He pressed the barrel of a revolver against the back of Gearhart’s head and called, “Don’t move, Preacher, or I’ll blow this little fella’s brains out!”
Chapter 26
Gearhart was a small man with thick spectacles, and his eyes looked huge behind those lenses as they bulged with fear. The gunman had one hand on his collar and the other held the gun against his head.
Tall and middle-aged, with a lean face under his black Stetson, the gunman looked like he meant every word of the threat. Despite that, Preacher didn’t follow orders and freeze. With decades of experience making up for what he lacked in sheer speed, he drew his right-hand Remington, eared back the hammer, and aimed it at Senator Sherwood P. Olson. The whole thing was done in the blink of an eye. Preacher saw the gunman’s finger tighten on the trigger of his Colt, but he didn’t fire.
“You shoot Gearhart,” Preacher said, “and I’ll kill your boss.”
“Preacher!” Olson gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Finally startin’ to make some sense outta this deal. I reckon those fellas who started the buffalo stampede got ahead of us and took over the train, and I know good and well they work for you, Senator.”
Curtis started toward Preacher. “You’ve lost your mind, you old lunatic! The senator was almost killed in that stampede!”
“We’ve only got his word for that,” Preacher pointed out. “I think it’s more likely some o’ those fellas who were trailin’ us slipped into camp, killed Hank Wilkerson and the other guards, and took Olson out of there so he’d be safe when the stampede started.”
Helena was listening carefully to Preacher, as were the others from the hunting party. She asked, “Why would the senator want all the rest of us killed?”
“I ain’t sure about that, but I got a hunch he wasn’t after all of us. Just me.”
Olson glared darkly at Preacher. “Like Curtis said, you’re insane,” he barked. “Now put that gun down. I’m sure we can work all this out.”
Slowly, Preacher shook his head. “There ain’t nothin’ to work out. You’re part of that damned Indian Ring, ain’t you, Senator?” He was guessing, but the idea that had popped into his head made sense. “You and your cronies are up to no good again, and you want me dead so I won’t get mixed up in it. Only . . .”
Only that didn’t fit together, Preacher realized. If Olson wanted him dead, there had been plenty of chances for him to accomplish that goal earlier, with a lot less trouble.
Another theory suggested itself. “You didn’t know, did you, Senator?” The long-barreled Remington in Preacher’s hand never wavered. “You came along on this huntin’ trip just for the publicity in Mr. McCormick’s newspaper. But somethin’ came up while we’ve been out here, and the rest of the Ring sent those hombres on the train to get rid of me. Easiest way to do that would be to wipe out the whole bunch of us, but your pards didn’t want you gettin’ killed along with the rest of us. So they came in and got you, killin’ poor Hank in the process, and then sent them buffalo chargin’ down on the camp. Thing of it was, you didn’t know I wasn’t there. And most of the folks got lucky and got out of the way of the stampede in time.
“Then today, when they came back to check and make sure I was dead, bringin’ you with ’em, they must’ve been surprised as all get-out to see me. So they sent you back to join us and spin that cock-and-bull yarn about how you got away. By then you knew the Ring wants me dead, so your job was to make sure we came on to the railroad while the others rode ahead and took over the train.” Preacher paused and took a deep breath. “Phew! That’s more’n I talked in some whole months, up in the mountains durin’ the Shinin’ Times.”
As he had spun out the theory, he had watched Olson, and knew by the fear and surprise in the politician’s eyes that he had guessed correctly.
Olson glared at him again. “You’re a fool, Preacher. My men would have made it look like a holdup and just killed you. Now all of you are going to have to die.” Olson glanced at the man holding the gun on Gearhart. “What do you think, Bannister? Can we make it look like Indians slaughtered the lot of them?”
“I reckon we can do that, Senator,” the gunman drawled.
All the other members of the expedition were staring at Olson in amazement, including his two aides. Obviously they had known nothing about Olson’s treachery and his connection to the Indian Ring.
