Preacher's Quest

by William W. Johnstone

  Carling was impressed. “Now that’s how a noble savage is supposed to look!” he said as he positioned Badger again and then picked up his brush. “Preacher, tell him to tip his head back a little and turn it to the left . . . that’s it . . . he needs to put his left foot a little in front of the right . . . yes, just like that . . . Now, Chief, stare off into the distance and look as solemn as you can . . . perfect!”

  The whole thing drew quite a crowd. Now only did the Indians gather around to watch, but so did Rip Giddens and the other frontiersmen, along with Hodge, Sinclair, and Faith. Willard Carling seemed to like being the center of attention. He talked constantly as he worked, using a thin slice of wood as a makeshift palette.

  Preacher had to admit that it was pretty impressive the way Carling could daub paint on the canvas and actually make it look like something. The drawings the Indians made on rocks and tepee walls were very simple, with the representations of humans and animals being nothing more than stick figures. Under Carling’s skilled touch, though, the portrait of Bites Like a Badger that began to take shape really looked like the chief. It was amazingly lifelike, in fact, especially considering that Carling was nowhere near finished with it. The painting would still require a lot of details and fleshing out.

  Like nearly everyone who lived on the frontier, Badger had experience at staying still. A lot of times a hunter might have to remain motionless for a long time before he got a good shot at his chosen prey. But even so, the chief began to get restless after a while. He said to Preacher through gritted teeth, “This mad white man needs to stop talking and finish what he is doing.”

  “He’s workin’ at it, don’t worry. But it’ll be a while yet before he’s finished.”

  “I cannot stand here all day,” Badger complained.

  “Tell him he needs to stop talking,” Carling called to Preacher. “His head’s not quite right now.”

  “Maybe you’d better stop for a while,” Preacher suggested. “You don’t want him gettin’ too impatient with you.”

  “But I’ve barely started!” Carling sighed dramatically. “Oh, very well. Since the chief is being gracious enough to extend his hospitality to us, I suppose I should honor his wishes. Anyway, I can work on the background while he’s doing whatever it is that chiefs do.”

  “You can move now,” Preacher told Badger.

  “Thanks to the Great Spirit for that,” Badger grumbled. He broke the pose, lowering his head and shaking it to loosen muscles that had grown stiff. Then he started walking toward Carling.

  “What’s he doing?” the artist said, visibly alarmed. “He can’t look at the painting yet. It’s not finished!”

  “I reckon you’d better let him be the judge of what’s proper and what ain’t,” Preacher advised.

  “Very well. But be sure and tell him that it will look a lot better when it’s done.”

  Carling stepped back as Badger circled around to the front of the easel and stared at the portrait. Carling had roughed in his figure, and it looked remarkably like the chief. For several long moments, Badger didn’t take his eyes off the painting.

  Then he turned toward Carling with a snarl on his face, jerked the tomahawk from behind his belt, and raised it over his head, ready to split the artist’s head open.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Carling let out a high-pitched scream of terror as Badger threatened him. Preacher stepped forward quickly, poised to grab the chief’s wrist if the tomahawk started to fall.

  “Stop him!” Carling cried. “He’s going to kill me!”

  “Settle down,” Preacher growled at him. He could see now that while Badger was mighty upset, the chief had control of his temper and wasn’t going to strike immediately. “What’s wrong?” Preacher asked him in the Sioux tongue.

  With his free hand, Badger pointed at the painting and said, “He has stolen my soul!”

  “You knew he was paintin’ your picture,” Preacher pointed out. “Why are you so upset now, Badger?”

  “I did not know it would look like that! That is me! He has stolen my soul!”

  “Why is the chief so upset?” Carling practically moaned, unwitting echoing Preacher’s question to Badger. “I told you to tell him that it’ll be better when it’s finished, Preacher!”

  “That ain’t the problem,” Preacher said grimly. “It’s too good now. He thinks you’ve taken his soul and put it on the canvas.”

  “Told you some o’ them Injuns feel like that,” Switchfoot put in.

  “But . . . but what can I do?”

  Preacher wasn’t sure. This whole thing seemed sort of silly on the surface, but he knew that it was really deadly serious. To an Indian, there was nothing worse than interfering with his prospects for a happy afterlife. Without a soul, Badger couldn’t go on to his just rewards when he died. He would wander the spirit world, aimless and miserable, for the rest of eternity. So to his way of thinking, Carling had done just about the worst thing possible.

  Preacher didn’t know what Badger had expected the portrait to be like, but it was too late to worry about that now. He said, “What will it take to make this right, Badger? The white man knows little of your ways and meant no harm.”

  Badger slowly lowered the tomahawk, but he was still clearly furious. “He must put my soul back in my body,” he demanded.

  “How does he go about that?” Preacher wanted to know.

  “He must . . . he must . . .” Badger threw back his head and howled. “I do not know! My soul is gone, and I do not know how to get it back!”

  Preacher turned to Carling and said, “Paint over it!”

  “What? But that . . . that would destroy it! All my work would have been for nothing!”

