Blood on the Divide

by William W. Johnstone

  SEVEN

  Preacher held the razor-sharp blade to the renegade’s throat. The renegade was wearing the buckskin dress of a Ponca berdache. A homosexual. Many Indians believed that the moon appeared to boys during puberty and offered both a bow and a woman’s pack strap. If the boy hesitated in reaching for the male symbol, the moon gave him the pack strap, and a female life-style. It was as good a theory as any.

  “I ain’t belittlin’ your way of life, Pretty Little Fallin’ Star,” Preacher said sarcastically, speaking in the berdache’s tongue. He had no way of knowing what the Ponca’s name was, but he wanted him to know that he spoke it and knew all about him. “But if you want to continue your way of life, you better not tell me no lies.”

  The Ponca was no coward, for he was a veteran of many battles, but the look in Preacher’s eyes spoke silent volumes. And the Ponca knew about the mountain man called Preacher. Many in his own tribe – before he got kicked out – called Preacher White Wolf. The Mandans called him Man Who Kills Silently. The Dakotas called him Bloody Knife. The Crow sang songs about his bravery and fierceness, as did most of the tribes, including the Blackfoot.

  “I will not lie,” the Ponca said.

  “The Pardees and Red Hand. Where are they?”

  “Red Hand has left Pardee for a time. Probably half a moon or more. They will meet again when the next wagons try to cross. I do not know where Pardee and his people have gone, nor do I care. I left them and Red Hand. Their viciousness sickened me. War is one thing, but they go too far. A puking vulture would make better company.”

  Preacher pulled the knife away from his throat and stood up, sheathing the huge blade. “Get out here,” he told the Ponca. “Go on back to match-makin’ in your tribe.”

  “I cannot,” the Ponca said. “They have banished me forever. I am nothing. I am nobody. They even took my name. I would be better off dead.”

  “All right,” Windy said, hauling out a pistol and cocking it, ready to give the Ponca his desires.

  “Wait a minute,” Preacher said. “He leveled with us. Let him go his way.”

  The Ponca stood up from the ground, straightened his dress, and then swung onto his pony, showing a lot of leg. It was not a thrill for any of the mountain men. He looked at Preacher. “They plan to steal children from the next train.”

  Rimrock’s face grew hard. “To sell them to slavers?”

  The Ponca shook his head. “To use them and then kill them.” He rode away without looking back.

  “We might not be able to wipe out Red Hand’s bunch,” Preacher said. “But we can damn sure put a dent in the Pardees’ operation.”

  “Providin’ we can find them,” Caleb said, mounting up.

  Preacher stepped into the saddle and picked up the reins. “We’ll find them. ’Cause if we don’t, a lot of kids is in for a rough time of it.”

  * * *

  The Pardees and their followers left the abused and tortured body of the last woman captive dead on the ground. The carrion birds and the varmits would soon take care of the body. To the best of their knowledge, no one was now left alive to connect them with any atrocities. The gang of cutthroats and brigands saddled up and headed out.

  The Pardee gang had long been a scourge in the wilderness. They were a totally ruthless, savage, and lawless pack of degenerates in a land that had never known any type of law except for tribal law ... and no tribe would have anything to do with the Pardees. Only tribal outcasts, like Red Hand and those that followed the renegade.

  Miles and days behind the Pardee gang, four men rode. They rode with rifles across the saddle horn. Small bands of Indians saw the four men and did not bother them. A band of warring Blackfeet saw the four men and let them pass without trouble. There was something in the way the men sat their saddles and held their rifles that caused the Blackfeet to hesitate. And they knew that one of the men in the group was the man the Blackfeet called Killing Ghost. The band of warriors who watched the four men ride on were not afraid of Killing Ghost, known to the white as Preacher, but they respected him. They knew that should they attack, there would be heavy losses and no gain for them. So to attack was foolish.

  The Blackfoot raiding party sat their ponies and watched the four men ride out of sight.

  “They ride after the white renegades,” one brave said.

