Blood on the Divide Read online

Sutherlin looked at the man in amazement. He didn’t believe he had ever before in his life heard such drivel. But picked up his rifle and waved what was left of his men forward.

  “What happens if we kill Preacher?” Isaac asked. “I mean, with the savages?”

  “They let us go,” Clubb said. “So we better fight like we ain’t never fit before. Or start makin’ our peace with God.”

  A man called George was stumbling along with tears streaming and streaking his dirty face. “I jist don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die.”

  “You should have thought of that ’fore you crossed the line from good to bad,” Curtis told him.

  “I didn’t have no choice in the matter,” George sobbed.

  “Shit!” Curtis replied.

  “We all have a choice,” Sutherlin said in a firm voice. “It’s pure balderdash that anyone thinks we don’t. To a very large degree, we all control our destinies.”

  The men had left Dirk where he lay on the trail. His head busted open, limbs broken, and bleeding from internal injuries. They had left him without a second thought. Although a man called Jeff had taken the time to rip Dirk’s watch from his dirty vest and stick it in his pocket. No point in leaving a good timepiece with a dying man.

  “Why the hell did we even come out to this godforsaken land?” Delbert asked, tossing the question out to anyone who might have an answer.

  “I don’t believe God forsake this land,” Kenrick told him. “I think He don’t even know it’s here!”

  Delbert opened his mouth to speak and a ball took him square in the chest and knocked him flat on the ground. The men left the trail and hunted for cover.

  Preacher was pulling out all the stops now. He had loaded up three rifles and laid them out. He reloaded and waited, his eyes watching the suddenly deserted trail just below him.

  “Did anybody see the smoke?” Kenrick called out hoarsely.

  “Delbert damn shore didn’t,” Jeff replied, eyeballing the body of the outlaw. “I’d like to have them boots of hisn. Mine’s plumb wore out.”

  “They ain’t worth dyin’ for,” Valiant told him.

  Sutherlin cut his eyes to the Pardee brother. We’re all going to die right here, he thought. And I’m going to die with this trash if I don’t start using my wits and think about getting out of here.

  Sutherlin looked around him. He had chosen very good cover, on the river’s side. He cut his eyes to Doc Judd, who had jumped into cover with him. “When the rest of them move out, we stay put,” he whispered. “If we don’t, we’re going to be picked off one by one.”

  “What about the Indians?” Doc said, returning the whisper.

  Sutherlin thought about that for a moment. “We’ll just have to take our chances. Who would you rather face, them or Preacher?”

  “That’s easy. I’m with you.”

  Malachi and his followers began slipping up the trail, staying with the cover, now lush and green in full spring, vegetation blossoming everywhere. Sutherlin and Doc Judd stayed still and quiet. A silent tribute to the awesome fighting power of the mountain man called Preacher.

  Something in Ansel’s warped brain straightened out and a voice in his head told him not to follow his brothers and to hunker down in some bushes and be quiet. Ansel slipped off the trail and slid down the riverbank. He crouched in brush and closed his eyes.

  The Indians watching the men knew that Ansel was touched by the gods and they were wary of him. The actions of Sutherlin and Doc Judd had not escaped their eyes, either. Let the white men be afraid of them. Fear was sometimes a good thing.

  Preacher lay in cover and watched the men slowly advance toward his position.

  “You’re a murderin’ no-count, Preacher!” Malachi shouted. “I challenge you to step out here and fight me fair and square, man to man. How ’bout that, Preacher? You got the belly to face me eyeball to eyeball?”

  Sure, Preacher thought. And as soon as I show myself I’ll be shot full of holes.

  “He’s afeard of us, brother!” Valiant shouted. “We got him on the run.” Valiant threw caution and good sense – the latter something he was woefully short of – to the wind and stepped out onto the trail.

  Preacher sighted him in and the Hawken boomed, the ball dropping Valiant where he stood.

  Kenrick looked at his brother, sprawled in death, and felt like puking. A wild rage seized the outlaw. He cursed Preacher, shouting out the black oaths from his cover.

  Preacher waited.

  “How come you doin’ this to us, Preacher?” Malachi shouted. “We ain’t done you no harm.”

