“Yah,” Pete had put in. “You are always most welcome here, Preacher.”
Preacher had smiled and told them he would see them again, and then he’d set out, alone except for Dog and Horse, not sure exactly where he was going but knowing he had to shake the dust off his feet and rattle his hocks. He never stayed in any one place for too long. For Preacher, alone had never meant lonely.
Sometime while he was remembering the winter he had spent with his friends, he dozed off.
He slept soundly until Dog stiffened against him and a soft growl came from deep within the big cur’s throat.
The gray light inside the shelter of the rocks meant that dawn was approaching. He listened and heard voices. The guttural sound told him they were Blackfeet.
He pushed the blankets aside, then rolled over onto his belly and picked up the rifle. Crawling over to a tiny crack between the rocks a few feet away, he put his eye to the gap.
His field of vision was narrow, but he was able to see several warriors on horseback riding through the newly green grass about seventy yards away. Preacher spoke the Blackfoot language fluently, so he had no trouble understanding them as they talked to each other. At this distance he couldn’t pick up all the words, but he garnered the gist of the conversation.
They were looking for him, of course, but they hadn’t actually followed his trail. Their war chief—Red Knife, Preacher thought the name was—had his warriors scattered all to hell and gone searching for the man who had killed the three scouts beside the creek.
Preacher had heard of Red Knife, although he’d never run into the man before. He’d heard the stories. The Blackfoot war chief had a special hatred of white men and killed them anywhere, any time he could.
A couple of the passing riders glanced toward the rocks where Preacher, Horse, and Dog were hidden, but they looked away again without showing any interest. They couldn’t tell the little pocket was behind the massive stone slabs.
They rode on to the far end of the ledge, turned around, and circled back. Preacher couldn’t see them the whole way, but he tracked their movements by the sound of their voices. From time to time Dog growled, and Preacher put a hand on his thick fur and whispered, “Easy, old son, easy.”
By the time the sun peeked over the horizon, the Indians were gone. Preacher figured they would join up with Red Knife and the rest of the war party and report that their quarry wasn’t to be found in this direction. That was a good break for him, he thought. They would all move on and look elsewhere for him, and eventually they would give up the search.
“We’re gonna squat right here for a day or two and give those heathens time to leave this part of the country,” Preacher told his animal companions. “Then we’ll work our way north and find some good trappin’ country.”
That sounded like a fine plan to him, and it probably would have been, if he hadn’t seen the dust cloud a couple of days later as he was getting ready to leave the hideout among the boulders.
But there it was, too small and moving too steadily to be caused by a buffalo stampede but big enough to tell it came from a large group of horses or some other animals. He was curious, since that was his nature, but more than that, he knew if he could spot the dust cloud, so could somebody else, namely Red Knife . . . if the Blackfoot war party was still around.
So he saddled up and headed east out of the mountains, down onto the plains.
CHAPTER 3
After resting for a couple of days, Horse was more than happy to stretch his legs. Preacher let the big stallion run. He knew he was kicking up dust of his own that might draw attention, but if it was a party of white men up ahead, he wanted to warn them about Red Knife prowling around, looking for trouble.
The problem with being able to see a long way was that it always took longer than it seemed like it should to reach a destination. Preacher had covered several miles when he reined Horse back to a walk. The dust cloud looked like it was still as far away as it had been when he started.
The stallion tossed his head impatiently.
Preacher said, “Take it easy. I’ll let you run again in a little while.”
They kept going, angling northeast to intercept whatever was raising the dust cloud. With tireless energy, Dog bounded ahead and then came back, again and again.
Preacher heeled Horse into a faster gait, not a gallop but rather a ground-eating lope the stallion could keep up for hours if he had to. Gradually they drew closer to their goal.
Then the dust cloud stopped moving.
Preacher frowned and reined in. As the pounding of Horse’s hoofbeats stopped and the echoes faded away, he heard a distant popping and cracking that could be only one thing.
