“What about you? You do not want a woman?”
“I didn’t say that,” Deaver answered, being deliberately vague about it.
He wanted a woman, all right. One woman. The one called Raven’s Wing. There was no denying it.
And he promised himself in that moment that he would find a way to have her, somehow. No matter what it took, short of ruining his plans to get rich.
“Very well,” Snake Heart said with a nod. “When we return to the village, your men can have their pick of the prisoners … except for this one. She belongs to Snake Heart.”
You go ahead and tell yourself that, you redskinned bastard, thought Deaver, even though there was a smile on his face.
Raven’s Wing was never going to belong to anybody except him.
Night was not far off when Preacher and his companions reached the top of the ridge and the gap that led through it. Snow had drifted a couple of feet deep in the notch, but it was still passable for the horses.
“Once again we face a journey through the badlands,” Two Bears said as the men reined in and looked over the rugged, snow-draped terrain in front of them. “Can your dog follow a scent through this snow?”
“Maybe,” Preacher said. “It won’t be easy, though.”
Frustration made one of the muscles in Two Bears’ tightly clenched jaw jump a little.
“We are not going to catch them. We will have to follow them all the way to their village.”
Preacher tried not to sigh.
“Looks like you’re right. Can you find the place?”
“I can find it.”
“Yeah, but can you find your way through the badlands … or will we be wanderin’ around in there for the rest of the winter?”
“I will lead us through,” Two Bears snapped. “And once I have, it will not be difficult to locate the Gros Ventre village.”
Audie had moved his horse up alongside their mounts while they talked. Now he said, “Maybe we could trade something to the Gros Ventre for the prisoners. A lot of times that’s all it amounts to when they take captives, just something to give them some bargaining power.”
Two Bears shook his head.
“Not Snake Heart,” he declared confidently. “He has no interest in ransom or in trading with us. His heart is filled with hate, as his name says, and all he wants to do is kill Assiniboine. He will hold them so we have no choice but to come for them, and he believes that when we do, he will kill all of us.”
“Well, then,” Preacher drawled, “I reckon we’ll just have to surprise him.”
CHAPTER 24
The rescue party camped just below the notch. It was a long, cold, miserable night as the men huddled in their robes and blankets. With the wind blowing and the snow falling, it was impossible to keep a fire going, so there was no hot food, no chance to warm up next to merrily dancing flames.
The cold made the wound in Preacher’s side ache like a son of a gun, and his head throbbed from the wallop it had taken. He was getting too old for adventures like this, he told himself as he lay with a couple of blankets tucked tightly around him and tried not to shiver from the cold.
One of these days he ought to go back home, get some land to farm, maybe find him a widow woman to marry. He could sit on the porch of an evening, smoke his pipe, watch the sun go down, and just enjoy the peace and quiet.
He had to chuckle to himself at that thought. That was about as likely to happen as it was for buffalo to sprout wings and go flying over the prairie.
For some men, such things were just never going to happen, and Preacher knew he was one of them. Someday he would die with a bullet or an arrow or a knife in him, either freezing on a mountaintop or scorching under a desert sun.
He just hoped that when his time came, he had a weapon of his own in his hand, and the last thing he heard on this earth was an enemy’s dying scream.
For a man like him, that would be a good death, a better death than going to meet his Maker lying in a bed somewhere peaceful with a bunch of folks standing around him with glum expressions on their faces.
Of course, given the tumultuous life he’d led, it would more likely be Ol’ Scratch waiting for him on the other side of the divide, not St. Peter.
In that case, Preacher would just spit in the son of a bitch’s face and keep fightin’.
It was what he did.
And with those thoughts in his head, he dozed off.
When he woke up an unknowable time later, it was to the sounds of men yelling and guns booming.
Preacher had gone to sleep with a pistol in one hand, the other short gun behind his belt, and his rifle right beside him. Dog was on his other side. As he threw the blankets aside and sat up, he saw that the big cur was already standing, ears pricked forward, the fur on his back ruffled, a growl rumbling deep in his throat.
“Sic ’em, Dog!” Preacher ordered. Dog was off like a shot, arrowing toward some struggling figures nearby. Preacher knew that Dog’s sensitive nose would tell him which men were friends and which ones were foes.
Snake Heart had struck again, Preacher thought as he uncoiled smoothly to his feet. When the first bunch of ambushers never returned, the Gros Ventre war chief had sent some of his men doubling back to attack the pursuers.
Drawing his other pistol, Preacher strode forward, but he had gone only a couple of steps when a howling figure lunged at him out of the darkness. Preacher ducked as a tomahawk slashed through the air where his head had been an instant earlier. He jammed the barrel of his right-hand pistol against the raider’s chest and squeezed the trigger.
The man’s body muffled the dull boom somewhat. The Gros Ventre flew backward and landed in a limp sprawl on the snow. His buckskin shirt was on fire from the burning powder blown out of the muzzle, along with the two heavy lead balls that had punched a fist-sized hole in his chest and smashed his heart into pulp.
Preacher wheeled to his left as his instincts warned him. An arrow cut the air beside his head. He fired the left-hand gun and sent the man who had just launched the arrow spinning off his feet. Preacher shoved the empty pistols behind his belt and drew his knife.
