A moment later, through the red haze that was beginning to fill his head, Pete heard a pistol shot. He knew that Manning had just murdered that other fur trapper. Now no one would ever know what had happened here or who was responsible for this atrocity.
“I threw around some coal oil,” he heard Deaver say. “Get that candle. We’ll light it and get out of here.”
A moment later, Pete heard the whoosh of flames and felt their heat against his face. In a matter of seconds, they were all around him, rapidly turning into an inferno.
The roaring blaze behind them turned the night sky an ugly, garish shade of orange as Deaver, Manning, and the other three men rode away from the trading post. Manning shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and Deaver asked, “Feelin’ any better?”
“Not much. That old man deserved everything he got.”
“Yeah, but at least he told us where to find Preacher.”
Manning hesitated, then said, “We don’t have time to go after him right now, Willie. You know that. We’ve got to rendezvous with those other fellas. I was willin’ to come back here tonight, but—”
“Don’t worry,” Deaver broke in impatiently. “I haven’t forgotten about that business we have to take care of. But Pete said Preacher was plannin’ to winter with Bent Leg’s bunch of redskins. And our business won’t take us all winter. There’ll be plenty of time later on to teach that son of a bitch and his friends a lesson they’ll never forget.”
“All right,” Manning said with a grin and a nod. “I like the sound of that.”
They rode on as the flames leaped high behind them, consuming Blind Pete’s Place and everything in it.
Yes, sir, Deaver thought, it was going to be a long winter.
Especially for Preacher.
CHAPTER 4
A storm roared down out of Canada a few days later, bringing with it a biting wind and hard pellets of sleet that pelted down, making life miserable for man and horse alike.
Because of that, Preacher considered them lucky to have found a cave where they could get out of the weather. It was empty, so they didn’t have to share it with a hibernating grizzly bear.
People had used the chamber in the side of a rocky hillside for shelter in the past. That was obvious because of the charred ring on the floor where campfires had been built. The ceiling of the cave had a crack in it that ran all the way to the surface of the hill to carry away smoke. Nighthawk built a fire, and the heat from the flames, along with that put out by the horses, warmed the cave so that it was quite comfortable.
“Have you ever been here before, Preacher?” Audie asked as the four men sat around the fire that first night.
“Not that I recollect,” the mountain man answered. “I recall ridin’ through this valley before, but I must not’ve stopped and looked around any. How about you?”
Audie shook his head and said, “No, it’s all new to me as well.”
Nighthawk said, “Umm.”
Audie turned to him.
“What’s that you say? You’ve been here before? Eight winters ago?”
“Umm.”
Lorenzo frowned and asked Preacher, “How’s he do that? I never heard that Injun do nothin’ except make that sound like he’s tryin’ to pass somethin’ that hurts.”
“They got their own way of communicatin’, I reckon,” Preacher said.
“Yes, I agree that it’s a fine place,” Audie went on. “We should be able to wait here until the storm blows over.” He turned to Lorenzo. “Why don’t you tell us how you and Preacher came to meet, my friend?”
“It’s a long story,” Lorenzo said, “and it ain’t a particularly pretty one.”
Audie smiled and spread his hands.
“Until the weather gods smile upon us again, we have nothing but time.”
“Well, I reckon that’s true enough.” Lorenzo looked at Preacher. “You mind if I tell the story?”
Preacher waved a hand.
“Like Audie says, we got nothin’ but time.”
“Well, it was back in St. Louis, you see,” Lorenzo began, “and I was workin’ for a fella who was nothin’ but a lowdown, dyed-in-the-wool varmint.”
“You were his slave?” Audie asked.
“No, sir. I’m a freed man. But Mr. Shad Beaumont, he was as bad or worse than any plantation owner who might’ve put me to work pickin’ cotton.”
Lorenzo continued with the story of how Preacher had come to St. Louis to settle a score with Shad Beaumont, the criminal who was responsible for causing a lot of trouble for Preacher and some of his friends on the frontier. Because of Beaumont, people Preacher cared about had died, and the mountain man couldn’t let that pass. It just wasn’t in him.
