Preacher's Blood Hunt Read online

  But if they got away, Barnabas Pendexter would just come after them again, Will mused with a frown. Pendexter wasn’t just evil; he was incredibly stubborn and arrogant, too. He had tracked them down once, and he would find a way to do it again.

  It was clear that only one thing would stop his threat from looming over them for the rest of their lives.

  Barnabas Pendexter had to die.

  That thought occupied Will’s mind when he suddenly felt a light touch on his shoulder. He jerked around and his hand went to the pistol tucked behind his belt.

  He stopped short when he saw Charlotte standing there.

  For a second he couldn’t speak. Then he said, “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I dozed off. But then I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Will, we . . . we need to talk—”

  “No, we don’t. Everything’s fine. We’ll get away from Pendexter and find some other place where he’ll never bother us again.”

  “Perhaps we will. But that won’t stop you from thinking the things that you’re thinking right now.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m thinking about how we’re going to escape—”

  “You’re thinking about what Blood Eye did to me.”

  Will felt his face grow warm. “It’s not proper to speak about such things—”

  “You believe that he dishonored me. Had his way with me.”

  “You had no control over what that savage—”

  “He didn’t.” Charlotte shook her head vehemently.

  Will frowned, unable for a moment to fully comprehend what Charlotte had just told him.

  “He didn’t molest me. He . . . he tied me up, and I thought he was going to, but he didn’t. Oh, he said things . . . vile, unspeakable things . . . about what he planned to do to me, but he said that first I had to be . . . prepared.”

  “What the devil did he mean by that?”

  “Devil may well be right.” A tiny shudder went through her. “While I was tied up, he carried out some sort of . . . ritual, I suppose you’d call it. He chanted and danced around me. It went on for hours. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that he was trying to summon up a . . . a demon from the bowels of Hell!”

  “Good Lord,” Will muttered.

  “Exactly. I suspect He’s the one who saved me, because I prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life. Finally Blood Eye stopped what he was doing, and I thought it was all over then. But instead of attacking me, he sat down and crossed his legs and took out a pipe. He put something in it—”

  “Tobacco?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “I . . . I’m not sure. It looked more like some sort of herb. But he smoked it like tobacco for a while, and then he just sat there. His good eye had gotten rather glassy. I thought he was going to pass out. I hoped he would, so that I could at least try to get free and slip away, but he never did.”

  She paused while Will tried to digest everything she had told him. The story seemed far-fetched, but her words had the ring of truth to him, and he knew her better than he had ever known anyone else. He didn’t think she was lying to him.

  “Finally, it started to get dark,” Charlotte continued. “Blood Eye came out of his stupor, or whatever you’d call it, untied me, and took me back to Druke’s stronghold to watch Preacher’s showdown with the giant French brute. You know everything that happened after that.”

  “Earlier when you kissed me,” Will said, “why did you stiffen and pull away?”

  “I didn’t. You did. I just reacted to what you did. That’s when I knew that what you thought had happened was bothering you. I knew that I had to tell you the truth and make you understand that nothing has to change between us. Nothing.”

  Will took a deep breath. He hadn’t been aware of the reaction in him that she described, but he couldn’t swear that it hadn’t taken place. It was true that bad thoughts had been preying on him. “I’m glad you told me. If things were otherwise, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Truly.”

  “Of course it would have,” she said softly. “But they’re not. And now that we’ve cleared the air we can do like you said and concentrate on getting away from here. Away from here and far, far away from Barnabas Pendexter.”

  He almost told her then what he had been thinking about how Pendexter’s death was the only thing that would truly free them. He stopped himself and decided there would be time enough for that discussion later.

  Charlotte hated Pendexter, Will had no doubt about that, but she had been married to the man. Was still married to the man, legally. He wasn’t sure how she would feel about murdering Pendexter if it came down to that.

  As for himself, Will knew he could put a bullet in the blackguard’s heart and never lose a second’s sleep over it. He might even get the chance to do that before they left King’s Crown.

  That probably would depend to a large degree on how Preacher’s mission was going....

  CHAPTER 35

  Pendexter’s man never saw Preacher coming. The mountain man crashed onto his back and shoulders and drove him out of the saddle. They tumbled to the ground as the startled horse lunged ahead.

  Preacher landed on top. His target writhed around and tried to throw him off. Preacher hammered a punch to the back of the man’s neck.

  Pendexter’s man fumbled for his pistol. As it came free, Preacher slid the knife Charlotte had given him from the sheath at his waist and plunged it into the man’s side. He angled the blade up, felt it scrape against ribs, and then the gasp the man let out told Preacher that the point had reached his heart.

  The man spasmed and died before he could even cock the pistol, let alone fire it.

  Preacher pulled the knife out and stood up. He took the pistol from the man’s limp fingers and then looked around for the rifle the man had dropped. It lay on the ground a few feet away. Preacher retrieved it, too.

  He took the dead man’s powder horn and shot pouch as well and slung them over his shoulder by their straps. He was almost fully armed again, and it felt good.

