Preacher advanced toward the dormer alcove where Terry and Vickie had withdrawn. “C’mon, I’m takin’ you outta this hell-hole,” he commanded.
Accustomed to mistrusting all adults, Terry responded with defiance. “What if we don’t want to go?”
Preacher cocked his head to one side. His expression clearly declared that he would not take a lot of that. “Do I have to hog-tie you, like before, an’ drag you outta here? It can be easy or hard, your choice; either way, we gotta move fast. ’Cause them she-cats down there are like to recover from their weepin’ an’ wailin’ over their head he-coon and come after me with a vengeance.”
“One of them is our momma,” Terry said as he continued his challenge.
A flint edge turned Preacher’s eyes; and sarcasm, his words. “You got any idee which one?”
Terry had not expected that tack. “Why-why, the yeller-haired one, of course.”
“If you expect to see her go unharmed, then you’d best move fast. There’s knives and forks and things down there that can do a feller real harm. I don’t intend to stand around an’ let her poke any of them into me.”
His head of steam deserted Terry, and his frail chest deflated under the raggedy shirt. “We’ll go.”
“Yes, Preacher, we’ll go with you anytime,” Vickie added, her cobalt eyes dancing in starlight.
“Now, that’s more like it. ’Sides, you’ll be better off where I’ll be takin’ you, better by far than livin’ with this sordid riffraff.”
Terry produced a pout. “She’s still our maw.”
Enough had come and gone for Preacher long ago. His face clouded, and his words rang in a hollow command. “Git down them stairs. Grab what belongin’s is yours, especially any coats.”
“Coats? You flang the only ones we had in the fire,” Terry protested.
Nonplused, Preacher could only shrug. “Rags. They was mostly rags,” he defended his action. “Now, scoot!”
Oblivious to the deep chill, the youngsters scampered barefoot down the ladder. Preacher followed. The thirteen-year-old, still smarting from the punch Preacher had laid on him, shouted after. “Paw’s gonna wrang your necks oncest he catches up to y’all.”
Preacher turned his iron gaze over one shoulder. “You tell him to come on, as I reckon it’ll be me does the wringin’.”
On the ground floor of the cabin, the women still whooped and hollered over the wounded Silas Tucker. Silently, Preacher wished them the joy of it, then led the way to his horses.
* * *
“I don’t want to sit still!” Terry Tucker sassed Preacher from atop the packsaddle at midmorning the next day. “It hurts my behind, ridin’ like this.”
“You spook that pack-critter an’ I’ll show you a hurt behind,” Preacher warned.
Terry tried his repertoire of the cutest. “Why can’t I ride with you?” he asked coyly.
“Cougar ain’t used to carryin’ double,” Preacher grumbled.
“He can learn.”
“Not now, he cain’t, Terry. Not no-how,” Preacher insisted.
Right then, Cougar’s ears twitched. The packhorse whuffled. Preacher reined in sharply and listened. His ears, then his nose caught the message. Injuns! Friendly, without a doubt. Else they would not have let the three whites ride in so close. Preacher nodded, raised his right arm and signed the symbol for peace. Then he waited.
Always perceptive, Terry spoke in a mere whisper. “What’s wrong?”
Preacher’s lips barely moved. “Cain’t you smell it? They’s Injuns out there.”
Terry’s eyes went wide and round. “They gonna scalp us?”
“I don’t think so.”
Fear and insecurity shivered through the boy’s skinny frame. “You don’t think so?”
“Take it easy, boy. No sense in gettin’ them riled . . . if they ain’t already.”
Preacher signed again. This time a familiar figure walked his spotted pony out onto the trail. Preacher raised in the saddle and signed “friend.”
“Ho! Ghost Walker, we meet again.”
“Ho! Bold Pony, it is a good meeting.”
“The hunting is plenty. We stay to fill our travois.” He looked pointedly at the two towheads on the packhorse. “You found them, I see.”
Preacher thought over the ordeal of last night, and the trials of this morning. The kids had taken to being bratty, as usual, right after breakfast. “Yep. More’s the pity.”
“You would tell me about it?” Amusement twinkled in the eyes of the Arapaho war chief as he rode in closer. He examined Preacher’s face. “The parents were not so pleased with parting with their dear ones?”
