Forty Guns West by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

he’d found a blind canyon. There, he removed the sacking and rode the horses deep into the canyon. Then he replaced the sacking and walked them back out, staying close to the wall and carefully removing all signs of his departure.
    He picketed the horses and then ran back to fetch Eddie and the other horses. He found a small creek and led them back along it. By the time Bones and his men reached the creek, the water would have cleared and the hoof marks would be long gone.
    â€œNow, Eddie,” Preacher told him, “we got about a day and a half, maybe two days, ’fore those men reach us. I know that Bones and Van Eaton don’t know this country. What I don’t know is whether Dark Hand does. I’m bettin’ that he don’t know this is a blind canyon. I got to shorten the odds some. And this is how you and me is gonna do it ...”
    * * *
    â€œPreacher rides into the canyons to try to lose us,” Dark Hand said to Bones. “But it is a clumsy attempt. I find his tracks going in. Nothing coming out.”
    â€œIs there a way around it?” Van Eaton asked.
    â€œThere is a way around everything,” the Pawnee said, making no attempt to hide his contempt for the white man. “But we would lose much time. But time is what we have. I do not like this canyon country. I say we go around.”
    â€œBe lots of twists and turns in there,” said Mack Cornay, a thug from Maryland. “Preacher could do ’most anything. Head in any direction, or circle around and come in behind us.”
    Horace and Haywood and George Winters had dismounted and were studying the tracks that were plain before them. There was no doubt about it. Preacher and the kid and their pack horses had entered the pass and had not come out.
    â€œI say we got no choice but to foller,” George said. “If we don’t, we run the risk of losin’ them.”
    Bones looked up at the sun. Not yet noon. They had plenty of time. He made up his mind. “Let’s go. We might trap him in there and end this show here and now.”
    High atop the mesa above the entrance to the blind canyon, Eddie and Preacher looked at each other and grinned.
    â€œThey took the bait,” Preacher said. “I can’t believe it, but they done it. All right, Eddie. You know what to do at my signal.”
    The boy nodded and then Preacher was gone.
    The reporters from New York and Boston and Philadelphia did not like this canyon. It was hot and still and not one breath of breeze entered to fan them. John Miller, on assignment from a New York City paper, glanced at the Philadelphia journalist and saw that Raymond Simms was not happy about it either. William Bennett, writing for a magazine out of Boston was behind them, and one look at his face told Miller that he too was very unhappy about this present situation.
    When their editors had handed them this assignment, all the men had been thrilled beyond words. They would be going into wild, savage, untamed, and unexplored country. They could all write books about their adventures, make a lot of money, and perhaps aid in bringing an outlaw to justice. But back in Missouri they had been told by a dozen well-placed gentlemen that Preacher was no outlaw. He had worked for the government and was a highly respected scout and trail-blazer. And they had finally realized that Bones Gibson and his men were nothing more than common murderers, thugs, and hooligans, under the dubious disguise of bounty-hunters.
    But it was too late to turn back. The reporters were depending on the bounty-hunters to guide them back to civilization. In other words, the eastern reporters were all lost as a dim-witted goose.
    Dark Hand had fallen back to the middle of the column. He did not like these twisting canyon trails and he felt in his belly that Preacher had set up some sort of trap.
    â€œI say,” Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor said, twisting in his saddle and looking around him,