Free Pale Rider by Alan Dean Foster Page B

that includes Lahood.”
    The Preacher was looking past Hull and his rock now, letting his gaze roam over the steep slope just above the claim. “But you were afraid dynamite might bring down the rimrock, right? Idly he tossed a pebble uphill.
    “A lot of this is broken, and you’re sitting right at the base of an old talus slope here. It’d slip pretty easy, given the right shove.”
    Hull eyed him curiously. Apparently the Preacher had dipped into other books besides the one he was required to read from on Sundays.
    “Yep, that’s what I figured, for sure.” He tapped the boulder. “As much dynamite as it’d take to split this thing, it’d bring the whole hillside down.” He nodded toward the slope above. “That’d dam up the stream, and that’d be the end of everything. I’d slow down the creek and form a lake behind it. No panning and no sluicing and all the easy gold, assuming there is any, buried under ten or twenty feet of rock and snowmelt.” He stepped away from the boulder.
    “Anyway, dynamite’s expensive, and I don’t like the idea of bein’ any broker than I already am. I don’t like owin’ old man Blankenship or anybody else.”
    “Impecuniosity’s not a sin,” the Preacher murmured.
    Hull looked at him crossways. “What?”
    “Nothing. Let’s have a look at the whole project.”
    Following Hull’s lead, the two men circled the boulder. When they had completed their geological circumnavigation the Preacher rolled up his sleeves, spit into one palm, and rubbed both hands together. It was the first time Hull had gotten a good close look at those hands. One thing was immediately apparent: they had handled rougher material than the leather exterior of a bible.
    “There’s plain few problems,” the tall man said as he raised the sledge over his head, “that can’t be solved by application of a little sweat and hard work.”
    The sledge seemed to hang in the air for a moment, the iron head suddenly weightless against the sun. Then it descended. The resultant clang reverberated the length of the canyon.
    Two cousins, prospectors since the first strike back in ’49, heard the sound and looked curiously toward its source. Jake and Hilda Henderson paused in the process of strapping a washtub and rocking chair onto the back of their rickety wagon to look down at Hull Barret’s claim. Up the hillside a young recently married couple turned away from the open steamer trunk they’d been filling with clothes to peer curiously out their wax-paper window.
    Hull watched the Preacher work, admiring the smooth, apparently effortless swings of his long arms. Then he turned to study the wreckage of his placer cradle. Legs needed to be straightened and one would have to be replaced. He could get down to the dull but necessary work of repairing the rocker as he’d intended, or . . .
    Maybe it was the Preacher’s quiet enthusiasm, the energy he was putting into his efforts. Or maybe it was the thought of him challenging the impossible. Whatever it was, it infected Hull as well. There was a second sledge lying amidst the splintered wood of the sluice. Hull picked it up and checked the handle. It was older than the one the Preacher was wielding, but still serviceable. Hard to break a good sledge. Or a good man.
    Taking up a stance opposite the Preacher, he waited for an opening and then swung. Now the sounds of steel on rock rang out across the canyon in ragged syncopation at twice the rate, the two men driving the metal against the rock like a pair of Irishmen driving spikes into rails.
    Megan had turned back and now gazed at them admiringly, until something further downstream caught her attention. It took a moment before she recognized the approaching riders. Then she ran toward the two men.
    “Hull! Mr—Mr. Preacher!”
    The steady hammering of the sledges ceased, and they both looked up at her, then turned their gazes in the direction she was pointing.
    Josh Lahood was less than twenty yards away