Preacher didn’t believe that would happen as long as Dog was around. The big cur, who padded along beside Horse, would warn them if he smelled or otherwise sensed anything suspicious.
The trail led them southeast for a while, then angled north, back toward the badlands, when they were several miles away from the spot where the Apaches had jumped the wagons. Preacher knew what the Mahoney brothers were doing just as surely as if they’d written it out for him—if any of those uneducated scoundrels could write, that is.
They planned to get back to the edge of the badlands and travel along it. They weren’t familiar with these parts, but the area of volcanic rock was such a distinctive landmark a blind man could almost follow it. They wouldn’t try crossing for fear of getting lost and stuck in there, especially with night coming on. But the rough terrain would peter out eventually, and once around the badlands, the brothers could head north and make for Santa Fe as rapidly as possible.
Preacher discussed that with Audie, and the former professor agreed.
“They’ll have to keep Clementine too frightened to say anything and give them away to the authorities, once they reach civilization again,” Audie commented. “But in all likelihood, she believes that Fletch is dead, so there’s a very good chance she’ll be overcome by despair and just cooperate with them, thinking that she has nothing to live for.”
“She struck me as bein’ a mite too feisty for that,” Preacher said.
“Well, that’s certainly possible. But grief is very powerful. We don’t know what she’ll do if she’s convinced she’s a widow.”
When they reached the badlands, the tracks turned almost due east along that desolate stretch, just as Preacher expected. They paused there to rest the horses.
“How’s your head feelin’, son?” Preacher asked Fletch.
“It still hurts like blazes,” the young man admitted. “But I don’t care. I can put up with it. All that matters is finding Clementine . . . and settling things with those brothers of hers.”
“Lean over here and let me look at your eyes,” Audie said. While Fletch did that, Audie studied his eyes intently, tipping his head back and forth slightly to get the best view of each orb. Apparently satisfied, Audie finally nodded. “I don’t see any sign of brain injury at this point. The eyes are clear and focus well. Your headache may continue for a day or two, Fletch, but I believe you’re going to be all right. You’re a very fortunate young man.”
“To be shot in the head and still be alive, you mean? I can’t argue with that. Whenever I think about Clementine being gone, I don’t feel very lucky, though. And it’s bound to be worse for her.”
“They don’t want to kill her,” Preacher pointed out. “This whole thing has been about takin’ her back home alive.”
“Yes, but you don’t know Clete Mahoney like I do,” Fletch said grimly. “I honestly believe that if he thought Clementine was going to be taken away from him for good . . . he might kill her rather than let me or anybody else have her.”
“He’s that loco?”
“I don’t want to risk that he’s not.”
Preacher nodded. He would have to keep that in mind and try to get Clementine out of Clete’s hands before he had a chance to harm her.
They pushed on, and as night approached they came to a halt again so Preacher could have a council of war with Audie and Nighthawk.
“My hunch is that they ain’t gonna stop and make camp just because it gets dark,” the mountain man said. “As easy a trail as they’ve got to follow with these badlands right alongside ’em, I think they’ll keep movin’ at least part of the night.”
“I concur,” Audie said, and Nighthawk added, “Umm.”
“So we can’t afford to make camp, either, but if for some reason they were to veer off to the south again, we might miss the tracks in the dark, and come mornin’, we’d have lost considerable ground on them.”
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.
“That’s true,” Audie responded. “If we stop temporarily once it gets too dark to see the tracks and wait for the moon to rise, there ought to be enough light then to follow the trail if they do something unexpected. We’d lose a little time doing that, but not as much as we’d be risking if we were to lose the trail entirely and have to locate it again.”
“Do I get a vote in this?” Fletch asked.
Preacher’s mouth quirked under his graying mustache. “I didn’t know we was votin’ . . . but I reckon you got a right to speak your piece, Fletch.”
“I don’t like waiting,” the young man said. “I’m so scared for Clementine that I just want to keep moving. But what Audie says makes sense. We have to do whatever gives us the best chance of staying on their trail.”
