Annie looked shocked, as if the idea had never even occurred to her. She confirmed that by saying, “Ozark would never let me leave.”

  “I wasn’t plannin’ on askin’ his permission.”

  “Escape …” Annie sat back in the chair and seemingly struggled to grasp the concept. “I knew I could never leave as long as Jonathan was alive … You know about Jonathan and what happened to him?”

  Preacher nodded and said, “Little Bear told me. I’m mighty sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  “I started losing Jonathan long ago,” she said. “But that didn’t mean I could bring myself to desert him. And then, once he was … gone … I knew I couldn’t take the children and run. I wasn’t capable of surviving on my own with them. Ozark would just come after us and bring us back. It seemed to me they would have a better chance with Bluebird and her grandfather. They at least knew how to live in this wilderness.”

  “I reckon you could have gone with them,” Preacher suggested.

  Annie shook her head. “I would have just slowed them down. Speed was the most important thing. By staying here, I managed to keep it a secret for several days that Bluebird and Sahale had fled with the children. That gave them a chance to forge a lead. But sadly, not enough of one.”

  “You won’t slow me and my friends down, I can promise you that. And if Ozark comes after us, well, I’ll just send Audie and Nighthawk on ahead with you and the young’uns and Little Bear while I stay behind to slow down Ozark and his bunch.”

  “You’d be throwing your life away if you did that.”

  He grinned. “Maybe not. I’ve taken on plenty of bad hombres in the past, includin’ whole bands of Blackfoot warriors. I’m used to bein’ outnumbered. And I’m still here, alive and kickin’.”

  “Yes, I suppose you are.” Annie stared down at the table in the candlelight for a moment and then lifted her head. “Do you really believe we could get away?”

  “I reckon we’ve got a good chance. And a good chance is all I’ve ever asked outta life.”

  She took a deep breath. “We’ll do it. Now that I know my babies are so close by, I have to be with them again. Take me to them, Preacher, and then let’s get away from here as fast as we can.”

  “Sounds like a mighty fine idea to me. You want to pack a few things to take with you?”

  She shook her head again. “There’s nothing here that means enough to me to wait. I can’t carry my books—they’re too heavy and they would slow us down—and nothing else here is important to me.” She took a shawl from a peg on the wall and wrapped it around her shoulders, then picked up the shotgun from the table. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Let’s light a shuck, then.”

  Preacher leaned over and blew out the candle. Annie was already heading for the door. She opened it and stepped outside—then stopped short.

  “Preacher,” she said, her voice taut with strain again.

  Preacher moved up behind her and looked past her, and in the silvery light from the stars that washed over the landscape, he saw what had stopped her cold.

  More than a dozen men stood there between them and the creek, most of them holding rifles. One of the group, a big, broad-shouldered man whose face Preacher couldn’t make out in the darkness, stepped forward. In harsh, gravelly tones, he said, “Going somewhere, Annie darlin’?”

  Preacher knew without being told that he was about to meet the infamous Mack Ozark.

  CHAPTER 14

  Annie started to raise the shotgun, but Preacher quickly stepped up beside her and caught hold of the twin barrels before the weapon could come level.

  Mack Ozark seemed to be a complicated hombre and clearly didn’t want Annie dead, or he would have made sure of that before now.

  But if she menaced him and his men with a shotgun, he would probably give the order to shoot both her and Preacher full of holes. It was hard not to respond when somebody threatened you with a weapon like that.

  “Don’t go to shootin’ just yet,” Preacher told her as he pressed the barrels down toward the ground. “Let’s see what he wants first.”

  “Listen to the man, Annie,” Ozark said. “There’s no need for you to get hurt.”

  He turned his head to look at Preacher. “You, on the other hand, mister … Where’s my man Hoskins?”

  Preacher gestured with a thumb toward the shadows at the side of the cabin.

