Preacher's Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  “Wait!” Hawk said through clenched teeth. “Rushing into that canyon may be just what they want you to do.”

  “But . . . but that could be Chessie!” Oliver struggled to get loose, but Hawk’s grip was too strong.

  “I’ll go take a look,” Preacher said. “You two stay here. Come on, Dog.”

  The mountain man and the big cur started forward between the steep stone walls. Their gazes roamed constantly from side to side and up and down. The spot of blue was fifty yards into the canyon, partially concealed by a large rock. As they neared it, Preacher tried to decide if there was a body inside the cloth, but from where he was, he just couldn’t tell.

  Finally, he and Dog were close enough for Preacher to reach out and snag the fabric with the muzzle of his rifle. He pulled it into the open and felt relief go through him as he realized it was a dress, all right, but it was empty. He half turned and held the rifle out so Hawk and Oliver could see the garment.

  “Oh my God,” Oliver said in a voice choked by emotion. “It’s hers! It’s Chessie’s dress!”

  “Yeah, but she ain’t in it,” Preacher said. “And she ain’t here, either.” He took the dress from the end of the rifle and looked it over. It was dirty and torn in places, and it had a long rip down the front of it. That made his mouth tighten into a grim line. The Indians had torn the dress off Chessie, but that didn’t mean they had done anything else to her. They could have wanted the dress to leave here as a means of taunting their pursuers.

  Or as bait for a trap, he realized suddenly as he heard a faint grating sound from somewhere above him. He reacted instantly, yelling, “Dog, out!” as he flung himself toward the canyon mouth.

  Almost as quickly, he stopped short as rocks plummeted down from above. One great bound had carried Dog past the area where they were falling, but Preacher saw he wasn’t going to make it in time and threw himself back the other way. A terrible rumble filled the narrow canyon and rebounded from its walls. Rocks the size of fists pelted Preacher and made him stumble, but luckily none of them struck him in the head and knocked him unconscious. If that had happened, he would have been buried forever.

  With the rockslide getting worse all around him, he gathered his strength and launched himself into a headlong dive, not knowing if it would carry him beyond the worst of it or doom him. But it was his only chance, so he took it.

  When he landed, he kept rolling. A slab of rock as big as he was slammed into the ground mere feet away. He covered his head with his arms as best he could and felt rocks hammering at him. Finally he came to a stop and lay there choking and coughing as roiling clouds of dust clogged his mouth, nose, throat, and lungs. Gravel slid around him, half burying him. Preacher was too stunned to move, other than to shake from the racking coughs.

  After an unknowable time, the air began to clear and the mountain man’s coughing subsided slightly. He gathered his wits and his strength and managed to lift his head and look around. He had to blink several times to clear enough of the dust from his eyes so he could see. When he shook his head, more dust from his hair swirled around his face and made him cough again. He needed to stop that, he thought.

  A few yards away, a wall of boulders and smaller rocks completely filled the defile at the spot where he had found Chessie Dayton’s dress, confirming that the garment had been the bait in a trap. The outcasts had sprung that trap, but it had failed. He was battered but alive.

  Alive . . . but cut off from Hawk, Dog, and Oliver.

  CHAPTER 21

  Preacher clawed his way out of the gravel that had slithered around him and covered nearly half his body. When he was free, he staggered to his feet. He had flung his rifle out in front of him when he tried to dive out of the way of the rockslide. It took him only a moment to locate the weapon, lying apparently undamaged on the ground a few yards away. He picked it up and quickly checked it to make sure he could use it if he needed to. As soon as he got a chance he would give the rifle a good cleaning, but that would have to wait.

  Right now he had to figure out a way to get free from this impromptu prison.

  “Hawk!” he called. “Oliver! Can you hear me?”

  No answer came back from either young man. Preacher frowned. From where he had left them, they ought to be able to hear him. The rockslide barred his path, but it shouldn’t stop sound from getting out of the canyon.

  Which meant Hawk and Oliver couldn’t answer his shout, and he couldn’t think of any reasons for that other than bad ones.

