Preacher's Peace

by William W. Johnstone

  Art dismounted when he was about twenty yards outside the thicket, leading his horse forward, alert to sounds and smells out of the ordinary that would signal danger. He cradled his trusted rifle after he had loaded and primed it, then hobbled the horse when he got to the edge of the thicket.

  Moving through the underbrush, he peered into the shadowy area beneath the trees, measuring each step with as much silence and stealth as he could manage. He entered an opening that must have been about ten yards by twenty yards, enough space for a house and garden, he thought—though it was unlikely that any white settler would ever come to this remote part of the world to build such a house. Dog, who had followed him, yowled.

  Then, with a suddenness that nearly took his breath away, he saw it: a grizzly bear with its long black-brown back turned to him. The animal became still, then sensed Art’s presence, then turned toward him and stood at its full height. As the bear turned, he could see three smaller animals—cubs. This was a mother, a grizzly sow, who was tending her young. She was as dangerous as ten men. He knew this when he heard her roar, an earsplitting howl of anger and defiance.

  The huge, dark bear stood nearly ten feet tall on her hind feet. Her giant clawed paws slashed at the air as the cubs, not knowing what was happening, scurried over each other to stand behind their aroused mother.

  Her black eyes locked on Art, who stood stock-still at the edge of the opening beneath the trees. He took one step forward, toward the grizzly that was ready to attack. This was unexpected, and the bear cocked her head, then opened her mouth again, baring yellow teeth and fangs. The sow trumpeted a warning to the approaching man and to the wolf-dog.

  Art had never seen anything like it: this monster with black eyes towering over him. Deliberately, he raised his rifle and aimed, held steady. With almost lightning speed, the grizzly attacked.

  The mountain man fired his rifle, sending a ball directly into the chest of the advancing bear. She shuddered as she took the impact of the lead in the center of her huge body. But it did not stop her. The grizzly came on, flailing her razor-claws, roaring in pain. With immense speed and power the wounded sow pounced, her arms extended.

  Art reacted just as quickly, ducking first as the bear-talons swept the air where his head had been. He felt the wind of her violent swipe. He dropped his rifle, useless now, and ran toward a nearby tree. He scrambled to get a foothold in a low branch, and had to jump up to reach for a higher branch. He slipped, jumped again, and took hold this time.

  The bear spun almost a full circle with the momentum of her attack. Her back was to the man. The ball in her chest was the source of incredible pain, and blood leaked from the entry wound. She turned, spotted Art as he tried to clamber up the tree.

  She shook her gigantic head, mouth open, and saliva sprayed all around her. In two steps she was at the tree where Art hung, trying to gain a footing. As she grabbed for him, he swung out of her reach and pulled himself up higher into the tree.

  He thought if he could hold out and not let the grizzly get him for just another minute, she would die from the wound he had inflicted. But she showed no sign of dying. The cubs watched from the side of the clearing as their mother attacked yet again.

  This time she stood at her full height and reached for Art, clawing him across the back with one paw, pummeling him with the other. Art felt the deep cuts in his back and the blow to his left shoulder, shaking him from his precarious perch in the tree. He wanted to howl in pain himself, but did not. He had to hold on, had to try....

  The great grizzly sow seized her prey then, holding both of Art’s legs and pulling him off the tree. Dog yapped at the bear’s legs, but she ignored him.

  He tumbled to the earth, falling with a hard thud and wincing at the pain. His back was in shreds and he felt the warm blood from the razor wounds there. He rolled away from the attacking bear, but was not quick enough.

  With an ear-shattering roar, the grizzly went after him again. She reached down and swiped, this time slicing into his arm with her claws. He wanted to scream, but did not. His only thought was escape—but there was nowhere to go. He struggled unsteadily to his knees. He pulled free his hunting knife from its sheath at his belt. With his good arm he pushed the knife toward the mad animal, found his target.

