He held out his hand and Richard shook it.
“Likely as not you won’t see no more of me, Richard,” Preacher told the man. “You tell Melody and the others goodbye for me.” He smiled. “You’re a good man, Richard. I watched you grow over the weeks. You toughened up, both in mind and body.” He clasped him on the shoulder with a hard hand. “You’ll do to ride the river with, man.”
It was only after Preacher had ridden off, that Richard realized he had just been paid the highest compliment a mountain man could offer.
“Goodbye to you, friend,” the missionary whispered to the afternoon. “And may God bless and keep you and your friends as you ride the mountain passes.”
Preacher didn’t ride far that day. He rode north of the mission and picketed Hammer on good graze and a small pool of water and waited. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the three survivors of the ambush were not going to attack the mission, maybe they were just heading for the closest point of civilization. Maybe the thugs were coming here to steal or beg or buy supplies and horses and then leave. But Preacher doubted that.
Although he’d never seen a tiger, he doubted one could change its stripes, and he felt the same about those who chose to ride the outlaw trail. Preacher knew that to a large degree, each man shaped his own destiny. People were not forced into a life of crime—they chose it willingly. Preacher had not one ounce of sympathy in his being for thugs and hoodlums and the like.
Preacher also knew that what he was about to do—depending on whether the trio showed up—cut across the grain of those who knuckled down and cowered under the watchful eye of any constable or sheriff’s department. Man steals your horse, you hang him. Man threatened to do a body harm, you go after that person and put the harm on him ’fore he can do it to you.
He waited in the timber behind the mission.
Just after dark, he saw the three men slip to the edge of the timber and crouch down. He could hear the murmur of their voices but could not make out any of the words. He watched them point to the lamp-lighted windows of the church and living quarters.
Preacher stood and moved silently, making a wide circle and coming up by the side of the buildings, then working his way to the rear of the main building. He crouched down, his war-axe in his hand.
He smelled the man before he saw him. The man stank of filth and days-old sweat. The hoodlum came closer, so close Preacher could have reached out and touched him. He was going to do just that—sort of—in a few seconds. The man peered in through the precious glass of a back window, into a darkened room. He saw the man take a long-bladed knife from a beaded sheath.
Preacher rose like a wraith and buried the head of his axe into the man’s skull. He rolled the man under the building.
“What was that?” came the hoarse whisper.
“Stubbed my toe,” Preacher gruffly called.
“You’re a clumsy igit, Waller. Did you find us a way in?”
“Right here.”
“You see them women?”
“Yes. They’s nekkid.”
“Hot damn! I get first dibs.”
What he got was the sharp head of a tomahawk right between the eyes.
“Dipper?” came the whisper.
“Right here.”
“Waller with you?”
“Yeah.”
“I seen some fine-lookin’ horses in the stable.”
“Good.”
“Did you say them fillies was nekkid?”
“Yep.”
“I’m on my way to glory, Dipper!”
“You shore is,” Preacher said, as he lowered the cooling body to the earth.
One by one he dragged the bodies to a ditch far behind the church buildings and dumped them. He collapsed part of the bank over them and then threw small logs and branches over that. Sooner or later the men might possibly be discovered— or an arm or leg of them would—but by that time the bodies would be so badly decomposed no one would be able to tell who or even what they had been.
Preacher looked toward the rear of the buildings, a thousand yards or more away. “You good folks rest easy now,” he said. “Live a long life and be happy—compliments of Preacher.”
* * *
Preacher rode away from the fort and made a cold camp. By noon of the next day, he was in the Cascades. By midafternoon, he had found the tracks of both his friends and Bum and his crud. By nightfall, he found the first small mound of stones left him by Nighthawk. To someone unfamiliar with his style of living, the stones would have been meaningless; to Preacher they spoke volumes. He made his camp and slept as soundly as he ever did.
Four days later, he caught up with his friends. They were standing over three mounds of earth.
