Preacher walked along the line of wagons until he found Bartlett, who was climbing out of one of the vehicles. “Riders comin’,” Preacher told him.
“Is that a problem?”
“Most likely not, but it could be, if they’re lookin’ for trouble. Get your men together.”
Bartlett nodded and hurried off to do as Preacher said. The mountain man walked on past the wagons until he reached the end of the caravan. Then he waited for the riders to arrive. They were already in sight and coming steadily closer—close enough for Preacher to be able to count them.
Five men, and one of them was leading a pack horse. Not a real threat, considering that Bartlett had twenty bullwhackers working for him, but Preacher was still wary. His instincts wouldn’t allow him to be otherwise.
“Preacher?”
Casey’s voice came from behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw her plodding through the mud toward him with a worried expression on her face. Not surprisingly, Roland trailed after her. So did Lorenzo.
“Someone is following us?” Casey asked.
“Somebody’s goin’ the same direction we are,” Preacher said. “It ain’t necessarily the same thing.”
“You don’t think they could be some of Beaumont’s men, do you?”
Back in St. Louis, Casey had worked for Shad Beaumont, a prominent criminal. Beaumont was dead, but ever since they had left St. Louis, Casey had worried that some of the surviving members of his organization might come after them and seek vengeance.
Preacher didn’t think that was likely, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility entirely, which was yet another reason to be cautious. He told Casey, “I’d be mighty surprised if those fellas had anything to do with Beaumont, but if they did and if they’re lookin’ for us . . . well, we’ll deal with it, that’s all.”
“Who’s Beaumont?” Roland asked.
Casey looked over at him and shook her head. “No one. He’s dead. But some of the men who worked for him might have a grudge against Preacher and Lorenzo and me.”
“Oh.” Roland was clearly puzzled, but he didn’t indulge his curiosity. Preacher figured Casey hadn’t told him she used to work in a whorehouse, and she probably wouldn’t tell him unless she was forced to for some reason. Her past didn’t matter to Preacher and she knew that, but likely Roland would be a different story.
As the riders came closer, Preacher’s keen eyes saw that they were all wearing buckskins. A couple sported coonskin caps, the others broad-brimmed felt hats like the one Preacher wore. He recognized them as fellow mountain men, even though he had never seen any of them before.
One of the men edged his horse in front of the others as the party closed to within thirty feet and reined in. The self-appointed spokesman was tall and rangy in the saddle, with a gray-shot brown beard that jutted from his angular jaw. He put a grin on his face and nodded to Preacher, who walked out from the wagons to meet him.
“Howdy.”
“Afternoon,” Preacher said as he returned the nod. He had his rifle cradled in his arms with his thumb looped over the hammer. The stranger couldn’t fail to note that sign of being ready for trouble. As a matter of fact, the man’s own rifle was resting across the saddle in front of him, also ready for quick use.
“Looks like you folks are a mite bogged down,” the man commented. “We saw that storm blowin’ through, but we were lucky and the worst of it missed us. Looked like it was a ring-tailed roarer, though.”
“It sure was,” Preacher agreed. “A big cyclone came down from the clouds, and for a minute I thought it was gonna carry us off.”
The man shook his head. “I saw one of those things down in Texas once. It’d be mighty fine with me if I never saw another one.”
“Same here,” Preacher said.
The man leaned over and spat. “Name’s Garity.” He waved a hand at his companions. “This here’s Levi Jones, Walt Stubblefield, Micawja Horne, and Edgar Massey. We’re headin’ for New Mexico.”
“They call me Preacher.”
He saw the looks of recognition that appeared on the faces of all five men. They knew the name, all right. Most folks who roamed the wild places west of the Mississippi did.
“Preacher, eh?” Garity said. “Didn’t know you’d started guidin’ wagon trains to Santa Fe. I reckon that’s where these wagons are goin’?”
“That’s right. What do you plan to do in New Mexico?”
