Makepeace landed on his butt. He dimly saw the man he attacked raise a leg. Pain exploded as Preacher kicked him square in the chest.
“Lookin’ to bushwhack me, boy?” Preacher hissed, his face close to the pain-wracked one of his attacker. That was when Nate and Wally joined in, grabbing hold of Preacher by both arms.
An instant later they went flying as Preacher flung his arms wide. They fared somewhat better than Makepeace. Preacher slammed a fist into the side of the lout’s head, which made his ear ring. By then Nate had regained his balance and gone for the mountain man again. Preacher met him with a grin on his face, dodged a wild left and put a looping right into the pudding face of the twenty-year-old thug. Nate came to a sudden stop. His arms sagged and Preacher gave frightful punishment to his ribs. When the man from the High Lonesome decided his opponent had been softened up enough, he went back to work on the face.
Blood spurted from Hate’s broken nose. His lips stung as Preacher mashed them into his teeth, loosening two in the process. Nate tried to raise his arms to cover his head only to have his ribs explode in exquisite agony. He flailed wildly at Preacher to no avail. Preacher finished him with a sharp uppercut that clapped Nate’s mouth shut with a loud ring. Nate sighed softly and settled in the dust. By then, Wally Slaughter had screwed up his courage and come at the wildcat they had cornered. Preacher let him approach, then sidestepped and whacked Wally in the side with his forearm. Next, Preacher grabbed the youthful bandit by the hair, which was long, blond and greasy, and yanked backward.
Wally’s feet went out from under him and he went down hard. A screech of pain came when his tailbone fractured. Whimpering, he crawled aimlessly around on the ground like one of Makepeace’s flies. Preacher paused and looked around himself, well pleased. That’s when Makepeace Baxter got back in the fray. He came at Preacher with a knife. Moonlight gave the edge a wicked, blue glint.
Preacher had his own Greenriver in hand in an instant. The knife fighters squared off. Makepeace lashed out, a testing gesture. Preacher ignored it and began to circle.
“C’mon, stand still an’ fight like a man.”
“I am, you little bastard. You ever been in a knife fight before?”
“N-no.”
“What’s your name?”
“Why you wanna know?”
“So I have it right on your gravestone.”
“It’s Baxter. Makepeace Baxter, an’ you’re the one who’s gonna die.”
Preacher chuckled. “I reckon you’d best make some of that peace with the Almighty, ’cause you’re gonna meet him real soon.”
Makepeace could no longer contain himself. He launched forward. He swung his knife, now a blur, in front of him, left-right, right-left. Preacher backstepped and circled in the other direction. Makepeace followed him, his breathing harsh gasps, born of desperation as much as exertion. Preacher’s moccasin landed on a loose pebble and caused him to stumble. At once, Makepeace rushed his opponent. He made a powerful slash and sensed the contact his blade made.
Preacher grunted and took a backstep, then plunged his Greenriver to the hilt in the chest of Makepeace. An expression of utter surprise formed on the suddenly pale face of the boy. He dropped his knife and closed his hands, gently as a lover, around Preacher’s, which held the haft of the Greenriver.
Baxter’s attempt to speak brought forth a river of blood. Then he gained enough of an opening. “You killed me.”
“You didn’t leave me much choice.”
“Who . . . who are you?”
“They call me Preacher.”
A mournful groan escaped the bloodied lips of Makepeace Baxter. “Oh, Jesus. I ... I been done in by the best.”
“That you have,” Preacher told him without false modesty. He turned the blade slightly to break it free and pulled it from the dying youth’s chest. Makepeace fell to the ground.
Preacher watched the young thug’s dying throes, then turned away. He felt a lightness at his waist and reached down. During the brief fight, Makepeace had slashed open his money pouch. Half his winnings lay scattered in the dusty station yard.
“Damn, oh, damn, now I’ll have to crawl around and pick it up like a beggar.” Tomorrow, he speculated fervently, just had to be better.