  “Better that than havin’ Badger think you’ve stolen his soul,” Preacher said. “If he keeps workin’ himself up into a state, he’s gonna forget that he promised you’d be safe here in the village.”

  “Are you sure that’s the only thing I can do?”

  “I ain’t sure o’ nothin’, but it’s worth a try.” Preacher turned to Badger and went on. “He will put your soul back in your body. Return to where you stood before while he performs the ritual.”

  “I will have my soul again?”

  “My word on it, Badger.”

  Badger brandished the tomahawk at Carling one last time and said, “Give me back my soul, white man!”

  Carling didn’t understand the words, but Badger’s feelings were clear. Carling swallowed hard and said to Preacher, “Tell him not to worry, everything will be fine.”

  Badger posed again, and Carling got to work. He took white paint and brushed it onto the canvas with swift, broad strokes, spreading it until the portrait of Badger could no longer be seen. While he was doing that, Preacher said to the chief, “You should feel your soul coming back into your body now.”

  “Yes, I feel it,” Badger said in obvious relief. “It is good to have a soul again.”

  What had taken Carling a couple of hours to paint required only a matter of minutes to cover up. When he was finished, he sighed dispiritedly and said, “All right, it’s done. It’s all ruined.”

  “But you’re still alive,” Preacher pointed out. He called Badger over, and the chief looked at the painted-over portrait for a long moment before he nodded solemnly.

  “It is good,” he said. With that, he glared one last time at Carling and then stalked off.

  “Well!” Faith said. “What did he expect? Didn’t he know that Willard was painting his picture?”

  “Their ways and ours are so different sometimes that it’s hard to know how they’ll feel about something,” Preacher explained. “I thought Badger understood what was going on, but I reckon he didn’t.”

  “Can I paint any of them?” Carling asked. “Or will they all react like that?”

  “Maybe you’d better stick to landscapes for a while,” Preacher advised. “Might be safer.”

  “Very well. But perhaps you could talk to the Indians
, Preacher, and find some of them who would be willing to pose for me . . . without threatening to kill me.”

  “I reckon I could do that.”

  Carling wiped sweat off his forehead. “I know artists are supposed to suffer for their art, but getting threatened with a tomahawk . . . that’s ridiculous!”

  Somewhat to Preacher’s surprise, he found several of the warriors who were willing to pose for Carling without fear of having their souls stolen. It made more sense when he realized that they were all older men who had been friends with Hairface. Everyone in the village knew that Badger had been terribly upset when he saw Carling’s portrait of him. Preacher supposed the warriors were trying to make a point by posing. It was the sort of subtle dig at Badger that had to have the chief seething.

  Not surprisingly, after a few days, Badger came to Carling and made a long speech that had the artist baffled. “What’s he saying?” Carling asked Preacher.

  “Says he wants you to paint his picture,” Preacher drawled as he tried not to grin.

  “What? But I already painted his portrait, and he threatened to kill me because of it!”

  “Yeah, but he sees you paintin’ pictures of all them other warriors, and it’s an insult to his honor that they look like they have more courage than he does. If they ain’t scared o’ losin’ their souls, then he can’t be, either.”

  Carling closed his eyes and pressed the fingertips of one hand to his temple. “This is something he really wants?” he asked without opening his eyes.

  “It appears so,” Preacher said.

  “Very well, then.” Carling summoned up a smile for Badger and went on. “I’d be glad to paint your portrait again, Chief. Just dress as you did the last time and come to see me whenever you’re ready.”

  Preacher translated, and Badger nodded solemnly.

  “I swear, I could stay out here a hundred years and never understand these people,” Carling said in exasperation when Badger was gone.

  “That’s sort of the way I feel about folks who live back East in big cities,” Preacher said.

  The gash in Preacher’s side was healing just fine. The poultice had done its job. He didn’t think the scar would be too bad, but it didn’t really matter since his body was already covered with scars. The bruises he had received in the fight with Badger were fading, and the soreness in his muscles had just about gone away. He started thinking again about how he was going to resolve his unfinished business with Luther Snell and the other men responsible for the death of Mountain Mist.

  Willard Carling seemed to be happy, humming to himself and talking as he painted all day. Jasper Hodge was also busy making notes and writing. Faith had given up on composing any poems, but seemed to be reasonably content watching her brother at his work. At least, she had stopped complaining quite so much.

  But it was Chester Sinclair who was enjoying this sojourn in the Teton Sioux village the most. He had made friends with Panther Leaping, and the two of them could often be found deep in conversation, Sinclair speaking English and Panther expounding in Sioux. Somehow, though, each seemed to get the basic idea of what the other was saying, probably because Sinclair had picked up some of the Indian sign language.

  His beard had grown more, and most of the time he wore a buckskin shirt that one of the squaws had given him. Preacher had noticed that squaw making eyes at Sinclair, but he seemed oblivious to her interest in him. He was still smitten with Faith Carling, and he was usually somewhere near her when he wasn’t visiting with Panther.

  One day, Preacher found the two men throwing tomahawks at a stump. Panther was trying to show Sinclair how to use the weapon. Sinclair was pretty clumsy at first, missing the stump entirely with his throws, but he got the hang of it fairly quickly. When he threw the tomahawk and the head of it stuck in the stump with a solid thunk! he grinned and looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the feat.

