cold didn’t matter to Preacher. When he was on a mission such as this—a mission of death—physical discomfort was meaningless. The only important things were those that might interfere with his goal of killing more of his enemies.
As he rested his hand on the bank, he knew he was almost there. The day he and Hawk had spied on the Blackfoot village, he had committed to memory as many physical details as possible about the village’s surroundings. Even though he couldn’t see much, he was certain the tepees were close by.
The women of the village had worn a couple trails into the bank by going up and down to fetch water from the creek, but Preacher didn’t take the time to search for them. Using the rough face of the bank and the roots protruding from it, he scrambled up the bank like a squirrel climbing a tree.
He paused at the top, clinging to footholds and handholds as he edged his head up until his eyes cleared the rim. He had left his hat back at the cave and smeared mud on his face to darken it. He didn’t think it would be easy for anyone to spot him.
He had left his rifle behind, too. It wasn’t going to do him any good tonight. He was armed with knife, tomahawk, and two loaded pistols. If he ran into any unexpected trouble, that would have to be enough to get him out of it.
If it wasn’t . . . well, Hawk would just have to carry on their war alone except for White Buffalo, Dog, and Horse. Preacher had a hunch the boy might be up to it, especially if he had a little luck on his side.
He was getting ahead of himself, Preacher thought. Nobody was going to die tonight except a few more Blackfoot warriors.
The fires had burned low. The tepees were dark. No one was moving around, not even the village dogs.
Making no sound, Preacher slid over the edge of the bank and stretched out full-length on the ground to wait and see if his movement provoked any reaction.
When it didn’t, he crawled closer to the tepees. He proceeded slowly, checking every inch of ground before he pulled himself over it. He didn’t want to disturb anything that might make a noise, and he certainly didn’t want to crawl over a rattlesnake, although it was unlikely very many of them were moving around much so early in the season.
Gradually, he closed the distance between himself and the nearest tepee. So far he hadn’t seen or heard any sentries, but he knew they were out there somewhere. With everything that had happened, he couldn’t imagine Tall Bull not posting guards.
A soft step only a few feet away made Preacher freeze. He turned his head and saw the dark shape of a man walking through the night. The warrior was headed away from the village toward the creek, probably part of his regular route.
Preacher put a hand on the ground, came up on one knee, then pushed himself to his feet, all without making any sound. The sentry was almost at the creek.
Since Preacher had already crawled over this area, he knew it was nothing but dirt and grass. The whisper his moccasins made couldn’t have been heard more than a foot away.
The guard paused at the edge of the creek bank to look out over the stream and the woods and meadows on the other side. He had just started to turn back toward the village when Preacher’s left hand closed over his mouth and nose, preventing any outcry, and the knife in the mountain man’s right hand drove deep into the guard’s back.
He was aiming by instinct, but as usual, it guided him well. He felt a slight scrape as the razor-sharp blade glided past a rib, and then the Blackfoot spasmed as the point reached his heart. Preacher pushed harder on the knife, just to make sure it pierced that vital organ. The warrior’s back arched as his death throes gripped him.
Preacher pulled the knife out and eased the dead man to the ground, preventing the corpse from rolling off the bank and falling into the creek. The splash would be terribly loud in the quiet night.
Confident the sentry had been responsible for patrolling that part of the approach to the village, Preacher stayed on his feet and turned back toward the tepees. He stalked toward them in utter silence.
Often when he’d infiltrate a Blackfoot village, he’d have a chance to watch it long enough to have specific targets in mind . . . like tepees where he knew he would find a lone warrior sleeping.
That wasn’t the case. He didn’t want to wind up inside a tepee with a bunch of women and children who would start yelling if they found him there. He was after the sentries tonight, and if he was fortunate enough to find some other places to strike, so much the better.
He paused beside a tepee and hunkered down on his heels. His keen hearing detected the deep, regular breathing of several sleeping people inside. Knowing he wouldn’t be going in there, he moved on to the next one, keeping alert for more se
ntries as well.
A few minutes later, a warrior moved around a tepee right in front of Preacher. The mountain man had heard him coming in time to get set to strike. The Blackfoot spotted Preacher, obviously didn’t recognize him in the darkness, and mistook him for one of the other sentries.
