He felt the warmth of that skin a moment later when Casey slipped into the blankets with him, naked as the day she was born, and pressed her mouth to his in a hungry kiss.
CHAPTER 5
Preacher was as human as the next man. He couldn’t help but respond when he found his arms full of naked, eager female flesh. He tightened his grip on her and returned the kiss.
But after a mighty enjoyable moment, he pulled his head back and asked in a low voice, “Casey, what in blazes do you think you’re doin’?”
“What does it feel like I’m doing, Preacher?” she whispered as she moved her hand, exploring under the blankets.
“Blast it, gal, there are too many folks around for this sort of carryin’ on. Not to mention the fact that I’m too dang old for a youngster like you.”
“I’m not all that young, at least when it comes to experience,” Casey said. “And you’re not that old. You’ve been doing just fine as far as I can tell.”
“Somebody might’ve seen you crawl under here.”
“I wasn’t naked. I had a blanket wrapped around me.” She gave a defiant toss of her head, which made her blond hair swirl like wings around her face. “Anyway, I don’t care who sees me. You think Lorenzo didn’t know we were together all those other nights on the trail?”
“That’s different,” Preacher insisted. “Lorenzo’s not the same as a whole camp full of folks.”
Casey sighed in exasperation. “I swear, you’re the only man I’ve ever met who’d argue with a gal in a situation like this. Do you really want me to go back to my own bedroll?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I want you to,” Preacher told her, “but I think it’d be the right thing to do.”
“All right,” she sniffed. “But don’t be surprised if it’s a long time before I come crawling into your blankets again.”
She rolled off him, pulled her blanket around herself, and crawled out from under the wagon. Preacher sighed. Sometimes doing the right thing was damned inconvenient, he thought, and downright frustrating to boot!
Not surprisingly, it was quite a while before he got back to sleep.
Preacher took one of the final turns on guard duty that first night. He wasn’t sure yet how reliable Bartlett’s men were, and those hours before dawn were the ones when it was the most difficult to stay awake. He didn’t want to take a chance on all the sentries dozing off at the same time. He would know that he was awake and alert, at the very least.
The night seemed about as quiet and peaceful as it could be. A gentle breeze blew across the prairie, stirring the grass that grew on both sides of the broad, dusty trail. With his flintlock cradled in his arms and Dog padding along softly beside him, Preacher walked all the way around the camp. Whenever one of the other guards challenged him, he identified himself and asked if there had been any signs of trouble. In each case, he was told that everything was all clear.
He knew that. Dog would have warned him if it were otherwise. It was well nigh impossible for any threat to sneak past the big cur’s sharp hearing and phenomenal sense of smell.
The eastern sky lightened to gray. Someone stirred up the fire and got the flames crackling merrily again. Preacher came in and found Bartlett putting the coffee on to boil.
“Early riser, are you?” the mountain man asked.
“That’s right,” Bartlett replied. “I’ve found that the older I get, the more difficult it is to sleep. The aches and pains of age, you know. They keep a man awake.”
“Yeah, I’m startin’ to figure that out myself,” Preacher admitted with a grin.
“But you’re a young man yet,” Bartlett said.
“It ain’t so much the years. It’s the miles, and everything you see and do along the way. I’ve been a heap of miles since I came west.”
“I suppose you have. What made you leave home in the first place, if you don’t mind me asking.”
Preacher leaned on his rife. “No, I don’t mind, but I sort of don’t remember. I was always a mite restless, I reckon. Always wanted to know what was out there, past what I could see.”
“By now have you seen it all?” Bartlett asked. He wasn’t smiling, and evidently he was serious.
Preacher shook his head. “I don’t figure one man could live long enough to see all there is to see out here. The country stretches too far, all the way out to the Pacific and from the Rio Grande in the south to the Milk River in the north. I’ve seen a heap of it, I reckon, but there are still plenty of places I’ve never been. I intend to keep lookin’ as long as I can.”
