Preacher sighed. “Well, I reckon I can manage if I have to.”

  “We promised to take care of these children. We’re in this together, Preacher.”

  “You’re right, I know. I won’t let you down, nor Bluebird, neither.”

  “Good. I’ve already had this discussion with Nighthawk, and he’s agreed to do his part.”

  “Umm,” Preacher said under his breath.

  By the middle of the day, the bleak chore of dealing with all the bodies had been taken care of. Bluebird and her grandfather were laid to rest atop a small hill about a hundred yards from the trading post with a beautiful view of the creek.

  The men who had followed them intending to kill them and steal the babies were tossed into the large, shallow hole Preacher and Nighthawk had dug in a clearing back in the trees. It was better than they deserved, Preacher thought, as he and Nighthawk covered the grave, but at least it got rid of them.

  With that done, Audie and Dutch Charley negotiated the trade involving the load of pelts and the extra horses and gear. They sealed the deal with a handshake.

  The horses ridden by this latest batch of dead men had been nowhere to be found this morning. Preacher supposed they had followed the mounts of the two men who had gotten away.

  The escape of those two nagged at his thoughts as he and his companions got ready to travel. While he was saddling Horse, he commented to Audie, “You know, there’s a mighty good chance those fellas will head right back where they came from and tell whoever sent ’em about what happened here.”

  “Oh, I’d say that’s entirely likely.”

  “Which means the varmints may be on the lookout for us.”

  “Of course. But they might also believe we’ll continue heading east as Bluebird and Sahale were doing.”

  “And that means they could come after us.”

  Audie nodded. “Yes, it’s possible we’ll encounter them on our way to Emerald Creek.”

  With a puzzled frown, Preacher asked, “Why’s it called Emerald Creek if you can find them star garnets there?”

  Audie laughed and shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “I suppose more than one variety of precious stone may be found in the area. Perhaps we’ll discover that, too, when we get there.”

  Charley’s wife, Hilda, had the two babies inside the trading post. Audie went to fetch them while Preacher and Nighthawk led the saddle horses and pack animals out of the barn. They had kept one of the extra mounts and rigged board-and-blanket slings on both sides of the saddle, similar to how Indian women sometimes carried their children, so the infants could ride securely in them part of the time.

  Dog sat off to the side watching the preparations warily. The big cur didn’t seem to know what to make of the babies, but he acted like he didn’t want to get too close to them.

  Audie came out onto the porch carrying one of the babies. Hilda followed with the other. Dutch Charley was the last one out the door, and he caught Preacher’s eye as he emerged.

  Preacher walked over to join him. Quietly, Charley said, “I’ve been racking my brain, trying to remember anything I could about those men who looked familiar, and something finally came back to me.”

  “You know who they were?”

  Charley shook his head. “Their names, no. But I recalled that they were traveling with a whole group of ruffians led by a man named Mack Ozark.”

  “Mack Ozark?” Preacher repeated. “Mighty odd name. Who is he?”

  “If the things I have heard are true,” Charley said, “he is a bad man. A very bad man.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “These are only rumors I’ve heard, you understand,” Charley went on. “It’s said that Mack Ozark is an outlaw, and a particularly vicious one, at that, for all his cunning. The one time I saw him, he caused no trouble, but simply looking at him made a shiver go through me. You know what I mean? Something about his eyes … It was like looking in a man’s eyes and expecting to see a soul, but nothing was there except the cold, primitive essence of the serpent in the garden.”

  “That sounds like somethin’ one of Audie’s old poetry fellas might say.”

  “Poets have written about evil many times. Mack Ozark is an evil man.” Charley made a face and went on, “I’m told he began his career of villainy in the mountains of Arkansas, from which he took his name.”

  “Yeah, Mack Ozark don’t sound like the sort of name a fella would be born with,” Preacher said.

  “He killed his first man when he was twelve years old and assaulted his first woman not many years after that. He set houses afire and burned entire families alive. When a local constable arrested him, Ozark freed himself, took the lawman prisoner, and peeled off every inch of the man’s skin with a dull knife while the poor man was still alive!”