It was an unusually blunt question. Whenever folks met somebody for the first time, they normally waited for the other fella to offer whatever information he wanted to about where he came from and where he was going . . . and what he planned to do once he got there.
Garity frowned. “Figured we’d do some trappin’.”
“Ever been to that part of the country before?”
“Nope. I’d wager you have, though, what with you bein’ the famous Preacher and all.”
Preacher stiffened at the edge of mockery in Garity’s voice. The man obviously didn’t think that based on looks alone, Preacher lived up to his reputation.
Preacher didn’t give a damn about that, but he didn’t like the predatory gleam he saw in Garity’s eyes when the man looked at the wagons . . . and at Casey.
“Yeah, I’ve been there several times. Pretty country. The trappin’s better farther north, though. That’s where the real fur trade is.”
“Yeah, but there’s more competition up there,” Garity pointed out. “We figure the field’ll be clearer down south.” He scratched at his beard. “How long do you folks figure on stayin’ here?”
“Until the trail dries out enough that the wagons won’t get stuck when they try to move,” Preacher said. The answer was obvious, so he didn’t see any harm in giving it.
“Muddy as it is, that may be a while. Anything we can do to give you a hand?”
Preacher shook his head. “Nope. I reckon we’ll do just fine.”
“All right, then. I reckon we’ll mosey on.” Garity lifted a finger to the brim of his hat. “You folks be careful, now.”
He jerked his head at his companions. They moved their horses over to the side of the trail and rode around the wagons. Preacher saw that each of them eyed Casey as they moved past her. That wasn’t surprising. A man could go a long time out there without seeing a woman, and an even longer time without seeing one as pretty as Casey.
She wasn’t the only thing that interested the men, however. They looked long and hard at the wagons, too, as if they were weighing how much money the freight in the vehicles might bring in Santa Fe.
Preacher kept an eye on the men until they vanished into the setting sun. Leeman Bartlett came up beside him and said, “That was a rather rough-looking bunch.”
“Yeah,” Preacher agreed. “I wouldn’t trust any of ’em. Good thing is, there were only five of ’em. We outnumber ’em four to one, so there ain’t much chance they’ll try to bother us.”
“But our guards should be especially alert tonight anyway, don’t you think?”
Preacher grinned at the man. “You’re learnin’, Mr. Bartlett. You’re learnin’.”
CHAPTER 8
Preacher and Bartlett put on extra guard shifts for the night. The ground was too muddy to sleep on comfortably, so after their cold supper, the men who didn’t have sentry duty climbed into the wagons and tried to find enough room to stretch out. That wasn’t easy, especially for someone like Preacher with his long legs.
He managed to doze off on top of some crates, but his slumber was restless. After a while, he sat up, pulled on his boots, and climbed out of the wagon. The night was quiet and peaceful. The air had cooled off a little, and there was a breeze out of the north. It wasn’t as sticky, which boded well for the ground drying out some the next day.
Something nuzzled his hand. He looked down and saw that Dog had crawled out from under the wagon. The big cur was covered with mud. He had romped in it for an hour around dusk, deciding it was all right after all.
�
�You’re a mess, you know that?” Preacher said with a grin as he gave Dog’s ears an affectionate scratch. “You—”
He stopped short as Dog suddenly stiffened, growled, and pressed against his leg. The animal’s ears pricked up, and he lifted his head as he pointed his muzzle toward the north.
“Whatever that damned thing is, it’s out there again, ain’t it?” Preacher asked softly.
As if in answer, Dog growled again.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Preacher muttered to himself. Earlier, he had seen Leeman Bartlett climbing into one of the wagons to try to get some sleep. With Dog at his heels, he stalked over to that wagon and pulled the canvas back. “Bartlett!”
“What? Wh-what?” Sputtering a little, Bartlett raised up and stuck his head out through the opening. “What’s wrong, Preacher?”
“You have any newspapers or anything like that?”
