As they left the business, Preacher commented, “I hate to think about it, but I can see a time comin’—and it ain’t too long from now—when fellas won’t be able to make a livin’ as free trappers anymore, Charlie. The demand for furs ain’t what it used to be even a few years ago, and all the companies want to hire a man to work for wages when he goes out trappin’.” Preacher shook his head regretfully at the very idea. “When that happens, I reckon I’ll have to look for a new line of work. I’ve hired on to do a particular job now and then, like goin’ west with a bunch of pilgrims who needed somebody to guide and look after ’em, but I don’t intend to collect wages regular-like.”
“Nearly everyone in the world works for wages of one sort or another, Preacher,” Charlie pointed out.
“Yeah, but I ain’t nearly everyone in the world,” the mountain man said. He weighed the pouch of gold coins in his hand, then opened the drawstring and took out a few of them. He held out the rest to Charlie and said, “Here. I’ve got as much as I need.”
Charlie stared at him and didn’t take the money. “We agreed to equal shares,” he said. “You were already generous enough to set aside that much for Aaron’s family.”
“I’ve got plenty to pay for a couple of days here in St. Louis and then to outfit me for a trip back to the mountains. I plan on goin’ back to that Crow camp and winterin’ there with Hawk and Butterfly and our friends.” Preacher smiled. “Any more gold would just weigh me down, son.”
Charlie still hesitated, but after a moment he reached out and took the pouch from Preacher. “Thank you. I’m going to pass along Aaron’s share of the extra money to his family.”
“I expected you would. You’re an honorable young fella, Charlie.”
“You don’t know how much it means to me that you think so,” Charlie said, his voice thick with emotion.
With their newly acquired funds, they went to a restaurant to have a couple of thick steaks with all the trimmings. Charlie had already put aside the share of the profits he intended to deliver to Aaron Buckley’s parents back in Virginia. He and Preacher had agreed that it would be a full third, even though Aaron had been killed before some of the pelts were taken, and now Charlie had the extra coins from Preacher’s share to divide, as well.
Money was scant recompense for the loss of a son, as Charlie put it, but he couldn’t do anything else. The past couldn’t be changed.
They ate at Trammell’s, a decent restaurant that didn’t go in for the sort of frills and finery that rich folks liked but served good, solid food at a decent price. The pretty, buxom waitress remembered Preacher from past visits, flirted shamelessly with him, and brought them cups of strong black coffee while they waited for their steaks, potatoes, and biscuits.
“That girl likes you,” Charlie said when the waitress had gone.
“Molly?” Preacher grinned and shook his head. “Naw, she just likes to josh around with me. It don’t mean nothin’. If I ever tried to take her up on any of the stuff she hints around about, she’d prob’ly run screamin’ into the night.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Charlie sipped his coffee, leaned forward in his chair, and lowered his voice as he went on. “Now, look at that girl over there. The one sitting by herself in the corner.”
Without being too obvious, Preacher looked. An attractive young brunette sat at the other table, well dressed but seeming to lack something of the decorum that a respectable lady ought to have. Of course, a respectable lady wouldn’t be sitting by herself in a public accommodation, either. She would be with her father or her husband or, at the very least, her brother.
“Do you think she might like to join us, since she’s alone?” Charlie went on.
“She’s nice-lookin’, all right,” Preacher said, “but maybe not the sort of gal you should be takin’ an interest in, Charlie.”
“Why in the world not?”
“You said it yourself. She’s alone.”
Charlie stared at him for a second, then said, “Surely you don’t think that means anything. I never took you for the sort to be judgmental about another person.”
“I ain’t judgin’ nobody,” Preacher said. “Just tryin’ to look out for you, that’s all.”
“And you know how much I appreciate that. We’re not in the wilderness now, though. I think I can take care of myself in a situation such as this.” With that, Charlie pushed his chair back and stood up to walk toward the girl’s table.
Preacher watched as Charlie spoke to her. He couldn’t make out any of the words, but he saw the look of surprise on the young woman’s face as if she hadn’t expected anyone to talk to her.
Then she smiled, and her already pretty face became even lovelier.
“Well, if she’s fishin’, she just set the hook,” Preacher muttered to himself.
* * *
Lucy Tarleton introduced herself after Charlie took her arm and escorted her back to the table he shared with Preacher. The mountain man saw now that she had a small beauty mark on her right cheek, not far from the corner of her mouth. It just made her more attractive.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Tarleton,” Preacher said with his natural chivalry.
“Oh, please, call me Lucy,” she said brightly. “I don’t believe in standing on a lot of formality.”
Preacher had long since rejected any sort of formality for himself, but it bothered him to hear a young woman say such a thing. Ladies ought to consider proper behavior important, more so than hairy-legged ol’ mountain men did. He knew that his friend Audie, who had been a college professor before giving up that life to become a fur trapper, would call him a hypocritter, or some word like that, but he couldn’t help feeling that way.
Lucy had plenty of charm to go with her looks, though. Preacher had to give her credit for that. And to hear her tell it, her being out and about alone didn’t mean anything scandalous.
