CHAPTER 19
Dog didn’t care much for having the
rope tied around him like a sling and being lifted out of the wash
by Horse. He whined as he began to rise into the air.
“Up you go,” Preacher told the big cur.
Lorenzo waited atop the bank for him.
Preacher had checked Dog for injuries
and found some deep scratches where the bear had grabbed him and
flung him away. The mountain man had some medicine made from roots
and herbs in his saddlebags that would help the injuries. He
intended to rub a healthy dollop of the stuff on his left shoulder
and arm where the bear had clawed him. That arm was already getting
a little stiff.
Lorenzo pulled Dog in, got the rope off
him, and tossed it back down to Preacher. “There you go,” he
called. “Now get outta that hole in the ground. I don’t like this
place. That bear might come back.”
Preacher thought that was unlikely, but
he didn’t waste any time getting the rope fastened around him,
tucking his rifle under his arm. Horse backed up, taking most of
Preacher’s weight as he climbed out of the wash.
“Looks like that varmint got you pretty
good,” Lorenzo said as he gestured toward Preacher’s wounded
shoulder. “Get that shirt off and we’ll clean it up.”
Using water from their canteens,
Lorenzo got the blood washed away. Preacher saw that the scratches
were deep enough to be gory and painful. He took the medicinal
ointment from his saddlebags and rubbed a handful of the black,
foul-smelling stuff on the wounds, then gave Dog the same
treatment.
“That’ll help heal up them scratches?”
Lorenzo asked.
Preacher nodded. “Injuns been usin’
things like this for hundreds of years. They generally know what
they’re doin’.”
“Didn’t you tell me that some of ’em
will chant songs and dance around and then claim it gave ’em some
sort of magic that’ll stop a rifle ball?”
“Well . . . I never said they got
ever’thing right,” Preacher
drawled.
He pulled his ripped and bloodstained
shirt back on and they mounted up. After taking a good look at the
sky and judging how much daylight was left, Preacher said, “Let’s
ride along this wash a little farther. I want to see if that bear
collapsed and died.”
“You sure we got time?”
“I’m gonna take the time. I made a
promise to Roland, and I intend to keep it if I can. I’d like to be
able to tell him I saw that beast’s carcass with my own
eyes.”
A short distance farther on, the arroyo
branched out into a maze of gullies and little canyons. The tracks
had petered out as the floor of the wash became rockier, so they
couldn’t be sure which way the bear had gone.
Preacher reined in and sighed. “Might
as well head back to the springs,” he told Lorenzo. “We don’t have
the time to waste lookin’ for that ornery critter. It’d take a
couple hours to search all them gullies and canyons.”
“You figure he’s dead or soon will be,
anyway, don’t you?” the old-timer asked.
Preacher nodded. “As many times as he’s
been shot, as much damage as we’ve done to him, I don’t see how he
could survive for much longer. He smelled like he was rottin’ away
from the inside out.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s so damn
ornery.”
“Could be,” Preacher agreed. He swung
Horse’s head around. “Let’s go.”
He wished he was as confident as he had
sounded when he answered Lorenzo’s question. The grizzly had to be
dying. It simply had to be.
But Preacher sure wished he could have
seen the thing’s carcass.
The sun had set but the western sky was
still awash with gold and orange light as the two riders approached
the springs near the bend of the Cimarron. Preacher had been
expecting to spot the wagons up ahead, but so far he hadn’t seen
them.
A vague uneasiness began to stir inside
him. It was possible Roland had ordered the men to move the wagons
to another location, but Preacher had told the young man to stay
put at the springs. He couldn’t think of any reason why Roland
would have gone against that suggestion . . . unless they were
trying to get away from trouble of some sort.
As they drew closer to the springs,
Preacher could tell the wagons definitely weren’t there. Lorenzo
saw that as well and asked, “Where the hell did they
go?”
“I don’t know,” Preacher said, “but I
don’t like it. Come on!”
He heeled Horse into a run. The big
gray stallion responded instantly, pulling ahead of the mount
carrying Lorenzo. Preacher pulled his rifle from its sheath as he
galloped toward the springs.
A shot rang out from the scrubby trees
along the river. The ball kicked up dust a considerable distance in
front of Horse. Preacher was about to veer the stallion in that
direction and return the fire when he heard a man’s voice shouting,
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s Preacher!”
