“You can come along, too,” Preacher offered.
Mountain Mist shook her head. “No, my place is here, making sure everything is good for you, Preacher.”
“If you say so.” He was already unsure if he had done the right thing by taking her in like this. He thought that maybe if he left her alone for a while, she would realize that she had made a mistake and would slip out of his tent and go back to what she had been doing.
The afternoon passed pleasantly as Preacher renewed acquaintances with many of the trappers who had come to the Rendezvous. He swigged from jugs, told jokes, swapped stories about what was going on elsewhere, and laughed a lot. Over the course of the day, he didn’t really think much about Rip Giddens and the Easterners Rip had signed on with, or Luther Snell or even old Stump.
When he finally returned to his tent as the sun was going down, a campfire blazed merrily in front of it, and delicious aromas drifted up from the pot that Mountain Mist was stirring. Not only was she still here, but it looked like she had settled in just fine. Preacher’s nebulous plan—more of a hope, really—hadn’t worked.
“I have food,” she informed him. “And the horses and your dog have been cared for.”
In fact, Dog was sitting on his haunches beside her, and he appeared to grin as she lowered a hand and scratched between his ears. It took a lot to win over the big wolflike cur. Preacher thought that maybe he ought to reconsider his decision to part company with Mountain Mist after the Rendezvous was over.
They sat and ate together, and the stew that Mountain Mist had prepared lived up to its enticing aroma. It was mighty tasty. When the meal was over, Mountain Mist insisted on cleaning up while Preacher sat and smoked a pipe. Darkness had settled down over the valley, and the encampment was quieter than it had been earlier. Preacher still heard fiddle music and somewhere men were laughing, but it wouldn’t be too much longer before folks began to turn in for the night.
He wondered briefly how those pilgrims in the fancy tent were doing. The noises of the night probably made folks like that nervous. Rip was going to have his hands full, not only keeping them safe but also keeping them calmed down.
Mountain Mist went into the tent, and a few minutes later he heard her call softly, “Preacher.”
With a faint smile on his face, he tapped out the dottle from his pipe into the embers of the campfire and then put it away. He stood up and turned to go into the tent. There was a small fire inside, too, to ward off the nighttime chill, and as Preacher swept back the entrance flap, he saw by the flickering light of the flames that Mountain Mist was stretched out on the buffalo robe with one of the blankets pulled up over her. The blanket rose only as far as her smooth, bare shoulders, though.
“I am happy to be here with you, Preacher,” she said with a smile.
“And I’m happy you’re here,” he told her. He was a little surprised to realize that his words were true. Maybe this was going to work out after all.
Mountain Mist pushed the blanket aside, her smile widening as she revealed that she wore nothing under it.
Preacher stepped into the tent and let the entrance flap fall closed behind him.
When they had finished making love, Mountain Mist fell into a deep sleep, but Preacher took his time about dozing off. He lay there with her in his arms and listened to the night sounds—the call of an owl, the distant howl of a wolf, the trumpeting of an elk. Lonely sounds in their way, but also reminders that a man was never truly alone out here on the frontier. Even though there might not be another human within a hundred miles, life still surrounded everyone who came here. Vibrant, ever-changing life, often full of beauty and peace, but sometimes touched with blood and sudden violence as well, as the squeal of some sort of rodent as it was snatched to its death by a hunting owl reminded Preacher.
When he finally drifted off, it was into his usual light slumber, where he rested despite the fact that a part of his brain remained alert for any warning signs of trouble.
He couldn’t have said how long he had been asleep when he abruptly came fully awake. Preacher glanced around the inside of the tent, not sure what had roused him.
Everything looked all right. The fire, small to start with, had burned down to a tiny circle of faintly glowing embers. They gave off just enough light for his keen eyes to see that nothing was out of place and no one was moving around inside the tent.
