The eerie cry made some of the bushwhackers let out surprised yells. Getting ready to charge Preacher must have drawn their nerves pretty tight, and that shriek startled them into pulling triggers. Shots blasted through the woods, but the wail continued. It didn’t even sound human.
Bullets whipped through the branches and thudded into tree trunks, but none of them came close to Preacher. He spotted a muzzle flash off to his right and reacted instantly, angling the Dragoon that direction and dropping the hammer. The heavy revolver roared and smoke and flame erupted from its muzzle. Somewhere in the woods, a man screamed. Preacher didn’t know if his shot had found its target, or if whatever was making that unholy noise had gotten hold of the man.
With his back against the tree to brace himself, Preacher pushed to his feet. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but there was still a good chance he would die here today. If that turned out to be true, he planned to go out standing on his own two feet with shooting irons in his hands.
“What the hell is that?” a man shouted. There was a great thrashing in the brush. “Look ou—
The howl of pain just made the bushwhackers shoot even more. A grim smile tugged at Preacher’s mouth again. If they kept this up, they’d all ventilate each other and save him the trouble, he thought. That would be just fine with him.
The older voice he’d heard giving orders earlier bellowed, “Head for the horses! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Preacher aimed at the voice and thumbed off two more rounds from the Dragoon. He figured the chances of him hitting anything in these thick woods were pretty slim, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to try. There were still so many guns going off, the bushwhackers likely wouldn’t even notice two more shots.
The gunfire died away, but Preacher could still hear men crashing through the brush. He let them go without sending any more lead after them. Blood still oozed from the holes in his side, and he was starting to get a little dizzy. Best to let those varmints take off for the tall and uncut right now, he decided.
Once he got his strength back, though, he might just try to track them down. He didn’t cotton to the idea of letting anybody get away with shooting him.
And there was also whatever kind of wild creature had made that sound, he reminded himself. He might have to deal with it, too.
The swift rataplan of hoofbeats drifted through the woods to his ears. The bushwhackers had reached their horses and were putting some ground behind them. As the hoofbeats faded into the distance until he could no longer hear them, silence settled once more over the valley.
Then Preacher heard a crackling in the brush. Something was coming toward him. Something big, from the sound of it.
He felt his legs weakening underneath him. His head spun, and each of the guns in his hands seemed to weigh a ton. It was all he could do to hold them up. When he felt himself slipping, he tried to stiffen his legs, but it didn’t work. He had lost too much blood, and his strength had leaked out of him along with the crimson fluid. Slowly, inexorably, he slid down the tree trunk until he was sitting on the ground at its base again.
The thing came closer, stepping around trees and pushing brush aside. A gray veil seemed to have slipped down over Preacher’s eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He could make out the massive, looming shape, but that was all. The Dragoons had sunk into his lap. His thumbs were still looped over the hammers, though. He struggled to lift the weapons. If he could just manage to raise the guns, when the thing stooped to reach out for him with its clawed, misshapen paws, he would blow a couple of fist-sized holes in it. Anything that big had to be a grizzly bear, his fevered brain decided…but he had never heard a griz make that kind of a noise.
He was wrong. The looming shape finally came to a stop directly in front of him, and as Preacher gazed up at it, his vision cleared enough for him to realize that it wasn’t a grizzly bear after all.
It was the biggest, ugliest Indian Preacher had ever laid eyes on.
That was the last thing Preacher saw as consciousness fled from him. He didn’t even feel it when his head fell back against the tree trunk with a solid thud.
The aromatic smell of woodsmoke filling his nostrils was the first thing Preacher recognized as awareness began to seep back into his brain. Then, not surprisingly, he heard the crackle of flames and felt warmth on his face. After a moment he figured out that he was lying on something soft, near a fire.
He kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular. Even though he had just come to, his instincts were already working again. Since he didn’t know where he was or what was going on around him, the smart thing to do was to not let on that he was awake.
He moved a hand slightly and felt something soft yet bristly. A thick fur robe of some sort, he decided. He sniffed the air and under the woodsmoke smelled bear grease and something else, a faintly musky scent.
A woman. She began to sing softly to herself, under her breath, confirming Preacher’s guess.
All these sensations were intimately familiar to him. He had spent many winters with various tribes, sharing a lodge or a tepee with a comely squaw. Sometimes when he visited those tribes again a few years later, he found young’uns trailing after those squaws who’d wintered with him. He never tried to be a pa to those kids, though. He’d always figured that a restless varmint like him who would probably come to a bad end didn’t have any business trying to act like a father. Might as well ask the wind to be a good parent. It wasn’t going to happen.
Now, Preacher thought about what he remembered from earlier and decided that that big, ugly Indian must have brought him back to a village rather than killing him. He kept his eyes closed and shifted his body a little. That told him that he had bandages wrapped tightly around his torso. His side felt stiff and hot where the rifle ball had torn through it, but whoever had tended to the wounds had probably packed each of them with a healing poultice. Preacher knew that with time and proper care, he would heal.
Of course, it was possible that the redskins were just trying to save his life so that they could kill him in their own way, in their own sweet time. He knew such things happened.
Maybe not here, though. Preacher hadn’t gotten a very good look at the beadwork and decorations on the big Indian’s buckskins, but he thought they might indicate that the man was a Crow. The Crow got along with white men about as well as any of the tribes did, and better than some. They didn’t hate everybody with a white skin, as the Blackfeet did, nor were they devoted to war like the Sioux. Preacher had always gotten along well with the Crow, and he hoped that the impression he’d gotten from that brief glimpse was correct.
