Preacher didn’t say anything. He knew that Broken Pine was right. Preacher had seen for himself how the army was building forts farther and farther west. They had a ways to go before reaching the mountains, but if they kept coming in this direction, it was inevitable.
“But worrying about the future can wait for another time,” Broken Pine went on. “For now, we are glad to see you. You are always welcome among the Crow, Preacher. Would you wait in the lodge of Hawk That Soars?”
“Butterfly and the young’uns are there?”
“They are,” Broken Pine nodded.
“Then that’s where I’ll be,” Preacher told him. “It’s in the same place?”
“Yes. Big Thunder, go with him . . . but no more fighting!”
Big Thunder sighed in disappointment but agreed.
“Our men will tend to Horse and put him with our ponies,” Broken Pine went on.
“I’m obliged to you. But don’t get Horse too close to those ponies,” Preacher warned. “He can get a mite proddy and obnoxious . . . like me.”
Broken Pine smiled again and nodded.
Preacher started across the village, with Big Thunder falling in beside him. He didn’t really need the guide, but he supposed that with evening coming on and shadows gathering, Broken Pine thought he might get turned around. Instead, Preacher walked unerringly through the large village to the hide lodge where Hawk and his wife and children lived.
As he approached, he saw the woman hunkered next to a cooking fire. She was no longer the girl she had been when they first met. Instead she was a beautiful woman in the prime of life. Her long black hair was done into two braids that hung over her shoulders and down across the rounded bosom of her buckskin dress. She was stirring something in an iron pot over the flames, but she glanced up as Preacher and Big Thunder drew near, then looked again and leaped to her feet as she recognized the mountain man.
“Preacher!” she said as she flung her arms around his neck and embraced him. The two children who threw back the hide cover over the lodge’s entrance and scrambled out must have heard that exclamation. In their eagerness to greet the visitor, they ran up behind the woman, but then their natural shyness got the better of them and they stopped to hide behind her with their eyes cast down to the ground. The boy appeared to be around eight years old, the girl a couple of years younger.
Preacher returned the woman’s hug, patted her on the back, and then stepped back to rest his hands on her shoulders as he smiled at her.
“Let me look at you,” he said. “I reckon you’re as beautiful as ever . . . Caroline.”
CHAPTER 2
Fort Kearny, on the Platte River,
unorganized territory
The man riding toward the fort appeared mighty big at first glance, but anyone looking at him might think that was because he was riding a tall, very sturdy horse.
They would have been wrong. Jamie Ian MacCallister looked like that because he was mighty big.
Unlike military posts back east, Fort Kearny had no stockade fence around it; in fact, no fortifications of any kind. It consisted of a four-acre parade ground with cottonwood trees planted at regular intervals along its edges, surrounded by sod and adobe buildings, with the exception of one frame building that housed the post commander’s home and office.
This was Unorganized Territory, so called because the recent Compromise of 1850, worked out by politicians squabbling over slave and free states, hadn’t settled what to do with vast stretches of the Great Plains. A short distance to the north of the fort ran the Platte River, divided by sandbars into many channels. Some wag had once described the stream as a mile wide and an inch deep, and while that was an exaggeration, the Platte was definitely broad and shallow. It might not be navigable, but despite that it was an important waterway for the settlers headed west in their wagon trains. Fort Kearny was the last spot on the trail west where those immigrants could stock up on supplies.
The last place they could truly feel safe from Indian attack, too. Out here on the Great Plains, the Pawnee and the Cheyenne were constant dangers. Farther west, in the mountains that could be seen dimly on the horizon, the Crow, the Blackfeet, and the Shoshone lurked, ready to slaughter the settlers who just wanted a new and better life than they could have in the crowded squalor of the cities back east.
That was the way all those greenhorns saw it, anyway, Jamie Ian MacCallister mused as he rode slowly along the edge of the parade ground, past the flagpole, toward the sprawling adobe building where the sutler’s store was located.