The man opened his mouth to speak, but before a sound could come out, Preacher’s knife slashed across his throat, cutting deep enough no words could escape the man’s mouth, not even a gasp of surprise and pain. Hot blood spurted.
Preacher caught hold of the man’s buckskin shirt and swung him lightly to the ground.
The coppery smell of all that freshly spilled blood rose to Preacher’s nose. He hoped the dogs wouldn’t smell it and start barking. He figured he could get away before the Blackfeet knew what was going on, but he didn’t want to light a shuck just yet.
He hadn’t done enough damage to them.
He left the corpse where it was and moved on. As he knelt beside the entrance flap of another tepee, he heard only one person breathing inside. Preacher eased the flap aside and went in.
If the tepee’s sole occupant was a woman, Preacher figured on knocking her unconscious before she could raise the alarm. He had never liked hitting a woman—although he had run into a few who were evil enough to deserve it—but that was better than cutting her throat.
If it was a man in the tepee . . . well, he was out of luck, that was all.
Preacher couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black inside the tepee. He had to work by feel and guesswork, his left hand stabbing down to close around the sleeper’s throat and choke off any outcry. His right hand, the one holding the knife, brushed across the sleeper’s body at the same time and felt the broad, muscular chest of a warrior.
The blade bit deep before the Blackfoot could even try to fight. He died in confusion, never knowing who had killed him or why.
Three dead so far. Preacher knew folks back east would consider what he was doing to be nothing less than cold-blooded murder. They were fools. Any of the warriors he had slain would have been more than happy to take his life. They would have laughed if they got the chance to kill him slowly and painfully. As far as he was concerned, his actions were completely justifiable.
He wouldn’t lose any sleep over what he was doing, that was for damned sure.
He pushed the flap aside again, looked and listened, and stepped out of the tepee to resume stalking the village. With nearly fifty tepees scattered along the creek, he had plenty of them to check.
A short time later he found another that had what sounded like only one sleeper inside.
He repeated what he had done before, but when he touched the sleeper’s chest, he felt the rounded mounds of a woman’s breasts beneath the buckskin. The hand holding the knife rose and fell, but instead of the blade, the side of the mountain man’s hand struck the woman’s head and stunned her.
To make certain she wouldn’t come to and give the alarm, he bound her hand and foot with strips he cut from the bottom of her dress and tied a piece of bearskin robe in her mouth to serve as a gag. She would wake up with a terrible taste in her mouth, he reflected wryly . . . but at least she would wake up.
A few minutes after that encounter, as he continued to explore the village, he came across another sentry. Preacher was able to take the man from behind, grabbing him across the mouth and jerking his head back so his throat was drawn taut.
The knife cut so deep Preacher felt the blade grind against the dying Blackfoot’s spine. With the man turned away from him, he didn’t get blood all over his hand and arm when it spurted from severed veins and arteries.
That made four dead, a couple in pretty gruesome fashion. He wouldn’t have minded killing two or three more, but when a dog started to growl somewhere nearby, he knew his time had run out. Once the dogs began to stir, it would be only a matter of moments before they were raising a ruckus, and then the Blackfeet would start looking around to see what was going on.
Preacher moved faster. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he headed for the creek. Behind him, a dog barked, then another and another.
He slid over the edge of the bank, climbed down part of the way, then dropped the rest, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. He was running an instant later. No one in the village could see him down there. They might hear him splashing if he had to cut across the creek, but more than likely all the commotion those curs were creating would cover up any sounds he made.
It wasn’t the most successful such foray he had made—he had penetrated Blackfoot villages in the past, killed half a dozen or more men, and gotten back out with no one even knowing he’d been there until the next morning—but it had accomplished his purpose and he felt exhilarated.
Now Tall Bull knew he had an enemy who could strike at him and his people anywhere, any time, even right in the middle of their village. He would be convinced his medicine had turned on him, and he might begin to wonder if the mysterious adversary was even human.
He would have no choice but to look for the attacker. If the war chief remained in the village and didn’t do anything in response to the killings, he would lose all the power and influence he had left.