Preacher grunted. “Sometimes your eyes are too keen, Bold Pony.”
He went on to relate the visit to the Tucker house. The more colorful his description grew of the brief fight in the cabin, the more Bold Pony laughed and held his sides. Although unaware of why, the amusement of Bold Pony had an effect on the children. Before long, Terry and Vickie broke into fits of giggles with each revelation Preacher made. It put him in a scowling mood.
Preacher rounded on them to growl. “That’s enough of that.” He turned back in appeal to Bold Pony. “You see what I mean? These two have been a pain in the behind from the git-go.” Then he told of their morning’s fractiousness.
Bold Pony studied the predicament in which Preacher found himself. At last he answered cautiously, albeit with a hint of laughter in his words. “If my people did not believe that spanking a child is wrong, I’d suggest that you do just that.”
Preacher soberly considered his friend’s words. “Well,” he announced at last, a gleam in his eyes, “these warts ain’t exactly Arapaho. So, mayhap a willow switch would be just the thing.”
Bold Pony nodded sagely. “I will leave you to your important work. May the sun always rise for you, Preacher.”
“May the wind always be at your back, Bold Pony.”
Without a backward glance, Bold Pony turned his mount and rode off silently. Preacher turned his attention to the youngsters, who had grown deathly pale. He dusted his hands together and kneed Cougar in the direction of a creek bed, where a long, narrow stand of weeping willows beckoned.
Terry read Preacher’s intent in a flickering and blurted his appeal, thick with tears. “Oh, no, you ain’t gonna do that. Please. You ain’t gonna whup us?”
“You broke my only fire trestle, burnt the cornbread, dang near ran off the packhorse, an’ shamed me by jibberin’ like a pack o’ monkeys in front of Bold Pony. Suppose you tell me just why I shouldn’t?”
“ ’C-’cause Paw always whups up on us somethin’ fierce.”
Determined now, Preacher ignored the boy. At the creek bank, he dismounted and tied off both horses. Then he selected and cut a suitable willow switch. Stripped of its leaves, it made a satisfactory whirr as he flexed it through the air. Face somber, Preacher walked over to the children.
“You first, Missy,” he directed to Vickie.
Reluctantly, she came down from the packsaddle. Her eyes flooded as Preacher knelt and bent her over his knee. He upended the hem of her skirt and exposed a bare bottom. Swiftly, without any show of anger, he delivered four sound whacks. Vickie bit her lip to keep from crying out, but her whimpers tore at Preacher’s heart.
Dimly, from memories best left buried, he dredged up images of the few times he’d been thrashed as a boy. Once begun, though, he could not stop in midstream, so’s to speak. He set her on her feet and went for Terry.
“Don’t touch me,” Terry wailed. “I’ll git’cha. I’ll git’cha in your sleep,” he threatened to no avail.
Preacher had him in the strong grip of one hand and hauled the slight lad off the packsaddle. The willow switch between the third and little fingers of the other hand, he quickly had the boy’s britches down and his wriggling torso over an upraised knee. For only a moment did Preacher hesitate; then six fast, expertly delivered smacks left red spots, but raised not a welt. Returned to his upr
ight position, instead of pulling up his trousers, the silently sobbing boy yanked on his shirt to expose his chest and back.
Angry, fresh red lines, knotted here and there with spots of infection, showed over the welter of earlier scars Preacher had seen in the cave. “See? You’re no better than he is, Preacher.” Then Terry broke into a gushing flow of tears. Vickie joined him.
Seeing the terrible punishment meted out by the animal who called himself the boy’s father and hearing their pitiful sobs tugged at Preacher’s heart. Impulsively, he reached out and hugged them to him. He held them tightly while their blubbering subsided.
“Nah—nah, that’s all right, yonkers. You ain’t hurt that bad this time. An’ a feller’s got to learn that he does wrong, he’s gonna git punishment, swift and sure. It’s what distinguishes us from the animals.” Preacher stopped and jerked his head back, a surprised expression on his face. “Listen to me, speakin’ words with more syllables than my tongue can tickle over. Next thing you know, I’ll be takin’ to Bible-thumpin’.”
