The blind, unquestioning acceptance Preacher heard in Winter Wind’s voice was discouraging. He hadn’t been inclined to try to persuade her to change her views, and she was making it clear such an effort would be a waste of time anyway.
It was beginning to look like they could do only one thing about the situation.
* * *
Preacher extracted Hawk’s promise he wouldn’t hurt Winter Wind or allow White Buffalo to do so.
The young man wasn’t happy about it, though. “Why do you do this thing?”
“Because it’s what your ma would have wanted.”
“Again, you know very little of what Bird in the Tree would have wanted. But what I mean is, why do you ask this promise of me now?”
“Because I’m leavin’ the prisoner with you and White Buffalo today, and I want her to still be alive when I come back.”
“Leaving,” Hawk repeated. “Where do you go?”
“To look for another place for us to stay.”
“That means you are going to let her live.”
“I can’t kill her in cold blood or stand by while somebody else does.”
“So you would have us abandon this cave that suits our purposes so well.”
Preacher shrugged. “Don’t see anyway around it.”
“You will let her go back to Tall Bull and tell him there are only two of us, and an old man who cannot fight.” Hawk held up a hand toward White Buffalo to silence any protest he might make. “She will tell him you are the one called Preacher.”
“They’re probably startin’ to wonder about that anyway, after I slipped into their village and killed four men without bein’ caught.”
“Your heart is too soft. After all the stories I have heard, I would not have believed it of you.”
“Now wait just a damned minute,” Preacher said, angry. “You complain about how I don’t kill every enemy I meet, just as soon as I lay eyes on ’em. You say I’m too softhearted. Well, sometimes there’s a good reason for not killin’ first thing. I ain’t gonna apologize for not riskin’ innocent lives when it’s better to wait. There’s more to livin’ . . . than killin’.” He blew out a disgusted breath. “Anyway, when the time comes, I don’t reckon I’m all that softhearted. I’ve killed more ’n a dozen of those varmints here lately, and I reckon ’fore we’re done with ’em, I’m liable to kill two or three times that many. How much more bloodshed do you want, for God’s sake?”
Hawk just glared at him, clearly not persuaded. The mountain man had had his say, and that made him feel a little better, anyway.
“I have given you my word,” Hawk said after a moment. “No harm will come to the woman. You can go on and do what you feel you must do.”
Preacher gave him a curt nod and left the cave.
CHAPTER 21
The terrain became more rugged to the west of the Blackfoot village, as the pine-covered slopes rose higher and higher to some of the most majestic peaks in the Rockies.
When Preacher had first come to the frontier, most of the trappers had called those peaks the Shining Mountains because of the way the sun reflected off the snowcapped crests. Rockies suited them just as well, though. They were the biggest piles of stone he had ever seen.
The important thing for him at the moment was to find a good place up there for him and Hawk and White Buffalo to move their camp. They could abandon the cave and leave Winter Wind there to work her way loose from her bonds and return to her people.
It was possible they might see her in battle if she ever succeeded in persuading Tall Bull to let her join a war party. She was stubborn enough Preacher could believe that would happen sooner or later.
In that case, he wouldn’t hesitate to put a rifle ball through her or go after her with his tomahawk. Winter Wind considered herself a warrior, and he would treat her like the enemy she was determined to be.
First things first, he reminded himself, which meant finding a good campsite, one easily defended and hard for searchers to locate.
Through trees, brush, and gullies, he ranged up into the mountains, using his talent for stealth to stay out of sight. He never allowed himself to be skylighted on top of a ridge or get caught out in the open for too long at a time. As he climbed higher, he looked back down now and then, and one of those times, he spotted the creek on which the Blackfoot village was located. From that height, the stream was a winding, glittering silver ribbon of reflected sunlight.
He came upon a narrow cleft in a towering rock face that intrigued him. He investigated and found the passage led to a small canyon surrounded by cliffs. It had plenty of grass but no water, which meant he and Hawk would have to find a spring nearby where they could fill their water skins if they were going to move their camp there.
The canyon certainly fit the requirement of being easy to defend. The cleft that led to it was wide enough for two men abreast, but that was all. Preacher knew he and Hawk would be able to hold the place for a long time if they needed to, as long as their supplies, arrows, and powder and shot lasted.
It was miles away from the cave where their current camp was located, and if they were careful not to leave a trail, nothing would indicate they had gone up there. If Winter Wind escaped and led Tall Bull back to the cave, the war chief would concentrate his search in that area, at least to start with.
It would buy them some time, Preacher thought as he left the canyon and started back through the cleft.
He stopped short while he was still inside the passage, just before he reached the opening in the seamed and pitted rock face. He had heard something and his instincts set off warning bells in his brain. Whatever it was, he knew it didn’t belong there. It wasn’t a sound of nature.
A moment later he heard it again and recognized it as a voice. A second voice replied.
Hearing a couple men talking wasn’t what caused Preacher’s back to stiffen in surprise. The conversation was being carried on in English. He couldn’t make out the words yet, but he heard enough to recognize the language.
