“Is that what he used to do?”

  “Yep. He was a professor for a long time. But somethin’ inside kept tuggin’ on him, tellin’ him he ought to go west and see what there is to see out here. Finally, he did, and he fit right in better’n anybody ever would’ve dreamed. Better than even he expected to, I imagine. Then he met Nighthawk and the two o’ them became good friends, and they’ve made one hell of a team ever since. They’re the best pards I’ve got out here, that’s for sure, except for Dog and Horse.”

  “But how can Audie be a frontiersman? There have to be a lot of things he can’t do.”

  “He’s smart enough to figure out ways around ’most any problem. And his heart, well, his heart’s as big as anybody else’s. As big as Nighthawk’s, I’d say.” Preacher poked a finger against Little Bear’s chest. “What’s in there is mighty important, too, you know. Livin’ ain’t all about how strong you are or how fast you can run or how good you are at shootin’ a bow and arrow.”

  “But sometimes those things will save your life,” Little Bear insisted.

  “That’s true. And sometimes it takes fast thinkin’ to save your life. Do what you can do, son, and try to get better at the things you ain’t so good at, and in the end, if you’re lucky, it’ll balance out.”

  “That’s good advice, Preacher. I’ll remember it.”

  “You do that. Right now, though, take me to the cabin where Mrs. Collins lives.”

  They stayed in the trees as they moved to the west. According to Little Bear, Mack Ozark kept a guard posted in the watchtower all the time. Preacher didn’t want to risk them being spotted out in the open.

  They followed the creek around the bend. The bank on the other side wasn’t as tall, so Preacher was able to see the cabin sitting about fifty yards back from the stream. No lights were burning inside it. More than likely, Annie Collins had turned in for the night hours earlier.

  A short distance to the right of the cabin was a crude shed of some sort. It was dark, too.

  “Where does that guard usually stay?” Preacher asked in a whisper.

  Little Bear said, “I’ve seen one sitting on a stool by the door, but no one’s there tonight. There’s that shed over there where Annie keeps a milk cow. The guard could be in there.”

  “Any chance he’s sleepin’?”

  Little Bear hesitated for a moment before answering. “It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very likely. The men are all too afraid of what Ozark might do if they failed on a job he gave them.”

  “All right. You stay here. I’m gonna have a look around and see if I can figure out where the varmint is. If I can, I’ll get him out of the way so we can talk to Mrs. Collins without bein’ disturbed.”

  Preacher heard Little Bear swallow hard. Then the young Indian asked, “Do you mean you’re going to kill him?”

  “Are there any of this bunch with clean enough hands that they don’t have it comin’?”

  Little Bear thought about that again and said, “No, to be honest, I don’t think there are.”

  “Whatever happens, then, don’t go losin’ any sleep over it,” Preacher advised him.

  Little Bear sighed and nodded.

  “Dog, stay here with Little Bear,” the mountain man went on. “He won’t let nothin’ happen to you.”

  “Are you talking to me or him?” Little Bear asked.

  “Well, I was sayin’ Dog won’t let nothin’ happen to you. If any trouble breaks out, you won’t have to tell him anything. He’ll know what to do. You just lie low and wait for the ruckus to be over. And if it goes really bad and I don’t come back, you rattle your hocks back to the spot where we left Audie and Nighthawk. You can find it, can’t you?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can.”

  Preacher nodded. “Then you head for there, and one of those fellas will find you. You can bet a hat on that. You throw in with them and do everything they tell you to do. You’ll be all right.”

  “That’s not going to happen, though, is it? I mean, I’ve heard of you, Preacher. Everyone knows you can take care of yourself.”

  “That’s what I figure on doin’. But there ain’t no guarantees in this life, old son.” Preacher squeezed the young man’s shoulder for a second. “Thanks for the help you’ve given us so far. We’re obliged to you.”

  With that, he slipped away into the shadows. To Little Bear, it must have seemed like he was there one second and gone the next, vanished into thin air.

  The Ghost Killer was prowling the night once more.

  Preacher crossed the creek about two hundred yards upstream where trees grew down close to the water on both sides and cast dappled shadows on the surface. That would make him more difficult to see just in case anybody happened to be looking in his direction.

  His guess about the creek’s depth proved to be correct. It wasn’t more than a foot deep, and he waded across it easily, the sound of his footsteps lost in the chuckling of the stream’s flow.

  Once he was on the same side as the cabin, he circled around so he could approach the log structure from the rear. It was as dark and quiet back here as it was in the front.

  He saw the shed Little Bear had mentioned. It was made from rough-hewn planks, and a plank fence enclosed a small pen in front of it. The shed had a roof and three sides but was open on the side that faced the cabin. Preacher made out a dark bulk in the shadows under the roof and figured that was the milk cow Little Bear had mentioned.

  As Preacher stood there silent and motionless, watching the shed, he spotted a tiny orange glow. Someone whose eyes weren’t as keen might have missed it entirely, but he recognized it as the luminance from the bowl of a pipe as the man smoking it inhaled on it.

  The guard was in there, all right, sharing the shed with the cow.

