But killing him would alert the others, and there was no guarantee that they would abandon their plan and turn back if Snell was dead. They might have come after Preacher, too, and tried to kill him. He couldn’t afford to risk that.
Not until he found out for sure what, if anything, had happened to Rip Giddens and the group of pilgrims in his charge.
Preacher rode on, being careful not to let himself be spied by the group of men riding on the trail below. He moved as fast as he could and still be cautious. Gradually, he worked his way down out of the mountains, and when he came out on the level ground at their base, he looked back to the south and saw no sign of Snell and the others. He was far enough ahead of them now that he didn’t have to worry about them spotting him.
He turned Horse to the north and heeled him into a ground-eating trot. Dog ranged ahead, flushing out ground squirrels and birds.
Preacher judged that he ought to be getting pretty close to the spot where the shooting had taken place. Sure enough, as he entered a broad meadow covered with wildflowers, something out of place caught his eye. Things were scattered around in the middle of the meadow. He couldn’t tell what they were at first, but as he came closer he recognized the rectangles as Willard Carling’s canvases. Some were blank, but others had works in progress on them, including the portrait of Preacher that Carling had started back at the Rendezvous.
From the looks of the canvases, somebody had tossed them around haphazardly. Jars of paint were scattered across the ground, too, some of them broken but most of them intact. Brushes had been thrown down as well.
Preacher knew good and well that Carling never would have treated his precious supplies like that, and neither would any of the other members of his party. Dismounting to study the ground closer, Preacher found several tracks left by feet clad in moccasins. Those prints could have been made by Rip Giddens or some of the other guides, Preacher thought—but they could have been made by Indians, too. The way the canvases had been thrown around as if they were worthless made Preacher think that Indians were to blame for whatever had happened here. The paintings wouldn’t have meant anything to them.
Dog trotted around sniffing at everything he could find, but after a moment he stopped and began to whine as he looked intently at something on the ground. Preacher went over to him and found that the big cur was standing over a stain on the grass where something dark had been splashed. Preacher rubbed his fingers on the stain and then looked at his fingertips.
“Yeah, it’s blood, all right,” he said heavily to Dog, “and pretty recent, too.”
That didn’t bode well, but at least there were no bodies lying around. Everything he had seen painted a pretty clear picture in Preacher’s mind. The Easterners and their guides had been stopped here for some reason when Indians had jumped them. There had been a fight, and at least one person was hurt fairly badly, to judge from the amount of blood that had been spilled on the ground. But there was a chance, at least, that no one had been killed.
That meant Rip, Carling, and the others had all been taken prisoner.
Preacher glanced toward the south. Snell and the rest of those ruthless, money-hungry bastards were coming up behind him, and up ahead somewhere was a band of Indians on the warpath. Hard to believe that old Hairface’s bunch would do a thing like this. The Teton Sioux had always been friendly to whites, at least compared to tribes like the Crow and the Blackfoot.
First things first, Preacher told himself. He had to catch up to the Indians, find out what sort of shape the captives were in, and rescue them if he could. Then he would deal with the threat that Snell’s gang represented. Of course, it was possible that Snell and the others would run afoul of hostile Indians, too. That would take care of part of Preacher’s problem. But he wasn’t going to count on that.
“Come on, Dog,” he said as he swung up into the saddle. “We’ll see what we can do to help them pilgrims.”
It wasn’t really his problem, but he wasn’t the sort of man to turn his back on folks in trouble. Anyway, Rip was his friend, and to a lesser extent, so were Switchfoot, Jones, and the Ballingers. If the Indians had killed any of them, Preacher wasn’t going to be happy.
“Wh-what are they going to do to us?” Faith asked, her voice choked by sobs as she stumbled along between her brother and Jasper Hodge. From time to time one of the men had to reach out and grasp her arm to steady her. Chester Sinclair came along behind them, still unsteady on his feet.
“I think this is all just a misunderstanding,” Willard Carling said. The edge of terror and desperation in his voice made it clear that he hoped it was all a misunderstanding. “We mean these people no harm, and they have no reason to harm us.”
“They don’t need a reason,” Hodge said bitterly. “They’re savages. They scalp and kill white men just for the fun of it.”
Faith sobbed again. She didn’t want to be scalped or killed. She didn’t want to be here. More than anything else right now, she wished she was back in the family home in Boston, on Beacon Hill overlooking the Charles River, safe and secure. She wished she had never agreed to accompany Willard on this mad journey into the wilderness. This journey from which none of them were going to return alive . . .
The savages surrounded them, trotting along tirelessly and not allowing the prisoners to slow down, either. Faith wished she could ride, but the Indians weren’t allowing any of the prisoners to get near the horses.
Sinclair stumbled and nearly fell. One of the Indians yelled at him, strange, guttural words that Faith didn’t understand, and struck him on the back with the flat of a tomahawk. These savages weren’t even human, Faith thought. Their jabbering was like that of animals, not rational human beings.
Perhaps once they got to wherever the Indians called home, someone there would speak English. Faith could only hope that would be the case. If it was, they could explain that they were friendly and had come west to visit and write and paint, not to harm anyone. What threat could she and her brother, or for that matter, Hodge and Sinclair, represent to anyone? There had to be a way to make their captors understand that.