SEVEN
Eve Billings tried once more to reason with the hardheaded men of their wagon train. “We must move on. Several children have taken a fever from some unknown source and even more are likely to.”
“Fever’s fever. We don’t have to know what caused it.” Gus Beecher stated stolidly.
“If we knew what caused it, we could avoid it. I suspect the water is tainted somehow. I have been boiling all of mine before giving any to my children. Little Anna is improving rapidly. No more stomach pain and the fever is lower.”
Beecher remained adamant. “I say we should stay where we are. No one knows what’s out there.”
“Yeah,” Enos Throcker inserted. “Look what happened when we tried. We got plum lost.”
Eve was ready for that. “Send out scouts.”
Throcker shook his head stubbornly. “They’ll never find their way back.”
Determined, Eve pressed her point. “There are several older boys and young men who are levelheaded enough. They can tell north from south and read sign. They could mark the trail for us in piles of stones.”
Gus Beecher rejected her suggestion. “Wouldn’t do. What if we wandered off between the piles of rocks?”
Eve thought that over a moment. Somewhere she had read something that might work. What was it and who had done it? It came to her after a long pause in which the men began to hope they had silenced her.
“There is a way. Do any of you know the story of the Llano Estocado? The Staked Plains down in Texas?” She received no answer and went on. “When the Spanish explorers first went there, they found a vast desert. Not a tree to guide one, no way to lay out a trail for others to follow. The leader had an idea. He had soldiers ride back to the last stand of tall, young saplings. They cut poles from them, hundreds of them, oh, maybe fifteen feet high. To these they attached big flags. The leader had one set up at the edge of the rolling area of sand and rocks. Then they started off, taking the other poles with them.
“When they reached a spot nearly out of sight of the first pole, they erected another. Then they moved on and put up more flags.” Eve paused, to make certain the men followed her. “Each staff was numbered, so if they wandered, and came upon one, they would know where they were and which way to go. And it worked exactly like the leader said it would. They crossed that barren, waterless wasteland and went on to found Santa Fe.”
Enos Throcker was not buying any of that. “When’d they do that?”
Eve had her answer ready. “Almost three hundred years ago.”
Throcker snorted in derision. “There, you see? Old-fashioned ideas like that won’t get us anywhere.”
Unable to abide such stupidity, Eve let go. She stomped her tiny, booted foot. “That’s plain crazy. If we sent out the older boys and some young men, with arms to protect themselves and a wagonload of poles and flags, they could mark the trail the same way. Even come back if they needed more, or if they ran into trouble. After a couple of days head start, the train can load up on water and any game we can get, and follow the markers.”
Silence answered her. Eve looked around, her features set in grim determination. “What about you, young Honeycutt? Do you think it would work?”
The adenoidal sixteen-year-old cut his eyes to his father, who shook his head in the negative. Then David Honeycutt took a deep breath and made his bold first venture at independence. “Yeah— yeah, I do. And it would be a great adventure.” He turned to a cluster of his peers for support. “What do you think, fellahs?”
“It’ll work, Davey, I know it will,” a defiant Eb Throcker encouraged. His father took a menacing step in his direction. “Leave it be, Paw. We ain’t gettin’ anywhere just sittin’ here eatin’ up our supplies.”
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br /> It quickly got out of Eve’s hands. With the prospect of something, anything, to do besides sit around, the young men clamored to go. The decision made, those who would take the risks decided to set off that afternoon to find and cut a wagonload of lodge-pole pines. Meanwhile, their mothers and sisters would fashion flags from any bright material they had at hand. They would start off within two days, taking the wagon and three saddle mounts.
Hunkered down in a tall stand of wild mulberry, the spikey-haired lout who had dogged the mountain men along the Santa Fe Trail stared out at the deeply rutted roadway. Any time now, Amos Scraggs reckoned, the excitement growing. He itched. He twitched. Uneasily he cut his eyes left and right. His ace-boon runnin’ pard, Miguel Lopez, sheltered behind a fallen tree to the right. Five others were closer in by the road.
