“Yes, of course, they all are.”
Gray eyes alight and dancing, Faustus clapped his hands. “Oh, good.”
Two attendants rushed from the gladiator entrance portal to help the wounded professional off the sand. Another, armed like a Nubian, complete with zebra-print shield and long spear, took his place. He quickly finished off the second of the four pilgrims. With the farmer dead, that left only two. Faustus grew more excited with each feint and thrust of the four men before him. He stuffed his mouth with popped com, a feat made difficult by the broad, wet smile that exposed small, white, even teeth, like those of a wolverine. A great shout came from the crowd as one surviving immigrant stumbled over the body of the first man slain and went to one knee.
“Oh, splendid!” Faustus squeaked as the gladiator in Thracian armor swiftly closed in on the off-balance amateur.
With cold deliberation, the Thracian swung his curved sword and cleanly decapitated the downed outsider. Faustus bounced up and down on his cushioned chair, his breathing roughened, as little gasps escaped his lips. His eyes grew glassy. He moaned softly as the headless corpse toppled sideways to flop on the sand. To his right, his mother gave him alarmed glances.
“Hasn’t it been quite a good day at the games, my dear?” Quintus remarked idly to Pulcra.
“Yes, I suppose it has. Apparently Faustus thinks so.”
Faustus licked his lips repeatedly now and groped for more popped corn while he fixed his lead-colored eyes on the death throes of the last captive. A low, soft moan escaped as the hapless man breathed his last.
Quintus spoke in low, confidential tones to his wife. “I only hope the men I sent will be successful. And, that they get back in time for the birthday games for Faustus. We will have the spectacle of spectacles when that living legend, Preacher, is on the sand. What a crowning event that would be for the boy’s birthday!”
* * *
Preacher had other things on his mind at the time. Slipping unseen through the woods in late afternoon, he spied out the Tucker compound shortly before sundown. To grace it with the name of “compound,” Preacher reasoned, had to be a gross exaggeration. It consisted of a low, slovenly cabin, the second story of which seemed to have been added as an afterthought. A rickety corral stood to one side, partly shaded by a huge old juniper. The mound and the recessed doorway of a root cellar occupied space on the opposite side. Right off, Preacher spotted a dozen brats.
They stair-stepped from a toddler of maybe two to a gangly youth of perhaps fifteen. The younger ones went about blissfully naked. The older ones were every bit as ill-clothed as had been Terry and Vickie. While Preacher observed, he began to note that all of them appeared to have some physical or mental defect. All except Terry and Vickie, who showed up in the last glimmer of twilight.
Perhaps they had a different poppa, Preacher speculated. Or another momma? A moment later, the situation became clearer when three adults showed themselves in the tree-shaded, bare, pounded ground in front of the cabin. The man and one woman looked enough alike to be twins, both with black hair and eyes, like most of the children. Preacher recalled the speculation on the part of Ruben Duffey.
That seemed to make more sense when he studied the other woman, whom he saw to be fair, with long, blond hair and pale blue eyes. To Preacher’s consternation and as an assault on his sense of propriety, the man was openly affectionate to both women. He hugged them and bussed them heartily on their cheeks, held hands with the dark one while she gathered in the children.
Like most youngsters, the black-haired tribe frisked about some, holding out for only a few minutes more before surrendering to the indoors. The dusky woman cupped hands around her mouth and let out a raucous bellow.
“All right, that’s enough. Inside this minute or no supper for anyone.”
They scampered for the house with alacrity. All except Terry and Vickie, who coddled along as though reluctant to face a meal in that house. Terry continuously scuffed a big toe against the firm ground. Preacher continued to watch until the adult trio disappeared inside. Disgusted by this ménage à trois, and apparently an incestuous one at that, he settled back to lay plans for how he would deal with them. Some of the alternatives he came up with seemed distinctly grim.
* * *
Deacon Phineas Abercrombie and Sister Amelia Witherspoon stood stock still, thoroughly astounded. The men who surrounded their three-wagon train, which comprised their “Mobile Church in the Wildwood,” looked exactly like soldiers of Ancient Rome. Yet, how could that be? Here, in Wyoming Territory, in the year of our Lord 1848? One of them came forward into the fiickering bonfire-lighted clearing from the surrounding woods.
