Forty Guns West

by William W. Johnstone

  “Preacher, my heart is very sad about the little sick boy who was killed. I saw where you buried him with his horse. That was a good thing you did. He will need his pony to cross to the other side of life. But his grave will not fool the Utes when they return to find out what happened to Wind Chaser. And they will return, Preacher. After the hunt. Listen, I have what I think is a fine idea. Why don’t you ride to the strong Ute camp and tell them what happened? They will see to the fates of those who did that terrible thing.”

  “No,” Preacher said with a shake of his head. “I can’t have Utes killin’ ever’ white man who comes along. We’re not all bad, Dark Hand.”

  Dark Hand grunted at that and Preacher understood and had to smile. The white man had not given the Indians many reasons to trust them. But the Indians hadn’t exactly welcomed the white man with open arms, either. Preacher understood that there was right and wrong on both sides. There always is when two strong cultures clash. What was considered barbarism and savagery to the white man was an accepted way of life to the Indian.

  “Well, if Bones has more men comin’ out to join him, I reckon I best get on with whittlin’ down the odds.”

  “I would say that you have made a fine start toward that,” Dark Hand said, a distinct dryness in his tone.

  The eyes of the Indian and the white man met, and both of them chuckled. Most whites felt the Indian did not have a sense of humor. They were wrong. The Indian had a fme sense of humor. They just didn’t show it very often around whites.

  Dark Hand finished his coffee and stood up. “I go now, White Wolf. You will not see me again while this silly war is going on. Months from now, should we meet again, remember that you will always be welcome in my camp.”

  “And you in mine, Dark Hand,” Preacher said, extending his hand.

  Dark Hand shook the hand and walked to his horse. He was gone seconds later.

  Preacher stood for a moment. “First Pawnee I ever really made friends with,” he muttered. “Damned if he didn’t turn out to be a right nice feller.”

  * * *

  “Tracks lead off yonder,” Van Eaton pointed, reporting back to Bones. “I betcha that Injun went straight to Preacher.”

  “No matter,” Bones said. “I’m glad to be shut of him. I never did really trust him.”

  The teams of men were packed up and ready to mount. The royalty had been separated at Bones’s orders. He wanted to keep as many alive as possible. He wanted his money, and the gentry were no good to him dead.

  “Let’s go,” Bones said, swinging up into the saddle. “We’ll meet an hour before sunset.”

  One team was to head straight for the new camp and get it ready. The other teams were to concentrate on tracking and finding Preacher. They didn’t know that Preacher was, at that very moment, making the search very easy for them.

  * * *

  “Got him!” Spanish called out. “He ain’t near’bouts as smart as he thinks he is. Look here.”

  The team members, including Robert Tassin, gathered around. The tracks were plain as could be. They didn’t know that Preacher had been laying down sign all morning, trying to get them to see the tracks. For this sign, Preacher had jumped up and down in one place, broke off a branch, and built a small fire. He figured if this didn’t work he’d have to find him a white rag and stand out in the open and wave it at the men.

  “We’ve got him!” the French aristocrat said excitedly. “Let’s press on, men.” He spurred his horse and entered the timber.

  “No, you don’t,” Spanish muttered. “Preacher is mine.” He jumped ahead of Tassin and unknowingly and certainly unwillingly, saved the Frenchman’s life.

  Preacher’s rifle boomed and Spanish went down, leaving the saddle like a sack of potatoes as the big heavy caliber ball blew a hole in his chest and shattered his heart.

  “Merde!” Tassin said, jumping from the saddle and taking cover behind a tree. He looked all around him, but could see nothing. He looked over at Spanish. The man lay motionless on the ground, his shirt front bloody.

  Tassin lifted his rifle, looking at where he’d seen a faint puff of smoke. If the Frenchman had been the man-hunter he thought he was, he should have guessed that as soon as Preacher fired, the mountain man would shift locations. The only thing that saved Tassin’s life was the turning of his head as one of the team, a large, big-bellied, rather obnoxious fellow called Percy, stepped on a branch and it popped. Preacher’s rifle crashed and the ball blew bits of bark into the side of Tassin’s face, stinging and bringing blood. Had he not turned at the sound of the branch breaking, the ball would have blown a huge hole in his head.

