Then his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he pitched forward, dead.
“Looks like we won’t have to be followin’ the capitan ’s orders,” Preacher said.
A rifle boomed. Preacher and Jamie looked up from Garazano’s body to see Dog Brother lowering his rifle. Powder smoke still drifted from the muzzle. In the rocks above them, the limp form of an Apache warrior rolled down several yards before coming to a stop wedged against a boulder.
“The fool had to try one last shot,” the half-breed Comanche said. “I hope killing the Mexican was worth his own life.” The cold flintiness of Dog Brother’s voice belied the sincerity of that sentiment. He didn’t care whether Garazano’s death had been worth it or not.
Audie walked over to Jamie and Preacher. “Bengt Molmberg is dead,” he informed them. “The shot that wounded him hit an artery, and his brother wasn’t able to stop the bleeding in time. Ramirez is gone, too. He was shot through the body while he scouted ahead of us and didn’t make it. The rest of our men are all right except for minor injuries.” The former professor sighed. “We were very, very lucky not to lose more of them, I’d say.”
“How about the Mex soldiers?” Preacher asked.
“It appears that only three are still alive.”
Jamie nodded and went to the back of the wagon. “Noah? Are you and Merrick all right in there?”
Noah Stuart stuck his head up from the among the crates of equipment they had been using for cover. “Yes, we managed to come through unharmed, except . . . well, Chester appears to have fainted.”
“Fainted?” Jamie repeated. “You sure he’s not dead? Maybe you missed a wound.”
“No, he’s alive,” Stuart said. “There’s not a drop of blood on him.”
Jamie grunted. “All right. I’m glad to hear both of you fellas pulled through.”
Meanwhile, Preacher went to the back of the Wylie wagon and said, “Fletch? Clementine?”
Not getting any answer, he stepped up and threw a leg over the tailgate to climb inside. He was back a moment later, and the look on his weathered face immediately told Jamie that something was wrong.
“What is it?” Jamie asked as he started in that direction.
“Fletch is layin’ in there with his head in a pool of blood,” the mountain man replied, “and Clementine is gone.”
CHAPTER 43
Despite appearances, Fletch wasn’t dead, but he did have an ugly gash on his head where he had bled profusely. So much, in fact, that it would have been easy to believe he had crossed the divide.
Clementine was gone, though, just as Preacher had said. A quick search of the area by Dog Brother, Pugh, and Dupre turned up no sign of her—but when Dog Brother trotted on up around the bend in the trail, he found a few scattered hoofprints made by shod horses.
Preacher told himself he would do something later about what that meant. For the moment, he waited at the back of the wagon while Audie worked on patching up Fletch.
“This wound appears to have been made by a bullet,” the former professor said over his shoulder as he used a wet rag to wipe away some of the blood from Fletch’s head. “However, it struck him a glancing blow instead of penetrating, which is what saved his life.”
“You mean he’s gonna be all right?” Preacher asked.
“It’s too soon to say that. His skull could still be fractured, or he could have a concussion or some other sort of brain injury. But I don’t believe that he’s in immediate danger of dying.”
Preacher nodded and said, “That’s good. Do what you can for him, Audie.”
“Of course.”
Preacher went over to Jamie, who was supervising the sorting out of bodies. Ramirez and Bengt Molmberg had been placed in the back of the surveyors’ wagon. Garazano and the other dead Mexican soldiers lay on one side of the trail. Currently, Nighthawk and Greybull were dragging off the Apache carcasses and leaving them on the other side of the trail.
“How’s Fletch?” Jamie asked.
“Looks like he’ll probably make it. That head wound was a plumb mess, but other than losin’ a lot of blood, it don’t appear to have done much damage.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I expect he’ll have a devil of a headache when he comes around, though.”
“Findin’ out that Clementine is gone is gonna hurt worse,” Preacher said. “Those tracks Dog Brother found can only mean one thing, Jamie.”
“I know. Hold on a minute.” Jamie called the three surviving Mexican soldiers over to him and told them in Spanish, “It’s up to you to bury your officers and the rest of the men from your patrol. We don’t have time.”