He bore a large Imperial Eagle on a long, wooden rod; the laurel leaf wreath, which, like the eagle, appeared to be of pure gold, encircling below it the famous emblem of Rome— S.PQ.R., Senatus, Populusque, Romanus—Deacon Abercrombie recalled this from his Latin studies. “The Senate and the Roman People.” What madness could this be?
One, obviously their leader, stepped forward, haughty, fierce-eyed, every inch the domineering Roman centurion in his crested helmet, cuirass, kilt and greaves. “What are you barbarians doing in the realm of Nova Roma?”
New Rome? the stunned deacon echoed in thought. That accounted for it, then, his dizzied mind supplied. Still unsettled by this apparition, he spoke in a near babble.
“Why, we are not barbarians. We are Christian missionaries. We have come to spread the word of God to the heathen lands, to do the work of the Lord.”
Cutting his eyes to a subordinate, the centurion commented, “Good Christians, eh? We’ll get to see the lions again, eh, Sergeant?” His smile was decidedly unpleasant, Abercrombie thought.
His contubernalis (skipper) produced a wicked smirk. “That’ll be just jolly. I hope they save this fat windbag for last,” he went on, with a nod to Abercrombie.
Astonished that he had no difficulty in understanding their Latin, Deacon Abercrombie flushed with crimson outrage at the depiction of himself. He was about to launch into an indignant protest when the centurion’s next words stoppered his mouth.
“All right, round them up and get them in chains. First I want to ask a couple of questions.” He turned to Abercrombie and spoke in perfect English, albeit heavily laden with a Southern accent. “We’re looking for a man. He’s been wounded, and probably traveling slow. Have any of y’all seen such a person?”
While Deacon Abercrombie struggled to frame a reply that included a protest, a startled yelp from his right silenced him. “Take your hands off me,” Sister Amelia snapped. “I’ll not abide any man to touch me, let alone a rude stranger.”
A hard-faced legionnaire barked back at her. “Shut up, lady. The contubernalis says we put you in chains, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Why, the very idea! The nerve. How dare you treat us like this?”
“Sister, please,” Abercrombie interrupted in an attempt to defuse the situation.
The soldier acted as though he had not heard a word. “Because we’ve got the weapons, Sister. Now, cooperate or suffer for it.”
Quickly the twenty men and sixteen women were rounded up and thrust into chains. Few voiced protest. Several women began to pray aloud or to sing hymns. The crude legionnaires laughed among themselves and made nasty comments. Soon, the job had been completed. The centurion had as yet to get an answer to his first question. He bore in on Deacon Abercrombie.
“You seem to be in charge of all this. I want an answer, or it will go hard on y’all.”
Abercrombie tried to compose himself. “What was the question?”
“Have you seen a wounded mountain man?”
“No.”
“That’s all? Just no?”
Deacon Abercrombie sighed in frustration. “No, none of us has seen such a person.”
With eyes narrowed, the centurion put his face right in that of Abercrombie. “You sure y’all ain’t hidin’ somethin’? Not bein’ entirely truthful
?”
“Sir, I am a churchman. I do not lie.”
The centurion pointed contemptuously at the Bible tucked under the deacon’s left arm. “You ask me, that’s all you do, is lie. Pack of nonsense between those leather covers. I’ll ask one more question; then all of you back in your wagons or on horses. Have you, by chance, encountered a scruffy man goes by the name of Preacher?”
Several of the cowed missionaries shook their heads in the negative. Abercrombie drew himself up and glared defiantly at his interrogator. “Of that, I am absolutely certain. Had we encountered anyone with so outlandish a pretension in this wilderness, we would have remembered.”
“Am I to take that to mean no?” the centurion asked with a sneer.
“Precisely. It is possible that this wounded man you are looking for saw us first and hid himself. So it may be that we have passed by him on his way, without knowing so. As to this Preacher you are speaking of, there’s been no such person.”
“So, if you are going to stick to that, you might as well load up. Maybe the curia’s torturers can loosen some tongues.”