Gunfire.
Whoever was up there had run smack-dab into trouble, and Preacher figured that trouble was named Red Knife. “I reckon we’d better see what this is all about. Come on.”
Horse galloped again, swiftly carrying Preacher closer to the scene of battle. Instead of a single column of dust, it had diffused into a haze hanging over the plains. A lot of folks were moving around in a hurry up there.
Despite the way it looked from a distance, the prairie wasn’t completely flat. Ridges and gullies crisscrossed it, and sometimes the land swelled upward into something that could almost be called a hill. Preacher spotted one of those grassy mounds and used it to cover his approach.
Reaching the slope, he swung down from the saddle and dropped the reins, letting them hang loose. Horse wouldn’t go anywhere. With the flintlock rifle in his hands and Dog beside him, Preacher hurried up the rise.
Before he reached the top, he dropped to hands and knees and took off the wide-brimmed felt hat he wore. He crawled higher, bellied down, and stuck his head up just far enough to take a gander at the scene playing out before him.
Dog lay beside him and growled.
“I don’t blame you,” Preacher said quietly. “I don’t like the looks of it, either.”
About two hundred yards away, three canvas-covered wagons drawn by mule teams had come to a halt. What appeared to be a dozen or so men were using the wagons for cover as they fired at three times that many Blackfoot warriors on horseback racing around the embattled vehicles.
On the far side of the wagons was an entire herd of horses, fifty or sixty of them, Preacher judged. Maybe more. They had been driven up into a little draw and were being held there by several riders who divided their attention between keeping the horses penned up and fighting back against the Blackfeet.
As Preacher watched, one of those men grabbed his shoulder and toppled off his mount. The man rolled over and came up on his feet. He broke into a shaky run as one of the Blackfeet charged after him.
Preacher brought his rifle to his shoulder, eared back the hammer, and sighted over the long barrel. The distance was pretty far, but certainly within his range. When he was sure of his aim, he pressed the trigger. The hammer fell, the charge under it detonated with a crack, and the heavier charge at the base of the barrel boomed.
A second later, the warrior who’d been giving chase to the fallen white man threw his arms up and pitched from the back of his pony as the back of his head flew apart. The ball from Preacher’s rifle had shattered his skull, killing the warrior without him ever knowing what had happened.
Preacher reloaded.
With all the shooting already going on—the defenders at the wagons all had rifles, and so did some of the attacking Blackfeet—Preacher doubted anybody would notice right away that he was firing from the top of the rise. He drew another bead and shot another Blackfoot off his horse.
The Blackfeet weren’t exactly skilled riders. Being more at home in the mountains, they hadn’t adapted to the use of horses as well as some of the other tribes that spent most of their time on the plains.
But they could stay mounted when they wanted to, having learned that horses gave their raiding and hunting parties more range. They probably wanted that herd for their own use, Preacher thought, and they w
anted to kill the white men who had driven the horses out here because, well, because they were white. The Blackfeet didn’t need any more reason than that.
Preacher reloaded and fired several more times, and with each shot one of the attackers fell. He knew that sooner or later the other warriors would realize they were being cut down by somebody who wasn’t forted up inside the wagons. Unlike a herd of buffalo, they wouldn’t just go on about their business, unaware they were being slaughtered.
Sure enough, several of the Blackfeet spotted the spurts of powder smoke from Preacher’s rifle muzzle and broke off from the others, galloping toward the rise. Preacher calmly finished reloading, then socketed the rifle butt against his shoulder, aimed at one of the onrushing warriors, and squeezed off another round.
The Blackfoot flew backward off his pony as the heavy lead ball slammed into his chest, leaving three others still intent on killing Preacher. They were covering the ground too fast for him to reload the rifle.
He set it aside and waited in the tall grass until the Indians were closer. Then he reared up, pulling the two loaded pistols from his belt, and cocked them as the barrels rose.