  Badly frightened, Tassin bellied down on the ground, presenting as small a target as possible. This was just not turning out well at all.

  “You boys made a bad mistake,” Preacher called from the brush. “You best say your prayers.”

  “Hell with you, Preacher,” a thug called Hubert yelled. “We got you now.”

  “Then come get me,” Preacher challenged. A second later he changed position, moving several yards to his left. Rifles boomed, the balls whizzing harmlessly to the position where Preacher had been.

  “Oohhh!” Preacher moaned, trying to keep from laughing. “You got me, boys. Oohh, it hurts somethin’ turrible. Damn your eyes, you’ve kilt me. Tell my poor ol’ ma goodbye for me, boys.” He managed to suppress a giggle.

  Hubert gave out a loud shout of triumph and lurched to his feet.

  “Get down, you fool!” Percy hollered.

  Hubert suddenly realized he had made a perfectly horrible error in judgment. He froze in wild-eyed and openmouthed fear and panic. Preacher dusted him, shooting him from side to side, the ball making a huge bloody hole as it exited. Hubert fell dead to the ground.

  “Get out of here!” Percy yelled. “Work your way back. He’s got us cold in this brush.”

  Paul Guy made a jump for his horse and Preacher’s rifle boomed again. Paul’s leg buckled under him and collapsed to the ground, crying out in pain.

  Preacher slipped quietly away. He’d dealt this bunch enough misery. He figured rightly that all the shooting would bring the others at a gallop. Preacher was a brave man, but no fool. He’d fight this group of man-hunters on his own terms, not on theirs. He slipped over the crest of the rise and jumped into the saddle. He had him a brand new little hidey-hole all picked out.

  * * *

  Bones took one look at the sign that Spanish had found and snorted in disgust. He looked at what was left of this team of men. “He suckered you all.”

  “Whatever in the world do you mean by that remark?” Jon Tassin shouted, holding a bloody handkerchief to his face. “I demand an answer!”

  “Tricked you, that’s what I mean. Preacher deliberately left this sign, hopin’ you’d be dumb enough to follow it. And Spanish was dumb enough.” He savagely kicked the dead Spanish in the side. “Stupid, igit!”

  “Let’s proceed with the hunt!” Willy Steinwinder shouted. “After him, men!”

  “Just hold on, hold on!” Van Eaton said. “That’s what Preacher wants you to do. He’s layin’ up in the brush or behind some rocks just over that hill yonder. Now just settle down.”

  “Van Eaton’s right,” Bones said. “We got to sit down in a safe place and plan this out, carefully.”

  “I’m for that,” Percy said. “I’ve helped hunt down a lot of men. But I ain’t never seen no human bein’ like this here Preacher person.”

  “Yeah,” Paul Guy said through clenched teeth, as he wrapped a dirty rag around the wound in his leg. Preacher is more like a wild animal that somehow got as smart as us.”

  A huge ignorant lout called Doyle said, “Preacher said last night that some of us would die this day.” He looked nervously around him. “He was shore right.”

  Bones sensed the moment was getting spooky to some of the men. Down on the flats, he could see the rest of his party riding toward the ridges. He already had too many of the royalty gathered here
. “Evans, you take Doyle and head off those other men. Preacher would love to catch us all bunched up near the timber.”

  Doyle and Evans didn’t need a second invitation to leave this scene of blood and death.

  Bones took off his hat and scratched his licy head. “We got to start actin’ like an army and thinkin’ like generals.”

  “I am a general!” Rudi Kuhlmann said.

  “I thought you was a prince?” a man called Falcon said.

  “I am. I’m a general too.”

  “Me, too,” Wilhelm Zaunbelcher said. “And so is he.” He pointed to Juan Zapata. “Well, why don’t you start generalin’, then?” a man called Flores asked.

  Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor smiled. “We thought you would never ask. Catching this Preacher person is easy. We’ll show you how.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Bones said beligerently.

  “Oh, yes,” Tassin said. “Just watch and learn.”

  15

  “That’s odd,” Preacher muttered, watching the man-hunters through his spy-glass. They were all packed up and riding away. He watched the riders until they were no more than tiny dark dots in the distance. He collapsed his glass and tucked it away, then squatted down and gave this some thought.

  “Them ol’ boys want me to think they’re pullin’ out, when I know damn well they ain’t doin’ no such thing. Now, why would they want me to think that? Ummm.” After a moment, he smiled and said, “So’s I’d follow them and ride right into an ambush, that’s why. Well, I ain’t a-gonna do that.”

  Preacher thought a while longer and then began to break camp. He figured they would take the same route back that they took comin’ in, so he’d just make a wide circle and see if he could get a few miles ahead of them. He’d be right there to greet them.

  “This ain’t a-gonna work,” Flores grumbled. “We ain’t seen hide nor hair of Preacher.”

  Bones and party, now led by the royalty, were on their third day of travel, and the thought was creeping into the minds of many of the man-hunters that Preacher had not taken the bait and was not going to fall into the trap.

  By late afternoon of the third day, the man-hunters had traveled about sixty miles from their last contact with Preacher. They had not seen one living human being. They did not know that most of the Indians were far to the north, hunting buffalo.

  “Yeah,” Bobby Allen said. “I’m a-gettin’ hongry. I hope Mack finds us a good spot to camp pretty damn quick.”

  “Right purty,” Mack Cornay said, looking at the coolness provided by the shady trees that lined both banks of the little creek. “This’ll do just fine.”

  The man-hunters were in a long and narrow flat, running north to south between the snow-covered peaks of the Rockies. Cornay waited until the main body was in sight, and then began waving his hat. Rudi Kuhlmann, riding point, spotted the signal and angled the column off toward Mack and the creek.

  Rudi could not understand why one minute he could see Mack, and the next instant he could not. He did not know the terrain ahead of him; did not know it was very deceptive, with ravines and gullies and wallows on the east side of the creek. And Mack Cornay was in no condition to be aware of anything. Preacher had thrown a fist-sized rock at the man, the stone slamming into the back of Mack’s head and knocking him from the saddle. Mack lay on the ground, unconscious. Preacher had taken the man’s weapons, his powder horn, and his shot, and vanished into the bog across the creek.

  A knowledgeable man can traverse a bog, but he’d better know where to put each step, for there was mud there that could take a man down to his waist, or beyond. The bog ran for about fifteen hundred yards one way and was about half a mile across. Indians avoided the place, knowing it could be a death trap for both man and horse. Venomous snakes lay above the shallow water on clumps of grass, sunning themselves.

  Rudi rode up to the creek and sat his saddle for a moment, looking down at Mack, thinking the man certainly chose a strange time and place to take a nap. Preacher’s rifle barked and Rudi was slammed from the saddle, the ball tearing through his shoulder and almost blinding him with white-hot pain. He hit the ground on his belly, knocking the wind from him.

  Bones and Van Eaton and a few of the others immediately left the saddle and bellied down in the knee-high grass. A few of the less-experienced, including all the royalty, raced their horses toward the wounded Rudi.

  Preacher fired again from the bog and a man called Scott did a back-flip out of the saddle, dead before he impacted with the earth.

  Wilhelm Zaunbelcher, shouting oaths in a guttural tongue, threw caution to the wind and galloped his horse through the creek. But the horse had more sense than the Baron. He refused to enter the bog, stopping quite abruptly. Zaunbelcher went flying out of the saddle and landed in the mud at the edge of the bog. He sank about six inches. Zaunbelcher thought he was in quicksand—he wasn’t, but there was quicksand in the bog—and immediately panicked. He began screaming in fright, kicking his feet and waving his arms and flinging mud in all directions.

  Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor drew a short saber from a saddle scabbard and shouted, “Charge, men!”

  “Charge?” Bones said.