“Why, as a matter of fact, I brought along a stack of Philadelphia papers. I thought the American settlers in Santa Fe might like to see them.”
“Gimme one of them,” Preacher snapped.
Bartlett hesitated, and Preacher knew the man intended to sell the papers in Santa Fe, not share them for free. But after a couple of seconds, Bartlett said, “Very well. Just a moment.”
After a minute of rustling around inside the wagon, Bartlett climbed out and handed Preacher a newspaper. He was wearing high-topped boots and a nightshirt, which gave him a rather ludicrous appearance. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”
“Somethin’s been followin’ us,” Preacher replied, “and I’m sick and tired of it. I’m gonna find out what it is.”
He handed Bartlett his rifle, then took several sheets of the newspaper and twisted them into a makeshift torch. Getting out flint and steel, he struck sparks until he managed to catch the paper on fire.
Then he pulled one of the pistols from behind his belt, cocked it, and strode away from the wagons, thrusting the burning paper in front of him.
“Damn it, whoever you are, show yourself!” he bellowed.
Behind him, men began to crawl out of the wagons, awakened by the shout, and they called questions to each other as they wondered what was going on.
Preacher turned his head and barked a command. “Stay close to the wagons!”
He strode forward again, moving the burning paper from side to side. The torch wouldn’t last long, only a few more seconds, before it burned down close enough to his fingers to make him drop it.
Suddenly he saw something glow up ahead of him. Two somethings, actually, like a pair of embers in the remains of a campfire. The way the two glows were set, he knew they were eyes.
What they belonged to was another question. As Preacher thrust his pistol out in front of him, the eyes abruptly rose higher and higher and then just as abruptly disappeared. At the same time, the flames singed Preacher’s fingers and he had to drop the burning paper. It sizzled out instantly as it hit the mud.
Preacher wanted to pull the trigger, but he had never shot a gun without knowing what he was shooting at, and he didn’t want to start. He held his fire with his finger still taut on the trigger, ready to squeeze it.
He heard a few small sucking sounds. The mud tugging at the feet of whatever was out there, he thought. The thing was leaving.
But it would be back, Preacher told himself. It had been dogging their trail for several days, and he didn’t think it would stop just because he had yelled at it.
He didn’t think their stalker was human. A man would have shown himself already. Judging by the glimpse Preacher had gotten of the thing during the storm, it was too big to be a man. That meant it had to be some sort of animal, but if that were true, it had a keener intelligence than most animals, or else it would have forgotten about the wagons and wandered off by now.
Preacher stayed where he was with the pistol pointing out into the darkness until his instincts told him the thing was gone. He didn’t tuck the weapon away when he finally started back toward the wagons. In fact, he drew the other pistol and held it ready as well, just in case something came at him out of the shadows.
Nothing did. By the time he got back to the wagons, the entire camp was awake and waiting to find out what was going on. Casey, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, came up to him and asked, “What was out there, Preacher?”
The mountain man shook his head. “I don’t know. Some sort of animal. I saw its eyes glowing in the light, but only for a second. Then it turned around and left.”
Roland Bartlett was standing beside Casey. He said, “Well, then, if it was just an animal, we don’t have to worry about it, do we?”
“I didn’t say that,” Preacher replied. “Whatever that thing is, it’s pretty big, and it’s smart, too. It’d be a good idea to keep our eyes open. But then, that’s always a good idea out here.”
The men began to head back to their wagons to get some more sleep. Casey came over to Preacher and laid a hand on his arm. “Do you really think we’re in any danger from this thing?” she asked.
Preacher smiled, but the expression didn’t hold any real humor. “We’ve been in danger from one thing or another ever since we left St. Louis,” he told her. “And if you recollect, it was a mite perilous back there, too!”
By morning, the trail was still pretty muddy, but the big puddles of standing water were beginning to dry up. The sky was mostly clear, the cool breeze from the north was still blowing, and Preacher thought maybe the trail would be dry enough by midday for the wagons to pull out.
