With the attention of the thieves focused on the attacking Indians, Preacher and his companions were within a few yards of the wagons before anybody noticed them. One of the men let out a yell of alarm and wheeled his horse toward them, raising his rifle as he did so. Preacher was close enough to use one of his pistols, firing before the man did.
The pistol was double-shotted this time, unlike back in St. Louis, and both balls ripped through the man’s body, shattering bone and spraying blood as they drove him from the saddle. Preacher swept past the now-riderless horse. Behind him, the others opened fire, too. Clouds of powder smoke filled the air as Preacher veered the stallion toward the lead wagon, figuring that was the most likely place for Deborah to be. He had already spotted the two men he most wanted to meet again on the driver’s seat of that wagon, too.
The tall one stood up and raised a rifle to his shoulder. It belched smoke and flame from its muzzle, and Preacher felt a stunning jolt as the ball struck his left arm, causing him to slew halfway around in the saddle and almost fall off the lunging stallion. He caught himself, and guiding Horse with his knees, he brought up the pistol in his other hand.
“I hit him!” the tall man in buckskins shouted as he stood there on the driver’s box. “I actually hit him that time!”
A second later, Preacher blew him off the wagon with the pistol. The man somersaulted through the air and crashed to the ground in a limp, bloody heap, a pair of fist-sized holes in his chest where the balls had struck him.
The one in the beaver hat leaped to the ground and disappeared in the chaos that was spreading around the wagons. Choking, blinding clouds of dust and powder smoke filled the air. Preacher let the other man go and brought Horse up next to the wagon. “Miss Morrigan!” he shouted. “Deborah! You in there?”
The canvas flap was thrust back, and she stuck her head out. “Preacher!” she screamed.
Corliss flashed past Preacher and reached out to grab Deborah, lifting her from the wagon and cradling her in front of him. “I’ve got you,” he told her. “I’ve got you, and I’ll never let you go again.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on tight.
One of the renegades on horseback suddenly loomed up behind them, a shotgun clutched in his hands. He swung the weapon’s twin barrels toward them, but before he could pull the triggers, a shot blasted out and the man’s head jerked back as a black hole appeared over his right eye. He toppled from the saddle.
Gasping in surprise, Corliss looked at the dead man, then looked around at Jerome, who sat his horse nearby with a smoking pistol in his hand. After a second, Corliss smiled and gave his cousin a nod. Jerome returned it, then ducked aside as Corliss shouted, “Look out!”
One of the thieves had run up behind Jerome and swung an empty rifle at him like a club. The blow missed because of Corliss’s warning. With one arm still firmly wrapped around Deborah, Corliss drove his horse forward and lashed out with the pistol in his other hand. The barrel crunched against the skull of the attacker, laying him out cold.
By now Antelope Fleet as the Wind and the rest of the Arapaho war party had reached the wagons, and although the renegades put up a fight, they were no match for the warriors swarming around them. It was a massacre. Preacher and his party rode away to leave the Indians to their bloody work. One of the riders who had been with the wagons broke away from the fight and tried to escape, riding hard for the trees where Preacher and the others had been concealed earlier. Blackie lifted his rifle to draw a bead on the man, but before he could fire, an arrow whistled out of the trees and caught the fleeing renegade with a perfectly timed shot. The man tumbled to the ground with the shaft sticking out of his chest. Jake stepped to the edge of the trees, bow in hand, and waved and grinned at Preacher.
It was all over in a matter of moments. Preacher made sure that none of his companions had suffered any new injuries, then rode back to the wagons. He found Antelope Fleet as the Wind sitting propped up against a wagon wheel. The chief’s wounds had broken open again, soaking his buckskins with blood. But he smiled and lifted a hand in greeting as Preacher dismounted.
“It was a good fight,” Antelope said in the Arapaho tongue, “but I wish there had been more of the enemy to kill since this will be my last fight.”
Preacher knelt beside him. “We could not have won without you and your men,” he told Antelope. “You saved us all.”
“Preacher is a good man. You know . . . what is important and what is not. Do not let those who come after us ... ruin this land.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Preacher promised, but he knew that wouldn’t amount to much against the inevitable forces of civilization. Already, there were signs that an entire way of life would eventually be coming to an end. True, the settling of the frontier would be a new beginning as far as the forces of civilization were concerned . . .
But Preacher knew the whole truth. For each new beginning, something else was lost forever.
A long sigh came from Antelope Fleet as the Wind. His eyes looked into the distance but saw nothing. His spirit ran in the next world, as fast as the beautiful animal for which he was named.
From behind Preacher, Eagle Flies High said, “We will go now. Our warriors will respect the friendship that our chief felt for you, Preacher, so you and the others may travel on in safety.”
“At least as far as the Arapaho are concerned, eh?” Preacher said as he came to his feet.
“Yes.” A grim smile touched Eagle’s mouth. “But I can only speak for our people. Others may not feel the same way. Be careful, Preacher.”
They nodded to each other; then the Indians mounted their ponies and rode away, taking Antelope and their other dead with them. Preacher waved for Corliss, Jerome, and the others to come on in.
They still had a long way to go before they reached South Pass.
Twenty-nine
One week later
“This is it,” Corliss said. “This is the place for our trading post.”
