Cobey twisted instinctively in response to the shout, turning so that the rifle ball on its downward trajectory barely clipped the top of his left shoulder. The impact was still enough to knock him to his knees and make him drop his rifle. He jerked his head up and saw the tall, buckskin-clad figure at the top of the bluff. “Preacher!” he shrieked. “Kill him!”
Preacher dropped the empty rifle, yanked both pistols from behind his belt, and cocked them as he stepped off the edge and started sliding down the slope. The drop-off wasn’t sheer right here, but it was steep enough so that Preacher could barely stay upright as he slid down on his heels. He saw Chambers, Stilson, and Wick off to his right, so he swung his right-hand pistol toward them and fired. The weapon was double-shotted, with a heavy charge of powder. One of the balls whined past Chambers’s head and made him cry out and duck for cover. The other smashed Stilson’s left thighbone and knocked his leg out from under him. Stilson went down with a hoarse cry of agony.
Preacher had time to wonder if the pendulum had swung too far and he had gone to the other extreme, from thinking too much to being a damn fool, and then he reached the base of the bluff and somehow kept his footing instead of sprawling on his face. He used his momentum to send him racing forward, toward Esteban and Juanita. Bert McDermott wheeled toward him and brought up a pistol. Preacher ducked as smoke and flame geysered from the barrel. The ball passed over his head. He threw his empty pistol, sending it spinning through the air to slam across Bert’s face and knock him backward, off his feet and out of the fight, at least for a little while.
Cobey was still down, too, but Arnie was on his feet and dangerous, with a pistol in each hand. Preacher weaved to the side as Arnie fired the first one. He felt something pluck at his shirt and knew he had come that close to dying. Arnie fired the other pistol, but he rushed the shot and it missed Preacher’s head by a good three inches.
Preacher kicked Cobey in the back as he went by, knocking him sprawling. Esteban seemed to be unconscious. Juanita had crawled over to her brother and thrown herself half on top of him in an obvious effort to protect him. Preacher reached their side and dropped to a knee beside her, lining his left-hand gun on Arnie as he did so. Arnie had emptied both his pistols without any luck, and now grabbed at his powder horn in an attempt to reload, but he froze as Preacher barked, “Hold it!” By striking so swiftly, he had gained a momentary advantage. Three of his enemies were down, Arnie was momentarily unarmed, Chambers looked confused, unsure of what to do....
That left Wick.
And suddenly, the rising sun was blotted out and a deafening shout assaulted Preacher’s ears, and when he twisted his head and brought the pistol around, the dark mass looming above him looked like an avalanche about to fall on him.
But it wasn’t an avalanche, just Wick Jimpson, and he crashed down on top of Preacher with stunning force before the mountain man could pull the trigger.
THIRTY-TWO
Wick’s crushing weight drove all the breath out of Preacher’s lungs and made skyrockets explode through his brain. He gasped for air but couldn’t get any. The pistol had been knocked out of his hand, and he couldn’t reach his knife because he was pinned down so effectively by the giant. All he could get free was his right arm. It shot up, and he clamped his right hand on Wick’s throat. His fingers wouldn’t reach all the way around Wick’s bull-like neck, but he got the best grip he could and hung on for dear life.
Wick was too close to use his long arms and immense strength effectively. He cuffed Preacher, but even though the mountain man’s head was rocked from side to side by the blows, they lacked the killing power of one of Wick’s normal punches. The muscles in Preacher’s arm and shoulder bunched and corded as he poured all the power he could into his strangling grip. Wick’s face began to turn a dark red.
Preacher didn’t know what else was going on in the camp. All his attention was focused on Wick. In the back of his brain, he knew that even if he was able to escape from the big man, by now Cobey, Arnie, and the others would be ready to kill him. His only real hope was that Audie and Nighthawk had heard the shots and would come a-runnin’ to join the fray.