  Preacher didn’t waste any more time or energy yelling. He spotted the brim of his hat sticking out from under a rock and tugged it free, then slapped it against his leg to get some of the dust and dirt off it. He wasn’t sure he accomplished that task, but he clapped the hat back on his head anyway and looked up to study the rock wall confronting him.

  It rose a good twenty feet, but even though it was steep, Preacher thought he could climb it. The tricky part would be doing so without causing the rocks to start sliding again. He could break an arm or leg if he was part of the way up and got caught in such a collapse.

  He turned his head to look the other direction along the narrow gash in the earth. If he had been alone, he would have explored the rest of the defile to see if there was another way out. Right now, though, he was worried about Hawk and Oliver and Dog and wanted to find out what had happened to them. He slung the rifle on his back, approached the wall of rocks, and searched for a route that looked like he could climb it safely.

  There wasn’t going to be anything safe about this, the mountain man reasoned. He decided on a likely-looking spot and started to climb.

  Preacher tested each rock before he trusted his weight to it. They had packed down pretty solidly when they fell. Slowly, he made his way up. Now and then one of the stones shifted slightly, causing gravel and dirt to trickle down, and each time that happened Preacher froze until he was sure it was safe to go on. Sweat ran down his lean cheeks and made gullies in the thick layer of grayish-brown dust that covered his face.

  At last he was close enough to the top that he was able to pull himself up and peer over it. He halfway expected to see bodies sprawled in the canyon mouth, but the opening was empty. That was a relief, in a way, but it also added to Preacher’s worry. Where had his companions gone?

  Moving slowly and carefully, he pulled himself up farther and swung a leg over the crest of the rockslide. His impatience grew stronger as he began the descent. When he was halfway to the ground, a rock the size of a man’s head rolled under his foot. Thrown off-balance, Preacher didn’t try to catch himself. Instead he leaped out, landed with one foot on a boulder, and pushed off. That sent him clear of the small slide that tumbled down behind him. He landed on the canyon floor, rolled, and came up on both feet.

  He was out of the trap but not out of danger. However, a quick look around didn’t reveal any lurking threats at the moment, so he hurried forward. As he approached the mouth of the canyon, he heard a low growl and exclaimed, “Dog!”

  The big cur responded with a yip. He sounded all right, which made Preacher eager to see for himself. He stepped out of the defile and looked to his right. Dog stood there with the fur on his neck ruffled up in anger. Beside him, facedown, lay the unmoving form of Hawk That Soars.

  Preacher’s heart slugged hard in his chest when he saw his son lying there motionless like that. Dog backed away from the young warrior as Preacher hurried over and dropped to his knees beside Hawk.

  Preacher had the presence of mind to say, “Dog, guard,” which was exactly what the big cur had been doing already. With him there, no one would have been able to approach Hawk’s body except Preacher.

  The mountain man placed a hand on Hawk’s back and sighed in relief as he felt movement. Hawk was still breathing. Preacher took hold of his shoulders and rolled him over. Hawk was unconscious, but except for the bloody welt on his head where something had hit him, he didn’t appear to be hurt.

  Preacher looked around, not seeing a
ny sign of Oliver Merton. Not far off, though, a welter of what looked like bare footprints marred the dust. Preacher straightened and went over to study the marks. Maybe half a dozen of the outcasts had been here. A pair of grooves in the dirt showed where something had been dragged along for a few feet before all the sign disappeared on a stretch of rocky ground.

  To Preacher’s experienced eyes, the scene might as well have been a page from a book. After springing the avalanche trap on him, the outcasts had attacked Hawk and Oliver. Hawk had been knocked out, but Dog, having barely escaped from the rockslide, had protected him from the Indians.

  Oliver hadn’t been so lucky. Preacher didn’t see any blood on the ground, so he figured the young easterner had been rendered unconscious and taken prisoner. His captors had dragged him away, and by now there was no telling where they were. Probably wherever they had left Chessie under guard while they tried to wipe out their pursuers.