“Where are you taking us? I demand to know,” Abercrombie unwisely blustered.
“To New Rome, of course. Y’all are in our country without permission. The First Citizen will likely call you all Gallic spies. Whatever he decides, it’s the coliseum for the lot of you.”
At the news of this, wailings and lamentations rose among the faithful.
* * *
By ten o’clock that night, Preacher had it figured out. He waited until midnight, then glided out of his place of concealment. Bent low, walking in moccasins for quiet, he crossed the clearing to the tumble-down cabin. A stench of neglected, spilled food and unwashed bodies leaped out to assault him. His nose wrinkled. The shambles of an outhouse behind the log structure gave evidence of being a total stranger to quick lime.
He had been upwind of the wretched hovel, Preacher recalled as he closed on the rickety front porch. He made not a sound as he crossed the warped, weathered gray boards to the front door. There Preacher paused while he reached for the latch string. Strangely, considering where the cabin was located, it hung outside as a welcoming.
Preacher eased it upward and winced at the slight scraping sound the bar made as it raised. When it came free, Preacher waited tensely, one hand on the butt of a Walker Colt. After half a hundred heartbeats, with no alarm shouted from inside, he eased the door inward. Another mistake in wild country. The hinges should provide added resistance against anyone trying to break in. Sucking in a breath, Preacher edged around the open portal.
He made not the slightest sound as he entered the smelly structure. He eased the door shut behind himself. A long wait to allow his eyes to adjust to the dimness within. Slowly, objects began to define themselves: a counter along one wall, with crude cupboards above; a cast-iron stove, tilted rakishly because of a broken leg; a hearth and fireplace mantle; a large, leather-strung bed beyond a gauzy curtain. Satisfied, Preacher ghosted past the slumbering adults lying together in a tangle of naked arms and legs.
Carefully, he tested the rungs of a ladder that gave access to the loft where, he surmised, the children slept. He gingerly put weight on the first and thrust upward. No squeal betrayed him. Preacher took a second and a third step. Surprising for the slipshod construction in general, the ladder still did not give off a single betraying squeak. In due time, Preacher brought his head above the level of the elevated flooring.
Here and there in the starlit darkness he made out the huddled forms of sleeping children. Beyond their relaxed bodies, he found Terry and Vickie, asleep together as usual, fully clothed, their arms around each other. With that accomplished, he went back down to take care of the adults.
What a ruckus that caused! Perhaps Preacher had not chosen the wisest way of extracting brother and sister from the family bosom. What he picked to do was stand in the middle of the cabin floor, by a large table, and bellow his intentions to the parents.
“All right, folks. I want you to stay tight in that bed. Don’t even twitch an eyeball. I’ve come to take those towheaded youngins outta here to someplace decent.”
In the next instant, the women erupted in a hissing, spitting, nail-clawing cat-fight mode. Bare as the day her mother birthed her, the blond one hurled herself at Preacher with fingers arched into wicked talons. He deflected her with his raised left forearm, but not before she raked his cheek with sharp nails.
“You bastid, keep yer filthy paws off my babies!” she howled.
“They as much mine as yorn, Purity. T’same man fathered them as mine,” the other wailed, closing in on Preacher’s right.
Preacher backpedaled and shoved the black-haired vixen away, toward the bed. Silas Tucker had not moved a hair. He sat in the middle of his harem bed with a bemused expression on his ugly face. He laughed at the startled look on Preacher’s face.
“You done kicked a hornet’s nest, mister,” he declared through his mirth.
Preacher shook his head, determined not to be bested by a pair of fillies. “More’n likely they did.”
They rushed him again and Preacher had to duck. A sizzling kick hurtled toward his groin. A hot rod of pain thrust into the outside of one thigh. This could prove more than he bargained for, the mountain man reckoned. Shouts from the loft joined in the pandemonium. Blond curls flying, the mother of Terry and Vickie charged in while Preacher held off the other woman.
Her fists pounded ineffectually off the broad, firm back of Preacher while she cursed and spat at him. He felt the wetness of her saliva on his neck, and it rankled some.
