Blood on the Divide

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t know the answer to that, Preacher. But that there little gal thinks the world and all of you, and if you turn your backside to her at this time of need, then you a mighty sorry excuse for a man.”

  Preacher’s eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to one side and stared at the man. “I’ve killed men for sayin’ a hell of a lot less than that to me, Rimrock.”

  Rimrock met the stare without blinking. “I don’t think you ever kilt no man just ’cause he spoke the truth,” the big man said calmly.

  That stung Preacher. He frowned and shook his head in disgust. He’d been friends with these men for too many years to have something like this drive a rift ’tween them. He sighed heavily. “All right, Rim. All right. Hell, I’d a probably been back come the mornin’ noways. I’ll help you take these people into the wilderness. Has any of ’em told you exactly where it is they want to go?”

  Preacher listened and his eyes grew wider. When Rimrock finished, Preacher said, “Now I know they’re all plumb crazy. That ain’t farmin’ country. That country ain’t good for nothin’. Are you sure about this?”

  “He had the location all writ now and he read it off to me.”

  “Something is bad wrong with this, Rim. That’s a good thirty-five or forty miles north of this trail. The only visitors they’ll have will be them lookin’ for scalps.”

  “I done pointed that out to them. Weller said the Lord would see to their safety.”

  “Is he a gospel shouter?”

  “If he ain’t, he shore ought to be. Are you goin’ to talk to him about this folly?”

  Preacher shook his head. “No need. We ain’t gonna change their minds. But I thought Betina was boundened and determined to reach the Oregon Territory and that Coretine person was headin’ back East with the kids?”

  “I reckon they changed their minds.”

  “I reckon they did at that. When do they want to make the turn north?”

  “Right here, come the mornin’.”

  “Lord help us all.” Preacher nodded his head and secured his bedroll behind the cantle of his saddle. “You know the way, Rim. I’ll leave sign along from time to time. I’ll see you in a couple of days. I want to travel light, so see to my pack animal and possessions, will you?”

  “I’ll do it, Preacher. See you.”

  Preacher swung into the saddle and rode out, past Betina’s wagon. She was tending a small fire and had coffee on. She smiled up at him. “Coffee, Preacher?”

  “Thank you kindly, but no. I got to push on. I’ll see you in a couple of days. Then we’ll talk.”

  Her face brightened. “I’m looking forward to that.”

  “Yeah,” Preacher said dryly, then rode away.

  He made a lonely camp that evening not too far from a slow-moving little creek. If it had a name, Preacher didn’t know it. “Fools,” he muttered to his tiny fire hidden in rocks. “Someday this might be a settled land. But it’s too damn soon now for people to even try.”

  He emptied his coffee pot and put out the fire as the shadows began creeping in. Drinking his coffee and munching on a biscuit he’d swiped from a mover’s wife that morning, Preacher tried to make some sense out of this move. He’d asked Weller, but the man turned mum on him. No sense in that either. He could understand people wanting to go to California or the Oregon Territory – sort of – but this move ...

  Then it came to him.

  “Shore, there it was, right there in front of me all the time,” Preacher muttered to the shadows. “So damn plain I couldn’t even see it.”

  He could see Sutherlin’s fine hand in this. Had to be. And the reason the Pardees couldn’t be found was ’cause they wasn’t back at their mountain hideout... they was waitin’ up on the Wind River. Or at least was headin’ that way. Had to be it. Sutherlin would have the wagons leave the more-or-less-established trail west and head north to settle in a country that only mountain men, a few Army scouts, and Indians had ever seen. Then when the movers was busy with building cabins and such, they’d hit them, Pardee’s gang and Red Hand. They wipe them out, burn the wagons and structures, sell the women and girls for slaves and whores, and then vanish. The movers wouldn’t be missed for months, at least until spring, and by that time, their bones would be bleached white and scattered by varmits. And the odds were, no one would ever know what happened to them.

  “Quite a plan, if I got it figured out right,” Preacher muttered. “But how did Sutherlin get tied in with the Pardee bunch? And what did he get out of this?”

  Preacher knew the answer to that immediately. The fee for organizing the train, of course. But how many times could he get away with something like this?

