Hawk dropped to the ground and stumbled back away from the flailing beast. The grizzly was dead, but its body hadn’t realized that yet. Within moments, the bear began staggering back and forth.
Hawk raced to Preacher’s side, caught hold of the mountain man under the arms, and dragged him well clear of the grizzly. After they had survived the desperate battle, it wouldn’t do to have the huge varmint fall on Preacher and crush him to death.
Preacher pushed himself into a sitting position as Hawk hunkered down beside him. Together they watched as mortality finally caught up to the bear. The grizzly let out one more gurgling groan, then pitched forward, slamming to the ground like a falling tree. Preacher and Hawk felt the vibration from the impact.
“How badly are you hurt?” Hawk asked.
“Don’t matter,” Preacher replied. “We got to get movin’. Tall Bull’s men are liable to have heard those shots.”
“But a moment ago you could not walk.”
“I still can’t, not without help. Hurry and find a branch I can use as a crutch.”
“It will be faster if you lean on me, or let me carry you if I have to.”
“Can’t do that because you’re goin’ on ahead of me and gettin’ out of here while you got the chance. I’ll go on by myself.”
“No,” Hawk said. “I will stay with you.”
“Damn it, boy—”
“We are wasting time.” Hawk rose to his feet and extended a hand to Preacher. “As you said, we need to move.”
Preacher frowned at him for a couple seconds, then growled in frustration, reached up, and clasped Hawk’s wrist. He was no lightweight, but Hawk lifted him easily.
Preacher balanced on one leg and gingerly put some weight on the other. It buckled underneath him, but the lack of any sharp pain made him think no bones were broken.
“Put your arm around my shoulder,” Hawk said as he looped an arm around Preacher’s waist.
“This is gonna be like a damn three-legged race at a fair,” Preacher said, “except the stakes are a lot higher than a pie or whatever would go to the winner.”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Hawk said, “but I suggest we leave.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They started off awkwardly but soon fell into a rhythm of sorts.
As they walked, Preacher added, “By the way, thanks for killin’ that griz. He’d have settled my hash if you hadn’t done for him, I reckon.”
“We both killed him. He would have died from the wounds you inflicted on him. I just . . . hurried him along, as you might say.”
“Now and then, we make pretty good partners.”
“Do not become accustomed to it,” Hawk said.
* * *
Within an hour, most of the feeling had returned to Preacher’s leg and he was able to walk on his own, although his gait was slower and more awkward than he liked. The leg hurt like blazes once the numbness wore off. He figured he’d be bruised from hip to sole by the next day.
Several times, Preacher urged Hawk to go on ahead and not allow him to slow him down. Hawk refused. They had left the canyon together, and they would return together, he insisted.
Even hobbled, Preacher could move as fast through the wilderness as most men were able to when they were healthy. He and Hawk caught sight of what appeared to be a Blackfoot war party about half a mile away on the other side of a high, broad mountain meadow. They laid low in a gully until the warriors were gone, then resumed their trek.
They reached the pass and descended into the foothills on the other side of the valley, staying well above the valley floor as they worked their way north. They were still high enough that some of the drop-offs were fairly dizzying.
Their course came to an abrupt halt when they found themselves facing a stretch of talus—rocks that had fallen from the cliff in ages past and piled up below—that sloped down from left to right in front of them. At the top of that slope was a sheer rock face a good fifty yards wide. At the bottom of the slope was another precipitous drop-off.
Preacher stared at the loose rocks with disgust. They ranged in size from that of a fist to stones larger than a man’s head. “We didn’t run into this the first time we came through here. Must’ve gone around somehow and never saw it.”
“We will have to go around now,” Hawk said. “We cannot cross those rocks or climb that cliff.”
“We’d have to double back a mile or more. That’ll slow us down. Not only that, we’d be goin’ right back toward those Blackfeet we saw earlier. If they’ve given up lookin’ for us and turned back toward the village, we’d be liable to run right smack dab into ’em.”