“Enough of that,” he bellowed as he backhanded her in the upper chest.
She went tail over tea kettle across the table. Preacher had time to gather only a short breath before the dark one bounced in the air and came at him with fists flying. He ducked, blocked what he could and took a stinger on the already black eye. It smarted more than he would admit. All of a sudden, the other woman had him around the ankles.
She held on for dear life. It deprived Preacher of any means of avoiding the wrath of the one throwing fists and feet at him. It began to look worse with every passing second. Then Silas Tucker roused himself enough to get into the fray. He came at Preacher low and mean, a long, wicked-bladed knife held in one hand.
7
Preacher swatted the blonde aside and cleared a space for a swift kick. His moccasin toe bit into the meaty portion of Silas Tucker’s right forearm. The knife went flying. Preacher quickly hurled the furious black-haired gal full into Tucker’s chest.
Tucker went flying with a yowl, which quickly turned into a bellow of pain when his bare rump made contact with the still-hot stove. He came off it mouthing a string of curses, and his hand groped blindly for a weapon. He found the short, hooked, cast-iron stove poker and launched himself at Preacher. Evidently the blonde woman had learned her lesson. She hung back and satisfied her outrage by hurling metal cups, plates and other cookery items at the dodging figure of Preacher.
A white-speckled, blue granite cup clipped him as it zinged past Preacher’s ear. He jumped to the opposite side, having his moccasin caught up in the tangle of legs and arms of the dark hoyden. Abruptly, he went down in a heap. Black curls swirled over his face as his wily opponent scrambled on top of him. She immediately began to pummel him with her fists.
“Git back, woman,” Silas Tucker bellowed. He came at Preacher with the poker.
Faith Tucker rolled off Preacher in the wrong direction and at the wrong time. The descending poker caught her on the exposed point of her left shoulder. Her shriek of pain ended with a curse; then she added for emphasis, “Idjit, you done broke it.”
Stunned, Silas looked upon his injured sister and dropped the metal rod as though it had been heated in the fire. Preacher used the brief interlude to spring to his feet. A large stew pot filled the entire range of his vision. He ducked and received only a slight graze across the top of his head. That bought valuable seconds
for Silas Tucker.
He bolted to the corner of the cabin, by the fireplace. There his hands closed around the smooth, polished hickory handle of a double-bit axe. He hefted it once, grinned stupidly and advanced on Preacher’s back, the deadly tool held high, ready to split the mountain man’s skull. He learned how stupid he had been a moment later.
A shout—he thought it could have come from Terry—warned Preacher. He spun, took in the menace, now only four feet from him, and drew in one swift, sure motion. The hammer came back on his .44 Walker Colt and then dropped on the primer of a brass cartridge. Fire flashed in the cabin in time with the comforting buck of the six-gun in Preacher’s hand. Smoke billowed, but not before Preacher saw the axe fly from Tucker’s hands, and a spray of blood from the back of the man’s shoulder showered both of his women.
They went berserk. Howling and screaming, they rushed to their wounded male, like females in a pride of lions. They completely ignored Preacher, who turned and headed for the loft. Pandemonium reigned above. Suddenly awakened, the children shrieked, screamed and wailed in confusion and fear. When he loomed up through the opening in the loft floor, Preacher rightly read a warning of fight in some of the older youngsters. Two of them came at him before he gained purchase on the flooring.
Preacher cuffed one of them aside and climbed off the ladder. He lightly felt a stinging blow to his side and yanked a naked, spluttering boy of ten or so off his feet. Preacher gave a disapproving cluck of tongue against teeth as he tossed the lad into three more who advanced on him.
“Enough!” he roared. The command had its effect.
Some of the smaller children clapped hands over their mouths and went round-eyed. Yet another brat challenged him. Growing amused, Preacher batted at the ineffectual blows in the manner of a man swatting mosquitos. His diversion lasted only a moment, until the sturdy boy of about thirteen snapped a kick at Preacher’s groin. It connected before he could block, though without striking any vital targets. Preacher popped the youngster high on the cheek in reply and sat him down on his bare butt. The rest drew back in fear.
Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Page 7