Wick suddenly jerked and stiffened, and Preacher heaved to the side as hard as he could. Wick rolled off him, leaving Preacher free to gulp down a huge lungful of life-giving air. Preacher rolled, too, and saw an arrow protruding from Wick’s back. The feathers and the markings on the shaft identified it as a Crow arrow, so Preacher knew that Nighthawk had shown up. As he scrambled to his feet, a rifle roared on top of the bluff. The shot drove Arnie back, even though it didn’t hit him. A few feet away, Preacher saw Cobey crawling toward the rifle he had dropped earlier when Preacher’s shot grazed him.
Spotting the pistol that he had dropped, Preacher rolled toward it and snatched it off the ground. He twisted toward Cobey, expecting to trade shots, but to his surprise he saw Cobey surge onto his feet and run toward the river. Arrows whistled around his head as he ran.
Preacher pushed himself up and looked around. Arnie and Cobey were fleeing from the barrage of arrows and rifle fire laid down from the top of the bluff by Nighthawk and Audie. Chambers and Bert McDermott had hold of the wounded Stilson, one on either side of him, and they were hustling away from here as fast as they could, too. Wick still lay facedown, the arrow sticking up from his back.
The thieves reached their tethered horses and ducked behind the nervous animals, using them for cover. Cobey and Arnie jerked the reins of their mounts loose from the trees where they were tied and sprang into the saddle, ducking as lead sang around their heads. McDermott and Chambers hoisted Stilson onto another of the horses and pressed the reins into his hands, then lunged for their own mounts. Bert grunted in pain as a rifle ball clipped his arm, but he managed to make it into the saddle. He kicked his horse into a run, following Cobey and Arnie. Chambers and Stilson did likewise.
Preacher lowered his pistol, unfired. The fleeing hard cases had quickly drawn out of range. Dog chased them for a short distance, barking furiously, before turning around and trotting back to Preacher, who now knelt beside Esteban and Juanita.
The young woman was conscious and seemed to be all right. Preacher helped her up and then rolled Esteban onto his back. Pressing a couple of fingers into the young man’s neck, Preacher found a strong pulse.
“I reckon he’ll make it,” he said reassuringly to Juanita. “Looks like he took a hard wallop.”
“Si, and he would be dead now if not for you, Señor Preacher.” Impulsively, Juanita threw her arms around the mountain man. “Gracias, señor, mil gracias!”
Even as he clumsily patted her on the back, Preacher heard hoofbeats and looked over Juanita’s shoulder to see Audie and Nighthawk riding along the riverbank toward them. Nighthawk was leading Horse. The two trappers had circled around to a point where they could descend the bluff with the horses.
Preacher glanced in the other direction, where Cobey, Arnie, and the others had disappeared around a bend in the Purgatoire, back the way they had come from the day before. Although they had been forced to flee by the deadly accurate rifle and arrow fire from Audie and Nighthawk, Preacher didn’t believe for a second that the hard cases had given up and would not come back. Cobey wouldn’t abandon his goal of getting his hands on that treasure, and now he would be even hungrier for vengeance on Preacher and the Alvarez siblings, not to mention Preacher’s newfound allies.
Gently, Preacher disengaged himself from Juanita’s hug and turned to Esteban. He lightly slapped the young man’s face until Esteban began to come around. “Sorry, amigo,” Preacher said, “but we got to get movin’, ’fore that bunch o’ thieves and killers regroups and comes after us.”
With Preacher’s help, Esteban sat up and shook his head groggily. When his gaze focused on Preacher, he exclaimed in surprise. “Preacher! Where did you come from?”
Juanita said, “He came down that bluff like an angel descending from Heaven.”
“First time I recollect tha
t anybody compared me to an angel,” Preacher said with a grin. He helped Esteban to his feet. “I been followin’ Cobey’s bunch with a couple o’ fellas I ran into yesterday. That’s Audie and Nighthawk.” He nodded to the little man and the Crow warrior in turn.
“I’m pleased and honored to meet you, Señorita,” Audie said, taking off his coonskin cap and bending low in a bow without leaving the saddle. He straightened, replaced his cap on his head, and went on. “Preacher, we’d better light a shuck out of here while we still can.”
“Ummm,” Nighthawk concurred.
Juanita said worriedly, “We don’t have enough horses.”