That was Roland Bartlett, Preacher
realized. He headed for the trees, convinced something had gone
wrong while he was gone.
By the time he reached the trees with
Lorenzo trailing about fifty yards behind him, several men had
emerged from their cover and were waiting for him. Preacher
recognized them as some of the bullwhackers. They were grim-faced
and carried their rifles. One of them had a bloody bandage tied
around his arm, and another man sported a similar binding on his
thigh. They had been in a fight, no doubt about that.
Roland limped out to meet Preacher as
the mountain man swung down from Horse’s back. He had a bandage
tied around his right calf. His face was pale with
pain.
“What happened here?” Preacher asked.
“Where are the wagons?”
“Gone,” Roland replied in a choked
voice.
“I can see that, damn it. Who took
’em?” Preacher knew it probably hadn’t been the Comanches. Indians
didn’t have any use for wagons or slow-moving oxen.
“It was that man Garity and the other
thieves with him. They must have been following us, just waiting
for a good chance to jump us again.”
“Garity,” Preacher said. The name left
a bad taste in his mouth. “I knew him and his bunch might still be
around here, but I figured it was more likely they’d gone on to
Santa Fe or wherever the hell else it was they were
headed.”
Roland shook his head. “I got a good
look at him. It was definitely Garity and his men. We tried to
fight them off, but they hit us without any warning and killed
several of the men before we knew what was going on. The rest of us
were cut off from the wagons and had to retreat into these trees.
Some of them kept us pinned down while the others hitched up the
teams and got the wagons moving.”
A chill went down Preacher’s back as a
thought occurred to him. “What about Casey?” he asked. “Was she
hurt in the fightin’?”
“I don’t know,” Roland replied, his
voice more tortured than ever. “She was with the wagons. Garity . .
. Garity took her with them.”
Preacher went cold all over when he
heard those words. Anger boiled up inside him. “What the hell were
you doin’?” he demanded. “You were supposed to have guards posted,
and you should’ve been with the wagons, not down here by the river
!”
“I know,” Roland said, sounding
miserable. “But some of the men decided they wanted to wash off,
and I thought it would be better if they did that in the river
instead of the pool at the springs, and . . . and—”
Preacher stopped him with a sharp
slashing motion of his hand. “That’s enough,” he said coldly. “It
was a damn fool thing to do, and just the sort of chance Garity had
been waitin’ for, I reckon.”
“I know.” Roland’s voice sounded dull
and defeated as he nodded. “It’s my fault.” His head came up.
“That’s why I’m going after them. I’m going to get Casey and the
wagons back. I want Lorenzo’s horse.”
“And leave me stuck out here?” Lorenzo
asked. He snorted. “Not likely.”
“Hold on,” Preacher said. “These horses
been travelin’ all day already. They’re in no shape to be rode all
night. Anyway, there ain’t much light left. How good are you at
trackin’ in the dark?”
Roland grimaced. “I’m not a tracker at
all. You know that, Preacher.”
“So you figured I’d go with you,
right?”
“I supposed you’d want to help Casey as
much as I do.” Anger flared in the young man’s voice as he went on,
“Or do you not give a damn about her now that she’s with
me?”
“She ain’t with you,” Preacher pointed
out. “She’s with Garity. And you’re damn right I want to help her.
We can’t do that by rushin’ off, just the two of us.”
Roland glared at him for a moment, then
sighed. “You’re right, of course. Garity has at least a dozen men.
But what are we going to do?”
Preacher looked at the sky, where the
last light of day was fading. “We’ll stay here tonight and pick up
their trail in the mornin’,” he said. “Did you at least see which
way they were headed when they left?”
“They were following the trail
southwest.”
Preacher nodded. “They’re headin’ for
Santa Fe. Nobody there will know the wagons and the freight don’t
belong to them. They can sell ’em all off and make a killin’, then
take the money and light a shuck out of there before anybody
figures out the deal was crooked.” Preacher tugged on his earlobe.
“Maybe we can go after the varmints tonight after all. When did the
raid happen?”
“Around the middle of the
day.”
“So they’ve had half a day to get a
lead on us,” Preacher mused. “But even on foot, men can move faster
than those oxen pullin’ those heavy wagons. We can catch up to ’em
before the night’s over.”
Roland shook his head. “Some of the men
are hurt too bad to march like that.”
