F
IFTEEN
“They never had a chance,” Radborne Pardee said, after he and his brothers ran off the bloated carrion birds. The birds didn't go far from their snack. They waited and watched patiently. “Injuns snuck up on 'em and finished 'em.”
No one had yet discovered the note. Very observant bunch of outlaws.
Malachi wasn't at all sure it had been Indians. He stood in the middle of the carnage and looked slowly all about him. “Something is wrong with this,” he finally said. “I don't think this was done by Injuns.”
“How come you to say that, Malachi?” his brother Henry asked, a stupid look on his stupid face. “What else could it have been? Them's arrows, ain't they?”
“I know they're arrows, Henry,” Malachi said. “I can see that. But something's mighty wrong here. Mighty wrong. It's just ... I can't put my finger on it.”
“I'll say this,” Kenrick Pardee said, looking at the trail. “Them Injuns, if it was Injuns, was either drunk or it's a setup. A blind man could follow this trail.”
Malachi nodded his head in agreement, thinking that he was very grateful to have at least one brother with sense enough to come in out of the rain.
“What is all this scribblin' on this here paper?” Radborne said.
Malachi took the note from the branch and slowly read the words. He and Kenrick were the only ones in the clan who could read. His mouth dropped open and his face darkened with rage. He started cussing and balled up the note and threw it to the ground, then jumped up and down on it. It had been unsigned, but he knew who wrote it.
“Nobody calls me a stupid son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Goddamn that Preacher.”
“Preacher!”
Kenrick said.
“Yeah. Preacher. He writ that note. I know it was him.”
“Then let's don't take no chances, Malachi,” Kenrick said. “Let's call in the whole bunch and take off after him. We try to go this alone and he'll pick us off one by one.”
Malachi nodded his head. “All right. Put out the call, brother. Sound it long. We've got to get him. Before he gets us,” he added grimly.
* * *
Preacher heard the mournful sounds of the hunting horn as it sounded around the high country. Malachi was calling his bunch together to come after him. He settled down for a wait.
“Come on, Malachi,” he said. “I made the trail easy for you. But you'll have to look close to see this surprise I got rigged up down yonder.”
Preacher had left the wider animal trail and worked his way into a stand of timber. Those following him would have to leave their horses and continue their tracking on foot, for Preacher didn't want to hurt anyone's good horse unless it just come hard to that. A horse couldn't help it if the man who rode it was a sorry son of a bitch. Preacher did know that most highwaymen took better care of their horses than they did themselves, for the outlaw's life often depended upon the speed and the stamina of the horse he rode.
Preacher waited behind the jumble of rocks and thin brush. From his vantage point, he had a wide view of the area just below him, a fairly thick stand of timber, and there was only one way the Pardee gang could come at him â straight ahead.
Down the trail, Malachi Pardee had halted the gang and they had gathered. They moved out slowly, in single file, for the trail was narrow and rocky, with bad footing. Now they had halted. Ned Blum had volunteered to take the point, as Malachi had suspected he would. Ned hated Preacher, and his hatred spanned a dozen years. Ned had braced Preacher once and Preacher had tossed down the glove and then proceeded to stomp the bejesus out of the outlaw from Delaware, publicly humiliating him in front of a dozen men. Ned had sworn to kill Preacher.
“I don't need no help to take Preacher,” Ned boasted to Malachi and the others. “Y'all just stay back here and let me handle this.”
“You go right ahead, Ned,” Malachi said, thinking: Maybe you'll really get lucky and get a ball in him.
Rifle in hand, Ned moved out, working his way carefully into the stand of timber, moving ever closer to the spike trap Preacher had laid out for anyone stupid enough to follow his trail. Ned was cautious, and he had good reason to be, for everyone in the wilderness knew that if Preacher was anything, he was a very dangerous man. But Ned figured he could take him now that Preacher didn't have his buddies around him. Not that his buddies had anything to do with Preacher whipping him that time, but Ned had convinced himself through self-lies that they had.