  “No point in lyin’ about it. You’ll find him anyway once you take a look,” the mountain man said. “He’s over there around the corner.”

  “Dead?”

  Preacher shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time. I didn’t figure he’d let me talk to the lady, no matter how polite I was when I asked him.”

  Several of the men shifted their feet and muttered angrily. Floyd Hoskins, despicable though he was, according to Annie, must have had friends among the gang. They would want to settle the score with Preacher for the man’s death.

  Ozark shook his head and said, “That’s too bad. I might have been able to let you live if you’d cooperated, but I can’t very well do that after you’ve killed one of my men. How would that look?”

  Preacher nodded toward Annie. “The lady’s done nothin’ wrong. You don’t have no reason to hurt her.”

  “You don’t know what reason I have to do anything,” Ozark snapped, dropping his amiable tone—which Preacher hadn’t believed for a second.

  Preacher ignored that and said to Annie, “Ma’am, you go on back inside now. I’ll deal with these fellas.”

  “I won’t do it,” she said stubbornly. “I’m tired of living under that awful man’s thumb. I’m going to stay right here beside you no matter what he does.”

  She raised the shotgun a few inches to emphasize her determination.

  Preacher grimaced in the darkness. Annie didn’t understand. If she would just retreat into the cabin, he could slap leather and open fire on Ozark and his men with his Colts.

  He was confident he was fast enough on the draw to ventilate Ozark before any of the outlaws could stop him, even though they already had their rifles pointed in his direction.

  They would blast him to hell a split-second later, of course, but if he could kill the leader of the gang, sacrificing his life might be worth it. Preacher knew that with Ozark dead, Audie and Nighthawk would stand a better chance against the rest of the outlaws.

  And his friends would avenge his death. Preacher had no doubt about that.

  They would do what they could to help Annie Collins and protect her babies, as well. But Preacher couldn’t put any of that possibility in motion as long as Annie was standing right here beside him. If he opened fire on the gang, they would shoot back and kill her, too.

  Problem was, he couldn’t very well explain all that to Annie with Ozark standing right there, backed up by a dozen ruthless killers.

  “Tell me one thing, Ozark,” Preacher said, stalling for time. “How’d you know there was anything wrong here? I was careful not to make any racket.”

  “You mean while you were killing Hoskins?” Ozark laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound. “One of his friends walked down from the compound to visit with him. He knew that Floyd always posted himself in the shed except when he was taking a walk around the place, so when he didn’t find him there and he didn’t show up after a while, my man knew something was wrong. He didn’t look around, he just hurried back to the compound to let me know Hoskins was missing.”

  Ozark spread his hands and went on, “And so here we are, ready to put things right.” His voice hardened. “Annie, go back in the cabin.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t do it. Don’t you understand, I’d rather be dead than have things go on the way they are. Especially if you’re dead first. You—”

  Preacher heard the hysterical note in her voice, saw the shotgun’s twin barrels start to rise even more. She was going to force all hell to break loose.

  He couldn’t afford that. His hand shot out, closed again around the shotgun’s barrels, and wrenched them upward this time as she jerked the triggers.

  Both barrels boomed. The double report was deafeningly loud as it pounded against Preacher’s ears like giant fists.

  The buckshot flew harmlessly into the air, though, and Ozark must have realized that because he shouted, “Hold your fire, hold your fire! Get that man! Don’t hurt Annie!”

  Several men tossed aside their rifles and swarmed forward. Preacher could have drawn his guns and cut them down with the Colts, but if he started shooting, Ozark’s men would disregard their leader’s order and return the fire. Annie would be hit.

  He still had hold of the shotgun, so he wrenched it out of her hands and gave her a shove that made her cry out as she stumbled toward the cabin’s open door.

  He whirled back toward the men attacking him. The shotgun was empty, but it made an effective club when he swung it at the closest outlaw.

  The shotgun’s stock crashed against the man’s jaw and knocked him off his feet. He fell in front of two of the other men and they tripped over him to sprawl forward.

