“Take it easy,” Preacher said. “It’s just me. I know where the outcasts are, and likely where they have Chessie and Oliver, too.”
“How—” Hawk began.
“I saw the light from their campfire, a mile or so west of here. And that’s where we’re headed, right now.”
CHAPTER 22
“This is a trap,” Hawk said as he, Preacher, and Dog made their way carefully toward the orange crescent low in the sky marking the location of the outcasts’ camp. They had to move slowly because there was always the danger of stepping on a razor-sharp rock, breaking an ankle in an unseen hole, or plunging into a crevice hidden in the shadows.
“You’re probably right,” Preacher replied, “ but we’ve got to take that chance. Otherwise we may be trackin’ ’em for days through this hellhole, and there’s no tellin’ what might happen to Chessie and Oliver durin’ that time.”
“You said the outcasts will keep them alive until they have all of us prisoner.”
“Yeah, I figure that’s what they’re plannin’, but you know how notional Injuns can be, and these outcasts are even crazier than usual. All it would take is for one of ’em to lose his temper for some reason and he’d be liable to split Oliver’s skull with a tomahawk.”
“I am half-Indian, you know,” Hawk said coolly. “Do you believe me to be . . . crazy?”
“Well,” Preacher said with a grin in the darkness, “you partnered up with me, so some folks would say that’s enough evidence right there that you ain’t right in the head.”
Hawk just blew out an exasperated breath.
They moved on, their pace slow enough and the terrain rugged enough that it took them more than an hour to reach the area where the outcasts’ campfire reflected its glow into the sky. They were even more cautious as they approached. At last the two men and the big cur stretched out on their bellies and peered over the crest of a ridge at a broad sinkhole that nature had scooped out of the badlands.
Jagged cliffs surrounded the natural amphitheater. Crude huts fashioned from twigs and branches and mud were visible here and there. At the moment, the big campfire dominated the scene. Preacher wasn’t sure where the outcasts had found enough wood to build such a blaze. It must have taken them a lot of searching and gathering.
The flickering glare from the dancing flames spread out around the camp and illuminated most of the area. Preacher saw forty or fifty warriors scattered around. He didn’t try to get an exact count. Some of the men squatted on their heels and passed around a pipe. Others danced, their movements weird and jerky. Some gnawed on food; Preacher couldn’t tell what it was they were eating, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He didn’t see any children, but there were a few women around, as naked as the men. The women were as squat and ugly as the men, too, and it would have been hard to tell them apart at a distance except their heads weren’t shaven and they had not daubed the red powder all over their bodies. That powder might have some spiritual significance for the warriors, Preacher thought, as well as its practical purpose in making them blend into the red sandstone background here in the badlands. It was possible the women weren’t allowed to use it because of that.
As one of the women walked past a man hunkered on his haunches, he reached up, grabbed her, and flung her down roughly on the ground. Instantly he threw himself on top of her and began rutting with her, in plain sight of the others. The woman didn’t seem upset. In fact, she barely seemed to notice what the man was doing to her. No one else paid any attention to it, either.
Preacher tasted the bitterness of disgust in his mouth. Calling these creatures animals was being unfair to actual animals, he thought. They were no better than the worms of the earth. Even that might be too generous a comparison.
He turned his attention to the reason he, Hawk, and Dog were here. Off to one side of the fire, Chessie and Oliver lay with their hands and feet bound. Chessie was clad only in her undergarments now, her dress having been left behind in the gorge to serve as bait in that failed avalanche trap. Oliver’s hat was gone. Preacher saw dark smudges on the faces of both captives, but he couldn’t tell if the marks came from dirt or dried blood. Might easily be both, he knew.
“They are alive,” Hawk breathed.
“Yeah.” Preacher had seen faint movements from both prisoners. “Hard to say from here, but it looks like maybe they ain’t been roughed up too much.”
“If they have mistreated Chessie—” Hawk began in a growling voice.