“They kilt ’em whilst they slept,” Beartooth said. “I didn’t know none of these boys, but they appeared to be trappers. I reckon they had ’em a jug and drank theyselves silly ’fore they went to bed. They heads was all beat in. The rocks and clubs is over yonder, all bloody. So Bum and Jack and them others now got guns and the like. These bodies was stripped nekkid, so them no-good’s now got skins on, I reckon. They taken everything so’s they’ll pass for trappers. How’d you do?”
“I took care of them three that went to the west and whupped Wade’s butt good over at the fort.”
“I’d like to have seen that,” Dupre said. “What brought all that on?”
“I don’t know. I reckon he was just feelin’ lucky,.”
“You shoulda kilt him,” Trapper Jim said.
“I would have but the chief factor butted in just at the last minute.”
“Too bad,” Beartooth said. “Let’s ride.
* * *
Bum and his small party crossed over into Washington Territory, into what is now Idaho, and for the first time since the ambush, began to feel like they just might have eluded their pursuers. They could not have been more wrong.
None of them had even the faintest inkling of what manner of men rode after them. Bum and his men were thieves, murderers, cutthroats, and almost anything else that was evil and dishonest. Like so many others, they made the oftentimes fatal mistake of judging others by comparing them to self.
While no one who is even an amateur student of the West would ever write—or even think—that mountain men were paragons of virtue, most of the mountain men did operate under a loose code of conduct. They were wild and woolly and, as the Western saying goes “Born with the bark on,” yet curiously drawn to alliances and bonding with like kind. A good woman was as revered as their own mothers, so even to think of doing harm to a good woman was enough to bring their wrath down on a person.
Bum and his bunch did not realize that Preacher and his friends, if it had to be, would pursue them all the way to New York City and drive them into the Atlantic Ocean.
“I believe we can rest easy now, boys,” Jack Harris said. “Preacher and them friends of hisn has played out their string.”
“Yep,” Leo said, stretching out on his stolen and bloodstained blankets and sucking on a cup of coffee. “I think we can relax and start pondering on another job.”
Miles to the west, five hard-eyed mountain men rode their ponies, their Hawken rifles across their saddle horns.
“I think we ought to lay low for a time,” Bull said. “Let the news of this wagon train gettin’ through to the blue waters git back East. Then they’s people who’ll come a-foggin’ to the promised land. They’ll have cash money and fancy wimmen and the like. Pickin’s’ll be fine, boys, fine.”
“I agree, Bull,” Bum said. “But we got to start lookin’hard for a cabin to winter in. The snow’s done cappin’ the low mountains. It’ll be hard cold soon.”
“We’ll find some trapper’s cabin and kill him,” Leo said. “Lay in a stock of meat and jerk it. Preacher and them silly friends of hisn will think we’ve done left the country.”
“I know a spot up on the Clark,” Jack said. “Snug little cabin that’d do just fine. Trapper lives there with one of the prettiest little
Injun gals you ever seen. She could keep us all happy durin’ the winter and then we could kill her come springtime ’fore we pulled out. We’ll catch her man out runnin’ his traps and do him in quiet like.”
“Sounds good to me,” Bum said. “We’ll head that way come the mornin’. Pretty little thing, you say, Jack?”
“Purty as a pitcher, she is. Shapely.”
* * *
Preacher and the others stood over the ripped and torn body of the man. “Anybody know him?” Preacher asked.
“I thinks it’s Parley,” Jim said. “But the buzzards and the varmits been hard at work here. Kinda hard to tell.”
Preacher rolled the man over on his stomach and grunted. A bullet hole in the dead man’s flesh was obvious.
“Shot him in the back while he sat before his fire,” Nighthawk observed.
“Four men,” Dupre called from outside the small clearing. “It’s Bum and them others for sure. Tracks are plain.” He rejoined the group.
“We’re gonna take ’em alive, boys,” Preacher spoke the words grimly. “And we’s gonna have us a court of law, all proper and legal like. Then when we find ’em guilty, we’ll hang em.”
“That sounds good,” Jim said.
