Preacher dismounted to study on his best course of action. He knew he had to tread carefully, because there was a chance Frederickson would kill that girl before he’d allow her to be rescued. He wouldn’t want her telling anybody about what had been going on here, especially not the authorities. The local lawman might be hesitant to interfere in domestic matters, but he might have to if Mattie’s story was bad enough and she told it convincingly enough.
“You might as well graze some more,” he told Horse, then added to Dog, “and you might as well go roust up some game if you want to. Best chance of gettin’ that girl outta there will be after it’s dark, so we’re gonna be here for a while.”
Chapter 23
By evening, Preacher had figured out what he was going to do. There was something a lot more precious to the Fredericksons than Billy’s pretty young wife. That was their claim, and the gold they were taking out of it. Anything that threatened that would make them react in a hurry.
They might take turns standing guard over the mine at night. Knowing that, Preacher moved soundlessly through the dark as he climbed down the slope toward the opening of the shaft. The coiled rope was looped over his shoulder. He had left Dog behind, although the big brute wasn’t too far away and could come in a hurry if Preacher called him.
Preacher stopped about ten feet above the opening. He listened and didn’t hear anything, but after a moment he smelled tobacco smoke. Somebody had a pipe going.
He was patient, and after a while a man grunted, stirred, and walked out away from the mine. Preacher could tell from the way the figure stretched and rolled his shoulders that he was having trouble staying awake. Preacher couldn’t tell which of the Fredericksons it was. Not the father; this man was too tall. It could have been any of the boys, though.
Preacher slipped closer and slid one of his Colts from its holster. He didn’t want to fire any shots just yet, but he would if he had to. Soundlessly, he moved out to the end of a jutting slab of rock, timed his leap, and sailed toward the guard just as the man turned back toward the mine.
Whichever of the Frederickson boys he was, he never had a chance. Preacher fell on him out of the dark like a giant bird of prey and knocked him senseless with one swipe of the revolver.
It would have been simple enough to go ahead and cut the unconscious guard’s throat, but Preacher decided not to do that. When he had seen Mattie earlier, she had definitely looked scared, like a girl who had gotten into something she desperately wanted out of, but until he talked to her, he couldn’t be absolutely sure that the situation was how Mattie’s mother had described it to him. Until he knew for certain, he wasn’t going to kill any of the Fredericksons in cold blood.
Now, if they decided to up and shoot at him, that would be different, of course....
Preacher dragged the unconscious man away from the mine entrance, cut strips off his shirt to tie and gag him, then straightened from that task and moved toward the dark maw of the mine shaft. He went into it carefully and extended a hand as he searched the stygian gloom.
It didn’t take him long to reach the end. The Fredericksons had only penetrated about fifteen feet into the hillside, the shaft sloping downward a bit. Preacher explored the walls by touch and found several support beams fashioned from the trunks of trees.
Working by feel, he took the rope from his shoulder and rigged it around the beams at the end of the shaft. As he played out the strand he looped it around the other beams as well, and when he stepped out of the shaft he had about twenty feet left.
The guard had come to and was moving around a little. Preacher went over and knelt beside him, drew the knife, and put the edge against the man’s throat.
“I could’a killed you earlier,” Preacher whispered as the man stiffened in fear at the touch of cold steel. “Don’t make me sorry that I didn’t.”
The man lay still. Preacher stood up and sheathed the knife. He went back to what he’d been doing.
A couple of old saddles lay next to the crude corral where the mules were. Preacher opened the gate and took the saddles inside, where he cinched them onto the big, stolid beasts. Then he led the mules to the end of the rope. He had to cut a couple of pieces off of it to come up with an arrangement where he could attach them to the mules and have both the animals pull equally. The mules weren’t the least bit skittish while he did this, which was a lucky break for him.
He didn’t know if his plan would work. Some dynamite would have been better. But a man had to work with the tools he was given.
“All right, you jugheaded varmints,” he told the mules. “You ready to do some haulin’?”
