Forty Guns West

by William W. Johnstone

  The boy nodded his head, a solemn expression on his face. Even he had heard of Bones Gibson.

  “The men have with them a Pawnee tracker called Dark Hand.”

  Preacher cussed under his breath. Again, he looked at Eddie. “Dark Hand hates my guts, Eddie. I killed his brother and whupped him twice. The last time I thought I killed him. I should have made certain. Goddamnit! Bones is gonna have half a dozen hard-cases that have been with him for years. Andy Price, George Winters, Horace Haywood, Mack Cornay, Cal Johnson, and Van Eaton, I’m sure. Van Eaton is a bad one. Just as bad as Bones, and maybe a little worser.”

  “We are moving north to Canada,” the spokesman for the Cherokee said. “Perhaps there we can find peace.” He looked around and received nods of approval from the other men. “Why don’t you and the boy ride with us? Your pursuers are looking for two sets of tracks, not many.”

  Preacher shook his head. “No. ’Cause when they find us, and they will, they’d kill you all for helpin’ us. And don’t think they wouldn’t. But I do ’preciate the offer.”

  The Cherokee ate and socialized and then moved on, leaving Preacher and the boy alone by the small fire. “We got to move fast, Eddie. We got to reach the mountains. Once we’s in the High Lonesome, them ol’ boys will play hell takin’ us. I know places there that even the Injuns don’t know about.” Preacher was thoughtful for a moment. “We can move a lot faster than that mob behind us. But we’ll be riding right through Kiowa and then Southern Cheyenne country, after that it’ll be mostly Utes. I get along all right with the Cheyenee. Kiowa and Utes can be right testy. You never can tell about them. Let’s hit the blankets, boy. We ready steady tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Bones Gibson sat on his horse off to one side of the gathering and watched with a sort of grim amusement on his hawk-like face as the many men tried to get packed and mounted up. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. Horses were pitching and bucking as their riders were getting the kinks out of them, mules were braying and snorting, and men were cussing and hollering. All in all it was a scene of chaos and confusion.

  Bones’s right-hand man, Van Eaton, a heavily muscled, sour-faced man who was little more than a brute, said, “I don’t see why you let them igits come along.”

  “Preacher will kill probably twenty or twenty-five of them long before we finally corner him. We can use their supplies and mounts as ours give out.”

  “I don’t like them reporters along.”

  “We couldn’t refuse them. Freedom of the press, and all that. But if they can’t keep up, that’s going to be their hard luck.”

  Van Eaton curved his thick lips into something vaguely resembling a smile. “Yeah. I see what you mean. Accidents do happen along the trail.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Bones?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Preacher ain’t no pilgrim. And we all best keep this in mind: When we get up into them mountains, all of Preacher’s friends is gonna be lined up solid agin us.”

  “That’s true. But from what I’ve been told, there are few real mountain men left at this date. Certainly not enough of them to cause us any real worry. And I got that from a very reliable source.”

  But Van Eaton was far from convinced. He shook his head. “When we hit them mountains, we best double the guard and sleep with one eye open.”

  Bones glanced at his long-time friend and ally. “I don’t remember you ever being this worried before.”

  “Ain’t none of us ever been this far west, Bones. We been all over the Smokies and the Blue Ridge and the Adirondacks and the Greens and so forth, but never out here. I ain’t never seen no country like this. It’s ... there ... well, there ain’t nothin’ out here, Bones. It’s . . . empty.”

  “Except for thousands of Indians,” Bones reminded him. “But you and I have fought Indians hundreds of times.”

  “We also knew the country, Bones. And we ain’t never fought no Plains Injuns. We’re gonna lose men on this job. Lots of men. If it wasn’t for all that money them silly foreigners offered to pay us, I’d say to hell with it.”

  “Van, those guns they’s carrying is worth thousands of dollars, and they got thousands more in cash money with them. I seen some of it. The rings they’s wearin’ is worth a fortune. No, Van, them fancy pants, nose-up-in-the-air gentlemen ain’t never gonna come out of the mountains alive. But we are. Rich enough to retire.”