Preacher’s enmity for Beaumont hadn’t extended to all the folks who worked for the man, however, and he had found an unexpected ally in Lorenzo. They had been traveling together ever since, along with another former employee of Beaumont’s, a young woman called Casey, who had formed an attachment with Preacher, too. Along with the members of a wagon train, the three of them had made a perilous journey over the Santa Fe Trail.
Casey had married one of the young men from the wagon train and remained behind in Santa Fe, and Preacher was glad of that. She’d had it in her head for a while that she ought to marry him, and that never would have worked out. He wasn’t the sort of hombre to get hitched permanent-like, although he enjoyed the company of women and had spent more than one winter in temporary marriages to women from various Indian tribes. None of them expected him to stay in one place for more than a few months.
“It certainly sounds as if you’ve had some thrilling adventures,” Audie said when Lorenzo finished his tale. “As for Nighthawk and myself, we first met Preacher a while back down in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, while he was looking for an ancient Spanish treasure.”
“You’re a treasure hunter, Preacher?” Lorenzo asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“I was just helpin’ some other folks look for it,” Preacher said. “I can’t think of nothin’ much worse’n windin’ up a rich man. Too much money’ll weigh a man down ever’ bit as much as chains will.”
“I wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t mind gettin’ the chance to find out one o’ these days, though.”
“People like to cite Scripture and claim that money is the root of all evil,” Audie said. “Actually, that’s an incorrect quote. The verse actually says that the love of money is the root of all evil.”
“I don’t love money,” Lorenzo insisted. “I’m just passin’ fond of it, that’s all.”
They talked until the fire burned down, then Preacher, Lorenzo, and Nighthawk rolled up in their blankets to sleep. Audie stayed awake to take the first turn on guard duty, nursing a cup of coffee as he sat beside the glowing embers of the fire.
With the storm howling outside, it was unlikely that anybody was out and about to bother them, but folks who had lived in these mountains for very long knew that it was never wise to take unnecessary chances. Later, each of the other men would take a turn standing watch.
The clouds had blown on by morning, leaving behind air cold enough to make a man gasp when he took a deep breath, as well as a landscape that glittered so brightly in the sun that it might as well have been covered by diamonds. The ice storm had coated the ground as well as the trees and bushes.
“Lordy, it’s beautiful,” Lorenzo said as he looked out from the mouth of the cave. “We used to get sleet back in St. Louis, but it never left the place lookin’ anything like this.”
“Like an ice castle from a fairy tale,” Audie said.
Lorenzo shook his head.
“I wouldn’t know nothin’ about no fairy tales. But this here is right pretty.”
“And slick as it can be,” Preacher put in. “A hoss might slip and bust a leg on that stuff. We’ll stay here until it melts off.”
That happened the next day, when the wind turned back around to the south and blew strongly. By mid-morning the temperatur
e had warmed above freezing and water was dripping everywhere as the ice melted, making its own peculiar and beautiful kind of music.
The four men rode north again, climbing toward a saddle between two peaks. Preacher didn’t know how they were designated on maps, but he called the mountains the Sleeping Woman and Old Baldy, because that’s what they reminded him of. On the other side of the mountains lay a valley that stretched for twenty miles north and south and was about five miles wide.
That valley was the domain of Chief Bent Leg’s band of Assiniboine. There was plenty of game, and another range of mountains at the northern end gave it some protection from the weather. It was a good place to spend the winter.
They camped that night at the base of Old Baldy and climbed to the high pass the next day. Even though Lorenzo was riding, he began to breathe harder the higher they climbed.
“Lord, there ain’t much air in the air up here, is there?” he asked when they stopped to rest the horses.
“You get used to it when you spend much time in the high country,” Preacher told him. “Don’t try to gulp down so much of it at a time. Just breathe more shallow-like.”
