Preacher's Peace

by William W. Johnstone

  Jennie’s party of women from the House of Flowers in St. Louis had found their way overland to Westport, then turned northwest and followed the Missouri River trail until it forked off along the Platte River. About a hundred miles west of the junction, where a trading town for trappers and explorers was located, lay a tiny, isolated settlement. The settlement consisted of a sutler and general store, a blacksmith, a three-room “hotel,” and a small cluster of tent dwellings—about ten people in total, including Jennie’s girls.

  Ben, her faithful driver—and the only black man for five hundred miles in any direction, as far as she knew—rigged a place for himself in the back of his wagon. There he could attend to the horses and guard Jennie’s valuable possessions: some cooking pots and a few dresses.

  Clara, the young woman who had been caught up in the commotion surrounding the House of Flowers, stayed by Jennie’s side as often as she could. Jennie and the few other girls did not try to talk her into becoming a prostitute to earn her keep, so she did some cooking and sewing and started a ledger book that recorded any money transactions—few as they were—that took place between Jennie and some “gentlemen customers.”

  The days were long and dry, hot during sunlight, and cool at night. The little village saw boatmen and trappers and a few Indians coming and going periodically. Most of the time, the men sat around in the front room of the hotel, which was a makeshift saloon with planks set over barrels and a few kegs of increasingly stale liquor that were rarely replenished. They played cards and gossiped like women—about the women in their midst.

  Certainly, they didn’t turn Jennie away when she came. They were glad to see women—any women—let alone women as pretty as she and as nice as her girls. They became occasional customers too, though they had little cash to pay. Jennie came up with a barter system, so that she and her girls could obtain food and supplies in return for their services. Within about a month, they had the system down, and it seemed to work well for them.

  One day it rained, and the men gathered for a card game in the stale-smelling saloon.

  “How did we get so lucky?” Bartholomew Wills, the owner and only resident of the Platte Hotel, said. He had come here from St. Louis, like Jennie, on the run from the law. He was a natural-born gambler, but unfortunately not very good at it. His debts had caught up with him, forcing him to flee as far west as he could. There was nothing beyond this little settlement, as far as he knew.

  The others were men of similarly questionable backgrounds. They didn’t probe into each other’s pasts and didn’t reveal anything about their own.

  “I mean, to have Miss Jennie of the famous House of Flowers in St. Louie right here amongst us. Must have done something right at some time in our lives.” He laughed. He was holding a winning hand.

  The others were silent, concentrating on their cards. Compared to the rest, Wills was a chatterbox. He liked to boast of his business prowess and successes back in St. Louis. No one believed him, and he didn’t even believe himself. But it passed the time in this dreary, lonely place.

  Thunder rumbled and crashed outside. The men smoked cigars and bet on their hands.

  Just then Jennie came into the saloon-hotel lobby. She held a blanket over her head against the downpour, but it hadn’t helped much. She didn’t wear a hat, so her black hair was damp and hung down over her lovely face. The men stopped and gaped at her as she stood there and shook her head. Drops of water flew everywhere, even over the card table, but the men did not protest.

  “Well, Miss Jennie,” Bartholomew Wills said. “Welcome to our humble establishment. You light up the place like a lantern, like the sun, which we so sorely miss today.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wills. One of my girls is sick and I need some medicine.”

  There was no doctor in these parts, unsurprisingly, so Wills kept some medicines and chemicals behind the bar. Mostly powders and potions that were months, if not years, old. He had won them in a card game with a traveling medicine salesman who had accidentally wandered far from civilized society. Word had it that the man had lost his scalp somewhere out on the plains after he had left the little village with no name.

  “Hope it’s nothing serious, ma’am,” Wills volunteered as he rattled around among the bottles behind the bar.

  Jennie said nothing. She thought she knew what was the matter with the girl: She was pregnant. It was probably the worst thing that could happen to the young woman. And it would be another mouth to feed for Jennie and the others. But her heart went out to the girl, who was desperately sick this morning.