“I reckon Nighthawk’s pony can carry double,” Preacher said, “especially if you ride with him, since you’re lighter. Horse is plenty strong enough to carry me and Esteban for a ways.”
“Where are we going?”
Preacher looked east along the river, opposite the direction in which the hard cases had fled. “The padre and the Yaquis and them wagons are still up ahead somewheres. They’ll be bound for the old mission. I reckon we ought to head for there, too.”
Esteban said, “You do not intend to try to take back the treasure from Father Hortensio, do you? I am angry with him for what he did, but still, the gold and the relics belong to the Church. . . .”
“The Church is welcome to ’em,” Preacher said. “What I was thinkin’ was that Mission Santo Domingo might make a pretty good place to fort up when Cobey and his bunch come after us. We got to get there first, though.”
Without any more delay, they mounted up, Preacher and Esteban on Horse, Juanita climbing onto Nighthawk’s spotted pony in front of the stoic Crow. The riders set off at a ground-eating lope, not pushing the mounts too hard since two of them were carrying double, but not wasting any time, either. They left behind the fire, which was now dying out in its circle of stones, and the arrow-pierced body of Wick Jimpson.
Preacher and his friends were out of sight when Wick suddenly stirred. The giant groaned and tried to push himself up on hands and knees, only to fail and sprawl out again. He lay there for a while, gathering his strength. When he was ready to try to move again, he let out a yell and climbed unsteadily all the way to his feet. His broad face contorted in a grimace at the pain in his back. He reached behind him and found the arrow. His thick fingers closed around the shaft and snapped it off, which left the head buried inside his back, just under his shoulder blade. A few inches of the shaft remained attached to the arrowhead, sticking out through the bloodstained hole in the back of Wick’s shirt.
He looked at the arrow, wondering where it had come from, and then threw it aside, not really caring. All that mattered was that when he looked around, he didn’t see the señorita anywhere. He saw tracks, though, hoofprints that led off to the east. That must be where the señorita had gone, Wick’s muddled brain decided.
He shuffled off in that direction and then broke into a shambling run. He didn’t know where Juanita had gone, but he was going to find her. He didn’t care if he had to run all day and all night and all the next day.
One way or another, he was going to find the señorita.
Chambers had never seen Cobey so angry. The man looked like he was going to explode with rage. Cobey had lost his hat somewhere, and as he paced back and forth he raked his fingers through his long, tangled hair.
“I’ll skin him alive!” Cobey ranted, and Chambers knew who he was talking about. There was no doubt that Cobey referred to Preacher. “He’s got more lives than a damned cat, but we’ll see how long he makes it once I start peelin’ the hide off him, one strip at a time!”
“Why don’t you gimme a hand here?” Arnie suggested from where he knelt beside Chuck Stilson. He had been working on Stilson’s wounded leg ever since they had stopped and Stilson had lost consciousness and toppled out of the saddle, maybe hurting himself even worse.
Arnie had used a tourniquet to get the bleeding stopped and cleaned away enough of the crimson gore to see what he was dealing with. He stretched Stilson’s leg out and heard the ends of the shattered bone grating against each other. Even though he was out cold, Stilson groaned loudly and shifted around, instinctively trying to get away from the pain that engulfed him.
“We need to get this leg splinted,” Arnie muttered as Cobey continued to pace and rave.
“Perhaps I can help,” Chambers offered. “What do you need me to do?”
Arnie looked up at the professor. “See if you can find a couple of fairly straight pieces of tree limb, about twice as big around as your thumb and maybe two feet long. I can use them as splints if you can find some like that.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Chambers hurried off on that errand.
“What about me?” Cobey demanded. “I’m hit, too. This shoulder hurts like blazes. Damn it, my arm ain’t completely healed up from where Preacher shot me before, and now the bastard’s shot me again!”
Without looking up from Stilson, Arnie said, “I’ll look at you when I get a chance, Cobey. Bert got nicked, too, you know.”
Bert McDermott stood to one side, calmly tying a strip of cloth around his bullet-burned upper arm, using his teeth to hold the makeshift bandage as he knotted it tight. When he was finished, he said, “Don’t worry about me, Arnie. I’ll be all right.”
