CHAPTER 16
Preacher bit back a curse. Roland
hadn’t come back yet with that pistol for Casey. He pulled one of
his own pistols from behind his belt and pressed it into her
hand.
“Did this fella you patched up have a
powder-horn and shot pouch?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t see them
if he did.”
“All right. You got one shot here. If
you need it, make it count. I’ll send Roland back here if I see
him.”
“Don’t worry about me, Preacher. I’ll
be fine.” Her face was pale with fear, making the scar on her cheek
stand out more than usual. He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly
and climbed quickly out of the wagon.
He saw dust boiling up from the hooves
of the Indian ponies as the Comanches charged toward the circled
wagons. They must have been making medicine to have taken this long
to attack again, he thought. He shouted to the men crouched behind
the wagons, “Hold your fire until they’re closer!” He added the
same advice he had given Casey. “Make your shots count,
boys!”
They had plenty of powder and
ammunition. What they wouldn’t have was a lot of time to reload. If
they didn’t break the back of the charge with their first volley,
some of the warriors were going to make it into the
circle.
Preacher took up a position at the back
of the wagon where Casey and the wounded man were. Lorenzo stood at
the front of the next wagon in line. Leeman Bartlett was a couple
wagons away. Preacher didn’t see Roland.
“Where’s Roland?” he called to Lorenzo.
“Have you seen him? He was gonna fetch a pistol for
Casey.”
The old-timer shook his head. “Don’t
know. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of him this last little
while.”
Preacher didn’t have time to worry
about Roland. He brought his long-barreled flintlock to his
shoulder and aimed toward the charging riders.
“Roland!” Leeman Bartlett suddenly
screamed. “My God! Roland, come back!”
Preacher lowered his rifle and looked
around to see Bartlett clambering over a wagon tongue, leaving the
circle. Preacher ran after him. He hurdled the wagon tongue and
grabbed Bartlett’s arm. The Comanches were only about five hundred
yards away.
“What the hell’s wrong with you,
Bartlett?” he demanded. “You gone loco?”
Bartlett pointed a shaking finger.
“Look!”
Preacher’s face grew grim as he spotted
the mounted figure riding toward the onrushing warriors. Roland had
gotten hold of one of the extra horses and was meeting the Comanche
charge by himself. It was the most foolhardy thing Preacher had
ever seen.
Despite that, he felt a surge of
admiration for the youngster. It was a crazy, futile gesture on
Roland’s part . . . but there was no doubt it took courage to do
what he was doing.
Preacher shoved Bartlett toward the
wagons. “Get back in the circle!” he ordered.
“But my son—”
“There’s nothin’ you can do for
him.”
Nothing any of them could do, Preacher
thought.
Except maybe him.
“Go on,” he told Bartlett. “I’ll see if
I can get him.”
Bartlett stumbled over the wagon tongue
as he climbed back into the circle. Preacher whistled for Horse and
Dog. The stallion and the big cur responded instantly. As Preacher
swung up into the saddle, he called, “Lorenzo!”
The old-timer stuck his head around the
back of a wagon. “Preacher, what in hell’s name are you
doin’?”
“Goin’ after that fool kid. Count ten
and then have everybody fire.”
“Preacher—”
“Just do it!”
Preacher leaned forward in the saddle
as he urged Horse into a run. The stallion galloped at a breakneck
pace after Roland, eating up the ground.
Preacher counted off the seconds in his
head as he rode. When he reached seven, he hauled back hard on the
reins. The Comanches were less than two hundred yards away, and
Roland was about halfway between him and them. At the count of
eight, Preacher dropped out of the saddle. His feet hit the ground
and dug in, and as he counted nine in his head, he pulled Horse’s
head down hard. The stallion knew what he wanted and fell to the
ground beside Preacher.
“Dog! Down!” the mountain man
yelled.
Dog hit the dirt, too, and as he did,
the ten-count ended in Preacher’s head. From the wagons, shots
roared in a concentrated volley. Like the humming of a flight of
giant insects, the heavy lead balls buzzed through the air above
Preacher, Horse, and Dog and smashed into the Indians and their
ponies.
Roland’s horse was hit, too. It went
down hard, sending Roland flying through the air. Preacher didn’t
know if any of the shots had struck the youngster. That had been a
calculated risk in his hastily-formed plan.
One thing was certain: if Preacher
hadn’t done something, Roland would have
been slaughtered by those Comanch’ in a matter of seconds. The
desperate gambit had nothing to lose.
Clouds of dust rolled through the air
as a dozen or more of the Indian ponies spilled, going down in a
welter of thrashing limbs. Preacher was up again instantly,
vaulting into Horse’s saddle. He raced toward the spot where
Roland’s motionless body sprawled on the ground.