Out of their anguish came laughter. Preacher continued to press his case. “Understand, I want things to go right for you. I promised I’d find a home for the both of you, with someone who will love and care for the both of you. An’ I’m gonna do it.”
Sniffling, Terry and Vickie dried their eyes and padded barefoot back toward the packhorse. Vickie spoke first. “I promise not to give you a hard time anymore, Preacher. Really I won’t.”
“Me—me, too, Preacher,” Terry croaked hoarsely. “It’s hard. After so many years of bein’ bad, it’s—it’s a habit.”
Preacher answered gruffly, his own throat constricted by a lump of memory. “See that you tend to your p’s and q’s an’ we’ll git along just fine.”
He restored them to their perch atop the pack animal and mounted up. Preacher led the way out, much relieved, the children considerably subdued.
* * *
Preacher crouched by the hat-sized fire he had built in a protecting ring of stones. He looked up from the skillet of fatback and beans, savoring the aroma that rose. He had found some wild onions, added dried chili peppers, salt and a dab of sugar from his supplies, and water from the creek that flowed soundlessly a hundred yards away.
Only a fool, or a greenhorn flatlander, camped right up beside a noisy mountain creek that burbled and gurgled over rocks and made musical swirls as it rounded sandbars and bends. A whole party of scalp-hungry Blackfeet could sneak up on such a foolish person. Preacher had learned that before his voice changed. It had saved his hair on numerous occasions. He paused in his cooking duties.
“Terry, go fetch that foldin’ bucket full of water for the horses.”
“Why didn’t we just camp by the crick?” Terry offered in a revival of his earlier attitude.
There you go, Preacher thought to himself. Flatlanders an’ fools. He drew a breath, ready to deliver a blistering rejoinder, then mellowed. “Because it’s foolish, even dangerous, to camp where the sound of water fills your ears and you can’t hear anyone sneak up on you. Didn’t I explain all that to you before?”
To Preacher’s surprise, Terry flushed a rich scarlet. One big toe massaged the top of the other. He cut his eyes to the ground right in front of them. “I—reckon you did. I—I . . . forgot.”
“Well an’ good. You owned up to it, an’ that’s what counts.”
Unaccustomed to praise for any reason, Terry glowed, his eyes alight and dancing, his cheeks pink for a far different reason. Preacher gave him scant time to rest on his laurels.
“Git on, now. Gonna be dark before long.”
After her brother scurried off on his errand, Vickie came to Preacher. With all the natural wiles of a woman, she draped one forearm on his shoulder and bent toward him with an expression of earnest absorption. “When will we be at the trading post, Preacher?”
“Some time in the mornin’, provided you two carry your end. We git up, eat, clean up, an’ git. All before the horizon turns gray.”
Vickie made a little girl face. “Why do we have to wake up so early? I like to sleep until the sun is up far enough to shine in the loft an’ I can smell breakfast a-cookin’.”
“There’s no loft here, an’ we be in a hurry,” Preacher answered shortly.
“What’s the hurry for?” Vickie asked in sincere ignorance.
Preacher studied her a moment. “You don’t think your poppa an’ them herri-dans of his’n is gonna kick back and say, ’Ol’ Preacher done stole our prize pupils. Ho-hum.’”
Vickie’s eyes went wide. “You mean . . . they’s a-comin’ after us?”
“Count on it. Sure’s there’s stink on a skunk.”
Twenty minutes passed, with Terry not yet back from the creek, when Preacher’s prediction proved true.
* * *
His teeth gritted against the constant pain in his shoulder, Silas Tucker had held steadfast to his determination to exact revenge upon the crazy man who had broken into their cabin and stolen his best earners. Why, then two could steal the gold from a man’s teeth without him knowin’ it. And the boy, even though Silas had no intention of letting him know it, was turning into a right capable killer.
With those two bringin’ in the goods, Silas would soon have his women dressed in silks and himself in a woolen suit. Reg’lar nabobs they’d be. Then, along comes this mountain wild man and spoils it all. Silas’ brow furrowed, and he flushed with mounting anger as he looked down into the small valley where Preacher and the children had made camp. They’d soon see, Silas decided. He turned to Faith and spoke in a whisper.
“Be sure not to hit them brats. I know you’re a good shot, m’love. Allus was. That’s why I want you to stay back up here and give cover fire, y’hear?”