  “I think that’s what he said,” Van Eaton replied.

  This was the day of horse-sense. Elmore’s horse refused to step into the bog, putting on the brakes and sliding to a halt. Like Baron Zaunbelcher, Sir Jerrold-Taylor left the saddle and went flying through the air, slowly turning as he flew. A Red-breasted Nuthatch flew past the Englishman and gave the huge creature a very strange look.

  “Yna, Yna, Yna,” the Nuthatch chirped, and flew on to tell his mate there was something very weird going on in the bog.

  “My word!” Sir Elmore said. He landed right next to the Baron and when he impacted with the mud, the point of his saber jabbed Zaunbelcher in the ass and the Prussian came roaring up out of the bog, looking and sounding very much like some terrible monster from a swamp.

  Benny Atkins realized he had made a bad mistake by following the nutty foreigners up to the creek and had jumped from the saddle, heading for the trees. Preacher’s rifle sang its deadly song and Benny took a ball in his hip, turning him around in a haze of pain before he collapsed to the ground. He tumbled into the creek.

  Preacher let himself sink into the mud until only the top of his head and his nose remained above the surface. He was behind a clump of grass and could not be seen. His one rather fervent wish was that there was not a big rattler sunning on the clump. The sun would be cycling soon, shadowing the valley in darkness. Preacher would mud swim out of the bog under cover of night. He rather hoped that some of the men would step into the bog, but he knew that was not very likely.

  Sir Elmore reached up and jerked Zaunbelcher back into the mud and safe from rifle shot and they lay quite still for several long moments before they began cautiously working their way back to solid ground.

  “Oh, drat! I lost my saber,” Sir Elmore said.

  “Excellent,” Zaunbelcher said. “I hope you never find the damn thing.”

  The rest of the man-hunters waited until shadows began casting long pockets of darkness before they moved. And even then, they did so very cautiously. None of them had been able to spot Preacher and they did not know whether he was still out there in the bog.

  “Creep out of that swamp or whatever it is careful-like,” Bones called to Elmore and Wilhelm. “Stay low leadin’ your horses back here. We got to get gone.” To Van Eaton he said, “Have the boys start draggin’ the wounded out.”

  “Right.”

  “What about Scott?” a man called.

  “Leave him,” Bones said, cutting his eyes to Van Eaton.

  “You boys get gone,” Van Eaton said. “I’ll see to Scott.”

  Preacher heard the calling back and forth and let the men leave, noting which direction they took. Just in case they were trying to set up a trap—something he doubted—Preacher remained in the bog for an hour after they’d left. Then, at full dark he carefu
lly worked his way out of the bog and back to his camp, about three miles away. He washed himself at a tiny run-off and brushed the now dried mud off his buckskins. Something was nagging at his mind but he could not bring it to full light. He shook his head and gave it up. It would come to him.

  He cooked his supper and boiled his coffee over a tiny fire. As he ate and drank, he tried to figure out what was nagging at him. He knew it was something he’d seen, and seen that day, but whatever it had been remained elusive to him. He laid out his blankets and with rifle and pistols fully charged and close to hand, Preacher sighed and went to sleep.

  He awakened with a grunt of anger about an hour later. Scalps. That’s what he’d seen. There had been scalps tied to the manes of the horses of them silly foreigners.

  And one of them had been Eddie’s.

  16

  “So much for the generals leadin’ us anywhere,” Van Eaton groused that evening. “I told you it was a bad idea.”

  Van Eaton shrugged that off. He already knew it was a bad idea. He glanced around at his shot-up men. They were a pitiful-looking bunch and a lot of the enthusiasm for the hunt had been knocked out of them by Preacher. Bones had never before encountered such a man as Preacher. What Bones didn’t know about any number of things would fill volumes, but just about any experienced mountain man would have behaved pretty much the same as Preacher as far as fighting ability went. Most mountain men would have been content to just run Bones and his so-called man-hunters out of the mountains, and then they would have gone on about their business. But there were a few who would have done just exactly what Preacher was doing.