The men glanced at each other. Judging by their expressions, they didn’t think burying Garazano and the others was all that important.
One of them shrugged and said, “We cannot bury them here. The ground is too hard. Too much rock.”
Jamie nodded toward the hills. “You’ll have to take them out of these badlands and find a place over there.”
“But Santa Fe is that way,” the man said, pointing to the north.
“You mean you’re going to leave them here for the buzzards, desert from the army, and head to Santa Fe?”
One of the other two soldiers sneered. “What business is that of yours, gringo?”
“None at all,” Jamie said. “I didn’t plan on asking you to come with us.” He added bluntly, “I don’t reckon I’d ever trust the likes of you.”
The third man looked a little nervous. “We might still run into some Apaches.”
“Take extra horses and guns and ammunition with you. You stand a pretty good chance of making it if you keep moving. That is, if you don’t mind never being able to go home.”
“Home holds nothing for us except squalor and hardship,” the man said, shaking his head. “We will take our chances, I think.”
Jamie gave them a curt nod and turned away, dismissing them from his thoughts. Whether they made it to civilization and safety or not was no concern of his. He said to Preacher, “We’ll bury Ramirez and Molmberg as soon as we get out of these badlands.”
“Can’t be soon enough to suit me,” Preacher said. “I want to get on the trail of those varmints who carried off Clementine.”
“Her brothers, you mean.”
“Couldn’t have been anybody else riding shod horses and comin’ from that direction. They got around us again somehow, and without runnin’ into the ’Paches. Those Mahoney brothers are the dadblasted luckiest sons of guns I ever did see.”
“They’ve got grit, you have to give them that,” Jamie said. “Sneaking into the middle of a pitched battle like that just to grab her. When they saw Fletch in the wagon with blood all around his head, they must have figured he was dead.”
“He sure looked like it,” Preacher agreed. “They’re bound to have left a trail in the hills. I intend to follow it, and I ain’t stoppin’ this time until all four of those varmints are dead.”
Jamie rubbed his chin, grimaced a little. “I’d like to go with you, Preacher, you know that, but there’s another little chore I plan to take care of.”
“Followin’ Perro Blanco and the rest of that war party?”
“We’ve hurt them pretty bad. There’s a good chance their stronghold is in those hills. That’s the best place in this whole area for them to be holed up, and we may never have a better opportunity to find it. If I can track them and capture or kill Perro Blanco, I have a strong hunch that’ll put a stop to all the hell-raising they’ve been doing in these parts. And maybe it’ll tell me the truth about what really happened to Damon Charlton.”
Preacher was still dubious about Jamie’s theory of Perro Blanco’s true identity, but at the moment, that didn’t matter. What was important to him was finding Clementine and getting her out of the hands of her no-good, degenerate brothers. He had promised to get her and Fletch to California, and he was a man of his word.
“I want to take Audie and Nighthawk with me,” he said. “And if Fletch w
akes up in time, I know he’s gonna want to come along, too. Not so sure it’s a good idea if he does, but I don’t reckon we’ll be able to hold him back.”
“No, probably not,” Jamie agreed.
From behind them, Noah Stuart said, “Preacher, Mr. MacCallister, I heard what you’re talking about. I want to come along and help rescue Mrs. Wylie, too.”
They turned to look at the young surveyor.
Jamie said, “That’s not your responsibility, Noah.”
“I know that, but . . . well, Fletch and I have become pretty good friends, and I greatly admire Clementine . . . Mrs. Wylie.” Stuart held up a hand, palm out. “Not in the way you’re thinking, although it’s undeniable that she’s a very beautiful woman. But she’s also smart and determined, and I believe she and Fletch are meant to be together. If I can help with that . . .” He shrugged. “Anyway, I want to come along.”
“What about Merrick?”
“He can do what he likes, either come with me or stay with you.” Stuart smiled. “Since you said you’re going after the Apaches, I suspect he’ll want to come with me. As bad as the Mahoney brothers are, I don’t believe Chester would be as afraid of them as he is of the Apaches.”
