The men turned their horses and jabbed in their boot heels. The animals took off at a run, headed west along the trail.
Preacher started to fire his second pistol after them, but he let go of the trigger before the weapon went off. The chances of him hitting any of them were slim, and he wanted to have a loaded gun handy if they happened to turn around and try another attack.
It didn’t look like that was going to be the case. The raiders showed no signs of slowing down as they gave up their attack and galloped off along the Santa Fe Trail.
Preacher rode straight to the wagons. Bartlett, Roland, Casey, and Lorenzo crawled out from under a couple vehicles and hurried to meet him. Their clothes were smeared with mud, but he didn’t see any bloodstains on them.
A wave of relief went through him as he realized the young woman and the elderly black man hadn’t been hurt. In the time he had known them, he had grown quite fond of them both.
That was true the other way around, too. Casey asked anxiously, “Preacher, are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he told her as he dismounted. “They threw a little lead at me, but none of it came close.”
Bartlett said, “It was that man Garity and his friends, the ones who were here yesterday! I got a good look at the scoundrels.”
“Yeah, it was them, all right,” Preacher said, “and a dozen other polecats to boot. Garity’s bunch must’ve been plannin’ on meetin’ up with those other fellas, and when they did, he told them about these freight wagons.”
“Were they always planning to rob us?” Roland asked.
Preacher shrugged. “No tellin’. They may have been on their way to the mountains to do some trappin’ just like Garity said, and decided to take advantage of the opportunity fate put in their way. Or they could’ve been highwaymen all along.”
“Well, the important thing is that we defeated them and sent them packing,” Bartlett said.
Preacher shook his head. “No, the important thing, the thing we got to remember, is that they’re still out there. Only one man got hisself killed.” Preacher jerked his head toward the corpse that lay on the ground about a hundred yards away. The man’s horse had deserted him, following the other horses when the rest of the bunch galloped away. “And at least one of them is wounded,” Preacher went on, “maybe more, but really, we didn’t do all that much damage to them.”
“Then you think they’ll come back?” Roland asked with a frown.
“They don’t have to,” Preacher said. He pointed west along the trail. “They’re between you and the place where you’re headed. All they’ve got to do is wait for you to come to them.”
CHAPTER 9
Bartlett sent a couple of the bullwhackers to fetch in the body of the dead man. The powerfully muscled freighters were able to carry the corpse without much trouble. They laid it out next to one of the wagons so Preacher could have a look at it.
The man was skinny and had a scraggly black beard. One corner of his mouth was twisted grotesquely because of a knife scar that ran raggedly up his cheek. It looked like somebody had shoved a blade in his mouth and cut his face half open.
Preacher had never seen him before.
“This ain’t one of the fellas who was with Garity yesterday,” he said as he hunkered on his heels next to the corpse. “I’ve seen his sort before, though.”
“What sort is that?” Bartlett asked.
“The one that’ll do some trappin’ or some other kind of honest work if he absolutely has to, but he’d rather steal from other folks and enjoy the fruits of their labor.”
“Then we shouldn’t be mourning him too much, I suppose.”
Preacher snorted as he straightened to his feet. Since Casey was out of earshot at the moment, he said, “Hell, when we pull out you can leave the bastard layin’ here for the wolves, for all I care.”
Bartlett shook his head. “No, he’s still a human being. We’ll give him a decent burial.”
“Suit yourself. Don’t expect me to pray over him.”
“I can do that. I brought a Bible with me, of course.”
Digging a grave in the mud proved to be a difficult chore, and the men given the task by Bartlett were muttering curses under their breath before they were finished. The hole kept filling up with water. Finally they got the grave deep enough, and Bartlett had the dead raider wrapped in a blanket. A couple of the bullwhackers lowered him into the soggy earth.
Bartlett got out his Bible, asked God to have mercy on the soul of the departed, whose identity was unknown, and then motioned for his men to fill in the grave. By the time that was done, it was early afternoon and the sun had passed its zenith.
Preacher walked out on the trail and tested its firmness with his boots. Hours of sun and wind had dried the ground somewhat. Bartlett followed the mountain man and asked, “Do you think we can leave now?”
“We’ll give it a try,” Preacher replied with a nod. “If it looks like the wagons are about to bog down, we can always stop again.”
Bartlett called orders, and the bullwhackers hitched up their teams. Roland saddled Casey’s horse and then his own. Preacher grinned as he heard Lorenzo grumbling about how nobody saddled his horse for him. He had to do it himself despite the fact that he was an old man.
“I reckon it’s better to be a pretty girl than a old geezer,” Lorenzo muttered.
“I don’t know about that,” Preacher said. “Casey’s had a hard life at times.”
“Yeah, well, so have I. It don’t matter none. Nobody fusses over me.”
Preacher suddenly lifted up Lorenzo’s hat and planted a kiss on top of the old man’s bald head. “There,” he drawled. “That make you feel better?”
“Gimme that hat!” Lorenzo snatched it away from Preacher and started swatting at the mountain man with it. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you about respectin’ your elders?”
Despite the tomfoolery, several worries nagged at the back of Preacher’s brain, and hoorawing Lorenzo wasn’t going to make them go away.
When everything was ready, Bartlett rode along the line of wagons and waved his hat over his head. “Move out!” he shouted. “Wagons ho!”
The bullwhackers popped their whips and bellowed at their teams. The oxen leaned forward against their harnesses and lurched into motion. With loud sucking sounds, the wheels pulled free of the mud. The sounds continued as the wagons rolled along the trail.
Preacher watched the wheels. They left deep ruts behind them, but they kept turning. It was the best he could hope for. Progress would be slower than usual as the oxen trudged through the mud and fought its clinging grip on their hooves, but any progress was better than none.
Bartlett, Roland, and Casey were at the head of the caravan. Preacher rode up alongside them and said, “Looks like there’s a good chance the wagons won’t get stuck.”
“Splendid!” Bartlett said. “Finally we can put more ground behind us.”
“Well . . . maybe not as much as you’d hope.”
Bartlett looked over at Preacher with a frown. “What do you mean? The wagons are moving.”
“This morning while I was out trying to track the critter that was lurkin’ around camp last night, I came across a creek. Reckon in normal times it wouldn’t be much more’n a trickle, maybe even a dry wash, but after that gullywasher yesterday, these ain’t normal times. The stream was flooded.”
“You mean we won’t be able to ford it?” Roland asked.
Preacher nodded. “That’s what I’m sayin’. I don’t know for sure that it crosses the trail, but it was runnin’ northeast to southwest, so there’s a good chance it does. And if it does, we’ll probably have to wait for the water to go down before we can get to the other side.”
Bartlett said, “How long will that take?”
“Depends on how much water’s runnin’ in it. Might just be a few hours, in which case we might be able to ford today while it’s still light. But it could be as long as another day.”