Preacher's Fortune

by William W. Johnstone

  Father Hortensio was behind the horses, using the animals as cover from any more shots.

  Pablo’s rifle blasted and one of the strangers cried out and went over backward. Joaquin knelt behind the pile of bags, knowing their contents might stop a rifle or pistol ball. Father Hortensio saw what he was doing and shouted, “No! The holy relics must be protected!”

  Joaquin thought the world of Father Hortensio, but the priest did not always see the practical side of things. How could he, Joaquin, protect the holy relics if he allowed the gringos to shoot him? It made no sense.

  So he dropped to a knee behind the sacks, raised his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. At the same time, one of the men loosed a round at him from a pistol. Sure enough, the ball smacked into the pile of sacks but didn’t penetrate all the way through it. Father Hortensio let out a cry as if the ball had struck him instead of the relics.

  Joaquin’s shot passed close enough to the head of one of the men to make him duck frantically into the trees. All of the gringos were retreating now, including the one who had hold of Juanita. She continued to struggle until the fat gringo holding her drove a fist against the side of her head. Pain flashed through her skull, and she went limp in his arms, knocked unconscious by the blow.

  There were two loaded pistols holstered on the saddle of Señor Preacher’s horse. Joaquin grabbed the butts of the guns and jerked them from their holsters, but as he spun toward the trees and lifted them, Pablo caught one of his arms and stopped him from firing.

  “They have the señorita!” Pablo said. “If you shoot, you risk hitting her!”

  Joaquin hadn’t thought of that. He nodded and lowered the pistols. Now that the shooting had stopped, Father Hortensio came out from behind the horses and began to harangue them.

  “The gringos have stolen Señorita Juanita!” the priest said. “What will we do?” He crossed himself. “At least the holy relics and the gold are safe!”

  But for how long? That was the question none of them could answer.

  And from behind the three men came Preacher’s outraged bellow. “What the hell!”

  The moment when Juanita screamed and the shooting started was one of the worst in Preacher’s life. He was used to trouble, having lived with it for many years, but in the past he had always been able to strike back at whoever was trying to hurt him and his friends. He had never been trapped down in a hole in the ground, able to hear what was going on but unable to do anything about it or even to be sure exactly what was happening.

  The situation was intolerable, that was all there was to it. “Gimme a boost,” he said to an equally worried Esteban.

  “What?”

  “Help me get up to where the shaft starts.”

  “But there is no rope—”

  “That ain’t gonna stop me,” Preacher vowed grimly.

  As more shots rang out on the surface, Esteban made a stirrup of his hands. Preacher put his foot in it, and Esteban grunted from the effort as he heaved Preacher upward. The mountain man was heavier than his lanky frame would indicate, since it was so packed with muscles. He reached for the lip of the shaft, stretching as high as his long arms could reach. His fingers closed over the edge and took some of the weight off Esteban. The young man lifted Preacher higher. Preacher’s foot came off Esteban’s hands as he pulled himself into the shaft.

  It angled toward the surface, seemingly too steep to climb without a rope or anything else to hang on to. The shaft was a little less than a yard wide, however, and Preacher’s arm span was wider than that. He pressed his hands against the sides and pushed with his feet. That allowed him to inch upward. It took an incredible amount of strength to brace himself against the walls of the shaft like that and keep himself from falling, but it was strength that Preacher had. His progress was slow but steady. He kept his head back and his eyes fastened on the ragged circle of light that marked the upper end of the shaft.

  The shooting came to an end just before he reached the top. Not knowing if that was good or bad, he was prepared for anything as he levered himself out of the shaft and sprawled on the ground. As he scrambled to his feet, he jerked his pistols from behind his belt. The muscles of his arms and legs tried to tremble from the exertion they had just gone through, but he willed them to an iron steadiness as he shouted, “What the hell!”

  Father Hortensio and the two Yaquis were standing beside the pile of sacks containing the artifacts that had been hidden below. One of the Yaquis—Joaquin, Preacher thought—had a couple of pistols in his hands. Preacher recognized the weapons as the ones from his saddle.