Manifest Destiny, they called it. Some newspaper scribbler back east had come up with the term, and the politicians in Washington City had been quick to latch on to it as an excuse for their schemes to “civilize” the entire continent—and make themselves rich in the process. Maybe they weren’t all that way, but Jamie had been around enough of them to know that most were.
But regardless of their motivations, the politicians and the journalists kept filling folks’ heads with the dream of the West, and they kept streaming out here to try to capture it.
He hadn’t ought to be so damn cynical, Jamie told himself as he reined the big horse to a stop in front of the store. He had been part of that westward expansion himself, after escaping from the Shawnee raiders who had massacred his family and made him a captive and slave for several years when he was just a boy. A lot had happened since then. Jamie had roamed the West and had all sorts of adventures. He had married the beautiful Kate and sired several children. Kate and their youngsters were back in Colorado, at the ranch he had established in MacCallister’s Valley. He knew he should have been there himself, but from time to time the wanderlust seized him, and this was one of those times. He had been drifting for a while and figured that soon he would turn around and head for home, but not yet. Not just yet.
He swung down from the saddle and looped the horse’s reins around the hitch rail in front of the store, where several other horses were tied. Although some men were old by the time they reached their early forties, Jamie still appeared to be in the prime of life. He stood well over six feet, which meant he towered above many men, and had the broad shoulders to go with his height. No one would call him handsome, except maybe Kate, but his craggy face had a definite power to it. A few strands of gray ran through the thick fair hair under his broad-brimmed brown hat and could be seen in his mustache as well. He wore a faded blue shirt, a brown vest, and buckskin trousers. A heavy Walker Colt rode in a holster on his right hip.
A group of dragoons had been drilling on the parade ground as Jamie rode past, and other soldiers hurried here and there around the fort, bound on mysterious errands that kept them busy. The four soldiers on the porch of the sutler’s store must have been off duty, though, because they were taking their ease and passing a jug back and forth.
“Look here,” the man currently holding the jug said as he waved a hand toward Jamie. “It’s one of them mountain men.” He took a swig and then laughed. “Where’s your squaw, mister? Didn’t want to bring her along where decent white men could see her?”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the soldier, who was a big, redheaded bull of an Irishman. For a second, Jamie considered not wasting the breath it would take to respond to the man’s taunt. But then, with all the dignity he could muster, which was considerable, he said, “I’m not married to an Indian woman. I have a wife over in Colorado Territory, but she’s white. However, I’ve met some fine Indian ladies I’d be proud to be wed to, if circumstances had been different.”
The Irishman, who had a sergeant’s three stripes on the sleeve of his blue jacket, pushed his stiff-billed black cap back on his head and guffawed.
“Fine Indian ladies!” he repeated. “You mean filthy heathen squaws stinkin’ of bear grease and fit only for warmin’ a man’s belly at night, don’t ye?”
“Sergeant,” said one of the other soldiers, who looked a little nervous, “you know what the cap’n told you about fightin’. He said
next time you’d wind up in the guardhouse.”
“And you know what I think about the cap’n! He can kiss my hairy Irish a—”
The sergeant stopped short as Jamie shouldered past, intending on going on into the store. Jamie needed some coffee. He’d been out of it for the past couple of days and felt the lack.
“Wait just a damn minute, squawman!” The sergeant’s hand came down hard on Jamie’s shoulder. Even though Jamie had his back to the man now, he could still smell the whiskey fumes on his breath.
Without turning around, Jamie said, “Get your hand off of me, mister.”
“You’d better call me sergeant,” the Irishman said without letting go.
“I’m not in the army.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll show me some respect, squawman, or I’ll—”
Jamie shrugged off the hand and said, “Respect has to be earned. You haven’t earned the time and energy it would take to spit on you.”
He took another step toward the door.
“O’Connor, no!”