  “That sorta sounds like it might just be a story … but to be honest, I’ve run into a few fellas who were mean enough to do such a thing.”

  Charley nodded. “Such monsters are rare, but they exist. When Ozark was forced to flee the mountains, he fell in with a gang of thieves while he was still a young man. They made a practice of attacking wagon trains full of immigrants crossing the plains. The gang killed all the men and sold the women and children as slaves to Indians or to Mexicans who came up from the south. Ozark fit right in among them.”

  “Did you know all this when he stopped here at the tradin’ post?” Preacher asked.

  Charley shook his head. “No, these are things I’ve heard from others since then. When he and his friends were here, all I knew was that he made me nervous and I wished he would leave.”

  “I never knew you to be scared of anything, Charley, so that tells me just how bad this varmint must be.” Preacher scratched at his jaw. “What’s he look like?”

  “Tall. Almost as tall as you. Very swarthy. His hair is dark and thick, and he has a mustache that hangs down on both sides of his mouth. No beard, or at least none then. Gray eyes. The color of ice when it’s thick on a stream or a lake, and every bit as cold.”

  Preacher nodded slowly. “I reckon I’ll know him if I see him.”

  “By the time you see him, it may be too late.”

  “We’ll have to take that chance.” Something else occurred to the mountain man. “You said he had some friends with him, includin’ some o’ them sons who killed Bluebird and her grandpa. How many were there, do you recall?”

  “That day, only half a dozen. But since then, I have heard that he commands a large gang, perhaps as many as thirty or forty men.”

  “The same bunch he ran with over on the plains?”

  Charley shook his head again. “Some of them, possibly, but I have no way of knowing.”

  “That gang was already robbin’ wagon trains when Ozark threw in with ’em. Maybe he wound up bossin’ it.”

  “That could be the case. But what really puzzles me is the connection between a man such as that and two innocent babes. What could that possibly be?”

  Before Preacher could answer, Audie called from where the horses waited. “We’re ready to go, Preacher.”

  “Be right there,” Preacher told him. He turned back to Dutch Charley and said, “Maybe we’ll find out once we get where we’re goin’.”

  “Don’t let those children fall into Ozark’s hands, Preacher,” the trader urged. “After seeing him, I truly believe that man to be capable of almost anything.”

  A few minutes later, Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk rode out. Preacher was in the lead, with Dog bounding ahead as usual, followed by Audie who led the horse with the two makeshift cradle boards and their precious cargo. Nighthawk brought up the rear, trailing all three pack animals behind him.

  As Preacher rode, he couldn’t get the things Charley had told him out of his head. If somebody like Mack Ozark was holed up in the country toward which they rode, maybe it would be the smart thing to turn around and go the other way. The safest thing for those two young’uns, too.

  But as he and his friends had discussed the previous day before they rode into Wailing Woman Pass, they never cottoned much to running away from trouble. Better to face things head-on and fight for what was right.

  Maybe ol’ Mack Ozark really was a ring-tailed roarer, just like Dutch Charley said. But Preacher had been known to do some pretty good bellerin’ his own self …

  The valley where Emerald Creek flowed was approximately 120 miles northwest of Dutch Charley’s Trading Post. It would take Preacher and his companions a little less than a week to reach it, assuming they didn’t run into any significant delays along the way.

  Those star garnet necklaces Audie had found on the infants were solid proof they had been in that valley. Preacher couldn’t bring himself to believe they had come all the way from India on the other side of the world.

  The first day passed uneventfully. Apollo and Artemis slept most of the time, rocked into slumber by the steady rhythm of the horse carrying their cradleboards. That evening, Audie got them to suck on rags soaked with sugar water. He also boiled and mashed up some carrots from Charley’s garden that he had brought along. The babies were less fond of those but ate some anyway.

  “How old do you reckon them little varmints are?” Preacher asked as they all sat by the fire that night.