But something had wakened him. Mountain Mist lay snuggled into his side, her nude body soft and warm against his leaner, more muscular shape. Preacher hated to leave her warmth, but he knew he couldn’t rest until he figured out what had disturbed his sleep. Carefully, so as not to awaken her, he slipped out from under the blankets.
He had pulled on his buckskin trousers and was reaching for one of the pistols he had placed next to the buffalo robe when he heard the hissed voice from outside the tent. “Preacher!” it summoned. “Preacher, you in there?”
The voice was muffled so that Preacher couldn’t be sure who it belonged to. He thought maybe the man calling him was Rip Giddens, but he wasn’t certain about that. He knew plenty of other men at this Rendezvous who might be trying to get his attention for one reason or another. He stood up, padded in his bare feet to the entrance, pushed the flap aside, and stepped out into the night to see what was going on.
With a crashing impact, what felt like the entire world fell on his head, driving him down into a darkness so vast and deep, it dwarfed the massive mountains rising around him.
Chapter Four
Preacher swam up out of that ebony sea an unknown time later, struggling toward consciousness. The fact that he was still alive surprised him a little; anybody foolish enough to have walloped him over the head like that should have gone ahead and killed him, because when he caught up to the son of a bitch . . .
Well, whoever had hit him would pay for it, that was for damned sure.
There was no doubt he was still alive. His head hurt too much for him to be dead. With a groan, he forced his eyes open and lifted his head from the ground. The world spun crazily around him and the throbbing in his skull grew worse, as if all the imps of Hades were in there pounding on it with sledgehammers.
Preacher let his head fall back to the ground and closed his eyes again.
But he didn’t allow unconsciousness to reclaim him. He was still aware of what was going on around him, and he listened intently, trying to pick up some clue as to what had happened to him.
The encampment sounded perfectly normal. A quiet voice here and there, raucous snores coming from a nearby tent, the occasional bark of a dog. The tranquil atmosphere that hung over the Rendezvous told Preacher that the hour was very late, because some of the trappers who came to these gatherings never stopped celebrating until exhaustion overwhelmed them.
A wet tongue suddenly lapped against his beard-stubbled jaw. Preacher groaned and levered his eyelids open again. Dog stood over him, licking him. Preacher cast his mind back to earlier in the evening. Dog hadn’t been around when he had crawled into the blankets with Mountain Mist. The big cur had been out somewhere prowling around. Preacher might have worried about him being gone if they had been in a city, where man and dog both had unnatural enemies, but not out here in the wilderness. Dog could take care of himself here.
Preacher groaned again and rolled onto his side as Dog moved back a step. After letting his head settle down for a few seconds, Preacher got his hands and knees under him and pushed himself off the ground. He staggered to his feet and held his hands to his pounding skull. As he took an unsteady step toward the tent, one of his bare feet struck something painfully. He looked down and in the light from the moon and stars he saw his pistol lying on the ground. He must have dropped it when he got clouted over the head.
Even though it made him dizzy again to bend over, Preacher reached down and picked up the gun. When he straightened, he felt a little better because he had a weapon in his hand. He didn’t like being unarmed.
A low moan came from the t
ent and made him jerk his head around. The dizziness and the throbbing in his head were instantly forgotten. That sound of pain had to have come from Mountain Mist—!
Fear and anger growing at almost equal rates inside him, Preacher lurched to the tent and thrust his way through the flap. “Mist!” he rasped. “Mist, are you all right?”
There was no answer except another soft moan.
Preacher couldn’t see. He dropped to his knees beside the embers of the fire and carefully stirred them with a stick until a tiny flame leaped up. He fed more twigs into it. The fire caught and burned strongly enough to send a glow spreading out over the inside of the tent.
That flickering light showed him a hellish scene he would never forget. Mountain Mist lay on her back on the buffalo robe, still nude, her arms and legs outflung, her body covered with already-darkening bruises and streaks of blood on the inside of her widespread thighs. Her swollen face was stained with blood, too. A stream of it trickled from the corner of her mouth.