Why hadn’t those frontiersmen Willard had hired killed the Indians, or run them off, or something? That was what Willard had paid the men for, after all—to protect them. And they had failed miserably. It had been left to the hapless Chester Sinclair to do most of the fighting.
Faith turned her head and looked over her shoulder at Sinclair. Big, dumb Chester—that was the way she had always thought of him. But today he had fought like a demon. Unfortunately, he had been no match for all those Indians.
“We’re . . . we’re stopping!” Carling gasped. “Thank God! They’re going to let us rest at last.”
“I don’t think that’s all they have in mind,” Hodge said ominously, and when Faith looked around again, she saw one of the red brutes stalking straight toward her, a grin on his ugly face. He stopped in front of her and reached up to touch her hair. The look in his eyes was unmistakably one of lust.
Faith screamed and fainted dead away.
Chapter Twelve
Sinclair’s head still throbbed and he felt dizzy from time to time, but all that vanished in an instant as he saw the Indian accosting Faith Carling. His aches and pains were burned away by the flare of righteous anger that went through him. His hands clenched into fists, and he was about to step forward when Faith let out a shriek and then swooned.
Her brother caught her as she fell. Since she was as tall as Carling and almost as heavy, he was nearly knocked off his feet by the sudden weight. As he staggered and tried to hold her up, Sinclair moved threateningly toward the savage who had caused the violent reaction in Faith.
Before he could get there, one of the other Indians caught hold of the first one’s arm and spoke sharply to him in their indecipherable tongue. The two red men traded hostile gazes for a moment, and Sinclair realized there was bad blood between them. The second Indian was scolding the first one for causing Faith to faint. Their ey
es held each other in a level stare for several seconds; then the first Indian shrugged and turned away. The second one, who was evidently the leader of this group of warriors, snapped at his men, and they prepared to get moving again. The Indian gestured curtly at Faith, and then lowered his hand to the tomahawk tucked behind the rawhide belt around his waist. It was as if he was saying that if she couldn’t keep up, he would dispose of her, Sinclair thought.
Carling obviously got the same impression, because he said quickly, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring her along. It’ll be just fine. Chester, give me a hand here.”
“Let me just take her,” Sinclair said.
“You can’t carry her by yourself. You’re in no shape to do that.”
“I’ll be fine,” Sinclair insisted. He put an arm around Faith’s shoulders and then bent to slip his other arm behind her knees. When he straightened, he was carrying her like she was a child. His muscles felt the strain and his head throbbed worse for a moment, but he didn’t care.
Despite the circumstances, he took a certain joy in the fact that at long last, Faith Carling was in his arms. And it never would have happened if they hadn’t been attacked by these savages.
The group got moving again. Sinclair staggered along, carrying Faith. They were moving steadily toward the mountain Rip Giddens had told them about, the peak called Baldpate. Sinclair could see it better now, and he had to admit that it actually did look like an old man’s hairless head.
Less than half an hour after Faith’s swoon, she regained her senses. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she stared up at Sinclair in shock. “What . . . what’s going on?” she gasped. “Chester, why are you carrying me?”
Carling answered before Sinclair could. “You fainted, dear. Passed out cold.”
“That Indian,” Faith choked out. “That awful Indian. Did . . . did he . . .”
“None of them touched you,” Sinclair told her. “You’re safe.”
“But . . . you’re carrying me.”
“They made us keep moving. I had no choice. And I certainly meant no disrespect, Miss Faith.”
Jasper Hodge put in, “Their head man acted like he was going to kill you if we didn’t bring you along.”
Faith’s eyes widened as she stared at Sinclair. “Then you saved my life,” she said.
He felt embarrassed. While the idea that she might feel gratitude toward him was appealing, it also made him a bit uncomfortable for some reason. He wanted her to like him, but for himself, not because she felt obligated in some fashion.
“I . . . I just did what I thought best,” he managed to say.
“You can put me down now,” she said crisply.
The statement took him by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I said you can put me down. If I’m not injured, then I’m perfectly capable of walking. It’s hardly proper for you to be carrying me like this, Chester. My God, you’re like a bridegroom carrying his bride over the threshold.”
Now that was an even more appealing idea, but there wasn’t time for it to linger in Sinclair’s mind because Faith continued. “Besides, it’s not fair to make you carry me. You were badly beaten by those savages.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted gruffly.
“No, you’re not. Now put me down.”
Sinclair had no choice but to stop for a second and lower her so that her feet were on the ground again. One of the Indians brandished a tomahawk at them and spoke harshly. Faith began to walk alongside the other prisoners.
She looked around and asked, “Where are we?”
“Still going north,” Carling replied. “Toward that mountain up there, the one that Mr. Giddens told us about.”
As if he knew that he was being talked about, Rip Giddens suddenly let out a groan and raised his head. He was still slung over the back of one of the horses. Now that he was conscious again, the Indians halted briefly and dragged him off the animal, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. The leader stood over him and harangued him in a loud, angry voice.
“I’m gettin’ up, I’m gettin’ up,” Giddens muttered. “Keep your shirt on, Badger.”