“Don’t worry about that now,” Preacher told him. “We got to concentrate on gettin’ ’em away from here safely and then out of these badlands before those varmints can catch up to us.”
“If we kill them all, we will not have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, that’s the simplest solution, but there may be a mite too many of ’em for us to do that. And there’s probably more of them hidden around here that we can’t see, just waitin’ for us to show up.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I been thinkin’ on that,” the mountain man said. In fact, Preacher’s brain had been working quickly. He didn’t see any way of accomplishing their goal without taking some big chances.
Big risk, big reward, he told himself. When you didn’t really have any other options, that was the best way to look at things.
“When somebody’s fixin’ to spring a trap on you, the best thing to do is somethin’ they ain’t expectin’,” Preacher said. “They figure we’ll try to sneak in there, turn Chessie and Oliver loose, and sneak back out with ’em.”
“Is that not what we need to do?” Hawk asked with a frown. “I have heard how you slipped into the camps of the Blackfeet and slit their throats without being discovered. They were so terrified of you they began to call you the Ghost Killer. I have heard the stories many times.”
“Yeah, that’s true, but the Blackfeet were asleep and not expectin’ trouble. I’d need to be a real ghost to get in and out of that camp down there without bein’ seen.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
“What they won’t be expectin’,” Preacher said, “is for me to waltz right in there like I ain’t the least bit worried about what they’re gonna do.”
Hawk stared at him in the faint glow that came from the fire in the camp below. After a moment, the young warrior said, “You cannot do that. They will kill you.”
“They might if I just stood there and let ’em. But when they come after me and all hell breaks loose, it’ll be your job to get Chessie and Oliver and then light a shuck outta there. When they realize what’s goin’ on, that’ll distract ’em enough for me to make a break, too. We’ll rendezvous up here and head out of these badlands as fast as we can.”
Hawk thought about that for several seconds, then said, “We will not have time to get away unless you keep them distracted. You plan to trade your life for those of Chessie and Oliver, Preacher. You cannot make me believe otherwise.”
The mountain man chuckled. “You ain’t givin’ me enough credit. Sure, there’s a lot of those fellas, but they’re all scrawny. I can handle ’em. You just wait and see. Or rather, don’t wait. You’ll need to get outta these parts as fast as you can.”
“And you claim that Indians are notional,” Hawk muttered. “This notion of yours is insane.”
“You have a better idea?”
Hawk’s silence told Preacher that he didn’t.
“One thing you need to do before you go,” Preacher went on. “Let’s get some rock, crush it, and smear it on you.”
“You mean I should make myself look like one of them?” Hawk’s tone made it plain how revolting he found that idea.
“Well, there ain’t time to do it up proper so you could actually pass for one of ’em. For that we’d have to cut all your hair off, and anyway, you’re taller and sturdier than any of them. But if you look a little like them, it might give you a few extra seconds ’fore they notice you. That could come in handy.�
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“I do not like this idea,” Hawk said ominously.
“It’ll work. Just make sure you tell Oliver and Chessie who you are right away, so they’ll cooperate with you and won’t slow you down.”
Hawk was still muttering under his breath as they retreated from the top of the ridge. Preacher found a place where several chunks of sandstone had already flaked off the wall of a gully. He gathered up some of them, then used the brass ball on the handle of his knife to grind them into a fine powder while Hawk stripped off his buckskin shirt and leggings, leaving him clad only in a loincloth. He told Preacher, “This is as far as I go.”
“Shouldn’t be too noticeable,” the mountain man agreed. “Hold out your hands.”
He scooped the powder into Hawk’s outstretched hands. The young warrior began spreading the stuff over his body while Preacher ground up more pieces of sandstone. Dog sat nearby with his head cocked quizzically to the side, as if he couldn’t figure out what these crazy humans were doing.