  “Did you see that?” he asked Preacher.

  “Sure did. That’s pretty good, Chester.”

  “Panther Leaping is a good teacher,” Sinclair said with a nod toward his newfound friend. “Do you think Faith would like to see me throw the tomahawk?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Preacher said dryly. “You’d have to ask her.”

  “I believe I will.” He hurried off.

  Preacher hoped that Sinclair wouldn’t be too disappointed in Faith’s reaction. She didn’t strike him as the sort of woman who’d be too impressed by the way a fella threw a tomahawk.

  A shout suddenly caught his attention. He looked around and saw several warriors hurrying toward the northern edge of the village. Realizing that there was some sort of trouble looming, Preacher followed them, along with Rip Giddens. “Somethin’s up, Preacher,” Rip said, “and I got a hunch it ain’t good.”

  “You an’ me both, Rip,” Preacher agreed.

  They came up to a gathering of warriors, and saw that the men had formed a circle around a young brave who was panting heavily and bending over to rest his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. The young man also had a bloody gash on his forehead. He had been in a fight, and then he had run a long way.

  The warriors parted as Badger came up. The chief confronted the young man and asked harshly, “Long Grass, where are the other scouts?”

  Long Grass was able to straighten up, but he was still breathing heavily. Blood dripped into his eyes from the wound on his forehead, but he ignored it.

  “Dead,” he said in reply to Badger’s question. “We encountered a Crow war party. My companions fought bravely, but there were too many of the dung-eaters. They killed the others and almost killed me. I escaped to bring warning. Otherwise, I would have stayed and died with my Sioux brothers.”

  “The dung-eaters are coming here?” Badger asked sharply.

  “They were headed in this direction when we met them.”

  “Where?”

  “At the head of the valley of Seven Smokes,” Long Grass said.

  That wasn’t good news, Preacher realized. The head of the valley wasn’t far away, and the war party wouldn’t be far behind the wounded scout.

  “How many?” Badger asked.

  “More than the five of us could have counted on all our hands and feet.”

  Rip said quietly to Preacher, “Lord, that’s more’n a hundred Injuns!”

  Preacher nodded, his face grim. “Yep. And they’ll be painted for war.”

  At that moment, Long Grass let out a groan and collapsed. Preacher saw another terrible wound on the back of the young man’s head that hadn’t been visible to him until now. Long Grass shuddered and then heaved a loud, rattling sigh. Preacher recognized it as a death rattle, and knew that the young warrior had just gone over the divide.

  Badger knelt beside Long Grass for a moment and rested a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Songs will be sung about your bravery,” the chief promised. Then he straightened and began barking orders. The village would be under attack soon. There was no time to waste.

  “What’ll we do, Preacher?” Rip asked as the two of them hurried back to the lodge where the rest of the visitors were staying. “Reckon we ought to grab those pilgrims and light a shuck out o’ here?”

  Preacher shook his head. “Then we’d be on our own, and if the Crow overrun the village they might come on after us. We’ve got a better chance of stoppin’ ’em here.”

  “You mean we’re gonna fight on the side o’ Badger and his people?”

  “Don’t see as we’ve got much choice. Anyway, we’re their guests, and it’s the honorable thing to do.”

  “I never figured to die helpin’ one bunch o’ redskins fight off another bunch o’ redskins.”

  “Well, that’s the thing about death,” Preacher said. “When it’s ready to come callin’, it don’t much care what anybody’s been figurin’ on.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “What?” Willard Carling asked a few minutes later, his voice rising in surprise and fear. “We’re going to
fight Indians?”

  “Crows,” Preacher explained. “Most o’ the other tribes call ’em dung-eaters and don’t like them.”

  “That would explain the name,” Jasper Hodge said.

  Preacher ignored the journalist. “Their normal hunting grounds are north and east of here, but from what I’ve heard, they’ve been raidin’ in this area for a while. Badger’s had scouts out, watchin’ for them, and a little while ago the Crows jumped one o’ the scoutin’ parties and wiped them out except for one warrior who made it back with a warnin’. Then he died, too.”

  Faith shuddered and said, “That’s awful.”

  “But why do we have to fight?” Carling asked. “We don’t have anything to do with hard feelings between the tribes.”

  “You accepted Badger’s hospitality,” Preacher pointed out.

  “After he terrorized us and tried to kill us!”

  Preacher shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. These folks are our friends now, and we have to help them. Besides, I’d rather fight the Crow with Badger and his warriors on our side than have to take them on later by ourselves.”

  “That makes sense,” Sinclair said. “Make our stand here where we have allies.”

  “Yep.”

  “Count me in. Just give me a gun and some ammunition. Panther gave me a tomahawk, too, if I have to use it.”

  Faith stared at him. “Chester, have you lost your mind? You’re no Indian fighter. You’re not a fighter of any kind.”

  “You may be wrong about that, Faith,” Sinclair said, and even in these desperate circumstances, Preacher noticed that the man didn’t call her Miss Faith anymore. Sinclair was making progress.