That was just about the last thing Preacher had expected to hear in the savage wilderness not all that far from a village full of bloodthirsty Blackfoot warriors.
He shouldn’t be that surprised, he told himself. Many times during his years as a trapper, he had penetrated into equally dangerous areas. When he was going after pelts, he never gave much thought to the Indians he might encounter or the other perils he might find himself facing. He’d always figured whatever happened, he would deal with it as it came.
Plenty of other trappers felt the same way, and evidently two of them, maybe more, were nearby. Preacher eased into the opening of the cleft to take a look.
Two men wearing buckskins and coonskin caps and carrying rifles were moving slowly toward him, paying more attention to the rugged ground on which they were walking than they were to their surroundings, so they wouldn’t trip and fall on the rocky surface.
Such inattentiveness was a good way to get killed, and it was something a veteran mountain man would never be guilty of. They weren’t near the streams where beaver were to be found, either. As fur trappers, they clearly left a lot to be desired. Preacher would have bet the pair had never been to the frontier before.
“—mite hard to breathe up here in this high country,” one of them was saying.
“That’s because you’re used to the tidelands back in Virginia. At least I’ve spent some time in the Appalachians.”
“I’m not sure those are even real mountains, compared to these.”
“You’d think they were real mountains, all right, if you’d tramped all over them like I have.”
The two men were close to Preacher. He stepped out, cradling the long-barreled flintlock rifle in his arms. “You fellas lost?” He didn’t expect any trouble from them, but he was ready if it came about.
He didn’t have to worry. Both men stopped short and gaped at him with open mouths.
They were fairly young, in their mid-twenties. One was on the st
ocky side, with a brown beard and round face. The other was clean-shaven, which made his face look even more young and innocent. He had curly black hair under the coonskin cap.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the one with the beard.
“Reckon I could ask you fellas the same thing. But to save time, I’ll tell you they call me Preacher.”
“Preacher!” the clean-shaven one said. “We’ve heard stories about you. Some of the other men said they knew you. They seemed proud of that.”
“Other men?”
Both trappers made faces. The bearded one said, “Yeah, we were with a group of six more men.”
“Where are they?”
“Dead,” the second man said. “Wiped out by Indians three weeks ago.”
“We escaped by the skin of our teeth,” the first man said, “and we’ve been wandering around out here ever since.”
Preacher looked around. Out in the open wasn’t the best place to be. “You fellas come on in here out of sight. I reckon we need to do some talkin’.”
The pair looked at each other as if they weren’t certain they ought to accept the invitation then the bearded one shrugged and said, “He’s not a murdering redskin.”
“No, but what if he’s a murdering white man?” the other man said.
Preacher said, “If you fellas want to go on about your business by yourselves, have at it.”
“We didn’t say that,” the bearded one replied hastily. “You’re the first friendly face we’ve seen in three weeks.” He looked at his companion. “I say we take our chances.”
The other man nodded. “I guess you’re right. Anyway, from what we’ve heard about Preacher, if anybody can get us out of this mess we’re in, it’s him.”
They stepped inside the cleft.
The stout fellow with the beard was Charlie Todd. The clean-shaven one was Aaron Buckley. Both were from Virginia and had come west to find fortune and adventure.
“We joined up with a party of trappers in St. Louis,” Todd explained as they stood inside the hidden canyon with Preacher. “A couple of them had experience, but the rest were newcomers like us.”
Buckley added, “The men who had been out here to the mountains before were named Samuels and Powell. They’re the ones who said they knew you.”
“Abner Samuels and Cy Powell?” Preacher asked.
“That’s right. Were they telling the truth? Did you really know them?”
“We met at a rendezvous or two,” Preacher said. “Wouldn’t say we was friends or even that well-acquainted.” He paused, then added, “To be honest, I never was too impressed with ’em, but I reckon they were honest enough.”
“Well, they seemed to know what they were doing, at least at first. They certainly knew a lot more than the rest of us.” Todd sighed. “But in the end it didn’t really help them all that much, I guess.”
“What happened?”
“Indians jumped us. They killed everybody except Aaron and me. We were lucky, I guess.”
Preacher figured instead of putting up a fight, they had lost their nerve and run. It was a little surprising the war party hadn’t tried to track them down, but maybe whoever was in charge hadn’t considered the two greenhorns to be worth the effort.
“Where’d this happen?”
Buckley pointed. “Over there east of that big mountain with the saw-tooth top.”
So, east of Beartooth, Preacher thought, but still in the area Tall Bull considered to be Blackfoot hunting grounds. It was a good chance the war party was from Tall Bull’s village. It might have been led by the war chief himself.
“And this was three weeks ago, you say?”
“Well, out here it’s kind of hard to keep track of the days . . . but at least that long, yes,” Todd said.
Tall Bull’s warriors had attacked the trappers before venturing south of Beartooth to wipe out the Absaroka village. That made sense to Preacher. Ever since he and Hawk had started their vengeance campaign, Tall Bull wouldn’t have bothered going after some white trappers who didn’t represent a threat to him. He would have been too busy trying to figure out who kept whittling down his supply of warriors.
“How in blazes have you two fellas managed to stay alive since then?”
