“I reckon so.” Then Preacher put a sly look on his face and cut his eyes to Falling Horse. “Why'd you choose them particular words to address to the sky chief?”
Falling Horse shrugged, eyes alight with mischief, a fleeting smile curled his full lips. “It seemed the right thing to say at the time. In my father's days, the Black Robes came to our people from the place you call Canada. They told of the same Almighty Father and his Son. Also they spoke of the good Mother.”
“I know,” Preacher said quietly, thinking of the French missionary priests who had come among the plains tribes.
“Their Blessed Mother could easily have been our Earth Mother. Or, so my father told me as a boy,” Falling Horse went on. “We had no need then for new names for the creating spirits we had always revered. We don't now. Why is it that a man, and usually a white man, thinks his ways are always better?”
“That I can't answer you. Now, to this other thing. Why is it that you come so far south wearing war paint?”
“I have told you before, White Wolf. It is the white men who sell whiskey and guns to the Blackfeet and try to sell to us. Fifteen suns ago, they attacked the village of Black Hand. But, all of this you know. It is decided by the great council that they must be stopped.”
“My friends and I are hunting the same men,” Preacher told him. “Does the council have names for these white men?”
“The one who leads them, he is called Pease.”
“By dang it!” Preacher flared. “I've known that no-account buzzard-poke was behind all this trouble in the north. You have my word on it, Falling Horse, if we come upon these men, we'll leave them wandering in darkness, unable to enter the Spirit World.”
Another rare smile lighted the face of Falling Horse. “And if we find them first, the same will be true, my friend White Wolf.”
* * *
Beartooth scratched in his full, ruddy brush of beard. “I hate to mention this, Preacher,” he addressed to his companion where they sat their mounts in a deep pool of shade under an ancient fir tree. “But I think someone among them pilgrims we're babyin' along has got theyselfes some louses.”
Preacher laid his head at an angle and cut his eyes to his friend. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I itch, that's what,” Beartooth said hotly. “It feels like there's critters crawlin' around in my hair an' beard.”
“Dust 'em with some sulphur.”
Beartooth didn't think much of Preacher's suggestion. “What? An' smell of hell-fire an' brimstone for a month?”
“If you'd take a bath more'n oncest in three months, you wouldn't have to stink of sulphur.”
“Don't get off on that now, Preacher. Least I don't smell as bad as Polecat Parker. You gotta admit that.”
Preacher pursed his lips, canted his head left and right, cast a long gaze at the azure sky, and hummed a brief snatch of tune. “If you say so, Beartooth.”
Beartooth's eyes went wide. “You sayin' I do stink as bad as Polecat?”
“Nooo,” Preacher drawled. “Sometimes you got you a' aroma about you far worse than Polecat.”
Spluttering, Beartooth flung his hat at Preacher, who ducked, laughed and set heels to Thunder's flanks. Beartooth was obliged to dismount to retrieve his floppy head cover, which made him late riding into the ambush laid among rocks at a narrow spot on the trail.
He saw Preacher, bellied down in the dirt, banging away with one of those awful four-barrel pistols. A ball moaned past Beartooth's head. He saw the puff of smoke and caught a hint of motion when the shooter drew back to reload. Hugging his Hawken to his cheek, Beartooth saw to it the man didn't need to charge his weapon.
Preacher's pistol made a flat crack almost upon the discharge of Beartooth's rifle and a scream came from the low scrub brush in the boulders. One of those new conical balls cracked past Beartooth's head and reminded him he made a good target sitting high in the saddle. He came down, cussing and squalling. He brought his second rifle with him.
It went into action at once as a buckskin-clad figure bolted from a spot made uncomfortably hot for him by Preacher. Beartooth put a ball through his left thigh and the would-be assassin went down with a shrill cry. His rifle clattered in the rocks as it slithered away from his grasp. Preacher emptied his first four-shot and went to the other as Beartooth pulled a. 60 caliber pistol free and busted a cap. A healthy growl came from a dark puddle of shadow and Beartooth cut his eyes that way.
He focused in time to see Preacher stand upright and run toward the mysterious noise, firing his multi-barrel with all the speed possible. The growl turned to a scream of terror. The brush thrashed and waved while the thud of pounding boot soles faded into the distance.
