shot and missed him, although the pistol ball must have come within a whisker of him at almost point-blank range like that.
The man, who Preacher recognized now as Ned Donnelly, had finished reloading the rifle. He started to bring it up as Preacher yelled, “Hold your fire, damn it! It’s me, Preacher!” Half-deafened as he was, his voice sounded strange in his ears.
Donnelly hesitated, giving Preacher the chance to push the rifle barrel aside. “Preacher?” Donnelly said.
“That’s right. You’re under attack by bandits. Don’t let ’em inside the circle of the wagons, and you’ve got a chance.”
“You’re not one of them?”
“Hell, no! I’ve been out there tryin’ to stop them. Where’s Buckhalter?”
He thought that if he could bring down the gang’s leader, the other bandits might not put up as much of a fight.
Donnelly just shook his head. “I . . . I haven’t seen him. I heard him yelling something a little while ago. He’s still around somewhere.”
Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t, Preacher thought. After firing that signal, Buckhalter might have slipped out of the camp to keep his own hide safe during the attack. Preacher wouldn’t put it past the man for a second.
Lorraine stepped closer to him and said, “I’m sorry I shot at you, Preacher.”
“You didn’t know who I was,” he said. “No harm done.”
Other than the ringing in his ears, and she didn’t have to know about that.
“Do you need powder and shot for your pistols?” She held out a powder horn and shot pouch toward him.
Preacher grinned and took them from her. “I dang sure do.” With swift, practiced efficiency, he began reloading the weapons.
When both pistols were charged and ready, he handed the powder horn and pouch back to Lorraine and said, “You’d better hunt some cover, ma’am.”
“I’m going to stay right here and reload for Ned,” she declared without budging. “We have two rifles.”
And they’d be liable to need them, Preacher knew. He nodded curtly and settled for saying, “Keep your head down as much as you can. Where are your youngsters?”
“In the wagon, between our trunks.”
That was as good a place as any for the boys. Preacher nodded again and began loping around the circle to see how the rest of the defenders were holding up.
A frightened yell made him head for one of the gaps between wagons. As he approached, he saw one of the immigrants wrestling with a tall, hatchet-faced bandit who looked like a half-breed. The pilgrim had an ax, but as Preacher came closer, the bandit wrenched it away from him and swung it. With a grisly
The half-breed didn’t have time to enjoy his triumph. His face turned into a crimson smear as Preacher fired one of the pistols into it. He stuck the empty gun behind his belt and reached down with that hand to pull the ax free, trying not to think about the sound it made as it came loose. Another bandit bounded up onto the wagon tongue and started over. Preacher met him with the ax, whipping it back and forth so that the razor-sharp blade opened up deep slashes across the man’s chest. The man fell off the wagon tongue, and as he landed facedown on the ground, Preacher swung the ax up and brought it down in the back of the man’s head.
He had lost track of how many members of the gang he had killed in the past ten minutes or so. He knew he had made a pretty good dent in their numbers, though, so it didn’t really surprise him when the shooting began to die down. The attack had been blunted before it even began, and now it was losing the rest of its momentum.
Preacher saw one of the defenders go down with blood welling from a wound in his arm just as he finished reloading a rifle. Leaping to his side, Preacher took the weapon from him and said, “I’ll put it to good use, friend.” He lifted the rifle and aimed at another muzzle flash from the attackers. The rifle boomed as he pressed the trigger, and Preacher was rewarded by a howl of pain from his target that trailed off into a gurgling moan.
Several more shots sounded, and then a tense, eerie silence fell over the camp and the surrounding area. Preacher didn’t know if any more of Beaumont’s men were out there. Maybe they were all dead. It was possible, too, that the survivors had given up and lit a shuck out of there.
“Preacher!”
He looked around and saw Uncle Dan trotting toward him. The old-timer’s beard was streaked with red from a bullet graze on his cheek, but other than that he seemed to be all right.
“I think they’ve rabbited,” Uncle Dan said as he came up.
“I hope you’re right. You think we should go have a look-see?”
“I don’t know any other way to be sure, even though I ain’t all that fond o’ the idea.”
Preacher chuckled. “Neither am I. We’d best reload all our guns before we venture out there.”
“I’m going with you.”
Preacher looked around and saw that Ned Donnelly had come up on his other side. He shook his head, saying, “I ain’t sure you ought to do that.”
“I am,” Donnelly declared. “I’m the captain of this wagon train. The safety of its members is my responsibility.”
Donnelly should have thought of that before he hired a skunk like Buckhalter, Preacher thought, then told himself that maybe he was being a mite unfair. Donnelly hadn’t had any real reason to suspect Buckhalter of treachery until today.