“Huh,” Preacher said. “That’s like askin’ a fella if he wants a diamondback rattler or a copperhead stuffed down his pants. Either way, he ain’t gonna like what happens.”
* * *
As Noah Stuart predicted, Chester Merrick chose to accompany him and go with Preacher, Fletch, Audie, and Nighthawk after the Mahoney brothers. Some of the other men wanted to come along, too, but Preacher asked them to stay with Jamie.
“Y’all are chasin’ a lot bigger bunch than we are,” he said. “If you find Perro Blanco’s stronghold, you’ll be facin’ high odds.”
“Maybe,” Tennysee said. “The way we been killin’ them Apaches hand over fist, we must’ve whittled ’em down a mite. But we’ll do like you say, Preacher, and go with Jamie.”
There was no question that Lars Molmberg would be part of Jamie’s group, as well. The Apaches had killed his brother, and the taciturn Swede wanted revenge. Nighthawk had been closer to the Molmbergs than anyone else in the party. He and Lars had communed in silence after the burials, which took place at the edge of the hills, right outside the badlands, as soon as they came to a place where the soil was deep enough for graves to be dug.
Audie had cleaned the wound on Fletch’s head and wrapped a bandage around it. As expected, the young man had a terrible headache and was a little weak and disoriented, but those things would fade with time. Mostly he was furious that his wife had been stolen from him. He grumbled about taking the time to lay Ramirez and Bengt Molmberg to rest, but, like the others, he grew solemn as Audie recited scripture over the graves.
Earlier, when he had regained consciousness and everything had been explained to him, Fletch had confirmed that one of the wild shots from the Apaches must have struck his head and knocked him out. As far as he remembered, Clementine had been beside him in the wagon, unharmed, when the world suddenly went black.
“I don’t know what happened after that,” he had said. “I don’t remember anything until I woke up and you were bandaging my head, Audie.”
“Well, when we catch up to the Mahoneys, we can ask ’em how they did it,” Preacher had drawled. “If there’s a chance, that is. If there ain’t, I reckon we’ll just kill ’em and take Clementine back.”
That plan sounded good to all the others.
With Fletch’s wound tended to and the burying done, the group was ready to split up. They would be leaving the wagons there and traveling on horseback so they could move faster. Enough of the Mexican army mounts had survived that Stuart and Merrick had horses to ride.
Jamie said to Merrick, “If you want, you can stay here with the wagons. Might not be a bad idea to have somebody watching over them.”
“By myself?” Merrick practically yelped.
“You shouldn’t have to worry,” Preacher told him. “Clementine’s brothers don’t have any reason to come back this way, and there’s a good chance the ’Paches won’t, neither. They’ll be headin’ back to wherever they usually hole up, so they can lick their wounds for a while before venturin’ out again.”
Merrick shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll come with you. I don’t want to be stuck out here by myself.”
“Suit yourself.”
“If I did that,” Merrick said with a sigh, “I’d be back in Washington, D.C., right now.”
Tennysee shook his head. “What a terrible-soundin’ fate that is.”
They had backtracked the hoofprints left by Clementine’s captors and would follow them on into the hills. Jamie’s party, with Dog Brother and Jamie himself handling the tracking, would have to locate the trail of the Apaches, which probably would be more difficult. But Jamie was determined to track them to their lair and finish this job, once and for all.
With a quick round of farewells, the men split up, Preacher’s group angling to the southeast while the others, with Jamie in the lead, headed almost due south, deeper into the hills.
CHAPTER 44
Clete Mahoney still almost couldn’t believe they had done it. Well, he had done it, to be honest. Lew, Harp, and Jerome had been close by, ready to give him a hand if he needed it, but he was the one who had darted from rock to rock, staying out of sight of the defenders and the attacking Apaches alike, until he was close enough to the wagon to make a run for it, leap up on the tailgate, and haul himself inside.