Preacher stopped firing and went to the rocks to gather weapons and powder. Beartooth joined him there. “You arrived in the nick o' time, friend,” Preacher remarked dryly.
“Had to get my hat,” Beartooth responded without any sign of contrition.
“If you'd been here, you'd likely taken a ball,”
Beartooth squinted at his old sometimes partner. “You sayin' I done good comin' in behind like that?”
“Plum upset their plans, I'd say. Now, let's get these guns back to the folks on them wagons.”
Remounted, Preacher scanned the scene of the ambush. “There's somethin' not quite right about this, Beartooth. I've got the feelin' we're missin' the most important part.”
Beartooth sniffed the air and started to agree with Preacher when a slug cracked through the trees, releasing a shower of leaves, and smacked into the head of Beartooth's horse, killing it under him.
13
“That's what I didn't like about this set-up!” Preacher shouted to Beartooth as he finished reloading his second four-shooter.
Beartooth had rolled free of his dead horse, and used the animal for a barricade to protect him from the incoming balls of the rest of the frontier trash that came swarming down on them from among the jumble of boulders above. He looked around him and saw that Preacher had disappeared. Never mind. He leveled his reloaded Hawkin on a target and let her bang. “Looks like there's an ambush within an ambush,” the older mountain man remarked as he poured powder down the barrel of the Hawken, added patch and ball and rammed home.
“Stars an' garters, my good man, however did you figure that out?” Preacher unleashed his tension in jocular sarcasm.
“No call to get pouty with me, Preacher,” Beartooth bantered back.
Another thug attempted a dash from the cover of one boulder to another. He never made it as Preacher clipped his legs out from under him with a through-and-through shot from his own Hawken. The man yelped in pain and flopped on the ground. Thinly his voice came to the beleagured mountain men.
“He shot me through both legs, Quint. What do I do?”
“Good enough for you, ya sneaky polecat,” Beartooth roared back.
Quint answered his wounded man. “Stay low. We'll get you out.”
“But I'm in th' wide open,” the wounded one protested.
“Not for long,” Preacher muttered as he fined his sight picture and let go another ball. The ambushing scum died before Quint could offer more advice.
“Does seem we found the wrong place to be in,” Beartooth quipped as he reloaded.
The downhill charge continued and the riff-raff swarmed into the meadow where Beartooth lay. They had a hundred yards of open ground to cross to reach the redoubtable mountain man. They got only a few feet into the clearing when Preacher opened up with his two rifles once more, then leaped into the open to charge their flank.
“They're gettin' in pistol range,” Preacher advised as he abandoned his Hawken for a four-barrel terror. Two shaggy-haired louts reared up among the lupin and both went off to meet their maker in a twinkling as Preacher closed on their attackers and worked his complex shooter with a speed that surprised even him.
“How many more of them?” Beartooth asked as he sighted in on a burly ruffian in homespun who zig-zagged toward him.
“Been too busy to count,” Preacher answered.
“I make it six,” Beartooth advised as he triggered his .60 Hayes and grunted in satisfaction when the broken field runner tripped over his feet and went down with a hole in his chest.
“Before or after that one?” Preacher asked lightly.
“You're enjoyin' this, ain'tcha?”
“Ain't my favorite mess to be caught up in,” Preacher allowed. “Still, there's somethin' to be said for it. It sure keeps the blood pumpin' through your veins right smartly.”
Beartooth groped for another pistol. “We'd best put an end to this right sudden. There might be more of these rag bags out there.”
Preacher changed his empty pistol for the second one. “I was thinkin' the same thing.”
The one called Quint showed himself then, along with four others. “You ain't got a chance, Preacher We got you cold,” he taunted.
A ball from his rifle put a plume of dust up inches from Preacher's face. “Now that's plumb unfriendly,” Preacher growled. He sighted in and fired the first barrel.
Bark sprayed from the trunk of a big old silver-tipped fir and gouged half a dozen bloody cuts in Quint's face. He yelped and jerked back behind the tree for protection. Preacher took aim on another of the misbegotten brethren and watched dust puff off the jackal's leather vest as the .54 caliber ball smacked home.
His numbers cut down to three now, Quint decided that he had been sent on a fool's errand by Ezra Pease. Why, there was just two of them down there and they done killed off eleven men. Pease had been right about one thing, though. Preacher had been easy to find, right about where Pease and Vickers said he'd be. South of Trout Crick Pass, only moving slower than expected. They had laid out a good ambush.