He grasped the halters he had put on them and backed away from the mine. The mules came with him, and behind them the slack in the rope lifted from the ground and became taut. When the mules felt that, they stopped.
“Come on,” Preacher gritted. “Don’t get balky on me now, you dadblasted critters!”
He cussed and heaved, and after a minute the mules began to heave against the weight. Would the rope hold? Preacher didn’t know. Some chain or cable and a bigger team of mules would’ve been better. So would a donkey engine. But he didn’t have any of those things. He had rope, a couple of mules, and some ingenuity.
And the hope that that would be enough.
A scraping sound came from inside the mine. That was one of the support beams coming loose, Preacher thought. Once it gave, that allowed the mules to exert more force on the others, and a moment later the old mountain man heard more scraping.
Then with a clatter, all the beams gave way, and the mules lunged forward and dragged them out of the shaft. Preacher stopped the animals, since their work was done.
Then he held his breath and waited to see what the result would be. There was no guarantee the shaft would collapse just because the support beams had been removed.
The Fredericksons hadn’t been tunneling through solid rock. There was a lot of dirt mixed in there, too, Preacher had discovered as he felt his way along the walls. That weakened the shaft. He listened closely and heard a pattering sound. That would be dirt and small rocks falling from the ceiling as the great weight of the hillside shifted a little.
The pattering grew more rapid and got louder. Then it suddenly turned into a rumble, and that rumble changed to a roar as the shaft began to collapse.
Preacher felt like letting out a whoop of triumph, but he didn’t want to give away his position. Instead, he left the mules standing where they were and retreated quickly into the trees near the cabin. The place had been dark when he came up, but now the door flew open and light spilled out from a lantern someone inside had lit. Several figures charged out.
Preacher counted them. All four of the remaining Fredericksons appeared. The sons wore long underwear. The elder Frederickson was in an old-fashioned nightshirt.
All of them carried rifles.
“The shaft!” one of the boys yelled in alarm. “The shaft’s collapsin’!”
“Where’s Arly?” another shouted.
That would be the guard, Preacher thought, the only one of the sons whose name he hadn’t heard until now.
Frederickson held the lantern high as they rushed toward the mine opening. He bellowed, “Arly! By God, boy, where are you? What’s happened here? All our work ruined!”
Preacher slipped behind them, putting himself between them and the cabin. He drew both Colts, pointed the left-hand gun into the air, and pulled the trigger. The roar of the mine collapse had come to an end, so the gunshot sounded loud in the following silence.
The shot made the Fredericksons jump and start to turn around, but they froze when Preacher leveled his Colts at them and barked, “Hold it right there, you ridge-runnin’ polecats! I got the drop on you, and I’ll ventilate the whole lot of you if you give me an excuse.”
“You!” Frederickson exclaimed. “I knew we couldn’t trust you! What have you done? Why’d you collapse our mine?”
“I reckon if I was you I’d be more w
orried about that boy o’ yours who was standin’ guard,” Preacher drawled.
“Arly? Damn him, if he let you ruin us!”
“Pa, don’t say that,” Billy objected. “Mister, what have you done to my brother?”
“He’s all right,” Preacher said. “Just got a sore head, that’s all. But he’ll get worse if you fellas don’t cooperate with me.” His voice hardened. “I’ve come for Miss Margaret Langston.”
“What? You mean Mattie? She ain’t Miss Langston! She’s my wife!”
“Maybe in the eyes of the law, but if what I’ve heard about you varmints is true, I don’t reckon it’s a real marriage in the eyes o’ God.”
“See?” Wiley said. He was the oldest of the four sons. “I told you we shouldn’t—”
“Shut up!” Frederickson snapped. “What goes on inside a family ain’t no business of outsiders!”
That reaction pretty well confirmed the rumors Elizabeth had heard, at least as far as Preacher was concerned. He reined in the impulse to start shooting.