He told Leeman Bartlett they would remain where they were for the time being, then saddled Horse and rode out to the area where he had seen the glowing eyes the night before. Dog trotted alongside him. Since the rain had stopped before Preacher went out and challenged the thing, he thought he might be able to find its tracks.
Sure enough, the marks were on the ground, leading off to the northwest. But the mud had been soft enough at the time the tracks were left that it had flowed back into them, blurring and obscuring any details. Even though Preacher dismounted and studied the tracks closely, he couldn’t tell what sort of animal had made them.
He could follow them, though, and he did so, swinging back up in the saddle. Dog ranged ahead of him as he rode northwest.
The wagons fell out of sight behind him. Preacher was a little worried about Garity and the other hard-looking men who had ridden past, but he didn’t expect them to double back and attack the wagons. They had struck him as men who wouldn’t risk anything unless the odds were on their side.
Eventually, the tracks led to a rain-swollen creek and vanished into the fast-moving water. The creature must have plunged right in, demonstrating a complete lack of fear where the flooded creek was concerned. As Preacher reined in and sat on the bank, frowning at the rushing stream, he wondered what sort of varmint would do a thing like that.
He wasn’t going to try to swim Horse across the creek. It would be too easy for both man and horse to be swept away. He turned the gray stallion and called, “Come on, Dog,” to the big cur. They headed back toward the wagons, which were several miles away.
Preacher had covered about half that distance when a series of faint popping sounds came to his ears. He stiffened in the saddle for a second as he immediately recognized the sounds for what they were.
Gunfire.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he leaned forward and dug his heels harder into Horse’s flanks. The animal responded by leaping into a gallop.
Preacher couldn’t hear the shots anymore over the pounding of Horse’s hooves. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as he thought it was, he told himself.
But he couldn’t convince himself of that, and sure enough, when he came in sight of the wagons, he saw a number of men on horseback riding back and forth, firing rifles toward them. Since the wagons weren’t pulled into a circle, the traditional defensive formation, the bullwhackers and the other men had been forced to take cover underneath th
e vehicles. As Preacher raced closer, he saw puffs of powdersmoke coming from under the wagons and knew Bartlett’s men were putting up a fight.
Preacher figured Garity and the men who had ridden by the day before had joined up with some others and come back to attack the freight caravan.
He was coming at them from behind, so they didn’t seem to know he was there. When he was within rifle range, he reined Horse to a halt and was out of the saddle even before the stallion stopped moving. He pulled the long-barreled flintlock rifle from the fringed sheath strapped to the saddle and rested it across Horse’s back.
Preacher eased the rifle’s hammer back and lined the sights on one of the attackers. He would be shooting the man in the back, which he didn’t like, but since the varmint was trying to kill folks Preacher had befriended, the mountain man figured he had it coming. Preacher took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
The black powder went off with a dull boom as the rifle kicked back hard against Preacher’s shoulder. The cloud of smoke that poured from the muzzle obscured his vision for a second, but as it cleared, he saw the man he had targeted was on the ground, kicking out his life spasmodically. The heavy lead ball had slammed into his back and driven him right out of the saddle.
Preacher didn’t try to reload the rifle. The other attackers would have noticed that one of their number had been shot down from behind. As some of them wheeled their horses around to search for the source of the new threat, Preacher jammed the rifle back in its sheath and vaulted into the saddle. He sent the stallion lunging forward again and put the reins in his teeth, guiding Horse with his knees. Preacher pulled both pistols from behind his belt.
The guns were double-shotted and carried a larger than usual charge of powder, which made them mighty lethal, but he had to get closer to use them. He was relying on Horse’s speed and elusiveness for that. As the attackers who had turned toward Preacher opened fire, the big animal swerved from side to side, responding swiftly and surely to the pressure of the mountain man’s knees on his flanks.
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