The fierce volley from the wagons
blunted the Comanche charge as Preacher hoped. The warriors who
were still mounted reorganized a short distance away. Recognizing
Preacher and Roland as targets too tempting to pass up, arrows
began to fly through the air as Preacher galloped toward Roland,
who was apparently unconscious and defenseless.
Preacher reached his side in a matter
of heartbeats and was out of the saddle, lifting him and throwing
him over Horse’s back. The stallion jumped as an arrow grazed his
rump.
Preacher leaped into the saddle and
grabbed the reins. He wheeled Horse and sent the stallion racing
toward the wagons again. With his other hand, he held Roland’s limp
form in place in front of the saddle. Dog ran ahead of them. Arrows
whipped through the air around them.
Preacher soon outdistanced the Comanche
bows, and the few warriors who had flintlocks weren’t good shots
with them. Even so, he didn’t slow down until he had leaped Horse
over a wagon tongue and was back in the circle.
Bartlett and some of the other men
rushed to gather around him. “My God!” Bartlett cried. “Is he
dead?”
“I don’t think so,” Preacher said as
hands reached up to take hold of Roland and lift him down from the
stallion’s back.
“Whoo-eee!” Lorenzo said. “I never seen
nothin’ like that before, Preacher! You coulda got yourself blowed
all to hell tryin’ somethin’ like that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t.” Preacher
dismounted and waved a hand at some of the men. “Get back to the
wagons and watch out for those Comanch’! Reload those rifles, if
you ain’t already done it.”
The men had placed Roland on the
ground. Bartlett knelt beside his son and felt for a heartbeat.
“He’s alive!” Bartlett announced a second later. “I don’t see any
blood on him.”
“I think it just knocked him out when
he got throwed off his horse,” Preacher said.
Casey came pushing through the crowd.
“Roland! Is he all right?”
Bartlett looked up at her. “He’s alive,
my dear. I think he’s going to be fine.”
“What in the world was he trying to
do?” Casey demanded of Preacher.
The mountain man shrugged. “Looked to
me like he was tryin’ to fight off those Injuns all by his
lonesome.”
“Because you told him it was his fault
they attacked us!”
“I told him the truth,” Preacher said
bluntly. “What he did with it was his own lookout.”
Casey glared at him for a second, then
dropped to her knees beside Roland. She took hold of his shoulder,
lifted him, and pulled his head into her lap. His eyelids began to
flutter. After a moment, his eyes opened and he looked up into
Casey’s worried face.
“I . . . I’m alive?” he asked
hoarsely.
“You are,” she told him. “But that was
a foolish thing to do, Roland.”
“I thought . . . it might help,” he
said. He looked over at Preacher. “I thought it might . . . make
amends.”
“Throwin’ your life away hardly ever
does anybody any good,” Preacher said.
Roland wasn’t listening to him. He was
looking at Casey again.
Preacher left them there like that and
went back to one of the wagons, peering past it at the Comanches.
They had withdrawn again but hadn’t gone out of sight. They sat out
there, about two dozen of them, watching the wagons. The odds were
no longer overwhelmingly on their side.
“What do you think they’re gonna do?”
Lorenzo asked as he stood beside Preacher.
“They’ve hit us twice, and we’ve hurt
’em bad twice,” Preacher said. “Some of ’em will be thinkin’ by now
that it’s time to cut their losses and go home.”
“But not all of ’em.”
Preacher shook his head. “No, not all
of ’em. The hotheads are still gonna want blood. It’s just a matter
of how many are left on each side, and if they can convince the
others to go along with ’em.”
Bartlett came up to them and said,
“Preacher, I . . . I don’t know how to thank you for saving my
son’s life. Roland would be dead now if you hadn’t gone out there
and brought him back. I’ve never seen such a thing.”
“And you ain’t likely to see it ever
again,” Preacher said, “because most fellas’d have more sense than
to try a damn fool stunt like that. But he’s back and he ain’t
dead, and there ain’t no need to say anything else.”
“All right,” Bartlett said. “But I
won’t forget, Preacher. Not ever.”
“Preacher.” Lorenzo pointed toward the
Indians. “Looks like the hotheads won the argument.”
The Comanches were charging again.
Preacher called out to the other defenders, “Get ready! Here they
come!”
When the warriors were just outside
easy rifle range, they swung to the side and began riding in a
circle around the wagons. They yipped and shouted and waved their
bows and lances in the air.
“What are they doing?” Bartlett
asked.
“Showin’ off,” Preacher said. “They
ain’t attackin’ after all. They’re just tellin’ us how fierce they
are before they leave.”
“You mean they’ve given
up?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. For
now, anyway. There’s no guarantee they won’t try to rustle up some
more warriors and come after us again later. But for now . . . I’d
say it’s over.”