Instead, he said, “Put them rifles on the ground and back away from ’em. I’m takin’ the girl back to her mama, where she belongs.”
“She belongs with me!” Billy said as the four of them obeyed Preacher’s command with obvious reluctance and anger. “She’s my wife! We’re in love!”
“You may be, but I’ll bet she don’t feel the same way no more.”
“You ask her!” the young man blustered. “You just ask her!”
“I intend to,” Preacher said. He raised his voice. “Mattie! Come on out here, gal! I’m a friend your ma sent to help you!”
He didn’t take his eyes off the Fredericksons, but a moment later he heard some hesitant, shuffling steps behind him.
“Mattie, is that you?” he asked.
“Yes,” came the strained reply. “Who . . . who are you, mister?”
“They call me Preacher. I’m an old friend of your ma’s.”
Frederickson snorted and said, “Old is right. I’ll bet this relic can’t even see well enough to hit anything with those guns. We should charge him, boys.”
“If you’re that eager to get your sons killed, and your own self, too, you just go right ahead, Frederickson,” Preacher said.
The four of them didn’t move.
“Listen here, Mattie,” Preacher went on after a moment. “Your ma asked me to come out here and get you and bring you back to her. I got to hear it from your own mouth, though, that you want to go.”
Before she could reply, Billy said, “Mattie, don’t! You know I love you, honey. You gotta stay with me!”
Preacher heard Mattie swallow hard. Then she said, “I . . . I can’t go, mister. I can’t leave here.”
Preacher frowned.
“You don’t mean that, gal,” he said.
Billy let out a whoop and pointed a finger. He said, “You see! She loves me, like I told you! She don’t want to leave me!”
“It . . . it’s not that,” Mattie went on. “I can’t go back because of the . . . the shame. After what’s been done to me, even a saloon is too respectable a place for . . . for the likes of me. I’m too dirty.”
“Now, Mattie, that just ain’t right,” Preacher said. “Only reason for somebody to feel shame is because o’ somethin’ they done their own selves. Nobody needs to be ashamed about somethin’ that was done to ’em.”
“I’d like to believe that’s true, I really would, but I . . . I couldn’t stand the way people would stare at me and talk behind their hands and snicker.”
“Anybody who did that, your mama would set ’em straight in a hurry. They’d be sorry enough they wouldn’t do it again, neither.”
“I’m sorry, mister. I just can’t go back.”
“I told you,” Billy crowed. “You’ll see, honey, everything’ll be all right.”
Frederickson said, “Except we got to dig out that damned shaft all over again because of what this old bastard did!”
“I’m just a whisker away from shootin’ you just on gen’ral principles, Frederickson,” Preacher warned. “So I’d be careful what I said if I was you.” He turned his head slightly and added, “You got to be sure about this, Mattie. You can make it right if you want to. You just got to be brave enough to do it.”
“I know,” she said. “I already figured that out.”
She stepped beside Preacher. He saw her from the corner of his eye. She wore a long, white nightdress, and her long dark hair was loose around her face and over her shoulders. She had something in her hands, but Preacher couldn’t tell what it was at first.
Frederickson saw it, too, and said, “What the hell is that the girl’s got? It’s not—”
Mattie raised the object with both hands and thrust it in front of her.
Billy cried, “It’s your old Dragoon pistol, Pa!”
So it was, Preacher realized, and in that long white gown Mattie looked like some sort of avenging angel as she pointed the long-barreled revolver. The hammer was already pulled back and cocked.
Frederickson said scornfully, “That old thing won’t even shoot anymore.”
Preacher began, “Girl, don’t—”
But Mattie said, “I’ve got to make things right,” and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 24
The Dragoon was a cap-and-ball revolver that fired a heavy .44 caliber round. A tongue of flame lashed from the muzzle as the gun roared.
Billy had started to take a step toward Mattie, but he staggered back as the ball struck his right arm exactly at the elbow. The shot was pure luck; Mattie couldn’t have aimed it like that.