  Preacher darted to his left and rammed the shotgun’s butt into the belly of another man. The blow doubled the outlaw over and put him in position for Preacher’s knee to come up and slam into his face.

  The mountain man ran out of time to carry the fight to his enemies. The lone attacker who was still on his feet launched himself in a diving tackle that caught Preacher around the waist and dragged him to the ground.

  Preacher struck a backhanded blow with the shotgun that knocked his assailant away from him, but the two who had tripped over their comrade had scrambled back to their feet and now closed in from both sides.

  Preacher couldn’t avoid the kicks they aimed at him. Boot toes hammered his ribs and rocked him back and forth. They kicked the empty shotgun out of his hands.

  He ignored the pain—years of desperate fights had taught him how to do that—and rolled onto his side to grab the leg of one man. A sharp heave upended that hombre and sent him crashing to the ground on his back.

  A kick from the other man landed in the small of Preacher’s back. The agony from that one was hard to set aside. He would be passing blood for days, he thought—assuming he lived longer than just tonight.

  The Good Lord had left out any surrender when He made Preacher, though. The mountain man shoved himself onto hands and knees and surged upright. The man who had just kicked him in the back lunged at him, swinging a mallet-like fist.

  Preacher twisted aside. The blow landed on his left shoulder and sent needles of hurt down his arm, but his right arm was fine, and he used it to smash a fist into the middle of his attacker’s face. The feel of cartilage crunching as the man’s nose flattened was satisfying to Preacher’s soul.

  The next instant, strong arms closed around him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.

  “I got him!” a man yelled in his ear. The varmint’s breath was laden with fumes of whiskey, onions, and rotted teeth and almost made Preacher gag. “Whale the tar outta him, boys!”

  Two more attackers loomed in front of Preacher, obviously intent on doing just that. As the first one got too close, Preacher jerked a leg up and kicked him in the belly. The man flew backward.

  The second one was smart enough to come in at an angle. He clubbed a punch that landed on Preacher’s jaw and slewed his head to the side.

  A third man crowded in from a different direction and hooked a fist to Preacher’s belly. These outlaws, without exception, were big, powerful men, and Preacher had already taken quite a beating from them. He tried to hold in a groan, but it slipped out despite his best efforts.

  Another punch landed on his right cheek. He didn’t know where that one came from, only that it jerked his head back the other way. Then somebody hit him again.

  And again.

  Consciousness was rapidly slipping away from him now. He knew that; he could sense the black tides washing in all around him. He tried to fight off the darkness and summoned all his strength in a last-ditch attempt to break free from the bear hug of the man behind him.

  He couldn’t do it, and as fists slammed into his face and body again and again, landing like sledgehammers, the last of his awareness faded away.

  Oblivion claimed him.

  Preacher had been knocked out often enough in his life that regaining consciousness was a familiar sensation to him.

  He knew exactly what was going on as the black nothingness surrounding him began to recede and dim light seeped in to take its place.

  Gradually, the light grew stronger. It had a reddish quality, and it was inconsistent, brighter, and then dim again before once again blossoming.

  Eventually, he felt heat against his face, too, and realized that he was facing a fire.

  He became aware of other things, as well. His arms were above his head, pulled high and held in place somehow. He was standing up with his feet on the ground, but enough of his weight hung on his arms that his shoulders ached in their sockets.

  Something tight was looped around his wrists. A rope? Had to be.

  As that thought formed in his mind, he realized that he was strung up somewhere. The heat felt the same on his face as it did on his chest.

  That was because his chest was bare. He’d been stripped to the waist.

  His eyes were still closed. He hadn’t opened them or made a sound because he didn’t want anyone who might be around to know that he was conscious again.

  Sometimes it came in handy if folks believed you were still out cold. They might say or do things they wouldn’t if they knew you were aware of what was going on.

