“The Little Man,” Two Bears said as he looked at Audie.
“I know you mean no insult by that,” Audie said, also in Assiniboine.
“Could somebody maybe tell me what’s goin’ on?” Lorenzo asked in English. “Are we all gonna die?”
“Eventually,” Preacher said dryly, “but I got a hunch it ain’t gonna be tonight.”
Two Bears slowly lowered his bow and let the tension off the string. He made a curt motion, and one by one, nearly a dozen more Assiniboine warriors stepped out of the trees. Their bows were still raised and ready to launch their arrows.
“Lord have mercy,” Lorenzo muttered. “We was in a fix, all right.”
“Still might be,” Preacher told him. “Stay calm and follow my lead.”
“Easier said than done when you start jabberin’ in that redskin talk and I don’t have no earthly idea what you’re sayin’.”
“Stay where you are,” Preacher said. He stood up and moved deliberately toward Two Bears, keeping his hands in front of him so it was obvious they were empty. He confronted Two Bears and went on, “I have always been friends with the Assiniboine. And the Gros Ventre and their cousins the Blackfeet are my enemies. The people who live in the mountains know that.”
Two Bears nodded.
“This is a thing that is known.”
“You probably already found the bodies of the three Gros Ventre raiders in the trees. There are three more atop the bluff. They attacked us, and we killed them. Then we found the one called Raven’s Wing, who was their prisoner.”
“He speaks the truth, Two Bears,” Raven said.
“Then the people of Bent Leg owe you a debt,” Two Bears said, “for saving one of our fairest maidens.”
Preacher couldn’t argue with that assessment of Raven’s beauty. Instead he held out his hand and said, “The friendship of Two Bears and the rest of the Assiniboine is ample payment of that debt.”
Two Bears hesitated, but only for a second. He gripped Preacher’s hand, then ordered the other warriors to lower their weapons.
“Should I be heavin’ a sigh of relief about now, Preacher?” Lorenzo asked.
“I reckon you could do that,” the mountain man said. “We’re all friends now.”
“Thank the Lord for that. I was about to mess my drawers when all them Injuns stepped outta the woods like that.”
The Assiniboine warriors hunkered near the fire, except for a couple who moved off into the trees at Two Bears’ command. Preacher knew they would stand watch, although it was unlikely there were any more enemies in this valley who would attack such a large group.
Two Bears himself sat close to Raven’s Wing, and Preacher sensed the possessiveness in the man. He didn’t exactly act like Raven was his wife, but he had it in mind that she might be one of these days, thought Preacher.
“After the Gros Ventre raided your village, you pursued them?” he asked.
Two Bears nodded solemnly.
“At first Bent Leg said we would not give chase, since they stole no ponies, but I persuaded him that we should pursue them anyway.”
“To rescue Raven’s Wing, you mean.”
“Yes. She is his niece, and he did not think it was right to risk the lives of his warriors for one prisoner, even though he is her uncle.”
Preacher understood. As chief, Bent Leg’s first responsibility was to the entire band, and he couldn’t be seen to be playing favorites because one of his relatives was in danger.
“But you changed his mind.”
“I had no choice. Raven’s Wing could not live her life as a slave to the filthy Gros Ventre.”
Yeah, he was definitely sweet on her, Preacher thought. Well, there was nothing wrong with that. He wouldn’t have wanted to let the raiders get away with Raven, either.
“In the morning, we will return to the village,” Two Bears went on. “The people will celebrate that Raven’s Wing is safe. And there will be a feast of thanks for Preacher and his friends.”
“Preacher wishes to spend the winter in our village,” Raven said.
Two Bears frowned a little at that, but he said, “That will be for Bent Leg to decide.”
After the events of the evening, everyone was tired. Preacher, Audie, Nighthawk, and Lorenzo rolled up in their blankets to sleep. They didn’t have to worry about standing guard tonight. The Assiniboine would take care of that.