  “Good,” the subchief said. “I hope they catch them and kill them all.” He turned his pony’s head and the others followed.

  “Wonder why them Blackfeet back yonder let us go?” Caleb asked, during a break for water.

  “By now, that Ponca’s spread the word that we’re after the Pardees and no one else,” Preacher said. “Most Injuns hate the Pardees as much as we do. But they’re ’feard of them. I had a Pawnee tell me one time that the Pardees had good medicine workin’ all the time. And there ain’t never no less than ten or twelve of them.”

  “A Pawnee?” Windy questioned, knowing how Preacher felt about the Pawnees. “You actual had a conversation with a Pawnee?”

  Preacher smiled. “I had my good knife to his throat. He had to talk to me.”

  * * *

  The great monetary collapse of the late 1830s was sending people westward by the hundreds. Most were cautious enough to populate states and territories east of the Missouri River. But there were others who heard the westward-ho call and ventured on. Naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.”

  Most of those who went west knew very little about the country into which they were traveling. Much of what they did know was wrong. Actually, very little was known about the wilderness west of the Missouri River. There were those movers who turned back, telling tales of savage hordes of wild red Indians, and of terrible sicknesses and bad water that killed when tasted. Still others told of the awful loneliness of the great plains that drove some people mad.

  But still they came. For whatever reasons, they came. Alone, in pairs, often entire families. The story is told about the pioneer who, when he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, fell to his knees and wept because he could go no further west. No one knows if the story is true or not, but it is attributed to the British novelist Charles Dickens.

  By the late 1830s, cabins were beginning to dot the wilderness. Many of them belonged to trappers, but many were also family dwellings of easterners who headed west and, for one reason or another, came to a spot and went no further. All too often in the early days, they were never heard from again.

  * * *

  “That’s a damn cabin down yonder!” Rimrock said.

  The four were resting their horses on a ridge.

  “It wasn’t there last year,” Preacher commented. “’Cause I come this way.” He stared at the lonely cabin. “Anyways, it ain’t much of a cabin.”

  “You be right about that,” Caleb said. “But it’s new. I don’t think they’s anybody to home. The day is cool and they ain’t no smoke from the chimney.”

  “Why would anybody build a cabin here?” Windy questioned.

  “Who knows why an easterner does anything?” Preacher posed the question as he gave Hammer his head and started down the ridge. The others followed.

  The men stopped just out of good rifle range of the cabin and spread out, studying the lonely cabin set well back from the banks of a creek.

  “I’m goin’ in,” Preacher said, and kneed Hammer forward. He stopped in the weeded-up front of the cabin and hallooed it several times. His shouts of greeting echoed back to him. Preacher swung down and walked up to the front door, noticing that it was hanging slightly open on its leather hinges. The hinges were cracked and dried nearly useless.

  Standing to one side, so the logs of the wall would stop any ball, he pushed open the door with the muzzle of his rifle. Before he could step inside, Rimrock called, “I’m going around back.”

  “I’m goin’ inside for a look around,” Preacher said.

  Dust covered everything. But not one thing was out of place. A musket hun
g over the fireplace, and a brace of pistols in holsters were hung on the back of a chair. The table had been set for a meal, with four plates and four cups and real silverware. Preacher picked up a dust-covered spoon and hefted it. Good quality stuff, too. He looked in the blackened kettle hanging over the long-dead ashes in the fireplace. Something had been cooking in the pot, but all that was now left was a hardened glob of whatever it had been.

  Pack rats had been at work; their sign was evident. But by and large, everything was as it should be.

  There were three rooms and a loft. Preacher climbed the loft ladder and looked around. Nothing out of order. Two floor pallets had been made up and they had not been disturbed by any human hand. He climbed back down and walked out into the back.

  “We got some skeletons out here,” Caleb said.

  “This is spooky, boys,” Preacher said. “Damn strange. Any arrows about?”

