Not that there was any real rivalry, Preacher reminded himself. Judith was married to Langley, and he hadn’t seen any indication she would consider leaving her husband for Courtland, even though she had spoken up for her old beau a couple of times while the two men were arguing. That didn’t mean anything serious. Judith was just trying to be fair.
The worst part about it, Preacher told himself, was that he was devoting precious time and energy to even thinking about that blasted mess, instead of concentrating all his attention on the threat from Red Knife and the Blackfoot war party.
He left Courtland and Freeman taking a closer look at the horse herd and walked toward the trading post. Harrigan caught up to him along the way and asked, “You reckon we’d better toss the bodies of those savages out of the fort? It’s liable to make the rest of the varmints even madder if they can’t tend to ’em in the Blackfoot fashion.”
Preacher nodded. “I don’t reckon they could get much madder at us than they already are, but it’s the decent thing to do, and I don’t see any reason not to be decent. Can you tend to gettin’ that done, Quint?”
“Sure,” Harrigan agreed. “What are you gonna do?”
“I want to make sure Miz Langley’s all right and talk to Langley about gettin’ ready for the next time Red Knife and his friends come callin’.”
Harrigan nodded and hurried away.
Preacher had seen Langley disappear into the trading post earlier, so he headed in that direction. Approaching the building, he noticed a small group of men standing on its porch. He heard loud, angry voices as he came closer.
“What’s goin’ on here?” he demanded as he went up the steps.
One of the men turned to him with a snarl. “I’ll tell you what’s go—” The man stopped short and took a step back. “Preacher! Sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”
The fella was scared of him, thought Preacher. Well, it was true that he had a pretty fearsome reputation, although he rarely took advantage of it. “Just tell me what this is all about.”
“Langley’s got the door barred,” another man said. “After all that fightin’, we need powder and shot, and he won’t let us in there to get it!”
Preacher frowned. “Let me through.”
The crowd parted, and he stepped up to the door and pounded on it a couple of times with his fist. The booshwa didn’t respond, so he shouted, “Langley! It’s Preacher!”
A moment later he heard the scrape of wood on wood as someone inside lifted the bar on the door. Knowing there might be trouble if the men on the porch tried to bull their way inside, he turned to them and said firmly, “You boys stay back until I get this all sorted out.”
One of the men began, “But we need—”
“Stay out here,” Preacher cut in. “I know what you need. I’ll find out what’s goin’ on and when you can get it.”
Nobody argued with him. They all knew his reputation as a deadly fighter. But there was a lot of unhappy muttering behind him as the door opened a crack.
“Preacher,” Langley said as he peered out cautiously through the narrow gap. “What do you want?”
“There are fellas out here who’ll need more powder and shot before those Blackfeet make another run at us.”
“I know that, and I plan to let them take whatever they need. But I have to make an accounting first.”
Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “An accounting?” he repeated.
“That’s right. The company will want to know exactly what happened to those goods, especially since I won’t have any pelts to show for some of them.”
Preacher let out a disgusted snort. “You’re tellin’ me you’re worried about those squinty-eyed varmints back East with their ledger books? You’ve got hundreds of angry Blackfeet outside the walls of this fort, and you’re countin’ pennies?”
“I’ve got a job to do,” Langley insisted. “I was sent out here, and all the goods in this trading post were sent with me, so I could sell and trade for them and amass shipments of beaver pelts. Being attacked by the Indians doesn’t change that.”
Preacher didn’t see how it could help but change things, but he didn’t think he would get very far arguing with Langley. The man was stubborn as a mule. He had already demonstrated that with the grudge he held against Wiley Courtland.
“All right,” Preacher said, “but whatever you’ve got to do, you’d best be quick about it. I don’t think Red Knife and his bunch will be back tonight, but we can’t count on that. You’d feel like a damn fool if you were in there countin’ rifle shot while a hundred of those varmints were scramblin’ over the walls with knives in their hands and murder in their hearts.”
“It won’t take long,” Langley assured him. “And then everyone can take what they need.”
Preacher started to turn away, but then he paused and asked, “How’s Mrs. Langley?”
“Terribly frightened, of course. But she’s a brave woman. She’s holding up well.”
Preacher wondered briefly if Judith had said anything to her husband about the promise she had extracted from him. He had a hunch that she hadn’t. “Give her my best,” he said gruffly.
Turning back to the other men, he held his hands up to get them to quiet down as they started talking loudly and angrily again. He heard the trading post door close behind him and the bar drop into place. “Settle down and take it easy. You’ll get your ammunition.”
“Yeah, when the booshwa finishes countin’ every ball and every bit of powder,” one man said bitterly. “We heard what he said. We’re riskin’ our lives for this outpost. Some of us have already been killed. He ought to throw the door open and tell us to take whatever we need.”
Several men called out agreement with the man who had complained and Preacher recognized the sound. It was the noise of a mob in the making.
“Listen to me, damn it,” he said sharply. “We all fought side by side against them Blackfeet. That includes Langley and the other fellas who work for the company. You start breakin’ up into different bunches now and you may not be able to count on the man next to you when that war party shows up again. And you’re gonna want to be able to count on him, because he may wind up savin’ your life.”
