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He didn’t explain. Lilah studied Tom’s eyes for a moment, then shrugged and knelt by the corpse. Benny noticed that her examination was almost identical, step by step, with Tom’s. Her reaction, however, was different. She hissed and whipped out her knife and without a moment’s pause drove it into the base of the dead man’s skull.
“Yeow!” cried Benny, lurching backward from the flashing blade.
“Whoa now!” said an unfamiliar voice. They all whirled as a stranger stepped out of the woods right behind Lilah.
27
“LITTLE GAL’S FAST WITH A PIGSTICKER.”
The stranger seemed to have stepped out of nowhere and was in the gap between the rear bumper of the truck and a game trail that vanished into the shadowy woods. He was a tall, broad-shouldered but very thin man in a dusty black coat and wide-brimmed black hat. Long white hair hung like strands of spiderweb from under the brim of his hat, and he wore a smile that twitched and writhed on his thin lips like worms on a hot griddle.
Lilah was so startled that out of pure reflex she snatched up her spear and swung the blunt end toward him. The man was at least sixty, and he looked dried up from the hot sun and bitter winters of the Sierras, but he moved like greased lightning. He tilted out of the swing of the spear, snaked out his left hand in a movement that was so fast Benny could not follow, snatched the spear from her hand, and flung it into the woods. Without pausing, the man shoved Lilah on the shoulder with the flat of his palm and sent her crashing into Nix and Chong. Before Benny could even grab the handle of his bokken, Tom was up from where he had been kneeling, and his glittering katana was in his hand. But then the man did something Benny would have thought to be completely impossible. Before Tom could complete his cut, the man in the black hat had stepped into the arc of his swing, blocked the elbow of Tom’s sword arm, and put the wicked edge of his own knife against the bulge of Tom’s Adam’s apple.
“My, my, my,” said the man softly, his smile never wavering, “ain’t we all in a pickle?”
Instantly Tom pivoted, slapped the knife away from his throat, spun like a dancer, and swung the blade in a lightning-fast circle that stopped a hairbreadth from the man’s nose.
The man looked cross-eyed at the tip of the blade and gave a comical chuckle. He slowly raised his knife and gave the sword a small tap. The ping! of metal against metal lingered in the still air.
“Let’s call it one-all and say the rest of the game was rained out,” suggested the stranger. Without waiting to see if Tom agreed, the man rolled the handle of his knife through his fingers like a magician and slid the ten-inch blade into a sheath that hung from his belt.
Tom did not lower his sword. He cut his eyes left and right to check the woods, then said to Lilah, “You okay?”
She snarled something low and unintelligible and got to her feet, placing her fist threateningly on the butt of her holstered pistol. Nix helped Chong up, and they looked scared and uncertain. Benny had his sword out now, and he shifted to Tom’s right to prepare for a flanking attack.
“Okay,” said Tom, still holding his sword out, “who are you?”
“Would you mind lowering your katana, brother?” The white-haired man held his hands up and kept smiling. The smile did not quite reach the man’s ice-blue eyes. “We’re all friends here.”
Benny noticed that not only had the man avoided Tom’s question, but he knew what a katana was. Interesting.
Tom said, “‘Friend’ is a funny word for someone who attacks a teenage girl.”
The man looked—or pretended to look—shocked. “As I recall it, brother, she tried to rearrange my dentures with the butt end of yonder spear. I gave her a little shove by way of increasing our distance and decreasing the likelihood of my having to eat my dinner without teeth henceforth. Then you and t’other youngster here set to drawing swords on me. I drew my knife only to calm things down.” His look of shock gradually drained away, and his mouth again wore that twitchy smile. He patted his sheathed knife. “And see … I stood down.”
Tom did not lower his sword. Not one inch.
“I asked you your name,” he said quietly.
“These days people seem to have a bunch of names, don’t they?”
Tom said nothing.
“Okay, okay.” The man chuckled. “You’re being serious here ’cause you’re the grown-up and there are kids watching. I respect that. Like a shepherd with his little flock.”
“Name,” prompted Tom.
“When I came yowling into the world I was called John. Biblical name. Means ‘God’s grace,’ which is a kindly thing to name a babe who ain’t yet done a thing worth being remembered for.” He removed his black hat and looked at Nix and Lilah. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance, ladies, and at the same time I beg forgiveness for my rudeness and gruff ways. Please accept my apology, which is earnestly and humbly given.” He bowed low, almost sweeping the ground with his hat. As he rose, he caught Tom with a grin and a wink. “You look like a traveling man, and that sword of yours marks you as a trade guard or a bounty hunter. So you’ve probably heard the name I go by.”
“Which is?”
The man straightened and opened the flap of his coat to reveal the worn black cover of a Bible tucked halfway into an inner pocket. “Preacher Jack.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re Preacher Jack?”
“Yes sir, I am, in both flesh and spirit. You have heard of me, then?”
“We know some of the same people,” murmured Tom. “J-Dog, Solomon Jones, Dr. Skillz. Lot of people in my trade pass through Wawona.”