  As he stabbed the blade into the wounded grizzly’s chest, he felt it scrape against the giant’s ribs. The foamy spittle at the gaping mouth became pink, then red. The bear’s black eyes locked on Art, who could barely breathe as he was caught in a savage tent made by the huge animal’s body.

  Then it closed in on him and fell on top of him. Art was crushed beneath the thousand-pound weight of the grizzly sow.

  * * *

  It was only an hour, but it seemed like days to Art, who drifted in and out of consciousness. His men found him lying beneath the carcass of the bear he had killed. It took all five of them another hour to figure out how to lever the dead body off the man. The bear’s blood mingled with Art’s, leaving him a bloody, pulpy mess. He fought through the pain to remain alert.

  “She-bear . . .” he gasped. His eyes sought the three cubs who had sniffed around their mother before Art’s party arrived.

  McDill looked around, cursed, and shot at the nearby cubs, who scattered out of sight. There was little hope for them now. They would soon join their mother in death.

  Hoffman, ignoring his own injury, and the others knelt beside their leader. He lay on his back more dead than alive. He bled from claw wounds in his face, chest, back, shoulder, and thighs. One leg and several ribs were broken. His face was a red mask of blood, and he had to spit to keep it out of his mouth as he breathed.

  “He’s tore damn near to pieces,” Don Montgomery said. Matthews turned away and got sick. “Aw, Joe, come back here and help him.”

  “He should be dead,” McDill muttered, standing over Art.

  “Maybe we should put him out of his misery,” Caviness suggested.

  “By God!” Hoffman, the big German, leapt to his feet and pushed his face against Caviness’s. “You will not kill our captain as you say! You will die if you try to hurt him, because I will kill you!”

  It was the longest speech any of them had ever heard the Hessian give. His face was red from heat and anger. Caviness took one step backward.

  “I was just saying maybe it would be the merciful thing to do, that’s all.” Caviness looked around at the others, but no one came to his defense. He had not won any friends on this journey, and even McDill looked away.

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  “It is good,” Hoffman said, then went back to tend to Art.

  All of them had thought it, but only Caviness had said it. As they looked at the tall young mountain man lying in a pool of red-black blood, none of them thought he could survive the day. But carefully they cared for him, washed his wounds, and bandaged him. McDill tended to his horse, then fetched his bedroll, which they laid out in a semi-sheltered spot by a tree. Hoffman went to the stream close by and filled Art’s canteen with fresh water.

  He brought it back and propped it up next to his wounded friend. “Here is water for you,” he said.

  “He’s a regular orator,” McDill commented to Caviness as they built a cook fire.

  No point in riding farther today. They would camp here for the night and start out in the morning. As the others ate, Art listened to their palaver, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  “We should rig up a travois,” Matthews said. “Maybe we could get him back to the fort for medical help.” He looked at the others, sitting around the fire. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “He’s gonna die,” McDill spat.

  “We don’t know that,” Matthews said angrily. “He’s our leader. We’ve got to stay with him.”

  “He can’t lead us nowhere now.” McDill was relentless, couldn’t let go of his hatred for Art and his need to take over the expedition and prove himself.

  Montgomery and the G
erman knelt by the severely injured man, and helped him drink some water from a canteen. For all they knew the water, like his blood, would leak out of puncture holes in his body. But they had to do something. Art couldn’t eat anything in his condition, and he was barely conscious enough to move his lips to drink. The two men looked at each other in despair.

  “Damn,” Montgomery said simply. He was not a man of words.

  Hoffman too was sad and angry at the grizzly sow who had nearly killed his friend—and angry at the disloyalty shown by McDill and Caviness. “We must keep an eye on those men,” he told Montgomery in a low voice. “I do not trust them.”

  “Hell, no,” Montgomery hissed. “They’s a pair of snakes if there ever was, damn their souls to hell.”

  That night the members of the party slept fitfully. All were exhausted but full of uncertainty about their mission. Without their designated leader there was nothing to hold them together. They stood watch in three shifts through the night, but there was no sound, no threat from man or beast. The dawn came suddenly.

