Chapter 35
Matt's thoughts worked like lightning. He had no reason to save Randall's life, especially if the man had done something to Preacher.
But there were still too many questions, and Randall might have the answers to some or even all of them. So maybe there
was
a good reason to keep the other man from gunning him down after all.
Even under these circumstances, Matt didn't want to shoot a man in the back. Instead, he threw the half-full beer mug as hard as he could. The heavy glass mug crashed into the back of the would-be killer's head with such force that it knocked him forward a step. The gun in the man's hand roared, but the barrel had dipped and the slug thudded into the floor between him and Randall, kicking up splinters.
With the instincts of the big cat he resembled, Randall reacted with blinding speed and whirled around. The gunman was out of arm's reach, but Randall still held the cue stick. He whipped it across the man's face, shattering the stick. Randall leaped forward and brought the piece he still held down sharply across the man's wrist.
Matt heard something break, but he wasn't sure if it was cue stick or bone. Either way, the man dropped the gun. Randall grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and heaved, pivoting at the hips as he hauled the man off his feet and flung him like a rag doll through one of the saloon's side windows. Glass shattered and sprayed outward as the man flew through the air for a few feet and then crashed limply to the ground outside the saloon.
The flurry of violent action had taken only seconds. The rest of the people in the saloon had barely had time to lift their heads to see what all the commotion was about.
Randall drew his gun as he looked out the window at the man's huddled shape. Matt had moved forward enough to peer past Randall's shoulder. The man lying on the ground was either out cold or dead. Randall didn't appear to be overly concerned about which one it was as he grunted and holstered his gun.
“Simmons, Quitman, get out there and gather up Page,” Randall ordered. “If he's alive, tend to him. If he's dead, haul him to the undertaker.”
Two men, who'd been seated at a table, playing poker, threw in their cards without argument and stood up to hurry out of the saloon.
Randall looked over at Matt and said in a cold voice, “Who the hell are you?”
“The name's Stevens,” Matt replied.
“You're the one who made Page miss by throwing that beer mug at his head?”
“That's right.”
“Pretty quick thinking. But why'd you do it? I never laid eyes on you before, at least not that I remember.”
“Nope, you haven't,” Matt said. “I just rode in to town less than half an hour ago. As for why I stepped in . . . let's just say I don't cotton to back-shooters.”
“Maybe I deserve to be shot in the back. You don't know me.”
“That's true,” Matt admitted. “But I was willing to take a chance.”
Randall studied him for a long moment and then finally nodded.
“I'm obliged to you for the help,” he said. “I might've been able to handle him on my own, but you made it easier, Stevens.”
“Glad I was in the right place at the right time,” Matt said, and in his own way, he meant it. He nodded toward the window. On the other side of it, the two men Randall had sent out there were picking up a groggy and moaning but very much alive ambusher. “That fella must be holding a powerful grudge against you.”
“I killed a friend of his,” Randall said curtly. “The bastard had it coming.”
“What did he do?”
“Shot a woman in the back. She was an Indian woman, but still . . .” Randall's voice trailed off as he looked at Matt with narrowed eyes. “You ask a lot of questions, mister, and you're a stranger, to boot.”
Matt held up both hands and said, “I didn't mean to pry. Just curious, that's all.”
“Forget it. I reckon you've earned a little curiosity.”
Archibald Ingersoll had come into the saloon. He approached Randall cautiously and chose that moment to speak up.
“Mr. Randall, sir . . .”
Randall didn't let him go on.
“The Colonel will pay for the window.” Randall reached down and picked up the now-empty beer mug from the floor. He handed it to Ingersoll and added, “At least the mug didn't break.”
“I'm not worried about the mug or the window, Mr. Randall,” Ingersoll said. “But if you consider me in any way to blame for what happenedâ”
“Because your bartender sold Page the bottle he got drunk on?” Randall snorted. “Page is a grown man, Ingersoll. He makes his own decisions. Bad ones, usually.”
“Yes, sir. Just so we're clear and everything's all right.”
“It's fine. Get the window replaced and give me the bill. I'll see that it's paid.”
“It won't be cheap,” the saloonkeeper warned, “with freight having to go so far around the mountains, and it's a long way to start with to the nearest town with glass like that.”