  “They’re at least six months,” Audie replied. “Possibly eight or nine. This isn’t the first solid food they’ve had. Bluebird wasn’t nursing them, so she had to be feeding them something else. We’re lucky they’ve been weaned. It would have complicated matters considerably if they hadn’t been.”

  “How soon are they gonna start walkin’?”

  “Oh, not for another month or so, I’d say.”

  “Good. Then we don’t have to worry about chasin’ ’em down if they start runnin’ off.”

  Audie laughed. “We may not have to worry about them running off, but at this age it’s entirely possible they may be crawling. So we’ll still need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get into any trouble.”

  Preacher rolled his eyes and shook his head, unsure why fate had chosen to saddle him with being responsible for a pair of infants. Whoever had come up with that notion was probably having a good laugh about it.

  The next day, they pushed on and made good time across mostly rolling terrain. Snow-capped mountains were visible in the far distance, well beyond their destination, but in this region, the wooded hills weren’t too rugged. Broad valleys between them provided relatively easy routes. Occasionally the travelers were forced to detour around deep ravines cut by fast-flowing streams, and here and there, large rocky knobs dotted the landscape.

  It was pretty country, sure enough, but Preacher didn’t allow himself to be lulled into a sense of nonchalance. All his senses remained on high alert. His keen eyes scanned the countryside around them, searching for any signs of potential trouble.

  Dog ranged well ahead of them, often out of sight, and Preacher was confident that the big cur would let him know right away if he encountered anything he thought was suspicious.

  Game trails cut through this country as well as traditional travel routes used by the Indian tribes who lived here. Preacher and his companions were following one such well-trod path that ran between a rocky knob to their right and a low, saw-toothed ridge to their left. The opening between the two geographic features was perhaps seventy yards wide.

  One of the babies picked that moment to start squalling. Naturally, the second infant, ensconced on the blanket-wrapped cradleboard on the horse’s other side, sympathized and began howling its lungs out, too. Preacher reined in and hipped around in the saddle to look meaningfully at Audie.

  “I think they’re getting tired of me,” Audie said. “Why don’t you see if you can quiet them down for a change?”

  Preacher’s shaggy eyebrows went up. “Me?”

  “You’re as much their caretaker as I am, you know.”

  Preacher muttered a few choice words under his breath as he swung down from the saddle. Audie was right, of course, but that didn’t make Preacher any fonder of the idea of dealing with two crying infants.

  “Which one’s which?” he asked as he approached the horse carrying the babies.

  “Apollo on the left, Artemis on the right. Apollo is the one who started crying this time.”

  “I’ll see if I can settle him down first.”

  Carefully, Preacher loosened the blankets enough to lift Apollo out of the snug nest. Audie had cut up one of the spare blankets to form diapers and stuffed moss in them to serve as an absorbent so the cloth could be used again. Preacher checked the diaper tied around the infant’s hips and found that it didn’t need to be changed.

  “What’s wrong, you dadgum little varmint?” he asked as he cradled the blond-haired youngster against his chest and bounced him up and down a little. Tears still ran down the scrunched-up face as Apollo continued to cry.

  Preacher tickled the baby’s belly and under his chin. He ruffled Apollo’s hair. None of that did any good.

  Sitting nearby on horseback, Nighthawk wore his usual solemn, almost expressionless mask, but Preacher saw amusement lurking in the giant Crow warrior’s eyes. Nighthawk raised a hand, pointed, and said, “Umm.”

  “I agree, it’s worth a try,” Audie said. “Why don’t you blow on his belly, Preacher?”

  “You mean the young’un’s belly?”

  “Well, I certainly don’t mean Nighthawk’s!”

  That brought a faint grunt of laughter from the towering Crow.

  Preacher made a face again, then lowered his head, placed his lips against Apollo’s belly, and blew. He fluttered his lips to make a sputtering noise. Apollo kept crying, and Preacher blew harder.

  Nighthawk actually laughed out loud this time, which was almost unheard of, and Audie howled with hilarity. Preacher jerked his head up and glared at them.