  Van Eaton smiled. “You got it all worked out, don’t you?”

  “I always do, Van. I always do.”

  5

  Knowing that their chances for survival were nil if they were caught out in the open plains by sixty-five or so men, Preacher and Eddie packed up, saddled up, and rode out before dawn that morning, heading straight west. Seventy-five or so miles away, the gang of man-hunters finally pulled out, about two hours after.

  Indians from several tribes saw Preacher and the boy as they crossed the great expanse of rolling hills and waving grass, but they made no hostile moves toward them. They all knew Preacher and most felt he was as one with them. If the boy rode with Preacher, then he too was one with them.

  The Indians also saw the huge group of heavily armed and mounted men coming up behind Preacher. They watched the trackers study the ground and knew the men were after White Wolf and his pup.

  But this was not their fight. And it would not be their fight unless the large group of men attacked them. For the Indian to mount an attack against such a large and well-armed army of men would be foolhardy. Nothing could possibly be gained by it.

  “Preacher will not run long,” one Indian remarked.

  “No,” another said. “There will be blood on the moon when Ghost Walker has his belly full of running.”

  “I think he runs because of the boy,” yet another said. “When he finds a place where the boy will be safe, he will turn and make his move.”

  “It would be interesting to watch,” the first one said.

  The others smiled. “But dangerous, and would not serve us in any way.”

  That was true, the Indians agreed, then wheeled their horses and rode back to their village.

  Preacher finally found what he was looking for. The country had turned higher and drier, the grass shorter, and the landscape dotted with buttes, cliffs, and mesas. Preacher stowed Eddie and told him to stay put. He tied sacking over the hooves of Thunder and Eddie’s pony, and walked the horses back to where he’d found a blind canyon. There, he removed the sacking and rode the horses deep into the canyon. Then he replaced the sacking and walked them back out, staying close to the wall and carefully removing all signs of his departure.

  He picketed the horses and then ran back to fetch Eddie and the other horses. He found a small creek and led them back along it. By the time Bones and his men reached the creek, the water would have cleared and the hoof marks would be long gone.

  “Now, Eddie,” Preacher told him, “we got about a day and a half, maybe two days, ’fore those men reach us. I know that Bones and Van Eaton don’t know this country. What I don’t know is whether Dark Hand does. I’m bettin’ that he don’t know this is a blind canyon. I got to shorten the odds some. And this is how you and me is gonna do it ...”

  * * *

  “Preacher rides into the canyons to try to lose us,” Dark Hand said to Bones. “But it is a clumsy attempt. I find his tracks going in. Nothing coming out.”

  “Is there a way around it?” Van Eaton asked.

  “There is a way around everything,” the Pawnee said, making no attempt to hide his contempt for the white man. “But we would lose much time. But time is what we have. I do not like this canyon country. I say we go around.”

  “Be lots of twists and turns in there,” said Mack Cornay, a thug from Maryland. “Preacher could do ’most anything. Head in any direction, or circle around and come in behind us.”

  Horace and Haywood and George Winters had dismounted and were studying the tracks that were plain before them
. There was no doubt about it. Preacher and the kid and their pack horses had entered the pass and had not come out.

  “I say we got no choice but to foller,” George said. “If we don’t, we run the risk of losin’ them.”

  Bones looked up at the sun. Not yet noon. They had plenty of time. He made up his mind. “Let’s go. We might trap him in there and end this show here and now.”

  High atop the mesa above the entrance to the blind canyon, Eddie and Preacher looked at each other and grinned.

  “They took the bait,” Preacher said. “I can’t believe it, but they done it. All right, Eddie. You know what to do at my signal.”

  The boy nodded and then Preacher was gone.

  The reporters from New York and Boston and Philadelphia did not like this canyon. It was hot and still and not one breath of breeze entered to fan them. John Miller, on assignment from a New York City paper, glanced at the Philadelphia journalist and saw that Raymond Simms was not happy about it either. William Bennett, writing for a magazine out of Boston was behind them, and one look at his face told Miller that he too was very unhappy about this present situation.