Cobey threw his hands in the air. “Ever’thing’s shot to hell! It’s all fallin’ apart around me!”
It was true they’d had a run of bad luck . . . but some of it was Cobey’s fault. They shouldn’t have brought the girl and her brother with them. Either kill them or let them go, Arnie thought. Either of those things would have been better. The youngsters wouldn’t have represented much of a threat, and having a pretty girl around where gents could fight over her always led to trouble sooner or later. And if they had released Esteban and Juanita unharmed, Preacher might not have come after them....
That was pretty unlikely, of course. Once a man like Preacher got his dander up, he wasn’t going to just go away. He would have felt like he had a score to settle, and nothing short of death would stop him.
That was still the case. Preacher had those kids back now—although there was no way of knowing what sort of shape Esteban was in after having been attacked by Cobey—but he was still a threat. For one thing, he was between Cobey and that gold, so they would have to deal with him sooner or later. Cobey wasn’t going to give up the treasure.
Chambers came up carrying a couple of pine branches. “Will these do?” he asked as he held them out to Arnie.
The fat man took them and nodded. “Yeah, they look fine, Professor. Good job.”
He ripped up a homespun shirt from his own possibles bag and used it as bandages, tying them as tightly as possible around the holes in Stilson’s leg where the pistol ball had gone in and out. When he loosened the tourniquet, the bandages reddened a little from fresh blood, but not too much. Arnie thought there was a good chance Stilson wouldn’t bleed to death, anyway.
Carefully, he laid the branches on either side of the wounded leg and tied them in place with rawhide thongs. He thought the bone was back together as best he could get it, although it was possible the ball had pulverized enough of the bone so that it would never heal properly. This leg might wind up shorter than the other, and Stilson would always have a bad limp. Better to be crippled for life, though, than dead.
Chambers watched with interest as Arnie patched up the wound, and after a few minutes he said, “Am I imagining things, or have you had some medical training, Mr. Ross?”
Arnie shrugged. “When I was younger, I thought I might be a sawbones. I apprenticed to one for a while. It never worked out, though.”
“A pity. You have some definite skills in that area.”
Impatiently, Cobey demanded, “You got Stilson ready to ride yet?”
Still on his knees beside the unconscious man, Arnie looked up and said, “He ain’t gonna be doin’ any ridin’ for a while, Cobey. Not for a day or two, at least. If he does, it’l
l hurt like hell—”
Cobey snorted. “I don’t care if he’s in pain.”
“And that wound will open up again and he’ll bleed to death,” Arnie went on doggedly.
“We’re all hurt,” Cobey said with a shrug. “You got your arm half gnawed off by that damn dog. The only one who ain’t been hurt is the professor, for God’s sake!”
“Just fortunate, I suppose,” Chambers said with a smile.
Cobey ignored him and said, “So Stilson has got to ride. We have to get movin’. We can still catch up to the priest and get that treasure.”
“Preacher will likely be joined up with him by then,” Arnie pointed out.
“Fine with me. I want another shot at that son of a bitch.”
“I know you do, but Stilson can’t ride.” Arnie sighed. “You and Bert and the professor can go after them, I reckon. I’ll stay and take care of Chuck.”
Cobey looked at him intently and asked, “You sure about that?”
“Yeah. We can’t just leave him alone.”
Cobey pulled his pistol, cocked it, and fired. The action was so swift and unexpected that Arnie had no chance to stop him. The ball struck Stilson in the middle of the forehead and made him jerk and arch his back off the ground as it bored on through his brain and exploded his skull. His body sagged back to the ground in death.
Cobey lowered the smoking pistol and said, “I reckon we can leave him and get after Preacher and that treasure now.”
Arnie, Bert, and Chambers stared at Stilson’s lifeless body and his shattered head. Finally, Arnie nodded and said in a resigned voice, “I reckon we can.”
THIRTY-THREE
Horse, Nighthawk’s pony, and Audie’s stubby-legged mount had all had a night’s rest, so they were fresh and strong. Preacher set a brisk pace that day, although he did call a halt more often than he might have otherwise, since two of the animals were carrying double and he didn’t want them to get too tired.
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