  The only person missing was Juanita Alvarez. “Where’s the señorita?” Preacher snapped.

  “They . . . they took her,” Father Hortensio said.

  “Who took her?”

  “The gringos!” The priest leveled an arm toward some nearby trees.

  Preacher swung in that direction, his pistols held ready to fire. He didn’t see anything moving in the trees, however. “Where are they?”

  “They fled,” Father Hortensio said. He seemed to be getting some of his wits back about him now. “After they took Señorita Alvarez and tried to kill the rest of us, they ran off.”

  “We tried to stop them, Señor,” Joaquin said. He lifted his left arm. Blood stained the sleeve of his shirt. “I was wounded.”

  “You hit bad?” Preacher asked.

  The Yaqui shook his head. “The ball barely touched me.”

  Preacher grunted. “You were lucky. Get the rope back down the hole and help Señor Esteban outta there. And gimme back my guns.”

  He replaced the pistols behind his belt and took the ones that Joaquin had been holding. All four guns were double-shotted and loaded with a heavy charge of powder. They gave him considerable firepower as he stalked toward the trees.

  He saw quickly that he wasn’t going to need it. Juanita’s kidnappers were gone. The tracks they had left headed off straight toward the top of the canyon, and Preacher had no doubt they were on their way back down now, taking Juanita with them as a prisoner.

  They had left behind a couple of dead men. One of them was a Yaqui. He had been shot in the face at close range, destroying most of his features. Preacher was still able to recognize him as one of the Indians who had been left with the wagons.

  The other man’s identity was a mite more interesting. He was Hardy Powers, one of the so-called guides who worked for Professor Rufus Chambers.

  TWENTY

  By the time Preacher stalked back to where the others waited, Esteban was on the surface, having climbed up the rope that the Yaquis had dropped down the shaft to him. He hurried anxiously to meet Preacher and asked, “Where is Juanita? Did you see her?”

  Preacher shook his head, and he hated to see the devastated look that settled on Esteban’s face in response. The young man had to know what the situation was, though. Preacher said, “They’ve got her, all right.”

  “But who are they?” Father Hortensio asked.

  “I don’t know about all of ’em, but I’ve got a pretty good idea one was that Professor Chambers.”

  “I knew it!” the priest burst out. “I thought I saw him for an instant in the trees. He had a pistol and fired at us, as did the others.”

  Preacher jerked a thumb toward the trees. “Hardy Powers is dead over yonder. I reckon that fella Worthy was probably with ’em, too.” He looked at Pablo and Joaquin. “I hate to tell you fellas this, but one of your pards is over there, too, shot dead.”

  They looked a little puzzled, so in rapid Spanish Esteban clarified what Preacher had just said. Both of the Indians gave guttural exclamations and then hurried toward the trees.

  Preacher turned back to Father Hortensio. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he ordered the priest.

  Before Father Hortensio could answer, Esteban said, “Should we not go after Juanita? Can you follow the trail they left?”

  “I reckon I can,” Preacher said. “First, though, we need to know what we’re up a
gainst. Tell me what happened, Padre.”

  “I . . . I am not sure,” Father Hortensio said.

  That was probably the first thing the priest hadn’t been absolutely certain of since Preacher had known him, the mountain man reflected.

  “We had just brought up the first chest of gold,” Father Hortensio went on. “Then Señorita Alvarez screamed, and when I looked around I saw a gringo running toward her. A fat little gringo, but he moved very fast.”

  That rang a faint bell in Preacher’s memory, but he passed over it for now. “Go on.”

  “At the edge of the trees, there was another gringo struggling with one of the Yaquis. I think it was Benedicto.”

  “The Yaqui, you mean?”

  “Sí. The gringo, I had never seen before.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Father Hortensio frowned in thought. “He was tall. A big man, strong-looking. He wore buckskin clothing, much like yours, but with more beads and decoration on them. He had long, fair hair and a beard.”