  When their editors had handed them this assignment, all the men had been thrilled beyond words. They would be going into wild, savage, untamed, and unexplored country. They could all write books about their adventures, make a lot of money, and perhaps aid in bringing an outlaw to justice. But back in Missouri they had been told by a dozen well-placed gentlemen that Preacher was no outlaw. He had worked for the government and was a highly respected scout and trail-blazer. And they had finally realized that Bones Gibson and his men were nothing more than common murderers, thugs, and hooligans, under the dubious disguise of bounty-hunters.

  But it was too late to turn back. The reporters were depending on the bounty-hunters to guide them back to civilization. In other words, the eastern reporters were all lost as a dim-witted goose.

  Dark Hand had fallen back to the middle of the column. He did not like these twisting canyon trails and he felt in his belly that Preacher had set up some sort of trap.

  “I say,” Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor said, twisting in his saddle and looking around him, “isn’t this grand fun?”

  Baron Wilhelm Zaunbelcher agreed, adding, “But I am so disappointed that we have not been able to kill any savages. Let’s hope our luck will change.”

  Duke Sullivan said, “But what magnificent country we’ve seen. The vastness of it boggles the mind.”

  His mind hadn’t been boggled just yet. But it was about to be.

  All of a sudden, the trail ended against a sheer rock wall. For a moment, Bones was stumped. That confusion abruptly ended when the man next to him, Bill Front, toppled from his saddle, shot through the head. Cal Johnson screamed as Front’s brains splattered all over the front of his shirt.

  Dark Hand had leaped from his horse before the echo of the shot began reverberating around the canyon and jumped for the protection of a rock overhang.

  Boots Baldwin was the next to go down, the front of his shirt suddenly stained with fresh blood. He fell dying against another man and took him to the ground with him.

  Preacher and Eddie had worked for most of a day and a half rigging another surprise for Bones and his party. At Preacher’s yell, Eddie slapped Thunder on the rump and the animal jumped, stretching the rope taut. “Haww!” Eddie yelled, and the animal strained and a wooden platform gave way, spilling hundreds of pounds of rocks of various sizes down into the narrowest part of the canyon trail. The rocks took other rocks with them as they tumbled down the incline, some of them huge boulders, and within a matter of seconds, the trail was blocked by a pile of boulders twenty feet high and fifty feet deep.

  Preacher had both hands filled with those terrible pistols of his and was wreaking havoc on those trapped inside the narrow walls of the dark trail.

  Preacher had gathered up bushes to dry and he lit them and began throwing them onto the canyon floor. Then he started throwing small bags of black powder into the flames. The results were even better than he had hoped for. The concussion of the explosions brought down more rocks, hopelessly blocking the trail in a half dozen more locations. Horses were bucking and jumping and screaming in fright, throwing riders all over the place. Dead, dying, and wounded men were lying on the sand, many of them calling out for help that no one was able to give.

  A warrior’s smile on his lips, Preacher ran around the lip of the blind canyon to where Eddie was, and together, they got the hell out of there.

  * * *

  None of the reporters had been hit by any of the rounds Preacher had fired, but they had experienced the sensation of having the crap scared out of them.

  Bones squatted down after he realized that no more shots were coming their way and assessed the situation. It was terrible. It was going to take them a good day and a half, maybe longer, to dig their way out of the huge piles of rocks blocking the trail in half a dozen places. And they’d lose another four or five days tending to the wounded. Normally, Bones would have left the wounded to fend for themselves. But with the reporters along, he couldn’t do that. They would write him up as a monster or worse.

  “Damn you, Preacher,” he softly offered the oath. “Damn your eyes.”

  Dark Hand squatted down beside him in the churned and bloody sand. “I tried to warn you about Preacher. Do not underestimate the man. Not ever.”

  Bones ignored that. “How many men down?”

  “Eight dead. Nine others wounded. Two of them will not live through the night.”

  “One man and a snot-nosed kid and they take out nineteen men and we never even got a glimpse of them.”

  Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor turned to one of Bones’s regular gang and said, “Your Mister Preacher appears to have no fair play in him, whatsoever.”