“They ain’t gonna murder us in our sleep, are they, Preacher?” Lorenzo asked quietly from his bedroll before Preacher dozed off.
“Not likely,” Preacher replied. “If they wanted us dead, they could’ve done it before now. Some folks think that Indians are tricky, but they really ain’t, leastways when it comes to killin’. They’re pretty straightforward about that.”
“Oh, well, I’ll sleep really good now,” Lorenzo said.
Preacher tilted his hat down over his eyes.
“I intend to.”
And he would have, too, except for some reason he kept thinking about Raven’s Wing.
The lodges of the Assiniboine village were built along the banks of a creek that flowed through the valley. When winter clamped its frigid grip on the land, the stream would freeze over and the people of the village would have to chop down through the ice to get water and fish. But it would help sustain them through the long, gray, cold months.
Right now, even though the air was chilly, there was no snow on the ground, and all the evidence of the ice storm several days earlier had melted and vanished. The creek still bubbled along, making its merry music. Winter was almost close enough to reach out and touch, but it wasn’t here yet.
Two Bears was right about the celebration. Happy cries went up from the people of the village when the group rode in the next day and they saw Raven’s Wing on the back of Two Bears’ pony, riding in front of him. Women and children pressed around the riders, reaching out to touch her as if they couldn’t believe she had been returned safely to their midst, and dogs barked and added to the commotion. The warriors who hadn’t been part of the rescue party stood to the side, arms crossed, nodding in grave satisfaction that the mission had been successful.
There were plenty of curious looks cast toward Preacher and his companions, too, but since they had ridden in with Two Bears and the other warriors, the rest of the band was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were friendly.
The crowd around Two Bears’ pony parted so that Bent Leg could limp through the opening. The old chief embraced Raven’s Wing as she slid from the pony’s back to the ground.
“The one who is like a daughter to me has returned,” Bent Leg announced. That wasn’t really necessary, since everybody could see her with their own eyes, but important occasions such as this demanded a certain formality. When Two Bears had dismounted, Bent Leg gripped his hand.
Then the chief turned toward the newcomers, who had swung down from their saddles, and said loudly, “Preacher!” He threw his arms around the mountain man and pounded him on the back.
Preacher returned the enthusiastic greeting.
“It is good to see Bent Leg again,” he said.
“Many winters have passed since last you visited. We have each of us grown old since then.”
“Maybe I have,” Preacher said with a grin. “You still look the same as you always did, Bent Leg.”
“You lie like a white man.” Bent Leg threw back his head and laughed. He turned to Audie and said, “Little Man, another of my old friends. The village of Bent Leg is truly blessed today to have such visitors.”
He bent to embrace Audie with another round of back-slapping. Bent Leg’s greeting for Nighthawk was more reserved. The Crow and the Assiniboine were not enemies, but they were not the same, either. The tribal differences were minor, though.
Bent Leg turned back to Preacher.
“Did Two Bears and the others find you when they sought Raven’s Wing?”
“They did,” Preacher said.
Raven spoke u
p, saying, “It was Preacher and his friends who rescued me from the Gros Ventre.”
Bent Leg looked surprised, and Two Bears scowled a little. He had planned to save Raven’s Wing, but circumstances hadn’t worked out that way.
“We owe you a great debt, my old friend,” Bent Leg said to Preacher.
“It’s already paid,” Preacher told him. “But there is a great courtesy you could do for me and my friends, if you would.”
“Speak it, and it shall be done,” Bent Leg assured him.
“We’re lookin’ for a place to spend the winter, and we can’t think of anywhere we’d rather do that than right here with the Assiniboine.”
Bent Leg nodded.
“So shall it be. You will be our honored guests until the spring comes.”
“Thank you, old friend.”
“There are widows in the village whose husbands had no brothers,” Bent Leg said with a twinkle in his eye. “And some unmarried women as well.”