  “Thank you,” she said finally when Wills handed her a bottle of powdered stomach medicine.

  “You’re quite welcome. Are you—er—that is, are the girls going to be around tonight?” he asked, somewhat sheepishly.

  Jennie smiled, even though she didn’t feel like it, and she said, in her best professional voice, “Yes, Mr. Wills. I would love it if you were to call on us this evening at any time. You’re always welcome, as I hope you well know.” She lifted a wet strand of hair from her eyes and put it behind her ear.

  “Thanks, Miss Jennie,” Wills said like a schoolkid.

  The other men looked down in amusement and embarrassment. They would all probably come calling at some point that night.

  Jennie took the medicine, put the blanket over her head again, and stepped into the rain. It was pouring hard, in sheets, and she stepped through mud puddles on her way back to the tent where the sick girl lay. She administered the medicine and helped the girl get comfortable, then went to her own tent. There, Carla was expertly sewing a torn undergarment for one of the other girls.

  “Is Marie doing better?” Carla asked.

  Jennie said, “Yes, but I’m afraid she’s in for a long haul.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s probably expecting a baby.”

  “Oh, my!” Carla exclaimed innocently. “How can that be?”

  “It probably happened in the usual way,” Jennie replied.

  “What way is that?”

  “I hope one day you marry a nice young man and have lots of children, Carla. Then you’ll find out.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Jennie wished she were as naive and trusting as Carla—then again, she certainly had been trusting with Mr. Epson, the damnable thief who had stolen not only her money, but her house and her livelihood, her chance at a normal life one day.

  She felt almost like a slave again, trapped in a place from which there was little chance of escape. But at least she was her own mistress, she did not have someone telling her what to do every minute of the day. She vowed she would never go back to that life—not ever. She would die first.

  “Do you think I’ll ever get married, Miss Jennie?”

  She was startled from her dark thoughts by Carla’s voice. “Surely you will—one day,” she lied to the girl.

  Jennie went to the tent flap, opened it, and looked out on the rain. It reminded her of the old Bible story that she had heard as a girl, the story of Noah and the great flood that had covered the whole world. Maybe this rain would wash away her own cares and troubles. Maybe it would wash the whole world clean. Maybe, somehow, it would bring Art back to her—one day....

  In the Blackfoot Village

  On his second night in the Indian village, Art was brought before the council fire. He had eaten and slept and regained some strength, and he knew he would need it for whatever ordeal lay ahead.

  They had taken his knife and his buffalo robe when they had captured him. They’d left him only his clothes, which were ragged and dirty, and his moccasins, which were worn but still good. So he stood before them, the Blackfoot elders and warriors, with no weapon or means of defense except his own hands.

  He had heard how they might make him run the gauntlet, which meant taking blows and taunts from every man, woman, and child of the village. And after that—he didn’t know. But he assumed they would put him to death. How? Again, he had no idea, but
he had heard stories of men being tortured or burned to death by various plains tribes. If he were a praying man, now was the time! But Art had never been particularly religious or churchgoing . . . though he did remember that preacher in St. Louis who had preached nonstop for hours and hours along the waterfront, and he had been spellbound by the man’s gift for words and his faith.

  The men began speaking among themselves around the council fire and passing the pipe from hand to hand. Each man took a few leisurely puffs of the smoke when his turn came. They seemingly ignored Art, who stood in their midst. He listened, but could only make out part of what they were saying.

  “He must be put to death. Tomorrow.”

  “First we must hear his story. How did he kill Wak Tha Go?”

  “What happened to him after the battle with our warriors? Why was he lost?”

  “His own men turned against him and left him for dead.”

  “We do not know what happened. He must tell his story.”

  When the pipe had been completely around the circle, Brown Owl stood. He had gained stature among the people for his capture of this much-feared white trapper, Artoor. The men listened with respect to what he had to say.