Noah Stuart said, “That sounds like a good idea to me, too.”
Preacher turned to Merrick and asked, “What do you think, Chester? You’re the only one who ain’t spoke up yet.”
“Are there any ravines we can fall into in the dark, or anything like that?” Merrick said. “Because if there are, I think we ought to wait until morning to go on.”
“Umm,” Nighthawk said.
“If there are any ravines, Nighthawk’ll spot ’em in time for us to stop,” Preacher assured Merrick. “And as for waitin’ until mornin’ . . . well, that ain’t gonna happen, Chester.” The mountain man rubbed his chin. “It’s time them dadblasted Mahoneys got what’s comin’ to ’em, and I aim to be the one to deliver it, sooner instead of later.”
CHAPTER 45
Although Jamie and Dog Brother were the best trackers in the group that went after the Apaches, all the mountain men were pretty good at reading sign, too, so they split up to search for the trail. Jamie picked one of the hills that was fairly distinctive, with a couple of mounds on top of it—Tennysee claimed that it looked like a woman’s bosom—and pointed it out to them before they went their separate ways. They would rendezvous there late in the afternoon.
Lars Molmberg didn’t have much experience at tracking, so Dupre said, “Lars, why don’t you come with me? I can always use an extra pair of eyes.”
“That’s ’cause you’re so old you’re gettin’ blind as a bat,” Tennysee gibed, which helped ease a little of the tension they were all feeling. Molmberg just nodded his gratitude to Dupre and moved his horse alongside the Frenchman’s.
Finding tracks where the Apaches had fled from the badlands wasn’t that difficult, but they had scattered in all different directions. They probably had a rendezvous point as well, Jamie speculated, so it was a matter of finding that location and then following them from there to their stronghold.
The hills were rugged enough that Jamie was soon out of sight of the other men. As he rode along, he thought about everything that had happened and how he could have spent this time at home in MacCallister’s Valley with Kate. Maybe it would have been better if he had, he mused. Edgerton would probably still be alive, and so would Ramirez and Bengt Molmberg. Those three lives—so far—had been spent in the service of someday uniting both sides of the country by rail. That was a worthwhile goal, and doubtless it would cost the lives of many more men before it came about, if it ever did.
Jamie wondered if he would live to see it.
His children would, he told himself. It would make a difference for them, and so he was making a difference. Making the world a better place for those who came after him. That was the main thing any man should aspire to.
But at the same time, he thought about how much change the future would bring. There would be no need for men such as him and Preacher and most of the others in their party. No, that world would belong to Fletch and Clementine, and to Noah Stuart, not to a bunch of rough, cantankerous old-timers.
But it would be a while before that came about. For now, Jamie and Preacher and the men like them still had jobs to do. Once the frontier was tamed, then it would be time for them to fade away, to be remembered for a while but ultimately to be forgotten by those who had no idea what the West h
ad been—and in their small self-satisfactions, no desire to know that once giants strode across this land . . .
* * *
When Jamie reached the rendezvous late that afternoon, Dog Brother was already there, as were Dupre, Lars Molmberg, Powder Pete, and Greybull. Tennysee, Deadlead, and Pugh showed up soon after.
Jamie gathered them around and pointed to a saddle of land higher in the hills. “The tracks I followed led in that direction.”
“The ones I found did, too,” Dog Brother agreed.
One by one, the other men nodded or spoke up to say that the trails they had found converged on that gap in the hills, too.
Jamie nodded. “I reckon it’s safe to say their stronghold is somewhere on the other side. No way to tell how far on the other side until we go and look. Everybody feel the same way?”
“We been lettin’ them come to us,” Deadlead said. “It’s time we took the fight to them.”
“Likely they’ll still outnumber us by quite a bit,” Jamie pointed out.
“Yeah,” Tennysee drawled, “but there’s a heap fewer of ’em than there was a couple o’ weeks ago.”
