CHAPTER 22
It was a damn good thing he had a thick
skull, Preacher thought as consciousness seeped back into his head.
If he didn’t, his brains would be scrambled good and proper by
now.
Maybe they are and you
just don’t know it, he told himself.
He saw light and felt heat, but it
wasn’t the same as before. The glow that penetrated his closed
eyelids danced and flickered, and the heat wasn’t
steady.
He was close to a fire.
And he was bound again, but not staked
out on the ground. He was upright. When he shifted as much as the
ropes around his arms would allow, he felt a rough surface scrape
his back. After a moment he figured out that his wrists were tied
together behind his back, and another rope wound around his torso
binding him to what felt like a wagon wheel.
It was a wagon wheel, he saw when he
forced his eyes open. He was tied to the front wheel, and Casey was
bound similarly to the rear wheel on the same side of the vehicle.
Preacher looked past her and saw Roland Bartlett tied to another
wagon. The left shoulder of his shirt was stained with blood where
Garity had shot him with the derringer, and his head sagged
forward. He was unconscious, but his chest rose and fell, so he was
still alive.
They were on the inside of the circle.
Preacher could see several other men were tied to wagon wheels,
too. He recognized them as some of the bullwhackers he had left
with Roland. They were the survivors from the bunch that had
launched the attack on the outlaw camp while Roland provided a
distraction.
Preacher wondered where Dog and Horse
were. Probably within earshot, knowing his old friends. He figured
they would come if he whistled to summon them, but that would
expose them to danger at the hands of the outlaws.
Night had fallen. Preacher realized he
had lost most of an entire day. The oxen were crowded over to one
side of the area inside the circle of wagons, and a big fire had
been built on the side closest to the wagons where the prisoners
were bound. The outlaws were gathered around it.
One of the men had noticed Preacher
lift his head. The man nudged Garity and jerked his chin toward the
wagons. Garity looked around, saw that Preacher was awake, and
grinned. He ambled over, carrying a jug. Preacher could smell the
rotgut whiskey on Garity’s breath, even from several feet
away.
“Damn, you got a hard head!” Garity
said, unknowingly echoing the same thought that had gone through
Preacher’s brain a few moments earlier. “I thought sure you was
dead this time.”
“Not even close,” Preacher rasped,
which was sort of a lie. He felt at least half dead.
But that meant he was still half alive,
too, and that half was a hell of a lot stubborner than the dead
part.
“I’ll bet you’re wonderin’ why I didn’t
just go ahead and kill you.”
“I don’t waste my time wondering about
what loco snakes like you do or don’t do,” Preacher
said.
Garity went on as if Preacher hadn’t
said anything. “I’m tired of havin’ to worry about you people
poppin’ up to cause trouble for me. Now that I’ve got you all here,
I’m gonna finish you off once and for all.”
Garity didn’t know it, but he was
wrong. Lorenzo and the bullwhackers who had been wounded too badly
to come along on the rescue mission were still back at the springs.
But it didn’t really matter, Preacher knew. Those men wouldn’t be
able to help him and the other prisoners.
Garity waved a hand. “We got you all
lined up here like targets, so that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re
gonna have some target practice.” Garity stepped closer and poked a
hard, bony finger against Preacher’s bare chest. “Startin’ with
you, you son of a bitch. We’re gonna shoot away little pieces of
you and see how long we can keep you alive.”
“What about the girl?” Preacher
asked.
Before Garity could answer, Casey said
hotly, “You might as well go ahead and kill me, too. I won’t
cooperate with you.”
Garity leered at her. “You go ahead and
fight all you want to, darlin’. Just makes it that much sweeter for
me, and I’ll bet most of the boys here feel the same way. The ones
in Santa Fe will, too.”
“I’ll kill you,” Casey said in a low,
threatening voice. “You’ll never be able to turn your back on me,
Garity. You’ll never be able to close your eyes. Because I’ll find
a way to kill you.”
“I’d like to see you try,
honey.”