  The man’s horse had come to a stop about fifty yards away. Under the circumstances, the mount wouldn’t really do Preacher and his young friends any good, but he walked over to the horse anyway, speaking softly as he approached to keep it from spooking again. He held out his hand and let the animal nuzzle against his palm.

  He found two more pistols in scabbards strapped to the saddle, and a search of the saddlebags turned up a hatchet. For fighting, Preacher preferred a tomahawk. A hatchet was better for chopping wood and brush, but he took it, too.

  “Come on, Dog,” he said as he trotted away from the site of the ambush. The big cur bounded alongside him.

  Preacher wished he had time to look for Horse and his pack animal. He was confident that wherever Horse was, the big stallion was all right. Horse could take care of himself, and he would look after the pack horse, too, but Preacher would have liked to be reunited with his other trail partner.

  When it was over he would be, he told himself. When Barnabas Pendexter and his hired killers were dead.

  Preacher had decided it was very unlikely Pendexter would give up, even if Charlotte and Will escaped from King’s Crown and tried to make a life for themselves elsewhere. If everything they said about Pendexter was true—Preacher had no reason to believe it wasn’t—Charlotte running away from him again would make him more determined than ever to find her and take her back.

  Running away with Will Gardner a second time would just make it worse.

  A lot of folks would consider it Pendexter’s right to feel that way, given the fact that Charlotte was his wife. For all practical purposes, she was Pendexter’s property, to do with whatever he wanted to. That was the way the law saw it.

  But Preacher had never held with all the laws and strictures of civilization. He believed in a higher law, a law of right and wrong. That was one reason he had chosen to live his life out in the wilderness, far from all those artificia
l, arbitrary rules.

  He had no doubt that Pendexter would continue on his ruthless quest as long as he had to. More than likely, he would rather see Charlotte dead than let Will have her.

  So it was a fight to the end, Preacher thought. Will and Charlotte would live out their lives in peace in King’s Crown, or they would die there.

  Preacher moved on, sticking to cover as much as he could and hunting the hunters. Even though he had enough guns for himself, it wouldn’t hurt to get more so Will and Charlotte would be better armed. In a fight against overwhelmingly superior odds, they could never have too many guns.

  A short time later, he spotted another of Pendexter’s men following a game trail along the edge of a narrow draw. Preacher circled quickly to get ahead of him and crouched behind a boulder as the man rode toward him.

  The sound of the horse’s hoofbeats grew louder as the rider approached. He drew even with the boulder, then passed it, and Preacher made his move.

  The man caught a glimpse of Preacher from the corner of his eye or something warned him. He turned to swing his rifle around. Preacher reached past it, grabbed the man’s shirt, and hauled him off the horse.

  A kick to the head as soon as the man hit the ground knocked him out. Preacher considered cutting his throat, but dragged him off the trail into some brush instead. He sliced strips of cloth from the man’s shirt and used them to tie his hands and feet. Another piece of cloth went in the man’s mouth as a gag.

  The varmint might still die if he couldn’t get loose and no one found him, but leaving him tied at least gave him a fighting chance. Preacher knew that was more than he would have gotten if the situation had been reversed.

  He had just stepped out of the brush when a rifle blasted and a heavy lead ball hummed past his ear. He threw himself backward into the brush as a second shot rang out.

  At least two men, he thought as he knelt in the thick growth. That explained how the shots had come so close together.

  He had a hunch he knew what they had done. They had followed the hombre he’d just knocked out, using the man as an unwitting stalking horse.

  And Preacher had played right into their hands.

  Those shots would bring any of Pendexter’s men who were within hearing distance galloping in Preacher’s direction. It was going to get a little crowded around there.

  In fact, it already was. Several more shots roared and sent him diving to the ground as the rifle balls whipped and crackled through the brush around him.

  On his belly, Preacher crawled backward. He paused as he heard the distinctive thud of lead against flesh and looked back over his shoulder at the man he had left tied up. One of the shots had struck the man in the head and blown away a chunk of his skull, killing him before he ever regained consciousness.

  “Sorry, mister,” Preacher told the corpse, “but it was your own bunch who killed you. They had to have seen me drag you in here and just didn’t give a damn if they killed you, too, as long as they got me.”

  He crawled past the dead man and then angled to the side as he went toward the draw again. Rifle balls still whined and buzzed through the brush like angry hornets as Preacher reached the edge of the growth. The open trail lay between him and the gully.

  Preacher gave a piercing whistle. That was as good as a verbal command to Dog. A moment later, a man screamed somewhere nearby, and the sound told Preacher that the big cur was on the attack.

  The screams continued and caused the victim’s companions to shout in confusion. Preacher took advantage of the distraction to burst out of the brush and dash across the trail to the draw with a rifle in each hand and four pistols and the hatchet stuck behind his belt.

  More shots blasted, but Pendexter’s men reacted too slowly. Preacher had already slid down into the draw and was safely out of sight before the shots came anywhere near him.

  The gully was about ten feet deep and a little less than that wide, a natural trench in the earth carved out by the torrents that resulted from occasional downpours.

  It was dry at the moment. Preacher hurried along toward the men who had been shooting at him.

