That was when the ball clipped Preacher’s 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 man’s 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 hadn’t 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 man’s view. More importantly, the varmint couldn’t 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 Preacher’s 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.
So that was where he found himself now, wounded slightly, a little winded, and with empty guns.
But he still had a hunting knife with a long, heavy, razor-sharp blade, and there was a Crow tomahawk tucked behind his belt as well. He wasn’t defenseless, not by a long shot.
He hadn’t moved for several minutes. The fella chasing him had to be wondering by now if Preacher had given him the slip. Preacher heard him drawing closer, hurrying along now and muttering frustrated obscenities to himself.
“Sumbitch couldn’t’ve got away. Maybe Jonah was right. Maybe he was wounded. I know he came along here, damn his hide.”
The words came clearly to Preacher’s ears, along with the panting breaths that the man took. He was right around the bend in the gully where Preacher had waited…
The man stepped around the bend and yelled in alarm as Preacher lunged at him, swinging the empty rifle. He jerked his own rifle up, not trying to fire the weapon, just making a desperate effort to fend off Preacher’s rifle.
The flintlocks came together with a loud clash of wood and metal, knocking the rifle out of the man’s hands, and the blow Preacher aimed at his head bounced off his shoulder instead.
That still had to hurt. The man yelled again and lowered his head, driving forward with powerful thrusts of his legs while Preacher was slightly off balance. He was almost as tall as Preacher and weighed more, and when his head slammed into Preacher’s chest, Preacher was knocked backward.
The collision sent both men sprawling to the ground. When Preacher slammed into the earth, it jolted the rifle out of his hands.
No great loss, he thought. The rifle was empty, and it wasn’t very good for fighting at close quarters anyway. A long-barreled flintlock only made a good club when you had room to swing it.
He snatched his tomahawk from behind his belt and swung it instead. The other man rolled out of the way, his desperation giving him the speed to barely avoid the tomahawk’s slashing head.
He kicked out at Preacher as he moved. The heel of his boot caught Preacher on the elbow, making Preacher’s entire right arm go numb. The tomahawk slipped out of his fingers, but he caught it with his left hand before it hit the ground.
The man grabbed Preacher’s arm and twisted it. Preacher aimed a knee at the man’s groin and sank it deep. The man screamed in Preacher’s face but didn’t let go.
They rolled over and over, grappling with each other. The man’s hat came off. Long, fair hair flopped over his face. A mustache of the same shade drooped over his mouth. Preacher was more certain than ever now that he had never seen this varmint before.
That was mighty curious, too. Usually when folks tried to kill him, they had a good reason, or what they thought was a good reason anyway.
The man drove his face at the side of Preacher’s head. His mouth was open, and Preacher knew what was coming next. The son of a bitch wanted to bite his ear off!
Preacher jerked his head to the side, avoiding the snapping teeth. He whipped it back the other way so that their skulls banged together. Preacher would match the hardness of his noggin against anybody else’s, but he had to admit that he saw stars dancing around behind his eyes. Both men groaned and seemed a little addlepated.
The feeling was coming back into Preacher’s right arm and hand. He reached for his knife and closed his fingers around the leather-wrapped handle. He pulled the weapon free of his belt and slashed at the man’s legs with it.
The blade cut through buckskin and flesh. The man howled, let go of Preacher’s other arm, and drove the ball of his hand hard against Preacher’s jaw. Preacher’s head was forced back until it felt like his neckbone would crack.
Whoever this fella was, he could fight! He was almost as adept at rough-and-tumble as Preacher.
But there was only one Preacher, and he had come by his reputation as the toughest he-coon in the mountains honestlike. Preacher kneed the man again, in the belly this time instead of the balls. He walloped him across the face with the brass ball that was at the end of the knife’s grip. The man’s struggles were growing weaker now.
Sensing maybe that he was losing the fight, the blond man made a last-ditch effort. He heaved himself up off the ground, arching his back so that Preacher was thrown off to the side. Then he rolled over and scrambled frantically for the rifle he had dropped when the fight began.
He was closer to the weapon and got there before Preacher could stop him. Grabbing the rifle, he lunged to his feet and swung around, earing the hammer back to full cock. Preacher scrambled up, too, and saw the barrel swinging relentlessly toward him.
The survival instinct took over then. Preacher still gripped the tomahawk in his left hand, but he was almost as deadly with his left hand as he was with his right. His arm swept up and back and then flashed forward.
The ’hawk spun across the space between the two men with blinding speed and landed with a meaty thunk! just as the man pulled the trigger. The flintlock roared, but its owner was already going over backward, his skull split open by the tomahawk that had landed with terrific force in the middle of his forehead. He fell on his back and lay there twitching as blood and brains oozed out around the blade.
“Well, hell!” Preacher said with heartfelt disgust. The man wouldn’t be answering any questions now.
And Preacher still had no earthly idea why the two varmints wanted him dead.
Chapter 2
The settlement had no name. It wasn’t even much of a settlement, at least so far. And it would be just fine with Preacher if it stayed that way.
First had come the trading post established by a pair of cousins, Corliss and Jerome Hart, who had been brought here to this beautiful valley in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains by Preacher. They’d had some mishaps and adventures along the way, but things had finally settled down once they got here. Corliss and his wife Deborah had even unofficially adopted the boy Jake, who had run away from his brute of a father in St. Louis and come along on the wagon train journey that had ended here.
Another wagon train had followed close behind, bringing with it a handful of settlers—and customers for the trading post, which was doing a brisk business even before the building that housed it was