“I speak your filthy . . . white man tongue,” the man gasped, his voice choked by the blood that had run from his ruined nose into his mouth.
“Is that so?” Preacher said in English. “All right, then. You can answer my question. How many more of you are there in these parts?”
“Go ahead and . . . kill me! I will tell you . . . nothing! Cut my throat, white man!”
Preacher thought about it for a second, then shook his head and said, “Nope, I reckon not.” He took the knife away from the nicked place on the Indian’s throat. “Dog!”
The big, wolflike cur edged closer, his lips curling away from his teeth as he snarled at the Pawnee.
“I ain’t gonna cut your throat,” Preacher went on. “I’m just gonna let Dog here gnaw on you for a while.”
He saw the fear in the Indian’s eyes as Dog approached.
“He’s got a mean streak in him,” Preacher went on. “Likes to play with his food for a while before he eats it. He’s liable to start at your toes and just sorta . . . nibble his way up.”
The Pawnee swallowed hard. His eyes were wide, and he seemed to have forgotten about his busted nose and the kick in the crotch.
“What band are you from?” Preacher asked. “Who’s your war chief?”
“St-Standing Elk,” the Pawnee said.
Preacher nodded toward the other members of the war party, who lay scattered around the hillside, dead. “Is he one of these fellas?”
The Pawnee shook his head. “No. We were scouts . . . from a larger party.”
“Where’s Standin’ Elk and the rest of your bunch?”
The Pawnee started to look stubborn again. Preacher made a small motion, and a snarling, slavering Dog bent his head toward the Indian’s legs.
“One sleep toward the sunrise!” the Pawnee cried. “It is the truth!”
Preacher waved Dog back. The big cur retreated with obvious reluctance.
“How many?”
“As many as the fingers of four hands.”
Twenty more warriors, then. A formidable bunch. He and Uncle Dan would avoid them if possible, Preacher thought.
“All right,” Preacher said as he straightened to his feet. “I reckon we’ll tie you up and leave you here. The rest of your bunch will come along and find you sooner or later.”
The Pawnee sneered up at him. “Go ahead and kill me. I have shamed myself by talking to you.”
Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “There are a few hombres in this world who’re bad enough I might be tempted to kill ’em in cold blood. You ain’t one of ’em, old son.”
“Then let me . . . die in battle.” The Indian’s fingers groped for the handle of the knife at his waist.
“You ain’t fit to fight right now. I reckon I kicked your balls halfway up to your throat.”
Preacher started to turn away. Behind him, the Pawnee struggled to climb to his feet. Uncle Dan said warningly, “Preacher . . .”
With a sigh, Preacher turned around again. The warrior had made it upright and managed to pull his knife from its sheath. He raised the weapon and lunged awkwardly toward Preacher.
Preacher waited, hoping that the stubborn varmint would collapse or pass out or something, but when the blade started to thrust toward his chest, he had to act. He knocked the Pawnee’s knife aside and stepped in to bring up his own blade and bury it in the warrior’s chest. The man sighed and dropped his knife as he sagged toward Preacher.
“What’s your name?” Preacher asked.
“Bent . . . Stick,” the Pawnee forced out.
“Well, if anybody ever asks me, I will tell them that the warrior called Bent Stick died in battle, with honor.”
Gratitude flickered in the Indian’s eyes, then died out along with everything else. Preacher lowered the corpse to the ground.
Uncle Dan had ridden on down the hill and now sat nearby on his horse, still holding the reins of Preacher’s horse and the two pack animals. The old-timer nodded toward the body and asked, “How’d you know he’d talk if you threatened him with Dog?”
“I saw him eyein’ the old boy,” Preacher replied. “Some folks are more scared of one particular thing than they are of anything else. Might be dogs or snakes or, hell, I don’t know, bugs. I took a chance that with this fella, it was dogs.”
“Looks like you was right. We gonna try to avoid that war chief Standin’ Elk and his bunch?”
“Damn right,” Preacher said. He pulled up a handful of grass and used it to wipe the blood from his knife before he slid the blade back into its sheath. “We’ve got places to go and things to do, and I don’t want anything slowin’ us down.”
He walked over to retrieve his pistols from the place he had dropped them. He reloaded them first, then picked up his rifle and loaded it. He always felt a little naked when his guns were empty.
“If you hadn’t seen them birds fly up and guessed there might be somethin’ waitin’ for us on this side of the hill, them redskins would’ve had the drop on us,” Uncle Dan said as Preacher swung up into the saddle on the rangy gray stallion known only as Horse. “That was pretty smart of you, havin’ me go on singin’ whilst you slipped around the side of the hill and snuck up on ’em.”
“But if there was no ambush, I’d’ve wound up lookin’ a mite foolish, wouldn’t I?”
“Better to be foolish and alive, I always say.”
Preacher couldn’t argue with that.
“How far you reckon we are from St. Louis?” Uncle Dan went on.
“Be there in another week, just about, I’d say.”
“That arm of yours gonna be good and healed up by then?”
Preacher lifted his left arm. It was splinted and wrapped up from elbow to wrist, but at this point, that was more of a precaution than anything else.
“It’s pretty much healed now,” he said. Several weeks had passed since the bone had been broken about halfway down his forearm. “I can use it without any trouble. It just aches a little ever’ now and then.”
“Well, you best be careful with it. You want to be at full strength when we get there. Killin’ that bastard Beaumont ain’t gonna be easy.”
“No,” Preacher said, thinking of all the evil that had been done because of the man called Shad Beaumont, “but it sure is gonna be satisfyin’.”
Chapter 2
Preacher had left his family’s farm at a young age, driven by an undeniable wanderlust. Many of the years since then had been spent in the Rocky Mountains, although his fiddle-footed nature had taken him as far south as Texas and as far north as Canada. He had also made a number of trips back east to St. Louis, and that was his destination now.
He wasn’t going there to sell furs that he had trapped in the mountains, though, as he had done in the past.
This time, he was going to kill a man.
Twice now, Shad Beaumont had dispatched agents to the mountains in an attempt to take over the fur trade. Beaumont was the boss of the criminal underworld in St. Louis, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to branch out, to spread his unholy influence over the mountains, and when Preacher had helped foil his first effort in that direction, Beaumont hadn’t hesitated to send hired killers after him.
Preacher was still alive, and those would-be assassins were dead, but they weren’t the only ones who had died. Innocent folks had been killed, and Preacher was filled with righteous wrath over those deaths. Some of the people who had died hadn’t exactly been what anybody would call innocent, but they hadn’t deserved to die, and Preacher wanted to avenge what had happened to them, too.
It all added up to Preacher going to St. Louis and confronting the arch-criminal on his own stomping grounds. Venturing into the lair of a vicious animal was always dangerous, but it was also the fastest, simplest way to deal with the threat.
So Preacher and Uncle Dan Sullivan had ridden out of the mountains, following the North Platte River to the Missouri and then following the Missouri on its curving course through the heart of the country toward St. Louis. Uncle Dan had his own grudge against Beaumont, since his nephew Pete Sanderson had died as a result of Beaumont’s latest scheme. Over and above that, Preacher and Uncle Dan had become friends, and the old-timer hadn’t wanted Preacher to set out alone with a broken arm. It was true that by now Preacher’s arm was almost healed, but he had to admit, it had come in handy having Uncle Dan around to help with setting up camp and tending the horses and all the other chores that had to be taken care of when a fella was riding just about halfway across the continent.