  Preacher could no longer contain his tongue. “How many innocent people have you killed, Malachi?” he shouted. “How many children have you raped and sold into bondage? Answer me, you son of a bitch!”

  “That ain’t none of your affair, Preacher!” Malachi screamed. “Nobody made you the law out here. Git on out and leave us be. Ain’t you done enough harm to my good family?”

  “Not until I kill you all,” Preacher told him.

  Clubb left his cover and made a run for the rocks to the left of Preacher’s position. Preacher knocked a leg out from under the man, the ball of lead shattering the man’s knee. Clubb screamed and went rolling down the grade, losing his rifle along the way. He rolled across the trail and down the bank, landing in the river. The last anybody saw of him, he was caught up in the current and drifting downstream, screaming and flailing his arms.

  “I can’t swim!” he called out weakly. “Halp!” The current took him on and around a bend, then he was out of sight.

  Ansel thought it was very funny and had to stifle his urge to giggle.

  Sutherlin and Doc Judd looked at each other, both sharing the same thought: If they could somehow make the river, they’d swim for their lives.

  Indians were sitting, squatting, and standing on both sides of the river, watching the show. This fight would provide them with many hours of talk around the fires. The one man who was called by many names, including Bloody Knife, fighting alone against many, was surely the bravest of the brave.

  Mueller called out in a foreign tongue and leaped from cover, dashing to rocks below Preacher’s position. Preacher fired too late and missed the man. Now his smoke was seen and the outlaws blasted at him, the lead howling and shrieking all around him. Preacher shifted locations, moving away from the river. Mueller panted up to the rocks and cursed when he saw that Preacher was gone.

  The big man turned and felt a heavy blow strike his chest. The pain hit him a split second later. He looked down in amazement at the shaft of the arrow sticking out of his chest. Mueller fell backward, all sprawled out on top of the rocks. He stretched out his arms, sighed once, and the murderer and rapist died, his face to the sky.

  “Damn,” Big Max whispered. Then he made up his mind. “Preacher!” he called. “Big Max Delvin here. I’m gone if you’ll let me. I’ll leave this country and you’ll not see my face here no more. How about it?”

  Malachi turned around and shot the man through the chest with a pistol. “It just don’t pay to associate with trash,” he told Kenrick. “Cain’t trust ’em to have no honor.”

  THIRTEEN

  This is not happening, Son thought, looking back up the bloody and body-littered trail. One man could not have caused all this havoc. But he knew that one man had done it. He silently cursed Preacher. Son looked around for any of his men. He could not find a one left.

  Then the thought came to him: Where was Sutherlin and Doc Judd? He had not seen either man in a hour or so. He could see Malachi and Kenrick. There was Isaac. Jeff. Dill was over there. Good God, was this all that was left? Impossible. He looked all around. The Indians were gone. He blinked and looked again. They had vanished.

  Sutherlin and Doc Judd had noticed that several minutes before Son. The two men had begun working their way back down the trail. They made their way slowly and cautiously, always keeping in the brush. Once they were out of rifle range of Preacher, they began to brea
the easier. They found two saddled horses, swung into the saddle, and lit out down the trail.

  Then they received yet another shock for that day.

  Armed Indians blocked the trail. A lot of armed Indians. Doc and Sutherlin reined up and stared. There was no way around the Indians.

  One Indian rode his pony away from the others and pointed his rifle back up the trail. Doc and Sutherlin didn’t need an interpreter. They got the message loud and clear.

  “Can’t we talk about this?” Sutherlin asked.

  “No,” the Yakima said.

  “I have money.”

  “Don’t want money.”

  “There are guns and powder and shot up ahead.”

  “From the dead. We will have those anyway.” He smiled. “Yours, too. Ver’ soon.”

  The two men cursed under their breath and slowly turned their horses around and rode back up the trail.

  “Where’s Ansel?” Malachi asked Kenrick.

  “I ain’t seen him. Maybe he broke and run and got clear, you reckon?”

  “I hope. He’s a good boy, that one is.”

  “Malachi?”

  “Yeah, boy?”

  “I guess we ’bout run our string out, ain’t we?”