“I think you’re forgettin’ something,” Preacher said. “I’ve still got my gun pointed at the senator here.”
Bannister shook his head. “That’s not really a problem, Preacher. You see, the fella who gave us our orders, the fella who’s paying us, said we ought to keep Olson safe if we could . . . but the most important thing is that you wind up dead.”
The senator’s jaw dropped. “You . . . you can’t be serious! You work for my associates!”
“And they’re not all that worried about you staying alive,” Bannister said.
Preacher glanced along the train as Olson turned pale with fear. All the senator’s arrogance and confidence had deserted him in the blink of an eye. Preacher saw several rifle barrels sticking out of windows in the passenger cars. Most of them were aimed at him, but the members of the hunting party were close to the line of fire. When the shooting started—it was no longer a matter of if—some of them might get hurt.
But the Indian Ring’s hired assassins meant to kill them anyway, so they might as well go down fighting.
Preacher wasn’t the only one thinking that way. Countess Helena Markova suddenly jerked her rifle to her shoulder, shouted, “Chester, get down!” and pulled the trigger.
Bannister hadn’t expected that from a woman. He hesitated for a split second before pulling the trigger, giving a desperate Chester Gearhart time to dive off the platform. Bannister’s bullet went over his head.
At the same instant, Bannister’s head jerked back as the slug from Helena’s rifle left a redrimmed hole in his forehead as it bored through his brain and exploded out the back of his skull in a grisly spray of blood and gray matter. Bannister’s knees unhinged and dropped him to the platform. He was dead before he got there.
Preacher yelled, “Everybody scatter!” and threw himself out of the saddle.
His bones were getting too old for this, he thought.
He slapped Horse on the rump as he fell and sent the stallion lunging away from the train. Preacher landed with a jolt, rolled, and came up aching from head to foot. The pain didn’t stop him or even slow him down as he dashed toward the train, triggering bothRemingtons at the windows where rifles showed.
It was Olson’s bad luck to be too close to him. The hired killers sprayed lead at Preacher, and the senator was in the way of some of the slugs. He cried out in pain as the bullets struck him and made him jerk back and forth in a macabre dance. Crimson flowers blossomed on his shirt as blood gushed from the wounds.
Preacher saw that from the corner of his eye and considered it good riddance. If he’d had time, he would have told Olson not to look so surprised—he had it coming.
Instead, Preacher bounded to the platform of one of the cars and kicked the door open as bullets whined around him. The assassins who had been crouched at the windows whirled toward him. Gun thunder filled the car and powdersmoke rolled as both of Preacher’s Remingtons roared out their deadly song.
Seeing that all of the gunmen in that car were down and kicking out the last of their evil lives, Preacher jammed both revolvers in their holsters and grabbed one of the iron rungs bolted to the side of the car. He swarmed up the rungs and pulled himself on top of the car, stretching out so he couldn’t be seen as easily from below. That gave him a chance to thumb fresh cartridges into the Remingtons.
Too old for this, too old for this. The refrain beat in his brain. But too old or not, he had to deal with it. He came up in a crouch, holding both guns, and started along the top of the car. Glancing down on the south side, he saw the horses the killers had ridden. He and the others hadn’t seen th
e animals as they rode up. On the north side lay several bodies. Olson, of course, but also Jennings—one of his aides—and Count Markova. From the looks of the bodies, both men were dead.
Preacher would feel sorry for them later. He had to concentrate on saving his own hide, and those of the others from the hunting party. It looked like they had scattered and were hiding somewhere.
Preacher headed for the caboose. It was the most likely place for the train crew to be held prisoner. If he could set them free, it would help even up the odds. The conductor, the engineer, the fireman, and the brakemen were all tough hombres.
Guns roared behind him. He felt a bullet rip past his head. He threw himself down, twisting as he fell so he was facing toward the front of the train again. Several of the hired killers were on top of the next car, shooting at him.
