“Stranger things have happened,” Preacher said dryly.
“No stranger than this tale gets. Ya see, the two little nippers were stark naked.”
Silence held for a moment. Then a cherry-cheeked Preacher added verification to Ruben’s story. “They do like to get out of their clothes a lot. I found that out on the way here.”
Ruben raised both hands. “So there it is, isn’t it?” He took note of the empty pewter mugs and poured more whiskey. “Whose payin’ for these?”
Preacher and Tall turned to each other. “Preacher.” “Tall.”
“Ah, saints preserve us, I’ll buy, ’cause it’s good to see you again, Preacher, it is.”
Ruben dropped coins into the wooden till under the bar and went on to tell how the little depredations, and an occasional killing, went on right up to the present. He concluded with a suggestion. “So, if ye’ll tell me what dastardly act you caught this pair performing, maybe it is we can drag the whole family in and dispatch them.”
Silence lengthened while Preacher thought over all he had heard. Try as he might, he could not visualize these two as so profoundly evil as Ruben painted them. He had brought the children here to find them a good home, with stepparents who would raise them properlike. He could not turn his back on that promise in good conscience.
“I dunno, Ruben. I’m thinkin’ they can be shown the error of their ways and, given a good home, turn out all right.”
“Don’cha tell me ye’ve turned soft-hearted, Preacher, don’t ye?”
“Ruben, if you weren’t such a little-bitty feller, an’ all frail-like, I’d break you in half for sayin’ that. I’m the same man I’ve always been. It’s only that I’ve got to know them over the past two, nearly three days. They can be sweet-tempered enough and obey right smartly, if a firm hand is applied.”
“To their bottoms, I presume, I do.” Ruben poured another drink. For all of Preacher’s disparagement, Ruben stood six-two in his stocking feet and had the body of a double beer barrel.
“I have yet to do that. Though when they come at me to rob me, I shook ’em until their teeth rattled. That seemed to get their attention.”
“I wonder why?” Tall Johnson spoke for the first time. “You were serious, then, when you asked me about bein’ a poppa?”
“Not really. I know how you and Shorty live. Not a place for kids. No offense intended.”
“None taken. There’s a feller over a couple of valleys, runs horses. I hear he’s been wantin’ to take in a couple of yonkers to help work on the place. If that’s any help.”
“He have a woman to wife?”
“Sure does. And three kids of his own.”
“Sounds fine. I might look into it, failing I find any closer.”
* * *
A sudden shout and curse in French from the cook at the hostelry brought the old drinking friends out of their cups and onto their boots. Preacher, wise in the ways of his captives, reached the back door first. He got there in time to see the cook on his rump, legs splayed and upraised, a pot of as-yet unheated potato soup soaking him from floppy stocking cap to the toes of his moccasins. Beyond him was the open door to the store shed—and the rapidly disappearing backs of Terry and Vickie.
“You had the right of it, Ruben. They’s nothin’ but trouble,” he shouted as he set off afoot in swift pursuit.
Being no stranger to running—Preacher had engaged in many a foot race against Arapaho and Shoshoni braves—the rugged mountain man soon managed to close ground on his quarry. Terry lost more precious space with frequent, worried glances over his shoulder. With longer, stronger legs and more endurance, Preacher far out-classed the youngsters. Then providence gave the children a much-needed break in the form of several habitués of the trading post.
“Hoo-haa! Lookie there. Ain’t that ol’ Preacher playin’ the nursemaid?”
“Shore be. Don’t he look cute a-high-steppin’ it like that?”
“Shut them yaps, Ty Beecham, an’ you, Hoss Furgison. Them kids is my responsibility.”
“Strike me dead. Preacher’s done become plumb domesticated.” Tyrone Beecham rubbed salt in Preacher’s wounded pride. “Nextest thing we know, he’ll take to wearin’ an apron and skirts.”
That did it. Preacher slammed to a stop and whirled to confront his detractors. No man, unless he was a tad light in the upstairs, ever suggested that a denizen of the High Lonesome might have sissy inclinations. To question a fellow’s manhood most often called for a shooting. Preacher did not want to kill these old friends, and sometime partners, but Beecham had stepped over the bounds. The least that would satisfy now was a good knuckle drubbing.
