Free Forty Guns West by William W. Johnstone Page B

And Indians took an even sourer view of folks like that. Indians hunted animals for survival. They never killed what they couldn’t use.
    Preacher calmed down some and drank his coffee and chewed his jerky. He mulled over his situation. Counting the cooks and servants, he was outnumbered about fifty-some-odd to one. He knew that common sense told him to get Eddie and head deep into the mountains. Bones and them goddamn foreigners would never find them. Preacher knew that. But Preacher didn’t much cotton to runnin’ away. That cut against the grain. It wasn’t that he hadn’t run from trouble before, because he had. There was a time to fight and a time for a feller to haul his ashes. Said that plain in the Bible—sort of. But damned if Preacher was gonna run from the likes of Bones Gibson and a bunch of fancy-pants counts and barons and dukes and princes and so forth.
    Now, about the boy. Eddie was safe in the Ute village. Bones would never attack an Indian village, even if he could get close enough without bein’ seen, which he couldn’t. Bones was arrogant, but he wasn’t stupid.
    Preacher drank the last of his coffee and made up his mind as the fire began dying down to coals. All around him lay the magnificence and majesty of the Rockies. Birds were singing and squirrels were playing and chattering.
    He had done nothing to any of those men huntin’ him. They wanted to do harm to him and Eddie. They wanted to use Preacher like some poor chased animal. But that would never happen. They wanted a war. Well, all right. That could happen. Preacher could damn sure give them a war. But this war would be on Preacher’s terms—Preacher would lay down the rules of warfare. And they would be harsh. This would be a war like none they had ever seen. Count on that.
    Preacher doused his fire and covered all signs of the camp. He saddled up Thunder and packed his few supplies and stepped into the saddle.
    He rode for about fifteen miles before topping a rise and there, staying in the timber, he surveyed his surroundings. This was his country. The High Lonesome. The Big Empty.
    And it was about to run red with blood.

8
    Bones had shifted his camp.
    It only took Preacher about one minute to determine which direction they’d gone. He did not immediately follow the tracks. Instead, Preacher threw together a small fire, made some coffee, and then sat for a time, ruminating.
    Bones and Van Eaton had assumed rightly that John Pray would blab, telling Preacher everything that he knew. Dark Hand would point out that he’d been right all along in saying that Preacher was close-by, watching. So the smart move would be to shift locations. But this time it would be a much more secure camp, one that could be easily guarded and defended while the man-hunters made new plans.
    The men had made no attempt to hide their tracks, so to Preacher’s mind, that meant they wanted him to follow. “They think they gonna ambush you, Ol’ Hoss,” he muttered. “They got some boys layin’ in wait for you to come amblin’ along so’s they can put a ball in your noggin. So you just sit right here and figure out where the main bunch is headin’ and then circle around and do some dirty work of your own.”
    John Pray had told him that the Pawnee, Dark Hand, had spent a couple or three years in this area. That was news to Preacher, but he didn’t doubt the man’s words. It made sense to him. Without someone who knew this country, Bones and his men would have been wanderin’ about like a lost calf a-bellerin’ for its mamma. So where would Dark Hand lead the men now that they knew Preacher was on the prowl?
    That was a question that Preacher could not answer. Putting himself in Dark Hand’s moccasins, he could come up with several dozen places where he’d go. But what he could do was pretty much determine the direction. Preacher carefully extinguished his