Ned dried his sweaty palms on his britches and once more gripped his rifle. He paused for a moment, looking around him. He could see nothing out of the ordinary. Damn that Preacher, he thought. He's a-layin' up yonder somewhere's like a stinkin' Injun. He's been out here in the Lonesome so long he ain't even a white man no more. He thinks like a damn Injun.
Ned moved on and up. After a few steps, he sensed something was wrong and paused, looking all around him. Something was wrong, but he didn't know what. He let his eyes linger on the trees, the brush, the rocks, the faint trail that Preacher had left. He looked behind him. The boys was clean out of sight. He took one more step, then another. He began to feel better. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe all them feelin's of gloom and doom was wrong. After all, Preacher was just a man, not no superbein'.
He took another step and felt the earth give beneath his foot. He tried to jerk back but it was too late. Ned screamed as the sharpened stakes tore through his foot and ripped into the flesh of his ankle and calf. He dropped his rifle as the pain became so intense he almost lost consciousness. He began screaming, over and over, the hoarse howlings echoing around the high country.
“I reckon Ned wasn't as good as he thought he was,” Malachi remarked matter-of-factly, listening to the screaming.
“What you reckon Preacher done to him?” a thug called Van asked. He looked furtively all around him. That screaming was really unnerving.
“Why don't you go find out?” Malachi said, looking at the scared outlaw.
“Me?”
“I ain't talkin' to no damn tree, Van. Yeah, you. So move on out.”
All the others looked at him as Van licked suddenly dry lips and hesitated for a few seconds. The wild screaming was now more animallike in nature. All of them were thinking that there was no damn telling what Preacher had done to Ned.
“Back him up, Dexter,” Malachi ordered.
That made Van feel some better. Dexter was a good man and pure hell with a pistol, and in that stand of timber up yonder, a pistol was what a man was going to have to use. Van moved out, Dexter staying about twenty-five feet behind him.
As they slowly and cautiously closed the distance, both of them expecting a ball through the chest at any second, Dexter asked, “Van, what you reckon we've gone and done that's made Preacher so mad at us?”
“I don't know. I ain't never done him a hurt, that's for sure. Let's get Ned out of this mess first and then we'll tackle Preacher.” They stepped into the timber. “Jesus, it's close in here. Watch yourself.”
“Oh, may God help me!” Ned wailed. “My foot and leg is all tore up bad.”
“Hang on, Ned!” Dexter called. “We're comin' in to hep you. Just hang on.”
“Yeah,” Preacher muttered, Dexter's words just audible to him. “Come on, boys. I got some surprises waitin' for the two of you, too.”
Van was the first to reach the injured man and he almost got sick when he saw what Ned had gotten into. Preacher had dug a pit and rigged up sharpened stakes, with about half of the stake points up, the other half of the points down. Those pointed up had torn into Ned's foot, calf, and ankle. When Ned had tried to jerk his foot free, those stakes pointing down had ripped into flesh and trapped him.
“Good Lord,” Dexter said. “Keep watch, Van. I got to somehow pull these stakes out. Damn a man who would do something like this. Christ, they's blood all over the place. I can't get no good purchase on nothin'.”
Preacher had worked several hours in the building of his traps, and when Preacher wanted to be low down mean, he could be one mean son, for a fact.
Dex stepped back a foot or so and his boot hit a vine stretched tight. He had time to look up and open his mouth to holler before the heavy log fell on him. The log crushed his skull and broke his back and neck. But Dexter didn't mind. He was dead before he hit the ground. He would rape and rob and torture and murder no more.
Van had jumped back at Dexter's shout; now he looked at the mess, horror in his eyes. Ned had passed out, and that was a good thing for Ned, for one end of the heavy log had landed on his shoulder and bounced off. In addition to his other woes, Ned now had a broken shoulder and broken arm.
Van gingerly stepped back from the dead and badly injured and his boot slipped under and triggered another stretched-tight vine. A green and thick and limber limb lashed out and slammed into Van's face, breaking his nose and knocking out a couple of teeth and loosening a few more. Van screamed in pain and fright, struggled to his feet, and went staggering back down the trail, almost blind from the involuntary tears that were streaming from his eyes as a result of the busted beak.