That shout from one of the other soldiers was enough warning for Jamie. He turned swiftly and leaned back so that the fist the big Irish noncom swung at him passed harmlessly in front of his face, missing by several inches. The sergeant had had too much to drink, so he wasn’t very steady on his feet and stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the blow that hadn’t landed.
That brought him within easy reach of the left fist that Jamie hooked into his midsection. The punch had so much power behind it that Jamie’s hand sank into the man’s belly to the wrist. More whiskey stink gusted from the Irishman’s mouth. Jamie hit that mouth with a straight right that made blood spurt from O’Connor’s lips and sent him flying backward off the store’s porch.
The ground was dry and dusty in front of the store. A pale cloud flew up around O’Connor when he landed hard. He rolled onto his side, retched, doubled up, and spewed out the rotgut he’d been guzzling. The smell in the air got even worse.
Jamie shook his head in disgust and turned toward the door again. The last thing he’d wanted when he rode in here was to get into a fight.
On the other hand, this hadn’t been much of a fight.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t over. He heard big feet slap the ground and started to whirl around again. Getting hit like that and then emptying his stomach of all the booze must have sobered up the sergeant, because he was moving fast now. He plowed into Jamie from the side like a runaway freight train.
The collision drove Jamie against the door. The latch splintered under the impact of the combined weight, which had to be close to five hundred pounds. The door flew open and spilled both men onto the floor just inside the store.
O’Conner yelled in fury and hammered punches against Jamie’s body. He rammed a knee at Jamie’s groin. Jamie twisted aside from that just in time to take the blow on his left thigh. It was powerful enough to make that leg go numb for a moment. Jamie would have been incapacitated completely if the sergeant’s knee had landed where it was aimed.
Jamie shoved the heel of his left hand up under O’Connor’s chin and forced the sergeant’s head back. He brought his right fist around in a pile-driver blow that caught O’Connor on the side of the head and knocked him to the side. Jamie rolled the other way to put a little distance between them and came up on one knee.
He’d been vaguely aware of shouting around them. Now he saw that the store was crowded with soldiers in light blue trousers, darker blue jackets, and black caps, as well as a number of civilians including roughly dressed bullwhackers who handled the teams of oxen hitched to freight wagons, buckskin-clad fur trappers trying to scrape a living out of that fading enterprise, and dapper gamblers in frock coats and beaver hats.
At the moment, all of them were excited about the battle that had broken out in their midst. They had drawn back to give the combatants some room. Bets began to be made back and forth, even though Jamie and O’Connor were both catching their breath.
Jamie’s hat had been knocked off when the Irishman tackled him. He pushed back the hair that threatened to fall across his eyes and said, “Let it alone, O’Connor. I don’t want to fight you.”
O’Connor had pushed himself up on an elbow. He shook his head groggily, glared at Jamie, and said, “Too late for that, squawman. I’m gonna beat you to death with me bare hands!”
He scrambled onto hands and knees and then surged to his feet. Jamie got up at the same time and barely had a chance to get his boots planted on the puncheon floor before O’Connor charged him, swinging wildly. Jamie took a step back but bumped against a barrel of flour or sugar, he wasn’t sure which. Several such barrels were lined up behind him, so he didn’t have anywhere to go.
Not that he believed in running, anyway. If O’Connor wanted a fight, then he had come to the right man, by God!
Jamie met the sergeant’s ferocious attack with one of his own. Fists flew back and forth. The thuds and cracks of flesh and bone colliding violently punctuated the chorus of shouted encouragement from the onlookers. Jamie blocked as many of O’Connor’s punches as possible, but he couldn’t turn all of them aside. With some of them, he just had to absorb the punishment they dealt out.
But he was dealing plenty of punishment himself as he and O’Connor stood toe to toe, slugging away at each other. Blood smeared O’Connor’s mouth, and the area around his left eye was starting to swell. Jamie’s jaw ached where one of the sergeant’s blows had caught him, and he tasted blood in his mouth, as well. O’Conner was a few inches shorter than Jamie but probably outweighed him by ten or fifteen pounds. Their reach was practically the same. They were about as evenly matched as two men could be.