  “Looks that way. But we’ve had us a time, ain’t we?”

  “We shore have. How many squallin’ and kickin’ and bitin’ and scratchin’ women and girls you reckon we’ve helt down and humped, brother?”

  “White women?”

  “All of ’em.”

  “Oh ... that’d be hard to say. I recollect the time over on the – ”

  His words were cut short by the crash of Preacher’s Hawken. About fifty yards ahead of them, in a bend of the trail, Jeff slowly rolled out onto the trail, a large hole right between his eyes.

  Malachi looked at the last of Sutherlin’s men and shook his head. “Ansel,” he called softly. “If you can hear me, listen to me. I want you to stay hid. Stay hid and don’t move no matter what happens. Stay hid ’til come the dawnin’ in the mornin’. Then you slip down to that raft we seen and get the hell gone from here. Good luck, boy.”

  “I’ll be damned if he will!” Sutherlin spoke from the saddle, only a few yards behind the brothers. “I’ll kill the goofy son of a bitch myself. Come out, you stupid oaf. Come out here and face me.”

  “Damn your eyes, you black-hearted bastard!” Malachi screamed at the man. He stood up, leveled his rifle, and blew Sutherlin out of the saddle before the man could protest.

  Doc Judd’s rifle crashed and Malachi went down to his knees, belly-shot.

  Kenrick screamed curses and cocked a pistol and shot Doc Judd in the throat, almost tearing the man’s head from his shoulders. Doc toppled backward from the saddle and Kenrick stood up from his crouch just as Sutherlin leveled a pistol and blew a large hole in Kenrick’s head. Ansel roared and grunted and slobbered out of the brush, a pistol in each hand just as Son was running around the bend in the narrow road to see what in the hell was going on. He froze at the sight.

  Ansel cocked and leveled his pistol at the dying Sutherlin and grunted and slobbered all down the front of his filthy shirt.

  “You ignorant bastard,” Sutherlin told him.

  “No, Ansel!” Son shouted, waving his arms frantically. “No, boy. Don’t do it. Don’t shoot that man.”

  Ansel grinned at the man for a moment. Slowly he nodded his shaggy head. He grunted a time or two. “Aw rat,” he said, and shot Son in the chest.

  Son sat down hard in the rutted and bumpy trail. “Why, boy,” he said. “I think you’ve killed me.”

  Ansel bobbed his head up and down and grinned.

  “Git out of here, Ansel,” Malachi groaned. “Run, boy.”

  “Go on, Ansel,” Kenrick said. “Them Injuns around here nor no other place ain’t gonna bother you ’cause you’re titched in the head. Run, boy. Git gone from this killin’ place.”

  “Squirrelly bastard shot me,” Son groaned. “Shot me. And I was always kinda partial to him, too.”

  “He liked you, Son,” Malachi said. “He really did.”

  “Well ... how come the son of a bitch shot me?”

  “He ain’t neither no son of a bitch!” Malachi said, then pondered on that for a few seconds. “Well ... maybe.”

  Sutherlin cursed the addled Ansel and lifted another pistol to shoot Ansel and Ansel put his feet to work. He whooped and hollered once and then hopped over the side of the bank and disappeared.

  Kenrick lifted a pistol and blew the top of Sutherlin’s head slap off.

  Preacher had left his cover and was squatting above the men, watching it all, his hands filled with pistols, shaking his head at the wild scene.

  Ansel ran down the bank and to the raft. He untied the rope and jumped on, grabbing the pole and shoving off. He went floating merrily down the river, singing church songs at the top of his lungs.

  The Indians watched him leave and all made the sign of a crazy person. Ansel would not be bothered by any Indian.

  “There was two more of your gang got clear for a minute or two,” Preacher spoke from above the dead and dying. “They jumped in the river and tried to swim clear. I don’t think they made it.”

  “What happens to us?” Kenrick asked.

  “I reckon you’ll just lay there and ex-pire,” Preacher told him.

  “I wish I’d never laid eyes on you, Preacher,” Malachi said, his voice very weak.

  “That’s probably true.”

  “I hate you, Preacher,” Son said.