  Andy Price looked at the Englishman for a long moment, then shook his head, which had a big knot in it from a falling rock, muttered something under his breath, and walked off to help move the tons of rock.

  “Brutish lout!” Sir Elmore said.

  * * *

  “This here’s Big Sandy Crick, boy,” Preacher said, reining up and stepping down. “We’ll make camp here.”

  They had been riding steady from before dawn to nearly dark for several days. Preacher figured they were at least a week ahead of the man-hunters and could finally afford to relax and rest the horses.

  “How far to the big mountains, Preacher?” Eddie asked, as he gathered up dry wood for a smokeless fire without having to be told. Preacher was as proud of the boy as if he were of his own blood.

  “Five days easy ridin’.”

  “Preacher?” Eddie’s tone was soft.

  “Yeah, boy?”

  “I know you been thinking I’m all better and such, but I know the truth. I ain’t gonna make it, Preacher. There are too many scars on my lungs. And the sickness affected my heart, too. It’s weak. Right now, with me all tanned and such, it’s like the quiet before the storm. But I can’t get no better.”

  “Boy . . .”

  “No, Preacher.” Eddie shook his head and smiled. “I know. Believe me, I do. But I’m not afraid of dying. Really, I’m not. I’ve been baptized. And I believe in heaven. So let’s you and me just have a real good time for as long as it lasts, all right?”

  Preacher looked long into the boy’s eyes and saw the truth there. He sighed and said, “All right, Eddie. We’ll have a high ol’ time until who flung the chunk. I got cold mountain lakes for you to see and catch big trout out of. I got waterfalls and wild rushin’ streams for you to witness. And meadows bustin’ with flowers of all colors. We’ll have us a summer of fun, you and me. But mayhaps you be wrong about yourself, boy.”

  But Eddie only smiled sadly.

  * * *

  Bones and company buried their dead and tended to their wounded and the reporters noted it all in their journals. They carefully coded their words in case Bones or some of his men who could read might get their hands on the journ
als, for they were not being kind to Bones or any of the other men with him. The reporters now realized, after listening to some of the men talk, that Preacher was no desperado, and the shooting back in Ohio had been a fair one. The thousands of dollars now on Preacher’s head was not an officially sanctioned reward, but money put up by friends and family of Elam Parks. And the reporters now were having doubts that any of them would live to tell of this terrible travesty of justice. For, to a man, they believed Bones and his men intended to kill them, and the so-called noblemen who were on this blood sport.

  The reporters began to make friends with one of the men who had come along for the adventure of it, a man from St. Louis who was having a lot of second thoughts about this trip. His name was Jim Slattery.

  On the evening before they were to resume the hunt, Jim came to the reporters’ fire and squatted down, pouring himself a cup of coffee. In a soft voice, he said, “I figure in about a week, we gonna be about sixty-seven miles north and some east of Bent’s Fort. I’m fixin’ to leave this den of thieves and murderers and head there. Y’all want to come with me?”

  “I’ve heard of that place,” the Boston reporter said. “We could perhaps hire an escort back east from there.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Jim agreed. “They’s supply wagons rollin’ in and out all the time, so I was told. Boys, I got me a real bad feelin’ about the company we’re in. I think them foreigners are in for a rude surprise. If Bones and his bunch has their way, I don’t believe none of them hoity-toity barons and dukes and counts and the like is gonna come out of this alive. But they’re a nasty lot themselves, so I don’t hold out a lot of sympathy for them.”

  “Nor do we,” another reporter said.

  “All right then. That’s settled. When I’m ready to make the jump, I’ll give you boys the high sign. Stay loose.”

  “Mr. Slattery, what do you think is going to happen to this Preacher person?”

  Jim grinned. “Preacher is a war hoss, boys. That little deal back in the canyon should have warned off any reasonable-thinkin’ man. Damn shore did me. What do I think is gonna happen? Well, I think these ol’ boys is gonna chase Preacher and the sick little boy until they catch up with them. And when they do, they’re gonna be the sorriest bunch of people east or west of the Mississippi River. That’s what I think.”