It was close, bloody work, punctuated by screams, shouts, Dog’s fierce snarls, and the occasional roar of a gunshot.
When it was over, Preacher’s knife dripped red and bodies were sprawled around on the rocky ground with snow collecting on them. Preacher sought out his friends and was relieved to find that Lorenzo, Audie, and Nighthawk were all right.
“It was a near thing,” Lorenzo said. “I come mighty close to gettin’ my brains bashed out by one o’ them Gros Ventre who come after me with a tomahawk. I got my rifle up just in time to jab him in the belly with it and hold him off until I could pull the trigger.”
Blood welled from a shallow gash on Audie’s forehead. That was the only injury among the four of them.
The Assiniboine rescue party had suffered three more deaths, though.
“One of the men who died was standing guard,” Two Bears explained. “It would have been worse if he had not been able to sound the alarm, even mortally wounded.”
Six Gros Ventre warriors were dead. Again the Assiniboine had dealt out more damage than they had received. At this rate, the parties would soon be close to the same strength, if they weren’t already.
But that didn’t really matter, Preacher thought, because as soon as the Gros Ventre reached their village, the odds would go back up again. Frustration gnawed at the mountain man’s gut as he thought about the things that might happen to Raven’s Wing and the other captives before the rescue party caught up to them.
They pitched the bodies of the Gros Ventre into a ravine for the scavengers. The bodies of the Assiniboine who had been killed were wrapped in blankets and placed in a hollow, and then their fellow warriors piled rocks on top of them to form a cairn. That was all they could do to protect the remains of their former comrades from predators.
No one slept much the rest of the night. For those who did
doze off, their slumber was haunted by memories and nightmares.
Crossing the badlands took most of a day, and even though Deaver had been through here before on the way to the Assiniboine village, he knew he would have gotten hopelessly lost in a hurry if he’d had to navigate through these wastes on his own.
Snake Heart seemed to know exactly where he was going, though, and Deaver was grateful for that.
When the raiders camped the night before, Snake Heart kept Raven’s Wing close to him, tied hand and foot, but he hadn’t tried to assault her. This barren, rocky terrain was too cold and uncomfortable for such goings-on, as Deaver had pointed out to Caleb Manning the previous day. Snake Heart was willing to wait until they got back to the Gros Ventre village for that.
The other raiders were equally patient. The Assiniboine women sobbed softly to themselves, but as far as Deaver could see, they really didn’t have that much to complain about so far. Sure, they had been ripped away violently from their homes and families, tied up, and carried into these badlands, but things could have been a lot worse for them.
Things would be a lot worse for them. Just give their Gros Ventre captors time, Deaver thought with bleak humor as the group rode out the next morning.
The raiding party was considerably smaller now. Snake Heart had lost some men in the attack on the Assiniboine village itself, and during the pursuit he had left two separate bunches of warriors on their back trail to discourage the Assiniboine.
Surprisingly, none of those men had come back, which likely meant they were all dead. The pursuers were giving a better account of themselves than Deaver expected.
And they were still back there, still coming along doggedly after them. The Gros Ventre got confirmation of that late in the afternoon when they paused on top of a hogback ridge and looked back out over the rugged terrain they had crossed that day, which was now covered with snow. Snake Heart leveled an arm, pointed, and said with bitter anger in his voice, “There.”
Deaver looked where the war chief was pointing, and at first he didn’t see anything.
Then he spotted some tiny black dots moving against the white landscape and grunted in recognition.
“Riders,” he said.
Snake Heart nodded. He had Raven’s Wing on his pony today, sitting in front of him with her hands tied again. He hadn’t given her a chance to make another break for freedom. Her head was still up, though, and defiant anger still burned in her dark eyes.
He would beat that out of her once she was his woman, Deaver promised himself.
But not too quickly. He wanted to break her spirit, true, but he intended to enjoy himself while he was taming her. Sometimes, the more fight a woman put up, the more he liked it.
“I can see ’em,” he told Snake Heart, “but I can’t make out any details. Got to be the Assiniboine, though.”
Before Snake Heart could reply, Raven’s Wing said, “My people will kill all of you. Preacher and Two Bears will lead them, and you will all die.”
Snake Heart cuffed her on the side of the head, making her cry out more from surprise than pain.
Deaver had to laugh.
“You think that mountain man’s gonna help you?” he asked. “Preacher’s dead!”
The stricken look she gave him told Deaver that she cared for Preacher. Hell, for all he knew, she had become his squaw and moved in with him for the winter.
That would make things even better for him when the time came, Deaver thought. His anticipation was growing by leaps and bounds.
Even though Snake Heart had walloped her, Raven’s Wing glared over at Deaver and insisted stubbornly, “You lie, white man! Preacher is not dead.”
“I put a rifle ball in him myself,” Deaver boasted. “And then later during the fightin’, my horse trampled him and stove in his skull. He’s dead, girl. Don’t you make any mistake about that.”
Deaver’s words did something that all the other mistreatment Raven’s Wing had received had failed to accomplish.