“Then they’ll stay here with a couple
men to watch over ’em while the rest of us go after
Garity.”
“We’ll be outnumbered.”
“Not for long,” Preacher
said.
Lorenzo didn’t like it, but Preacher
asked him to stay behind to help guard the wounded men. The
old-timer had been in the saddle practically all day and was worn
out.
“The same thing is true of you,”
Lorenzo pointed out, “and you got clawed by that damn bear, to
boot.”
“Yeah, but I’m a heap younger than
you,” Preacher responded with a grin.
“You just want me to give up my horse
so that young whippersnapper can use it.”
“Roland’s spoilin’ for a fight. We’ll
see to it that he gets one.”
Reluctantly, Lorenzo agreed. “Don’t
push that horse too hard. It’s already been a long way
today.”
Preacher nodded. “We’ll take it as easy
as we can. Most of the time we won’t be movin’ any faster than
those men can walk.”
In addition to Preacher and Roland,
eight men were in the party going after Garity and the rest of the
outlaws. Each man was armed with a rifle and a knife, and a couple
had pistols as well. It wasn’t much of an army, Preacher thought,
but it would have to do.
Starting out, Roland was the only one
who rode, since he had an injured leg. Preacher walked alongside
him, leading Horse. The other eight men followed behind them. The
stars were out and provided enough light for Preacher to follow the
well-defined wagon trail.
“What about the bear?” Roland asked
after a few minutes. “I saw that you were hurt. You must have found
it.”
“We did,” Preacher said. “Dog and me
both tangled with the varmint close up, and Lorenzo shot the
blasted thing again.”
“So you killed it?”
“Well . . . it was alive the last time
we saw it, but as bad hurt as it was, it’s bound to be dead by
now.”
“But you’re not sure?” Roland
persisted.
Preacher shrugged. “I wish I
was.”
He knew logically that the bear
couldn’t have survived for much longer after their encounter
earlier that day . . . but he had thought that on other occasions,
too, he reminded himself.
Ghost bear. Spirit
bear. The words forced themselves into his brain. He shoved
them right back out. The bear was flesh and blood. He had felt it,
smelled it, wrestled with it. Like everything else flesh and blood,
it could be killed.
But he had to admit, that particular
bear had been damned stubborn about dying.
“I hope Casey’s all right,” Roland
said. “I . . . I hate to think about what might be
happening—”
“Then don’t,” Preacher said. “Think
about what we’re gonna do when we catch up to that
bunch.”
“What are we
going to do? We can’t just burst into their camp and start
shooting. Casey might get hurt, and besides, they outnumber us,
like I said before.”
“I plan to do somethin’ about
that.”
“What can one man do?”
Preacher smiled in the darkness. “I’ve
slipped into and back out of more than one Injun camp, and take my
word for it, the Blackfeet and the Sioux and the Comanch’ are a
hell of a lot harder to sneak around than those outlaws will be. I
plan to find out just where Casey is—maybe even get her out of
there before the shootin’ starts.”
“That would be wonderful,” Roland said.
“She’s already been through enough in her life.”
“Told you about her life, did
she?”
“She told me enough,” Roland snapped.
“I don’t care about her past, if that’s what you’re talking about,
Preacher. It’s a closed book as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s a good idea,” Preacher said
with a curt nod. “I’d keep it that way, if I was you.”
They dropped the subject of Casey,
which was just fine with Preacher. He didn’t know how much of the
truth she had told Roland about her past, and he didn’t care. That
was between the two of them.
Preacher called a halt as the moon rose
to let the men and horses rest for a few minutes. Later, around
midnight, he estimated, they stopped again. The moon and stars
wheeled through their courses in the sky as the party trudged on.
Preacher could sense the exhaustion in the men.
Finally, he held up a hand and called
softly, “Hold on. We’ll wait here a bit.”
“Don’t we need to keep going?” Roland
asked. “Casey’s still up there somewhere. They can’t be too far
ahead of us now.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s what I want to
find out. You fellas stay here. I’m goin’ ahead to take a look
around.” He added, “Don’t budge from this spot until I get
back.”
“We won’t,” Roland snapped defensively.
He knew their failure to do that at the springs had contributed
heavily to the disaster that had befallen them.
Taking Dog with him but leaving the
stallion behind, Preacher disappeared into the night.