“I know, Silas, I know. It’s that Purity cain’t shoot for beans.”
Silas gave her a broad wink. “That’s why she’s comin’ with me. I c’n sorta keep an eye on her.” He paused and gave consideration to something that had been gnawing on him since Terry and Vickie had been stolen. “You know, I been thinkin’ maybe I should git a couple more brats offen her. They’s whip-smart, her git.”
Faith hid the jealousy that nearly gagged her. “What’s wrong with me?”
“We gotta face facts, woman. Those youngins of ourn ain’t travelin’ with full packs. Somethin’s sommat wrong with them.”
“They’re kin an’ kin to our kin,” Faith defended stubbornly.
Silas ground his teeth. “So be it, woman. Now you just get ready.”
* * *
Preacher had poured himself a final cup of coffee when a bullet cracked sharply over his head. He lunged to the side and rolled to where he had rested his Hawken against the trunk of a grizzled old pine. The finely made weapon came into his hands with fluid ease. He turned back to the direction from which the shot had come.
His eyes took in a flash, bright enough in the twilight to be readily seen, and a puff of gray-white powder smoke. He sighted in the Hawken. The hammer had not struck the percussion cap when a fat lead ball smacked into the tree, two inches above his head, and Preacher flinched in a natural reaction. Bits of wood and bark stung as they cut the back of his neck. That caused his round to go wild. A hell of a shot, whoever it might be, Preacher considered.
“You youngins stay low. Hug the ground.”
“It’s Silas, come to git us,” Terry announced, his voice quavering with his fear of the man.
Preacher mulled that over. “May be, but if so, he’s gonna leave his bones here for the varmits.”
“No,” Vickie wailed. “No, he’s gonna kill us all.”
More shots came from closer in. Preacher dived for another position. But not before one ball cut a hot path across the top of his left shoulder. He came up in a kneeling position and took aim at a hint of movement among the aspens along the trail. The reloaded Hawkin bucked and spat a .56 caliber ball into the tree line.
A grunt and muffled curse rewarded Preacher’s effort. He put
the rifle aside and drew one of the pair of new-minted. 44 Walker Colts. Another shot came from uphill and forced Preacher into a nest of rocks at the edge of the camp. Vickie yelped, and Terry uttered words that should never be in the mouth of a twelve-year-old. Preacher fired into the aspens and moved again.
Emboldened by Preacher’s apparent retreat, Silas Tucker came into view. A red, wet stain glistened in the waning light of the sunset. He had taken Preacher’s ball in the meaty flesh of his right side. Enough fat there, Preacher reckoned, to make certain nothing vital had been hit. Still, even a cornered rat had a lot of fight left in him. Silas peered shortsightedly around the clearing and located Terry, hunkered down on the grassy turf. Sudden rage at the boy’s defiance blotted out his earlier evaluation of the youngster’s worth. He raised a single-barrel pistol and took aim at the boy’s slim back.
A hot slug from the .44 Colt in Preacher’s hand shattered the radius of Tucker’s right forearm a split second later. Impact caused his .60 caliber pistol to discharge skyward. Instinctively, he dove for a hiding place. Preacher started after him when another shot cracked from the aspens.
This could be a little harder than he had expected, the mountain man admitted to himself. He sure hated to kill a woman, but who else could Tucker have with him?
8
In rapid succession, three bullets sought a chunk of meat from Preacher’s hide. He banged off two fast slugs at the hidden shooter and again moved to better cover. A fallen log seemed to offer the best advantage.
He had barely settled into position and begun to lament the lack of his rifle when a scurry of movement in the open caught his attention. On hands and knees, Terry scampered toward Preacher, with a Hawken, powder horn, ball pouch, and cap stick slung over his slender back.
“Git back, you little varmint!” Preacher shouted at him.
Terry kept coming. “You need these,” he countered.
Well, damned if I don’t, Preacher acknowledged to himself.
Terry reached the fallen tree in under five seconds. He paused as a ball smacked into the bark inches above his towhead. Then he adroitly flew over the rough surface of the trunk. At once, Preacher snatched the rifle from the boy, taking time only to pat the lad on his head in gratitude. A moment later Silas Tucker made his move.
Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Page 8