Читать книгу Preacher's Pursuit - William W. Johnstone - Страница 8

Dust billowed up from the avalanche, but the thick gray cloud didn’t obscure the vanguard of the slide. Preacher could see the massive boulders bounding down the slope like they were no more than pebbles. Any one of those giant rocks would be enough to smash him into something that didn’t even resemble a human being.

That is, if he waited around and let one of the stony bastards land on him.

He dug his heels into Horse’s flanks and leaned forward over the stallion’s neck, yelling encouragement to the animal as Horse lunged ahead in a gallop. Dog ran alongside, stretching his legs to keep up with the stallion. Preacher hung on tightly to the packhorse’s reins and dragged it along with them.

He had known instantly that their only hope was to charge straight ahead. The angle of the slide made it impossible for them to turn around and get clear in time, going that way.

There was a slim chance, though, that they might be able to get ahead of it. Horse was an ugly, hammer-headed brute, but he had speed and strength and stamina to spare.

The same could not be said of the packhorse, however. Preacher realized that after only a few strides by Horse. The other animal was holding them back. If Preacher hung on to the reins, they were all doomed.

Hating to do it, both for the sake of the packhorse and for the supplies that the horse carried, Preacher let go of the reins and called to his own mount, “Let ’er rip, you son of a gun!”

The roar of the falling rocks was deafening now. Preacher watched the inexorable advance of the slide from the corner of his eye as Horse raced along the winding trail that led through the pass. Those twists and turns slowed them down; a flat, straight run would have given them a better chance.

But a fella had to play the cards he was dealt…and Preacher would always stay in the hand until the end. He’d be damned if he would fold.

He glanced around, saw that Dog was falling behind. “Come on!” he yelled, not knowing if the big cur could hear him over the unholy racket or not. “Come on, you shaggy varmint!”

Dog lunged ahead harder, digging for all the speed he could muster. The two animals were Preacher’s best friends in the world, and he wasn’t going to leave either of them behind. He slowed Horse slightly, and Dog drew closer.

“We’ll make it together, or we won’t make it!” Preacher said through gritted teeth.

On they raced, until it seemed that the roar of the avalanche would be enough to crush them by itself, until the dust reached them and clogged Preacher’s mouth and nose and stung his eyes, until it seemed that the whole world was about to come crashing down on top of them.

Then suddenly, they were in the clear as they broke out of the great swirling cloud. The earth shook under them as countless tons of rock came smashing down a mere matter of yards behind them. Smaller rocks pelted them, and Preacher lifted an arm to protect his head. Even a fist-sized chunk of stone might catch him in the head and knock him out of the saddle, and then the edges of the slide could still engulf him.

Gradually, the punishment eased and the rumbling began to die away. Preacher slowed his mount. Horse’s sleek hide was covered with foamy sweat and his sides heaved from the exertion. Dog’s head hung low and his tongue lolled from his mouth as he padded along. Preacher was a mite weary from the strain himself, but at least he hadn’t had to do any of the running. His gallant companions had handled that.

He reined Horse to a stop and leaned forward to pat the stallion on the shoulder. “You’re the damned finest horse any man ever rode,” he said. He looked behind him regretfully. Dust still obscured the pass. The packhorse was back there somewhere, trapped under the avalanche. Poor son of a gun had never had a chance, Preacher thought.

Then he lifted his head and looked up toward the rimrock. It was possible that the rock slide had started on its own and that it had been just a coincidence that he was traveling through the pass at that moment.

Yeah, it was possible…but he didn’t believe it.

Not for a damned second.

Somebody had been up there watching him, waiting for just the right moment to shove one of the precariously balanced boulders that littered the rimrock and launch that avalance into deadly motion. Luckily for Preacher, Horse, and Dog, whoever it was had misjudged things a mite. Just enough to give them the narrow hope of escape that they had seized so fiercely.

Preacher wanted to hitch Horse into motion again and start circling through the rugged terrain, heading upward toward the rimrock to find out exactly what had happened. But after the valiant dash that had saved Preacher’s life, Horse was too played out for any more effort right now. The stallion had to rest for a while.

That was all right, Preacher told himself. He would get up there before the day was over, and when he did, he would find the sign that the man who started the avalanche had left behind. There was always sign of some sort, if a man knew how to look for it.

Preacher knew, and once he had the trail, he wouldn’t lose it.

That fella didn’t know it yet, but he had bought himself a world of trouble when he rolled that stone.

Horse was strong enough that he recovered quickly, but Preacher gave him a little extra time anyway, waiting until midday before starting the climb to the rimrock. Preacher had some jerky and a biscuit in his saddlebags, so he and Dog made a skimpy lunch on that.

Then he rode the rest of the way through the pass and began the arduous task of circling back and climbing, following faint game trails that most men barely would have been able to see. Horse was almost as sure-footed as a mountain goat, so Preacher didn’t hesitate to trust his life to the stallion’s balance, even though at times hundreds of feet of empty air yawned right at his elbow.

By the middle of the afternoon, they reached the rimrock where the avalanche had started. Dog ran forward and sniffed the ground. Preacher dismounted and left the reins dangling as he hunkered down and studied the place that interested Dog. He saw some pebbles that had been disturbed recently, so that their undersides now lay upward, and he knew the man who’d tried to kill him had walked along here.

“Trail, Dog,” he said.

