“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Preacher said. “Have you heard from any of the other boys?”
“Nope. Soon’s I got your letter, I lit a shuck for Santa Fe. Truth to tell, the relatives I was visitin’ seemed a mite glad for me to dee-part, although I sure can’t figure out why they’d feel that way.”
Preacher noticed the clerk from the lobby had entered the dining room and was making his way toward them hesitantly. “Is there a problem?” he asked the man.
“No, no, not at all,” the clerk answered hastily. “Some of the other guests approached me and asked if, ah, this gentleman was going to be stopping here at the hotel . . .”
Preacher felt a flash of annoyance. Pugh’s smell was pretty potent, all right, but he had as much right to be here as anybody else. Preacher might have said something along those lines, if Pugh hadn’t responded first.
“Naw, naw, I ain’t stayin’ here, if that’s what you mean, little feller,” Pugh said. “Never could stand to be cooped up inside four walls for very long at a time. Figured I’d make camp somewheres out o’ town.”
“That’s a good idea,” Preacher said. He told Pugh how to find the meadow where they had been practicing riding and shooting. “As the other fellas show up, they can stay out there, too.”
“That’s fine, mighty fine. I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ all of ’em. And then we’ll all go off and—”
Preacher held up a hand to stop him. He and Jamie hadn’t said much around other folks about Jamie’s mission. Preacher didn’t really believe it would be a problem if people in Santa Fe knew that they would be setting off to fight Apaches, once the rest of their force got here, but just as a general rule, both frontiersmen believed in playing their cards pretty close to the vest. It was better to ensure that extra problems didn’t crop up, since later on they’d probably have plenty to deal with that arose naturally.
After a few minutes of reminiscing with Preacher, Pugh left the hotel to head out to what would be the campsite for the group.
As Preacher sat down at the table again, Fletch said, “Well, Mr. Pugh certainly seems like, ah, a colorful character.”
“Smells to high heaven, don’t he?” Preacher said with a grin. “You kinda get used to him, but you don’t ever get so’s you don’t notice when he’s around. Tell you what, though, he’s a fine fightin’ man who won’t never let you down. I’ll be glad to have him on our side.”
“So will I,” Jamie agreed. “I’ve heard plenty about him. Didn’t the two of you fight off more than a hundred Blackfeet one time?”
Preacher made a face and said, “I don’t know how them crazy stories get so blowed up like that. There weren’t no hundred Blackfeet that time Pugh and I had a little dustup with ’em. Couldn’t’ve been more ’n seventy or eighty of the varmints.”
“Seventy or eighty Blackfeet,” Fletch said. “And the two of you fought them off.”
Preacher shrugged. “For a while. Then a few more of our friends showed up and we chased them Blackfeet back where they come from.”
Jamie chuckled and asked, “How many more of your friends are we talking about, Preacher?”
“I don’t rightly recollect. Three or four, I’d say.”
Fletch began, “So five or six of you chased eighty Blackfeet—”, but then he stopped short and looked at the dining room’s entrance.
The young man’s expression made Preacher glance around. A dark-faced stranger stood there wearing a sombrero, a fancy charro jacket, tight trousers, and a pair of low-slung guns that his hands hung menacingly near as he started toward the table.
CHAPTER 13
Preacher and Jamie came to their feet and turned so that they faced the newcomer. The aura of potential danger was so thick in the air that everyone else in the dining room looked nervous and began glancing around as if searching for some place to dive for cover if bullets started flying.
The stranger didn’t make a play for his guns, though. He stopped and said in a faintly accented voice, “I am looking for Jamie MacCallister.”
“You’ve found him,” Jamie said, his own tone flat and hard. “What can I do for you?”
“It is said in certain places along the trail that you are looking for men. Men with special skills.”
The stranger’s attitude made it clear that he considered himself to possess those skills.
Jamie and Preacher glanced at each other. They had known when they put the word out that it might reach men other than those for whom it was specifically intended. The frontier, as Jamie had said, was a small place in many ways.