  That meant Preacher was going to have trouble getting to him. The fence around the pen had a gate in it, but Preacher couldn’t very well just walk up and open it. He needed to lure the guard out into the open somehow.

  While he was pondering that, fate took a hand. The man stepped out from under the shed roof, stretched, and went to the gate. It was possible he took a turn around the cabin every hour or so to make sure everything was all right. He might be about to do that now.

  Preacher smiled in the darkness. With the overwhelming odds he and his friends were facing, he would take any bit of good luck he could get.

  The guard unlatched the gate and stepped through to swing it closed behind him. The aromatic smoke from his pipe drifted to Preacher. As the man went around the front of the cabin, Preacher dashed noiselessly to the other end of the building. He drew his knife and waited.

  More than likely, the guard never fully understood what happened in the brief time he had left. As he stepped around the corner, Preacher’s left hand slapped the pipe out of his mouth and then clamped around his jaws to prevent him from crying out. At the same time, the mountain man’s right hand drove the knife into the man’s chest. The blade scraped on a rib but penetrated all the way to the heart. Preacher felt the spasm go through the man as he died.

  He left the knife in place and lowered the corpse to the ground before removing the blade. He wiped it on the man’s shirt and then sheathed it.

  Stepping to the door of the cabin, he lifted the latch and pulled the door open a few inches. He had his right hand on the butt of the Colt on that hip, although since Annie Collins was supposed to be alone there, he didn’t expect to need it.

  He heard the distinctive, metallic double clicks of a shotgun being cocked. That ominous warning from the darkness made him pause right where he was.

  “If you step in here, I’ll put both loads of buckshot right through you, and you know it,” a woman’s voice said. “What are you thinking? You know better than to try to come in here.”

  “I reckon I know now, ma’am,” Preacher said, “but I didn’t before.”

  Silence greeted his words. That moment stretched out, and then the woman said, “You’re not Hoskins. Who are you?”

  “Hoskins was the fella who was standin’ guard?”

  “That’s right. You know him.”

  “Matter of fact, I don’t. Didn’t, I should say. The fella’s crossed the divide.”

  A faint gasp came from the woman. Preacher couldn’t see her, couldn’t make out a thing in the stygian darkness inside the cabin.

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry if you find that disturbin’.”

  “I don’t,” the woman responded. “Floyd Hoskins was a despicable man. I’ve heard him talk about some of the things he’s done. It was sickening.”

  “That makes me feel a mite better about killin’ him, although to tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that worried about it to start with.”

  “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “A friend. Folks call me Preacher. And you’d be Mrs. Annie Collins, I reckon.”

  “I am. How in the world do you know that?”

  “Another friend o’ yours told me. Young Flathead fella name of Little Bear.”

  “Oh!” This time she really did sound worried. “Is he all right?”

  “He was fine as frog hair the last time I saw him. That was a few minutes ago when I left him on the other side of the creek. He’s the one who brought me here.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Just to talk to you, ma’am.”

  “Talk to me? What about? I don’t know you.”

  “No, ma’am,” Preacher agreed. “You never heard of me until just now, more than likely. But for the past week or so, I’ve been helpin’ to take care of a couple of little rascals my pards and me have been callin’ Apollo and Artemis.” He paused. “You know them as Edward and Elizabeth.”

  CHAPTER 13

  This time the gasp of shock from Annie Collins was louder.

  “Oh, my heavens!” she said. “My children! Are … are they all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Preacher assured her. “Two of my friends are lookin’ after ’em, and you couldn’t have a better pair of guardians than Audie and Nighthawk doin’ that.”

  He heard Annie lower the hammers on the shotgun she claimed to be holding. Preacher didn’t doubt that she actually was—and that she would have used the weapon if the guard called Hoskins had intruded in here where he wasn’t welcome.

  “Come in,” she told Preacher. “I—I don’t understand any of this, but if you know something about my children, I want to hear it. They’re not supposed to be anywhere near here!”

  “No, ma’am, I understand that now. We’ll get it all straightened out.”

  Preacher pulled the door open wider and slipped into the cabin. He closed the door behind him. A moment later, he heard the distinctive sound of a lucifer match being scraped to life. Flame burst from the match’s tip with a glare and a whiff of sulfur. The light from it illuminated Annie’s face and cast shadows over it at the same time.

  She held the flame to the wick of a candle sitting on a rough-hewn table. The candle caught and the flickering glow from it spread in a circle through most of the one-room cabin.

  The furnishings were sparse and primitive: the table, a couple of chairs, a bunk with a corn shuck mattress and a thin blanket against one wall.

  The only thing that really stood out in the place was a stack of books several feet high in one corner. Little Bear had said that Annie liked to read. The numerous, well-worn leather-bound volumes were proof of that.

  Preacher wondered fleetingly how many of them had been looted from wagon trains raided by Jonathan Collins’s gang of killers and thieves.

  Annie straightened from the candle. She was as pretty as Little Bear had described her. Preacher figured she was in her late twenties, probably not thirty yet, although strain had put a few lines around her mouth and eyes. Despite that, Preacher thought she was quite attractive.

  “All right, tell me what this is about,” she said. “Why do you have my children? They’re supposed to be with a friend of mine. She promised to keep them safe.”