Preacher lunged to her side and grabbed her shoulders. “Mist!” he said as he tried to lift her and shake her back into consciousness. “Oh, Lord, Mist!”
She didn’t awaken. Her head lolled loosely on her neck. But she cried out as Preacher tried to raise her into a sitting position, and he knew then that she must be broken somehow inside. He eased her back down, as gently and carefully as possible.
He knew as soon as he saw her what had happened. Somebody had lured him outside and knocked him unconscious, and then that somebody—several somebodies, more than likely—had come in here and attacked Mountain Mist, raping her and beating her, probably kicking her until she was all busted up inside. The bastards. The unholy bastards.
Maybe there was somebody here at the Rendezvous who could help her. Mountain men had an amazing variety of backgrounds. Many were illiterate and had never been anything other than farmers or laborers before coming to the high country. But others were educated men, and numbered among them were lawyers, teachers—and doctors. Preacher pushed himself to his feet and turned toward the tent’s entrance, intending to go out and see if he could find anyone to help Mountain Mist.
Her voice stopped him. “P-Preacher!” she gasped as she regained consciousness. “Preacher, are . . . are you here?”
Instantly, he was beside her again, kneeling and catching hold of one of her hands.
“I’m here, Mist,” he told her. “I’m right here.”
“P-Preacher . . . there were men . . . bad men . . . they hurt me. . . .”
“I know.” This wasn’t the time to be asking questions, but he had to find out if she knew the identity of her attackers. “Did you see who they were? Did you know them?”
“C-couldn’t see . . . they threw . . . a blanket over my face . . . held me down . . . choked me . . .”
Preacher could tell that from the sound of her voice as it came through her tortured throat.
“. . . they . . . did things to me . . . hurt me . . . over and over . . . then started hitting me . . . and k-kicking me . . .”
She started to cry and writhe around as the memories came back to her, and moving like that must have sent pain shooting through her because she gasped and shuddered and whimpered. Preacher put his hands on her shoulders to hold her still and said soothingly, “It’s all right now, Mist. It’s all over. Nobody’s gonna hurt you again.”
He was all too afraid that was true. More blood had welled from her mouth while she was moving around. She had to have broken bones inside, ripping her to pieces. Preacher had seen a lot of people die, and he sensed that life was slipping away from Mountain Mist.
He didn’t want to leave her now. It was too late for anyone to help her, too late for him to do anything except say good-bye.
And make a promise to her.
“I’ll find them, Mist,” he whispered. “I’ll find the men who did this to you, and I’ll see to it that they pay for hurtin’ you.”
“Preacher . . .” Her fingers tightened on his hand.
He leaned closer. “What is it?”
“I would have been . . . your woman . . .”
“Yes,” he said, and meant it. “I think I knew that all along. You would have been my woman, and I would have been your man.”
“We would have been . . . happy together . . .”
“Very happy,” Preacher whispered.
She squeezed his hand hard and then sighed. The strength left her fingers and her grip slipped away.
“Damn it, Mist,” he grated. “Damn it . . .”
But she didn’t hear him. She was gone. He knew it even before he gently placed a hand on her chest and felt that her heart had been stilled.
He sat there beside her for a long time as the fire slowly burned down again, until only embers were left once more.
But those embers continued to glow hotly, as did the desire for vengeance in his heart.
The Rendezvous was just stirring to life again in the morning when Preacher came out of the tent. He was fully dressed now, and so was Mountain Mist. He cradled her in his arms as he walked slowly toward the center of the encampment. Indian women who had poked cooking fires back to life and were about to begin preparing breakfast stopped what they were doing when they saw Preacher walking by with the lifeless, buckskin-clad bundle in his arms. Some of the women hurried back into their tents and tepees to shake awake the men with whom they shared the hide and canvas dwellings. Others fell in behind Preacher, following him to see what he was going to do.