  “I agree with those who say we will hear his story. There are too many things unknown to us, too many questions.”

  The elder, Buffalo Standing in the River, agreed with the younger man. “Yes, let the white one talk. Even if he lies to us, we will learn more than we know already.”

  “I think he will not lie,” Brown Owl said. “I think he is a man who speaks truth, even if we do not like what he says.”

  With sign and speech then, Brown Owl said to Art, the mountain man: “Artoor, you will tell us your story, what happened in the battle with Wak Tha Go and the others, then what happened to you that you were separated from your men.”

  Since it was his first chance to ask directly, he said to the warrior, “Were you there at the battle on the island in the river with Wak Tha Go?”

  “Yes, I was one of the warriors.”

  “Were you the one who wounded my man Hoffman, the tall man with the yellow hair?”

  Brown Owl smiled for the first time in a very long times. “Yes, my arrow struck his arm and drew much blood.”

  “Yes, it did. But Hoffman is a strong man. He was not badly injured.”

  “Then you will tell me, how did you kill Wak Tha Go?”

  “It was not easy, but I sneaked into your camp. I stabbed him in his heart as he slept. I left my hat as a sign. I hoped your men would then go away. Which they did.”

  Brown Owl was unhappy to hear Artoor tell this part of his story. But he had to grant that it took much heart for him to have done this deed. He could have been killed by a sentry or by Wak Tha Go himself, if he had awakened.

  “We retreated but vowed to fight again,” Brown Owl said. “We will find your men and kill them one day.”

  “Well, I guess you might do just that,” Art admitted. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Brown Owl did not answer immediately. He spoke a few words to the other men in council. They grunted, nodded, and some raised their fists in a defiant gesture. None of it boded well for the trapper who was their prisoner.

  “I guess that answers my question,” Art said. He was resigned to his own death now, as he had not been after the mauling by the grizzly, after surviving in the wilderness for more than forty days. In fact, there had been many close calls in his life. Looking back, he was surprised that he had survived this long.

  But this didn’t mean he was going to give up without a fight. He had plenty of fight left in him. The only question was, how and who was he going to fight? He couldn’t take on the whole village—or could he?

  The man called Brown Owl was speaking to him: “Tell the men of my people how you came to be here. What happened to you? Why were you alone when we captured you?”

  Art figured this would buy him some time, so he told the story of what had happened to him after the battle on the island. He told them of his encounter with the bear sow that nearly killed him, then about how his own men had left him behind—especially McDill, who probably would have killed him if it hadn’t been for Dog’s vigilance. He told them of his weeks of wandering and healing, of his killing the buffalo calf and eating its meat, crudely tanning the skin to make the robe that had sheltered him.

  “My Great Spirit was looking out for me, I guess,” he said in words and signs.

  The men around the council fire could barely believe what he was saying. How could one man, a white man, do this—fight off a grizzly attack and survive for two moons without food or shelter? It was almost beyond comprehension. They nodded in admiration of this man.

  “Truly, he is touched by the Great Spirit,” one of the Indians said, echoing the thoughts of all the men around the council fire.

  Brown Owl too felt a great respect for Art after hearing his story. But he knew that the trapper must die, could not be allowed to live since he was an enemy of the Blackfoot people. So Brown Owl put it before the council, for their judgment. “Now that we know the power of our enemy, who among you would want him to live to fight us in another battle and kill our warriors?”

  “But must such a man be killed?” the elder Buffalo Standing asked, looking around at the others.

  “Yes,” Brown Owl said. “It saddens my heart in a way to say it, but this is the only answer: He must die.”

  Again, Art followed the discussion as best he could, but he knew immediately what was happening. It was his death sentence.

  His mind went blank, free of fear or anticipation of what might happen next. The Indians kept talking, debating how and when he should be killed. They came to an agreement that he would be kept under double guard through the night, then killed the next day at noon. He could hear their voices, but what they said did not penetrate his consciousness.