Casey and Lorenzo came over to the fire a short time later. Casey was rather cool toward Preacher, cool enough that Lorenzo noticed. While they were saddling their horses after breakfast, the old-timer asked, “You do somethin’ to make that gal mad at you, Preacher?”
“Nope,” Preacher replied. It was more a matter of what he hadn’t done, he thought wryly, but he didn’t see any need to explain that to Lorenzo.
The day was much like the one before, at least as far as the ground they covered. They did a little better because they didn’t run into any Indians. The scenery didn’t change any and wouldn’t for quite a while, Preacher knew. They had a lot of prairie to cover before the mountains came into view in the distance. Once that occurred, it would still be a week or more before they actually reached the higher ground.
During the day, Preacher noticed on several occasions that Roland Bartlett was watching him. The youngster’s stare wasn’t a friendly one. He always looked away quickly whenever Preacher glanced toward him, but then he would start glaring at the mountain man again.
Preacher wondered if Roland’s hostility had something to do with Casey. He could have seen her crawling under the wagon where Preacher was sleeping the night before and made more out of the incident than it really was.
When they made camp that evening, Roland continued casting unfriendly glances toward Preacher from time to time. Preacher was convinced the youngster was jealous. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Roland had been quick to help them two nights earlier in the tavern in Independence, but at that time he hadn’t known there was any sort of relationship between Preacher and Casey. Now he had figured it out . . . and he didn’t like it. He was attracted to Casey himself.
Even so, Preacher didn’t expect any real trouble to come from the situation. It would be fine with him if Casey decided to throw him over in favor of Roland. That would do away with the inevitable unpleasantness when the day came that he told her he was moving on without her.
Casey sat down next to Preacher to eat supper and smiled at him, putting her hand on his arm for a second as she said, “It was a good day today, wasn’t it?”
“We covered some ground,” he allowed.
“And we didn’t run into any more hostiles.”
Lorenzo sat down on Preacher’s other side in time to hear Casey’s comment. “I’ll bet there’s plenty more out there, ain’t they, Preacher?”
“The farther west we go, the more likely we’ll be to see them,” Preacher replied with a nod.
Roland came over carrying a plate of beans and cornbread. “Mind if I join you?” he asked the three of them in general, but Preacher could tell the question was really directed at Casey.
She smiled up at the young man. “That’ll be just fine,” she told him.
Roland sat down cross-legged on the ground beside her, close but not too close. He ate in silence for a few moments, then asked, “Did you say you grew up on a farm, Miss Casey?”
“You don’t have to call me Miss. Just call me Casey. And yes, I was born and raised on a farm.”
“Why did you leave there?”
That was sort of an awkward question to ask a gal, Preacher thought. Casey didn’t seem bothered by it, though. She said, “Oh, I wanted to see more of the world than just a barn and a kitchen. That’s how I wound up in St. Louis.”
At least Roland had the good sense not to press the issue and ask her about w
hat she had done in the city. Instead, he said, “I grew up in Philadelphia, so I always had a city around. I have to say, I like it out here on the frontier. It’s not nearly as crowded, and the air smells better.”
“You’re sure right about that,” Lorenzo put in. “I didn’t know it was possible for the air not to stink until Preacher and Casey and me rode out of St. Louis.”
“It’s even better up in the mountains, isn’t it, Preacher?” Casey asked. “That’s what I’ve heard.”
He nodded. “It’s mighty nice country up there. Leastways, it seems like that to me. Some folks can’t handle the loneliness, though.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve never minded bein’ alone,” he said. Maybe that would give her a hint that he didn’t intend to travel with her from now on.
“I’m not sure I could stand being completely by myself like that,” she mused. “I’m used to having people around—”
Casey might have said more, but at that moment, Dog lifted his shaggy head from the ground and growled. The sound was a low rumble, deep in his throat. His ears pricked up as he stared into the darkness to the north of the camp.