There wasn’t much pretense to these people. They had their societal rules, of course, and Preacher respected them. But they didn’t go out of their way to repress folks’ natural instincts and appetites, like most of the so-called civilized societies did. Preacher had always found their honesty refreshing.
Right now, though, he was more interested in having a place to wait out the winter than he was in finding a woman to warm his blankets during those cold months. That would come in time, in the due course of events.
“We will see,” he told Bent Leg, who nodded gravely.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Lorenzo asked in English. “They gonna let us stay?”
“Yep,” Preacher said. “For the next six months or so, Lorenzo, this is gonna be home, sweet home for us.”
CHAPTER 8
More than a week had passed since the trouble at Blind Pete’s Place. During that time, an ice storm had forced the five men to hole up for a couple of miserable days, but then they had been able to ride on, heading north toward the Canadian border.
Willie Deaver was pretty sure they had passed the border by now and were actually in Canada. The men they were supposed to meet ought to be waiting for them somewhere close by.
Unless St. John and his people had grown impatient and left. Deaver wasn’t going to be happy if that happened.
So it was with a sense of relief that he spotted a thread of smoke curling into the sky up ahead as he and his men rode along a twisting hogback ridge. That was the signal he’d been looking for during the past two days.
Deaver pointed out the smoke to Caleb Manning and said, “That’s got to be them.”
“Or else it’s comin’ from some fur trapper’s cabin,” Manning said.
Deaver shrugged.
“We’ll be able to tell when we get there.”
They followed the smoke and soon descended from the ridge, entering a small valley where a cold wind whipped down from the north. Deaver led the way with Manning riding behind him.
Bringing up the rear were Cy Plunkett, Darwin Heath, and Fred Jordan. Plunkett was a rotund little Englishman who was much tougher than he looked. Heath was thin and dark, with a narrow face deeply pocked by the childhood illness that had almost killed him. Jordan was a big, blond man who was always grinning, no matter what sort of terrible thing he was doing at the time.
All five men had come West several years earlier to make their fortunes as fur trappers. Like plenty of others, they had discovered pretty quickly that the only people getting rich off the fur business were the traders and the business owners back East who made hats and coats from those furs. The trappers, the men who carried out the hard, dangerous jobs and did the actual work that made the whole industry possible, always got paid the least.
The five of them, who hadn’t known each other starting out, gradually had drifted together and decided that they would be better off taking the spoils of somebody else’s labor rather than grubbing for themselves.
Since then they had robbed and killed parties of trappers smaller than themselves, raided a couple of wagon trains, and looted a few trading posts. They had cleaned out all the money and gold in Blind Pete’s Place before setting it on fire.
But that had been an opportunity that presented itself, so Deaver and the others had taken it. They had other plans that would allow them to leave their hand-to-mouth existence behind. They were going to be rich men.
Of course, some people would have to die in order for that to happen, but Deaver didn’t care about that.
Plunkett, being an Englishman, was the one who’d put them in contact with Odell St. John, a fellow Britisher, during one of the gang’s periodic trips back to St. Louis. Deaver wasn’t sure exactly what St. John’s game was—maybe he was just out to make some fast money, or maybe he was working for the British government—but again, Deaver didn’t care. The payoff was all that mattered.
Deaver and his men rode through a thick stand of trees, and when they emerged from the woods they saw a camp beside a small stream. Half a dozen tents were pitched not far from the creek, and the smoke rose from a little crackling fire nearby. Some saddle mounts were penned in a rope corral, along with several large, heavily-built pack animals. A number of crates were stacked on the ground beside the tents and covered with a large piece of canvas. The ends of the crates peeked out so that Deaver could tell what they were.
Most of the men in the camp wore buckskins or homespun work shirts and corduroy trousers, like Deaver and his companions. One individual, though, stood out from the others. He wore a dark suit, including a swallowtail coat, high-topped black boots, a white shirt, and a cravat. He was bareheaded as he strode forward to meet Deaver. The wind ruffled his brown hair, which matched his close-cropped beard.