“I’m traveling with my aunt,” she explained, “and we have lodging at the hotel in the next block. She gets tired so easily, you know, and she decided she preferred to just go on to bed instead of getting something to eat. The hotel doesn’t have a dining room, but the clerk told me this was the closest restaurant and a respectable place, so . . . here I am.”
“Here you are,” Charlie said. “And I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Well, a girl has to eat. I’m just so thankful that you approached me, Mr. Todd, so I would have some company.”
“Good fortune has smiled on both of us, I’d say.”
“Indeed it has! And Mr. Preacher, too, of course.”
“Just Preacher,” the mountain man said. “No mister needed or wanted.”
“How did you come by such an unusual name? It’s not actually your name, is it?”
Preacher shook his head. “No, but folks have been calling me that for so long I sort of disremember what my real moniker is.”
That comment stretched the truth considerably. His ma had named him Arthur, as he knew quite well. But he didn’t feel like explaining that or how he had come to be called Preacher.
When he resisted telling the story, Charlie said, “Let me. I’ve heard it plenty of times.”
Preacher sighed and waved for him to go ahead.
“When Preacher first began trapping in the mountains as a young man, he clashed with the Blackfoot Indians so often and so successfully that they came to regard him as one of their greatest enemies,” Charlie began.
Lucy shivered a little. “Just the very idea of dealing with those bloodthirsty savages terrifies me.”
“You can find plenty of good folks out there among the tribes,” Preacher said. That included his own son, the young Absaroka warrior Hawk That Soars, who now lived with a band of Crow hundreds of miles from here. Preacher missed the boy, who had fought at his side in numerous adventures after their first meeting when Hawk was nearly grown.
“But not the Blackfeet,” Charlie said. He had his own compelling reasons to hate them. “And o
ne time when they captured Preacher, they decided to burn him at the stake.”
Lucy shuddered again. “Obviously, they didn’t. But what a horrible fate to be faced with.”
“I wasn’t lookin’ forward to it,” Preacher said dryly.
“Earlier, when he’d been right here in St. Louis, he had seen a man preaching the gospel on the street. So he began imitating that man. The Blackfeet hadn’t gagged him, so even though they tied him to a tree, he started preaching and kept it up the rest of that day and all through the night, never stopping even though he was exhausted and his mouth and throat were as dry as the desert.”
Lucy frowned across the table at Preacher and asked, “What did you believe you would accomplish by that? Did you hope for divine intervention?”
“I was hopin’ them Blackfeet would think I was touched in the head,” Preacher said.
Charlie nodded. “You see, the Indians won’t harm a man they believe to be insane. They think it will bring down all sorts of bad luck on them. So even though they had Preacher in their power—a mortal enemy who has gone on to be a thorn in their sides for many years—they felt they had no choice but to let him go.” The young man sat back. “So they did. And when other mountain men heard what had happened, they started calling him Preacher. The name stuck and that’s what he’s been known as ever since.”
“What a thrilling tale,” Lucy said with a breathless note in her voice.
“Didn’t seem too thrillin’ at the time,” Preacher said. “More like scared and desperate.”
“Well, I’m glad you survived.”
“So am I,” Charlie said. “Preacher has saved my life on numerous occasions.”
“The two of you are partners in the fur-trapping business?”
“That’s right. We just got back to St. Louis today with a season’s worth of pelts.”
“What do you do with them?” Lucy asked with a curious frown.
“Sell them, of course. That’s where beaver hats and beaver robes come from.”
The girl laughed. “That does make perfect sense. I just never really thought about where such things come from. Have you already sold those . . . pelts, did you call them?”
“That’s right. Yes, we sold them to one of the fur companies that has an office and warehouse here. We received a pretty penny for them, too.”
Preacher wouldn’t have gone so far as to say that, but he supposed Charlie exaggerated in an attempt to impress the girl. Young fellas had been doing that since the beginning of time.
“Well, I’ve learned a lot today, and enjoyed your company, as well.” Lucy drank the last of the coffee in her cup. “But I really should be getting back to the hotel so I can check on my aunt.”
“I thought you said she’d gone to bed.”
“She has, but the old dear might wake up and need something. She knew I was coming over here for dinner, but she might worry if she knew I wasn’t back yet.”
“I hoped we could continue our conversation—” Charlie began.
She gave him a dazzling smile and said, “Perhaps we shall. Are you going to be in town for a few days?”
Charlie glanced at Preacher and said, “We hadn’t really made any plans yet.” He didn’t mention that he’d been figuring on heading back to Virginia as soon as possible.
He might have changed those plans some, though, after meeting Lucy Tarleton, Preacher mused.
“Good. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.” Her brown eyes twinkled. “Say . . . for dinner here tomorrow?”
“We’ll be here,” Charlie responded without hesitation. “Won’t we, Preacher?”
“Sure,” the mountain man said. Let Charlie enjoy himself and end his Western adventures with a pleasant experience, he thought—although he didn’t believe for a second that Lucy Tarleton wanted any sort of serious friendship with the young man.
But maybe he’d been wrong about the sort of girl she was, after all.