“Thank God,” Bartlett said
fervently.
The Indians made several circuits
around the wagons, yelling ferociously and gesturing threateningly
with their weapons. Then they turned and rode up the trail to the
site of the first battle to retrieve the bodies of their comrades
who had fallen there.
“I’ll bet I could tag one of the red
bastards from here,” one of the bullwhackers said as he sighted
over the barrel of his rifle.
“Leave ’em alone,” Preacher said
sharply. “They’re lettin’ us get out of here with our hair. It’d be
plumb stupid to antagonize ’em. Anyway, they’re gatherin’ up their
dead. Show some respect.”
“Respect?” the man repeated. “For those
red heathens?”
“They’re honorable enemies, and they
were here before we were. Sure, they came along and pushed somebody
else out, but they were still here before we were.”
The man shrugged powerful shoulders.
“Whatever you say, Preacher.”
“It won’t hurt to keep an eye on ’em.
If they try to jump us again, then you can shoot as many of ’em as
you want to.”
Within fifteen minutes, the Comanches
were gone from sight. Preacher knew they might come back, but his
instincts told him the trouble was over.
“We got some daylight left,” he told
Bartlett. “Best hitch up the teams and get movin’
again.”
While that was going on, Roland sought
out Preacher and said, “Casey tells me you saved my life. Thank
you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry I acted rashly in shooting
that Indian. I really thought he was going to take Casey with
him.”
“Well . . . I reckon it ain’t your
fault you didn’t know no better.”
“I’ll do anything and everything in my
power to protect her.”
“That’s good to know. Just be sure you
know what you’re doin’ when you do it.”
Roland nodded. Preacher had the feeling
the young man still didn’t like him very much, but at least Roland
had had the gumption to speak plainly.
A few minutes later, the oxen were
hitched up and the wagons were rolling again. Since there was only
one extra horse, the men who had been working as outriders took the
places of the wounded bullwhackers. Casey rode in one of the wagons
with Roland. He had volunteered to take over for one of the wounded
men, but Casey insisted he rest after being knocked out, and
Bartlett agreed with her.
Preacher picked Lorenzo to ride the
extra saddle mount starting out. “We’re gonna have to take the
place of all those other outriders,” he told the old-timer. “That
means scoutin’ the flanks and our back trail as well as keepin’ an
eye on what’s up ahead.”
Lorenzo nodded in understanding. “You
go ahead,” he told Preacher. “I don’t mind bringin’ up the rear for
a while.”
Preacher lifted a hand in farewell as
Lorenzo wheeled his horse and rode toward the rear of the caravan.
Preacher moved out ahead, wondering how they could get their hands
on some more horses, knowing that wasn’t likely to happen short of
Santa Fe.
For the rest of the day, Preacher and
Lorenzo circulated around the wagons as the heavy vehicles made
their slow, steady way southwestward. They checked in every
direction for any sign of the Comanches or other trouble
approaching the caravan. Nothing threatening appeared. Hot, tedious
hours crept by, and finally the sun lowered toward the horizon and
Preacher began looking for a good place to make camp.
He found it near a cluster of rocks and
motioned for the bullwhackers to pull the wagons into a circle
again. It was a good thing they would reach the springs tomorrow,
he thought. The water in the barrels was starting to run a little
low.
After the strain of the day everyone
was exhausted, but the possibility the Comanches might return had
the men so on edge that sleep was difficult. Preacher had no
trouble getting volunteers to stand guard.
When he checked on the wounded man,
Casey reported, “He seems to be sleeping peacefully and doesn’t
have any fever. I think there’s a good chance he’ll be all
right.”
“It’s thanks to you taking care of him
if he is,” Roland said.
“How’re you doin’, boy?” Preacher
asked. “You must’ve hit your head pretty hard to get knocked out
cold like that.”
Roland shrugged. “I’ve got a headache,
but that’s all.”
“Seein’ straight?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“All right.” Preacher turned back to
Casey. “If you need me, give a holler.”
She nodded. “I will.”
Despite the tension in the camp, the
night passed quietly. The wagons rolled out the next morning
without incident, and the day passed, with long hours of slow, hot
travel toward Santa Fe.
Late that afternoon, Preacher spotted a
patch of green ahead and felt his spirits surge. Vegetation meant
the springs were still flowing. He rode ahead to make sure, then
returned to the wagons to give the others the good
news.
“Looks like the spring is in good
shape,” he told an exhausted-looking Leeman Bartlett. “I’m thinkin’
after such a long haul and the trouble we’ve had, it might be a
good idea to stay here a few days and let everybody rest up,
includin’ the oxen.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,”
Bartlett responded. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Thing is, we’ll still have to keep our
guard up. Injuns have been using this spring for a whole lot longer
than wagons have been goin’ to Santa Fe. Wouldn’t surprise me none
if they knew about the spring before there ever was a Santa Fe.”