“Just take care of it,” Randall said, obviously growing impatient. He kicked the broken cue stick aside, adding that the Colonel would pay for it, too, and then said to Matt, “Come on, Stevens. I'll buy you a beer to replace the one you lost.”
Normally, Matt wouldn't think of having a drink with a man he suspected of harming Preacher, but under the circumstances, being friendly with Randall might be the best thing he could do. There were still plenty of things he needed to find out.
Such as the identity of the Indian woman who had been shot in the back. A terrible chill had gone through Matt when he heard those words, but he thought he had been able to keep the reaction from showing on his face.
“I appreciate that,” he said. He and Randall turned toward the bar.
When they had their beers, Randall picked up his and nodded toward an empty table.
“Let's sit down,” he suggested.
“Sure,” Matt agreed.
They took their seats. Matt thumbed back his hat like he didn't have a care in the world and took a long swallow of the cool beer.
“What brings you to Hammerhead, Stevens?” Randall asked.
Matt thought it was more than mere curiosity that prompted the question. Randall was eyeing him speculatively, like he had something else in mind.
“Nothing in particular,” Matt replied. “I'm just drifting. I came through the pass in the mountains to the east and thought this basin was mighty pretty. Saw the settlement in the distance and decided to take a walk over here. I've been riding a lot of lonely trails lately.”
“Been hearing a lot of owls hoot at night, have you?”
Matt shrugged. If Randall wanted to think that he was on the dodge, that was just fine.
“You're fast with a beer mug,” Randall went on. “How are you with a gun?”
“I get by. I'm still alive and kicking, and I've seen my share of gun trouble.”
Randall took a long swallow of beer and then nodded.
“There's something to be said for staying alive, all right. You know what I'm thinking, Stevens?”
“That after today you won't ever be able to trust that fella Page again?”
“I can't ride with a man I don't trust to have at my back with a gun in his hand,” Randall said with a harsh note in his voice. “You're right. Page is done.” That cold, grim smile touched Randall's mouth again. “Anyway, I'm pretty sure I broke his jaw and his wrist with that cue stick. He won't be any good for several weeks. If he's got any sense, he'll slink on out of the basin like the coyote he is as soon as he's able to travel.”
“So you're going to need somebody to take his place,” Matt said.
“That's right. But you don't even know what the job is.”
Matt shrugged and said, “I don't know what the
pay
is. That's the only important thing.”
Randall laughed, and there was at least a trace of genuine amusement in the sound.
“The job is doing whatever the Colonel tells us to do, and the pay is a hundred dollars a month for you.”
That implied that Randall was making more, which came as no surprise.
“Who's this Colonel fella?”
“The man who runs things around here. He gives the orders, and I make sure they're carried out. The men who work for him do as they're told, without question. Can you handle that?”
“I reckon I can,” Matt said. “There's one thing, though.”
“Spit it out,” Randall snapped.
“You said something about a woman being killed. I don't cotton to that any more than I do to backshooters.”
“That wasn't supposed to happen.” Randall's face hardened with remembered anger. “We were bringing her here to the Colonel, and she tried to get away. The man who nearly let her escape lost his head. She'd put a knife in him, and I reckon he wasn't thinking straight. He yanked his gun out and shot her before I could stop him.” He took a drink. “I suppose I got carried away, too. The son of a bitch shouldn't have been so careless as to let it happen. So I shot him.”
“And he and Page were pards,” Matt guessed.
“Yeah. Page claimed he was all right with it, that Dwyer dug his own grave, but I guess the anger just sat there inside him, festering for a week. Earlier this afternoon he took a bottle and a whore upstairs with him. I had a hunch the bottle might finish poisoning him, but I hoped the whore would work it out of him. Reckon that didn't happen.”
“That's a shame. Some people get it in their head that they've got to even a score, and they just can't get over it.”
Matt kept his tone light, but inside he was seething. He was almost completely convinced that the woman who had been killed was Wildflower, Two Bears's daughter and Standing Rock's wife. He wanted to ask about the little boy, but he couldn't. Matt Stevens, drifting gunman, wouldn't know a damned thing about that.
Randall drank the last of his beer and said, “You never gave me a firm answer, Stevens. Do you want the job?”
Matt said, “Yeah, I do.”
Randall scraped his chair back and stood up.
“Good. I'll take you up to the Colonel's house and introduce you. Maybe you can give me a hand with a little chore, too.”
“What chore would that be?”