That meant the outcome of the fight would probably come down to pure luck. One of them would slip or drop his guard just a hair too much, at just the wrong second, and that would be the end of it.
Jamie figured he just had to hold on for a little while longer. He could tell that O’Connor was tiring. O’Connor might not be drunk now, but all the whiskey he had consumed earlier was taking a toll on him anyway. Big beads of sweat rolled down his face and mixed with the blood leaking from his mouth.
O’Connor must have realized he was on the verge of being defeated and was willing to go to any lengths to prevent that. He swayed backward to avoid one of Jamie’s punches and reached out to close his right hand around an ax handle lying with a number of others in an open crate on a shelf beside him.
Jamie had to throw himself backward desperately to avoid the ax handle as O’Conner swung it at him. O’Conner bored in, slashing back and forth with the makeshift weapon. Jamie knew that if it connected, it might crack his skull wide open.
He couldn’t allow that, so he ducked and dived forward, wrapping his arms around O’Connor’s waist. From this position, O’Connor could whack at his back with the ax handle but couldn’t get a lot of strength behind the blows. Jamie drove hard with his feet and heaved, forcing O’Conner backward. O’Connor yelled in alarm as Jamie literally lifted him from the floor and dumped him on his back.
O’Conner came down on those barrels that had blocked Jamie’s path earlier. He knocked a couple of them over, and one dumped its contents onto him: flour that turned his uniform white and covered his face in a choking, clinging cloud. Jamie stepped closer and swung his right leg in a kick that sent the ax handle flying from O’Connor’s hand.
Then he reached down, caught hold of the front of O’Connor’s jacket with both hands, and hauled the sputtering, disoriented sergeant to his feet. Jamie hung on to O’Connor’s jacket with his left hand, drew his right arm back, and cocked that fist, then delivered a punch to O’Connor’s jaw that was perfectly timed and aimed. The devastating blow slewed the man’s head around and knocked him off his feet again.
This time when O’Connor landed on the puncheons, he didn’t move, other than his chest rising and falling. He was out cold.
An awed silence fell over the inside of the sutler’s store. Most of the me
n in here had lived rough-and-tumble lives and had witnessed and participated in countless brawls. But seldom had any of them seen such a knockout punch.
Jamie shook his hand a little as he stood there. It would be sore the next morning, he knew, but as he flexed his fingers, he could tell that no bones were broken. It took a great deal of skill to land a bare-knuckles punch like that and not do any damage to his own hand. Jamie Ian MacCallister was skillful in fighting and many other things, as well.
One of the bullwhackers broke the hush with a stream of colorful, inventive profanity, the sort of thing he would have bellowed at his oxen as he cracked a long whip over their heads. Short, black-bearded, and almost as broad as he was tall, he stepped up to Jamie and fetched him a resounding slap on the back.
“That was almost pretty enough to make me cry, mister,” the bullwhacker said.
Some of the other civilians crowded around Jamie and began congratulating him, too. The soldiers hung back, though. Most of them cast surly glares in Jamie’s direction, but a few kept their expressions carefully neutral. Jamie noted that and figured that Sergeant O’Connor had made some enemies among his fellow Dragoons, in addition to rubbing the civilians at the fort the wrong way. As obnoxious as the sergeant had acted, that wouldn’t be surprising.
The sutler came out from behind the counter at the back of the store and stomped toward Jamie, causing the crowd around him to scatter. The man was short and wiry, and what he lacked in size, he made up for with the fierce expression on his face as he glared up at Jamie. He had gray hair that stuck up wildly, a bad, milky left eye with a permanent squint because of the scars around it, and a stubby black cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Who’s gonna pay for the damages?” he demanded around the cigar.
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