“Preacher’s right,” one of the men said. “This ain’t the time to be worryin’ about such things.”
“It ain’t the time to be worryin’ about having every cent of the company’s money accounted for, neither,” the first man insisted stubbornly. “If this fort falls, the company loses everything!”
That argument made sense. Preacher said as much, then went on, “Langley knows that, too. Give him a few minutes to finish what he’s doin’. I reckon you’ll get all the powder and shot you need after that.”
The spokesman for the angry men looked at him with narrowed eyes. “We’ll give him those few minutes like you want, Preacher. But he better not take too long.”
Preacher stood in front of the door with his arms crossed, for the moment an immovable sentry. He kept his face impassive, but inside he was angry and frustrated that circumstances seemed to be maneuvering him into positions he didn’t particularly want to take. He had intervened in the rivalry between Langley and Courtland, and now he was defending Langley’s actions on behalf of the company when he found them just as petty and irritating as the other men did.
Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long. The bar scraped out of its brackets again, and the door swung open behind him. Langley stepped out onto the porch and looked around. Most of the men were scowling at him.
“Help yourselves to powder and shot,” he told them. “And any other supplies you need, too.”
“You gonna charge us for ’em later?” asked the trapper who had spoken up earlier.
“No, I’m not. And if my employers back in St. Louis don’t like that, they can damned well find somebody else to run this fort.” Langley smiled faintly. “Assuming, of course, they don’t have to do that anyway because my hair is hanging up in some Blackfoot lodge.�
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Preacher said, “In that case, there probably won’t be no fort left for anybody to run.”
Langley stood aside and waved the men into the trading post. He waited until they had trooped inside and then said quietly to Preacher, “You know, I’ll probably lose my job over this anyway. But those men are fighting for all of us. I have to give them whatever help I can.”
“That’s the best way to look at it, all right,” Preacher agreed.
“Still, I’d better go inside and, ah, keep an eye on the situation.”
“Might not be a bad idea.” Preacher knew some of those trappers, but not all of them. There might be some who would try to take advantage of the circumstances, even in the perilous surroundings.
Langley went into the trading post, leaving Preacher standing on the porch. He watched the activity around the compound as Courtland’s men tried to quiet the horses, other men made sure all the fires were out except the main one in the center of the compound, and still others carried the bodies of the slain Blackfoot warriors onto the parapet and dropped them over the wall.
No matter how you looked at it, Preacher thought, war was an ugly business.
Red Knife had declared war on Fort Gifford, and only utter annihilation on one side or the other would end it.
CHAPTER 25
Preacher had been right when he said the Blackfeet probably would not attack again that night. Not a single arrow flew after the warriors retreated.
Sometime during the hours of darkness, though, the bodies of the slain warriors disappeared from outside the walls. The Blackfeet had stolen up and reclaimed them, just as Harrigan had predicted.
There was the matter of what to do about the defenders who had been killed. As the sky began to turn gray in the east with the approach of dawn, Preacher tied a rope around one of the sharpened logs forming the stockade wall and let the other end drop outside the fort.
Langley stood nearby watching him and frowned in puzzlement. “What are you doing, Preacher?”
“Goin’ out to have a look around,” the mountain man replied. “We need to bury those poor fellas who didn’t make it through the fight, but it ain’t a good idea to open the gates and send out a burial detail until we’re sure Red Knife and his varmints ain’t lurkin’ somewhere close by.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Langley said with a nod. “But you’re going alone? Shouldn’t you take someone with you? That fellow Harrigan, maybe.”
Preacher shook his head. “I can move faster by myself, and if I need to move, chances are it’ll be fast.”
“We could open one of the gates enough to let you out—”
“The rope’s fine,” Preacher insisted. “Leave them gates just like they are. And when I’m gone, pull up this rope, too. I’ll holler when I’m ready for somebody to let it back down.”
“All right,” Langley said. “You know what you’re doing.”
“Damn right I do.”
Preacher had rigged a sling on his rifle so he could carry it over his shoulder. The long-barreled flintlock was loaded, and so were the four pistols he carried behind his belt. It was a small arsenal, but if he ran into Red Knife, more than likely he would need every shot.
Preacher climbed carefully over the wall and gripped the rope. While Langley and several other men watched, he braced his feet against the logs and walked down the wall. It took only a moment for him to reach the ground.
He looked up and motioned with his thumb for the men to pull the rope back up. One of them did so, coiling it as he brought it in.
Preacher took his rifle from his shoulder and padded off into the gray shadows of dawn. After being stuck in the fort it felt good to be out there, moving around and breathing in the fresh, cool air of early morning. All of his senses were fully alert as he trotted west along the Missouri River.
He hadn’t gone very far when his instincts warned him about a patch of darkness he recognized as a clump of brush. It was a good place for a couple of Red Knife’s warriors to keep an eye on the fort, he thought. He slowed and brought his rifle to bear on the brush.
When movement exploded from it, he almost fired. But he held off on the trigger as he recognized the large, shaggy shape bounding toward him.