“But you don’t have to worry about
that,” Casey went on. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
Garity shook his head. “You got nothin’
to bargain with.”
“You don’t think so? Leave Preacher,
Roland, and the other men alive. Tomorrow morning you can leave
them tied up so it’ll take them all day to get loose. By then
you’ll be far enough down the trail that they’ll never catch up to
you. If you do that”—Casey swallowed hard—“I’ll make it worth your
while. I give you my word on that.”
“What can you do that’d make it worth
my while?”
“I worked in a whorehouse from the time
I was sixteen,” Casey said with a defiant jut of her chin. “I
promise you, Garity, I know some tricks that’ll surprise even a man
like you.”
Garity looked at her and chortled. “You
think so? You make it mighty temptin’.”
Roland’s head had started to lift
during the last exchange. He heard enough of it, and understood
enough, to prompt him to call out shakily, “N-no, Casey!
Don’t!”
“Shut up, mister,” Garity snapped.
“This is between me and this little trollop.” He looked at Casey
again and went on, “I’ll admit you got me curious, but it ain’t
enough. I don’t want no more trouble, so we’re gonna just go ahead
and shoot these other fellas. If I have to knock you out to get
what I want from you, that’s all right.”
The oxen began to shift around
nervously. Preacher noticed that and frowned. Something was
bothering them, and it took a lot to spook those massive, stolid
beasts. He peered through the gaps between the wagons, searching
the night, but it was hard to see anything in the thick darkness,
especially since his sight had been compromised by the bright
flames of the campfire. He drew in a deep breath, thinking he might
catch a whiff of a particular scent, but the smell of the woodsmoke
covered up everything except the whiskey fumes Garity was breathing
toward him from only a few feet away.
In fact, Garity lifted the jug just
then and asked, “You want a drink, Preacher? One last drink before
we start shootin’ you to pieces?”
“I wouldn’t drink after you if that was
the last jug of corn squeezin’s on earth,” Preacher answered with a
glare.
“I got news for you.” Garity laughed.
“As far as you’re concerned, this is the
last jug of corn squeezin’s on earth! Because you’re gonna be dead
in a little while.”
Preacher looked at the way the oxen had
started tossing their heads around a little. Even though the
possibility that had occurred to him was so farfetched it was hard
to believe, he took the chance anyway.
What did he have to lose?
“You’d better not shoot me,” he said.
“You’ll be mighty sorry if you do.”
“I don’t think so,” Garity responded.
“Why in the hell would you say that?”
“Because if you kill me,” Preacher
said, “the spirit of my brother the bear is gonna come after you
and tear you apart.”
Garity and the outlaws stared at him.
“Your brother the bear?” Garity repeated. “What in blazes are you
talkin’ about?”
“It’s true,” Preacher insisted. “Me and
the grizzly bear are brothers. He’s my totem animal, as the Injuns
would say. He follows me around and protects me.”
“And you had the gall to call me loco!
That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“If you don’t believe me, go ahead and
shoot me,” Preacher said calmly. “The spirit bear won’t just get
you, though.” He raised his voice as he looked around at the other
outlaws and went on, “He’ll come in here and kill all the rest of
your men, too. Rip ’em into little pieces, that’s what he’ll do. If
you don’t believe me, ask them.” He jerked his head toward Casey
and Roland and the other prisoners. “They’ve all seen it with their
own eyes.”
“It’s true,” Casey said quickly. “The
biggest bear I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s terribly ferocious,
and . . . and it follows Preacher around!”
She wasn’t stretching the truth by
much, Preacher thought. The bear had certainly seemed to be
following him for hundreds of miles.
“I saw it,” Roland put in. “The thing
is a monster, and you can’t kill it. Before we knew about its
connection to Preacher, we shot it again and again, and it just
kept coming. It . . . it killed my father.”
Roland’s voice broke, and there was no
doubting his sincerity. He and Casey had caught on so quickly to
what Preacher was doing. Several of the bullwhackers chimed in as
well, telling Garity how fierce and massive the beast
was.