  A soft groan made Preacher turn around. Hawk was starting to stir. Preacher went over and knelt beside him. As he did so, Hawk’s eyes popped open. He tried to surge up from the ground.

  Preacher’s firm hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Take it easy,” the mountain man said. “You got another good wallop on the noggin. Keep that up and your skull’s liable to start gettin’ a mite mushy.”

  “Oliver!” Hawk gasped.

  “Gone.”

  Hawk raised himself again, but this time only on one elbow so he could look around. “Dead?” he asked.

  “Gone,” Preacher said again. “Looks like the outcasts took him.” A bleak cast came over his face as he added, “I reckon we’ve got two prisoners to rescue now.”

  * * *

  Hawk sat up with his back braced against a rock while he regained his wits and strength. He told Preacher, “We heard the rockslide start, but there was no way we could reach you. Dog came running out, but then a huge cloud of dust billowed up and we could not see what had happened.”

  “Yeah, that dust damn near choked me,” Preacher said. He patted his shirt, which caused a pale puff to rise from the buckskin. “I’ve still got a heap of it on me.”

  “As soon as that happened, the outcasts attacked us,” Hawk went on. “I don’t know how many. A dozen, perhaps. Too many for us to fight, although we tried. I remember one of them flung a tomahawk at me . . .” Hawk shrugged. “That is all I know until I woke up with you looking at me.”

  Preacher nodded. “That tomahawk glanced off your head and knocked you colder’n the snow up on those peaks yonder. But Dog stood over you and kept the varmints from killin’ you.”

  “They could have killed both Dog and me if they had tried hard enough,” Hawk said. “For some reason they chose to leave us alive and take Oliver with them.”

  “They’re playin’ with us. This is probably the most sport they’ve had in a long time. They took Chessie and used her to lure us into this wasteland. Now they’ve got Oliver, too, and they figure we’ll keep comin’ after ’em. They’re tryin’ to pick us off one by one and make the game last as long as they can.” Preacher mulled that over for a moment, then added, “Which makes me hope they ain’t hurt Chessie too bad. They want to get all of us together sooner or later and then have their real sport with us.”

  “Torture,” Hawk said. “And probably cannibalism, as well.”

  “Wouldn’t doubt it,” Preacher agreed. “We ain’t gonna let things go that far, though.”

  “Can we still trail them?”

  “Dog will see to that, once you’ve rested up enough.”

  Hawk moved as if he was about to stand up. “I can go after them now. I’m fine—”

  Preacher put a hand on his shoulder and held him down again. “I can tell by your eyes that you ain’t fine,” he said. “Chances are that things are still pretty fuzzy for you. Just give it a little time.”

  “Chessie and Oliver may not have that time,” Hawk said with a frown.

  “It ain’t gonna help ’em for you to pass out again, neither. Just sit there and rest.”

  Hawk didn’t look happy about it, but he did what Preacher said. Since the two of them had never met until Hawk was nearly grown, the usual bond between father and son had never really existed where they were concerned. Preacher felt what he believed was a paternal instinct, a primitive urge to protect Hawk, but at the same time they were more like partners. Friends . . . maybe. Preacher wasn’t sure how Hawk felt about him. But he was certain Hawk wasn’t going to obey his orders out of any sense of duty to a parent. That sort of feeling might not ever be present between them.

  A short time later, Preacher got Hawk to gnaw on a little jerky. When the food didn’t make him sick, Preacher decided it would be all right for him to get up and move around again. A glance at the sky told him there wasn’t much more than an hour of daylight left, but that was an hour they couldn’t afford to waste.

  “Dog, find Chessie,” the mountain man ordered. “Find Oliver.”

  Dog trotted around the area for a few minutes but always came back to the spot where the tracks indicated that the outcasts had dragged Oliver away. Preacher suspected that the big cur could no longer find Chessie’s scent, probably because they had taken her on through the gorge that was now blocked by the rockslide. But the Indians who had taken Oliver prisoner had been forced to follow a different route, and that was the one Dog trotted off on now.