  He might have escaped by going the other way, but escape wasn’t what he had in mind. He had the urge to take the fight to his enemies and whittle down the odds a little more.

  The screaming stopped, which meant that Dog had finished his bloody work. He would retreat for the time being, since he could no longer take Pendexter’s men by surprise.

  “What the hell was that, a wolf?”

  Preacher heard the voice clearly, no more than thirty or forty feet away from him.

  Another man answered, “I don’t know, but it tore poor Robinson to shreds.”

  Carefully, Preacher climbed the gully’s side. He had long since lost his hat, so he didn’t have to worry about removing it as he edged his head up far enough to take a look.

  The two men were standing behind thick-trunked pines that gave them a view of the trail along the draw. Preacher spotted a man’s leg sticking out from behind another tree and figured it belonged to the unlucky Robinson, who’d had a fatal encounter with Dog.

  “Where do you think that guy Preacher went?” the first man asked.

  “He probably took off up that little draw once he got into it. I don’t reckon we ought to waste any more powder and shot right now.”

  “Larrabee won’t like it that Preacher got away. Neither will Pendexter.”

  “Well, I don’t see either of them out here riskin’ their own hides, do you?” the second man asked.

  Preacher figured the man with the eye patch was Larrabee.

  “What about Simmons?”

  “One of us better go over there and see about him. Preacher probably killed him, but Larrabee’ll want to know for sure.”

  Preacher grimaced. The man was killed by one of his own with all their wild shooting.

  The first man said with obvious reluctance, “All right. I’ll go take a look. You cover me, though.”

  “I’ll be right here,” the second man said.

  The first man stepped out from behind his tree. His beard-stubbled face was pulled taut by nervous lines as he darted his gaze back and forth. In a crouching run, he started toward the brush where Preacher had taken cover earlier.

  The second man moved out more into the open, as well, and watched his companion.

  Preacher let the first man take about five steps before he rose up from the draw with a pistol in each hand and called sharply, “Hey!”

  The first man stopped short and instinctively turned toward Preacher. So did the second man.

  Neither of them had time to react before the guns in the mountain man’s hands roared.

  The first man doubled over as the ball punched into his midsection. The second one flew back against the tree trunk behind him as the force of the ball that drove into his chest lifted him off his feet.

  They hit the ground almost simultaneously.

  Preacher lowered the pistols as smoke curled from their muzzles. The echoes of the shots rolled away across the valley. Preacher cocked his head slightly to the side as he heard something else.

  The drumming of rapid hoofbeats.

  Time to get moving again, Preacher thought with a grim smile. He whistled for Dog and lit a shuck out of there.

  CHAPTER 36

  The sound of sporadic shots echoed through the valley all day. An hour might pass between bursts of gunfire, and as that interval stretched out, Will became more convinced that Preacher’s luck had run out at last.

  If the mountain man was dead, Will thought, it would be up to him to get Charlotte out of King’s Crown and find a safe place for them elsewhere.

  The problem was that there might not be a safe place anywhere in the West as long as Barnabas Pendexter was alive.

  In a way, it surprised Will that Pendexter had come along in person on the hunt for Charlotte. Pendexter had never been the sort to get his own hands dirty at anything. Will had seen that for himself back in Phi
ladelphia as he had come to realize the shady nature of many of Pendexter’s business enterprises.

  But as the man’s chief clerk, he knew perfectly well that nothing illegal could ever be traced back to Pendexter. If the authorities ever became interested in some of the less than savory activities that put money in Barnabas Pendexter’s pockets, it would be someone else who took the blame and wound up in jail because of it.

  Possibly even Will himself, which was one more reason he had been willing to help Charlotte escape from her marriage and leave civilization behind.

  Out on the frontier, anyone could make a fresh start.

  Unfortunately, evil existed even there. Jebediah Druke and Blood Eye were proof of that.

  Druke was dead, and Blood Eye might be, too. Will would have felt better about that if he had seen the Crow’s body with his own eyes. He couldn’t stop worrying that Blood Eye was still out there somewhere, plotting his revenge.

  “You look like you’re a million miles away from here,” Charlotte said from behind him.

  Will turned to her with a smile. He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d been thinking about Blood Eye. There was no reason to remind her of the ordeal she had gone through the day before, even if it hadn’t been as bad as it might have been.

  “I was just hoping that Preacher will get back soon. All that shooting down there has made me pretty concerned about him.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. He has Dog with him, and anyway, those men Barnabas hired will be no match for Preacher.”

  “Not individually, but if there are twenty or thirty of them . . .” Will didn’t know for sure how many men Pendexter had brought with him. They had never gotten a good look at the group in the daylight. By the time the sun rose that morning, the hunters had been spread out across the valley.

  “I still say not even thirty men will be able to run Preacher to ground.”

  “I hope not.”

  Both of them had gotten some sleep during the day, so even though their slumber had been fitful, they weren’t quite as exhausted as they had been when they’d reached the canyon shortly before dawn. The spring water was good and they had drunk deeply from the pool, but neither had been able to find any food except a few berries.