Carling stared at the frontiersman as Giddens struggled to his feet. “You speak their language?” he said in amazement. “You know this man?”
“I savvy enough of it to get the idea of what he’s talkin’ about,” Giddens said. “And his name is Bites Like a Badger, but most folks just call him Badger.” Giddens scrubbed his hands over his face and winced at the pain in his head. “He’s a sub-chief of the Teton Sioux.”
Badger spoke again, the words coming swift and harsh from his mouth.
Giddens grunted. “He understands a little of our tongue, too, enough for him to know that I just called him a sub-chief. He tells me that ain’t the case no more. He’s the chief o’ his band of Tetons. Seems ol’ Hairface is dead. Took sick and died of a fever one moon ago. One month, we’d call it.”
“This Hairface . . . you said he was a friendly Indian.”
“Yep.” Giddens nodded. “And Badger ain’t.”
Carling’s eyes widened. “Then he and his people . . . they’re our enemies now?”
“You could say that. Even among the tribes that get along with us pretty well, there are always some hotheads who want war with the whites.” Giddens gingerly fingered a lump on his head and grimaced. “Hairface always kept that bunch under control in his band. Badger here ain’t near as sympathetic to us. He’ll let the ones who hate whites do pretty much whatever they want.”
Faith said, “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they? They’re taking us back to their town or village or whatever you call it, and they’re going to torture us and kill us.” Her voice shook with fear.
Sinclair wanted to put his arm around her and assure her that he would never let anything like that happen to her, that he would protect her and everything would be all right.
But he knew that might not be the case, and he knew as well that Faith might not want his reassurances. It was obvious she still thought of him as a servant, and perhaps as a fellow prisoner, but nothing else.
And it seemed that he had larger worries than her lack of romantic interest in him, because Giddens nodded and said solemnly to Faith, “I reckon that’s what they have in mind all right, miss. Unless we can get away from ’em somehow, I doubt if any of us will live to see the sun come up tomorrow mornin’.”
“What the hell happened here?” Luther Snell said as he looked around the meadow at the scattered canvases, paints, and brushes. “That prissy little bastard wouldn’t’ve left all this paintin’ gear behind.”
“Blood on the grass over here,” Singletree called. Snell stalked over to join him in looking down at the dark stains.
Patch Dimock said, “Must’ve been Injuns, the way those paintin’s are slung around. They wouldn’t have had no interest in such-like.”
His cousin said, “Injuns don’t like paintin’s to start with. Some of’em think you steal a man’s soul if you paint his picture.”
Snell ground his teeth together and muttered curses. “Of all the damned bad luck! We go after Carling to make ourselves rich, and a bunch o’ stinkin’ red heathens carry him off!”
“How do you know they didn’t kill him?” asked Baldy. He was older than the others, a lanky man who had been in these mountains for more than twenty years, and some said that the decades of isolation had left him touched in the head. Snell knew that Baldy might seem a little slow sometimes, but he was still pretty cunning.
“There’s blood, but no bodies,” Snell pointed out. “If the Injuns had killed Carling, or any of the rest of that bunch, they would’ve left the bodies.”
Vickery nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. They’ve taken ’em prisoner, sure as hell.”
“What are we gonna do now?” Baldy asked.
“Go after ’em and get Carling back, of course!” Snell declared.
Vickery rubbed his rawboned chin. “I ain’t so sure if I want to get mixed up in that, Snell
. I agreed to come along with you mainly because Stump did, and if you look around, you’ll see that Stump ain’t here. And I sure as hell didn’t sign on to do no Injun fightin’.”
Snell felt rage building up inside him, but he made an effort to tamp it down. “Look, I don’t know what happened to Stump,” he said. “We waited for him as long as we could, but he didn’t show up. Now, maybe he’s comin’ along behind us and will catch up ’fore the day’s over.”
“Yeah, and maybe he decided it was a mistake throwin’ in with you, especially after what happened to that Injun woman of Preacher’s.”
Snell glowered at Vickery. “We all agreed not to say no more about that.”
“Whether we talk about it or not don’t have anything to do with whether or not it happened,” Vickery replied with a shrug. “We know it did, Preacher knows it did, and sooner or later he’s gonna come after us whether he’s got any proof or not. You don’t know Preacher like I do, Snell. And you still ain’t answered what I said about havin’ to fight Injuns.”
“Damn it, ain’t you ever had to fight those red devils before?” Snell sputtered. “Why’re you makin’ such a fuss about it now?”
“I never went out of my way to fight ’em,” Vickery said. “And I ain’t gonna do it now, either.” He reached for his horse’s reins. “I’m done, Snell. I got better things to do than throw my life away on some crazy scheme of yours.”
As Vickery got ready to mount up and ride away, Snell struggled to retain control over his temper. He wanted to yank out one of his pistols and blow a hole in the ornery son of a bitch. Chances were, though, that if he did that it would just turn some of the others against him, too. He couldn’t kill all of them.
But he couldn’t let Vickery take off by his lonesome, either. That might start an exodus among the group, and before he knew it, Snell thought, he’d be alone. He didn’t want that.
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