Strung out on both sides of the trail were the surviving dozen of the gang that had attacked the freight wagon train. They had been paid well to locate and kill the mountain man known as Preacher. They had attacked the wagons out of greed, but their specific charge had been to see that Preacher, and anyone with him, never lived to reach the Missouri side of the river of the same name.
Now their chance had come. Only the three mountain men had broken up their raid before, Amos Scraggs recalled. Could it be they could do it again? He stiffened when he heard the distant thud of hooves. Four horses, he figured it to be. It had to be them. Amos saw the one called preacher come into view first. He lined up his sights, as he tried to quell the quiver in his hand. Slowly he squeezed off a round.
A loud crack shattered the pastoral calm of the morning. Big mistake! the mind of Amos Scraggs shouted at him as in the next instant the mountain men exploded into a deadly fury.
Bright sun no longer slanted into Preacher’s eyes when he reined in. Shadows had grown so short they had become pools around the bases of the objects that made them. He estimated their morning’s travel had brought them close to Diamond Springs Crossing. Another four days should see them in Missouri. He had traveled the Santa Fe Trail three times before and felt confident with that assessment. He turned to share that with his friends when a shot blasted to silence the warbling of the meadowlarks. Preacher put heels to the flanks of Tarnation as he slid his Hawken from its scabbard. The words that left his mouth had nothing to do with their destination.
“By dang, we’re bein’ ambushed!”
Three Sleeps Norris grumbled agreement. “I figgered that out for myself. I see some of ’em over there.” He fired as he spoke, sent a ball in among the high stand of wild mulberry, and went for his powder horn. Preacher loosed a round. A scream answered. To his right, Antoine emptied his Hawken into the screaming face of a pasty-skinned outlaw who broke from cover, confident that their numbers and surprise would carry the day.
He died without knowing the flaw in his judgment. Antoine quickly drew one of his single-barreled pistols from the saddle holsters and chopped a hole through the underbrush with a double-shotted load. His second pistol brought a groan and an enemy ball discharged skyward. Quickly Antoine holstered the empty weapon and drew one of two double-barreled pistols from the wide, red sash around his hard, flat middle. He cut his eyes to his companions and saw Preacher unlimber one of his wicked Walker Colts.
Three fast shots downed two more of the ambushers. Preacher looked at Antoine and nodded. They worked well together, the gesture seemed to say. With a roar, a squat, ugly thug stormed at Three Sleeps Norris, who had a cap fail to fire. Preacher wheeled around in the saddle and put a .44 ball into the jaw hinge of the attacker. He staggered three steps closer, enough so that Three Sleeps dropped him with a butt stroke to the top of his head.
“Obliged, Preacher.”
“My pleasure.”
By then they had ridden in among those who had laid the ambush. Preacher struck one down with the barrel of his Colt, then shot another who sprang upward to fire wildly. The bullet cracked by Preacher’s cheek and struck a resin-slicked pine a foot away. A shower of amber moisture slapped the back of Preacher’s neck. He’d play billy hell getting that out of his hair, he thought crankily, while he exchanged Colts.
Stunned by the incredible firepower of the mountain men, the border trash fell back as their intended victims kept coming. In rapid order, their number had diminished to a mere seven. Yet, they still outnumbered the men they had come to kill by two to one. Preacher and Antoine quickly reduced that advantage by two.
Antoine pulled a sad face as he advised Preacher. “Par hasard, I have shot myself dry, my friend.”
By chance, eh? Preacher thought. “You got a war hawk ain’tcha?”
Antoine brightened and brought forth a wicked-looking iron-bladed tomahawk. The thug in front of him paled and threw a wild shot. The ball made a red line along Antoine’s ribs, but failed to prevent him from splitting the skull of the hapless bandit. Preacher heeled Tarnation to one side, and fired one of his remaining three loads.