  Preacher nodded. That jibed with the memory that had cropped up at Father Hortensio’s mention of the fat man. “The bunch from the trading post,” Preacher said.

  “Que?”

  Preacher shook his head. “Never mind. Go on.”

  Father Hortensio rubbed his hands over his clean-shaven face and took a deep breath. “The tall gringo shot Benedicto. Then other gringos stepped out of the trees and began shooting at us. I could not say how many there were. A half dozen, perhaps. I thought one of them was Professor Chambers, but I was not sure. We tried to fight back . . . or rather, Pablo and Joaquin did. I, of course, could not.”

  “You let them steal Juanita while you stood by and did nothing?” Esteban asked.

  Father Hortensio drew himself up straighter. “I am a man of God,” he said. “A man of peace. I cannot allow my hands to be stained with blood.”

  Esteban’s face darkened angrily, and Preacher felt more than a mite irritated himself. But they didn’t have time to waste, so he put a hand on the young man’s shoulder and said to the priest, “Go on, Padre.”

  Father Hortensio shrugged. “There is not much left to tell. The fat man carried Juanita into the trees, and then all of the gringos fled.”

  “Why would they take her?” Esteban asked, his voice shaking. “Why?”

  There was one pretty obvious reason, but Preacher figured there was a lot more going on here. He might be lacking much of a formal education, but he had a keen native intelligence and the ability to put things together quickly.

  “Don’t worry, Esteban, we’re gonna get her back.”

  The young man turned an anguished look on him. “How can you know this?”

  Preacher nodded toward the sacks of artifacts and the single chest of gold that had been brought up so far and said, “Because we’ve still got something that they want.”

  Never in his wildest dreams would Cobey have thought that so much could go so wrong so fast. They had lost another man—Hardy Powers, drilled dead center by a lucky shot from one of those damned Indians—and they didn’t have any of the treasure they had set out to steal. Worst of all, Preacher was still alive. At least, Cobey supposed he was. From what they had seen before all hell broke loose, it had looked like Preacher and the young Mex were down in the hole under the cliff where the loot was hidden.

  The only good thing to come out of this debacle was that they now had the girl.

  That had been quick thinking on Arnie’s part to rush out there and grab her like that. Once Cobey had seen that, he’d realized that their best course of action was to cut their losses and get out of there, taking Juanita Alvarez with them.

  Unfortunately, Hardy Powers had been hit and killed by that shot before they could pull back. Cobey hadn’t known Powers for long, but he had seemed like a good enough fella. Too bad it couldn’t have been the professor who caught that ball through the guts. Cobey wouldn’t have minded that at all.

  They were about halfway down the canyon when Cobey called a halt. Chambers objected, saying, “Shouldn’t we keep moving? What if Preacher comes after us?”

  “He knows by now we’ve got the girl,” Cobey replied. “He’s not gonna crowd us too much. From everything I’ve heard about him, he’s a smart bastard. He’ll have figured out by now that we’re gonna have to work a swap.”

  “A swap?” Chambers echoed.

  Cobey nodded. “That’s right—the treasure for Señorita Alvarez.”

  The light of understanding dawned on Chambers’s thin face. For a professor, he was dumb as a rock sometimes. The idea of trading Juanita for the treasure had sprung fully formed into Cobey’s brain as soon as he saw Arnie grab her.

  It wasn’t as good as killing everybody else and just taking the girl and the loot . . . but once things had fallen apart, it was the best option they had left.

  Juanita was starting to come around now. While Arnie hung onto her, Cobey took some rawhide thongs from his possibles bag and used them to tie her wrists. That would make her easier to handle. As consciousness returned to her and she realized what was going on, she began to spout a torrent of furious Spanish at them. Cobey put his face a couple of inches from hers, glared at her, and warned, “You better shut up, gal, or I’ll gag you, too!”

  That made her fall silent, although she still looked daggers at Cobey and all the other men. When her gaze reached Chambers, her eyes widened and she gasped, “Professor! You must help me!”