“Nighthawk, you be the judge,” Preacher said. “I’ll speak agin the bunch, Dupre, you defend ’em.”
“Wagh!” the Frenchman recoiled. “I ain’t got nothin’ good to say about this pack of mad dog heathens.”
“No, we got to do this right and proper now,” Preacher insisted. “You just let them have they say and such as that. Then, after they’s done, if you can find anything good to say about them, say it. Hell, it don’t make no difference. We gonna find them guilty anyways. Jim and Beartooth’s gonna be the jury.”
“When the time comes, I shall don my proper robes to sit in judgement,” Nighthawk said. “I have a fine buffalo robe in my pack.”
“That’ll be good,” Preacher said. “Make you look plumb respectable.” He glanced at the Crow. “Providin’ you do something with them goddamn pigtails.”
5
“They’s noonin’ by a crick,” Dupre reported back. “So careless you’d think they was havin’ a picnic.” The day was cold, the approaching winter already opening its hand and closing chilly fingers over the high country. The men had awakened to a hard freeze that morning. They night before they knew they were close upon the outlaws and had elected to keep a cold camp, so the smell of wood smoke would not give them away. “They got a fire big enough to roast a bear. So’s I reckon we could build us a small one for coffee.”
“Bum and them’s got a-plenty,” Preacher said. “And it’s already fixed. No point in usin’ up any of our supplies when come the sundown, them down yonder ain’t gonna have no further need for vittles.”
“You make a good point,” Nighthawk said. “Perhaps it is you who should be the judge.”
“You be better. You can look sterner than me.”
“Of course. You are correct. I also am much more handsome and certainly I present a much more regal appearance.”
“Wagh!” Beartooth said. “He’s got you on that, Preacher.”
“English judges wear wigs,” Jim said. “I seen a drawin’ of ’em in a book one time. Them pigtails of Hawk’s fit right in, seems to me.”
“You be right,” Beartooth agreed. “When do we move agin them murderers?”
“Right now,” Preacher said, and stood up.
Leo decided the coffee was just about ready and dumped in cold water to settle the grounds. Suddenly he had the feeling of eyes on him. He looked around. He could see nothing.
“What’s the matter with you?” Bull asked.
Leo shook his head. “Nothin’. Just had a shiverin’ sort of feelin’, that’s all.”
“That meat do smell good,” Jack said. “I be hongry for a fact.”
Bum was all stretched out comfortable on his stolen blankets, half asleep. He opened his eyes to the warbling of a songbird. Sure was pretty He cut his eyes and saw something that was a lot less pretty. Beartooth, standing grinning at him from the bushes. The man had a Hawken rifle in his big hands, the muzzle pointed straight at Bum. Bum cut his eyes to Jack Harris. The man was squatting motionless, the muzzle of a pistol placed at the back of his head. Bum could see Leo staring up at Preacher, the mountain man holding him in check with a pistol. Bull was looking into the muzzle of a rifle held by Dupre.
“Well now,” Preacher said. “That meat do smell good. So let’s eat it up and then we’ll settle down to business.”
The outlaws were trussed up and dumped on the ground. They offered no resistance, and up to this point, no argument.
Preacher and his friends ate the meat and drank the coffee. Bum and what remained of his band lay on the ground and watched in silence.
Bum finally broke the silence. “Go ahead and shoot us, you sons of bitches! What the hell are you waitin’ on?”
“Speak for yourself!” Leo said. “I’d a-soon delay the grave, if possible.”
“The three that made it to the fort and the missionaries’ church I tooken out,” Preacher informed the outlaws. “They was a scabby bunch, they was.”
“You recall their names?” Bum asked.
“Waller and Dipper was the only names I heard. Don’t know who the other one was. Don’t make no difference. He’s just as dead as the others.”
“You never gonna get us to no court of law,” Bull boasted. “And since you ain’t lawmen, what you’re doin’ is agin the law. You ain’t got no right to hold us agin our will.”
“You’re wrong on all counts,” Dupre told him. “We fixin’ to have us a court of law. Right here.” He pointed at Nighthawk. “And yonder sits the judge.”