“It hasn’t been easy,” Buckley replied with a wan smile. “For the first few days we hid in a gully, in the middle of some thick brush where nobody could see us. I don’t mind admitting we were too scared to budge from it.”
“I might mind admitting it,” Todd said, “but yeah, that’s pretty much true.”
“We had some water with us but nothing to eat, and eventually we got hungry enough we had to go out,” Buckley went on. “We didn’t shoot anything because we figured the savages might be looking for us and would hear the guns. We’ve had to get by with what we could catch with our hands or in snares we rigged. It, uh, hasn’t been much.”
Todd swallowed. “So if you could spare any food, Mr. Preacher—”
“Just Preacher,” the mountain man said. “No mister.” He pulled a couple chunks of leftover grouse out of his possibles bag and handed them to the two men, who began eating ravenously.
After a few minutes, Todd gnawed the last of the meat off the bone, then used the back of his hand to wipe grease from his beard and mustache. “So what are you doing out here by yourself, Preacher? If it’s all right to ask, that is.”
“A friend of mine and I have been doin’ some huntin’.” It might be a bit of a stretch to call Hawk his friend, Preacher thought, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go into all the details of their quest, at least not yet.
“Hunting,” Buckley said. “You mean for beaver? Or some other sort of game?”
“The most dangerous game,” Preacher said with a faint smile. “Blackfeet.”
CHAPTER 22
Preacher didn’t see any point in taking Todd and Buckley all the way back to the cave where Hawk and White Buffalo were waiting for him. He told them, “My friends and I are gonna move our camp to this canyon from where it is now, so if you fellas want to throw in with us, you can wait here until we get back.”
“You mean you want us to help you fight the Blackfeet?” Buckley asked.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Todd added. “We didn’t do so good about that the first chance we got, you know.”
“Then maybe you’d like a second chance.”
Neither of the novice trappers looked particularly excited about that prospect, but at the same time, they obviously didn’t want to continue trying to survive in a hostile wilderness by themselves.
“I guess we can stay here,” Buckley said. “We can, uh, guard the place while you’re gone.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s what I had in mind.”
As a matter of fact, that might wind up being their full-time job once the camp was moved. Preacher wasn’t sure he wanted to take them along on any of the raids against the Blackfeet. He was comfortable with Hawk’s fighting abilities, but the two greenhorns didn’t inspire any such confidence.
Allies who were inclined to panic and make mistakes usually were more dangerous than enemies.
But they could stay in the canyon with White Buffalo and hold off any Blackfeet who chanced to discover the camp. Preacher considered that possibility unlikely, so chances were, Todd and Buckley wouldn’t have much to do.
Later, when war with the Blackfeet was over, Preacher could take the two men back to where they could find their way to civilization . . . if they all survived.
There was a lot more killing to do first.
“I just have one question,” Buckley said, then waited.
“Go ahead,” Preacher told him.
“What if you leave us here and then, uh, never come back?”
“You mean if somethin’ happens to me so I can’t make it?”
Todd said, “Well, you wouldn’t go off and just, well, leave us here, would you?”
“Nope,” Preacher said with a smile. “I ain’t that hea
rtless. If I was to wind up dead before I got back here, I don’t reckon you’d be any worse off than you were before you ran into me, now would you?”
The two men glanced at each other and Buckley said, “I suppose not,” but neither of them looked very reassured by Preacher’s answer.
* * *
Preacher showed the two would-be trappers around the canyon, then told them, “It’ll probably be tomorrow mornin’ before I get back with Hawk and White Buffalo. You can build a little fire if you want to, but make sure it’s far enough back nobody can spot it through that passage.”
“Those friends of yours that you’re bringing here . . . they’re Indians?” Todd asked with a nervous expression on his face.
“That’s right. They’re Absaroka. Some call ’em Crow.”
“They’re not members of the same tribe that killed all the men with us?” Buckley asked.
“Not hardly. The Absaroka are friends with the white men. Not because they’re that awful fond of us, I expect, but because they know the Blackfeet hate us, and the Absaroka and the Blackfeet don’t get along at all. As long as we’ve got a common enemy, you don’t have anything to worry about where the Absaroka are concerned.”
“What if the Blackfeet are ever wiped out?”
“I don’t figure that’ll ever happen . . . but even if it did, I believe the Absaroka would still be our friends. They’re just decent folks. Fact of the matter is, a lot of the tribes out here are like that. They’re willin’ to get along just fine, as long as the whites don’t come in tryin’ to tell ’em how to live their lives or pushin’ ’em out of their huntin’ grounds. You see, the Indians don’t hold with the idea of the land belongin’ to anybody. That’s why they think they oughta be able to hunt wherever they please.”
“I think we can learn a lot from you, Preacher, if we get the chance,” Buckley said.
“Just keep your eyes and ears open. The frontier’s a hard teacher but a fair one. All it asks is that you never let your guard down.”
Preacher left the two men in the canyon and started back toward the cave. It was mid-afternoon, and he knew night would fall by the time he got back to Hawk and White Buffalo. First thing in the morning they could set off for the new camp.
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