They probably thought Preacher was
stalling for time, clinging to life any way he could for as long as
he could, just as he had done all those years ago when the
Blackfeet took him prisoner and planned to burn him at the
stake.
But there was a big difference.
Preacher was stalling, sure, but he was also waiting to see if his
crazy hunch might be true. No reason why it shouldn’t be, he told
himself. The oxen were nervous . . . and Garity’s men were starting
to get that way, too. He saw the furtive, worried looks they
exchanged with each other.
“There’s only one way you can kill me
and keep the spirit bear from seekin’ revenge,” Preacher
said.
“Yeah? How’s that?” Garity asked with a
sneer.
“In a fair fight. Turn me loose and you
and me can settle this man to man, Garity. If I die fightin’, it’ll
be an honorable death and the ghost bear won’t have to avenge
me.”
Garity shook his head. “That ain’t
gonna happen.”
One of his men spoke up. “Why not,
Garity? You said yourself that Preacher’s half dead. Hell, you can
finish him off easy.”
The other men nodded in
agreement.
“Damn it, have you forgot who’s givin’
the orders here?” Garity snapped at them.
“Their lives are ridin’ on it, too,”
Preacher said. “The ghost bear will kill ’em all.”
“Shut the hell up about some stupid
ghost bear!” Garity roared. “There ain’t no such
thing!”
“Then go ahead and shoot me,” Preacher
challenged. “See what happens.”
Garity glowered at him for a long
moment, then muttered, “Son of a bitch.” He drew the knife at his
belt and used it to point at two of his men. “Point your rifles at
him while I’m cuttin’ him loose. If he tries anything funny, go
ahead and kill him.”
“You’re gonna fight him, Garity?” one
of the outlaws asked.
“No, I’m gonna cut him loose and then
kill him,” Garity said. “It ain’t gonna last long enough to call a
real fight.”
They would see about that, Preacher
thought.
Garity moved closer to him and started
sawing on the ropes that held him to the wagon wheel. After a
moment, the ropes parted. Without them to hold him up, Preacher’s
strength deserted him momentarily and he fell to his
knees.
Garity laughed. “See what I mean?” he
told his men. “What’s about to happen ain’t a fight at all. It’s
gonna be pure slaughter.”
With his hands tied behind his back,
Preacher struggled to his feet. He dragged a couple deep breaths
into his lungs, turned sideways, and held his bound hands away from
him.
“Finish it, Garity,” he
said.
“Oh, I’ll finish it, all right,” Garity
said meaningfully. He moved behind Preacher and roughly sliced the
bonds around the mountain man’s wrists, leaving a stinging cut on
Preacher’s arm in the process. Preacher pulled his hands in front
of him. They were like chunks of dead meat. He shook them and
flexed them. A million tiny knives pricked him as the blood began
to flow again, but it was welcome torture. It meant that he would
be able to use his hands again.
“All right,” Garity said. He held out a
hand to one of his men. “Gimme your knife.” The man did so, and
Garity threw the knife into the ground at Preacher’s feet. The
handle quivered a little as the weapon stood upright. “Whenever
you’re ready, Preacher,” Garity said. “Just don’t take all night
about it. I’m gettin’ a mite anxious to carve you into little
pieces.”
Preacher looked down at the knife, then
up at Garity. “I don’t think I can do it,” he said. “I’m too beat
up. I can’t take you on.”
“I knew it,” Garity sneered. “What a
damn coward.”
“But I got a substitute,” Preacher went
on. “Somebody you can fight instead of me.”
“Oh? Who’s that?” Mockingly, Garity
waved a hand at Casey. “The whore? Or that boy?” He pointed at
Roland.
“Nope,” said Preacher.
“Him.”
He nodded toward the far side of the
circle, where the grizzly that had just climbed over a wagon tongue
reared up to its full height and let out a soul-shattering
roar.