Hard Ride to Hell (9780786031191) (3 page)

Standing Rock and several of his friends carefully wrapped Blue Bull's body in a blanket and tied it onto one of the horses. It was a solemn group that left the canyon and started back toward the Assiniboine village.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this terrible thing, Preacher?” Two Bears asked as they rode at the head of the search party.

“I thought I spotted some sign from a horse wearin' shoes in the canyon,” Preacher replied. “The ground's too rocky to be sure of anything, though. But I'd say there's a good chance Blue Bull ran into a white man. Probably more than one.”

“Why more than one?”

“It ain't that easy for most folks to get behind somebody and stab 'em, unless the fella on the receivin' end of that knife is distracted somehow. If Blue Bull came upon two white men in that canyon, would he have stopped and talked to them?”

Two Bears looked over at Standing Rock, who was riding on his other side close enough to have heard Preacher's question.

“He would have talked to them,” Standing Rock replied. “He would have asked them who they were and what they were doing on Assiniboine land.”

“Would he have challenged 'em enough that they thought he might attack them?” Preacher asked.

“Blue Bull would never attack anyone without good reason!” Standing Rock responded.

Two Bears said, “Blue Bull's blood ran hot at times, like that of all young men. The white men might have believed they were in danger.” The chief's voice hardened. “But that was no reason to murder one of my young men.”

“No, it sure wasn't,” Preacher agreed. “I think we're on the right track about what happened, though, regardless of the reason for it.”

“Do you think you could track the men who did this, old friend?”

Preacher shrugged and said, “I could give it a try. There ain't all that much daylight left, but I can go up on that ridge and take a look around. If there really were some other riders in that canyon, they didn't come out either side of it. We would have seen the tracks at this end, and Standin' Rock probably would've noticed 'em at the other end when he went all the way through lookin' for Blue Bull.”

“You saw no such tracks?” Two Bears asked his son-in-law.

Standing Rock didn't hesitate in his answer.

“I saw no tracks of any kind,” he said. “Shod or unshod.”

“There you go,” Preacher said with a nod. He pulled back gently on Horse's reins. “I'll take Dog and have a look.”

“I'm coming with you,” Standing Rock declared.

Preacher started to say he wasn't sure that was a good idea, but he knew that if he did, Standing Rock would just be more put out with him. Besides, he supposed it wouldn't hurt anything to have the young man along. Preacher knew this country, but Standing Rock lived here and would know it even better.

“Sure, I'd be glad to have the company,” he said. “Come on.”

“We will take Blue Bull back to the village,” Two Bears said as the two men turned their mounts. “Be careful.”

That would be the smart thing to do, all right, Preacher thought, since there was at least one murderer on the loose somewhere in these parts.

He and Standing Rock rode back toward the canyon, which was only a couple of hundred yards away. As they approached, Preacher studied the ridge on both sides of the canyon mouth.

“I don't think we can get up there anywhere close, at least on horseback,” he said. “We can leave our mounts down here, though, and check it out on foot.”

“Perhaps my pony is more sure-footed than that beast of yours,” Standing Rock said.

Preacher suppressed the annoyance he felt at the young warrior's bold statement. Here the fella's best friend was dead, and he still had to act like an ass.

“Maybe so,” he said. “If you want to take a chance on rollin' down that ridge with a horse on top of you, I reckon that's up to you.”

Standing Rock glared but didn't say anything else. When they reached the base of the ridge, he dismounted just like Preacher did. They took their rifles from saddle sheaths as they got ready to climb.

The ridge was rugged enough, with rocks jutting out from it and hardy bushes growing here and there to provide handholds, that they had no trouble climbing the forty or fifty feet to the top. Dog found the going even easier and reached the crest first.

When Preacher made it to the top, he saw that the ridge was about half a mile wide. On the far side it dropped down into a narrow valley, and on the other side of that valley rose an even more rugged hill.

“We'll follow the canyon,” Preacher said. “If there were riders down in yonder, they had to go down and come back out somewhere.”

