E
IGHT
The eyes of the mountain men popped open and everyone lay still in their robes and blankets, alert and listening as the very faint and unnatural sound came out of the night and to the now-wide-awake camp. The fire had burned down to only a few embers and the night sky was cloud-filled, limiting vision to no more than a few yards. With their hands on their weapons, the mountain men waited. They could smell the wood smoke and grease from the bodies and clothing of the Indians and knew from long experience in the wilderness that when the attack came, it would come either in a silent deadly run or in a wild screaming rush of killing frenzy. They also knew the Indians were very close. No one had to ask if the others were awake. These were men who had lived all their adult lives on the cutting edge of danger.
Preacher cut his eyes to the bulk of Rimrock, who was lying only a couple of yards away. He could see the whites of his eyes and practically feel the tenseness in the big man's body.
Across the dying embers, Windy had his hands outside his blankets, and both hands were filled with pistols. Caleb lay on his side, one hand on his rifle.
Any second now, Preacher thought. They're as close as they dare come before they leap. If we make every ball count, we can break the attack at the first rush ... maybe. If they get inside the circle, we've got a fight on our hands.
Preacher knew that every man there was thinking the same thing. He also felt that these were Red Hand's renegades rather than the Cheyenne Contraires the Mandan had warned them about; but he wasn't quite certain why he thought that. Then he knew why. The smells were many, signifying men from different tribes. Not all tribes ate the same thing, hence their body odors were different. Some Plains Injuns, such as the Blackfoot, Crow, and Comanche, would not eat fish, considering it taboo. Apaches would eat a horse, but Plains Injuns worshipped the horse, oftentimes staging elaborate burial ceremonies for a favorite. A few tribes would eat dog, but most would not; some even worshipped the dog as a minor god. Some Injun tribes considered the coyote as sent from the beyond, so they revered it.
Just some of the dozens of little things a man must learn quickly in the wilderness ... if he plans on keeping his hair for any length of time.
Then there was no more time for thinking as the renegades came screaming out of the darkness, charging the camp with rifles and war axes and knives.
Preacher threw back his blankets and rose to his knees, cocking and leveling one pistol. He fired, the ball taking the brave in the chest and stopping him cold. Before the dying attacker hit the ground, Preacher turned and leveled his second pistol. The night blossomed with muzzle flashes and Preacher's second shot hit a brave in the face. The Injun's face exploded and he was flung backward, dead before he stretched out on the ground. Preacher grabbed for his Hawken.
A buck jumped on his back and rode Preacher to the cold ground. Preacher flipped him off and jumped into the middle of the man's chest with both feet. He heard bones break under his feet. The renegade screamed in pain as Preacher rolled away, grabbing up his rifle and cocking it as he came to his knees.
The rifle was torn from his grasp and Preacher ducked a savage blow from a war axe. On his back in the dirt, Preacher got his feet all tangled up in the Injun's feet and ankles and brought him down. Kicking out, Preacher's foot smashed the buck's nose and the other foot caught him in the throat. The Indian started gagging and gasping for breath through his ruptured throat.
Rolling to his feet, his rifle lost in the dust, Preacher hauled out his big blade and went to cuttin'. He nearly severed the head off of one buck. The man went down, blood squirting with every beat of his heart. Turning, Preacher drove the blade into the throat of another warrior, abruptly stilling the wild cries. He jerked the blade free and jumped to one side, avoiding the screaming charge of a brave with the hair knot that some Cheyenne favor. Preacher stuck out a foot and tripped the buck, sending him rolling and sprawling. Preacher jumped on the man's back and drove his blade into the buck's neck.
Rimrock had dropped his empty pistols and snapped the back of an attacker, and he was now wrestling with a huge brave. He clamped one big hand around the buck's throat and squeezed with all his might. Blood erupted from the buck's mouth and Rimrock let him drop to strangle on the ground.
Windy had fired his last charged weapon and was now fighting with a lance he'd taken from a dead Sioux. He impaled a buck, and when he jerked to free the lance, the tip broke off. Windy started using it like a club.