“Mr. Deaver!” the man said. “How utterly splendid to see you again!”
Deaver grunted and said, “Yeah.” Cy Plunkett sounded like an Englishman and that had never bothered Deaver. Something about Odell St. John’s oily accent rubbed him the wrong way, though.
“You’re late.”
Deaver motioned for his men to dismount. He swung down from the saddle before saying, “Ice storm caught us a few days ago. It wasn’t safe to travel until the ice melted off.”
“I understand. We’ve had a bit of inclement weather up here as well. I told the men that was probably what delayed you.” St. John rubbed his hands together. “But you’re here now, eh, and ready to do business?”
“That’s right. If we’re satisfied with the quality of the goods you brought with you.”
“Oh, you will be,” Deaver promised. “There’ll be plenty of time for you to examine the merchandise. First, though, how about a drink?”
“That sounds mighty good to me,” Manning put in. “It’s been a long, thirsty ride.”
Deaver frowned. The ride hadn’t been all that thirsty. They had taken several jugs of whiskey from Blind Pete’s, too.
He didn’t like Manning butting in like that, either. He made the important decisions in this bunch, by God!
But the men were all licking their lips, and Deaver was a canny enough leader to know that he might be facing a mutiny if he told them to forget about the whiskey. And Caleb Manning was a good man to have on your side, second in viciousness only to Deaver himself, so he’d cut Manning some slack … this time.
St. John was looking at him, one dark eyebrow arched quizzically. Deaver jerked his head in a curt nod and said, “Sure. A drink will be fine.”
“Excellent!” St. John turned and called to one of the other men, “Brutus, bring the jug!”
They all gathered around the fire to pass the jug from man to man. St. John counted and then said, “I see there are thirteen of us here, all told. A somewhat less righteous band of apostles than the original, eh?”
Deaver took the jug from Manning, tilted it to his mouth, and downed a slug of the fiery corn liquor. He passed it along to Plunkett and wiped the back of his left hand across his mouth.
“I don’t know
about callin’ us apostles,” he said. “They weren’t rich, from what I remember of my ma readin’ to me from the Good Book a long, long time ago, and I intend to be a rich man.”
“The prospect of passing a camel through the eye of a needle doesn’t trouble you, eh?”
“Not one damn bit,” Deaver said, “and it probably wouldn’t even if I knew what in blazes you were talking about.”
That brought a laugh from St. John. The jug went around the circle again, and then the Englishman said, “Very well, down to business.”
He led the way to the stack of crates and threw back the canvas so that one of the long wooden boxes was revealed. With a snap of his fingers and a sharp “Brutus!”, St. John had the man who was evidently his lieutenant use a heavy-bladed knife to pry up the lid nailed onto the crate.
A number of long, oilcloth-wrapped shapes lay in the box. Brutus picked up one of them and unwrapped it, revealing a long-barreled flintlock rifle. All the brasswork on the weapon gleamed with newness.
St. John took the rifle from Brutus and passed it to Deaver, saying, “The finest rifle of its kind to be found anywhere in the world, my friend. Direct from the factory in England to this backwoods Eden.”
Deaver examined the flintlock closely. Its mechanism appeared to be in perfect working order. It might have never been fired.
“How’d you get your hands on ’em?” he asked.
“I don’t believe that information was included in our arrangement.” St. John gave an eloquent shrug. “However, I don’t mind saying that there are always means by which to make certain a shipment of goods goes astray and never arrives at its intended destination. In this case, that destination would be a British army garrison in Ontario. A little bribery, the judicious use of blackmail … arrangements can be made, you understand.”
“Sure,” Deaver said with a nod. He handed the rifle to Manning. “What do you think, Caleb?”
Manning looked the flintlock over.
“Mighty fine weapon,” he declared. “Does it shoot true?”
Preacher’s Fury Page 5