Randall raised his right hand and touched his upper left arm where the bandage was, under his shirtsleeve. He said, “Trying to beat some sense into the stubborn old son of a bitch who shot me last week.”
Chapter 36
The rattle of a key in the lock made Preacher's eyes flutter open instinctively. He closed them again almost immediately. He didn't want whoever was coming into this attic room to know he was awake, not until he figured out who it was and what they wanted. The visitor could be Mrs. Dayton, bringing him something to eat and drink. That was good.
Or it could be the Colonel or Randall, and that was bad. Very bad.
As Preacher hung there limply, suspended by a rope slung over an exposed attic beam and tied to his wrists, he smelled the air and caught a whiff of lilac water, as well as the odors of leather and tobacco and sweat. The lilac came from Mrs. Dayton, the other smells from the guard who accompanied her into this makeshift prison. She never came in without having one of the Colonel's gunmen with her, although Preacher wasn't sure what they thought he could do, trussed up the way he was.
His ankles were lashed together. With his arms pulled up over his head the way they were, he had to come up on his toes to keep all his weight from resting on his wrists, arms, and shoulders. That awkward stance caused burning pain to radiate through the muscles of his legs and back.
Thankfully, they didn't leave him strung up like this all the time. If they had, it probably would have killed him by now. As it was, he was only half dead from the torture and from the bullet wounds he had suffered in the shoot-out with Randall and the Colonel on the mansion's second floor.
When he had first come to, lying on a cot with his hands and feet bound, it hadn't taken him long to figure out where he was. A candle burned on a crate beside the cot, and its flickering glow revealed the exposed beams and rafters above his head. He was in a small room in the mansion's attic. Preacher didn't know if it had been built for prisoners or just happened to be here, but for the time being it was his jail, sure enough.
The wounds in his side and arm had been cleaned and bandaged. They hurt like blazes, but Preacher had been shot often enough in his long and perilous life that he could tell how serious the injuries were. They could still fester and kill him, but other than that, he wasn't in any danger of dying from them.
With no windows in the room where he was being held, he couldn't tell at first if it was day or night outside. But eventually he began to see light seeping through the cracks between boards and knew the sun had come up. Since then he had tried to keep track of how many days had gone by, but it was difficult because sometimes he passed out. The number of meals Mrs. Dayton brought him didn't really help, either, because he had no way of knowing how many times a day she was feeding him. But he thought that roughly a week had gone by since he was captured.
A week in hell, for the most part.
He had been there a day or so when the Colonel and his pet gun-wolf Randall came into the attic room. Randall strung Preacher up from the beam, and then the Colonel began to question him, wanting to know how many of the Assiniboine he had brought with him and where to find them. He asked as well who Preacher was and what his connection was with the Indians.
Preacher had the same answer to all the questions: “Go to hell.”
He knew he was in for trouble when the Colonel began pulling on a pair of soft doeskin gloves. Ritchie didn't bother with a whip or any other implements of torture. He relied on his fists, putting the weight of his blocky body behind them as he swung blow after blow to Preacher's head and torso. After he had thrown enough punches to wind him slightly, the Colonel paused and asked the same questions again.
Preacher's answer remained the same, too.
Eventually, he passed out, and when he came to, he was back on the cot. Mrs. Dayton was there, with a guard standing behind her. She wiped Preacher's face with cool cloths and pressed hot ones to his body to draw out some of the aches and pains.
She still had that sorrowful look in her eyes, as if she didn't like what was being done to him, but she said, “You should tell the Colonel what he wants to know. You're too old to take this kind of punishment.”
“I'm too old and stubborn . . . to give in to the varmint,” Preacher husked through dry, cracked lips.
“He'll kill you,” the woman warned in a whisper.
“He can try,” Preacher said.
The Colonel certainly had tried, visiting the attic room several times a day to pummel the prisoner, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness. Randall took a turn now and then, when the Colonel told him to, although he seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about it.
But Preacher's body was rawhide, leather, and steel. All the softness had been honed away from it decades earlier. And his skull was cast iron, an advantage he'd been blessed with by nature. He absorbed the punishment and maintained his defiant attitude.
Being strung up was actually worse than being beaten. It was a slow, steadily grinding pain that ate away at him. But he withstood it, too. He knew that if he gave away the location of the camp where Standing Rock and the other warriors were waiting for him, Randall would take his crew of hired killers and wipe them out.
