Preachers hell, p.23
Preacher's Hell, page 23
Keeping his voice low, Preacher said to Nighthawk, “Ozark don’t know about that other trail. You take it and get back down there. Work your way around if you can and come in behind ’em. You might get a chance to jump some of them. Hold off, though, if there are too many. It won’t do us no good in the long run for you to get yourself killed.”
A stubbornly determined light burned in the warrior’s eyes, but he nodded in agreement with Preacher’s words. He might not like it, but he would do what the mountain man said.
“I’ll stay here and stall the no-good son of a buck,” Preacher went on. “If Ozark leaves with the others as prisoners, you follow ’em. I’ll pick up your trail and catch up as soon as I can.”
Nighthawk nodded again.
“Good luck,” Preacher concluded.
Nighthawk picked his way nimbly across the top of the “nose” and then followed the trail as it curved around the mountainside. The giant warrior had just gone out of Preacher’s sight when Ozark shouted again from below.
“I don’t have all the patience in the world! If you’re up there, Preacher, you’d damned well better answer me. Your friends are all right for the moment, but there’s no guarantee they’ll stay that way!”
“You’d best not hurt any o’ those folks, Ozark!” Preacher called. “If you do, I swear I’ll make it my life’s work to see that you pay for it!”
“Your life won’t last very much longer if you don’t act reasonable and cooperate with me! Hell, now that I know where this place is, I don’t really need you or the others anymore. I can just kill them and leave you and that big redskin up there to starve to death!”
Preacher felt that icy finger go up and down his spine again. Ozark was right—at least as far as the boss outlaw knew. Preacher could escape from here anytime he wanted to, but for the moment, he wanted to keep Ozark occupied.
“Before we make any deals, I want proof those folks are alive. You let my friend Audie sing out!”
“You mean the sawed-off little runt?” Ozark laughed. “Sure. Go ahead, runt.”
“I’m not hurt, Preacher.” That was Audie’s voice, all right, but not surprisingly, some strain could be heard in it. “They knocked me around a little, but nothing serious.” He paused. “What about Nighthawk? He’s not hurt, is he?”
Preacher smiled faintly as he lowered his voice to a rumble and called, “Umm!”
Ozark and the others would never know the difference, but Audie would realize that was Preacher imitating the massive warrior—and Audie was smart enough to make an educated guess that his old friends might have set some sort of plan in motion. He would play along for now.
Preacher switched back to his regular voice and said, “How about you, Miz Collins? Are you all right?”
“I’m not hurt at all, Preacher,” Annie replied. “Just frightened for the sake of my children.”
That prompted Ozark to say, “I’m not going to hurt those kids. Damn it, when I sent men to look for them in the first place, didn’t I give orders that they were to be brought back unharmed?”
Annie responded to that, but voices carried in this thin air. Preacher could still hear her coldly angry words even though she was talking to Ozark.
“You didn’t really care what happened to Edward and Elizabeth,” she accused. “You just wanted those blankets they had with them.”
“No point in denying it now,” Ozark said. “Even so, I told my men to be careful of the infants.”
Preacher cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Little Bear! Are you down there?”
“Blast it!” Ozark burst out. “Are you going to insist on talking to the babies, too?”
“I reckon they’re all right,” Preacher said. “I want to hear from Little Bear, though.”
After a moment, the Salish youth called, “I’m fine, Preacher. Like Audie, they roughed me up a little, but no real harm done.”
“Put up a fight, did you, son?”
“Well, I tried.”
“Proud of you. But for now, don’t cause any more ruckus. I got to talk to Ozark. We got some dealin’ to do.”
That brought an unpleasant laugh from the outlaw. “If you think you can make some sort of deal with me, you’re very much mistaken, Preacher. The stakes are high, and you don’t have any cards to play.”
“That’s where you’re dead wrong, mister! There ain’t no stakes!”
For several heartbeats, no response came from below. Then Ozark broke the silence by demanding, “What are you talking about?”
“There’s nothin’ up here. This danged old cave we found is empty!”
CHAPTER 29
The lie came to Preacher out of thin air, but it was a good bluff and would keep Ozark distracted for a while longer, giving Nighthawk more of a chance to scout the situation.
For a long moment, Ozark didn’t respond. Then he shouted angrily, “That’s a damned lie! That cave’s full of money! Jonathan Collins admitted that to me himself. He admitted he’d been stealing from his own men for years and squirreling the loot away in some hiding place!”
“Maybe he did,” Preacher said. “I don’t know about that. But if he did, then he cached it somewhere else, because there ain’t a blasted thing up here except dust and the bones o’ some little critter that crawled in here and died!”
He smiled. That business about the bones was a nice touch, he told himself. Just a little detail to make what he was saying seem more real.
Ozark wasn’t convinced, however. He bellowed, “He boasted to me that he’d left his wife a map leading to that hidden fortune! He said he made it himself. I didn’t figure out until after he was dead and those Indians had run off with the babies that he was talking about the beadwork on those blankets. That was the only thing he made that could’ve been a map.”
The outlaw let out a cackling laugh and went on, “And you led us right to the place, just like I thought you might! Face it, Preacher—I beat you!”