  “Why don’t you two dadblasted jackanapes just hush up that dang mule-brayin’?” Preacher burst out. “Why, I oughta—”

  He continued ranting at his friends, indulging in one of his rare but extremely colorful outpourings of profanity. Audie and Nighthawk just laughed louder and harder. Nighthawk pounded his saddle horn.

  Audie wiped at his eyes as he raised his voice to interrupt Preacher’s stream of invective. “Look, Preacher,” he said. “Apollo has stopped crying.”

  Preacher fell silent and frowned as he looked down at the infant in his arms. Apollo was staring up at him with keen interest. The baby cooed and gurgled.

  “I think he enjoys your inventive vocabulary,” Audie added.

  “Umm,” Nighthawk said.

  “You’re right, that won’t work with Artemis. He can’t speak to a lady like that!”

  Preacher shook his head, growled deep in his throat, and said, “You two jaybirds just keep it up. It’ll be your turn before you know it, and then we’ll see how you do at placatin’ these little varmints.”

  “I’ve already been doing that, remember?” Audie pointed out.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Preacher muttered. “You reckon ever’ time these rascals start cryin’, I’m gonna have to cuss a blue streak at ’em to hush ’em up?”

  “Well, I suppose if it works …” Audie replied with a grin on his face. “And it seems to be catching. Once Apollo stopped crying, Artemis did, too. You’re fortunate.”

  “Yeah, mighty lucky,” Preacher said. He held Apollo under both arms and swung the now-happy baby back toward the cradleboard. “Let’s get you squared away again, you leather-lunged little heathen.”

  But before he could lower Apollo into the sling-like arrangement of blankets, something whipped viciously past his head, missing only narrowly. Preacher recognized the telltale hum instantly and didn’t need to hear the crack of a rifle a split-second later to know that some low-down bushwhacker had just missed a shot at him.

  Apollo chose that moment to kick and squirm, and him jerking around like that, combined with Preacher’s surprise over almost having his brains blown out, made the mountain man lose his grip on the baby. Apollo slipped right out of his hands like a flopping fish.

  Luckily, Preacher’s reflexes were almost supernaturally swift. His left hand shot down and snagged the back of the diaper before Apollo hit the ground. The knots Audie had tied held.

  Another rifle barked somewhere not far off. Preacher didn’t know where the ball went, but he wasn’t hit and he didn’t hear this one. He wrapped his left arm around the infant and pressed Apollo against his chest as he whirled away from the horse.

  Nighthawk had already leaped out of the saddle and one fast stride of his long legs brought him up on the other side of the mount that had been carrying the babies. He plucked Artemis from the blankets and held her against his chest as Preacher was doing with Apollo. Hunching his massive shoulders in an attempt to do a more effective job of shielding the youngster, he turned and loped toward the mound of rocks to the right of the trail.

  Preacher saw a spurt of powdersmoke from the saw-toothed ridge, followed an eyeblink later by a handful of dirt kicking in the air as the ball struck the ground near him. He tightened his grip on Apollo as his right hand dropped to the Colt on that side and palmed it from the holster.

  Swinging the revolver from left to right, he thumbed off three rounds as quickly as he could. The revolver boomed in his hand, and he hoped it wasn’t hurting Apollo’s ears too much. He didn’t figure he would hit any of the ambushers, but he wanted to give them something to think about, maybe even make them duck for cover for a few seconds.

  With that done, he whirled and dashed after Nighthawk, heading for the nearest sanctuary—which happened to be that rocky knob.

  Preacher hoped there weren’t any bushwhacking skunks hidden up there, too.

  CHAPTER 7

  Nobody shot at Preacher and Nighthawk from the rocks as they dashed toward the knob with the babies. Behind them, Audie yelled at the pack horses and spooked them out of the line of fire. He reached over to grab Preacher’s rifle and drag it from the scabbard lashed to Horse’s saddle, then kicked his mount into a run after his friends.