Preacher's Journey (23 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Preacher's Journey
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“Yeah, sure,” Nate said.
“If a fella does what's got to be did, no matter how scared he is, then he's just as brave as anybody else.”
“As brave as you, you mean?”
Preacher squeezed the youngster's shoulder for a second. “I sure do.”
Nate grinned. “Thanks, Preacher. I—”
Whatever he was going to add remained unsaid, because at that moment Angela let out a startled cry and said, “Oh, my God! Peter! What's he doing?”
Preacher wheeled around, feeling a flash of anger toward himself because he had let the conversation with Nate distract him. He hadn't been keeping an eye on the situation as well as he should have. He hadn't noticed when Peter Galloway left the wagons.
By now, Peter was a hundred yards away, striding out into the valley, heading straight toward that Arikara war party.
THIRTY-FIVE
Preacher stared at Peter's retreating back, for a second unable to comprehend what the man thought he was doing. Then Preacher stepped out away from the wagons and bellowed, “Galloway! Damn it, get back here, Galloway!”
Peter ignored him and kept walking toward the Indians.
Angela clutched Preacher's arm. “Stop him!” she said. “For God's sake, he's going to get himself killed!”
Maybe that's just what he wants,
Preacher thought. It sure as hell looked like that was what Peter was trying to do.
Preacher shook off Angela's hand and trotted forward, snapping a command over his shoulder. “Ever'body stay here. Take your positions and be ready to fire.”
Then he hurried after Peter, who still didn't look back, even when Preacher shouted at him to stop.
Preacher kept an eye on the distances involved. Peter wasn't in range of the war party's bows, but if he kept up that fast walk for much longer, he would be. Preacher started to yell at him again, but before he could, Peter began to shout. The words were directed at the Arikara war chief.
“Swift Arrow! Swift Arrow, can you hear me?”
There was no response from the Indians, but Preacher knew they could hear Peter just fine.
“Swift Arrow, I'm the one you want! I killed your brave back there near your village! Take me, and let the others go!”
Preacher kept trotting after Peter, and finally Peter glanced back. He broke into a run, but he didn't stop yelling at the Indians.
“I surrender!” Peter shouted. “The others had nothing to do with it! Let them go, and you can have me!”
The damn fool didn't realize that the Injuns already had him. His surrendering now wouldn't change a blessed thing. The war party wanted vengeance, not only for the young man Peter had murdered, but also for the warriors they had lost when they set out to even the score. Peter thought he was making a noble gesture—maybe in an attempt to redeem himself at least partially in his wife's eyes, Preacher thought—but in reality all he was doing was throwing away his life and making the odds for everyone else even worse.
Preacher would have to catch the dumb son of a bitch, though, before he could explain all that. And there might not be time for that, because Peter was almost close enough for the Indians to risk a shot . . .
In fact, it was just a second later when an arrow came whistling through the air. It fell short, but Peter still didn't stop. “Kill me!” he shrieked. “Kill me and let the others go!”
“Galloway, stop now!” Preacher roared. His long legs had cut the gap between them until he was only about twenty yards behind Peter. “They're gonna—”
They did. The next arrow flew true and slammed into Peter's chest. He cried out in pain as the flint arrowhead tore into his body, burying itself deeply. He stumbled but stayed on his feet and kept running toward the Indians. “Take me!” he croaked. “Don't kill the oth—”
Two more arrows thudded into him, one in the chest, one in the belly. Preacher heard screams coming from the wagons far behind him as Angela saw her husband being pincushioned with arrows. Peter staggered and twisted around so that Preacher saw the shafts protruding from his body. Peter turned his head and looked back at Preacher, his eyes wide with pain and the realization that he was doomed. Preacher began to back away, knowing that he was dangerously close to being in range himself.
“I'm . . . sorry,” Peter choked out, and then another arrow ripped into his side. He twisted the rest of the way around under the impact, so that he was facing toward Preacher and the wagons. He fell to his knees.