“There were riders in the canyon,” Standing Rock said. His face was set in grim lines. “We know that because they killed Blue Bull.”

“Somebody sure did,” Preacher said. “Come on.”

They walked along the side of the canyon, staying fairly close to the rim. Preacher saw several places where he thought men on horseback could get up and down the caved-in sides, but there were no hoofprints to indicate that any had done so recently. He didn't spot any footprints, either.

Then, when they weren't far from the place where they had found Blue Bull's body, Preacher stopped and pointed to the ground.

“Take a gander at those,” he said.

The ground was pretty rocky up here, too, but there were stretches of dirt and scrubby grass. In one of those stretches, several prints made by a shod horse were visible.

Preacher knelt to study the tracks closer, and so did Standing Rock. After several moments, the warrior said, “They are only a few hours old.”

“Yeah,” Preacher said, “and they lead away from the canyon.”

“There were two shod horses.”

Preacher nodded, agreeing again with his companion. Standing Rock might be pretty stiff-necked most of the time, but he had a good eye.

“They have to be the men who killed Blue Bull,” Standing Rock went on.

“We don't know that for sure”—Preacher held up a hand to forestall the protest he knew was coming from Standing Rock—“but I'd say the chances are mighty good that they are.”

“We must follow them!”

“What if they're on their way back to a bigger bunch?”

“I do not care,” Standing Rock said. “They killed Blue Bull. His death must be avenged!”

“Happens I agree with you. But we're liable to lose the light before we catch up to them. And we don't know what they're up to, but more than likely it ain't anything good. If they catch sight of us, they're liable to start shootin'.”

“The Blackfeet call you Ghost Killer, do they not? They say you can turn yourself into a phantom and cut a man's throat without anyone knowing you were ever there.”

“Reckon them days are a long time behind me,” Preacher said wryly. “I ain't quite as stealthy anymore. But if we're careful, maybe we can get a look at them without bein' spotted.”

“We must find more tracks—”

“Don't bother. Dog can show us where to go. Dog!”

Preacher made sure the big cur had the scent of the horses that had passed this way, and then once again he told Dog to hunt. Dog took off. Preacher and Standing Rock hurried after him.

Preacher had to call Dog several times to make sure he didn't outdistance them. Any kind of hunt always filled Dog with eagerness.

Preacher understood that. Even as old as he was, he felt the same way, getting caught up in the thrill of the chase. The fact that they were going after a pair of killers didn't really change that. This was far from the first manhunt Preacher had taken part in.

Dog led them down into the thickly wooded valley on the far side of the ridge. Preacher spotted more hoofprints from time to time, but he relied more on the big cur's nose.

As soon as the sun dropped behind the mountains to the west, the light began to fade quickly. The two men could still see Dog ahead of them, though, so they kept going, trotting easily through the gray shadows of dusk.

Preacher didn't know how close they might be getting to their quarry so, instead of calling Dog, he let out a whistle that could be mistaken for the sound of a bird. Dog turned and trotted back to them.

“Why did you stop him?” Standing Rock asked.

“Keep your voice down,” Preacher said. His own voice was little more than a whisper. “I don't want to go announcin' to those varmints that we're here. Thought I just caught a whiff of smoke.”

He sniffed the air again. Smoke, all right, he thought. Not a campfire, though. Tobacco. Somebody had rolled and smoked a quirly not too far from here.

Something else suddenly caught Preacher's attention and made him take a sharply indrawn breath. Standing Rock heard it, too, and exclaimed, “Horses!”

“Yeah,” Preacher said. The sound of hoofbeats drifted through the darkening air. Quite a few riders were on the move. Twenty or thirty of them, Preacher estimated.

They were at least a couple of hundred yards away, too. Preacher stood there stiffly as he tried to track them by sound. As best he could determine, the riders were headed east.

The Assiniboine village lay in that direction. An icy finger trailed down the mountain man's back at that thought. Even though he didn't know who the riders were or what was going on here, his instincts told him that trouble was on the move tonight.

“Come on,” he told Standing Rock. “We got to get back to the horses!”