  Art drifted between sleep and unconsciousness, his injuries stabbing him with pain in nearly every part of his body. At sunup, when the camp began to stir, he was aware of the activity, heard the men’s voices and smelled the morning cook fire, but his eyes remained closed.

  The wound in his throat was especially painful, and he could feel the copious dried blood on the bandage there. He was more than half-certain that he was going to die.

  “So I’m in charge now,” McDill announced to the others as the men drank their morning coffee.

  “The hell you are,” Matthews said, glaring at McDill and Caviness.

  “Maybe it’s hell for you,” Caviness said, “but McDill here is the only one with the experience to do it. So you just shut up and listen to him. He’ll get us out of here in one piece, like Art there can’t do just now.”

  “Besides,” said McDill, “those Blackfeet are liable to attack again. You want us to sit here and wait for them to gather their forces and come wipe us out?” McDill tossed his coffee dregs onto the ground and glared at Matthews and the other men.

  For a minute no one said anything, then the Hessian, Hoffman, said to McDill, “You will leave Art here to die?”

  “You want to stay here and die with him?”

  “He might live if we can care for him.”

  “Look at it this way. Do you think he would endanger the whole group if you were injured and going to die?”

  Again, the men were silent. It was hard to stand up to McDill when he was like this, at his bullying worst. He stood there like a big mule, his fists clenched, scowling at them all.

  “Well—what do you say? You want to be women and stay here and watch him die and likely get killed yourselves?”

  Caviness added, “And probably a lot worse than poor old Art here—scalped and gutted like a deer by them Blackfeet.”

  “It ain’t right to just leave him,” Montgomery muttered.

  “What’s that? Speak up,” McDill demanded.

  Hoffman said, “He means we got to do something. We cannot just leave the man here to die.”

  “All right, you want to do something, you can leave him some food and water. Maybe he’ll want to eat something—if he can. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything for the poor soul.” His words were sympathetic, but McDill turned and gave a wink to Caviness that the others couldn’t see.

  That seemed to satisfy Art’s friends. They settled in for a quick breakfast, saying nothing among themselves and watching McDill and Caviness with suspicion.

  The men changed that bloody neck bandage after they had eaten. Matthews cleaned and loaded Art’s rifle, and the others put a full canteen and a supply of food beside the wounded man. Caviness stood to one side and watched. But McDill helped, brought Art’s horse around after he had watered it, and ground-tethered it nearby.

  All the while, Dog, the young mountain man’s faithful sentry, walked around Art’s still form, occasionally licking at his wounds, eyeing the other members of the party who approached. He growled at McDill, who kept a safe distance at all times, spitting and cursing at the animal. Dog didn’t interfere with the others who were trying to help Art.

  “C’mon, let’s get movin’,” McDill said finally. He swung into the saddle alongside Caviness, who was already mounted.

  “Good-bye, friend,” the Hessian said as he stood stiffly above the unmoving injury-racked body.

  Matthews and Montgomery put a blanket over the long-legged mountain man, who lay with his eyes closed, breathing raggedly. They looked over at Dog, who sat at the alert just a few yards away. “Take care of him,” Matthews muttered beneath his breath so that McDill couldn’t hear him.

  “I said time to move out!” the new leader of the group barked. “It’ll be noon before we know it and you women won’t be too happy then, believe me.” He reined his horse around and started off.

  The others mounted and rode away without looking back at their gravely wounded leader.

  * * *

  Percy McDill had worked out a plan with his pal Ben Caviness. When the party had ridden about three miles he suddenly pulled up and halted their advance.

  “Damn it all!” he cursed. “I left my spare canteen back at the campsite.”

  “Since when did you carry a spare canteen?” Matthews piped up. He was very observant and hadn’t noticed that McDill was so extra-prepared.

  “Since none of your damn business,” McDill said. “But I’m not going to leave it there to rust when we may need it on the trip.”

  “Art could use it,” Matthews suggested.