“Then how do you suggest we get across those loose rocks?”
Preacher grunted. “Mighty careful-like. Make sure wherever you step is stable before you put much weight on it. It’ll be slow goin’, but still faster than doublin’ back.”
Hawk frowned as he studied the talus slope for a long moment. Then he said, “I will go first.”
“So I won’t fall and knock you off? I don’t reckon that’s likely to happen here, since I’d be behind you, not above you.”
“You argue as much as an old man like White Buffalo.”
“Well, go on, then,” Preacher said. “I ain’t stoppin’ you.”
Hawk moved out onto the talus. As he carefully eased across them, testing each step before he committed to it, he dislodged pebbles that bounced down the slope. A few larger rocks slid as well, and when they dropped off the end of the slope, Preacher listened to find out how long it took them to hit the ground below. The interval before the thuds drifted back up was longer than he liked to think about.
From several yards out onto the slope, Hawk paused and turned his head to look back at Preacher. “Stay there until I get across. That way you will know where it is safe.”
In turning his head, his body had moved slightly. His right foot twisted, and so did the stone upon which it rested. Suddenly, that rock shot out from under him, and so did his foot. He let out an involuntary shout as he fell. He scrambled, clutching at the rocks, but all of them were shifting. He could find nothing sturdy and stable enough to grab.
With a great clatter, Hawk and a whole section of the talus began to slide swiftly toward the drop-off at the bottom of the slope.
CHAPTER 30
Without pausing to think about what he was doing, Preacher lunged forward, bounding from rock to rock and throwing himself after Hawk. The soreness in his leg was forgotten.
The talus slid under him, as well, just not as much. He spotted an outcropping that didn’t seem to be moving and slapped his left hand at it.
At the same time, he stretched out his right arm as far as it would go and reached for Hawk’s flailing hands.
A couple things happened at once. Preacher’s left hand closed over the outcropping and his right hand caught hold of the fingers on Hawk’s right hand. Both were precarious grips. He grimaced when Hawk’s out-of-control weight hit his right hand and arm. Bones and muscles strained to hang on.
Preacher knew if the rock he had hold of gave way, it wouldn’t matter. He and Hawk would go over the edge and plummet to their deaths. The lower half of Hawk’s body was already hanging in midair.
The fingers of Preacher’s left hand slipped a tiny bit, but the rock itself didn’t budge. It wasn’t part of the talus but rather an outcropping from the underlying surface, he realized as he bore down and held on tighter.
The loose rock washed around Hawk like a wave and went over the edge to fall far below. As the clattering and grinding settled down, Hawk gasped, “Let me go . . . or you will fall, too!”
“I ain’t . . . lettin’ go,” Preacher said through clenched teeth. “See if . . . you can grab on somewhere. . . with your other hand!”
Hawk was lying spread-eagled on the slope, both of his arms stretched out as far as they could go in opposite directions. Preacher was the only lifeline keeping Hawk from falling to his death, and it felt as if any second
his shoulder sockets were going to pop loose.
Hawk fumbled around, searching for someplace stable to hold with his left hand. Every rock he grasped moved in his grip. Again he said, “Let me fall!”
“Not . . . hardly. See if you can . . . get hold of my arm . . . farther up. You can . . . climb up that way.”
“You cannot hold me!”
“I’m your pa, boy! Don’t you be tellin’ me . . . what I can’t do!”
Hawk reached up and grasped the end of Preacher’s sleeve. With a grunt of effort, he heaved himself a little higher on the slope. Preacher closed his eyes. He didn’t know what was going to give out first, his bones or his muscles.
“A little more . . . and then maybe . . . you can wedge a foot in somewhere.”
Hawk shifted his grip and pulled himself up another couple inches. While he clung to Preacher’s forearm, Preacher shifted his grip and clasped Hawk’s wrist while Hawk took hold of his. That was a more secure grip, but it didn’t relieve the weight on Preacher’s joints.