“Maybe I am,” Jamie said in response to the stranger’s comment. “You’ve got the advantage of me. You know who I am, but I don’t know who you are.”
“I am called Ramirez.” The man said the name as if that was more than enough to tell them all they needed to know.
Jamie shook his head and said, “Never heard of you, amigo.”
That response—or lack of response—to the name made anger flare in the man’s dark eyes. “If you ever spent much time around the Rio Grande, señor, you would have heard of Ramirez.”
Jamie hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “So you’re a big he-wolf down in the Texas border country. That doesn’t mean anything where we’re going.”
Ramirez scowled. His hands moved slightly toward his gun butts as he rasped, “Perhaps this will mean something—”
“Don’t do it, son,” Preacher said. “To start with, the chances of you outdrawin’ Jamie MacCallister are mighty small, and even if you manage to do it somehow, you ain’t fast enough to get both of us. I’m plumb sure of that. And that’s what you’d have to do to walk out of here alive.”
Ramirez stood there stiffly, his hands still curved clawlike above his guns as his gaze flicked back and forth between Preacher and Jamie.
“Listen,” Jamie said, breaking the tense, momentary silence. “Why don’t you stop trying to impress us and just sit down and talk to us? We’re done with our supper. You can join us for a cup of coffee.”
Ramirez hesitated for several seconds longer, then said, “I will not be disrespected.”
“Earn my respect and you’ll get it. I can promise you that.”
“Same goes for me,” Preacher added.
Fletch said, “I think maybe Clementine and I will go on up to the room . . .”
For the first time, Ramirez acknowledged their presence. He turned to Clementine, took off his sombrero, and said, “My apologies for interrupting your dinner, señorita.”
“It’s señora,” Fletch said, having picked up that much Spanish somewhere. “This is my wife.”
“My apologies again,” Ramirez murmured. He didn’t leer at Clementine or even show any undue interest in her, but it was clear that he recognized a beautiful woman when he saw one.
“That’s, uh, that’s all right,” she said, a little flustered by this stern, prickly gunman. She stood up, Fletch jumping to help her with her chair, and then the two of them left the dining room, casting glances back over their shoulders as they went.
Preacher said, “I’m goin’, too, just to make sure them pesky brothers o’ hers ain’t laid any traps upstairs.”
“Good idea,” Jamie said with a nod. They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the Mahoney brothers for quite a while, but it was always a good idea not to let your guard down.
As Preacher left the dining room, Jamie waved a hand toward one of the empty chairs at the table. Ramirez waited a second, then shrugged, put his sombrero on a chair, and sat down on the one next to it. Jamie signaled to the waitress for coffee.
“All right,” he said to Ramirez, “tell me why you want to go along on this trip.”
“You go to kill Apaches, do you not?”
“Nobody ever said anything about that in the word we put out,” Jamie replied.
Ramirez waved that away. “What else would you be doing in that part of the territory? There is very little else down there, señor. But someday, there could be, an
d that is why it is important to eliminate the threat from those savages.”
Ramirez had a canny streak about him, Jamie realized. He had formed a theory from pretty sparse information, and he was on the right track.
Jamie said, “Maybe that’s what we’ve got in mind.”
“I have killed Apaches,” Ramirez declared. “Also Yaquis, and Mexican soldiers, and gringos.”
“Well, you’re just a one-man army, aren’t you?”
Ramirez leaned forward and glared, and he might have replied hotly if not for the waitress’s arrival at that moment with his coffee. He nodded curtly to her and muttered, “Gracias.”
“You mentioned fighting Mexican soldiers,” Jamie said. “Are you a bandit, Ramirez?”
“I am a fighter for freedom. Santa Anna may call himself presidente, but he is a tyrant, a monster!”
“We’re in agreement on that,” Jamie said, nodding. “I don’t have any use for the varmint, myself. But you should know that what we’re setting out to do may have some benefit for him, at least indirectly. How’s that going to sit with you?”