  “He’s got a canteen full of water. He don’t need no extra. I do. Ben, you’ll be in charge of this outfit until I get back. I’ll push hard and catch up with you in a couple of hours. I won’t hold anybody up.” McDill wheeled his horse around and started off at a brisk pace.

  Caviness said, “All right, you heard him. Let’s ride.”

  McDill pushed his horse pretty hard, and made it back to the campsite in a short time. He had never carried a second canteen, never even thought of it until he and Caviness hatched this scheme for him to return and finish off Art once and for all.

  Nothing was different: The young man lay there like a corpse, except that his chest moved up and down in shallow breaths. And Dog was not there!

  Good, McDill thought. That damn wolf-dog won’t stop me from doing what I have to do. First he took Art’s canteen and food cache from beside him and put everything in a saddlebag. The rifle he concealed as best he could in a makeshift saddle holster that he had rigged the previous night so the others wouldn’t see that he had stolen the soon-to-be-dead man’s gun. Then he went back to the injured man. He moved as swiftly as he could, to get the job done and get back to his companions.

  The others had cleaned Art’s deadly knife and left it in his belt holster. McDill bent to retrieve the knife. He’d then slit the younger man’s throat and be off....

  A low, intense growl shattered McDill’s concentration and made him stiffen and stand up straight.

  There stood Dog, fangs bared, eyes black with anger and hatred for Art’s enemy. It seemed that the animal knew exactly what McDill was up to. But Dog wasn’t going to let it happen. He’d kill the man first, before he touched the knife. The canine growled again, threateningly, an evil sound from deep within its gut.

  McDill froze. His eyes grew wide as saucers and he took a tentative half step back from Art. Dog’s growls increased in volume with each move McDill made. The man had to think quickly. He looked over and saw Art’s horse just a couple of yards to his right. Dog was still about eight or nine yards away. Almost without thinking, McDill took two quick steps until he had put the horse between himself and the wolf-dog.

  Then he whistled quietly, and his own horse ambled over toward him. Using the second horse as a shield, he was able to mount his own and, holding the reins of Art’s horse, start moving back from Art’s body. He wanted to take ou
t his rifle and shoot the vicious guard dog to death, but he couldn’t and still keep a hand on the reins of each horse. Slowly, he backed both horses away from the campsite. Art had not moved or given any indication that he knew what was going on.

  Dog was frustrated. He walked closer to the badly injured man, growling all the while but powerless to attack McDill.

  The man smiled, showing yellow teeth. “So, you think you’re tough, you dad-blasted devil,” he said aloud. “I’ve outsmarted you this time. He’s gonna be dead by the end of the day anyhow.”

  Dog barked, as if in response.

  “Shut yer trap, you damned wolfhound. I hope you get ate by a bear. More’n you deserve.” As he talked he kept moving, then when he had enough space between himself and Dog, deliberately turned the horses.

  “Hee-yah!” he shouted suddenly, kneeing his own horse and yanking at the reins of the other. In a cloud of dust, he galloped off, leaving the yowling wolf-dog to tend to his master.

  McDill rode hard for a mile, then slowed to a more even pace. It took him a few hours more to catch up finally with the trappers. But it gave him time to get his story straight.

  “Well, boys, our friend Art is dead. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all.”

  “He wasn’t no friend of your’n,” Matthews said. He didn’t like the sound of Percy McDill’s voice, the barely concealed satisfaction when he told them of Art’s passing. “He was a damn fine fellow, worth more’n ten of you and Caviness put together.”

  “Now no need to get bitter,” McDill said in response. “We all did the best we could to help the man recover, but nobody could survive with those wounds—and you all know it.”

  The Hessian, Herman Hoffman, eyed McDill skeptically, watched him giving some secret hand signals to Caviness, his partner in crime. He suspected that something was not quite right about all this, but he could not afford to ride back to the campsite to see for himself what had happened. He had to take McDill’s word that his friend was dead. It made him sad, and even angrier at McDill for his pompous stupidity.