Both guns roared. Smoke and flame geysered from their muzzles. Blood fountained from a warrior’s throat as a pistol ball ripped through it. One of the horses screamed and went down, crushing its rider beneath it.
The fourth and final warrior in the charge yanked his horse to a stop and let fly with an arrow. Preacher dove forward and let the shaft whistle over his head.
The Blackfoot didn’t get a chance to try again. A gray streak flew through the air and crashed into him, knocking him off his horse. By the time the warrior hit the ground, Dog had his massive jaws locked around the man’s throat. More blood flew as the big cur came close to ripping the warrior’s head right off his shoulders.
“Come on, Dog,” Preacher called as he dropped to one knee at the top of the rise. He picked up the rifle and began reloading it again. He turned to the cur and smiled. “Good job.”
Down below, the Blackfeet had broken off their attack. Between Preacher’s efforts and those of the men in the wagons, they were taking too many casualties. White men had been coming regularly to the frontier for less than forty years, but the Indians had already figured out they were vastly outnumbered. No matter how many whites they killed, there were always more to take their place.
Resources, including warriors, had to be used carefully. The price paid for victory in battle couldn’t be too high, or that victory would actually be a defeat. Any time a fight wasn’t going as well as hoped, it made more sense to abandon it and fight again another day.
It wasn’t a blind retreat, however. The Blackfeet intended to flee right over Preacher and kill him in the process. To their way of thinking, he had it coming because he’d interfered with their attack on the wagons.
Preacher lifted the rifle. Once again the flintlock cracked and boomed. One of the warriors slewed around but managed to stay mounted as he clutched his shattered shoulder. He stood a good chance of never being able to fight again.
The men in the wagons weren’t finished. Shots roared from down below as they continued firing. A Blackfoot pony went down.
The warrior leading the charge, close enough for Preacher to see the designs daubed in red paint on his face, waved an arm and veered his horse. The rest broke off their charge and turned sharply, angling into a swale between a couple of ridges. Preacher watched them go while he reloaded the rifle yet again.
Setting the flintlock aside, he reloaded both pistols. He crossed his arms and shoved the guns behind his belt, butts forward. Then he picked up his hat and rifle. “Come on, Dog.”
He mounted and rode around the rise, keeping an eye on the place where the Blackfeet had fled just in case they decided to double back and try again. He headed slowly for the wagons.
As he came closer he saw that several of the mules were down, skewered by arrows. Only a few Blackfoot warriors had been armed with rifles claimed from victims of previous raids. Most of them had been using bows and arrows.
Men moved around the wagons. Some unhitched the dead mules while others stood facing outward, vigilantly holding rifles. One of the guards waved an arm over his head as Preacher approached, making a circling motion to let him know it was all right to ride on in.
The man lowered his arm and strode forward, meeting Preacher about fifty yards from the wagons. “Hello! You showed up just in time, friend. I assume that was you taking those potshots from the top of the hill?”
“It was,” Preacher replied as he brought Horse to a stop.
“Well, you turned the tide for us, I don’t have any doubt of that. Come on. We’ve got coffee and food, and we’re more than willing to share!”
CHAPTER 4
Preacher dismounted, and the man extended a hand. “My name’s Wiley Courtland.” He was a medium-size man, a couple of inches shorter than Preacher, but probably weighing just as much. Hatless and clean-shaven, he wore high-topped brown boots, whipcord trousers, a linsey-woolsey shirt, and a brown leather vest. He was fair-skinned and a little sunburned. His hair was so pale it was almost white, even though he was only around thirty years old.
The mountain man shook hands with him. “They call me Preacher.”
“Is that because you’re a minister?”
Preacher grinned. “Not hardly. Some would say I’m pretty much a heathen, but I like to think me and the good Lord are still on speakin’ terms. It’s just that the nearest church is more ’n five hundred miles away, and I never was much for bein’ cooped inside, anyway.”