“What the billy-hell ... ?” Malachi said, hearing all the commotion and then seeing Van come lurching and staggering out of the timber.
A rifle slammed and Van went down bonelessly and limp, a hole about the size of a teacup in his back. Malachi and the others hit the ground and went scrambling on all fours for cover.
“Anybody see the smoke?” Kenrick called from his cover behind a skinny tree.
“No,” a ne'er-do-well called Hall said. “But it's got to be comin' from up yonder in them rocks above the trees. Hell, that's a good three, four hundred yards.”
“Preacher can shoot,” Malachi said grudgingly. “This ain't no good, boys. We got to pull back from here.”
“What about Dex and Ned?”
“You ain't heard no more sounds from up yonder, have you?”
“Well ... no.”
“They're dead. Come on. Let's pull back and get gone. We got to plan some.”
They left Van where he lay and slipped back, far back, well out of rifle range. They went so far back they were out of cannon range.
Preacher watched them leave and left his rocks and drifted down to where Ned lay trapped in the stake pit. He ignored the battered and broken body of Dexter and squatted down beside the unconscious Ned. While Ned was out, Preacher freed his legs and hauled him out of the hole, stretching him out on the ground. He could plainly see that the man's arm and shoulder were busted. He poured a little water from his canteen on the man's face and Ned moaned and opened his eyes. They were bright with the pain that rippled through his body.
“Your pals pulled out and left you,” Preacher told him. “Mayhaps you should start thinkin' about associatin' with a better class of people.”
“I'm dyin', ain't I?”
“You ain't in the best shape I ever seen a man to be,” Preacher acknowledged. “But I reckon if I was a mind to, I could fix up some poultices and such for your legs and set that shoulder and arm.”
“For the love of God, man â ”
“Don't you be talkin' 'bout God to me, you trashy bastard. Anybody that would ride with the Pardees don't need to be mentionin' God.”
“You a mighty cold man, Preacher.”
“No, I ain't. I just don't like the Pardees nor anyone who consorts with them.” He picked up his rifle. “I best be movin' on.”
“Wait! Are you just going to leave me here?”
“I could shoot you, I reckon. I'd do that for a horse,” Preacher said straight-faced.
“My God, man, but you a devil!”
“Well ... you could make it easier for yourself by talkin' to me,” Preacher suggested.
“About what?”
“Malachi Pardee and his plans.”
“I don't know nothin' about no plans,” Ned said, a sly look creeping into his eyes.
Preacher started to walk away.
“Wait!” Ned called weakly. “Don't leave me like this. I don't know much but I'll tell you what I do know.”
Preacher squatted down beside the man. Ned wasn't going to die â providing gangrene didn't set in â but he would never be one hundred percent again. His shoulder was crushed and his arm broken in several places. If his legs weren't treated fast, both of them would rot off. Preacher told him that.
“You're gonna hep me, aren't you?” Ned begged.
“Depends on what you tell me.”
Ned laid his head on the ground. “All right,” he whispered. “All right. I ain't never in my life seen a man as hard as you, Preacher. Never.”
* * *
Preacher fixed poultices for the man's badly injured legs â but the plants really needed weren't growing this high up. Then he set Ned's arm and shoulder as best he could. Ned passed out from the pain and Preacher left him like that. There was nothing else he could do for him. Ned hadn't known much, but what he did know was a help.
Only a few of Red Hand's renegades had stayed with the Pardee gang. The renegade leader had taken most of his followers and left out. Ned seemed to think they had gone east, believing that would provide them with easier pickings. Ned had the impression that Malachi Pardee was even too gamy for Red Hand.
Preacher doubted that. Red Hand was as cruel a man as Preacher had ever seen. He probably just wanted to get shut of the crazy Pardee brothers. Preacher knew them all, and with the exception of Malachi and Kenrick, the rest of them were as nutty as a pecan tree. Ansel was by far the bloodthirstiest. He was killing crazy.