A final arrow hit him in the back of the neck and penetrated all the way through so that the bloody arrowhead emerged from his throat. Peter opened his mouth but couldn't scream or say anything else because of the flood of crimson that came from his mouth. He flopped forward, landing awkwardly because of all the arrows sticking out of his body.
Preacher wheeled around and lit a shuck for the wagons.
He heard the Arikara a-whoopin' and a-hollerin' behind him. An arrow zipped past him, and fluttering sounds behind him told him that more arrows were falling short. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the war party was giving chase. One of their most hated enemies had come close to them, almost in their grasp, and they hadn't been able to resist the temptation to come after him.
A grim smile tugged at Preacher's mouth. This might work out after all. It would all depend on how fast he could run....
It was a fantastic race with stakes of life and death there in the fading light. Preacher was a hundred yards ahead of the Indians, but he had to cover almost three hundred yards to reach the relative safety of the wagons. He was a fast runner, though. The snow slowed him down a little, but his pursuers had to contend with the same obstacle.
He remembered hearing about John Colter's epic race with hostile Blackfeet back in the fall of '08. This was nothing like that, of course; Colter had been stripped naked by his Indian captors and then had to run five miles to escape from them. Preacher had all his clothes and had to cover less than a quarter of a mile. But he still thought about Colter as he thudded across the open ground with the Arikara howling in pursuit.
Preacher slowed down. He could have run faster, but he didn't want to. If he drew away from them, they would realize they couldn't catch him and would turn back. He didn't want that. He wanted to pull them on, so he let them come closer and closer to him. Some of the Indians stopped, nocked arrows, and let fly at him again. The feathered missiles rained around him. Preacher kept going.
He was about a hundred yards away from the wagons when the defenders opened up. He heard the roar of exploding powder and saw puffs of smoke from around the wagon that was parked just beyond the rise. Behind him, one of the 'Rees yelled in pain, and when Preacher glanced back, he saw that two of them were down. The others came on, but they were slowing now that they realized Preacher had become the bait in a trap.
Jonathan, Roger, and Angela had had all the rifles loaded before they fired their first volley. That allowed them to fire again quickly, and they did so, the heavy lead balls whistling over the prairie to thud into the bodies of some of the onrushing Indians. Preacher stopped and whirled, throwing the Hawken to his shoulder. He cocked the rifle and drew a bead in the blink of an eye, then pressed the trigger. Flame spurted from the muzzle as the Hawken blasted. Another Arikara warrior spun off his feet as Preacher's lead tore through him.
Preacher pulled his right-hand pistol and fired, was rewarded by the sight of blood spraying in the air from a warrior's shattered shoulder. He didn't delay any longer. Turning toward the wagons, he broke into a run again, and this time he didn't hold back.
More shots came from the wagon, irregularly spaced now instead of together in a volley. With Nate's help, the defenders were reloading and firing as fast as they could. Preacher threw a look over his shoulder and saw that the Indians were retreating, leaving their dead and wounded behind for the moment, although he was sure they would come back for them later. He counted six bodies on the ground, and he thought one or two more of the fleeing warriors were limping and staggering from their wounds. Peter's crazy notion had allowed the others to strike a heavy blow at the enemy.
But they were still outnumbered by more than two to one, Preacher thought, and it would be dark soon. Swift Arrow wouldn't give up either. He would still rush the wagons as soon as night had fallen.
Preacher slowed to a trot as he went up the rise to the wagons. His heart slugged heavily in his chest. He was all whipcord, whang leather, and muscle, but that had been a hard run in cold, thin air. He would be glad for a chance to catch his breath.
Jonathan met him. “We got some of them!” the old-timer exulted. “I saw some of them go down!”
“You sure did,” Preacher told him. “I figure we done for five or six of 'em, and there's a couple more wounded, maybe bad enough so they're out of the fight.”
Jonathan's grin vanished, to be replaced by a solemn look. “Peter . . . ?”
Preacher shook his head. “He never had no chance.”
