William W. Johnstone - Preachers Pursuit (The First Mountain Man)

THE FIRST MOUNTAIN MAN

THE FIRST MOUNTAIN MAN

PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

Preacher pressed his back against the gullys rock wall and tightened his hands on the flintlock rifle he carried slantwise across his chest. He listened intently, ignoring the thudding of his heart and trying instead to pick up the stealthy sounds of the man creeping up the gully after him.

His side stung a little where a rifle ball had ripped his buckskin shirt and burned across his flesh. He put that pain out of his head, too. Twerent nothin, he told himself. Hed been hurt lots worse plenty of times.

A tall man in his thirties, dark-haired and bearded, lean-bodied but still powerfully built, Preacher knew these mountains as well as most men knew their own facesor the bodies of their wives. The two varmints whod tried to ambush him had made a bad mistake in doing so.

One of them had already paid the ultimate price. He lay dead or dying on one of the slopes higher up, his guts torn open by a shot from Preachers rifle.

His companion was still alive, though. He was the one trying to sneak up on Preacher now. Normally, Preacher would have just waited for the man to come along and then blown a hole through him, but that was hard to do without any powder.

A lucky shot aimed at him had clipped the rawhide thong by which the powder horn was slung over Preachers shoulder. It had skittered over the edge of a long drop, gone before he could even try to grab it. He had already emptied his rifle and both pistols while trading lead with the two would-be killers, so he couldnt reload.

But that didnt mean the man called Preacher was helpless. Far from it.

Hed been toiling up a long, steep slope to check on some traps. His horse and dog were down at the base of the slope, left behind because there was no real reason for them to have to make the tiring climb. He was halfway to the top when he heard the shrill neigh from Horse and the half-snarl, half-bark from Dog and recognized them as warning signals. Somebody was close-by who shouldnt be.

The first shot had rung out as Preacher started to turn. The heavy lead ball struck a small rock near his feet and blew it to smithereens. He saw the puff of powder smoke from a clump of fir trees and was bringing his rifle to his shoulder to return fire when another rifle cracked from above him and he felt the fiery lance slice across his side.

They had him between em, drat the luck.

He let loose with a round aimed at the fir trees anyway, then turned and dashed along the face of the slope, figuring to work his way around a rocky shoulder that jutted out ahead of him. More shots came after him, but his long legs carried him too fast for the lead to find him.

He reached the shoulder, ducked around it. Behind him, a couple of men yelled at each other. White men, Preacher noted. They were speaking English, peppered with a lot of cussin.

I got him, I tell you!

The hell you did! Did you see the way that bastard was runnin? No son of a bitch who was wounded could move that damned fast!

He could tell from the sound of their voices that they were angling toward him from above and below. He set the rifle down and drew the pistols from behind his belt. Both were double-shotted, with powder charges heavy enough that the recoil from them might break the wrist of a normal man.

Preacher was anything but normal.

He heard rocks clatter close by, kicked loose by the man who was closing in from above. Preacher swung around the rugged knob and saw the man trying to skid to a stop about fifteen feet away and bring his rifle to bear. Preacher squeezed the trigger of his right-hand pistol before the muzzle of the rifle could line up on him.

One of the balls missed, but the other one plunked itself in the mans belly. He screamed as he doubled over and pitched forward, rolling a couple of times before he came to a stop. He kept writhing and wailing.

You son of a bitch!

The cry came from the other man, who fired a pistol at Preacher even though he was still a good forty feet away. The ball missed, but it came close enough that Preacher heard the hum of its passage through the air. He darted around the rocky shoulder, stuck the empty pistol behind his belt, grabbed up his rifle, and started running again.

He had gotten a good look at the man hed shot, and knew that he had never seen the son of a buck before. The fella was squat and bearded, with a big felt hat that had fallen off when he collapsed. Preacher hadnt taken the time to study the other fellas face, but he had a feeling he had never seen that one either.

Now, why would two men he had never met before want to kill him? He had a decent mess of plews back at his camp, but nothing worth killingor dyingover.

Preacher didnt spend a lot of time pondering the question. It was enough to know that theyd tried to ventilate him, which, according to his way of thinking, meant it was perfectly all right for him to blow their lights out.

He kind of wanted to talk to that second man, though, and maybe find out what was going on here. That meant he had to take the rapscallion alive.

For that reason alone, Preacher hurried along the side of the mountain, looking for a spot where he could turn the tables on his pursuer and get the drop on the man. Otherwise, he never would have run.

Fleeing from trouble stuck in his craw. He had always been one to face up to it head-on. That was the way he had lived his life ever since he came West some twenty years earlier.

Of course, he hadnt come straight to these mountains. Thered been a little matter of fighting the British first at New Orleans, under ol Andy Jackson

Preacher put those thoughts out of his mind, too. Bein chased across a mountain by some son of a gun who wanted to kill him was no time for reminiscing.

Preacher threw on the brakes as he leaped over a rocky hump and found himself teetering on the brink of a hundred-foot drop. Footsteps pounded behind him. He still had one loaded pistol, so he whirled around and brought the gun up. He and the man chasing him fired at the same time.

That was when the ball clipped Preachers powder horn loose, just as neat as you please, and over the edge it went without even bouncing once. The two balls from his pistol powdered rock at the mans feet and made him skip backward with a yelp of alarm.

Left now with empty weapons and no way to reload, Preacher turned and stepped off the edge of the cliff, vanishing into empty air. The fella chasing him let out a startled yell.

Preacher hadnt done away with himself, though. He had spotted a narrow ledge about a dozen feet below the rim with some hardy bushes growing on it. He landed with a lithe agility and grabbed hold of some branches to steady himself and keep from plunging the rest of the way to the bottom.

Once he had his balance, he began working his way quickly along the ledge. The cliff face jutted out above him, cutting him off from the other mans view. More importantly, the varmint couldnt get a shot at him from up there.

But the man could hear the pebbles that Preacher kicked off the ledge clattering all the way down the drop-off, so he could track his quarry by the sound of Preachers passage. Likewise, Preacher heard the fella scurrying along up above.

The ledge angled down, and eventually Preacher found himself at the bottom where a narrow creek twisted its way along the base of the cliff. He followed it and came to the gully. During snowmelt season a stream probably ran through it, but it was dry now, so Preacher followed it, deliberately making enough of a racket so that the man behind him would be able to tell where he had gone.