But the ball pulverized bone and practically blew Billy’s arm off, anyway. He howled in agony as his hand and forearm flopped loosely, held on only by a few strands of muscle and flesh.
“Kill ’em both!” Frederickson bellowed as he lunged for one of the rifles they had dropped on the ground.
Preacher put two slugs from his right-hand Colt into Frederickson’s chest before the West Virginian could reach the rifles. He triggered the left-hand gun at Wiley and Thurlow as they went after the Winchesters, too.
At the same time Preacher lunged to his right so that his shoulder hit Mattie. The collision knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling on the ground, which was exactly what Preacher wanted. At least she was more out of the line of fire down there.
He stood over her and let the twin Colts buck and roar in his hands. The remaining two Frederickson boys got their hands on the rifles and jerked them from the ground. Bullets ripped from the repeaters and whined around Preacher as nearly continuous muzzle flashes tore the night asunder.
The old mountain man had been under fire and faced odds like this countless times in his life. He shifted subtly to throw off the aim of his enemies and drove a slug into Wiley’s midsection. That made the oldest son double over and collapse.
A second later, one of Preacher’s bullets smashed through Thurlow’s right lung and knocked him to the ground. He gasped for air, but the bubbling whistle that came from him testified that he was about to drown in his own blood.
Preacher was worried about Mattie, but he had to check on the Fredericksons first. The old man was dead. Preacher had drilled him twice through the heart. Wiley and Thurlow were both still alive, but not for long. As he was seeing how badly they were hurt, Preacher heard the death rattle in each man’s throat.
That left Billy, who writhed and whimpered on the ground nearby. A dark pool of blood surrounded him as it pumped from his mangled arm. But he was strong enough to say piteously, “Mattie . . . Mattie . . .”
Preacher thumbed fresh cartridges into his Colts, holstered them, and went to the girl’s side. He knelt and took hold of her shoulders.
“Mattie, are you all right?” he asked as he lifted her into a sitting position. He didn’t see any blood on her nightdress, but it was hard to tell in this light.
She seemed too stunned to talk. She clutched at his arms and trembled. He pulled her agains
t him and awkwardly patted her back. Despite his long life, comforting an upset female was something he had never really learned how to do effectively.
“Mattie . . .” Billy wailed.
That made her shudder even more. Preacher tightened his arms around her.
After a few moments, she was able to take a deep breath and say, “I . . . I’m all right, Mr. Preacher.”
“Just Preacher,” he said. “Forget about the mister.”
“Are they all dead?”
“Except for Billy and Arly. He’s tied up.”
“Is . . . is Billy dying?”
Preacher wasn’t going to lie to her. He said, “I reckon so. He’s lost too much blood to live.”
“I want to talk to him.”
That seemed reasonable enough. Preacher picked up the Dragoon Colt she had dropped when he knocked her down and tucked it behind his gun belt. He helped her to her feet. She was none too steady, but with his help she made it over to where Billy lay dying.
“Mattie . . .”
“I’m here,” she told him as she leaned on Preacher.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I know what we done . . . was wrong.... I tried to stop it.... I just never could . . . stand up to my pa and . . . my brothers.”
“This was one time you should have, Billy,” she said. “You really should have.”
“I know. . . . I know. . . .” He grimaced and spasmed as a fresh wave of pain must have gone through him. “I . . . I’d die easier . . . if you’d forgive me . . . if I knew that . . . you didn’t hate me. . . .”
“Billy,” she said softly.
“Mattie . . . ?”
“Go to hell. Your family’s waiting for you.”
Billy gasped. His back arched slightly. When his body sank back to the ground, he was gone, with his wife’s condemnation the last thing he heard on this earth.
“Gal, you had it all wrong,” Preacher told her. “You’re plenty strong enough to make it back in Deadwood, no matter what the folks there do.”
“I . . . I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
Massacre Canyon Page 14