Courtland spread his arms wide and smiled. “Where would you find a more spectacular tabernacle than this?”
“You’re in pretty good spirits for a fella who was in danger of losin’ his hair just a few minutes ago.”
“Yes, but the danger is over now. The savages are gone. We lost some mules, but no men or horses. I’d say we were lucky.”
“Mighty lucky,” Preacher agreed. As they walked toward the wagons, he went on. “What are you and your pards doin’ out here?”
“Driving that horse herd to Fort Gifford, of course.”
The answer didn’t seem that obvious to Preacher. For one thing, he hadn’t heard of Fort Gifford. “Where’s that?”
“It’s a new trading post established by the American Fur Company, about fifty miles west of Fort Union on the Missouri River.”
Preacher knew Fort Union, all right. He had been there several times in the past seven or eight years. Traders who worked for John Jacob Astor’s fur company had built it at the spot where the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers ran together.
He hadn’t heard that Astor was trying to extend his enterprise’s reach farther west, but the news didn’t surprise him. As ambitious as Astor was, Preacher wouldn’t be shocked if the fella wound up running the whole blasted country someday.
“And you’re in charge of this bunch?” he asked Courtland.
“That’s right. It was my idea to put the horse herd together and bring it out here. I financed the expedition, too. I don’t mind telling you, it took just about everything I had. But I expect to reap some handsome profits once we get to Fort Gifford.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m going to trade some of the horses directly to the Indians for pelts. The others I plan to sell to fur trappers who are in need of mounts.”
“You might come out ahead that way, all right.” Preacher thought Courtland was being overly optimistic about the amount of profit the horses would bring in, but he didn’t see any need to point it out. As a rule, he minded his own business and let other men tend to theirs.
As the two of them walked up to the lead wagon, one of the men approached them. “We got four men wounded, Wiley, but only one of ’em is pretty bad. I think he’ll live once we get the arrow out of him.”
“That’s good,” Courtland said with a nod. “Preacher, this is my second in command, Otis Freeman. Otis, meet the fello
w who pitched in to help us. He says he’s called Preacher.” Courtland frowned slightly. “You didn’t explain why they call you that if you’re not a minister.”
“It’s a long story.” Preacher gave Freeman a crisp nod as he shook hands with the man. “Howdy, Freeman.”
Courtland’s lieutenant was a tall, heavy-shouldered man with a mournful face. Calling him plain would have been generous. His appearance bordered on ugly. “Preacher, eh? “I think I’ve heard of you. You’re famous among the mountain men. Supposed to be as wild and dangerous as a ring-tailed Wampus Cat.”
Preacher grinned. “The Wampus Cat might not take kindly to bein’ compared to me. You say you’ve got a man with an arrow in him?”
“That’s right. You know anything about tending to wounds like that?”
“I’ve patched up a few of them,” Preacher replied, dryly understating the case. He had taken care of more arrow wounds than he could count, including quite a few in his own hide. “I’d be glad to take a look at the fella, if you’d like.”
“That’s mighty generous of you, Preacher.” Courtland nodded to Freeman. “Otis, show him where the wounded man is.”
“Right back here on this tailgate.” Freeman waved at the second wagon in line.
Preacher looped Horse’s reins around one of the spokes in a rear wheel on the lead wagon, then told Dog, “Stay.” He walked with Freeman back to the spot where the injured man had been placed.
The man lay on his left side on the second wagon’s lowered tailgate. The right side of his shirt was red with blood. Not surprising, the color had drained from his face, which was covered with beads of sweat. He was conscious, but looked pretty groggy.
Several men stood at the back of the wagon. One said, “We gave him a few slugs of whiskey, Otis. Figured he’d need it when you go to pull that arrow out.”
Freeman nodded. “That was good thinking. If some of you will hold him down now, I’ll get a good grip on that shaft and see if I can pull it out of him.”
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