“I don’t know what you think you won.”
“You and the Indian come on down from there,” Ozark said, putting his gloating aside. “Don’t give me any more trouble, and I’ll let Annie and the little ones live. I give you my word on that. Hell, I’ll even let this Flathead kid go back to his people. You won’t get a better deal than that.”
“You didn’t say nothin’ about what’ll happen to me and Audie and Nighthawk.”
“Oh, you three? You’ll die! That’s unfortunate for you and your friends, but I’ve heard too much about you to leave you alive, Preacher. I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for you!”
Preacher muttered, “And that’s exactly what you’d be doin’, old son. After what happened to Bluebird and her grandpa, you got it comin’.”
He didn’t yell that loud enough for Ozark to hear. Instead, he allowed the silence to drag out, giving Nighthawk more time to get down off the mountainside.
Also, he knew his lack of a response would get on Ozark’s nerves, and sure enough, a few minutes later the outlaw shouted, “What’s it going to be, mountain man? Are you coming down—or do I kill the Flathead boy?”
Preacher heard the genuine threat in Ozark’s voice and had no doubt the outlaw would go through with it. Little Bear’s life meant nothing to a man like Mack Ozark. Less than nothing.
“All right, hold on, damn it!” Preacher shouted. “I’m comin’ down!”
The thought of working his way back along that ledge, leaving himself wide open for any of the gang who wanted to take potshots at him, was unnerving. But there was nothing else Preacher could do. He had to hope that Mack Ozark wanted to kill him face-to-face and would allow him to climb all the way back down to the camp instead of letting the other outlaws blaze away at him.
“The big Indian has to come down, too!” Ozark called. “I want to see both of you!”
Preacher made a face. He shouted, “Nighthawk ain’t here! He headed on up the mountain to try to get away! Damned redskin! You wouldn’t think somebody as big as him would cut and run like that!”
It pained him to say such things about Nighthawk, but he had to account for the warrior’s absence somehow. Ozark might accept the story, or he might not, but there was nothing else Preacher could do.
“Damn you!” Ozark roared. “You’re lying again! This is some sort of low-down trick!”
“No, it ain’t!” Preacher said. “Listen, I’m comin’ down like you wanted! Don’t—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish that plea. Down below, a man yelled in alarm, and a second later, gun-thunder from half a dozen weapons pealed out and rolled over the landscape.
Preacher bit back a curse, dashed across the outcropping heedless of any danger, and pounded up the trail that was hidden from the sight of those below. They might be able to catch a glimpse of him moving, but that was all.
He didn’t know where the trail led, but even though it rose slightly as it curved around the mountain, he was confident that eventually it would take him back to the lower levels. Following it had to be faster and less risky than going back down that narrow ledge.
Unfortunately, no matter how much faster this way was, he was going to be too late, he realized. Already, the gunfire was beginning to die away. The fight, such as it was, would soon be over.
Nighthawk must have made a move against the gang. Either that, or else they had discovered him watching them and opened fire on him. Any hopes of taking Ozark and his men by surprise were gone.
That thought, added to the ominous silence coming from below, made Preacher jerk to a sudden stop. He stood there, breathing a little hard from emotion rather than exertion, and cudgeled his brain into working.
Whatever had happened down there, it was over, and there wasn’t a blasted thing he could do about it.
If he was going to fight back against Ozark, he would have to come up with a different way of doing it.
He looked up at the higher slopes. A number of boulders perched there. With a plan forming quickly in his mind, he went back to the rock outcropping and knelt there with one knee on top of the “nose.”
“Preacher!” Mack Ozark shouted. “Preacher, where the devil are you?”
“What happened down there?” Preacher yelled back. “What was all that shootin’ about?”
“I think you know good and well what it was! That tame giant Indian of yours tried to sneak up on us!”
Preacher’s jaw tightened. He hated hearing his old friend referred to in such an undignified manner and knew it would annoy Nighthawk, too. But the current state of the big Crow’s health was more important.
“What did you do to him?” Preacher demanded. “Is he all right?”
“He got a rifle ball through the arm, but he’ll live. Not for long, though, if you don’t come down here like I told you to. And like you already agreed to.”
“The hell with you!” Preacher yelled. “I ain’t surrenderin’ after all. You let my friends go and light a shuck out o’ here, or I’m gonna rain down an avalanche on all of you!”
“You crazy fool! If you start an avalanche, it’ll wipe out these innocent people, too.”
“You mean those innocent people you keep threatenin’ to kill? If I can’t save ’em, I sure as blazes ain’t gonna let you get away with everything you’ve done!”
Audie’s voice drifted up from below. “Go ahead and do it, Preacher!” he urged. “Dying will be worth it if we can take this outlaw scum with us!”
“Umm!” Nighthawk added, confirming Ozark’s claim that the massive warrior was still alive.
The two of them wouldn’t believe for a second that Preacher meant to kill them in an avalanche. They would know he was up to something else.
But Annie didn’t know him that well and must have accepted the threat as a genuine one. She surprised Preacher by crying out, “Go ahead, Preacher! I’d rather die with my children than be separated from them again!”