Caleb was swinging his empty rifle and doing some fearful damage with the heavy weapon. Dead and dazed Indians lay all around his feet.
Preacher grabbed up a war axe and planted it in a Cheyenne's head.
Suddenly, as it nearly always is, the attack was over. Indians ran back into the timber and rode out. The mountain men found their weapons and quickly charged them, working fast but smoothly from years of practice. One Indian rose up and tried to stab Windy in the back. Preacher shot him in the chest.
Windy built a small fire and soon had the coffee hot. The men began dragging the dead Indians out of their camp area. Then they sat back down and caught their breath. When they had swallowed some coffee, each took a firebrand and inspected their grisly work.
“All renegades,” Preacher said, as they walked around the area where they'd dumped the bodies. They were not worried about the Indians returning this night. This bunch had taken a terrible beating at the hands of the mountain men, and wanted no more of them. And since they were renegades, they would not be back for the bodies. But the men weren't careless, either. They quickly broke camp and moved about a mile. Since it was nearly dawn, they did not attempt to sleep.
“I killed a Ute,” Caleb said. “And I seen Preacher drop him a Cheyenne. Rimrock killed a Dakota. Something big is in the works, I'm thinkin'.”
An Indian with blood all over his face and chest staggered into the camp and fell down before he could do any damage with his axe, and before any of the men could shoot him.
Preacher squatted down beside the dying brave and tossed his axe into the graying early morning. “You a damn Kiowa,” he said. The dying Indian glowered up at him. “You sort of out of your territory, ain't you?”
The Kiowa cursed and spat at him, showing Preacher that he was not afraid. But also giving away that he spoke some English. He had taken a ball in the chest and his head was busted wide open, the skull bone showing.
“You better talk to me,” Preacher told him. “'Cause if you don't, when you die, I'll cut out your eyes and take your hands and feet. You'll never find your way to the beyond and you won't be able to see it if you do stumble into it.”
The Kiowa's eyes narrowed at that. Finally, he said, “What is it you wish to know?”
“You're part of Red Hand's bunch?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“That I do not know. We broke from him for the time he spends away from the wagon trail. In this I speak the truth.” He coughed up blood, pink and frothy, and that was a sure sign that he was lung-shot.
When he had finished coughing, Preacher asked, “Where is the Pardee hideout?”
“No one knows that. Not even Red Hand. I know only that it is in the mountains.”
Preacher believed him. He didn't know why, but he did. “How do you want to be treated at death?”
“You would do that for me?”
“Why not? I ain't got nothin' ag'in' you.”
The brave sighed, the expulsion of air sounding more like a death rattle. “I wish to be left to rot. That is all I deserve.” His head lolled to one side.
The men drank coffee and waited for the Indian to die. He died about an hour after dawn. “I wonder what he done to get banished from the tribe?” Windy asked.
“Don't have no idea,” Preacher said. “Must have been something awful.” He rolled the Indian up in a tattered blanket he was going to throw away and secured it. “We'll wedge him up yonder in that thick fork,” he said, pointing to a huge old tree. “ 'Bout the best I know to do.”
The men packed up and pulled out. A mile from where they'd left the dead Kiowa, they found the body of another Indian. They did not dismount, just looked at the body and rode on. That made fourteen renegades the mountain men had killed in one brief battle. When the news reached Red Hand, it would make the renegade leader much more wary of the four, pointing out to him that their medicine was very strong.
The men pushed on, heading for the high mountains in the faint hope they could find the hideout of the Pardee gang. Chances of them doing that were slight, something they all knew, but all four felt it was something they had to do. They cursed the ever-growing numbers of movers that were heading across the Great Plains to the Pacific, and cursed those who were stopping to settle in the wilderness. In all the days they'd been in the saddle, they'd seen two new cabins. Place was really getting crowded. But the curses were mainly without rancor. The men realized it was progress, and like the Indians, they could do nothing to prevent it. But unlike the Indians, they could live with it and try to adjust to it.