And once the Blackfoot warriors were away from the village, they would be even easier to kill.
When Preacher was well out of sight of the village, he crossed the creek and loped through the trees and across meadows, running as tirelessly as a young man half his age.
Hawk was a little more than half his age, he thought.
People had young’uns early on the frontier, if they were going to at all. Life in the wilderness held too many dangers to take a chance on postponing anything.
A harbinger of the approaching dawn, the eastern sky had begun to turn gray by the time Preacher neared the cave where he had left his companions. He should have been well satisfied with his night’s work, but something had started to nag at him. He didn’t know what it was, just a vague sense something was wrong, but he knew better than to distrust anything his gut was telling him.
He didn’t think anybody could have followed him from the Blackfoot village, but he didn’t want to take a chance on leading an enemy right to the sanctuary he and his friends had found. He veered away from the cave and moved deeper into the woods. After he had gone a short distance, he reached up, grasped a low-hanging branch, and pulled himself into one of the pines.
Since it was too dark for anyone to see him, he balanced on that branch and waited. He could wait without moving for hours on end if he needed to, barely breathing. His life had depended on that ability numerous times in the past.
He didn’t have to wait very long for his instincts to be vindicated. After only a short time had passed, he heard someone moving toward him. He could tell from the sounds the follower made that it wasn’t an animal.
Maybe one of the warriors had trailed him from the village after all. It was unlikely but not impossible, he supposed.
What was certain was that he couldn’t allow the man to escape. If he got back to the village and told Tall Bull he had trailed the intruder to this area, the war chief would know where to look. Preacher was too close to the cave to let that happen.
He and Hawk and White Buffalo could always shift their base of operations to somewhere else, Preacher thought, but he didn’t want to move. The cave was just about perfect, and he didn’t want to lose it just yet.
He slid his knife from its sheath and poised himself to leap from the branch as soon as whoever was on his trail had passed beneath him.
More seconds dragged by. Preacher heard soft footsteps, then the faint rasp of rapid breathing. He had been moving pretty fast, and the follower would have had to hurry to keep up with him and not lose his trail.
The fellow was good. Preacher had to give him that. Not many men could have followed him without giving themselves away sooner than that one had.
Preacher spotted a deeper patch of darkness moving through the shadows below. His lips drew back
from his teeth in a silent snarl as the figure passed underneath the branch where he waited.
Then Preacher leaped, the knife raised high and ready to swoop down and end the life of his enemy.
CHAPTER 19
Preacher landed on the man’s back and knocked him forward a couple steps. His left arm went around the man’s neck while his right hand brought the knife around in a stroke aimed at the Blackfoot’s chest.
Before the knife could find its target, the man bent forward sharply and dived to the ground. The swift move was meant to dislodge Preacher, but the mountain man was able to hang on.
His left forearm slid down a little from the enemy’s throat as both of them rolled on the ground. The pressure of rounded flesh against his arm was unmistakable.
Preacher was so surprised he experienced an extremely rare moment of indecision. In that moment, the person he was struggling with lifted an elbow that cracked sharply into his jaw and rocked his head back.
The Blackfoot twisted free and rolled away.
Preacher leaped to his feet and said in the Blackfoot tongue, “Wait just a minute. I don’t want to kill you—”
“But I will kill you!”
The voice confirmed what Preacher had already discovered a moment earlier. He was fighting a woman.
She surged to her feet and leaped at him. He didn’t know how she was armed, but he heard something moving in the air and figured she was swinging a tomahawk at his head. He ducked and she stumbled into him, thrown off balance by the missed blow.
Since he was already bent over, he grabbed her around the knees and found she was wearing buckskin trousers instead of a dress. He heaved on her legs and threw her over backwards.
From the sound and the pained grunt that came from her he could tell she had landed hard. He went after her, hoping the fall had jolted the tomahawk out of her hand.
No such luck. The flat side of the tomahawk’s head smacked his left shoulder and sent pain shooting down his arm. Still able to use it, he reached out blindly and closed his hands around the shaft of the weapon she had used to wallop him. A savage twist wrenched it out of her grip.
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