and stung his eyes, until it seemed that the whole world was about to come crashing down on top of them.
Then suddenly, they were in the clear as they broke out of the great swirling cloud. The earth shook under them as countless tons of rock came smashing down a mere matter of yards behind them. Smaller rocks pelted them, and Preacher lifted an arm to protect his head. Even a fist-sized chunk of stone might catch him in the head and knock him out of the saddle, and then the edges of the slide could still engulf him.
Gradually, the punishment eased and the rumbling began to die away. Preacher slowed his mount. Horse’s sleek hide was covered with foamy sweat and his sides heaved from the exertion. Dog’s head hung low and his tongue lolled from his mouth as he padded along. Preacher was a mite weary from the strain himself, but at least he hadn’t had to do any of the running. His gallant companions had handled that.
He reined Horse to a stop and leaned forward to pat the stallion on the shoulder. “You’re the damned finest horse any man ever rode,” he said. He looked behind him regretfully. Dust still obscured the pass. The packhorse was back there somewhere, trapped under the avalanche. Poor son of a gun had never had a chance, Preacher thought.
Then he lifted his head and looked up toward the rimrock. It was possible that the rock slide had started on its own and that it had been just a coincidence that he was traveling through the pass at that moment.
Yeah, it was possible…but he didn’t believe it.
Not for a damned second.
Somebody had been up there watching him, waiting for just the right moment to shove one of the precariously balanced boulders that littered the rimrock and launch that avalance into deadly motion. Luckily for Preacher, Horse, and Dog, whoever it was had misjudged things a mite. Just enough to give them the narrow hope of escape that they had seized so fiercely.
Preacher wanted to hitch Horse into motion again and start circling through the rugged terrain, heading upward toward the rimrock to find out exactly what had happened. But after the valiant dash that had saved Preacher’s life, Horse was too played out for any more effort right now. The stallion had to rest for a while.
That was all right, Preacher told himself. He would get up there before the day was over, and when he did, he would find the sign that the man who started the avalanche had left behind. There was always sign of some sort, if a man knew how to look for it.
Preacher knew, and once he had the trail, he wouldn’t lose it.
That fella didn’t know it yet, but he had bought himself a world of trouble when he rolled that stone.
Horse was strong enough that he recovered quickly, but Preacher gave him a little extra time anyway, waiting until midday before starting the climb to the rimrock. Preacher had some jerky and a biscuit in his saddlebags, so he and Dog made a skimpy lunch on that.
Then he rode the rest of the way through the pass and began the arduous task of circling back and climbing, following faint game trails that most men barely would have been able to see. Horse was almost as sure-footed as a mountain goat, so Preacher didn’t hesitate to trust his life to the stallion’s balance, even though at times hundreds of feet of empty air yawned right at his elbow.
By the middle of the afternoon, they reached the rimrock where the avalanche had started. Dog ran forward and sniffed the ground. Preacher dismounted and left the reins dangling as he hunkered down and studied the place that interested Dog. He saw some pebbles that had been disturbed recently, so that their undersides now lay upward, and he knew the man who’d tried to kill him had walked along here.
“Trail, Dog,” he said.
Nose to the ground, Dog followed the command, leading Preacher away from the rimrock’s edge. A few minutes later, they came to a place where fairly fresh droppings and the marks of steel-shod hooves on the rock told Preacher that three horses had waited here for a while.
Three men, Preacher reflected. One to hold the horses, two to push a boulder over the edge and start the avalanche. And the dumb bastards hadn’t even tried to hide the evidence that they’d been here.
Of course, they had assumed that they were going to kill him and that no one would ever follow them.
They would find out just how wrong they were about that.
Even now, they probably thought he was dead. After escaping from the avalanche, he had stayed close to the side of the pass so that anyone looking down from above might not be able to see him. The dust had been too thick for anybody to see anything for a while, and once it cleared away, there would have been no sign of him from the rimrock. The natural thing would be to think that the huge rock slide had caught him and crushed the life from him.
Preacher whistled Horse over to him and swung up into the saddle. He followed the scratches on the rocks left by the horseshoes, and Dog stayed on the scent for good measure. The men hadn’t made any effort to hide their trail, more evidence that they thought Preacher was dead.
The tracks led northwest through rugged but beautiful country. The men had dropped down quickly from the heights of the pass to a long, grassy valley watered by a stream that sparkled in the sunlight as it flowed over a rocky bed.
Preacher had been through here many times in his wanderings. He knew the country well. To the north was the area known as Colter’s Hell, named after the legendary mountain man John Colter. At first, folks had thought he was crazy when he came back and reported that there was an area where geysers of steaming water shot hundreds of feet in the air and bubbling mud pits stank of brimstone, like they were entrances to Hades. Of course, as it turned out, the place really existed and Colter hadn’t been exaggerating. Preacher had seen it more than once with his own eyes.
The would-be killers might be headed there, or their destination might be closer. Preacher didn’t know and didn’t care. He would stay on their trail wherever it led.
Since he had given Horse that extra rest, he kept the stallion moving at a fast pace now. The men who were his quarry had been dawdling along, yet another indication they didn’t think anybody could be following them. The sign Preacher saw told him that he was closing in on them. He might even catch up to them before nightfall.
He wasn’t sure he wanted that. Might be easier to deal with them once they had camped for the night. Let them fill their bellies, maybe pass around a jug…
Then see how they liked it when the man they thought they had killed rose right up out of that grave under hundreds of tons of rock.
When he was no more than an hour behind them, Preacher slowed down and maintained that distance. Dog whined a little in eagerness, but Preacher just smiled and said, “Just be patient, old fella. We’ll settle up with those varmints before much longer.”
The sun dipped behind the mountains to the west, and night settled down quickly. Preacher waited until he spotted the tiny orange eye of a campfire and then steered for it, still taking his time. It didn’t surprise him that the men had built a fire. He’d been able to tell from the trail they left that they were greenhorns. Still potentially dangerous, of course, but not as experienced in the ways of the frontier as some.
When he was close enough to smell the wood smoke, he dismounted and tied Horse’s reins loosely to a sapling. The stallion would be able to pull free if he needed to.
“Stay here, fella,” Preacher said quietly as he patted Horse on the shoulder. “Come on, Dog.”
Horse
