Bartlett stumbled over the wagon tongue as he climbed back into the circle. Preacher whistled for Horse and Dog. The stallion and the big cur responded instantly. As Preacher swung up into the saddle, he called, “Lorenzo!”
The old-timer stuck his head around the back of a wagon. “Preacher, what in hell’s name are you doin’?”
“Goin’ after that fool kid. Count ten and then have everybody fire.”
“Preacher—”
“Just do it!”
Preacher leaned forward in the saddle as he urged Horse into a run. The stallion galloped at a breakneck pace after Roland, eating up the ground.
Preacher counted off the seconds in his head as he rode. When he reached seven, he hauled back hard on the reins. The Comanches were less than two hundred yards away, and Roland was about halfway between him and them. At the count of eight, Preacher dropped out of the saddle. His feet hit the ground and dug in, and as he counted nine in his head, he pulled Horse’s head down hard. The stallion knew what he wanted and fell to the ground beside Preacher.
“Dog! Down!” the mountain man yelled.
Dog hit the dirt, too, and as he did, the ten-count ended in Preacher’s head. From the wagons, shots roared in a concentrated volley. Like the humming of a flight of giant insects, the heavy lead balls buzzed through the air above Preacher, Horse, and Dog and smashed into the Indians and their ponies.
Roland’s horse was hit, too. It went down hard, sending Roland flying through the air. Preacher didn’t know if any of the shots had struck the youngster. That had been a calculated risk in his hastily-formed plan.
One thing was certain: if Preacher hadn’t done
Clouds of dust rolled through the air as a dozen or more of the Indian ponies spilled, going down in a welter of thrashing limbs. Preacher was up again instantly, vaulting into Horse’s saddle. He raced toward the spot where Roland’s motionless body sprawled on the ground.
The fierce volley from the wagons blunted the Comanche charge as Preacher hoped. The warriors who were still mounted reorganized a short distance away. Recognizing Preacher and Roland as targets too tempting to pass up, arrows began to fly through the air as Preacher galloped toward Roland, who was apparently unconscious and defenseless.
Preacher reached his side in a matter of heartbeats and was out of the saddle, lifting him and throwing him over Horse’s back. The stallion jumped as an arrow grazed his rump.
Preacher leaped into the saddle and grabbed the reins. He wheeled Horse and sent the stallion racing toward the wagons again. With his other hand, he held Roland’s limp form in place in front of the saddle. Dog ran ahead of them. Arrows whipped through the air around them.
Preacher soon outdistanced the Comanche bows, and the few warriors who had flintlocks weren’t good shots with them. Even so, he didn’t slow down until he had leaped Horse over a wagon tongue and was back in the circle.
Bartlett and some of the other men rushed to gather around him. “My God!” Bartlett cried. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so,” Preacher said as hands reached up to take hold of Roland and lift him down from the stallion’s back.
“Whoo-eee!” Lorenzo said. “I never seen nothin’ like that before, Preacher! You coulda got yourself blowed all to hell tryin’ somethin’ like that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t.” Preacher dismounted and waved a hand at some of the men. “Get back to the wagons and watch out for those Comanch’! Reload those rifles, if you ain’t already done it.”
The men had placed Roland on the ground. Bartlett knelt beside his son and felt for a heartbeat. “He’s alive!” Bartlett announced a second later. “I don’t see any blood on him.”
“I think it just knocked him out when he got throwed off his horse,” Preacher said.
Casey came pushing through the crowd. “Roland! Is he all right?”
Bartlett looked up at her. “He’s alive, my dear. I think he’s going to be fine.”
“What in the world was he trying to do?” Casey demanded of Preacher.
The mountain man shrugged. “Looked to me like he was tryin’ to fight off those Injuns all by his lonesome.”
“Because you told him it was his fault they attacked us!”
“I told him the truth,” Preacher said bluntly. “What he did with it was his own lookout.”
Casey glared at him for a second, then dropped to her knees beside Roland. She took hold of his shoulder, lifted him, and pulled his head into her lap. His eyelids began to flutter. After a moment, his eyes opened and he looked up into Casey’s worried face.
“I . . . I’m alive?” he asked hoarsely.
“You are,” she told him. “But that was a foolish thing to do, Roland.”
“I thought . . . it might help,” he said. He looked over at Preacher. “I thought it might . . . make amends.”
“Throwin’ your life away hardly ever does anybody any good,” Preacher said.
Roland wasn’t listening to him. He was looking at Casey again.
Preacher left them there like that and went back to one of the wagons, peering past it at the Comanches. They had withdrawn again but hadn’t gone out of sight. They sat out there, about two dozen of them, watching the
