F
IFTEEN
Preacher headed southeast. He planned on taking his time and just enjoy being alone with no place in particular to go. Eventually he planned on lighting down around Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas in southeastern Colorado.
But that was subject to change, of course.
Preacher stopped often just to be doing nothing; but really he was doing something: he was seeing this land, all pure and untouched, for what could possibly be the last time. For once the movers started westward, there would be no stopping them. And it had started, and Preacher knew it.
Preacher rode across mountains, and sweated across desert country. But he knew where the water holes and the creeks were. He talked with friendly Indians and avoided those painted for war. In Nevada, one bunch did give him a run for it, but when three caught up with him and Preacher uncorked those fearsome pistols of his and left three braves shot all to hell and gone on the ground, the others wisely decided to let him be.
And there were cabins being built in the damnest places. Men were bringing their families out into the wilderness to live. Why, in one two-hundred-mile stretch, Preacher saw three brand-new cabins. He never heard of such a fool thing.
He just had to stop at the third one. Two kids and a woman run off into a cellar thing and slammed the door closed at the sight of him, whilst the man leveled a musket at him.
“Put that damn fool thing down, pilgrim,” Preacher told him. “I didn't ride up here to do you no harm.”
“What are you?” the man asked, not lowering the musket one inch.
“I'm a monkey from the Dark Continent. Hell's bells, what do you think I am?”
“I don't know. I ain't talked to no one 'ceptin' my wife and younguns for pert near a year.” He lowered the musket. “I reckon you're human, for a fact.”
“Thank you,” Preacher said dryly. “Now can I get down and water my good horses and myself?”
“Oh, sure. You can see why we might be skittish about strangers, though, can't you?”
“Out here, it pays to be. You're in Ute country, mister. And them ain't the friendliest folks that ever lived.” He lifted a gourd dipper from the bucket and looked at the man. “How in the hell did you get here?”
“Wagon most of the way. Then the wagon broke apart and we rode the mules.”
A ungodly shriek came from the back of the cabin and Preacher damn near swallowed the gourd. “What the hell ... ?”
“That's her brother, Simpson. He caught the fever on the way here and went out of his head. I'm afraid he'll never get any better.”
“We have to keep him chained out back,” the woman said, walking up with two kids, a boy and a girl, holding onto her skirts. “It's a shame, but what else can we do?”
“That's why the Utes ain't bothered you none. Injuns are fearful of crazy folks. Keep him alive and they'll never come near this place exceptin' to maybe leave some trinkets for the gods.”
“I'm Otis and this is my wife, Shirley, and our two kids, Otis Tom and Mary.”
“Pleased. They call me Preacher.”
“The
Preacher?” the man asked.
“I reckon. I'm the only one that I know of.”
“We heard of you all the way back in Illinois,” the woman said.
“What are y'all
doin'
out here?”
A sly look came into the man's eyes and he and his woman exchanged glances. Preacher knew then the answer to his question without having to ask again. Gold. Well, he was in the right country for it. “Forget I asked. I know. Luck to you in your diggin' and pannin'.”
The man and woman and kids stood and stared at him, no hospitality in their gazes. There came no invite to stay for food and that didn't surprise Preacher. Preacher guessed the man had found him a little pocket of gold or silver and he might be thinking that Preacher was out to steal it. Preacher stepped into the saddle and lifted a hand in farewell.
“You folks take it easy,” he said. “You get the hungries for someone to talk with, you got a neighbor about thirty miles to the northwest and another one 'bout thirty miles past that. I seen the cabins but didn't stop to visit none.”
Neither man nor woman had anything to say about that. Preacher shook his head and rode away without looking back.
“Friendly folks,” he said to Hammer. “Gold does strange things to people. He'd have fainted if I'd a told him there was a pocket not two miles from his cabin. Just for meanness I ought to go over there and dig it out.”