Hawk bent his knee and pulled his right leg up. He searched for a place to wedge his toe and after minutes that seemed like hours, he found one. He pushed against the rocks, and they didn’t move. As he increased the pressure and took some of the weight, Preacher almost groaned with relief.
“That’s it,” the mountain man urged. “Keep climbin’.”
Painfully slowly, Hawk crawled up the slope away from the brink. More rocks came loose, tumbled down, and shot out into empty space, but eventually, he was spread out on the slope like Preacher was.
The imminent danger was over, but they still had to climb up and across the rest of the talus before they would be safe.
“If you stay here,” Hawk said to Preacher, panting as he tried to catch his breath after that terrifying close call, “I can climb up and throw something back down to you.”
“You mean like a rope? You gonna conjure one out of thin air?”
“I can cut my shirt into strips and tie them together.”
That might actually work, Preacher thought. He nodded. “All right, but take it slow and careful-like. If you fall again, I doubt if I can catch you a second time.”
“I will not fall,” Hawk promised. His voice was grim with determination.
Inch by painstaking inch, Hawk angled toward the top of the talus slope. Preacher clung to the outcropping that had saved them and watched, occasionally calling out a suggestion as to where Hawk might place a hand or foot next.
Finally, Hawk pulled himself onto solid ground again. Preacher had no idea how long the nerve-wracking journey had taken, but the sun was well into the afternoon sky by then.
It was a good thing none of the Blackfeet had come along while they were stuck out there. Those bloodthirsty varmints would have had a high old time feathering them full of arrows, Preacher thought.
Hawk was trembling slightly from exhaustion and the strain of making that climb, but he set to work immediately fashioning the rope made from his buckskin shirt. He tied all the knots tight and tested them, then tossed one end down the slope toward Preacher.
The makeshift rope fell short, so Hawk had to pull it up and add more. The next time he threw it, Preacher was able to grab hold of the end. He wrapped it around his wrist and tied it in place.
“Let me brace myself, then you use the rope to pull yourself up,” Hawk called.
Preacher waited until the young man gave him a curt nod, then he rose to his knees and carefully stood up. He had hold of the rope with both hands. With it to steady him, he was able to find rocks that didn’t shift under his feet and made the climb much more quickly than Hawk had. He sprawled on the ground next to the young man and lay there with his chest rising and falling deeply.
“Well,” Preacher said at last, “that’s somethin’ I’d just as soon not do every day.”
* * *
After they had rested a while, they set off again. The terrain was still rugged, but they didn’t encounter any more obstacles as daunting as the ones they had already overcome.
“Seems like we’re sort of gettin’ in the habit of savin’ each other’s lives,” Preacher commented as they traveled through a dense stretch of pines and firs.
“We are allies against the Blackfeet,” Hawk said. “Those who fight side by side do what they can to help each other.”
“Yeah, I know, but it seems to me it’s a mite more than that.”
Hawk glanced over at the mountain man. “You mean because we are father and son?” He shrugged. “It is hard to deny the bond that exists between blood, but I cannot forget how my mother spent her life hoping you would return to her . . . and knowing that you would not.”
“Blast it. If I’d known Birdie and I had a son—”
“We have talked about this. If you had known, it is still likely you never would have come back to her.”
“Likely, maybe, but we can’t ever know for sure, can we? Folks like to say, oh, if such-and-such a thing was to happen, I’d do this or I’d do that, but when you come right down to it, they don’t know.” Preacher paused, then added, “Folks never know for sure what they’re gonna do until life’s problems are starin’ ’em right square in the face. That’s what tells the tale, and nothin’ else.”
Hawk didn’t say anything, but after a moment he shrugged again, although he remained silent. Preacher figured that was as close to agreement as he was going to get from the youngster.
Preacher’s injured leg kept trying to stiffen up, but the way they kept moving, he didn’t give it much of a chance to. He would be glad for the opportunity to rest it once they got back to the canyon.
It was late afternoon before Preacher recognized various landmarks near their destination. He was about to say something to Hawk about it when he heard something that made him stiffen as his forehead creased in a frown.