Angela crawled out from underneath the wagon in time to hear that. A sob caught in her throat. Roger went to her and put an arm around her shoulder to comfort her. Both of them had lost a spouse in the past couple of days. Even though Angela had come to despise Peter and had declared their marriage over, there had still been enough of a bond remaining between them so that she felt his loss. It had to hurt, Preacher thought. Best to let her cry it out.
But only for a short time, because the sun was gone and its light was beginning to fade from the sky. In less than an hour, Preacher thought, Swift Arrow and the rest of the Arikara war party would be coming, and one way or another, this would be the end of the long chase.
 
 
While he had the chance, Preacher went to check on Geoffrey and the younger children. Mary and Brad were sniffling, still frightened by all the shooting that had gone on earlier. If they knew that their father was dead, Preacher couldn't tell it. He didn't say anything about what had happened to Peter, but he could tell from the bleak look in Geoffrey's eyes that the older man knew about it. “What now?” he asked.
“Same as before,” Preacher said. “When the time comes, we fight as best we can.”
Geoffrey nodded grimly. He sat on one of the bunks with four loaded pistols at his side. If it came down to it, Preacher was sure that Geoffrey would defend the young'uns to his last breath.
Preacher dropped down from the tailgate and saw Nate coming toward him in the dusk. “Preacher,” the boy said, “did I do all right?”
“As far as I could tell, you done just fine. You ready to do some loadin'?”
“Yes, sir.”
Preacher patted his shoulder. “Well, it shouldn't be too long now.”
He went back to the first wagon and nodded to Roger, who stood there leaning on a rifle, the butt resting on the snowy ground. “That was terrible,” Roger said quietly, keeping his voice low so that Angela, who was at the other end of the wagon with Jonathan, wouldn't overhear. “I didn't know Peter had that much courage. It was a grand gesture.”
It was a stupid gesture, Preacher thought, and hadn't accomplished a damned thing except to cost them a defender. Still, Peter had been Roger's brother, and just as with Angela, there were still bonds there despite all the trouble. Roger had lost a father, a wife, and a brother in mighty short order.
Those deaths gnawed at Preacher's innards too. He had thrown in with these immigrants with the goal of getting them back to safety.
All
of them. He had known from the start how unlikely that was, of course, but still, losing any of them bothered him. He hadn't had anything to do with Dorothy Galloway's death, of course, and he had tried to get Peter to come back and not throw his life away. But there was a way of looking at Simon's death that made Preacher to blame for it. After all, Preacher had sent him out to stand guard before that storm hit and froze him to death.
Of course, somebody had to stand guard, and if it hadn't been Simon, it would have been somebody else. Jonathan or Geoffrey or Roger might be dead now instead of Simon. Preacher wasn't going to lose much sleep over what had happened—assuming he lived through the perilous night to come—but he wouldn't forget about it either. Tragedy had dogged this expedition even before he joined it, and he hadn't been able to prevent it completely since then.
“Got all the guns loaded?” he asked.
Roger nodded. “Loaded and primed. All we have to do is cock and fire. But once it's dark, how will we know the Indians are attacking?”
“We'll have to let them make the first move,” Preacher said. “It's risky, but we don't have much choice.”
“So they take the first shot and we hope they miss?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Preacher said with a grin.
“How many of them are left?”
“Twelve, fourteen, somewhere along in there.”
“And there are five of us,” Roger mused. “More than three to one odds.”
“I've faced worse and come through all right.”
Roger turned to look at him, but Preacher couldn't read his expression in the fading light. “Angela is quite fond of you. You'll take care of her, if you both live through this.”
“This ain't the time to think about that.”
“And the children,” Roger said, ignoring Preacher's comment. “Someone will have to look after them.”
“That'd be a good job for the two of you,” Preacher pointed out.
“The two of... You mean Angela and me?”
“Y'all been through a lot together, and you both love them kids. I ain't sayin' or meanin' any more than that. I reckon right now you're thinkin' that you ain't got a lot to live for, Roger. I'm just sayin' that maybe you do.”

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