Jerome nodded as they stood looking over a broad, grassy park at the foot of the slope that led up to South Pass. The meadow had a creek for water, plenty of grass for livestock, and trees for logs with which they would build a large, sturdy trading post. An uneasy truce between the cousins had grown into acceptance and the beginnings of friendship again. There had been no more talk about splitting up.
For one thing, since the deaths of Robinson and Neilson, they were short-handed. It was going to take everybody to make a success of this enterprise, including Jake, who had agreed to stay with the cousins, at least until the next spring.
“But the next time you come by here, Preacher,” the boy warned the mountain man, “you’re gonna have to take me with you. I’ll be ’most grown by then.”
“We’ll see,” Preacher said with a grin as he got ready to ride. He had packed some supplies on Horse and was anxious to get on up into the mountains, where the beaver were just waiting for him to trap them.
The rest of the journey had passed without incident. Preacher and Jake had both been forced to handle one of the teams, a job that Preacher didn’t like. He had managed all right, but if he never saw another ox’s rear end, that would be just fine with him.
Jerome, Blackie, and Pete Carey were all healing from their injuries. Blackie and Carey were going to stay on and help build the trading post; then Carey planned to continue working there while Blackie went back to trapping.
Everyone gathered around to say good-bye to Preacher. Deborah hugged him, and so, after a second’s hesitation, did Jake. “Thanks for bringin’ me along, Preacher,” the youngster said. “Even with all the fightin’, I like it a whole heap better out here than I did in St. Louis.”
Preacher grinned. “I sort of feel the same way, son,” he said.
“Hello!” Jerome said. “Someone’s coming.”
They turned to see a rider headed toward them, leading a packhorse. After a moment, Preacher recognized the man, who wore a coonskin cap with the
tail dangling in front of his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he told the others. “It’s a fella I know named Bouchard, another trapper.”
Bouchard reined in and raised a hand in greeting. He stared at the wagons for a second, then said, “Sacre bleu, Preacher, what is this? The beginnings of a new town?”
“You never know,” Preacher said. He waved a hand at the others. “These folks are settin’ up a tradin’ post.”
“Oui, I think I heard something about that. And a good thing it is, too, because there is a wagon train full of settlers about three days behind me.” Bouchard poked a thumb back over his shoulder as he spoke. “They will be needing supplies, I imagine.”
“Three days?” Jerome said. “We can’t build a trading post in three days!”
“So we’ll sell to ’em out of the wagons,” Corliss said with a grin as he put an arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a minister with that wagon train, would you, M’sieu Bouchard?”
The bearded trapper nodded. “I believe there is.”
“Good.” Corliss beamed down at Deborah. “I think we’re going to need to have a wedding.” Deborah smiled. Corliss glanced over at Jerome and added, “That is, if there’s a best man available.”
“There is,” Jerome said. Then he clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to work, everyone! There’s a lot to do before those wagons get here!”
They were all so busy, they didn’t even notice when Preacher and Bouchard rode away. Jake realized they were gone and looked around quickly, spotting the two men just as they disappeared into the trees as they climbed toward the pass.
He lifted a hand and waved anyway, not caring whether Preacher could see him or not.
As they rode, the Frenchman said, “It is unusual to see you with greenhorns such as those, Preacher. You guided them out here, oui?”
“Yeah,” Preacher said. “I seem to keep gettin’ roped into that sort o’ thing.”
“Any trouble along the way?”
Preacher thought about everything that had happened and then shook his head. “Nope. Not too much.”
Something was still bothering him, though. They hadn’t buried all the bodies of the men that had attacked the wagon train and kidnapped Deborah, but Preacher had checked all the corpses before the wagons rolled on westward.
The man in the beaver hat hadn’t been among them.
The fella had either been wounded and crawled off somewhere else to die, Preacher told himself, or else he had slipped away during all the confusion of the battle. But either way, he was a dead man, because Preacher didn’t figure there was any chance somebody like that could survive out here on his own, so far from civilization. If a grizzly didn’t get him, a wolf would, and if somehow he escaped from those predators, the elements or the Indians would take care of him.
Still, Preacher would have liked to know for certain sure that the bastard was dead.
But you couldn’t have everything, he told himself as he rode on toward the mountains with Bouchard. Looking at the wild, magnificent landscape around him, he thought again that no, a man couldn’t have everything ...
But a fella who lived out here on the frontier came mighty damned close to it.
* * *
Two months later
Shad Beaumont stared in amazement at the gaunt, filthy scarecrow of a man who had been brought into his study in his big house on the outskirts of St. Louis. The beaver hat was long gone and the clothes were in tatters, but Beaumont recognized the man despite that. But only barely, because Colin Fairfax had changed a great deal.
He looked like a man who had been to hell and back.
“What happened?” Beaumont demanded.
Fairfax was swaying with exhaustion. He had to put a hand on Beaumont’s desk to steady himself as he leaned forward and croaked, “Preacher . . . Preacher happened. Killed poor Schuyler and ruined everything. Nearly killed me.” A cackle of laughter that sounded like it was touched with insanity came from the tortured throat. “But he didn’t. I made it back. The animals didn’t get me, and neither did the Indians. And you know what kept me going?”
Beaumont could only shake his head as this crazed mockery of a man.
“Preacher kept me going,” Fairfax whispered, and despite everything, the light of hatred burned brightly in his sunken eyes. “I knew I had to live so that someday, somehow . . . I can kill that damned Preacher.”
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