Stretched out on his belly, Preacher returned their fire as bullets chewed splinters from the top of the car around him. One of the gunmen clutched his belly, screamed, and toppled off the train, but his two companions kept throwing lead at Preacher.
Another man suddenly threw up his arms and pitched off the train as a rifle cracked. Preacher turned his head and saw that Helena had gotten in the fight again. Unfortunately, her fancy rifle was a single-shot, and she had to reload. The remaining gunman hesitated, unsure whether to try to kill her or continue firing at Preacher.
That was a foolish mistake. Preacher planted a couple .44 rounds in the man’s chest that knocked him over backward. The heels of his boots drummed on the car roof as he died.
Preacher scrambled to his feet, yelled, “Get under cover!” to Helena, and turned toward the caboose again.
“Preacher, no!” she shouted back. “The rest of them are headed for the engine! I saw them!”
Biting back a curse, Preacher swung around again. He ran toward the engine, hoping Helena would have sense enough to lie low now that she had warned him.
Somehow, he didn’t think so.
Bullets slammed through the air at him from the cab of the locomotive as he reached the coal tender. He had to fling himself down on the coal to avoid the shots. He was pinned down, at least as far as going forward was concerned.
“Preacher! Preacher!”
The soft-voiced call came from below him. He scuttled backward and saw Helena looking up at him. She had climbed onto the coupling between the tender and the freight car next in line. She had discarded her rifle and had a six-gun that she picked up somewhere in her hand.
“I’ll go along the ledge on the side of the tender and distract them,” she said. “That will give you a chance to go over the top to the cab.”
“You’ll get your dang-fool self killed,” Preacher protested.
Helena tossed those blond curls defiantly. “They want to kill all of us anyway. What does it matter?”
Looking at her like that, gun in hand, face smudged with powdersmoke, Preacher grinned at her. “Countess, if I was forty years younger . . . hell, even thirty! . . . you’d be in trouble.”
“Some things are just not meant to be, I suppose.”
“Reckon not.” Preacher took a deep breath. “All right. Just get close enough to distract ’em. I’ll do the rest.”
Helena nodded and began to slip along the narrow walkway on the side of the coal tender.
Preacher waited, his nerves drawing taut as he did so. He probably shouldn’t have said that to the countess, he told himself. Her husband had just been killed, after all. Helena might not even know that yet.
A moment later, shots rang out as she moved far enough forward to lean out and open fire on the men in the cab. Preacher heard the high-pitched whine of bullets ricocheting off iron and bouncing around. He leaped to his feet and charged recklessly over the pile of coal, hoping he wouldn’t lose his footing and fall. At his age, he might break a hip.
The four gunmen were trying to get a shot at Helena, but they saw him coming and jerked their Colts upward at him. Preacher’s Remingtons roared and spouted flame as he showered lead down on them like an avenging angel. The bullets drove the men back against the front of the cab. One by one, they collapsed as Preacher’s bullets tore through them. The fight was over in a matter of heartbeats.
“Countess, are you all right?” Preacher called to her.
“I’m fine. What about you?”
“I’ll be mighty sore come mornin’, but right now I got no complaints.”
Preacher holstered his guns, climbed down into the cab, and started reloading as he stood next to the pile of bullet-riddled corpses.
Helena climbed around the end of the tender and swung into the cab to join him. “Such savagery. You’re like a Cossack in my country, Preacher.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about no Cossacks,” he said as he snapped one of the Remington’s closed. “I just don’t cotton to it when varmints try to kill me or other innocent folks.” He paused. “Speakin’ of which . . . I’m sorry, but it looked like the count was hit when the ball started.”
Helena heaved a sigh. “I know. And I am sorry, too. Even though our marriage was not good, Alexi was not really a bad man. I’m sure I will shed tears for him . . . later.”
Preacher nodded. “We better go see who else was hurt, and how bad.”
They found the other members of the hunting party hiding in the caboose. Packard and Skillern had gotten hold of guns and almost shot Preacher when he came in, before they realized who he was.