And Preacher was just the man to deliver it. He stepped in without a word and popped Beecham flush in the mouth. Surprise registered in the dark, nearly black eyes of Tyrone Beecham as he rocked back on his boot heels. He swung a wild, looping left at Preacher’s head, which, much to Beecham’s regret, missed.
Because Preacher did not. He followed his lip-mashing punch with a right-left-right combination to Beecham’s exposed rib cage. Each blow brought an accompanying grunt, expelled by the rapidly depleting air in Beecham’s lungs. Droplets of red foam flew from Beecham’s mangled mouth. His head wobbled with each blow. Right about then, his friend, Hoss Furgison, decided to join in.
He came at Preacher from the mountain man’s blind side. Raw knuckles rapped against Preacher’s skull, behind his left ear. Sound and sparkles erupted inside, and Preacher stumbled before he delivered a final right directly over Beecham’s heart. Then he spun, his left arm already in motion, and drove his back fist into Hoss Furgison’s nose.
Blood spurted, although nothing had been broken. Preacher continued his punishment with a right uppercut that cropped Furgison’s surprised jaw closed. Furgison stomped on Preacher’s right instep. Preacher gritted his teeth and ignored the pain. He still didn’t want to hurt these two badly, only drive home the lesson that there was still a lot of spit and vinegar in this old coon. Everyone witnessing their battle had seen two-on-one plenty of times, sometimes even four or five. Most had seen Preacher handle those odds with ease. It didn’t take long for the betting to begin.
“I got a cartwheel says Preacher pounds them both onto their boots,” Tall Johnson declared.
An old-timer next to him elbowed Tall in the ribs. “I got me a nugget that assays as one and a quarter ounce pure says those younger fellers will plain bust his bum for him.”
Thirty-five dollars, Tall thought. A reg’lar fortune. Temptation, and his confidence in Preacher, overcame his usual prudence and his near-empty purse. “You’re on, old man.”
Preacher made to dodge between his opponents, then stopped abruptly and reached out to snag the fronts of their shirts. He thrust himself backward on powerful legs and slammed his arms together at the same time. A coonskin cap went flying from the top of Ty Beecham’s head as the two noggins clocked together. It was time for them to see stars and hear birds sing.
Preacher did not let up. He shook both combatants like small children and then threw them away Ty Beecham bounced off the ground and started to get back on his boots. Preacher reached him in two swift strides and towered over the fallen man.
“Don’t.”
All at once, Beecham saw the wisdom in this and remained down. Not so Hoss Furgison. He came at Preacher with a yodeling growl. Preacher mimicked it and danced around like an Injun, flapping a hand over his mouth in time with the sound that came out. Somehow that further enraged Furgison, who, blinded by the taunts, abandoned all semblance of a plan.
He walked into a short, hard right to the chest, which he had left unprotected in order to grapple for a bear hug. Unkindness followed unkindness for Hoss. Preacher stepped in and pistoned his arms into a soft belly, until Hoss hung over the arms that punished him. Preacher disengaged his arms and stepped away. Hoss fell to his knees.
“You’d do yourself a favor if you stayed there, Hoss. I wasn’t fixin’ to do any real harm.
Push it, an’ by dang, I surely will.”
“You win, Preacher. You win,” Hoss panted.
Tall Johnson looked to the old man. Grudgingly, the graybeard dug under his grimy buckskin shirt and pulled out a small pouch. From it he took a large gold nugget, crusted in quartz. Tall reckoned it to be worth what the old feller said.
“You got enough in yer pocketbook to have paid, had yer man lost?” the ancient demanded with ill grace.
Tall puckered his lips and threw the sore loser a wry look. “Well, now, we’ll never know, will we?”
“Don’t get another hidey-ho goin’, Tall,” Preacher admonished. “I still have to go after those brats.”
“So you do,” Tall answered cheerily. “And I wish you the joy of it.”