“But those men . . . Who are they? Where are they going?”

“That's what we're gonna find out,” Preacher said.

And if the uneasy hunch he had turned out to be true, he just hoped they reached the village before it was too late.

Randall was a cautious man. He had to be in order to live as long as he had while following a dangerous profession. Most men who hired out their guns for any job where the price was right died at a pretty young age.

Randall had been at it for a while, though, and tonight was a prime example of how he had survived. In all likelihood, the Assiniboine brave Page had knifed in the back was still lying under those rocks. His people might have missed him by now, but the odds of anybody finding him were small. Randall still wasn't going to risk it.

So instead of using the canyon to cut through that ridge as he had planned, he led his men the long way around, riding north to a spot where the ridge petered out and going around it. That meant traveling several miles out of the way, but that didn't really matter to Randall.

They had all night to reach the Indian village and get the job done.

The sky was dark enough now that the stars stood out against the blackness like diamond pinpoints of light. When Randall glanced up at them, they made him think of real diamonds he had seen once, on a necklace stretched across black satin. That was in San Francisco, and the woman wearing the necklace was a beautiful redhead. Her name was Sherry.

Or was it Cherry? Randall wasn't sure anymore. Too many years had passed. He knew that the woman had wound up dead, though, because of him. An assassin working for one of the tongs had thrown a knife at him, and he had dodged it at the last second, so that it went right into the redhead's throat. Less than a heartbeat later, Randall had a gun in his hand and blew a slug through the murderous Chinaman's heart. The woman was dead, though, and it was a damned shame.

But he'd reminded himself that Sherry or Cherry—or whatever her name was—wasn't the first woman to die from being around him. Death just seemed to come natural for folks who got too close to him.

Well, a lot of years had gone by since then, he reflected as he rode across the rolling hills toward the Assiniboine village. He had done a lot of different things to earn his money, most of which involved guns and killing. Every now and then he used dynamite and blew somebody up. A little variety never hurt.

Most people weren't so casual about murder. He knew that, in his mind. He couldn't really bring himself to care, though. And as he glanced over his shoulder at the men riding with him, he knew that most, if not all of them, were the same way. As long as they got paid, they didn't care who died.

Randall didn't know exactly where the village was, but he had a pretty good idea. When he was sure they were getting close, he held up a hand and signaled his men to halt. When they had done so, he waved a couple of them forward.

“I'm going to take a look,” he said. “Hold the men here. Keep it quiet. No talking, no horses stomping around. And no smokes. The smell of tobacco can carry.”

“Injuns smoke pipes, don't they?” one of the men asked.

“Yeah, but they don't smell as bad as those cheroots some of this bunch favors,” Randall said. “Just do as you're told.”

“Sure, boss. No quirlies, no stogies.”

Randall dismounted and handed his reins to one of the men.

“Here. Hold my horse.”

He moved off into the darkness, trotting easily through the shadows. He blended into those shadows in his dark gray trousers, black shirt, and gray Stetson. In a matter of seconds, the rest of the men couldn't see him anymore.

Randall enjoyed moments like this. He was like a wolf gliding through the night in search of prey.

He had gone about half a mile when he heard the wailing. He followed the sound to the top of a hill, where he paused and knelt behind some brush. Parting the branches slightly, he looked down the slope.

The Assiniboine village was a couple of hundred yards away. Several fires blazed brightly among the lodges. Members of the tribe, men and women alike, were moving around. That sight brought a frown to Randall's face, as did the sorrowful cries he heard coming from down there.

Somebody was mourning, he thought. He supposed that another member of the tribe could have died during the day, but that possibility struck him as far-fetched since he
knew
that one of the Indians was dead for sure: the warrior Page had killed.

It looked like there was a good chance somebody had found the corpse after all.

“Those dumb bastards,” Randall muttered. It didn't appear that the Assiniboine were all that alert, but they weren't sound asleep, either, and he had been hoping to have the element of surprise solidly on his side. Nobody could put up much of a fight if they were jolted out of a deep sleep and killed before they knew what was going on.