Hawk had heard it, too. “Those sound like gunshots.”
“They damn sure do. Comin’ from the direction of where we left White Buffalo and those greenhorns.”
As far as Preacher knew, Charlie Todd and Aaron Buckley were the only ones in the area who had firearms, other than him. Of course, it was possible another group of trappers had drifted into the valley, but that wasn’t very likely. Most experienced mountain men knew to give the Blackfeet plenty of room. Crowding them was just asking for bad trouble.
The shots were irregular and spaced out considerably. They didn’t sound like a battle was going on, but he could tell whoever was doing the shooting wasn’t just hunting for game. Todd and Buckley wouldn’t have done that, anyway. They would have been too afraid of attracting unwanted attention, and rightly so.
“That’s trouble, sure enough,” Preacher went on. “Those boys are puttin’ up a fight. We’d best go see if we can give ’em a hand before it’s too late.”
It wasn’t easy to pick up the pace with his leg hurting like it did, but Preacher ignored the pain and hustled on with Hawk at his side. The shots grew louder as they approached the canyon, giving Preacher no doubt that was where they were coming from.
They came in sight of the tall rock face with the cleft in it leading to the canyon and knelt behind some boulders to study the situation.
Scattered around in a half circle facing the cleft were a dozen or more Blackfoot warriors. Using rocks and brush and gullies for cover, they fired arrows toward the opening. A shot boomed somewhere inside the cleft and Preacher saw a spurt of powder smoke.
A couple warriors were sprawled unmoving on the ground near the cleft. The defenders had scored at least twice with their shots.
Preacher frowned again as he waited for a second shot from the cleft. It finally came, but not until enough time had passed for a man to reload his rifle.
“I think there’s only one fella in there puttin’ up a fight,” he said quietly to Hawk.
“One of the white men must have been killed or wounded.”
“That’s what I figure,” Preacher said. “Or—” Just then the other poss
ibility that had occurred to him was shown to be right, as two warriors pushed out of some brush holding a struggling figure between them.
Charlie Todd was a prisoner, and he didn’t stop trying to get loose until one of the Blackfeet held a knife to his throat. The young white man was only a second away from death.
CHAPTER 31
The other warrior hanging on to Todd shouted toward the cleft, “Come out, white man, or we will kill your friend!”
He spoke in the Blackfoot tongue, of course, which Aaron Buckley wouldn’t understand at all. White Buffalo would, though, so he could translate for the greenhorn . . . assuming White Buffalo was still alive in the canyon.
Todd didn’t wait for a response. He shouted, “Whatever he’s saying, don’t listen to him, Aaron! Shoot the sons of bitches!”
The man with the knife responded by taking it away from Todd’s throat, then slamming a fist against the young man’s head. The blow knocked Todd to his knees. The man with the knife grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back, drawing the skin of his throat tight. A quick, hard slash with the blade would open Todd’s throat all the way to his spine. The knife hovered there, ready to strike.
“Wait!” Buckley shouted from the cleft. “Don’t kill him!”
“Damn it,” Preacher muttered. “Don’t come outta there, boy. They’ll just kill you both.”
“We can try to help them.” Hawk didn’t sound like he thought that was the best idea in the world, since he didn’t really know the two young white men and didn’t have much use for them, but Preacher could tell Hawk would go along with whatever he wanted to do.
“Get an arrow ready. Reckon you can hit the fella with the knife from here?”
“I can,” Hawk said with the simple confidence of a man who didn’t feel any need to boast. He nocked an arrow into his bow.
“Take him down first, then, when the time comes.”
“When will that be?”
“I want to see what Aaron’s gonna do first.” Preacher pulled out his pistols, checked the loads, and made sure they were ready to fire. The range was a little long for pistols, but he had left his rifle in the canyon, knowing what he and Hawk were setting out to do would require a great deal of stealth and close-up killing. A rifle wasn’t good for those things.
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