“Dang it, Tall, if my knuckles weren’t so sore, I’d knock some of the dust off ’em on that ugly puss of yours.” So saying, Preacher stomped off for the front of the trading post and his trusty Cougar.
* * *
Preacher reined in and dismounted. The troublesome pair had found a stretch of slab rock that made it impossible to track them. Instead of crossing directly over, Preacher skirted around the edge counterclockwise, leading Cougar. He had gone only a quarter of the way when he found traces. Something about them bothered him.
Then he saw it clearly. These prints had been made by moccasins, right enough, and Terry had been wearing the pair Preacher had given him. But these were of a different pattern than those the boy had. These marks had been put down by an Arapaho. Preacher continued his search, and found no sign of where the children had left the wide stretch of exposed granite. Had the Indians taken the boy and girl?
One way to find out. He set out to follow the trace left by the Arapahos. An hour later, he encountered their evening camp. Among them he soon found old friends. Bold Pony was an age with Preacher, and in fact they had spent several summers together as boys in their late teens. Now the Arapaho settled Preacher down to a ritual sharing of meat and salt.
Bold Pony had held his age well, Preacher noted. He still made a strapping figure, his limbs smooth and corded with muscle. He wore the hair pipe chest plate of a war chief and proudly reintroduced Preacher to his wife and three children. His boy was eleven, with a shy, shoe-button-eyed little girl of eight next, followed by a small boy, a toddler of three.
“Makes a feller know how many summers have gone by,” Preacher confided. “Last I saw of you, that biggest of yours was still peekin’ at me from behind his momma’s skirts.”
“You have weathered the seasons well, old friend,” Bold Pony complimented.
“Yep. Well . . . beauty is as beauty does.” Preacher’s observation didn’t mean a damned thing, but Bold Pony nodded sagely, arms crossed over his chest.
“What brings you into the hunting place of the Arapaho?” Bold Pony got right to the point as he pushed aside his empty stew bowl.
Preacher described in detail his encounter with Terry and Victoria, described them and recounted how they had managed to bowl over Frenchie Pirot and make an escape from the trading post. Bold Pony nodded several times during the explanation, then sat in silence as he lighted his pipe.
After the required puffs sent to the four corners of the world, and the two to the Sky Father and Earth Mother, Bold Pony drew one more for pleasure and passed it to Preacher. “We know of these children,” he said with a scowl.
Preacher repeated the ritual gesture and sucked in a powerful lungful of pungent smoke. “Do you now? Any idea where they might be right now?”
Bold Pony accepted the pipe back, puffed and spoke. “I may know that. My son and his friends”—he nodded to the other lodges in the small encampment—“range far on their boyish hunts. It is possible they saw these young white people not long ago. It is possible that they are with their no-account family in a canyon not far off. One that is hidden from the unskilled eye.”
“Is it also possible,” Preacher asked after another drag on the pipe, “that you can give me directions on how to find that canyon?”
A hint of a smile lighted the face of Bold Pony. “It is possible, old friend. I could tell you simply to follow your nose. They are dirty, an unwashed lot. You can smell them from far off. Or I could tell you to follow your ears. There are many children there, and they seem to squabble all the while—very noisy. Or I could tell you to journey half a day to the east until you come to a big tree blasted by the Thunder Bird. There you would find a small stream that comes from a narrow opening to the north. Follow that and you will find them.”
“I am grateful, old friend.”
“It is good. Now we must eat more or my woman will be unhappy.”
“I’d rather to be off right away. But—” he looked up at the stout, round-faced, beaming woman and waggled one hand in acceptance—“I reckon another bowl of that stew wouldn’t do no harm. Half a day will put me there a mite after the middle of the night. I can hardly wait,” he said to himself with sarcasm.
6
Eight men, who were dressed in traditional diaperlike loincloths and spike-studded sandals, marched out of a stone archway after the clarion had sounded and the portcullis had been raised. Four of them looked entirely unwilling. They had every reason to be, considering that they were captives from an ill-fated wagon train, not professionals, as were their opponents. When the eight reached the lavish, curtained box, they halted and raised their weapons to salute the imperator in the sanctioned words.
“Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus!”
And, right here on the sands of the Coliseum of Nova Roma, they really were about to die. At least the four pilgrims were, who possessed a woeful unfamiliarity with the odd weapons they had been given. One had a small, round, Thracian shield and a short sword. The second had the spike-knuckled caestus of a pugilist—a fistfighter. The third had the net and trident of a retiarius. The fourth bore a pair of long daggers, with small shields strapped just below each elbow, in the style of the Midianite horsemen. The professionals bore the appropriate opposing arms. They looked expectantly beyond their soon-to-be victims of the imperator.
Marcus Quintus Americus rose eagerly and gave the signal to begin with his gold-capped, ivory wand. At once, the gladiators ended their salute, each squared off against his primary opponent, and the fight commenced. Shouts of encouragement and derision rose from the stone benches filled with spectators. Many of these people, the “citizens” of New Rome, had been here for years. Not a few had formerly been the inmates of prisons and asylums for the insane. Whatever their origins, they had acquired a taste for this bloodiest of sports. That pleased Quintus, who resumed his seat on the low-back, X-shaped chair beside his wife, Titiana Pulcra, the former Flossie Horton of Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
“Rather a good lot, this time, eh?” Quintus asked the striking blonde beside him.
Pulcra/Flossie tossed her diadem of golden curls and answered in a lazy drawl. “Come, Quintus, you know the games bore me. They are so gruesome.”
From her far side, the small voice of Quintus Faustus Americus, her son, piped up. “But that’s what makes them so exciting, Mother.”
Pulcra gazed on him coolly. “I was addressing your father, Faustus. Really, Quintus, for a boy of ten years, he has truly atrocious manners.”
“Eleven, my dear,” Quintus responded. “He’ll be eleven on the nones of September.”
“Which makes it all the worse. He needs a proper teacher. There’s geography, history, so many things, including manners, he should be taught.”
“Eleven is a good enough time to begin formal education,” Quintus countered. “A boy needs to be free to indulge his adventurous spirit until then, doesn’t he, son?” he added fondly as he reached across his wife to tousle the youngster’s yellow curls.
Quintus Faustus Americus had his mother’s coloring, her gray eyes and pug nose as well. A thin, wiry boy, he had inherited his father’s sadistic traits. He enjoyed tormenting small animals and treated all other children as inferiors. Gen. G
aius Septimus Glaubiae summed up the lad best, as being mean-spirited, filled with a deep-seated evil.
“Yes, Father. Oh, look!” Faustus blurted, pointing to a small, nail-bitten finger on a fallen man on the sand. “He’s gone down already. I told you he was too old and frail. You owe me ten dinarii.”
“Done, my boy. Right after the games end,” Quintus responded laughing.
Out in the arena, the oldest immigrant lay in a pool of blood, his life slowly ebbing, while the professional gladiator who had downed him with a simple, straight sword thrust with his gladius stood over him. He looked up at the box. Quintus gave him the sign to dispatch the unfortunate.
A short, sharp scream came from the old fellow when the gladius pierced his heart. To the left of the unfeeling gladiator, a sturdy young farmer, who had been bound for Oregon, smashed a surprising blow to the face of his opponent with the caestus. Blood flew in profusion. A chorus of boos came from the audience.
“I say, rather good!” Quintus cheered on the amateur. “Smack him another one.”
Before the brave farmer could respond, his opponent’s length of his chain with the spiked ball at the end lashed out and struck him solidly in the chest. Yanked off his feet by the effort to extract the spike point from the deep wound, the farmer fell face-first to the sand. His opponent closed in and stood above his victim while he swung the wicked instrument around over his head. The farmer rolled over, eyes wide with fright, and lashed out with his blade-encrusted fist. The tines dug into the partly protected calf muscle of the professional gladiator, who leaped back with a howl.
“He’s going to die anyway, isn’t he, Father?” The small hand of Faustus tugged at the edge of his father’s toga.
Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Page 6