  They would all wind up at the same place, Preacher thought, so it didn’t really matter how they got there.

  The trail writhed like a snake through the badlands, climbing gradually but steadily, until Preacher and Hawk followed Dog to the top of a rise and found themselves looking out over what appeared to be a vast, storm-tossed sea. Waves leaped high and receded into the distance. But instead of the enigmatic blue-green and the constant ebb and flow of the ocean, this “sea” was tinged a hellish red and didn’t move. It was made of bare rock and looked like something that ought to be located on some far planet, not on Earth.

  As they gazed over that nightmarish landscape, Hawk muttered, “How can anyone be found in such a place?”

  “That’s why it’s a good thing we got Dog on our side,” Preacher said. He glanced down at the big cur, who had sat down and also looked out at the badlands. A little whine came from the furry throat. “Although it sounds like he don’t like it much, neither.”

  “Nothing truly human could live out there. Those outcasts, as you call them, have become lower than beasts, Preacher.” A note of urgency came into Hawk’s voice. “We must find Chessie. And Oliver, too, of course.”

  “We will. Dog, find.”

  Dog didn’t move right away. It was unheard of for the big cur not to obey Preacher’s commands instantly. His hesitation now was a sure sign of just how uneasy this place—and the creatures they pursued—made him. But after a moment Dog stood up and padded down the slope in front of them into a gully that twisted across the badlands. Preacher and Hawk followed, eyes straining for any hint of trouble in the fading light.

  Once the sun slipped behind the mountains to the west, darkness fell like a stone. Preacher and Hawk had to stop, even though Dog could have continued to follow Oliver’s scent. The shadows were too thick for them to see where they were going, the risk of injury too great.

  This would be yet another night for Chessie as a prisoner of the outcasts. At least she would have Oliver for company now. Preacher was convinced both of them were still alive. If they were dead, the outcasts would leave their bodies—or pieces of bodies—where Preacher and Hawk would be sure to find them, just to torment the pursuers.

  They stopped to make a rough, cold camp. They had barely eaten anything today, and both Preacher and Hawk felt exhaustion tugging at them. Some hot food and coffee, followed by a good night’s sleep, would have made a world of difference . . . but Preacher didn’t think any of those things were in the cards for him and his son tonight.

  “Get some sleep,” he told Hawk when they had each eaten a strip of jerky and a cold, h
ard biscuit. “I’ll wake you later.”

  “I can stand first watch,” Hawk offered.

  “You’re the one who got knocked in the head today. I just got walloped by a bunch of fallin’ rocks. I’m bruised up a mite, but that’s all.”

  “You will be stiff and sore in the morning, old man.”

  “Maybe so, but I won’t be mushy in the head like some fellas who are part Absaroka.”

  “Only the white man part of my head is mushy,” Hawk said.

  Preacher had to laugh at that.

  He sat down on a rock with his rifle across his knees and Dog beside him. Hawk stretched out, and despite the uncomfortableness of the rocky ground, within minutes he was sound asleep, judging by the deep, regular breathing Preacher heard emanating from him. Preacher drew in a deep breath himself and looked up at the sky, where millions of stars swam in the endless black.

  Except the black wasn’t endless. Low down in the sky to the west was a very faint, arching band of orange light. Preacher frowned when he saw that, and without thinking about what he was doing, he got to his feet.

  A few yards away, the gully’s bank had caved in partially at some point in the past. Preacher was able to climb that irregular slope, even in the darkness. When he reached the top, he peered toward the light that he could see more clearly now.

  The outcasts were nothing if not confident, even arrogant. They had built themselves a big campfire over there, and the light from it reflected into the sky plainly enough for Preacher to see it with no trouble. Obviously, the outcasts didn’t care about that.

  Or maybe this was another trap, Preacher thought. That was entirely possible.

  But he didn’t care. He slid back down into the gully and went quickly to Hawk’s side, even though the young man had been asleep for only a short time. Preacher knelt and put a hand on Hawk’s shoulder. Hawk woke instantly, his hand tightening around the butt of the pistol he held.