When Hawk had used the powder to cover the front half of his body and as much of the back half as he could reach, he pulled back his long black hair as tightly as he could and bound it with a strip of rawhide, then rubbed the powder into it as well. When looked at from the front, he didn’t exactly appear shaven-headed, but his hair wasn’t too obvious at first glance.
“I still believe you are risking too much,” he told Preacher.
“And it’s still the best chance we got to rescue those two, unless you happen to have a company of soldiers in your back pocket.” Preacher grinned. “That’s right, you ain’t got a back pocket.”
He led the way toward the outcasts’ camp, altering the route based on what they had seen earlier so they came out as close as possible to the spot where Chessie and Oliver lay. They were about to slip up behind a couple of boulders when Preacher heard a faint scuffing sound. He recognized it instantly as a bare foot sliding on rock and twisted toward it. His knife seemed to leap from its sheath into his right hand as his left hand shot out in front of him.
The move was guided entirely by instinct. Preacher’s eyes had spotted the deeper patch of darkness shaped vaguely like a man, and his nerves and muscles realized it was an outcast sentry before his brain even had time to grasp that fact. His left hand closed around the crazed renegade’s throat, choking off any outcry before it had a chance to escape.
At the same time, Preacher brought the knife up and felt the blade go smoothly into the man’s belly. He ripped one way and then the other and felt the hot, wet sprawl of entrails slithering over the back of his hand like snakes. The man jerked and spasmed and died in the mountain man’s iron grip. He pulled the knife free and lowered the carcass to the ground behind the boulders.
“That’s one we won’t have to kill later,” he whispered to Hawk, adding with a touch of grim humor, “You’ll have some company while you’re waitin’ for me to circle around to the other side and make my move. We want as many of those varmints rushin’ away from Oliver and Chessie as we can get.”
“You will not throw your life away without a fight, will you?”
“Son, I ain’t hardly done anything in my life without a fight, and I sure as hell ain’t fixin’ to start now.” Preacher put a hand on Hawk’s shoulder for a second. “You’ll know when to move. You won’t be able to miss it.”
He started to turn away, then paused and added, “Dog, you stay with Hawk.”
The big cur whined.
“I know, you want to go with me, but Hawk’s liable to need your help more.” Preacher scratched behind Dog’s ears, then dropped to one knee and hugged the animal. Dog licked his whiskery face. Preacher stood up, vaguely embarrassed by that display of emotion—and he wasn’t a man who embarrassed easily.
“How long do we wait for you to join us?” Hawk asked.
“Don’t wait,” Preacher said. “I know what I said about us rendezvousin’, but that ain’t gonna work. Just light out as fast as you can and keep goin’. I’ll catch up to you where Merton and Ryker are camped in the hills, if not before.”
Hawk nodded. He seemed to be struggling with what to say, so he didn’t say anything. After a moment he just nodded again, and Preacher drifted back into the shadows and disappeared.
Preacher circled the camp, pulling back well away from it because he didn’t want to stumble over any more sentries and risk giving away his position. When he judged that he was on the far side from where Oliver and Chessie were being held prisoner, he began to move in.
This time it was the sharp reek of long-unwashed flesh that warned him. He stopped in midstep and let his senses range around him until he was confident that the outcast guard posted in this area was to his right and in front of him, just a few steps away. Preacher shifted slightly to the side and saw the man’s silhouette against the fire’s glow. The guard was looking away from him and clearly had no idea that Preacher was so close.
He died without knowing, as the mountain man’s left arm looped around his neck and clamped across his throat like an iron bar. Preacher’s knife drank blood again, this time heart’s blood as the blade slid between ribs and its tip pierced that vital organ. The man slumped against Preacher, his life there one second and then gone the next without warning.
Preacher’s path into the camp was clear now. He wiped the blood from his knife on the leg of his buckskin trousers, then sheathed the blade. His rifle was slung on his back. He pulled both pistols from behind his belt and rested his thumbs on the hammers. The guns were loaded and primed. He drew the hammers back.