  “Nothin’,” Caleb said. “And we been castin’ about for sign. Critters got at the bodies, o’ course, but none of the skulls has been cracked open by war axes.”

  “Pox might have got them,” Preacher opined. “The reason the house was untouched might be ’cause the Injuns consider this an unnatural place of death and won’t go near it.” But he really didn’t believe that. If they had the pox, why would they all run out into the backyard? He had no idea what had happened to the pioneer family and realized that, like so many other mysteries, he probably would never know. And it really didn’t matter.

  “What about the bones?” Windy questioned.

  “I reckon we can scoop them up and plant them,” Rimrock said. “That skull over yonder probably belonged to the man, and that one there is the woman. Them two over yonder was the kids.”

  The men got their shovels and started digging. “Seems to me like we’re shore buryin’ a lot of folks this go-around,” Caleb remarked.

  “You should have been with me at the wagon train,” Preacher said, ending that topic.

  * * *

  No one knew where the Pardees hid out when they weren’t rampaging around the ever so slowly populating wilderness, stealing and killing and raping. Preacher and his friends looked for the gang, but they had dropped out of sight.

  In the wilderness, if one wished not to be found, it was easy to disappear within the millions and millions of acres of plains and timber and mountains. But not so easy for a large gang. They had to cook, had to have coffee, and that meant more than one fire for a dozen or so men. Somebody would see the smoke.

  “Have not seen them, Preacher,” a Cheyenne called Big Belly told him. “But Red Hand went north and west, to the mountains. This much I know is true.”

  “Why so far away?”

  Big Belly shrugged his shoulders. “I cannot say what I do not know.”

  Preacher and his friends pushed on, all sharing the feeling they were chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. They headed west, and when they came to a spot that seemed familiar to them, they made camp. The Indians knew they were there, of course, but the mountain men had long ago made friends with most of the tribes ... except for the Blackfeet. Most of the Indians looked upon the mountain men as being one of them, wanderers and hunters and lovers of the earth. But the men kept a sharp eye out nevertheless. You just never could tell.

  “No point in us wearin’ ourselves out looking for the Pardees,” Preacher said. “They got them a hidey-hole and they’s dug in tight. If there is any wagon trains headin’ west, and I pray they ain’t, they’ll be loathe to leave the safety of the fort with all the killin’ goin’ on.”

  “You hope,” Caleb said, as he dug a shallow pit for the fire and lined the rim with rocks. “Movers bein’ what they is, some of them would walk through the hellfires to get west. I never seen the like.”

  Windy brought back a battered and blackened coffee pot filled with water and set it to boil. “Reckon what month this is?” he asked.

  “May, I think,” Rimrock said. “Since I give up furrin’, I don’t pay much attention no more. Preacher, we best be mindful of what that driftin’ Mandan told us about them Contraires.”

  Preacher nodded his head in agreement. The Cheyenne warrior society called Contraires were extremely unpredictable. If they meant no, they said yes. They washed in dust and dried off in water. Nearly everything they did was backwards, except in battle. They was nothing backward about them in battle. The Cheyenne believed they possessed magical powers, but Preacher knew from personal experience that they bled and died just like anyone else. But they were fine warriors and to be feared.

  “You got somethin’ gnawin’ at you, Preacher,” Caleb said. “You want to spit it out?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Preacher admitted. “Any of you boys ever heard of a man named Sutherlin?”

  Caleb, Rimrock, and Windy exchanged glances. “How come you ask that?” Windy inquired.

  “’Cause I think he’s crooked as a snake. I think the bastard’s workin’ with the Pardees.”

  The men chewed on that for a moment. “I heard of him,” Windy said. “He lives back East. Ain’t he some kind of organizer of wagon trains west?”

  “That’s him. Betina told me he was the one who spoke to her and them others back East. He was supposed to meet them for the trip west, but backed out. Now I got me an idea that he’s done this before.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Rimrock said. “But you ain’t got no proof of that.”

  “Not a bit. Just a gut hunch is all.”