That comment brought grim chuckles from several of the men.
“It’s too late in the day to get through that gap before dark,” Jamie said, “but we can get closer and then maybe one or two of us can do a little scouting tonight.” He lifted his reins. “Come on.”
Now that they were together again, they rode steadily higher into the hills. Jamie was careful to lead them along a route that didn’t skyline them and stuck to whatever scant cover was available. It was possible the Apaches had left guards behind to keep an eye on their back trail. Jamie wanted to take Perro Blanco by surprise if at all possible.
He called a halt when they came to a beetle-browed outcropping of rock where they wouldn’t be readily visible to anybody watching from higher in the hills. “We’ll stay here until dark. Then Dog Brother and I will scout up through that gap on foot and see what we can find.”
“Don’t get caught, Jamie,” Dupre said. “Those Apaches are not known for their hospitality.”
“I’m not planning to pay them a visit . . . yet,” Jamie said with a grin. “But if we’re not back by morning, you fellas will probably have to figure out how to proceed on your own.”
Greybull said, “We’ll come lookin’ for you, of course.”
“Durned right,” Pugh added.
“And settle up with the ’Paches if they need settlin’ up with,” Tennysee put in.
With that, the men loosened the cinches on their saddles but didn’t remove them from the horses. They wanted to be able to get moving in a hurry if they needed to. They poured water from their canteens into their hats and let the mounts drink. Their water would run low if they didn’t find a spring or a stream in the hills, but none of them were particularly worried about that. There would be time for that later—if they survived their next encounter with the Apaches.
Night’s curtain dropped down suddenly. When the last reddish-gold vestiges of the sun had faded from the western sky, Jamie and Dog Brother started out on their scouting mission. On foot, with both men wearing moccasins so they could move more quietly, they headed up toward the gap where the Apaches had fled.
They didn’t get in any hurry. It took them more than an hour to reach the saddle formed by two large, upthrust rock masses about a quarter of a mile apart. Without speaking, Jamie and Dog Brother started through the gap.
They hadn’t gone very far when the faint scrape of leather on rock warned Jamie. He twisted aside, guided by his instincts, and the warrior who lunged out of the deep shadows missed with the knife he tried to thrust into Jamie’s chest. As the Apache, off balance from the missed stroke, collided with him, Jamie’s arms shot out and wrapped around the man’s neck. He heaved and twisted, and a sharp snap sounded as the Apache’s neck broke. The man made a strangled sound and went limp in Jamie’s grip.
Another scuffle was going on a few yards away. Dog Brother and a second Apache sentinel, Jamie thought as he heard shuffling footsteps and grunts of effort.
Deeper in the gap, running footsteps suddenly slapped against rock.
Jamie grimaced as he jerked out his bowie. The fleeing man had to be a third guard, trying to get away so he could warn the rest of the Apaches. Jamie tried to spot him, but not even his keen eyes could make out any movement in the thick gloom of the gap.
He had those footsteps to aim at, though, and since that was his only option, he drew back his arm, flicked it forward, and let fly with the bowie.
He didn’t hear the knife hit, but the hurried footsteps suddenly broke stride. They resumed raggedly, then stopped again as a faint thud sounded. Jamie hoped that meant his throw had been accurate and the fleeing guard had collapsed with the bowie in his back.
“MacCallister!” Dog Brother whispered.
“Here,” Jamie said. “You all right?”
“Yes. This man is dead. Yours?”
“Dead, too. I don’t know about the one who tried to get away, though.”
The two men catfooted forward. After a couple of minutes of stealthy advance, Jamie heard a quiet, wheezing sound. He followed it until one of his feet bumped into something. Stopping abruptly, he knelt and reached out.
He touched bare flesh slick with sweat and grease, moved his fingers along it until he found the bowie’s handle sticking up from the body. The man was lying on his belly with the knife in his back, just as Jamie had hoped. He was still alive, though, so Jamie wrapped his hand around the bowie’s grip, pulled the blade out, and struck twice more in the darkness, aiming for the heart. The Apache spasmed a little and then went still. Jamie couldn’t hear him breathing anymore.