Nose to the ground, Dog followed the command, leading Preacher away from the rimrock’s edge. A few minutes later, they came to a place where fairly fresh droppings and the marks of steel-shod hooves on the rock told Preacher that three horses had waited here for a while.

Three men, Preacher reflected. One to hold the horses, two to push a boulder over the edge and start the avalanche. And the dumb bastards hadn’t even tried to hide the evidence that they’d been here.

Of course, they had assumed that they were going to kill him and that no one would ever follow them.

They would find out just how wrong they were about that.

Even now, they probably thought he was dead. After escaping from the avalanche, he had stayed close to the side of the pass so that anyone looking down from above might not be able to see him. The dust had been too thick for anybody to see anything for a while, and once it cleared away, there would have been no sign of him from the rimrock. The natural thing would be to think that the huge rock slide had caught him and crushed the life from him.

Preacher whistled Horse over to him and swung up into the saddle. He followed the scratches on the rocks left by the horseshoes, and Dog stayed on the scent for good measure. The men hadn’t made any effort to hide their trail, more evidence that they thought Preacher was dead.

The tracks led northwest through rugged but beautiful country. The men had dropped down quickly from the heights of the pass to a long, grassy valley watered by a stream that sparkled in the sunlight as it flowed over a rocky bed.

Preacher had been through here many times in his wanderings. He knew the country well. To the north was the area known as Colter’s Hell, named after the legendary mountain man John Colter. At first, folks had thought he was crazy when he came back and reported that there was an area where geysers of steaming water shot hundreds of feet in the air and bubbling mud pits stank of brimstone, like they were entrances to Hades. Of course, as it turned out, the place really existed and Colter hadn’t been exaggerating. Preacher had seen it more than once with his own eyes.

The would-be killers might be headed there, or their destination might be closer. Preacher didn’t know and didn’t care. He would stay on their trail wherever it led.

Since he had given Horse that extra rest, he kept the stallion moving at a fast pace now. The men who were his quarry had been dawdling along, yet another indication they didn’t think anybody could be following them. The sign Preacher saw told him that he was closing in on them. He might even catch up to them before nightfall.

He wasn’t sure he wanted that. Might be easier to deal with them once they had camped for the night. Let them fill their bellies, maybe pass around a jug…

Then see how they liked it when the man they thought they had killed rose right up out of that grave under hundreds of tons of rock.

When he was no more than an hour behind them, Preacher slowed down and maintained that distance. Dog whined a little in eagerness, but Preacher just smiled and said, “Just be patient, old fella. We’ll settle up with those varmints before much longer.”

The sun dipped behind the mountains to the west, and night settled down quickly. Preacher waited until he spotted the tiny orange eye of a campfire and then steered for it, still taking his time. It didn’t surprise him that the men had built a fire. He’d been able to tell from the trail they left that they were greenhorns. Still potentially dangerous, of course, but not as experienced in the ways of the frontier as some.

When he was close enough to smell the wood smoke, he dismounted and tied Horse’s reins loosely to a sapling. The stallion would be able to pull free if he needed to.

“Stay here, fella,” Preacher said quietly as he patted Horse on the shoulder. “Come on, Dog.”

Horse threw his head up and down as if he didn’t appreciate being left behind, but he didn’t try to pull loose. Preacher and Dog padded off into the darkness.

The Indians knew Preacher by many names, most of them having to do with his expertise at killing. They frightened their children with tales of this white man who came in the night like a phantom and left death behind him, silent and lethal. Preacher knew this and did nothing to discourage it. A reputation as a dangerous man could be an annoyance at times, but mostly it came in handy.

Dog at his side, he moved through the night with an uncanny stealth practiced over many perilous years on the frontier. The glow of the campfire was visible through the trees from time to time, but Preacher didn’t really need to see it or smell the smoke. Now that he knew where he was going, his uncanny sense of direction would have taken him right to his destination without anything else.

He and Dog didn’t make a sound as they closed in on the camp. When Preacher was close enough to hear the men talking, he went to the ground and tugged Dog down beside him. They lay there listening. Preacher hoped that the men would drop some hints into their conversation about why they had tried to kill him.

The tone of their voices told him he’d been right about them having a jug. It sounded like they’d been passing it around for a while. Most of their comments were profane observations about the talents of various whores who plied their trade in the waterfront taverns of St. Louis. That confirmed another of Preacher’s suppositions, that they weren’t frontiersmen. They had come out here from back East, probably recently.

Had they come all this way just to kill him? That was crazy, he told himself, and yet he couldn’t rule it out.

They finally got around to talking about their attempt on his life. One of the men said in a slightly whiskey-slurred voice, “Wish I could’a seen that damn Preacher’s face when all those rocks started comin’ at him.”

“Prob’ly shit right in his pants,” another man said with a giggle that put Preacher’s teeth on edge.

The third man said, “Important thing is that he’s dead. Thass all that matters. Now gimme that damn jug!”

“Get your hands off it! You been hoggin’ it all night!”

“The hell you say! I’ll learn you to talk to me like that!”

“Dadgum it, Parker!” That was the first man, trying to make peace between the other two. “You can’t just—Oh, shit! No!”

The roar of a gunshot drowned out his voice, then another shot blasted and somebody screamed.

Preacher bit back a curse of his own.

So much for that plan, he thought bitterly.