  “Man shouldn’t ride off to his judgment day with no hate in his heart,” Preacher admonished the man. “That wouldn’t set well with the Lord, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Who gives damn what you think?” Kenrick said.

  Preacher tried his best to look deeply hurt and extremely offended. He couldn’t quite pull it off. “My dear sainted mommy did.”

  “You didn’t have no mommy” Malachi said. “You was thrown up here on the earth from the hellfires.”

  “My daddy would have broke off a limb and wore your ass out if he heard you say that, Malachi. My daddy was strong on them thumb-sized branches, he was.”

  Several Indians had gathered around, picking up rifles and pistols and shot pouches and powder horns.

  “Y’all can have their scalps if you’ve a mind to,” Preacher told them. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until they’s all dead ’fore you jerked ’em off.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Son yelled.

  “He make prayer to white man’s God?” a Yakima questioned.

  “Well ... sort of,” Preacher replied.

  Kenrick laid his head down and rattled and died.

  “My brother’s daid!” Malachi wailed. “Oh, Lord!”

  “He make prayer to God?” the Yakima asked.

  “In a way,” Preacher told him.

  “White man pray funny.”

  “Some do. But if you think this is something, you should have seem them all-day singin’s and shoutin’s we used to have back in the hills. I got me enough religion in one day to last a whole lifetime. That gospel shouter damn near drown-ed me in that cold-ass creek that day I turned to the Lord.”

  “You?” Malachi sneered.

  “Yeah, me. I been baptized.”

  “In what? A keg of gunpowder.”

  “You ’bout to make me mad, Malachi.”

  “Help me, goddamnit!” Son squalled.

  “Help you do what?” Preacher asked. “You doin’ a right good job of passin’ without no help from me.”

  “Well, I was washed in the blood of the lamb myself!” Malachi said.

  “You was washed in blood, all right,” Preacher said. “But not of no lamb.”

  “I hate you,” Malachi said.

  “I’ll see you in hell, Preacher!” Son yelled. Then he screamed. “Oh, God, it hurts, it hurts.” He jerked a couple of times and bought the farm.

  Preacher stood up and holstered his pistols.

 
“Don’t leave me for the savages, Preacher!” Malachi whispered.

  “You can’t give me no good reason why I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m a Christian.”

  Preacher spat on the ground. “Well, I’ll just consider them Yakimas Romans then.” He turned and walked away.

  FOURTEEN

  Ansel came up on a very waterlogged Clubb clinging to a log and dragged him on board the raft. A few miles further down, Isaac waved frantically from the north shore of the river at the men in the raft and Ansel somehow managed to get the raft over to the outlaw and get him on board.

  “Just get us away from here,” Isaac panted. “Get me away from that mountain man from Hell. I ain’t never gonna go past the Mississippi again. I swear on the Good Book I ain’t never gonna do it.”

  “What are you gonna do once we’re safe?” Clubb asked with a groan, his shattered knee swollen and throbbing with pain.

  “Farm,” Isaac said. “Go to church and become a Christian. Find me a good woman and settle down. Never again will I raise a hand against a fellow man. Or woman,” he added.

  Ansel giggled.

  Preacher pointed his horse’s nose east, heading back to intercept the wagon train. He stopped briefly to look at Dirk. The Englishman lay dead by the trail. “You should have stayed in England,” Preacher said, then lifted the reins and rode on.

  A hundred yards further on, he came up on a gut-shot and dying man. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Curt Morgan,” the man gasped. “No, you didn’t shoot me. Sutherlin stabbed while I was tryin’ to get away from you. Him and that damn Doc Judd both stuck me.”

  Preacher stepped down and squatted by the man. Curt had been stabbed twice, once in the chest and once in the belly. There was nothing Preacher could do for him and told him so.

  “I know it. I’m done for. I hooked up with this bunch about three weeks ago. Knew I was makin’ a mistake when I done it. They all dead?”

  “Near ’bouts.”

  Curt nodded his head. “A sorry lot they was, too. I tried to get shut of them, but them crazy damn Pardees said they’d shoot me if I tried. Stay with me. I ain’t got long.”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  “I ain’t never seen nobody like you in all my life, Preacher. Nobody in their right mind tackles twenty-odd men alone.”