Dog Brother hunkered beside him. “Three more dead.”
“That’s right, but we’re a long way from finished.”
They slipped through the shadows again, came out on the far side of the gap, and paused to look across the rolling hills in front of them. The moon was coming up, but its silvery illumination hadn’t really started washing over the landscape yet. Jamie and Dog Brother were able to spot a faint orange glow in the sky, coming from the other side of a ridge about half a mile in front of them.
“Light from fires,” Dog Brother said.
Jamie didn’t respond, but he knew the half-breed was right. He started toward the ridge with Dog Brother alongside him. Again they moved as quietly as possible. They might not run into any more guards, but the possibility still existed.
By the time they reached the base of the ridge, they smelled wood smoke from the fires that had cast the orange glow into the sky.
This was the main Apache camp, Jamie thought. If Perro Blanco was still alive, they stood a good chance of finding him there.
The ridge was steep and topped with stunted pines. Jamie and Dog Brother climbed it easily and stretched out on the ground underneath the trees.
They could see into a small valley with Apache wickiups scattered on both sides of a tiny stream. A few scrubby cottonwoods grew along the banks. The valley was steep-sided, and at the far end was a rope enclosure where the band’s pony herd was contained.
Half a dozen fires burned, but one blaze was larger than the others and a group of warriors had assembled around it. One man in particular seemed to dominate the gathering as he stalked back and forth and harangued the other men. He was dressed like them, in boot-topped moccasins, a breechcloth, and a colorful headband—in this case blue—around his dark hair. He wore a faded blue shirt, as well, and had a gun belt and holstered revolver strapped around his lean waist.
“From the way he’s reading the others the riot act, I’d guess that’s Perro Blanco,” Jamie whispered.
“Yes,” Dog Brother agreed. “Look at the way the others stand. Some of them want to disagree with him, but they remain silent. They are afraid of him.”
Jamie hadn’t shared his theory about Perro Blanco’s true identity with anyone except Preacher. As he watched the Apa
che war chief stalk back and forth, it was difficult to believe he might actually be a white man, but so far Jamie hadn’t seen anything to make him think his idea was wrong. Perro Blanco was taller and leaner than the other warriors, lacking the squatty build of the typical Apache male. Of course, not every Apache was shaped the same way.
Jamie leaned closer to Dog Brother and said, “Go back to the others and tell them what we’ve found. Bring them here.”
“We are going to attack the village?”
“Not unless we have to. I’m going to see if I can grab Perro Blanco and bring him out of there. If I can, the rest of the bunch will be liable to come after us, so I want the other fellas on hand to hold them back, maybe keep ’em pinned down as much as possible.”
“I thought you were going to kill him.”
“I will if it comes to that,” Jamie said. “But I’d like to take him back if we can.” He sensed Dog Brother staring at him in puzzlement, but after a couple of seconds the half-breed made a sound of agreement.
“Do not do anything foolish until I get back with the others, old man.”
“Then don’t waste any time getting back,” Jamie told him. “Because if I see a chance, I plan on taking it.”
CHAPTER 46
It was far into the night, long after midnight, when Clete Mahoney finally allowed them to stop. Several hours earlier, they had reached the end of the badlands, turned north, and come to the low escarpment that divided one vast tableland from the other.
“We’ve come far enough,” Clete declared. “That bluff’s not steep, but we’ll be able to get up it easier in the morning when we can see. Anyway, the horses are about played out.”
“So am I,” Harp said. The other two brothers muttered agreement.
Clementine seemed to have dozed off a while earlier, slumping back limply against Clete as he held her on the horse in front of him, but she was awake, turning her head from side to side as she looked around. He tightened his grip on her, lifted her from the horse’s back, and set her on the ground.
They Came to Kill Page 26