Lorenzo tried to follow the advice and soon felt a little better.
“Just imagine what it must be like to try to breathe at the summit of some of the great mountain ranges of the world like the Alps,” Audie said. “And I’ve heard it said that there are some even taller, at the edge of the Orient.”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“Never heard o’ them places. This is plenty high for me. Remember, I’m a flatlander.” He pointed back to the south. “Land’s sake, you must be able to see for a hundred miles up here!”
“Probably not that far,” Preacher told him. “You can see for a good ways, though. And it’s a right pretty view, too.”
“That it is,” Audie agreed. “Never thought I’d see the likes o’ that in all my borned days.”
They pushed on and made it through the pass by late afternoon. There was just enough light left for them to descend a short distance into the valley and find a place to camp. They did that on a little bench that backed up to a rocky bluff so they would be out of the wind.
“With any luck we’ll find Bent Leg’s village tomorrow,” Preacher said that evening as he fried some salt jowl over a small fire.
“What’s this fella Bent Leg like?” Lorenzo asked. “I reckon it’s safe for me to assume that he’s got a bent leg?”
“Yeah, it got broke in a fight with the Gros Ventre when he was a youngster,” Preacher explained. “Didn’t heal back right, so it’s always had a funny kink to it ever since. It didn’t stop him from gettin’ around, though, and he grew up into quite a warrior. He’s gettin’ on in years now, but he’s been a good leader for his people.”
“Who are the Gros … Gros … what’d you call ’em?”
“Gros Ventre. That’s another tribe, lives west of here a ways. They don’t get along with the Assiniboine. Any time tribes don’t cotton to each other, they raid back and forth, and it was durin’ one of those raids that Bent Leg got hurt. The Gros Ventre stole some horses and took some captives to make slaves out of ’em.”
“I don’t think I like these Gros Ventre folks, and I ain’t even met any of ’em yet,” Lorenzo said.
“Because they take slaves?” Audie asked. “Almost every tribe has been known to do that, at one time or another. Not only that, but … Were you born in this country, Lorenzo?”
“I sure was. Born and bred in Missouri.”
“Well, your ancestors in Africa almost certainly had slaves from other tribes there with which they were at odds. It’s an accepted form of warfare across the entire world.”
“That don’t make it right,” Lorenzo insisted.
“No, certainly not. But it’s a matter of historical record that the African tribes were quite proficient at capturing slaves from other tribes and selling and trading them to the Americans who sailed slave ships to their shores, especially during the last century.”
“How come you know so much?” Lorenzo asked with a frown.
Preacher said, “Audie used to be a teacher at one of them colleges back East before he chucked all that and became a fur trapper.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because the color of one’s skin is not the only means by which people discriminate,” Audie said. “I was tired of being judged solely by my stature, or lack of same, and not by what was in my heart and my head.”
“Reckon I can understand that. I’ll be honest with you, you looked a mite funny to me at first, but now you’re just Audie. I don’t even think about the other no more.”
“Nor does your Moorish coloring bother me, my friend.”
“No, I told you, I’m from Missouri.”
Preacher was about to chuckle when some instinct warned him. Maybe he had heard a faint noise from atop the bluff at their backs. Whatever it was, it brought him to his feet in a swift, sudden move. He started to turn and reached for one of the pistols tucked behind his belt.
Before he could draw the gun, a shape plummeted down from the top of the bluff and a bloodcurdling cry split the night. The figure crashed into Preacher and drove him to the ground. The pistol slipped out of his fingers and skittered across the rocks. Preacher was stunned, but not so much that he couldn’t see the savage, twisted face of the man who had tackled him, or the tomahawk that was lifted high, poised to fall and dash his brains out.
CHAPTER 5
A gun roared before the tomahawk could swoop down and end Preacher’s life. It was the Indian who died instead, as the ball from Audie’s pistol smashed into the side of his head, bored through his brain, and exploded out the other side of his skull in a grisly spray of blood, brain matter, and bone chips.