The spring emerged from the ground and
formed a pool surrounded by a marshy area covered with reeds and
grass. The Cimarron River itself was nearby, its banks lined with
scrubby trees, but its water supply was actually less dependable
than that of the spring. It had been Preacher’s experience that the
spring water tasted better than the river water, which was brackish
at times.
The caravan pushed on. The worn-out
bullwhackers had more life in their steps, as did the oxen. The big
brutes smelled the water and were anxious to reach it.
“Be careful not to let ’em drink too
much when we get there,” Preacher warned the men as he rode
alongside the wagons. “We don’t need ’em boggin’ down.” He paused
and then added, “The same thing goes for you men. You been on short
water rations for a few days now. Fill your bellies too full and
it’s gonna make you sick.”
By nightfall, the wagons were circled,
camp was established, and morale was better than it had been for
days. It was hard to believe that only one day earlier they had
been battling for their lives against the Comanches. Fresh water
and green vegetation did a lot to lift a man’s
spirits.
The man who’d had the arrow go through
his body was awake and feeling better, thanks to Casey’s nursing.
The other men who had been wounded during the fight were recovering
as well.
For the next two days, the men rested,
filled the water barrels, and did routine repair work on the
wagons. The arrows that had pierced the canvas had been removed,
and the holes sewn up. Several of the burly bullwhackers proved to
be surprisingly deft at the mending.
On their third night in camp, Preacher
sought out Leeman Bartlett and said, “I reckon we’d better get back
on the trail tomorrow, if that’s all right with you. Once we leave
the springs, another week should see us in Santa Fe.” Maybe the
last leg of the trip would prove to be the easiest, he
thought.
The man nodded. “Whatever you think is
best, Preacher. Although I must say, I’ll miss this place. Compared
to what we’ve seen so far of the Cimarron Cutoff, this is a
veritable Eden.” Bartlett paused. “I’ve started to think about what
we’ll do after we reach Santa Fe. I wish you’d come back to St.
Louis with us and guide us west again on our next
journey.”
Preacher didn’t even think about it. He
shook his head and said, “Sorry, Mr. Bartlett. I ain’t sure yet
where I’ll be goin’ when I leave Santa Fe, but it ain’t gonna be
back to St. Louis. I’ve had my fill of that town for a good long
while.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll reconsider. I’d
pay you good wages.”
Preacher smiled. “One thing a man like
me ain’t ever considered all that much is good wages.”
He said good night to Bartlett and went
to find Lorenzo. The old-timer was playing cards with some of the
bullwhackers. “You up to standin’ guard tonight?” Preacher asked
him.
Lorenzo glanced up from his cards. “I
reckon.”
Preacher nodded. “Good.” He looked out
at the blackness surrounding the camp. “I got a feelin’ . .
.”
“A bad feelin’?” Lorenzo asked
shrewdly.
“Just a feelin’, that’s
all.”
One of the bullwhackers said, “I hope
them damn Comanches don’t come after us again.” The other men
muttered agreement.
“Or those fellas who tried to rob us,”
another man put in.
Preacher hadn’t forgotten about Garity,
although it seemed likely to him the would-be thieves had already
pushed on to Santa Fe. He left Lorenzo and the other men to their
game and walked on around the circle of wagons. He found Casey and
Roland sitting on a couple of crates Roland had taken out of one of
the wagons.
The young man came to his feet as
Preacher approached. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Preacher had left the two young people
alone while the caravan was camped at the Cimarron springs. He
thought the bond between them had grown stronger, and that was a
good thing. His hope was that when the wagons started back to St.
Louis from Santa Fe, Casey would go with them. He wouldn’t be
surprised if she wound up marrying Roland Bartlett.
“No, nothin’s wrong,” Preacher told
them. “Just thought I’d see how you two were doin’ and let you know
we’re leavin’ here in the mornin’.”
Casey smiled up at him. “After
everything we’ve gone through, it’s been like paradise here,
Preacher.”
“Yeah. Roland’s pa compared it to Eden.
I reckon he wasn’t far wrong.”
“How long will it take us to finish the
trip from here?” Roland asked.
“Another week, I’m thinkin’. If nothin’
else happens along the way.” He hadn’t shaken the slight feeling of
uneasiness that had cropped up in him earlier.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Santa
Fe,” Casey said.
“It’s a right pretty town in its way,”
Preacher said. “And the mountains around it are even—”
The sentiment he was expressing was
interrupted by a terrifed shout that suddenly ripped through the
night, followed by the boom of a gunshot.