“Dog!” Preacher said softly.
The big cur raced over to him and reared up to put his front paws on the mountain man’s shoulders. Preacher embraced him. “Good to see you again, you old varmint!”
Dog wagged his tail and licked Preacher’s bearded cheek like a happy, innocent puppy, rather than the wolf-like, hundred-pound-plus hunting and killing machine he was.
“I knew you were bound to be around here somewhere and we’d run into each other sooner or later,” Preacher said. “You ain’t hurt any, are you?”
Dog certainly seemed to be all right. He dropped to all fours again and ran around and around Preacher with boundless enthusiasm.
“Come on. We’re scoutin’ for Blackfeet.”
Dog turned and loped toward the clump of brush from which he had emerged a few moments earlier.
“Come on,” Preacher said again.
Dog stopped, looked back over his shoulder at the mountain man, and whined.
“What is it, you ol’ scudder? You got a rabbit or somethin’ in there?”
Dog whined again, and the sound took on a more urgent tone.
Preacher stiffened and his hands tightened on the rifle as he realized what Dog was trying to tell him. Something was in that brush, all right, and it represented a threat.
“Let’s see what you got,” Preacher said grimly as he started forward.
He used the barrel of the rifle to part the brush. The sun still wasn’t up yet, but the eastern sky was rosy and golden, providing enough light for Preacher to see the buckskin-clad figures sprawled on the ground behind the brush.
Three Blackfoot warriors lay there, dark pools of coppery-smelling blood around the heads of two of them. Dog had ripped out their throats, probably before they were fully aware of what was happening. From the looks of it, Preacher’s speculation had been right. Red Knife had left the men there to watch the fort.
The big cur had savaged the third man as well, but he was still alive, Preacher realized suddenly. He heard the man’s ragged, shallow breathing.
Quickly but carefully, Preacher reached down and pulled a knife from its sheath on the warrior. He stuck it behind his belt and kicked the tomahawk laying beside the man into the brush where it was well out of reach.
The Blackfoot’s injuries were severe. Big gashes covered his face and hands, and his right wrist was swollen and twisted unnaturally, showing that Dog had broken it with a wrench of his powerful jaws. The man had bled quite a bit, and Preacher wouldn’t have given good odds for his survival.
But he was still alive, and Preacher wanted to talk to him. He set his rifle aside and knelt next to the warrior. Removing the wooden stopper of the water skin he’d brought with him, he held the skin to the unconscious man’s lips and tilted it so some water ran into the warrior’s mouth.
That brought him around, choking and gagging slightly.
Preacher set the water skin aside and drew the Blackfoot’s own knife, laying the keen blade against the man’s throat and pressing down just enough that the warrior knew what it was.
As the man’s eyelids fluttered open, Preacher said in the Blackfoot tongue, “Be still, or I’ll cut your throat.”
Despite his injuries, defiance immediately began to burn in the man’s eyes as he realized what was going on. His lips twisted in a snarl. “Go ahead, you white eater of carrion. End my life so I may join my brothers in the spirit world.”
“You’ll end up with them soon enough. Red Knife left you here to die.”
“Red Knife will cut off your head and stick it on a pole!”
That angry threat told Preacher that Red Knife was still alive. He wasn’t surprised.
“Why does Red Knife hate the white men so much?” Preacher asked. The war chief
’s hatred might be just on general principles, but something about the whole affair struck Preacher as personal.
“Because white men killed his sons!” the wounded warrior exclaimed. “They were only boys, and a group of trappers found them. They killed both boys and scalped them.”
Preacher drew in a deep breath. That would be enough to do it, all right, he thought. Grief over the deaths of his sons had allowed the worm of madness to crawl into Red Knife’s brain, as the Crow had put it.
One thing anybody on the frontier learned very quickly about the hostilities between red men and white was that wrongs and atrocities took place on both sides. Preacher had plenty of friends among the Indians, and often he was angered at the way they were treated.
At the same time, too many of them killed just for the sake of killing and considered spilling the blood of their enemies to be a sport. A deep streak of cruelty ran through many warriors, put there, perhaps, by the hard life they lived and leading them to unconscionable acts. Since long before any white man had ever set foot on the continent, the tribes had preyed on each other. Wanton slaughter was nothing new to the mountains and plains and forests.
So while Preacher might sympathize with Red Knife to a certain extent, it was a far cry from excusing the war chief ’s actions.
Hate gave the wounded man’s voice more strength. “Red Knife has sent runners to all the Blackfoot villages from here to the Shining Mountains. He will bring a mighty army of warriors to destroy the white man’s fort and avenge his sons. He will wipe the white men from the face of the earth, which rightfully belongs to the true people!”
“That ain’t ever gonna happen, old son,” Preacher said. “There ain’t that many Blackfeet in the whole world.”
“Red Knife will . . . will burn the fort to the ground!” The man’s voice began to falter as the strength that had animated him a moment earlier faded. “The white men . . . will all die . . . and the other white men . . . will be too afraid to . . . come into our lands . . .”
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