  “Who would know that we could ask out here?” Caleb questioned.

  “One of them damn Pardees, that’s who,” Preacher said.

  “They ain’t likely to be givin’ that up easy like,” Windy pointed out.

  “I ’spect not. But you let me get my hands on one of them, and I’ll make you a bet I get the news out of him. Count on that. Dump in the coffee. Water’s boilin’.”

  “That would be a low thing for a man to do, if this Sutherlin’s doin’ it,” Rimrock said. “A terrible mighty low thing.”

  The men sat silent with their thoughts for a time. Then, strong black coffee poured, they leaned back against their saddles and relaxed. “I knowed it,” Rimrock said, breaking the silence. “I knowed I been here ’fore. Right here in this same spot. It just now come to me.” He looked around. “Yep. Right over there is where I buried Jake Maguire. Right over yonder on that rise in that stand of cottonwoods.”

  “I ’member him,” Caleb said. “Injuns get him?”

  “Nope. He started complainin’ ’bout his stomach hurtin’ and it just got worser as the days wore on. We stopped right here on this very spot and he passed the next mornin’. His belly was all swole up. Something went wrong with his innards, I ’pose.”

  The men followed Rimrock as he walked over to the stand of trees and up the rise. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “I scratched them words in that big rock.”

  JAKE M. DYED 1821

  OF INNARD SIKNES.

  “I didn’t know how to spell his last name,” Rimrock confessed. “But I got them other words right!”

  EIGHT

  The eyes of the mountain men popped open and everyone lay still in their robes and blankets, alert and listening as the very faint and unnatural sound came out of the night and to the now-wide-awake camp. The fire had burned down to only a few embers and the night sky was cloud-filled, limiting vision to no more than a few yards. With their hands on their weapons, the mountain men waited. They could smell the wood smoke and grease from the bodies and clothing of the Indians and knew from long experience in the wilderness that when the attack came, it would come either in a silent deadly run or in a wild screaming rush of killing frenzy. They also knew the Indians were very close. No one had to ask if the others were awake. These were men who had lived all their adult lives on the cutting edge of danger.

  Preacher cut his eyes to the bulk of Rimrock, who was lying only a couple of yards away. He could see the whites of his eyes and practically feel the tenseness in the big man’s body
.

  Across the dying embers, Windy had his hands outside his blankets, and both hands were filled with pistols. Caleb lay on his side, one hand on his rifle.

  Any second now, Preacher thought. They’re as close as they dare come before they leap. If we make every ball count, we can break the attack at the first rush ... maybe. If they get inside the circle, we’ve got a fight on our hands.

  Preacher knew that every man there was thinking the same thing. He also felt that these were Red Hand’s renegades rather than the Cheyenne Contraires the Mandan had warned them about; but he wasn’t quite certain why he thought that. Then he knew why. The smells were many, signifying men from different tribes. Not all tribes ate the same thing, hence their body odors were different. Some Plains Injuns, such as the Blackfoot, Crow, and Comanche, would not eat fish, considering it taboo. Apaches would eat a horse, but Plains Injuns worshipped the horse, oftentimes staging elaborate burial ceremonies for a favorite. A few tribes would eat dog, but most would not; some even worshipped the dog as a minor god. Some Injun tribes considered the coyote as sent from the beyond, so they revered it.

  Just some of the dozens of little things a man must learn quickly in the wilderness ... if he plans on keeping his hair for any length of time.

  Then there was no more time for thinking as the renegades came screaming out of the darkness, charging the camp with rifles and war axes and knives.

  Preacher threw back his blankets and rose to his knees, cocking and leveling one pistol. He fired, the ball taking the brave in the chest and stopping him cold. Before the dying attacker hit the ground, Preacher turned and leveled his second pistol. The night blossomed with muzzle flashes and Preacher’s second shot hit a brave in the face. The Injun’s face exploded and he was flung backward, dead before he stretched out on the ground. Preacher grabbed for his Hawken.