Preacher's Journey (17 page)

Read Preacher's Journey Online

Authors: William W. Johnstone

Preacher's ears perked up. He had thought from the start that there was more to the story than he had been told.
Maybe he was about to find out what it was.
TWENTY-SIX
Preacher stepped forward even as Peter waved a hand and said disgustedly, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Preacher didn't believe him for a second, and judging by the stricken looks on the faces of Jonathan, Geoffrey, and Simon, they knew that Peter wasn't telling the truth either. Just as Preacher had suspected, something had happened back along the trail that had sent the Arikara war party after the immigrants. The men had hidden the secret among themselves, but it could stay hidden no longer. Preacher was about to drag it out into the light.
“All right,” he said heavily. “Time you fellas put your cards on the table. Roger, what are you talkin' about?”
Roger hesitated now, as if he might regret what he had said. But then his resolve stiffened, and he ignored the warning looks from the others as he met Preacher's intent gaze and said, “Peter killed one of the Indians. A young man. It happened not long after we passed their village.”
“That's a lie—” Peter began, but Preacher silenced him with a hard glance.
“Go on,” Preacher told Roger. “I thought you said you hadn't never seen any 'Rees before.”
“Well, we didn't stop at their village. We saw it before we got there, and we were afraid of them—they're savages, after all—so we went around. They didn't see us, didn't know we were there.”
Preacher would have been willing to bet that the Arikara had known good and well the little wagon train was passing close by. They just hadn't bothered to do anything about it. The tribe had a habit of letting other people alone unless something happened to rile them, as it had in this instance.
“We moved on,” Roger said, “and then the next day, while we were stopped at noon, Peter went out to do some hunting. We wanted some fresh meat.”
Preacher looked at Peter and guessed. “Instead you ran into an Injun.”
Peter looked like he wanted to deny it, but then he shrugged and shook his head as if to ask what was the use of that. “I didn't set out to hurt anybody,” he said, a note of whining defensiveness in his voice.
“Just tell me what happened,” Preacher said. “Don't leave anything out.”
Sullenly Peter said, “I was walking through some trees along a creek, and then suddenly there he was. He looked, well, savage, like he wanted to kill me. He had bones in his hair, like those others, and he was carrying a bow. When he saw me, he said something—I didn't understand him, of course—and then he reached behind his back, like he was reaching for an arrow. You have to understand, I thought my life was in danger. I thought he was going to get an arrow and shoot me.”
“So you shot him first,” Preacher said, knowing where this story of misunderstanding and violence was going. It had been repeated many times across the frontier, ever since the white man had started pushing westward into the domain of the red man.
“I was defending myself,” Peter insisted. “My rifle was ready, so I just lifted it and pointed it at him and pulled the trigger.” He swallowed hard. “The ball hit him in the chest and knocked him back into the creek. I pulled him out, but it was too late. He was dead.”
“What did he have behind his back?” Preacher asked, guessing that he still hadn't heard everything.
Peter looked down at the ground. “A couple of rabbit carcasses on a string. I . . . I think he was going to offer one of them to me.”
Preacher's hands clenched tight in anger on the Hawken. “I expect you're right,” he said. “As a rule, the Arikara are generous folks. The fella you shot was prob'ly out huntin' too, and he asked you if you wanted to share in the game he'd bagged.” Preacher thought of something else. “Roger said the Injun was young. How young?”
“I don't know.” Peter waved his hands helplessly. “Fifteen or sixteen years old, more than likely. But I thought he was a full-grown man when I first saw him. I . . . I never really took a good look at him until after I'd pulled him out of the creek.”
“So you just blazed away and killed a fella who didn't mean you no harm.” Preacher struggled to keep his temper reined in. “What did you do then?”
“There . . . There was a little gully close by. I put him in it and . . . put some brush and rocks on top of him.”
“Hidin' what you'd done,” Preacher snapped accusingly.
“I didn't want to take the time to bury him,” Peter said. “I knew someone might have heard the shot.”
“The other Injuns, you mean.”
Peter shrugged again. “I just thought it would be best to put him where he couldn't be found easily. And it wasn't totally selfish on my part, you know. I . . . I was trying to lay him to rest the best I could.”
Preacher knew such thoughts had never entered Peter's head; the man hadn't even considered anything except saving his own hide. But he didn't waste any breath arguing. He just said, “Then you went back to the wagons.”
“That's right.”
“And you told your brother and your pa and your uncles what had happened.”
“Not right away, he didn't,” Roger said. “I suppose he was too afraid of what he had done. But a day or two later, he told us. We all agreed that the best thing to do would be to go on and keep what had happened to ourselves. We didn't think it would matter once we got to Oregon.”
“You didn't figure the rest of the Injuns would come after you?”
“We hoped they wouldn't find the body,” Roger said.
And for a while they must not have found it, Preacher thought. Otherwise the wagons wouldn't have gotten such a big lead on the war party that had set out to avenge the young man's murder. It had taken time to find the body and then to locate the trail of the one responsible for the killing. The Arikara, in their quest for vengeance, wouldn't really care which of the immigrant party had pulled the trigger. They would wipe out all the whites in order to even the score.