  He hung there for several minutes, limp and unmoving. Somewhere not far away, footsteps came closer and then receded. Preacher could tell by the way they sounded, hard boot heels clicking on boards, that whoever made them was walking around on a wooden floor, not dirt.

  They were inside a building. Probably in Mack Ozark’s compound.

  Preacher’s eyes were closed. He opened them to mere slits, just enough to be able to tell that he was facing a fireplace with a thick, heavy mantel above it. A good-sized blaze burned on the hearth. The flames were responsible for the light and heat he experienced.

  Heavy footsteps approached him again. A man stopped in front of him and muttered, “I’m tired of this.”

  A heartbeat later, an open-handed blow exploded against Preacher’s face, knocking his head to the side. He tried to brace himself for the backhand he knew would follow, but it came too quickly. This time the man’s knuckles struck Preacher’s face with a stinging impact.

  Preacher opened his eyes. He didn’t see any point in standing there letting somebody wallop him.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Mack Ozark standing in front of him. That put Ozark’s back to the massive stone fireplace and threw his face into shadow, but the firelight reflected back enough to give Preacher his best look so far at the outlaw leader.

  Ozark matched the description Dutch Charley had given Preacher. The hawklike nose, the dark, deep-set eyes, the drooping mustache were all there. He was an ugly man—nobody would ever argue that he wasn’t—but at the same time, his features had a compelling power to them.

  Ozark grinned as he said, “I was hoping you’d keep on pretending to be unconscious for a while longer. That way I could have hit you a few more times trying to wake you up.”

  “I don’t reckon there’s anything stoppin’ you from wallopin’ me again,” Preacher said. His voice sounded rusty and strange in his ears. “You probably enjoy beatin’ up on helpless fellas.”

  “You make me sound like a cruel man. Some sort of inhuman monster.”

  “That’s what everybody says about you. I figure there must be somethin’ to it. You know what they say about there always bein’ fire anywhere there’s smoke.”

  Ozark shook his head and backed off a step.

  “I don’t enjoy being cruel,” he insisted. “I just don’t let anything stand in the way of me getting what I go after. Anybody who does that is weak. Ever since I realized the world is out there for the taking if you’re strong enough, I’ve never again allowed myself to be weak.”

  Ozark sounded as if he had some education, Preacher thought. Not at the same level as Audie, by any means, but more polished than Preacher would have expected a notorious outlaw’s education to be.

  Of course, the sort of life the man had led before he turned bad didn’t matter. Only the evil he had done since then was important.

  Ozark moved to Preacher’s right, going out of sight. He came back a moment later carrying a tin cup.

  “Have a drink,” he offered as he held the cup to Preacher’s lips.

  The mountain man smelled whiskey. It wouldn’t serve any purpose for Ozark to poison him. He opened his mouth and swallowed some of the cup’s contents.

  It was plain whiskey, all right. The fiery stuff stung his lips, which were battered and cut from the fight earlier.

  But it burned his gullet going down and kindled a fire in his belly. Preacher drew strength from that, so he didn’t mind the pain. He welcomed it, in fact, because it helped clear his head.

  “Better?” Ozark asked as he took the cup away from Preacher’s mouth.

  “Why do you care? You don’t give a damn whether I live or die.”

  “That’s not true. You’ll die soon enough, no doubt about that, but it’s important to me that before you do, you tell me what I want to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where those two infants are.”

  Preacher laughed hollowly. “You really think I’d tell you that, after everything that’s happened?”

  “Why not? Those youngsters don’t mean anything to you. They’re not your children.”

  “They’re not yours, either. You got no right to ’em.”

  “Never mind about that,” Ozark said. “I’ll make you a deal. Tell me where to find them and I’ll make sure you die quick and as painlessly as possible, my friend. Otherwise, if you make me force the information out of you, I’ll turn you over to my friends when I’m finished with you—and your death will be anything but quick and painless.”