“Oh? Well, let’s see how you cotton to this!”
With that exclamation, Roland leaped at Preacher, swinging a fist straight at the mountain man’s face.
CHAPTER 10
Preacher’s instincts took over, as they always did when he was attacked. He pulled his head to the side to avoid the punch. Roland’s fist sailed past, missing Preacher’s ear by a couple inches. The miss threw Roland off balance and made him stumble forward.
Preacher’s right fist came up hard, burying itself deep in the young man’s belly. Roland bent over, gasping for breath.
Preacher gained control of himself and grabbed Roland’s shoulders. He slung him to the side, sending him sprawling on the muddy ground.
“Stay down, boy,” Preacher warned him. “Don’t you come at me like that again.”
“Preacher, no!” Casey cried. “Leave him alone.”
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to do, damn it,” Preacher snapped.
Panting, Roland lifted his mud-splattered face. “I won’t let you . . . treat her that way,” he said as he struggled back to his feet. As soon as he had them planted under him, he launched himself at Preacher again.
Preacher didn’t want to hurt the young man, but it wasn’t in him to let someone attack him without fighting back. When the Good Lord made him, He hadn’t included the ability to run from trouble.
Nimbly, Preacher stepped aside from the charge and grabbed the front of Roland’s shirt. He threw the young man to the ground again. Stubbornly, Roland struggled back to his feet.
Some of the bullwhackers had noticed what was going on and started yelling, “Fight! Fight!” The men began to converge, hustling around the wagons to watch. Preacher caught glimpses of Lorenzo and Bartlett among them.
For the most part, he ignored the spectators. Pointing a finger at Roland, he said, “Now that’s enough. I don’t want to fight you—”
“You’re gonna have to,” Roland interrupted. “I’m going to thrash you, Preacher.”
“Not on your best day and my worst one, boy,” Preacher said.
“You’ve got to pay for hurting Casey—”
She broke into his breathless declaration, saying, “Roland, no! You don’t have to defend me.” She came up beside him and clutched his arm. “I’m fine.”
He looked over at her. “He made you cry.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was just being foolish.”
Roland shook her off. “I don’t care. I won’t let him get away with it.”
With clenched fists, he started toward Preacher again.
Preacher held up a hand, palm out. “Blast it, Roland, back off. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’ll have to kill me to stop me,” Roland said through gritted teeth.
“Roland!” Leeman Bartlett called out sharply. “Stop this foolishness right now. I won’t have my son brawling in the mud over some woman. Stop it, I say!”
Roland ignored the orders his father barked at him, just as he ignored Casey’s pleas to end the fight. His face was set in grim lines, as he continued his menacing advance toward Preacher.
The mountain man watched him closely, wondering if he would have to knock the boy out to get him to settle down. Preacher was ready to react if the youngster threw a punch.
Before that could happen, a shrill scream of terror suddenly split the night. It came from outside the circle of wagons. Everyone’s head jerked in that direction. A shot boomed out, followed by another scream.
Preacher reacted instantly, jerking the pistols out of his belt and breaking into a run toward the sounds. As he pushed his way through the oxen, which slowed him down, he heard a man yell, “No, no!” then the plea abruptly choked off in a hideous gurgle.
Preacher broke free of the livestock and hurdled a wagon tongue. It was dark on that side. Only a faint flickering glow from the campfire reached the area, but it was enough to show Preacher a huge, swiftly moving shadow. He couldn’t make out any details. The thing was just a deeper patch of darkness.
Both pistols roared and bucked in Preacher’s hands as he fired. It was too dark for him to tell if he hit the thing, but he didn’t see how he could have missed at that range. He jammed the empty guns behind his belt and yanked his heavy hunting knife from its sheath. He wasn’t sure how much good the blade would do against a monster, but he would put up the best fight he could.
As he stood ready, the misshapen form wheeled around and lurched away, vanishing into the thick shadows of the night in a heartbeat.
It left behind something on the ground.
Preacher moved over to the dark, sprawled shape and dropped to a knee. He recognized the harsh, bubbling sound he heard as the sound of a man trying to draw breaths through a ravaged throat. He put out a hand, felt the hot wet stickiness of freshly spilled blood. Preacher rested his hand on the man’s chest and found a faint heartbeat, but a second later it grew still. The tortured breathing stopped.
The man was dead.
There was nothing Preacher could do for him. There never had been. The mountain man turned his head and bawled, “Somebody bring a light!”
Men were making their way toward the spot. Some of them had grabbed rifles from the wagons. One of them turned back to fetch a lantern.
The bullwhackers babbled questions as they crowded around Preacher. He said, “Hold on, hold on. I know you all want to know what happened, and so do I. Let’s wait for that light.”
Lantern light bobbed with each step as the man carried it all the way around the circle instead of cutting through the center where the oxen were milling around. A faster and certainly easier route. Preacher ordered, “Everybody step back and give him some room,” as the man approached.
He held the light high above his head as he came up to the scene of the tragedy. Startled curses came from the men as the flickering glow washed over the bloody corpse lying on its back. Lifeless eyes stared up from the man’s pale, bearded face.
Preacher recognized the man as one of the bullwhackers but didn’t know his name. “Who is it?” he asked in the stunned silence that followed the curses.
“His name was Hammond,” Leeman Bartlett replied in a stunned, hollow voice. “Ben Hammond. My God, what could have done that to him?”
The man’s throat was nothing but a raw, gaping wound. Blood had poured from it, flooding down the front of his shirt. Preacher was surprised Hammond had lasted as long as he had.
That wasn’t his only injury. Several deep gashes started on his forehead and angled across his face. One eye had been popped from its socket, and most of his nose was torn away. Similar gashes crisscrossed the luckless bullwhacker’s chest. His bloody shirt was shredded.
Roland and Casey had joined the others gathered around Preacher and the dead man. Casey made a horrified sound and turned her face away from the gruesome sight. Roland slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.
“Are those . . . claw marks?” the young man asked, sounding like he couldn’t believe what he was saying.
Preacher had already figured that out. From the size of the shape he had glimpsed in the darkness and the way it had mauled Ben Hammond, there was only one thing the monster could be.
“Yeah, those are claw marks,” he answered Roland’s question. The fight between them seemed to have been forgotten. “The marks of a grizzly bear on a rampage.”
“A grizzly bear,” Bartlett repeated. “That hardly seems possible. They live in the mountains, don’t they?”
“Most do,” Preacher said, “but sometimes they start to roam, and you can find ’em just about anywhere west of the Mississippi.”
“You reckon that’s what’s been followin’ us?” Lorenzo asked.
Preacher nodded. “I know it is. Dog’s not scared of much of anything in this world, but even he’s liable to get spooked by a griz. Same goes for the horses. They catch even the faintest scent of a grizzly bear, they’re gonna get nervous. A bear doesn’t mind gettin’ wet, so that’s why it was out wanderin’ around durin’ that storm when I caught a glimpse of it.” Preacher got to his feet and shook his head. “It all makes sense now, and the only reason I didn’t think about a grizzly bear sooner is because like you said, Mr. Bartlett, you just don’t think about runnin’ into the critters out here on the prairie.”