Preacher's Journey by William W. Johnstone Page A

’em down on the ground. Then back off.”
    â€œYou can’t take a man’s weapons away,” Hawley whined.
    â€œI ain’t takin’ ’em permanent. You can have ’em back in the mornin’ after we’ve left. But for now just do what I tell you.”
    Grudgingly, Hawley complied, shedding himself of two pistols, a hunting knife, and a dirk.
    â€œThat all?” Preacher asked as Hawley backed away from the weapons.
    â€œThat’s it.”
    â€œYou better not be lyin’ to me.”
    â€œI ain’t as big a damn fool as you seem to think I am,” Hawley said bitterly. “But I ain’t gonna forget about this neither, Preacher.”
    â€œNo,” Preacher said, “I don’t expect you will.”

TEN
    The sound of the distant shots came faintly through the frigid night air, first one, and then a few moments later another. Swift Arrow heard them and grunted. “Perhaps the whites are killing each other,” he said to Badger’s Den.
    The medicine man frowned. “It will not satisfy the blood debt they owe the Sahnish if they kill each other.”
    â€œTrue. But there will be at least one left on whom to take our revenge, if Neshanu Natchitak wills it.” Swift Arrow smiled. “Who is the only white man who speaks the truth to our people?”
    â€œA dead white man, because he says nothing,” Badger’s Den replied, and the other members of the war party laughed at the old joke.
    They sat around a tiny fire built in the lee of a rock, trying to ignore the cold. Every man there, if he was honest with himself, missed the warmth of his lodge and his woman. When they had left their village, following Swift Arrow on his quest of vengeance against the white men, they had expected to be back before the first real snowfall. But the white men had been fortunate and had somehow stayed ahead of their pursuers for long enough so that that goal was no longer possible. The first real storm of winter was here, and the warriors had no choice but to pull their bear and buffalo robes tighter around themselves and take no notice of the bad weather.
    Swift Arrow worried, however, that the snow would make it more difficult for them to locate the wagons. The white mantle would obscure any tracks left by the wheeled vehicles. Again, the Sahnish would be reduced to splitting up into search parties, such as the one that Nah Ka Wan had been a member of.
    At least they knew the right direction in which to begin their search. The shots had told them that much. When morning came, Swift Arrow thought, they would take up the trail once more, and they would not stop until all the hated whites were dead.
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    Hawley didn’t try anything else during the night. He sat beside the corpse of his friend and stared darkly at the rest of the party until exhaustion finally overcame him and he fell asleep, leaning against the cliff.
    Preacher made sure they all understood that one man on every guard shift would have to watch Hawley. Preacher didn’t trust the surly mountain man as far as he could throw him. The smart thing to do would be to go ahead and shoot the son of a bitch, but Preacher couldn’t bring himself to do that. He couldn’t just kill a man in cold blood.
    The snow stopped during the night. Away from the camp, the ground was covered with four or five inches of the white stuff, Preacher saw as he looked around the next morning. That wasn’t enough to cause the wagons any trouble, although it was possible there were some deeper drifts they would have to contend with. It was pretty to look at too, that white blanket spread over the ground, as well as the caps of snow that nestled on the branches of the pine trees.
    The kids could make good snowballs now, and they fell to it with a vengeance, a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ as they ran around and flung the hard-packed missiles at each other. While they were doing that, the