“We were going to put up a fight,” Packard growled.
Jennings, Markova, and Senator Olson were the only fatalities besides the hired killers, all eight of whom had been wiped out by Preacher and Helena. Jiggers Dunlop and Jasper McCormick had both suffered minor wounds. McCormick was too excited to feel much pain.
“What a story this will make,” he kept saying. “What a story!”
Preacher didn’t care about that. He wanted to know why the Indian Ring was so interested in having him killed.
When he said something about that, Chester Gearhart spoke up. “I might be able to shed some light on that, sir,” the senator’s secretary said. “As you know, the train crew set up telegraphic communication here at the siding in case Washington needed to get in touch with the senator.”
Preacher nodded. “You’re sayin’ he got a wire from back east?”
“No, sir. You got a wire . . . from Colorado.”
Gearhart held out a telegraph flimsy. Frowning in surprise, Preacher took it.
“What is it?” Helena asked. “What does it say?”
“It’s from a friend. More like family, really,” the old mountain man said. “Fella name of Smoke Jensen. He says his adopted brother Matt is in some sort of trouble down in Nevada, at a place called Halltown. Smoke wants me to meet him there as quick as I can.”
“If the railroad goes anywhere near there, you can be there in no time at all,” Packard said. “Skillern and Dunlop and I all have some influence with this line, and after everything you’ve done, we’ll see that you get what you need.”
Preacher nodded. “I’m obliged for that.”
“But how does that so-called Indian Ring tie in with it?” McCormick asked.
“Don’t know, but Smoke and Matt and I crossed trails with ’em before, and I ain’t surprised they want us dead. They must’ve found out somehow that Matt sent for us to help him, and they’re tryin’ to stop us from gettin’ there.”
“Then this other friend of yours,” Helena said, “this man called Smoke . . . he could be in danger, too?”
“Yeah,” Preacher said as a grim smile slowly curved his mouth. “But if the Ring’s sendin’ gun-wolves after Smoke, they better send more than they did after me . . . elsewise it ain’t gonna be nowhere near fair for those varmints!”
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 27
Nevada
Smoke stepped down from the train that had rolled into the Southern Pacific depot in Reno a minute or so earlier. It had been a whirlwind trip from Big Rock after sending the tele
gram to Preacher in care of the newspaper-sponsored hunting expedition. Smoke had caught the first train to Denver, taking the ’Paloose with him in a freight car that had been converted to animal stalls. From there he had traveled as quickly as possible through Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins, Salt Lake City, and on across the Humboldt Basin to Reno. It was the closest he could get to Halltown. A spur line was being built from there to the settlement, but it wasn’t completed yet.
Preacher’s group was somewhere north of Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific line that ran in that direction. He and Smoke were supposed to leave word for each other at the Reno depot when they arrived, so as soon as Smoke had seen to having the ’Paloose and his gear unloaded, he walked over to the stationmaster’s office and knocked on the door. A voice called for him to come in.
The black-suited, balding man in the office looked up from a paper-littered desk. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Jensen,” Smoke said. “A friend of mine is supposed to be arriving in Reno at any time, and we agreed to leave word for each other. He’s an old mountain man who goes by the name of Preacher.”
The stationmaster frowned and shook his head. “I haven’t talked to anybody like that. You might ask the ticket clerks, or even the telegrapher.”
Smoke nodded. “I’ll do that, but I reckon it’s more likely he would have talked to you, since you’re in charge.”
“Well, I’ll keep an eye out for him.” The stationmaster shrugged. “Can’t promise anything, though.” He looked down at his paperwork for a second, signaling to Smoke that the conversation was over, then he glanced up again with his eyebrows lifting. “Jensen,” he repeated. “Not Smoke Jensen?”
It was Smoke’s turn to shrug. “That’s what they call me.”
The stationmaster stood up and came quickly around the desk to extend his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
The Family Jensen Page 20