  Preacher nodded. “You’re talkin’ about Bluebird.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  “Her and her grandfather both, but not for long, I’m sorry to say. My friends and I ran into ’em at a place called Dutch Charley’s, a tradin’ post southeast of here.”

  Speaking simply and directly, he explained to Annie Collins what had happened. The woman put her hand to her mouth in grief and horror when Preacher described how Bluebird and Sahale had been killed battling Mack Ozark’s men. She sank into one of the chairs as her strength had deserted her.

  “Before she passed on, Bluebird asked me and my friends to promise to take care o’ what she had in the pack,” Preacher went on. “We wanted to make it as easy for her as we could, so we swore we would. We didn’t have no idea what we’d find once we unwrapped them blankets, though.”

  “Babies,” Annie said in a hollow voice. “My babies.”

  “Yes’m. And I want to tell you, they’re as fine a pair of youngsters as I ever laid eyes on. They don’t give no trouble—well, not much, anyway. I reckon all young’uns need some takin’ care of. But these two are mighty good little varmints.”

  “You’re sure they’re safe?”

  “Sure as I can be. Audie and Nighthawk—them friends I mentioned—they’re plumb attached to those kids. They’d do anything to protect ’em.”

  “Including die—like Bluebird and her grandfather did?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I reckon they would,” Preacher said. “So would I. You see, our word means a powerful lot to us, and we gave it to Bluebird before she died. Ain’t no way we’re ever backin’ down from that.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Preacher. I really do.”

  “Just ‘Preacher,’” he told her. “You can forget that ‘mister’ business.”

  Curiosity got the better of her other emotions for a moment. She asked, “Are you actually a minister? I have to say, you don’t look like any I’ve ever met.”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m a fur trapper by trade, I suppose you’d say, but mostly I just seem to amble around and get in trouble. If you want to hear about how come I’m called Preacher, just ask Audie sometime. He pure-dee loves to spin that yarn. I’ve had about enough of it, my own self.”

  Annie didn’t say anything else for a moment, then she murmured, “Poor Bluebird. I knew I was asking her to run a terrible risk when she agreed to take the children and leave, but I hoped she and her grandfather would be able to get away safely. They were going to another Salish village where they had relatives. They would have been among friends there. The villagers would have hidden them. That monster Ozark never would have found them.”

  She drew in a ragged breath. “That was my hope, anyway,” she continued. “I thought surely that whatever he’s after, eventually he would give up looking for them.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Preacher said. If he and Annie were going to get out of here, they probably ought to be moving, but he wanted to find out as much as he could about the danger they would be facing. “You don’t know why Ozark wants those young’uns back?”

  Annie shook her head. “No, he just showed up one day and said he wanted Edward and Elizabeth to come live in his house with him. I refused, of course.”

  “Couldn’t he have just taken them?”

  “He could have, of course. But no matter how horrible he may be, Mack Ozark is no fool. He knew it wouldn’t sit well with some of the men in the gang if he ripped a woman’s babies away from her. Some of the men are married, and their wives certainly wouldn’t stand for that. Ozark rules with an iron fist, but at the same time, he wants to keep peace within the group.”

  That made sense, Preacher supposed. Not having met Mack Ozark, he couldn’t pretend to know how the man thought. But as long as Annie was a virtual prisoner here, Ozark had the upper hand. He could afford to take his time about getting what he wanted.

  Sooner or later, though, his patience was bound to wear out. Knowing that was probably what drove Annie to take the risk of sending the children away with Bluebird and Sahale.

  Annie sighed and said, “It would have been better if you had taken the children and gone on east. I—I probably never would have seen them again, but I was willing to accept that as long as they were safe.”

  “You keep sayin’ things like that,” Preacher said with a frown, “like you figure Ozark’s gonna do somethin’ terrible to those kids. He ordered his search parties to make sure they were safe. It ain’t like he’s gonna roast ’em and eat ’em or somethin’. He’s an outlaw, not some witch from one o’ them old German fairy tales.”

  Audie had told him about fairy tales and the gruesome things that went on in them. Preacher had never read such stuff and didn’t intend to.

  What he had just said caused another thought to pop into his mind. “Ozark is an outlaw,” he repeated. “Somehow, those babies are worth money to him.”

  Annie just stared at him for a second and said, “I don’t see how. They’re just … babies.”

  “I don’t know,” Preacher admitted, “but from everything I’ve heard about Ozark, he’s more interested in loot than anything else. Maybe we can figure it out.”

  Annie pressed her hands against the table and came to her feet with a determined expression on her face.

  “No,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter why he wants them. He can’t have them. You go back to your friends, Preacher, and then the three of you take my children and get as far away from here as fast as you can.”

  Her voice softened a little as she added, “If you want to do something else for me, take Little Bear with you. He’s a kind, sweet boy, and very intelligent. He deserves better than to grow up in a village where everyone is under the thumb of a man like Mack Ozark.”

  “I haven’t known the young fella for very long, but he does seem like a good one,” Preacher agreed. “I don’t know whether he wants to leave these parts, though.” The mountain man paused. “But I’ll bet he would, if you came with us.”