But he rode on. He had him a little sack of nuggets tucked back for any emergencies that might arrive and knew where more was if need be. When he was a good eight or ten miles from the cabin, he got him a rabbit and then found him a nice spot to make camp and settled in. He was carefully rationing his coffee now, for he was just about out and Bent's Fort was still a long ways off.
Preacher was in the high-up country now, in the land that he loved. All about him loomed the mountains, silent, snow-capped guardians of the wilderness. Preacher's hand closed on the butt of a pistol as his horses stopped their grazing and lifted their heads, ears pricked. He heard the sound of horses' hooves. Two of them, he guessed.
“Hallo, the camp,” the voice called. “It's Elmo Pike and I be friendly.”
“Come on in, Elmo. Be nice to talk with someone friendly.”
“Preacher,” the burly mountain man said, seeing to his horses first off. “Ain't seen you in near 'bouts three years, I reckon. You ain't got no handsomer.”
“I'd talk was I you, Elmo. You got any coffee?”
“A-plenty, and I'll share. I put Bent's place behind me some days ago and stocked up right whilst I was there. Place got too damn crowded to suit me.”
“Still sells whiskey, don't he?”
“That they do.” Elmo sat down and poured a cup of coffee. “Got a drink there now called a hailstorm. Right tasty, it is. Whiskey and wild mint and ice.”
“Ice?”
“Yes sirree. Bent built him an icehouse, he did. How long's it been since you seen the place?”
“Several year.”
“It's changed considerable. You'll see.” He peered at Preacher from under the brim of his battered old hat. “You becomin' a famous man, Preacher. They's talk that a big-city man who makes books wants to do a story 'bout you.”
Preacher grunted.
“Bent's got lodgin' for up to two hundred men now. It's a regular city when it's full. And got him a cook that'll fair make you hurt yourself come eatin' time. Name's Charlotte. She's a lady of color, she is, and can shore make a table groan with vittles.”
Preacher refilled his cup and leaned back. “I spent time with Rimrock and Windy and Caleb and ol' Carl Lippett. They all done give up furrin'.”
“Carl still afeard of bathwater?”
“Worse than ever.”
Elmo shook his head. “He's a good boy to have around when they's trouble, but he can get powerful odious at times. They give up furrin'? What they doin'?”
“Helpin' a bunch of pilgrims move to the Coast.”
“Like you done last year, I think it was.”
“Yeah.”
“Sad times.”
“For a fact.”
The two mountain men talked until well after dark and then turned in. They spoke of men whom they had known, men who prowled the high country and the great plains. Men such as Beckwourth and Bill Williams. Fitzpatrick and Carson, and others less well known but just as brave and knowledgeable of the country they helped blaze. And they spoke of men who had gone into the Big Lonesome and never come out. They lamented the fact that settlers were moving in and cussed progress and so-called civilization.
Elmo was gone at first light, but not before leaving a packet of coffee for Preacher.
Preacher wondered if he'd ever see the man again, for with the coming of pioneers, the Indians were getting all riled up and putting war paint on, and he really couldn't blame them for it.
Preacher pulled out, riding cautiously and always alert, for he was in the heart of Ute country, and the Utes were fierce fighters and did not particularly like the white man. Preacher took to making a fire only in the mornings for coffee, and it was a very small one. At night, his was a cold camp. This high up it was cold in more ways than one.
Just south of Cross Creek, he teamed up with a trapper called Batiste who was heading for Bent's Fort ... mainly for the lack of anything better to do. Batiste was a French Canadian who had just recently been up in the Northwest.
“You played hell, ma friend,” he told Preacher. “Three men looking like something out of a nightmare stumbled into a camp on the Columbia telling wild stories about a devil they had fought near The Dalles. They said the devil was called Preacher.”
Preacher smiled and Batiste's eyes twinkled.
“Oui, mon ami.
It seems that these men had been part of a notorious gang. Now only the three of them are left. The Shoshoni camp I was in last week, I tink, they were singing songs about the man called Killing Ghost ... among other names he has. What this gang do to make you so angry, Preacher?”
Preacher told him about the Pardees and Sutherlin.