“I hate Santa Anna . . . but I am one man, and he has an army at his beck and call.” The pistolero’s shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent shrug. “His soldiers have made the border country along the Rio Grande too hot for me, but they pay little attention to what goes on this far west. So perhaps it is time for me to explore this region and see if it is to my liking. The work will be satisfactory, if it involves killing Apaches.”
Jamie leaned forward, and his face was like granite as he said, “One more thing you’ve got to understand . . . I’m in charge of this bunch, and when I’m not around, that other fella who was here a few minutes ago is the boss.”
“The old man?” Ramirez smirked.
“That old man is called Preacher.”
Recognition flickered in Ramirez’s eyes. Even south of the border, they had heard of the legendary mountain man known as Preacher.
“Very well,” he said after several seconds. “That is understood. You are el jefé.”
For a long moment, the two men sat there looking at each other, and then Jamie nodded slowly. “We’ll see how it works out. I’ll provide supplies, ammunition, and whatever else we need for the job. I can advance you a little dinero if you want some, but the real payoff comes when the job is finished.”
“That is agreeable,” Ramirez said. “When do we leave?”
“When all the others get here,” Jamie said.
* * *
Over the next few days, more of the men Jamie and Preacher sought showed up in Santa Fe. The camp at the meadow grew. Jamie had let the clerk at the hotel know to send anyone who was looking for them out there. Preacher introduced Jamie to his friends from fur trapping days as they arrived.
Deadlead and Tennysee were both lean, buckskin-clad men of indeterminate age, but they weren’t young. Tennysee was quick with a laugh or a joke. Deadlead was more serious, and according to Preacher, he had gotten his name because he was a crack shot with a pistol.
“Best and fastest I’ve ever seen with a handgun,” Preacher declared. “I figured I’d set him to workin’ with Fletch, see if he can improve the boy’s natural-born pistol-handlin’ skills.”
Graybull was a mountain of a man, bigger even than Jamie. Fellows of that size often tended to be slow and lumbering, but Graybull could move quickly and nimbly when he had to, such as when somebody was trying to kill him—or when somebody needed killing. Luckily for everybody around him, Graybull was slow to anger, although he was an unstoppable force when his ire was roused.
When Preacher performed one of the introductions, Jamie shook hands with the newcomer and said, “Powder River Pete. I’ve heard of you.”
“No, no,” Preacher said. “This ain’t Powder River Pete. That’s a whole other hombre. This here is Powder Pete, so called because he’s better at handlin’ blastin’ powder than just about anybody. Name’s got nothin’ to do with the Powder River. You need somethin’ blowed up, Powder Pete’s your man.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Jamie said, squeezing Powder Pete’s hand, “the next time I need something blown up.”
The next arrival brought a fiddle, a French accent, and a merry attitude with him. “Dupre is what they call me,” he said to Jamie. “And I, of course, have heard of the famous Jamie Ian MacCallister. It will be an honor to ride with you, m’sieu.”
“Wait’ll you hear him go to scrapin’ on that fiddle of his,” Preacher said. “Even if you ain’t the dancin’ kind, it’ll make you want to get up and shake a leg. Miss Clementine’s gonna be kept busy, because all the fellas’ll be linin’ up to dance with her.”
“Not Phew, I hope,” Dupre said with a look of alarm. “Never would I subject a lady to such a fate as to dance with that malodorous one!”
From halfway across the camp, Pugh called, “I heard that, you derned Frenchie, and I think you’re tryin’ to insult me!”
“Are you saying my words are untrue?” Dupre shouted back.
“Well, maybe not, but that still don’t mean I’ll put up with any loose talk from the likes o’ you!”
Jamie asked Preacher, “Are those two liable to wind up trying to kill each other?”
Preacher grinned. “Naw, they’re good friends. They just like to hooraw one another.”
“Good. We’ll have enough trouble fighting the ones we’re supposed to, without battling among ourselves.”
It might still come down to that, though, Jamie thought, especially with Ramirez in camp. The Mexican gunman was surly most of the time, as if looking for something to be insulted about. These old mountain men didn’t put up with any guff, so sooner or later Ramirez’s attitude was liable to rub them the wrong way.
