“I’m very busy.” Doc Adams started to scurry off. “I can speak to you later?—”
Preacher swung into his path. “I’ll only take a few moments of your time. Were you telling the Osbournes that their daughter can’t be returned?”
“No, I was telling them that she can.”
“For three hundred dollars.”
Doc Adams tried to pass. “You ought to speak to the mayor?—”
“He’s gone.”
The doctor paused. “Gone?”
“He left with Mr. Dobbs. On some task, it seems. So…three hundred dollars is the price of a child’s life?”
“Yes, and the Osbournes will pay. We will make sure everyone can pay. Now, if you’ll excuse me?—”
“Three hundred and what else?”
Preacher hadn’t honestly expected any “else”—it was an arrow fired wild—but when he saw the other man’s expression, he knew that arrow had struck home.
“I heard there was something more,” Preacher said. “Something you aren’t telling the families.”
Doc Adams’s face went bright red. He blustered, asking who’d told Preacher and insisting it was merely rumor, people talking, that there was no other price. Finally, when he seemed to see that Preacher wasn’t going to back down, he started down the street.
“I have work to do,” he said. “Other families to inform of the wondrous news.”
“And families to tell that they will not have their children returned. You yourself admitted they cannot all be returned. Has Mayor Browning set you on that task as well? Deliver the good news and the bad?”
“It was not the mayor?—”
Doc Adams clipped his words short and kept moving, shoulders hunched, as if against the cold, but there was no more than a light breeze.
Preacher strode up beside him. “So it was Eleazar who sent you on this mission. Then he sent the mayor and Dobbs on another, one that ill suited you.”
Doc Adams glanced over, eyes narrowing, then quickly looked away. “I don’t know what?—”
“I was there. Outside. You left. They kept talking. Arguing, even. Then Browning and Dobbs left. Eleazar wanted to discuss something with them out of your earshot. I’m sure you know it. He sent you away, just as the mayor sent me away when I balked. What did you balk at, Doctor?”
The doctor’s expression told Preacher he hadnotbalked. Not openly.
“He knew you would,” Preacher said. “That’s why he sent you off before the subject was raised. Because, like me, you are a fellow of conscience and?—”
Doc Adams spun on him. “Good God, man. Do you never stop? You’re like a hound with a bone. Leave it be.”
“I will not. I’ll ask until I have answers. What’s the other cost? What else must we pay for our children’s return?”
The doctor turned and resumed walking.
“The old man’s dead, you know,” Preacher said.
Doc Adams glanced back.
“Rene. Eleazar’s assistant. He’s dead.”
Again, it was the expression that gave the doctor away. Preacher had expected shock. He didn’t see it.
He’s not surprised. He’s not horrified. He knew, and however it happened, this man—this good man—has no compunctions about it. How is that possible?