  Chambers smiled and said, “I’m sorry, my dear, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, these men are my business associates.”

  “Then . . . you are a thief and a murderer, too!”

  “Sadly, true.”

  “Why have I been abducted? I have never done anything to harm any of you men.”

  “You know better than that,” Cobey snapped. “You know damned good and well why we grabbed you.”

  “You’re our key to obtaining the lost treasure of Mission Santo Domingo, Señorita,” Chambers said. “Surely, in order to insure your safety, your brother will turn over the treasure to us.”

  “You want to . . . trade me for the treasure?”

  “That is essentially correct.”

  Juanita began to laugh. Cobey and Chambers frowned. “What’s so damned funny?” Cobey demanded.

  “You do not know Father Hortensio. He will not allow anything to divert him from his holy quest, not even my life.”

  “You’re saying he won’t turn over the treasure?” Chambers asked.

  “Of course not. My life means nothing to him, in comparison to his devotion to the Church.”

  “He’s just one man, and a priest, to boot,” Cobey growled. “He won’t be able to stop your brother from dealin’ with us, and he sure as hell won’t be able to stop Preacher.”

  “And do you think Señor Preacher will meekly go along with your plan?” Juanita asked.

  To tell the truth, Cobey was worried about that very thing. Preacher was just the sort to try to figure out a way to rescue Juanita and save the treasure. But he could try all he wanted to, because in the end Cobey and his companions held all the aces in this game.

  “He’d damned well better go along with it,” Cobey said. “Otherwise, you’re gonna be one dead señorita.”

  Preacher rode slowly down the canyon, guiding Horse with his knees because he had both hands on his rifle, ready to fire at the first sign of a threat. Dog walked in front of him, ears pricked forward. The big cur had wandered up after all the trouble was over, one of the few times since he’d been with Preacher that he had missed a fracas. Now, though, Preacher was mighty glad to have Dog with him. His senses were even sharper than Preacher’s.

  So when Dog suddenly stopped short and the fur around his neck bristled and he started to growl deep in his throat, Preacher knew trouble was waiting for him.

  The fat man eased around the bend in front of Preacher. Not for a second, though, did Preacher believe that he was alone. One or more of the other
hard cases would be with him. They might even have guns lined on Preacher at this very moment.

  Dog would have lunged at the fat man and torn out his throat, but Preacher stopped him with a soft-voiced command.

  “First thing I got to say to you,” Preacher told the fat man, “is that if your pards try to bushwhack me, you won’t never get your hands on that treasure.”

  “Why not?” the fat man asked with a wily smile. “Seems to me like it’d be smart to get rid of our most dangerous enemy while we’ve got the chance.”

  “Because if I don’t come back, Esteban Alvarez will make sure nobody ever gets it. He’s gonna blow it to kingdom come.”

  The fat man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What? How in blazes is he gonna do that?”

  “There are fumes down in the cave where the loot is. They seep up from somewhere deep in the earth, and if they build up enough, a spark will set ’em off and blow the whole side of that cliff off.”

  The fat man shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  “No, just a fact.” Preacher paused and then added, “Ask the professor about it if you don’t believe me. He ought to know enough about such things to know that I’m tellin’ the truth.”

  “It couldn’t be that bad,” the fat man protested. “You and the Mex been climbin’ up and down outta that hole all day.”

  “Yeah, but that shaft lets fresh air into the cave. It stunk a lot worse when we first opened it up and damned near knocked out one o’ them Yaquis, and it had a small hole to let in fresh air even then. Now it’s sealed up tight with rocks on top of the hole.”

  “You did that?” The fat man sounded like he couldn’t believe it.

  “Damn right we did,” Preacher said. “But before we closed it up, we put a pistol down there, cocked and primed, with a string tied to the trigger. The string runs up the shaft to the surface. We left just enough room for it when we piled up the rocks to close the entrance. By now them fumes have probably built up to where they’d make a mighty big blast if somethin’ set ’em off. And all it’ll take is one pull o’ that string.”