Preacher wondered sometimes whether the Assiniboine were still there, or if Standing Rock had lost patience and tried to come into town. He didn't think that was the case because the Colonel was still asking him about the Indians. But Preacher knew Standing Rock wouldn't wait for him forever. He was a little surprised the man hadn't made a move before now.
If Standing Rock ever found out that Wildflower was dead, mercilessly murdered by one of the Colonel's men, that would be the end of it. The Assiniboine would attack Hammerhead and they would all die, most likely along with a number of innocent citizens.
Preacher held out one strong hope: He knew that Smoke and Matt would show up sooner or later. If they followed his sign to Standing Rock's camp and found out what was going on, they would know what to do. And sooner or later they would unleash all hell on the Colonel and his men.
Now he was strung up again, waiting to see what would happen next since that was all he could do. He kept his eyes closed as Mrs. Dayton told the man with her, “Take him down.”
Several times Preacher had considered trying to escape in situations like this, but he knew he was too weak to overpower the guard. If he could get his hands on a gun, it might be a different matter. He believed he was still plenty strong enough to pull a trigger.
But the man untied one of his wrists and then stepped back out of reach quickly before Preacher could even start to lower that arm. The rope slithered over the beam and dropped away from it. Without it to hold him up, Preacher's strength deserted him and he crumpled to the rough floor.
The guard tied his wrists together and picked him up to place him on the cot. Preacher opened his eyes then, because there was no point in continuing to pretend to be asleep.
Mrs. Dayton stepped out into the hall for a moment, then came back carrying a tray with a bowl and a cup on it. Preacher smelled coffee and stew. His belly clenched with hunger. He was a little surprised that the Colonel hadn't tried to starve him into cooperating, but so far he'd been getting fed fairly regularly.
“Help him sit up,” Mrs. Dayton told the guard.
Preacher had seen the man before but didn't know his name. He didn't care what the varmint was called. The man took hold of him and lifted him into a sitting position.
“This old coot's nothing but skin and bones,” he said. “I never expected him to be so blasted stubborn. The Colonel's broken bigger, younger men a lot faster than this.”
“A man's age and size are no measure of his heart,” Mrs. Dayton said. She held the cup to Preacher's lips. He took a swallow of the hot, strong coffee and immediately felt its bracing effect.
For the next few minutes she fed him, spooning beef stew into his mouth and letting him wash it down with the coffee, all the while sitting beside him on the cot while the guard stood by with his arms folded across his chest and a scowl on his hard-bitten face.
“I don't think there
are
any Indians,” he said. “If there were, they would have attacked the town by now.”
“I don't know anything about that,” Mrs. Dayton said. From the sound of her voice, she didn't want to know anything about the Colonel's business.
When Preacher finished the food, he slumped back against the wall behind him. Mrs. Dayton got to her feet and picked up the tray. She looked like she wanted to say something to him, but before she could, footsteps thudded on the stairs leading to the attic room. From the sound of them, a couple of men were headed up here to Preacher's prison.
Randall's broad shoulders filled the doorway. Another man was behind him, but Preacher couldn't make out anything about him except the general impression that he was almost as big as Randall. The gunman gave Mrs. Dayton a curt nod and said, “Are you finished?”
“Yes, he just ate,” she said. “You're not going to beat him again, are you?”
“That's none of your affair,” Randall told her. His voice was edged with impatience. “When the Colonel wakes up, let him know I'm here, will you?”
“All right,” she murmured. “I'll do as you say, Mr. Randall.”
She ducked her head and stepped around Randall and the other man to go out the door.
That left three men in the little room with Preacher, and they just about filled it up. The old mountain man's head rested against the wall. His eyes were slitted and he tried to look like he was only half-conscious, but that wasn't the case. As he had been doing before, he pretended to be worse off than he really was until he had a better idea of what was about to happen.
“Doesn't look like much, does he?” Randall said to the man who had climbed to the attic with him. “He's just about the stubbornest son of a bitch I've ever run into, though.”
The other man moved a little to the side to get a better look at Preacher, and as he did so he asked, “Who is the old pelican, anyway, and why are you holding him?”
It took every bit of effort Preacher could muster not to show any reaction to the voice, because he recognized it instantly.
Matt Jensen had come to Hammerhead.