Mouth puckered in a soundless howl, the ruffian who took that .44 ball bent double and toppled to one side. A second later, Preacher held his fire as a fear-stamped face popped out of the underbrush. He was not surprised to recognize the straw-haired rascal who had been dogging their trail since Cottonwood Crossing.
“Don’t shoot. I give up. I’m hurt bad,” wailed the young outlaw.
Another disreputable creature crawled into the open. His usually coppery complexion had turned a sickly gray-green. Thin wisps of mustache were matted around his face by sweat. He dragged a bloody leg with a bullet-shattered thighbone. “Yo también. Don’t kill us, por favor.”
Preacher and his friends surrounded the defeated pair. Preacher chuckled softly. “Now ain’t this something?” He leaned low in his saddle. “Haven’t we met someplace before?”
Groaning, the towhead with the spiky hair licked dry lips. “You know damn well we have. You gonna stop this bleedin’?”
Preacher examined the wound in the side of the ruffian without moving from his horse. “We might, if we get some straight answers. Like, to start, do you have a name?”
Anger flared a moment. “Of course, everyone has a name. Mine’s Amos Scraggs. This is my pard, Miguel Lopez. But, we don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”
Preacher pursed his lips. “Now I believe that.”
“You do?” a surprised thug blurted.
“Yep. Back some years we had us what we called the University of the Rockies in the High Lonesome. I learned me a lot of grammar there. What you did was use a double negative; ’don’t know nothing’ you said. Well, what rules we’ve got for English says a double negative is a positive. In other words, you small piece of buffalo dung, you know a whole lot we’d like to hear from you.”
“What if we don’t tell you?”
“We leave you here to bleed to death.”
“You’d never do a thing like . . .” Then Amos Scraggs read the deadly message in Preacher’s steely eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“This jist another fling for you? Like that freighter train?”
“N-no. We— we were sent to see that you never reached Missouri.”
“Who’s we? That include that scruffy lot you rode with?”
Scraggs’ eyes strayed from Preacher’s face. He forced a tone of indignation into his voice. “No. We weren’t no part of them,” he lied. “Ask Miguel. That bunch was pure trash. Miguel an’ me joined up for that raid on the freight wagons only to make more money.”
Miguel, who believed incorrectly that the artery in his thigh had been severed, and he was about to die, sought to absolve himself before he met his Maker. He motioned to Preacher. The mountain man dismounted and squatted down beside the Mexican bandit.
“What is it?” he asked.
Heat flared in Amos. “Don’t tell him nothin’!”
Miguel whispered urgently, his eyes alight with the fear of death. “I will tell you the truth, Senor Preacher. The whole gang had been paid well to keel you.”
“Who paid you?”
“Three men. They are called Gross, Praeger and Reiker.”
“You done good, Miguel. I’m sure the Almighty will take that into account.”
“Por favor, please, I want a priest. I want to make my confession.”
“We’ll see if we can find you one. First off, we’ve got to bind up that wound and fix your partner.”
Sergeant Stalking Elk of the Osage Tribal Police rode up to the Diamond Creek Crossing relay station. That young Ryan boy had come like a whirlwind. Had two prisoners and a whole passel of bodies to take care of. Stalking Elk wondered how Finn Ryan and his boys, both under fourteen, could have stood off so many as made up the pile of corpses outside the tavern door. He supposed he would find out soon.
Three tall, lean men in buckskin stepped out into the dooryard. The one in the middle, with a square jaw and a far-off look in his eyes, introduced himself as Preacher and named his friends. Stalking Elk nodded toward the bodies.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He went on to describe the ambush, eliminating only the purpose. Then he added, “There’s two inside who need medical treatment, if any’s available.”
Stalking Elk pulled a wry expression. “Our medicine man is all that’s near.”
“That’ll have to do. I’ve been put back on the rosy side of health more than once by a medicine man. If these two don’t cotton to it, tell ’em they can walk to the nearest white doctor.”
Stalking Elk studied the toes of his moccasins for a moment. “From what you tell me, they’re due for a hanging under white law.”
Blackfoot Messiah Page 6