Batiste shook his head. “You did right. But you beware, Preacher. Way I hear it, the Pardees have much cousins and such east of the Missouri, and they might come looking for you.”
“I ain't hard to find. What happened to the three who rafted down the river?”
“The foolish one, way I hear it, he lef the camp and wander around in the woods. The trappers trew the utters out and tol' them to get gone quickly. I have a thought that they were kill' in the woods by Indians.”
“Good riddance.”
Batiste laughed and the men rode on.
Bent's Fort, a huge place with adobe walls fourteen feet high and four feet thick, with two musketry towers â which housed small cannon â and massive iron-sheathed front gates, was unsurpassed in size or importance anywhere west of the Mississippi. The fort was built in '33, by Mexican laborers, and could garrison more than two hundred men and about three hundred animals. The fort had a main dining hall, and blacksmith, tailor, and carpenter shops. The lodgings were built around a huge courtyard. From out of the fort, scouts and mountain men led the freight caravan wagons of the Bent brothers, which were loaded with everything from trinkets to axes. They would be traded to the Indians for buffalo hides. Inside the fort, Indians from a dozen tribes came to meet and trade in the main council room or on the grounds outside or in the courtyard. Hostilities were left outside the walls. The Indians came to swap for trinkets, knives, axes, and guns, powder, and shot â usually obtaining them for buffalo hides, for by 1839, the beaver trade just about finished.
A huge American flag flew atop the lookout post just above the front gates.
There was also a saloon and billiard room, which is where Preacher and Batiste went immediately upon seeing to their horses and gear.
“Easy you go, Preacher,” a scout called Watson whispered to him just outside the room. “They's a man in yonder making war talk about you. He's big and ugly and mean lookin'.”
“He got a name?”
“Kelly.”
Preacher shrugged his shoulders. I don't know any Kelly right off ...“ He trailed that into silence.” Yeah, I do. Or did. Bum Kelly. I helped hang the no-count a year or so back. Him and three others.”
“You done the world a favor. Mayhaps it's his brother. Man ain't old enough to be his daddy.”
“Any in there with him?”
“Three others. Just as big and ugly and mean lookin'.”
“Thanks. But I do want me a jug and I don't care if they' s fifty in there makin' war talk, I'm gonna have me one of them new whiskey hailstorms Batiste has told me about.”
Watson grinned. “They some good. I think I'll join you.”
“Both of you just stay out of the way when trouble starts. I stomp on my own snakes.”
Both men eyeballed the guns Preacher was wearing about his waist and smiled. Watson said, “This ought to be fun.”
Preacher opened the door and stepped inside. The men walked to the bar.
The big room was filled with pipe and cigar smoke. A few men were smoking tobacco rolled up tight in paper, a custom begun in Seville in the sixteenth century, when beggars shredded discarded cigar butts and rolled them in paper to smoke them. Roll-your-owns had not yet taken much of a hold in America and the unorganized territories.
“Give us all one of them hailstorms,” Preacher told the man behind the bar. “And put lots of mint in mine. I do like the taste of mint.”
“Watch your back in here, Preacher,” the man replied in a whisper. 'The four men at the last billiard table are gunnin' for you.”
“Thankee.”
The trio drank their hailstorms and smacked their lips. “Another round,” Batiste said. “You got anything to eat?”
“Bread and cheese and a roast over yonder,” the man replied, pointing. “The beef roast is good. I guarantee it. Charlotte cooked it.”
“You want some, Preacher?” the French Canadian asked, not speaking his name loud enough for it to carry.
“No. I'll wait 'til this dance is over. I fight better on an empty stomach. Makes me meaner. You and Watson go on over there and fill your bellies. This spot here might turn plumb unhealthy in a few minutes.”
Preacher sipped his hailstorm and waited. He had turned as if watching his friends, but he was really looking over the four men at the billiard table. They were everything that Watson had said they were. Big and mean looking and as ugly a quartet as Preacher had ever laid eyes on. And he had seen some uglies in his day.