If only young Lukins had not fired too soon. A lot of good it did, Quint decided. Time for him to get out of this. But how? he asked himself as another man went down, screaming, his neck ripped open on one side, and gushing blood. Keep the tree between him and those deadly shooters down there. That was the way.
“See him, Preacher?” Beartooth asked as he nodded toward the moving shadow of Quint.
“Shore enough. We'll give him a little time. He'll show in the open in a bit,” Preacher answered calmly.
That prediction proved true some two minutes later as Quint gained more altitude up the slope of boulders. Preacher had readied himself with the fancy French sporting rifle and popped the cap when the whole of Quint's left shoulder filled his sights. The smaller caliber ball moved with incredible velocity and drilled through the shoulder blade of Quint, then collapsed his lung. Quint fell face-first through a spray of his own blood.
Both of the survivors had had enough. They fled in wild disorder, gaining ground in long bounds. To add to their panic, the sound of laughter followed them uphill from the men they had sought to kill. When they reached the safety of the beeline where their horses had been tied off, they silently thanked all they held sacred for being spared. From below, Preacher and Beartooth continued to hoot and guffaw in derision.
When their merriment subsided, Preacher spoke for them both. “It had to be Pease. Something's going to have to be done.”
“Yep. An' iffin I know you, it ain't gonna be pleasant for our Mr. Pease.”
* * *
Silas Phipps cocked his head and cupped a grimy hand around one ear. From far off, he faintly heard a booming sound, like thunder. There, it came again. Too fast and too many for lightning strikes, he guessed correctly. A sudden image came to him and he licked newly nervous lips. Once, long ago, a year or two before Silas had reached his teens, he had heard a sound like that. Gunfire!
Yes, it had to be. Long buried images resurrected themselves in his mind and he saw again, with the same horror as the first time, the gang of ruffians swarming down on the isolated cabin in the western part of Virginia that his parents called home. Located on a rocky slope in the Appalachian Mountains, the thin, sickly farmland claimed by the senior Phipps stood in the middle of a clearing hacked out of the tall, thick trees that surrounded it. Most of what it grew was rocks. The desperadoes were upon them before anyone knew it.
His father and two older brothers died in the first hail of gunfire. After that, the unshaven, unwashed hill bandits made sport of rounding up the younger children. They had their way with his Ma and the girls, down to seven-year-old Betsy.
He never forgot. He had been adopted by a kindly family in neighboring Pennsylvania, raised and educated through the secondary school. When he grew older, he hunted down some of those men and killed them, albeit they were shot in the back. That gave him moments of satisfaction, though he failed to find all of those responsible. Yet, his mind seemed filled with strange and terrible cravings. So, he had sought out some orphans, and street waifs, using his inheritance from his adoptive parents to put on a show as a philanthropist and gaining the trust of overburdened police, and operators of orphanages.
Through those first children, he had relived the childhood he had lost. He entered into games with all the enthusiasm they generated. He dressed them well and saw they received proper schooling. Later, a darker side emerged. He became cruel and harshly demanding of the youngsters. At last he could not contain the fiercely hot flares of outright lust that sent him into fits of agony. He gave in ... and indulged.
None of which mattered in their present situation. The distant gunfire had engendered frightful memories to haunt him. Silas could not face yet another encounter with violent men. Peter, riding one of the saddle mounts beside the lead wagon stared at Phipps in surprise and puzzlement when he began to mutter to himself.
“I think we should turn off about here,” Phipps mumbled darkly. “Maybe even go back.”
Encouraged to boldness, despite his frequent bouts with the switch, Peter answered sharply. “Why? It's only thunder. I hear it too.”
“That's not thunder, boy. It's something far more fearsome than a thunderstorm.”
Beside him on the driver's seat, Ruth gave him a startled glance. Knowing that to get away from any source of whiskey would be their only hope, Ruth struggled with her thoughts to come up with some reason to keep going. A careful study of their surroundings gave her a direction.
Fearful of a stinging blow to her face with every word, she hesitantly stated her case. “We must go on, Mr. Phipps. There are no trails to follow otherwise. We would have to cut our way through this wilderness. At least we have to go on as far as that trading post we heard of.”
