“I will stay,” he told Bright Leaf.
She nodded, then bent over and pushed aside the flap of hide that covered the tepee’s entrance. Preacher was able to look outside for a second. He saw darkness, edged with the flickering glare of a fire. Night had fallen, and since it had been the middle of the afternoon when he was shot, that meant he had been unconscious for several hours, at the very least.
A tide of weariness washed over him. He lay there struggling to keep his eyes open. He knew that if he closed them, he would probably fall asleep. He wanted to stay awake until Crazy Bear got here, so he could talk to the man.
Luckily, Crazy Bear must have been close by, because only a couple of minutes passed before the hide flap was swept aside again, this time by a muscular arm as big around as the trunk of a small tree. The warrior who came into the tepee had to stoop low to make it through the entrance. When he straightened to his full height, he had to stand near the center of the tepee, otherwise his head would have poked against the sloping hide wall.
In the glow of the fire, he didn’t seem quite as ugly as he had in broad daylight. It softened the harsh planes and angles of his face, made the scars less noticeable, and the broken, crooked lump of a nose didn’t dominate his features quite as much. He still looked like the sort of figure that a mother might describe to her children and then threaten them with to get them to behave.
Bright Leaf came into the tepee behind the man and peeked timidly around his massive form at Preacher.
The Crow warrior regarded Preacher impassively for a moment and then said, “Bright Leaf tells me you are the one called Ghost-Killer.”
“This is true,” Preacher said, then continued, “But as I told her, the Crow are not my enemies.”
He could have been wrong, but he thought for a second that he saw a smile play over the man’s twisted lips.
“This is good. Our village will not have to fear you.”
“Nope,” Preacher agreed. “You got nothin’ to fear from me. I’m plumb friendly.”
The warrior hunkered on his heels beside the fire. “I am called Crazy Bear. I lead this band of my people.”
So he was a chief, Preacher thought. That wasn’t surprising, considering the elaborate decorations on his buckskins and the beads tied into the braids in which he wore his hair.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
“I did not save your life,” Crazy Bear said. “The Ghost-Killer cannot die.”
“You saw how much blood I lost, Crazy Bear. If you hadn’t helped me, I would have died. Believe me. But even before I could bleed to death, those men would have killed me. Thank you for stopping them.” Preacher paused. “I suppose it was you who made that terrible noise?”
This time the massive Indian definitely smiled. “You call the laugh of Crazy Bear terrible?” Then he folded his arms across his broad chest and shrugged. “There were six of the white men, and I was alone. I thought it best to make them afraid, in hopes that they would flee.”
“You were right about that. You got hold of at least one of them, didn’t you?”
“Two had broken arms when they fled.”
“You should’ve broken their necks,” Preacher muttered.
“We will kill them another day, eh, Ghost-Killer?” Crazy Bear extended his hand, white man fashion, as if to seal the agreement.
Preacher didn’t hesitate. He reached up, grasped the man’s hand, and said, “You got a deal, Crazy Bear. We’ll kill them another day.”
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Copyright © 2010 William W. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-2475-9