The attacker wasn’t alone. Rifles blasted from the top of the bluff. The balls thudded into the ground as Audie, Nighthawk, and Lorenzo scrambled in different directions.
Preacher flung the dead Indian’s body aside, snatched up the tomahawk the man had dropped, and sent it spinning toward the bluff top with a flick of his wrist.
He aimed the throw just above one of the muzzle flashes but didn’t really expect to hit anything. He just wanted to make one of the attackers duck for cover.
Instead, a man suddenly pitched over the edge and plummeted to the ground, landing next to the fire. The light from the flames revealed that the tomahawk was buried deeply in his forehead.
Preacher had never been one to turn down good luck. He rolled toward the base of the bluff, where the men on top of it would have a harder time drawing a bead on him because of the angle.
He pushed himself to his feet and planted his back against the rock wall. From there he could see that Audie, Nighthawk, and Lorenzo had reached the cover of the trees that grew around the clearing where they had made camp. They opened fire, peppering the top of the bluff with rifle balls.
Preacher had been about to draw his pistols and try to get a shot, but now he decided to leave the guns where they were for the moment. Instead he turned and faced the bluff. It was steep, but not quite sheer. Rocks stuck out from it here and there to form handholds, and a few hardy plants grew on it as well.
Preacher looked at the trees where his friends had taken cover and grinned. He pointed at himself and then jerked a thumb upward.
Reaching as high as he could, he found a hand-hold, got one of his feet on a rock lower down, and started to climb.
The men on the bluff and the ones in the trees continued to trade shots while Preacher made his ascent. He could tell from the way three different rifles sounded in the trees that all three of his friends were still in the fight. One or more of them might be wounded, but they were still alive.
Preacher had gotten a good enough look at the two dead Indians to know that they weren’t part of Bent Leg’s band of Assiniboine. He could tell by the decorations on their buckskins and the way their faces were painted that they were Gros Ventre. They had proba
bly ventured this far east to raid Bent Leg’s village.
As Preacher neared the top of the bluff, he stopped long enough to pull one of his pistols from behind his belt. Then he grasped one of the small, sturdy bushes and lifted himself higher as a rifle blasted a short distance above him. He could see flame spouting from the barrel.
The warrior started to reload. Preacher pushed with his legs and drove himself up. His head and shoulders cleared the rim. The Gros Ventre was on one knee, ramming a fresh load down the barrel of his rifle, when Preacher appeared and took him by surprise.
Preacher jammed the pistol under the warrior’s chin and pulled the trigger.
The weapon went off with a flesh-muffled boom. The Indian was thrown backward. His head had exploded so that not much of it was left as he landed on his back with his arms and legs thrown out to the sides.
The Gros Ventre hadn’t expected to find Preacher among them. He rolled onto the bluff and came up with his other pistol in his left hand.
A few yards away, one of the surprised warriors let out an angry screech and tried to swing his rifle toward the mountain man. Preacher’s pistol roared before the Indian could pull the trigger. The ball smashed into the warrior’s chest and knocked him sprawling.
Preacher heard a rush of footsteps behind him and whirled to see one of the warriors charging him and swinging a tomahawk. Preacher ducked under the slashing blow and crowded against the man. The empty pistol in Preacher’s right hand smashed against the warrior’s temple. Preacher felt bone crunch under the impact. The man dropped like a stone.
He twisted away as another Gros Ventre thrust a knife at him. The blade brushed Preacher’s side, but it didn’t penetrate his buckskin shirt. He dropped both pistols, clamped his hands on the Indian’s arm, and heaved. With a startled yell, the warrior flew off the bluff and into empty air. His crashing impact as he landed below near the fire cut off the outcry.
Preacher drew his knife and crouched, ready to continue the fight, but all the shooting had stopped now and no one came at him. There were three dead men down below and three more corpses up here on top of the bluff. It was possible those half-dozen warriors made up the entire raiding party.
Preacher’s Fury Page 3