CHAPTER 3
If Preacher’s true home lay in the mountains, then the tavern called Red Mike’s served as his home away from home. He spent more time there than anywhere else whenever he visited St. Louis. He considered the burly, redheaded Irishman who ran the place to be a friend—even though Mike allowed all sorts in the tavern, including, in the past, a number of folks who had wanted Preacher dead.
Preacher didn’t mind that. He had never figured he needed someone else to look after him and keep him out of danger. If he’d felt like that, he never would have set off for the mountains as a youngster, leaving behind his family’s farm back east without any regrets.
Charlie Todd hadn’t been to Red Mike’s when he and Aaron Buckley were in St. Louis before. He hadn’t even heard of the place at that time. He seemed to be having a good time on his first visit as he sat at a table with Preacher and drank a big, foaming mug of beer. Having supper with Lucy Tarleton had cheered him up considerably and made him forget about his gloomy mood earlier in the day.
As Preacher had explained, despite Red Mike’s not being a fancy place, a fella could have a good time there.
“There’s nearly always some music of an evenin’, folks playin’ fiddles and banjos, and if there’s any Mexicans around, some gee-tars, and sometimes one of ’em will sing a lively tune. Most of the servin’ gals Mike’s got workin’ for him don’t mind dancin’ a bit with the customers, either.”
Some of those serving wenches didn’t mind providing a different sort of female companionship, too, especially if coins changed hands. Earlier in the day, Preacher had had half a mind to see if he could arrange something of that sort for Charlie, but he didn’t know how the youngster would take to the idea, especially now that he’d met Lucy and seemed smitten with her. He might see cavorting with some other gal as being disloyal.
Some of Preacher’s friends among the other fur trappers in the tavern came over to say hello and catch up on the latest news among their scattered but tight-knit community. One of them, Jed Bannerman, surprised Preacher by saying that he intended to give up trapping and go back to his home in Tennessee.
“You’ve been in the mountains for years, Jed. What made you up and decide to call it quits?”
Bannerman, a hulking man with shaggy blond hair and a drooping mustache, shook his head. “Nothin’, really,” he said. “No one thing, that is. Just a feelin’ that the time’s come. It ain’t like it used to be. The mountains are gettin’ plumb crowded. Why, you might see a white man one day, and then see another ’un a week later! I recollect when I could spend a whole season out there and never set eyes on anybody that wasn’t Crow or Shoshone or such.”
Preacher nodded solemnly. “I know. It’s changed, sure enough. But that’s the way life is, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
“No, I s’pose not. But if I’m gonna be surrounded by folks, I might as well go home and see some of my family while they’re still alive.”
Preacher raised his beer mug and nodded. “Good luck to you, then.”
After Bannerman finished his beer and left the tavern, Charlie said to Preacher, “I think I might sit in on that poker game going on over in the corner.”
Preacher cocked a bushy eyebrow and asked, “You know how to play poker?”
“Of course. Aaron and I used to play all the time back home with some of our friends.”
“For what?”
“Money, of course.” Charlie sounded vaguely offended that Preacher would ask such a question.
“All right. But just remember you plan on takin’ Aaron’s share back to his family, not to mention needin’ some of your own share to get back to Virginia. You don’t want to go broke.”
“Of course. Anyway, I can’t lose much, because I already hid most of the money back in the hotel room, just to be sure nothing would happen to it.”
When Preacher was in St. Louis, he always stayed at Patterson’s Livery Stable, where the proprietor, another old friend, looked after Horse and Dog and was happy to let the mountain man sl
eep in the hayloft. Even having a barn roof over his head made him feel too hemmed in at times. A hotel room, with its ceiling and walls and curtains on the windows and rugs on the floor, was enough to give him the galloping fantods, although he figured he would get used to it if he had to stay in such a place permanently.
Nothing beat the open sky with its canopy of stars at night, though. Preacher slept better out on the wild trails than anywhere else.
However, he understood why Charlie didn’t feel that way. Charlie had had enough of the frontier. He had taken a room at a small inn not far from the waterfront. A boardinghouse would have been cheaper, but he wasn’t planning on staying in St. Louis long enough for that.
“Besides, I can take care of myself,” Charlie went on.
Preacher could have pointed out that on numerous occasions, that simply hadn’t been true. But his young friend likely would have been insulted by that, so he kept his mouth shut.
He studied the men playing cards in the corner, though, as Charlie downed the rest of his beer, stood up, and moved in that direction.
Four men sat at the table. Two of them, judging by their buckskins and broad-brimmed hats, were frontiersmen, probably fur trappers. Another, going by his rough work clothes, was a riverman, laboring either on the docks or on one of the riverboats that plied the waters of the broad Mississippi.
The fourth man wore a frock coat over a vest and a white shirt and a string tie. The garb marked him as a professional gambler. One or two of that sort usually hung around Red Mike’s. Probably, some were honest. Preacher felt an instinctive distrust and dislike for them, anyway.
Charlie waited until they finished with the hand they were playing. The frock-coated gambler was the one who raked in the pot, Preacher noted.
Then Charlie asked, “Mind if I sit in for a spell, gents?”
“I have no objection, my young friend,” the gambler replied, “as long as you can pay the freight.”
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