Preacher wondered if the slain young man had been the son of the chief or the leader of one of the warrior societies. That would help explain a little more the determination of the Arikara to find and kill this bunch of pilgrims. It wasn't necessarily the case, though. They would have valued the life of any of their young men and considered his murder a debt that had to be paid in blood.
“Why didn't you tell me all this when I threw in with you?” Preacher demanded of the circle of men.
“We had agreed to keep it our secret,” Simon said.
“And we didn't see how telling you would really change anything,” Jonathan put in. “The Indians were already after us, and you seemed to be convinced those first ones who attacked us weren't just a small band of renegades, Preacher. How could you have done anything differently?”
Preacher dragged a thumbnail through the close-cropped beard on his jaw and frowned. “Maybe I would have staked out Peter and left him for the 'Rees. I reckon they would've figured out he was the one to blame for the killin' and might've been satisfied with torturin' and scalpin' him.”
Peter stared at him, eyes wide with horror, and the others looked just about as appalled. “You can't mean that!” Simon exclaimed.
“Don't be so sure,” Preacher grated. “Out here when a fella makes a mistake, he usually pays the price for it hisself, without draggin' a bunch of other folks down with him.”
Geoffrey stepped over beside Peter and squared his shoulders, even the wounded one. “We never would have allowed such a thing,” he said. “Peter made a mistake, all right, a bad one, but he's still family.”
“That's right,” Jonathan said, moving up alongside Geoffrey. Simon closed ranks on Peter's other side.
Preacher looked at Roger. “How about you? You was ready to kill him yourself a while ago.”
Roger appeared to think it over for a moment, leading the others to glare at him for his hesitation, but then he said, “They're right. As much as I hate Peter right now, I wouldn't turn him over to the savages. I just couldn't do that.”
“Suit yourself,” Preacher said. “I don't reckon they'd take him now anyway. There's been too much fightin'. Too many of them have been killed. For them, it's all or nothin' now.”
“You mean . . .”
“Either we die,” Preacher said, “or all of them do.”
Inside the wagon, Angela Galloway had listened to the men talking, and though she wouldn't have thought it possible, her loathing for the man she had called her husband grew even stronger. Peter had slept with his brother's wife, possibly even raped her, and now Angela discovered that he was a killer as well, the murderer of an innocent young man.
Of course, Peter had acted out of panic when he shot that Indian, Angela told herself. He probably really had feared for his life. But his impulsiveness was liable to cost them all dearly. The other Indians wouldn't turn back, wouldn't give up. She had heard Preacher say that the Arikara intended to kill all of them. She didn't doubt it for a moment.
The baby began to kick and fret. Angela turned and picked him up, holding him against her as she snuggled him tighter in the blankets around him. The wind was still blowing hard, and it was very cold inside the wagon. Drafts found their way in no matter how snugly she closed the canvas flaps over both entrances. Poor John Edward, she thought. He was cold and hungry, and his mother was dying and his father was a coward and a liar and an adulterer. How could any child stand a chance in the world with odds like those against him?
“I'll take care of you,” she murmured, knowing that the baby couldn't understand her but feeling compelled to say the words anyway. “I know I'm not your mother, but I won't abandon you. Neither will Roger. He may not be your real father, but he loves you. That . . . That's more important. He loves you, and so do I.”
John Edward settled down as she spoke quietly to him, and a moment later he was sound asleep again. He must not have been too hungry, Angela thought. She laid him down carefully and then brushed a hand over Dorothy's forehead. The poor woman was colder than ever, and when Angela checked her pulse, she found it weak and rapid. Despair gripped her, despair for Dorothy, for John Edward, for Nate and for her own children as well, because all of them were threatened by the weather and the Indians. If any of them survived, it would be a miracle.
But Preacher was still with them, Angela reminded herself, and if anyone on this wild frontier was equipped to work a miracle, it was the man called Preacher.
 
 
Simon Galloway had drifted back into camp when the argument of Peter's killing of the Injun youngster had started. Now Preacher sent him out again to stand guard, and he took Dog and the Hawken and went out himself, circling the buffalo wallow in the howling wind.
The night's revelations had been stunning ones, and yet Preacher wasn't all that surprised. He had known from the start that Peter was rash and reckless and inclined to get into trouble. He just hadn't known how bad that trouble was. It took a special breed of bastard to cuckold his own brother. As for shooting the Injun when it wasn't necessary, well, that was something that had happened before, all the way back to when Cap'n Lewis and Cap'n Clark had gone up the Missouri and set out for the Pacific. Lewis and Clark had been a good ways north of here, and it had been a Blackfoot Lewis had shot in a dispute over a gun, Preacher recalled, but still it was a hasty act that had had plenty of repercussions over the years. The Blackfeet never had been friendly toward the whites after that, and more than one scalped trapper could lay part of the blame for his grisly fate at the feet of ol' Meriwether Lewis.
Dog suddenly growled and bumped his muscular body against Preacher's leg. Preacher looked down at him and asked, “What is it, Dog? Somethin' wrong?”
A second later, he got the answer to that question as the blizzard hit him like a brick wall.

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