“A goddamn Injun?” Leo hollered.
“You best watch your mouth,” Preacher told him. “It don’t pay to make the judge mad.”
Nighthawk rose and went to his pack horse, taking out a buffalo robe and slipping it on. He sat down on a large rock and said, “Court’s in session. Commence the proceedin’s.”
“Who goes first?” Dupre asked. “Me or you, Preacher?”
“Me.” Preacher wiped his mouth and rubbed his greasy hands on his buckskins. He looked at the trussed-up outlaws. “I’m the perser-q-tor.”
“Prosecutor!” Nighthawk corrected.
“That, too,” Preacher said. “Your honor, these here men afore you is scum. They’s murderers and rapers and torturers. They ain’t fit human bein’s.”
“Objection!” Dupre said.
“Hell, I ain’t even got goin’ good yet!” Preacher yelled.
“This is an outrage!” Jack Harris hollered. “I demand a real lawyer and a real judge. Not no goddamn Injun!”
“Objection overruled,” Nighthawk said. “Proceed, Preacher.”
“Where was I?”
“Not fit human beings.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Your honor, these here four snakeheads is about as low as a human person can get. Buzzard puke is easier to look upon than these four ...”
“I object!” Dupre hollered.
“Hell, I do too!” Bull squalled.
“All of you be quiet,” Nighthawk said. “What is your objection, counselor?”
“Say what?”
“Counselor. That’s what you are at this moment. A counselor. Now what is your objection?”
“I ain’t really got one. Hell, I agree with everything Preacher said. But ain’t I s’posed to object ever’time he says something? I seen a trial back ... oh, twenty-five year ago, I reckon it was. Judge had him a wooden hammer and was beatin’ on the table and hollerin’ ’bout half the time. And one or the other of them lawyers was always objectin’ ’bout somethin’.”
“You are supposed to object when the prosecution brings up some point that you disagree with,” Nighthawk told him.
“Oh. Well, hell. I might as well lay down and take a nap, if that’s the case.”
“No, you don’t!” Bum yelled.
“I got to pee!” Leo bellered.
“Order in the court!” Nighthawk thundered. “Does the prosecution have anything else to say?”
“I say we hang the bastards,” Preacher said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Dupre said.
“You can’t say that!” Nighthawk told him. “You’re supposed to be defending these no-good, sorry, good-for-nothin’s.” He caught himself. “Strike that from the record and the jury will disregard my comments.”
Jim nudged Beartooth. “That’s us.”
“Why disregard it?” Beartooth asked. “It’s all true.”
“What record?” Jim asked.
“Somebody’s s’posed to be writin’ all this down,” Leo yelled.
“Well, don’t look at me,” Jim protested. “I can’t write.”
“Stand the accused up before me,” Nighthawk said.
The four were jerked to their feet. Jack yelled, “This ain’t no legal court of law. I demand a judge. I got rights.”
“I sentence the four of you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, dead,” Nighthawk said. “And may God have mercy on your souls.”
“Halp!” Bull bellered.
“Get the ropes,” Preacher said.
“I have to dismiss the court,” Nighthawk told him.
“Well, dismiss it,” Preacher replied.
“Let’s get on with the hangin’,” Jim said.
“Don’t be in such a rush!” Bum squalled.
“I thought a court of law was supposed to show mercy and compassion?” Jack asked.
“We have the right to an appeal,” Bull said.
“Now, that is true,” Nighthawk said.
“How do we go about that?” Dupre asked. “This is gettin’ right complicated.”
“I think the prisoners got to go before another judge,” Beartooth said.
“We ain’t got no other judge,” Preacher said.
Jim looked at the four. “I reckon that means that you boys is outta luck.”
“Halp!” Jack bellered.
“Now what do we do?” Dupre asked.
“Hawk’s got to dismiss the pro-ceedin’s,” Jim said. “Soon as he does that, I’ll go fetch the ropes.”
The First Mountain Man Page 29