Preacher knew those signals very well. Dog had smelled something, or maybe heard it, and the big cur regarded whatever it was as a potential threat. Preacher reached over and rested a hand on the thick fur on the back of the dog’s neck.
“What is it?” Lorenzo asked.
“Don’t know.” Preacher looked toward the area where the saddle horses were picketed, and he saw the way the rangy gray stallion’s head lifted. Horse sensed whatever it was, too. He wasn’t the only one. The other horses stirred nervously.
“Is something wrong?” Roland asked as Preacher reached for the rifle he had placed on the ground beside him.
“The critters think there is, and I trust ’em more’n I trust my own self,” Preacher said. He got to his feet. “I’m gonna have a look around.”
“Want me to come with you?” Lorenzo asked.
“No, you stay here. Stay alert.”
Roland scrambled to his feet. “I’ll tell my father. Maybe those Indians have come back.”
Preacher made a curt slashing motion with his hand and said, “No, just take it easy for now. Ain’t no point in throwin’ the whole camp into an uproar if it’s nothin’. Might just be a wolf or somethin’ like that lopin’ by a mile away. Dog and the horses could’ve caught its scent. I’ll go scout around a mite.”
“Be careful, Preacher,” Casey urged. “I don’t know what any of us would do if anything happened to you.”
That comment put a brief frown on Roland’s face, but he was too worried they might be in danger again to dwell on being jealous. The youngster clutched his rifle tightly.
Preacher hoped Roland wouldn’t get too trigger-happy. Sometimes inexperience made a man’s own allies the biggest danger to him. He pulled Lorenzo aside. “Keep an eye on that kid,” he told the old-timer. “Don’t let him start blazin’ away at nothin’. I might be in the way of one of those balls.”
Lorenzo nodded, understanding etched on his wizened face.
In an easy lope, Preacher moved away from the camp to the north. Nobody but Casey, Lorenzo, and Roland saw him leave, and within moments he had vanished into the shadows.
Dog trotted alongside Preacher. The mountain man’s every sense was alert, but he relied on the big cur’s senses even more. Wherever and whatever the danger might be, Dog would lead him to it.
As they put more distance between themselves and the camp, Dog began to hang back a little. Instead of growls, a little whine came from his throat every now and then. Preacher came to a halt, and Dog stopped as well. The powerful, thick-furred body pressed against Preacher’s leg.
Preacher dropped to a knee and looped an arm around Dog’s neck. “What is it?” he asked in a whisper. “It must be something mighty bad if it’s got you spooked, you old varmint.”
He felt a slight tremble in Dog’s muscles. Preacher knew the reaction wasn’t from fear. Dog was anxious to get out there and tangle with whatever it was. At the same time, something more than Preacher’s grip held him back. Dog was wary, torn between the desire to attack whatever it was he had sensed and the urge to get the hell away from it as fast as he could.
Dog wouldn’t react that way to Indians. The big cur knew their scent quite well and had never been afraid of them. A wolf wouldn’t spook him that bad, either. It had to be something else.
Preacher got to his feet and moved forward again, as silent as the night breeze. He didn’t have to tell Dog to come with him. Dog wouldn’t willingly leave Preacher’s side in the face of danger, no matter how scared he was.
A glance over his shoulder told Preacher he was about half a mile north of the camp. He could see the fire, a bright orange dot in the darkness.
Dog stopped short and began to growl. The thing was close. Preacher stopped and waited, reaching out into the darkness with his senses. He didn’t hear anything, but he caught a faint whiff of a rank odor, then it was gone as quickly as it had come. Dog stopped growling, and when Preacher reached down to rub him, he found that the fur on the back of the big cur’s neck had settled down. Dog was no longer upset.
Whatever had been out there in the shadows was gone. Dog relaxed and let his tongue loll out of his mouth.
Preacher stood and waited several minutes to make sure the thing didn’t come back. When he was sure the danger was over, he grunted and said to Dog, “Well, if that don’t beat all. I’d sure like to know what it was that got you so spooked.”
