Preacher's Fire

With only a slight grunt of effort, the man heaved Preacher all the way off the porch and into the yard. He came down hard enough in one of the flower beds to knock the breath out of him. As he rolled over and gasped for air, he looked up and saw the big man stomping toward him, a look of outrage on the black face.

Well, thought Preacher, it looked like this part of the chore was about to turn out to be a mite harder than he’d expected.

Chapter 11

“You son of a bitch!” the black man yelled. “You landed right in my nasturtiums! I’m gonna thrash you within an inch of your life!”

“Well, you threw me here, you damn fool!” Preacher shouted back as he leaped to his feet. “Nobody does that to Jim Donnelly!”

Preacher knew he couldn’t take it easy in this fight. He had drawn an opponent who was too fast and strong for that. If he didn’t put his best effort into it, he might wind up crawling away with broken bones, and he couldn’t afford that.

So this time he waited for the other fella to throw the first punch, and when the big, hamlike fist came sailing toward his face, he slipped aside so that it barely grazed his ear as it went past and stepped in to hammer a right into the man’s sternum.

That was a good move, or at least it would have been if Preacher’s fist hadn’t felt like it had just slammed into a brick wall. The man brought up a looping left that clipped Preacher on the side of the head and sent him rolling on the ground again as rockets went off behind his eyes.

“Damn it, you’re in my flowers again!”

The man reached down and slapped his massive hands on Preacher’s shoulders. As he hauled Preacher upright, Preacher sent his right fist whistling skyward in an uppercut that caught the big man on the jaw. Preacher had hoped that anybody as solid in the middle as the black man might have a glass jaw, but that hope was dashed as the man shrugged off the blow and started shaking Preacher like a terrier shaking a rat.

The big son of a bitch had to have a weak spot somewhere, Preacher thought, so he went for the most likely area.

He kicked the fellow in the balls.

Finally, something went right. The man’s eyes widened, and the black face turned an ashen shade of gray. His hands slipped off Preacher’s shoulders. He didn’t double over in agony as most men would have done, but at least he hunched his shoulders and bent over a little as he clutched at his injured groin.

Preacher clubbed his hands together and swung them against the corded muscles on the left side of the man’s neck. That sent the man staggering to his right. While the man was off balance, Preacher kicked his right knee. That leg collapsed, dumping the man on the ground. Preacher landed on top of him and swung his clubbed fists again, back and forth, slamming them into the man’s face twice.

“That’ll be enough.”

The cold, dangerous voice spoke from the porch. Preacher twisted his neck to look back over his shoulder. He saw the sandy-haired man from the ferry standing there, a small but deadly pistol in his hand. The gambler pointed the gun at Preacher. It was cocked and ready to fire.

While the gambler held the pistol rock steady, a woman rushed past him and hurried off the porch into the yard. “Brutus!” she cried. When she reached Preacher, she struck at him with a small fist and said, “Get off him, you bastard!”

“Jessie,” the gambler said in a warning tone, “don’t get between me and—”

It was too late for that warning. Preacher grabbed the woman’s wrist and pulled her in front of him as he stood up. Using a woman as a shield really rubbed him the wrong way—hell, that was what Buckhalter had done with Lorraine when the Pawnee war party attacked the wagon train—but Preacher thought it might be something “Jim Donnelly” would do in circumstances like this.

“Take it easy, mister,” he said as he jerked the woman against him. He had twisted her so that her back was to him, and he felt the enticing curve of her hips as he pressed against her. “Just put that gun down.”

“I’ll kill you for this,” the woman spat furiously. “I’ll kill you myself. And if you’ve hurt Brutus, I’ll make sure you take a long time to die!”

“You take it easy, too,” Preacher rasped in her ear. “Everybody needs to just settle down, damn it. I didn’t come here lookin’ for trouble.”

On the ground, the black man called Brutus groaned, but he didn’t show any signs of getting up soon.

“Jessie,” the gambler said, “what do you want me to do?”

“Put your gun away, Cleve,” she told him. She glared back over her shoulder at Preacher. “I’ll deal with this . . . gentleman.”

She might as well have called him the most obscene name in the book, judging by her tone. Even though the gambler lowered his gun, Preacher didn’t let go of Jessie. He said, “This is your place?”

“That’s right.”

“Call off your dogs, then. I don’t want to hurt nobody, least of all a gal as pretty as you.”

She was stunning, no doubt about that. Even though Preacher hadn’t really gotten a good look at her yet, he was sure about that much. She was tall and slender—coltish would be a good word to describe her—and yet her body had plenty of womanly curves. Long, light brown hair swept around her face, over her shoulders, and down her back. The part that covered her ears had been curled into tight ringlets. She wore a fine, light blue gown that hugged her body. If she was a whore, she was one of the prettiest Preacher had ever seen. She looked more like she ought to be a rich man’s wife.

She said to the man on the porch, “Cleve, go back inside and send Terence and Micah out here to help Brutus.”