  Brown Owl was speaking: “This man has killed a great bear and survived for a long time with wounds that would have ended any other man’s life. He has been alone in the dangerous country and killed a buffalo calf with just a knife. We must treat him carefully and with respect. He is a great warrior.”

  The others nodded and grunted in agreement with the plan to put two men on watch over the white man who had performed these great deeds of strength and survival.

  He would not escape the judgment of the people, against whom he had fought so valiantly.

  One by one the Blackfeet rose and filed away from the council fire, leaving Art there with Brown Owl and two men who were assigned to take the first watch. Art’s hands were still bound with strips of buffalo hide, and they took him away to a tree near the council tepee and bound him to the trunk.

  He stood there calmly, observing everything, watching Brown Owl who supervised the other men. Then the young Indian war chief spoke to him.

  “You, Artoor, will die tomorrow. It will be a swift and honorable death for a warrior.” He spoke in words and signs so that the trapper would understand.

  Art just stared at Brown Owl. He did not defend himself or beg for mercy. That would not achieve anything but loss of respect from these men. The two guards stood on either side of the tree and watched him.

  As Brown Owl walked away, Art thought back to his visit to St. Louis and Jennie. He thought of Mr. Ashley and their business arrangement, how he liked and respected the man for his seeming honesty. He remembered the great General Lafayette, who had visited the city to a warm greeting by the citizens and the town fathers.

  Then he remembered the itinerate preacher who had been moving among the crowd down at the waterfront. The man had worn a long, black coat and a black stovepipe hat that had seen better days. He was skinny, probably hadn’t eaten in days, with a narrow, hooked nose and pointy chin that almost touched each other, like a puppet that he had seen once.

  The preacher’s thin, bony finger had stabbed at the air, and his equally thin body had rocked and moved, as he spoke in a singsong voice, spouting Scripture a
nd calling down God’s wrath on the people of “sin and debauchery,” on St. Louis itself, a “den of iniquity.”

  Art almost smiled as he remembered the scene and how the preacher had held him riveted, listening to his sermon, wondering if the man were crazy or just on fire with the word of the Lord. Crazy . . . the word of the Lord . . .

  An idea formed in his head as the young mountain man stood there, a prisoner of the Blackfeet in their village, with no chance of help or escape.

  Luckily, Brown Owl had made sure Art was comparatively well treated, and that he had drunk some water after eating a few bites of supper earlier, before the council meeting.

  Art swallowed once and began to speak, to preach in the same tone of voice as the man he had heard on the wharf in St. Louis. “Hallelujah, hallelujah! Sweet Baby Jesus, come to me, Lord,” he proclaimed like a born-again, water-baptized, true believer in the Lord Almighty.

  “Come to the aid of your servant who has wandered in the wilderness for forty days in search of your righteous blessing upon him. Deliver me, O Lord, from the hands of my enemies, from the clutches of the devil himself who has blasphemed your name. Release me from bondage as you did your people, freeing them from the Pharaoh. Release me from the lion’s den as you did your prophet Daniel, against the king who would have him devoured by the lions. Open the doors of your heavenly city and let the sinner enter the gates of salvation!”

  The two guards were startled by their prisoner’s words, which were incomprehensible to them. But they were also mesmerized by them, by the outpouring of the rhythmic, chantlike prayers and proclamations.

  “Lord, you sent hellfire and brimstone upon the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah who had raised up the devil to worship instead of the Almighty, and their evil deeds made a stink that could be smelled all over the world. You sent the plagues upon the Pharaoh, who would not let your people go, the water turned to blood, the frogs, the locusts and mosquitoes, the death of Egypt’s cattle, the boils on man and beast, the hail that fell from the sky, the darkness that fell over the earth, and finally the death of the firstborn of Pharaoh. You have the power to make right what is wrong and to set free the unjustly imprisoned.