Dog couldn’t tell him, though. The bond between man and animal was almost supernatural, but it still had its limits.
Preacher turned and walked back toward the camp. The sentries were already at their posts for the first shift, and one of them demanded to know who Preacher was.
“Just me, friend,” Preacher told the man.
“Something wrong, Preacher?” the bullwhacker asked.
“Nope, just takin’ a look around.” It didn’t make any sense to panic Bartlett’s men by telling the truth, especially when Preacher didn’t know the whole story yet.
When he rejoined Casey, Lorenzo, and Roland, they all looked at him with wordless curiosity. “I didn’t find anything,” he told them. “Somethin’ was out there, no doubt about that, but whatever it was, left.”
“What could it have been?” Roland asked. “Should I tell my father about it?”
Preacher shook his head. “No, we don’t know anything. We’ll keep quiet about it for now and just keep our eyes open. I’ll do some more scoutin’ tomorrow and see if I can find any tracks. That might tell us what we’re dealin’ with.”
“I hope we don’t have to deal with it,” Casey said with a little shiver. “Maybe whatever it was will go on and leave us alone.”
“That’d be good,” Preacher said. But he wasn’t convinced that was the way it would turn out. His instincts told him a different story.
For a moment there, out on the prairie, he had been convinced that he and Dog were the ones being stalked.
And it wasn’t a good feeling.
CHAPTER 6
The next two days were uneventful. No Indians, no mysterious creatures lurking in the night . . . in fact, Preacher and the other members of the freight caravan didn’t see another creature except a few prairie dogs. The unvarying landscape was mind-numbing, but the wagons made good time.
Then it began to rain.
Preacher rode a few miles ahead of the caravan. He’d noticed the bank of blue-gray clouds building to the southwest early on the morning of the fifth day out from Independence. He pointed it out to Lorenzo, who was riding beside him.
“Yeah, I seen it,” the elderly black man said. “Looks like we’re gonna have a storm blowin’ through.”
“It might miss us,” Preacher said. “Hard to tell just how far away anything is out here.”
“That’s the gospel truth! I never seen a flatter, emptier country than
this here.”
Preacher kept an eye on the clouds all morning. They loomed closer and closer, filling up half the sky until everyone in the wagon caravan, even the rankest greenhorn, couldn’t help but notice them. Leeman Bartlett rode forward to talk to Preacher.
“Do you think we need to find shelter?” Bartlett asked as he cast nervous glances toward the billowing black clouds. Preacher knew that the sun shining on the clouds made them appear darker than they really were, but they were plenty dark enough to hold a lot of wind and rain, maybe even some hail.
In reply to Bartlett’s question, Preacher swept a hand at the vast emptiness surrounding them and said, “That’d be a mighty fine idea . . . if there was any place to hole up. But you can see for yourself there ain’t really any place like that out here.”
“Then what should we do? Just keep going right into the teeth of that storm?”
Preacher shook his head. “No, I reckon it’d be best to stop. Maybe the worst of it will skirt past us.” He didn’t think that was likely, but stopping was just about the only thing they could do.
“Should we circle the wagons and unhitch the teams, like we do when we make camp?”
“No, leave ’em harnessed. We may have to move, if the water starts risin’.”
Bartlett looked confused. “Are you talking about a flood? How would that be possible on flat ground like this?”
“You’d be surprised at the amount of rain that can fall in one of these cloudbursts.”
Bartlett turned his horse and rode back to the wagons to pass along the order to stop.
There hadn’t been much wind and soon it laid down and was dead still. Lorenzo scratched his jaw and said, “I don’t much like the way the air feels.”
“Me, neither,” Preacher said. Horse tossed his head, and beside them, Dog let out a little whine. “These two varmints agree, and I’ve learned over the years to always trust ’em.” Preacher turned his mount. “Let’s get back.”
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