He would just have to deal with this, he told himself. The Indians still weren't expecting trouble. He knelt there and watched long enough, searching every shadow around the village, until he was convinced there were no warriors standing guard. He and his men could still hit them hard before they knew what was happening. They would just have to be more careful about their approach.

Satisfied that he had learned all he could, he backed away and then stood up. His unerring sense of direction meant that he had no trouble retracing his steps to the spot where he had left his men.

He paused and called softly, “It's me,” before he came up to them. No point in giving anybody an excuse to get trigger-happy.

“Did you find those redskins, boss?” Dwyer asked quietly.

“I did,” Randall replied. “I found something else, too . . . a village in mourning for someone who died.”

Page said nervously, “Probably somebody who was, uh, gettin' on in years.”

“Or a young man who was killed for no good reason,” Randall said, without bothering to keep the caustic tone out of his voice.

Page was angry now. He said, “Listen, Randall—”

“Forget about it,” Randall snapped. “It doesn't matter. We can still do what we need to do. Everyone dismount. We'll lead the horses. Quieter that way.”

That brought a few mutters of complaint. Hired guns weren't that different from cowhands in one respect: They didn't like to walk. But they were being well paid and they would do what they were told.

“All right,” Randall went on, “when we get there, we'll mount up and charge down the hill into the village. You can shoot all you want to, just make sure you aim high. There's to be no killing until I have the two we're after.”

“But once you do?” one of the men asked.

“Kill anything that moves, for all I care,” Randall said. “Let's go.”

 

 

Preacher and Standing Rock ran back over the ridge. Even so, the distant hoofbeats of the fast-moving horses had faded away completely by the time the two men climbed down and reached their mounts.

“They are gone!” Standing Rock said as he swung up onto his pony's blanket-covered back.

“Yeah, but we got a pretty good idea where they're goin',” Preacher replied as he settled into Horse's saddle.

“And if we are wrong?”

“Then they ain't headin' for the village and there ain't nothin' to worry about.”

“But we will lose them! Blue Bull's death will go unavenged!”

“Not necessarily,” Preacher said, curtailing the impatience he felt. “We can pick up their trail later. With that big of a bunch, it won't be too hard.”

He drove his heels into Horse's flanks and sent the big stallion trotting toward the Assiniboine village. Standing Rock kicked his mount into a gallop and dashed on ahead. The pony couldn't maintain that pace all the way to the village, though, so it wasn't long before Horse's ground-eating lope caught up to them.

Standing Rock looked over at Preacher and said, “You think they are going to attack my people.”

“I don't have any idea why, because I don't know who they are, but that's my hunch, yeah,” the mountain man said.

“They killed Blue Bull, and now they want to hurt the rest of the Assiniboine!”

It didn't make any sense, thought Preacher. This was pretty good grazing land hereabouts, and cattlemen always wanted to expand, wanted more range on which to run their herds. But as far as he knew nobody had been encroaching on the Assiniboine hunting grounds. The state of truce that existed between Two Bears's people and the neighboring spreads had been going on for a long time. Nobody wanted an Indian war.

He couldn't help but think that Standing Rock was right, though. For whatever purpose, those riders planned to attack the village.

And they had a pretty good lead on Preacher and Standing Rock, too.

Still, as the ground rolled past under the fast-moving hooves of the two horses, Preacher began to think they might have a chance to reach the village before any trouble broke out. If they could warn Two Bears to get ready for a fight, that might make a lot of difference in the outcome. But if the Assiniboine were taken by surprise . . .

Suddenly, Preacher threw a hand in the air and called to Standing Rock, “Hold on!” He hauled back on Horse's reins and brought the stallion to a halt.

Standing Rock stopped, too, but clearly he didn't like it.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “We must hurry—”

“Listen,” Preacher told him. A moment earlier, he had thought that he heard something, but he'd had to silence their horses' hoofbeats before he could be sure.

Now he was sure, and he wished he had been wrong.

The roar and crackle of gunfire drifted ominously to them through the night air.