Hearing her vehement response might have unnerved Ozark a little, if a man such as him was capable of feeling such an emotion. He shouted, “Now, hold on, damn it! Don’t do anything foolish, Preacher!”
“If we’re all gonna die anyway, what does it matter?” Preacher let out a ringing, gleeful cackle of laughter that echoed from the stony slopes. “Like Audie said, dyin’s worth it if I can take a skunk like you with me!”
A moment later, Preacher heard Ozark shouting at his men, although he couldn’t make out the words. A minute or two after that, the sound of hoofbeats came to his ears.
They were pulling back, Preacher knew. Trying to get out of the path of that avalanche he had threatened.
And they would be taking the prisoners with them, Preacher knew. Ozark wouldn’t give up on the chance of putting his hands on that hidden loot, and he wouldn’t throw away any possible leverage he might be able to use in achieving that goal.
The outlaw chief had to have the last word. He yelled up at Preacher, “You’ll never get down off this mountain alive! We’ll be waiting for you!”
“Wait and be damned!” Preacher gave another of those maniacal laughs. “You’ll never get what’s in that cave, either! It’ll be buried in that rockslide!”
While Ozark bellowed curses, Preacher turned and began scrambling higher on the slope. He went past a dozen large boulders and countless smaller ones until he reached the one he wanted.
He turned and put his shoulder against it, shoved as hard as he could. The boulder didn’t budge.
Preacher gritted his teeth and tried again. The boulder remained as motionless as ever. Preacher braced his back against another rock, lifted his right leg, and rested the sole of his boot against the boulder he had selected as the most promising for his purpose. When he was positioned the way he wanted, he placed his left foot against the boulder, too.
Then he began to push with both legs, summoning up all the strength from deep inside him that he possibly could.
Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. The pounding of blood inside his skull made it difficult for him to hear the fading rataplan of horses’ hooves as the outlaws beat a hasty retreat. Preacher clenched his jaw so tightly it seemed as if his teeth were about to crack.
The boulder shifted.
It only moved a fraction of an inch at first, but when Preacher took a deep breath, set himself, and pushed again, the huge rock tilted forward and slid a couple of inches with a loud grating sound. Preacher threw his powerful muscles into another effort.
This time, the boulder tipped even more, and then suddenly it was gone as its weight shifted and it began to roll down the slope. The change was so swift that it dumped Preacher on the ground where the big rock had been sitting only a second earlier.
He started to slide after it but caught himself. From where he was, he watched as the boulder began to roll faster. It bounced in the air a little whenever it hit a rough spot, and that just increased its speed.
A heartbeat later, it crashed into another boulder, and the impact was enough to knock that one loose and start it rolling, too.
Within moments, a full-scale avalanche was crashing down the mountainside as more and more boulders began tumbling from their perches.
Preacher knew that Ozark, his men, and the prisoners had had time to descend far enough through the trees that they would be safe. The boulders might smash through the pines right at the tree line, but the growth was thick enough to slow and then stop the avalanche.
He had to pray that his hunch was right and Ozark had taken the captives with him. If Preacher had been even indirectly responsible for the deaths of his old friends, as well as an innocent young woman and babies and the Indian youth …
It was the worst thing he could think of. The guilt would be pure-dee hell. And even though he would take revenge on Mack Ozark, an ocean of outlaw blood wouldn’t be enough to put things right.
Preacher shoved those grim thoughts out of his mind for now and forced himself to approach the situation with a practical attitude. The huge rumble from the avalanche was dying away now, but billowing, swirling, blinding clouds of dust still rose from lower down on the slopes.
Preacher plunged into that dust and began making his way back to the cave where Jonathan Collins had hidden his ill-gotten gains.
Even though he had threatened to cover up the cave with the rockslide, Preacher hadn’t known if that was actually what would happen. When he reached the spot, he saw that the “nose” in the telltale face was still mostly intact, although one of the falling boulders had knocked a chunk off the front of it.
Smaller rocks and masses of dirt that had been dragged down with the tumbling boulders had piled up on the level ground in front of the cave mouth, forming a barrier that effectively closed it off.
It wasn’t permanently buried, though; a crew of men with picks and shovels could clear off enough of it to gain access to the cave in a day or two of work.
Preacher figured Ozark would send somebody up to check on that. He would be long gone by the time that happened, though. He clambered over some rocks and found the other trail leading up. It was damaged in places but still passable.
Preacher got out of there in a hurry. He needed to find Ozark’s bunch and make sure the prisoners were still with them.
Then he could start making plans to rescue those captives and settle the score with Mack Ozark.
CHAPTER 30
After a hundred yards, the back-door trail, as Preacher thought of it, made a sharp turn and entered a narrow crevice that cut through the side of the mountain and sloped down gradually rather than up.
It looked like some giant had taken a knife and started to carve a slice off the mountain as if it were a towering rock cake, then changed his mind for some reason before the slice was cut all the way off.
The passage was narrow but still wide enough for a pack horse to get through it. Once a man started leading that pack horse through the crevice, though, there would be no turning back. It wasn’t wide enough for that.