The fireworks that might explode if that happened wouldn’t be pretty.
CHAPTER 14
It wasn’t only Preacher’s old friends who showed up to join the group. One day a stocky man in late middle age rode in on a rawboned mule. He wore canvas trousers and a buckskin jacket. A black hat with an eagle feather stuck in its band was pushed back on a mostly bald head with jug-handle ears sticking out on both sides. His strong chin had a little tuft of silvery beard sticking out from it.
Jamie greeted him with grinning enthusiasm and introduced him to Preacher. “This is Edgerton. We scouted together a few times and have backed each other’s play in plenty of trouble.”
Preacher shook hands with the man, whose face was so solemn it was hard to imagine him ever smiling. But Edgerton’s voice was friendly enough as he clasped Preacher’s hand and said, “Heard a-plenty about you, mister. I’ll be happy to call you friend.”
“Friends it is, then,” Preacher declared.
Less than twenty-four hours later, two men rode in together. At first glance they looked more like farmers than Indian fighters, wearing uncomfortable-looking shoes instead of boots, trousers that were a little too short for their long, gangly legs, and white shirts and black coats that hung on their scrawny frames like clothes on a scarecrow. Their lantern-jawed faces were pale under round-crowned black hats. Their hair wasn’t just fair, it was pretty much colorless.
“Lars and Bengt Molmberg,” Jamie introduced them to Preacher and the others. “They were with a wagon train I helped guide out to the Oregon country a while back, but they decided they weren’t interested in settling down after all, once they got a taste of excitement on the frontier.”
“Are they twins?” Clementine asked in a half-whisper.
“Yes, ma’am, I believe they are, but to tell you the truth, I never really asked them, and they don’t talk much.”
“They speak English,” Preacher said, “or just Scandahoovian?”
“Everything I’ve ever told them in English, they seemed to understand,” Jamie replied. “Like I said, they’re not exactly talkative.”
Preacher shook hands with the Molmberg brothers anyway and told them, “Glad to meet you boys. If Jamie says you’re fine fellas,
that’s plenty good enough for me.”
Lars and Bengt nodded but said nothing. Preacher glanced at Jamie.
“Like that all the time, are they?”
“Yep.”
* * *
When trouble came, it involved Ramirez, as Jamie had suspected it might, but the clash wasn’t between the Mexican gun-wolf and any of the men who had joined the group previously. It erupted between Ramirez and another newcomer who rode up to the camp.
This man wore a flat-topped black beaver hat that looked completely out of place above his coppery, hawklike face. It didn’t go with the rest of his outfit, either, which consisted of a beaded leather vest, no shirt despite the chill still in the air, buckskin trousers, and high-topped moccasins. He had a gun belt strapped around his waist, with a Walker Colt in the attached holster and a sheathed bowie knife on the other side.
Ramirez was sitting cross-legged beside a small fire, but as soon as he saw the newcomer, he came to his feet like a snake uncoiling. “Comanche!” he spat. His hands darted toward his guns as he stepped forward.
The newcomer reacted with blinding speed, diving out of his saddle and tackling Ramirez before the Mexican could complete his draw. Both men went down. The stranger’s momentum sent them rolling through the fire, scattering ashes and burning bits of wood. They writhed and wrestled, Ramirez still trying to pull iron while the other man yanked the bowie from its sheath and raised it high, ready to plunge it into Ramirez’s chest. At the same instant, Ramirez cleared leather with his right-hand gun.
By that time, the commotion had attracted attention all over the camp. Preacher and Jamie were close enough that they reached the two fighters before any actual killing commenced. Jamie’s powerful fingers clamped around the wrist of the newcomer’s knife hand, making sure the blade didn’t descend, while Preacher planted a boot on the wrist of Ramirez’s gun hand, pinning it to the ground.
“Stop it, you blamed idjits!” Preacher roared. “What in blazes are you fightin’ about?”
“You let a Comanche ride into your camp!” Ramirez yelled. “Those savages live only to kill! I have seen what they do—”
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