They made despair appear in her eyes.
She lowered her head and fought back a sob. When Deaver saw how upset she was, he wished he had told her about Preacher’s death earlier. He hadn’t known until now, though, of the connection between the two of them.
“You mourn over a white man?” Snake Heart said disgustedly. “They are even more disgusting than the Assiniboine! If you allowed a white man to touch you, truly you are fit to be only the lowest of slaves.”
If he felt that way about her, Deaver thought, then maybe he wouldn’t be so determined to hang on to her for himself. And Deaver didn’t care who she’d been with. He just wanted her.
Snake Heart pulled his horse around.
“They cannot catch us,” he went on. “We will be back in our village by nightfall, and once we are there, no one will dare to come after us. The Assiniboine are finished. They might as well turn around and go home.”
Deaver didn’t really expect that to happen, but he wasn’t particularly worried about the pursuit, either. With their numbers and their superior firepower, the Gros Ventre could hold off any attack by a party of Assiniboine bent on taking revenge and rescuing the prisoners.
As the raiders rode on, Manning said quietly to Deaver, “I’m sure lookin’ forward to gettin’ there, Willie, now that Snake Heart’s promised us some time with those squaws. This is gonna be some night.”
“Yeah,” Deaver said. But maybe not for him, though. He might have to wait a while to get what he really wanted.
It was going to be worth the wait.
The snow was still falling when the pursuit resumed that morning, but it stopped by midday, although the sky remained overcast. Once again the pursuers relied on Dog’s keen nose to guide them, because the snow had blotted out the tracks of the Gros Ventre as it fell.
Two Bears was convinced that he knew his way through the badlands, but Preacher could tell that the war chief was glad they had Dog along, too. Sometimes the big cur lost the scent, but he always found it again, and the paths he took agreed for the most part with the way Two Bears thought they should go.
Preacher rode with Lorenzo, Audie, and Nighthawk. Lorenzo had bound up Audie’s head wound with some strips torn off his shirt.
The old-timer asked, “Since we ain’t likely to catch ’em before they get back to their village, what do you reckon we’ll do once we get there?”
“Snake Heart is bound to have left some of his warriors behind,” Audie said, “which means that his force will be considerably stronger than ours again. And since they’ll be expecting trouble, I don’t think a direct attack would prove to be successful.”
“Umm,” Nighthawk said.
“That’s true,” Audie agreed. “They might kill the captives rather than letting us rescue them. Snake Heart is certainly cruel enough to do just that.”
“They ain’t gonna kill nobody,” Preacher said harshly. “I’m thinkin’ me and Nighthawk will get into the village and free the prisoners. Then the rest of the bunch can attack as a diversion while we get the gals outta there.”
“Lemme get this straight,” Lorenzo said. “You’re gonna turn them women loose and then we take off for home, right?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Preacher said.
“Well, what’s to stop this Snake Heart fella from comin’ after us? Seems like we’re liable to just take turns chasin’ each other back and forth across those blasted badlands!”
“I can’t vouch for the rest of the Gros Ventre,” Preacher said, “but I’m gonna see to it that Snake Heart don’t come after us.”
“How do you plan on doin’ that?” Lorenzo wanted to know.
“By killin’ him, of course,” Preacher replied in a hard, flat voice.
“Oh.” Lorenzo nodded. “Well … I should’a knowed it, I reckon, and never asked the question in the first place!”
CHAPTER 25
Dog wasn’t infallible. He led them down a few false trails, a few dead ends that required the memb
ers of the war party to turn around and retrace their steps until Dog picked up the scent again.
But the big cur led them through this snowy, trackless wasteland better than anybody else could have, Preacher thought. And for damn sure better than Two Bears, although Preacher didn’t bother voicing that opinion even to his friends, who would have agreed with him. No point in it.
They came to the end of the badlands as the light was fading from the overcast sky. Preacher was glad to see some trees again after the seemingly endless expanse of rock and bare ground. He had no idea what had caused the lack of vegetation, or what calamity had scored and scoured the ground behind them, but during his long years of wandering he had encountered similar blighted places elsewhere on the frontier, stretches of barren wasteland in country that was green and lush everywhere else.
At the moment, the terrain in front of them wasn’t green but rather white because it was covered with snow, but at least it didn’t have great gashes in the earth running through it anymore.
“How far is the Gros Ventre village from here?” Preacher asked Two Bears as the group stopped to rest the horses.
The war chief shook his head and said, “We cannot reach it by nightfall.”
“Can you find it in the dark?”
“Perhaps.”
Audie said, “Maybe it would be better to wait for morning.”
“No,” Two Bears said flatly. “I will not leave our women in the hands of those savages that much longer.”
“If we try to find the village tonight and wind up getting lost, it might take us that much longer tomorrow to find it,” Audie pointed out.
“I agree with Two Bears,” Preacher said, and the war chief looked a little surprised by that. “We know the general direction they were goin’. If we keep headin’ that way, we ought to smell their smoke sooner or later.”
Lorenzo said, “They’ll be waitin’ for us, won’t they?”
Preacher’s Fury Page 16