He’d had a gun in his fist and was ready to shoot that little varmint Fletcher Wylie, but somebody had beaten him to it, he saw as soon as he got inside the wagon. Clementine was huddled over his bloody corpse, weeping and wailing. Feeling the wagon shift under Clete’s weight, she’d jerked her head around toward him, expecting to see one of those filthy red-skinned savages.
When she’d recognized him, she’d made a grab for Fletch’s revolver, but she wasn’t fast enough. Clete bounded forward and backhanded her, snapping her head to the side and stunning her. It took him only a second to lift her, throw her over his shoulder, and climb out of the wagon while the wild melee still raged outside. He’d held on tight to Clementine and dashed toward the rocks where his brothers waited.
An Apache had seen them and tried to stop them, leaping in front of them with a defiant scream. Clete never slowed down, just planted a couple of bullets in the heathen’s face and blew his head apart like a melon. Then he was among the rocks again, and Lew and Harp were there to take Clementine’s senseless form from him. They threw her on a horse, and then all of them rattled their hocks out of those blasted badlands with the gunfire and screams dwindling behind them.
They stayed close to the northern edge of the hills and skirted the badlands for miles as they put distance between themselves and the site of the battle. Clete knew the badlands would play out in a few more miles and they could turn north again. It was the way he and his brothers had come, pushing their mounts to get ahead of their quarry once again. It had almost worked once before, so he didn’t see any reason not to try it again.
Clete remembered hearing somebody say something once about how fortune favors the bold. He understood that and believed it now. Stealing Clementine out of the wagon in the middle of a battle was about the boldest thing he could have done—and it had worked.
She was awake, riding double in front of him with his left arm tight around her waist. Her head drooped forward in despair and her fair hair hung over her face. Every so often she shook a little as a bout of sobs seized her.
“If you’re cryin’ over Fletch, you’re wastin’ your tears,” Clete told her. “He was never good enough for you, Clem, and you know it. You’re goin’ back to your family where you belong.”
Sullen silence was her only response. Well, she would come around once they got home, he told himself. She wouldn’t have any choice about that.
Lew pushed his horse up alongside Clete’s and said, “It’
s gonna be dark before too much longer. Hadn’t we best start lookin’ for a place to camp?”
“We’re not gonna stop just because it gets dark,” Clete replied. “We can’t get lost. All we’ve got to do is keep those badlands on our left. There’ll be time enough to stop for the night once we’ve gotten clear of them and headed north a ways. I want to put as many miles as we can between us and any trouble that might be followin’ us.”
“You mean those Apaches,” Lew said.
“Or Preacher.”
“I thought you said the redskins were gonna wipe out that whole bunch.”
“I said I hope they do. That would make it a lot easier on us.”
Lew looked worried. “Unless the savages come after us next.”
“They don’t even know we’re anywhere in these parts,” Clete snapped. “They’ve had their hands full with Preacher and MacCallister and the rest of those varmints, not to mention those Mex soldiers. No, we don’t have to worry about the Apaches.”
Lew still looked doubtful.
That made Clete mad, and he added, “Have I steered you boys wrong yet?”
“It took us until now to get Clementine back,” Lew said, then he winced involuntarily as if he expected his older brother to wallop him for mouthing off.
Clete thought about it, but he decided to be forgiving for a change. “We had some bad luck, but that’s over now. Before you know it, we’re gonna be back home, and then everything will be like it used to be.” He squeezed Clementine tighter. “Ain’t that right, honey?”
Again, she didn’t say anything, but a shudder went through her. Clete felt it and grinned in the gathering dusk.
* * *
Nighthawk handled the tracking and rode slightly ahead of the others. Preacher trusted the keen eyes of the big Crow warrior and hung back a little, riding next to Audie. Fletch, Noah Stuart, and Chester Merrick were behind them. Whenever Preacher glanced back, Merrick was looking around frantically, jerking his head back and forth until it looked like he was going to wear out his neckbone. He was mighty nervous about something sneaking up on them.
They Came to Kill Page 25