Phipps swiveled his over-sized head and stared at her as though she was a stranger. He blinked and licked his dry lips again. Then he delved behind him for a half-full, stonewear jug of whiskey he had placed there that morning. He removed the stopper and put the mouth to his lips. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down three times before he set the container aside. Then he wiped whiskey off and courage back on his face. Ruth's blood turned icy in her veins as he produced a lewd grin, eyes twinkling, though badly bloodshot. He nodded to acknowledge her comments.
“You've got a good point there, missy, an' tonight I'll have to reward you for comin' up with it,” Phipps stated as he patted Ruth's thigh through the thin cotton dress she wore. “Yep. We'll surely have to continue.”
* * *
Neither Silas Phipps nor anyone else in the High Lonesome needed to worry about a spring thunderstorm. No, the signs Preacher noticed as the rag-tag wagon train set off again indicated something potentially far worse. It began as a gray haze on the horizon. The sky turned to slate, while the overcast extended downward until wisps brushed the mountain peaks. While the wagons creaked and groaned along the rutted trace that led to Trout Crick Pass, the front swept in with teasing slowness.
Within an hour visibility had been cut to below a mile. In the next half hour the temperature dropped into the uncomfortable range. Silvery plumes came from the nostrils of the mules that hauled the rickety wagons up the steep incline. The men and women of the train had clouds of white before their faces at all times. Preacher first noticed the dampness that formed on every metal object. He raised a hand to signal a halt and turned Thunder to face the on-coming pilgrims.
“We'd best make camp right now. Circle the wagons and send the youngsters out to fetch all the firewood they can find.”
“Why should we do that, sir?” Reverend Bookworthy demanded. “It's barely mid-afternoon.”
Preacher gave him a pained expression. “You greenhorns never learn, do you? When I say to do something, you do it an' be damn quick about it. That way you have a chance of stayin' alive. There's a snow comin', an' unless I'm addle-pated, it could be a big one. Now, you folks what's got 'em, pitch yer tents on the lee side of the wagon boxes.” The first wide-spaced flakes began to trickle down while Preacher spoke.
Reverend Bookworthy waved at them disdainfully. “What harm can a few light flurries like these do us?”
Preacher eyed him with stony gray disgust. “They can bury you nose deep in a couple of hours is what. Now, do as I say or me an' the boys is pullin' out to make camp where we have a chance of weatherin' the storm. We'll come back for yer bodies.”
“My word, I think he means it,” Bookworthy blurted, entirely flustered.
Buck Dempsey, in the lead wagon with Patience Bookworthy clucked to the team and began the circle. Visibility had been reduced to a couple of hundred yards. Heavier snowfall began to cut that even more. Preacher noted it and called out advice.
“Have a rope guide strung from the wagons to the edge of them trees. The youngin's will get lost without it.”
The children had already become dark, indistinct figures in the swirl of lacy flakes. They bounded about with youthful energy and began to form an antlike double file to and from the windfall that littered the beeline. When the wagons halted in place and the menfolk had unharnessed the draft animals, Preacher and his friends hastily constructed a corral from sapling poles carried under the vehicles for the purpose.
They erected it snug against the northwest wall of the cut they followed, a scant three paces from the wagons on that side. Twilight dimness descended on the encampment. Women set to making fires while shelters were rigged for the occupants of the train. Preacher stood with Dupre, eyeing the preparations.
“I reckon we got us a heller on the way,” Preacher opined.
“I see it like you,
mon ami.
Mother Nature will have one last trick on her children
mais non?
”
“She al'ays does, Dupre. She al'ays does.” Preacher sighed. “Thing is, can these tenderfeet survive it iffin it comes on real deep?”
“They are learning, Preacher. Most of them, at least. I cannot say the same for the good
Pere
Bookworthy.”
Preacher chuckled softly. “Like most of his sort, his mind's made up, don't want nobody confusin' him with unpleasant facts.”
“You are unusually harsh on this man of the cloth. Why is that?”
“You know as well as I, Dupre, Nature's got her own rules out here. She don't abide fools lightly. Truth is, I'm hard on him because I want him to survive. I want him to go back East an' tell the rest of that passel of fools to stay clear the hell an' gone away from here.”