The representatives of the fur companies were the closest thing to civilization out here, the only ones who could even remotely be said to stand for law and order. Preacher intended to settle the score for Mountain Mist himself, but he wanted everybody to know what he was doing and why he was doing it.
He stopped in front of the largest tent and called, “Judson! Wake up in there! Judson!”
Benjamin Judson was the agent Preacher had sold his furs to the day before. The man generally bought more furs and paid the best prices, and if the group from St. Louis could be said to have a leader, Judson would be it. A few minutes after Preacher had shouted for him, he came out of the tent, rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand and pulling up his suspenders with the other. He stopped short when he saw Preacher standing there holding Mountain Mist’s lifeless body.
“My God! What happened?”
“She was murdered,” Preacher said. “Attacked and murdered.”
“Isn’t she one of those Indian—” Judson stopped abruptly, but Preacher knew he had been about to say whores.
“What she was before don’t matter,” Preacher said. “For the rest o’ this Rendezvous, anyway, and maybe after that, she was my woman. That’s why I’m tellin’ you, Judson, and everybody else in this camp, that I’m gonna find the men who did this to her . . . and kill the bastards.”
“But Preacher,” Judson exclaimed, “you can’t think that I had anything to do with . . . with . . .”
“No, I know you ain’t the sort to do anything like this. But you can see to it that word of what happened gets back to St. Louis, so that if there’s ever any question of what I’m gonna do bein’ justified, folks will know that the skunks had it comin’ to them.”
The word had spread rapidly, and quite a few people were gathered behind Preacher now, including the group of pilgrims from back East. Rip Giddens stepped out from among them and said in a hollow voice, “Lord, Preacher, I’m sorry. Do you know who did this?”
“I got a pretty good idea. I’ve only had trouble with one varmint since I got here.” He turned, his eyes seeking a familiar, bushy-bearded face in the crowd. But he didn’t see Luther Snell anywhere.
“Oh, my God, that poor woman.” Preacher was surprised to see Faith Carling coming toward him. He hadn’t liked Faith very much the day before, but this morning he saw mostly compassion on her face. She went on. “There should be a proper funeral service—”
“She’ll be laid to rest proper,” Preacher said. �
�The Shoshone way.”
“But surely there should be a minister—”
Faith’s brother came up behind her and laid a hand on her arm. “We shouldn’t interfere in things we know little about,” he said. “One reason we came out here to the frontier is to learn, isn’t it, Faith?”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Still . . . that poor woman.”
Willard Carling approached Preacher. “What will you do? What ritual is involved?”
“Not much ritual,” Preacher said. “I’ll wrap her up in a blanket and find a cave up in the hills where I can lay her to rest. Most of the tribes put their dead up in a tree or build a special scaffold for the burial, but the Shoshones do it different.”
“Fascinating,” Carling said. “I don’t suppose that outsiders would be allowed to observe—” At the look on Preacher’s face, he broke off and then added hurriedly, “No, of course not. How rude of me to ask. You have my deepest sympathy, sir.”
Preacher nodded curtly and started to turn away, but then he stopped and unexpectedly thrust Mountain Mist’s body into Rip’s arms. Rip looked startled, of course, but he took the body, a little clumsily but as carefully as he could.
“Preacher,” he said, “what the hell—”
Without a word, Preacher stalked off. His hands went to the butts of the pistols thrust behind his belt, and as he pulled the weapons out, the members of the crowd began to scatter, getting out of his way and giving him plenty of room for whatever he intended to do.
He had spotted the ugly face he had been looking for a few minutes earlier. Luther Snell had just stepped out of a tepee, yawning prodigiously and stretching. He didn’t seem to notice his doom bearing down on him until Preacher stepped up, thrust the barrels of both pistols into his face, and said coldly, “Snell, in about a minute I’m gonna blow your damned head clean off.”
Chapter Five
Snell’s eyes bulged in apparent shock. “Preacher, be careful with those guns!” he said. “You’re gonna hurt somebody!”
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