Then he took a deep breath, smiled in the darkness, and strode out quickly from cover into the garish firelight. Grinning, he raised his voice and announced loudly, “Howdy! My name’s Preacher, and I’m here to kill all y’all sonsabitches!”
CHAPTER 23
For a heartbeat, surprise froze everyone in the camp in their tracks.
Then one of the outcasts screeched and charged at Preacher, brandishing a tomahawk. The mountain man let him take a couple of steps, then raised the pistol in his right hand and fired. One ball smashed the outcast’s sternum while the other ripped deep into his guts. The man stumbled and went down.
The gunshot jolted the rest of the outcasts into action. They swarmed toward Preacher in a howling, bloodthirsty horde. He fired his second pistol and brought down another of the creatures, this one with blood gouting from holes in his chest. Preacher jammed the empty pistols behind his belt and reached back to grasp the rifle’s barrel. He brought it around in front of him and fired from the hip. The ball tore through the body of another outcast. He had killed three of them in less than ten seconds.
Preacher shoved the rifle behind him on its sling again and drew his knife, while at the same time pulling his tomahawk from behind his belt with his other hand. He leaped to meet the closest group of the charging outcasts, striking so swiftly with the two weapons that it was difficult to follow his movements. The knife’s keen edge sliced across the throats of two men in one swiping slash, causing them to gurgle and stagger as they pawed futilely at the crimson flood pouring from their necks. The tomahawk shattered one man’s jaw and split the skull of another on the backswing. Preacher kicked one of the outcasts in the belly, and when the man doubled over, the tomahawk swooped up and then down, taking him in the back of the neck with such force that it bit deep enough to sever his spine.
Preacher backed off quickly, leaving howling, mad renegades after him. He bounded to his left, forcing them to change directions to come after him. Several men tried to block his path, but he zigzagged through them, striking right and left with the knife and tomahawk and leaving more crumpled bodies in his wake. It was a macabre dance of bloody violence, and no one was more graceful and fleet of foot than Preacher, nor more deadly.
Even in the midst of battle, though, he was able to cast a glance across the camp toward the spot where he had last seen Oliver and Chessie. Nearly all the outcasts had rushed to confront him when he sauntered in
so boldly, but a couple of warriors had stayed behind to guard the prisoners. Preacher caught a glimpse of a red-daubed figure darting toward them. The sentries saw Hawk as well, took him for one of them at first glance, and looked again toward the chaos on the other side of the camp.
Hawk’s knife raked across the throat of one guard. As the man’s knees buckled and blood geysered from the gaping wound, the other guard saw what was going on and tried to recover. He was no match for Hawk’s speed, however, and an instant later the young man’s knife was buried in the second guard’s chest.
Two women who were nearby saw the guards die and began to scream. With all the commotion in the camp, those cries went unnoticed for a moment. Then several men realized something else was wrong and turned away from the larger group trying to corral Preacher.
As they wheeled toward the prisoners, they were met by a gray, fanged flash who drove among them in a flurry of snapping and slashing teeth. One man went down, hamstrung, while the bones in another’s forearm were snapped by the crushing power of Dog’s jaws. As the man staggered, Dog fastened his teeth in his groin and ripped out a large chuck of it, causing the man to fall to his knees and scream hysterically.
Hawk scooped up a fallen tomahawk and threw it with deadly force and accuracy at the third man. The tomahawk buried itself in his forehead.
Preacher caught only glimpses of that action, since he had his own hands full with trying to avoid the other outcasts and killing the ones he couldn’t dodge. As a younger man, he had wintered sometimes with friendly tribes, and often he had played the games the men devised, which usually involved running around and trying to keep some object away from the other competitors.
The object in play tonight was Preacher’s life. He darted, ducked, and whirled, and as he did, he struck with the knife and tomahawk and sent more of the outcasts to whatever hell was waiting to claim them.
However, more of the creatures were joining the fray and it was getting more difficult to find a place to move. Preacher was almost surrounded.
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