“This here's where the pilgrims cross,” Preacher said, dismounting and stretching.
They were west of Three Crossings, standing on the east side of the Sweetwater River.
“If somebody was ambitious,” Preacher continued, looking around him, “they'd build them a post right here and make a fortune sellin' to the movers.”
“Tend store?” Windy said. “Wagh!”
The mountain men all shuddered at the thought. Just the idea of being trapped inside four walls was disgusting. And having to deal with people was even more disgusting. Especially pilgrims. Pilgrims didn't appear to have a whole lot of sense. If they did, they'd stay to home and hearth.
“But that ain't for the likes of us,” Preacher said, summing up all their feelings. He looked around him at the silent loneliness. “The Pardees got to be just west of here. Somewheres between the Wind River and South Pass. Or at least they got lookouts close by.”
“Mayhaps you be right, Preacher,” Caleb said. “Let's split up. We're all gettin' a tad sick of each other's company, and that way we can cover a lot more territory and be shut of one another for a time.”
The mountain men parted company that day, agreeing to meet back at the crossing in a week or so. They rode the land, going into areas where few white men had ever been. They searched for sign and inspected the horizon for smoke. They could find nothing. They all came back more than a little disgusted. None of them had found hide nor hair of the Pardee gang.
“They ain't within no twenty-five or thirty miles of this place, Preacher,” Caleb said. “Or if they is,” he amended, “they ain't cookin' 'ceptin' after dark and under a tent or in a cave.”
That last part triggered something in Preacher's brain. But he couldn't pin it down. He let it lie dormant for the time being. It would come to him.
“Hello, the camp!” The call came out of the late-afternoon air. “I'm uncurried and mangy and got fleas, but I'm told I'm right friendly.”
“Carl Lippett,” Caleb said. “I'd know that voice anywheres. Come on in, Carl.”
Carl sure wasn't lyin'. He definitely was uncurried and mangy. He looked and smelled like he hadn't had a bath in weeks. And as for the fleas, Preacher started scratching five minutes after Carl joined them around the fire. But he did have news, so the men could scratch in exchange.
“Big doin's at the post, boys,” Carl said, after taking a swallow of coffee. Since he came from the east, the post would be Fort William. “Got some pilgrims who pulled in and some of them wanted to sell their wagons and possessions and head back to home. Had some pilgrims there who jumped right in and bought the wagons. But here's the funny part: these pilgrims ain't goin' over the mountains west of here. No sirree. They're sayin' they're gonna settle just north of here. Permanently. Up where the Wind River bends.”
Preacher leaned back against his saddle and drank his coffee. He dismissed what Carl had just said. He didn't believe a word of it. Carl must have had his head in a jug of whiskey and got things all twisted around. Nobody in their right mind would settle anywhere near this location.
“... And kids,” Carl continued. “Lord, I have never seen the like in all my borned days. Looked like a herd of midgets. And they was two women travelin' without no men; they had about ten kids 'tween 'em.”
Preacher sat up and looked at Carl.
“What
two women travelin' alone, Carl?”
“Well, I disremember their names right off. But they was both comely ladies, I can tell you that. One a few years younger than the other. The younger one was the real looker. And they must have had a right smart poke to buy them wagons and outfits.”
Preacher stared at him, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It just couldn't be. “What ... ages... were ... the ... kids?” he asked in a low and slow tone. Caleb, Windy, and Rimrock all gave him strange looks.
“Why ... I'd have to say they run 'tween nine and thirteen,” Carl said. “And that puzzles me. How do you reckon them ladies done that? I can't figure it out. There wasn't no twins amongst 'em. It's a mystery to me.”
“Done what?” Rimrock questioned.
“To be so young and to have all them younguns so close together? Don't none of them kids favor a-tall.”
“Well, hell, igit!” Windy said. “They probably adopted 'em. Any fool could figger that out.”