  “Plenty, if he’s smart,” Preacher said aloud. “Let two or three trains through, and hit the third or fourth one.” And Preacher knew then why the Pardee bunch was sometimes not heard of in the Big Lonesome for months at a time: they staggered the territories where they operated. They’d ride hundreds of miles to strike, and then beat it back to the Lonesome with their booty and hide out for a time. Then they’d move to another location to strike again.

  “Quite an operation,” Preacher muttered. “This Sutherlin must have a lot of men workin’ for him. He organizes a train back East, then sends riders west with the news.” And, he thought, no tellin’ how long this has been goin’ on. Preacher shook his head at the vastness of it.

  Preacher had known some cold-blooded ol’ boys in his time, but Sutherlin and Pardee and Son and men of that ilk took the prize for bein’ pure evil. To date, those workin’ with Sutherlin must have been responsible for the deaths of no tellin’ how many men and women and kids along the trail. No tellin’ how many young girls and boys had been sold into slavery, or indentured to someone, which to Preacher’s mind was the same thing as slavery.

  And so, he thought, summing it up in his mind, here I am stuck a hundred miles from nowhere, knowin’ what’s goin’ on, and now what am I goin’ to do about it?

  He pondered that for a time, then nodded his head as he came up with a plan. “Might work,” he said. “At least I can give ’er a try.”

  Satisfied with it, he rolled up in his blankets, Hawken close to hand, and went to sleep.

  The next day, he rode into Weasel Tail’s camp and met with the Shoshoni war chief.

  “A terrible thing,” Weasel Tail said, after listening to Preacher. “I will help. Your plan is good one, I think. And you are right about the Pardees disappearing for long periods of time. Now we will eat and smoke and rest.” He smiled sadly at Preacher. “Treachery knows no color or way of life, does it, my friend?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Preacher agreed. “We all got good and bad amongst us. When the time comes, Weasel Tail, you be careful what you agree to with the whites.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Some amongst us are prone to lie.”

  ELEVEN

  Weasel Tail started sending out riders that day. They were to range as far out as they dared, talking to friendly tribes and gathering news of any wagon-train ambushes or of any recently built cabins and settlements being wiped out. Weasel Tail said his riders would be back when they would be back. Time was not that big a deal for an Indian.

  Preacher expected the wagon train to make no more than five or six miles a day at best. Ten days, he figured, to that miserable spot somebody had conned them into taking.

  Then Preacher leveled with Weasel Tail about the final destination of the wagon train. The war chief was neither angry nor surprised. Instead, he smiled.

  “We have known that for weeks, Preacher,” Weasel Tail said. “Some of my people slipped close to the wagons one night and listened to the men and women talk.”

  “They took a chance,” Preacher told him.

  “Not without someone of your caliber there,” the war chief replied, with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “You know where I’ll be,” Preacher told his friend. “As soon as you get some news, let me know.”

  As Preacher rode the land, he w
as once more reminded that this part of the country was not his favorite by a long shot. He never could figure out exactly what this country was good for. And he hoped that when the members of Weller’s party got themselves a good taste of it, they’d see the folly in staying and either push on west or turn around and go back home.

  But it was a faint hope and he was fully aware of that. He was beginning to understand the mentality of movers.

  Preacher reined up and studied the land for a moment, looking all around him. Then he smelled dust. He and Hammer went immediately into a ravine. Ground-reining the horse, Preacher slipped from the saddle and climbed up the bank and sought a little cover behind a bush that was growing tenaciously in the rocky soil. That was the only thing that prevented his head from being exposed.

  It was a small war party of Utes, and they had them a couple of prisoners. Preacher knew from experience that the Utes could be real inventive when it came to torturing prisoners. But from where he squatted, he couldn’t see any way in hell he could help them poor men lashed to their saddles. Then he watched as the Utes stopped and swung down off their ponies.

  “Hell,” Preacher muttered. “They’re gonna do the deed right in front of me.”

  There were six Utes, all young braves, a couple of them just into manhood, it looked like. None of them had rifles or pistols. Two carried long lances, the rest bows and arrows. All had war axes.

  Preacher stared hard at the prisoners. He didn’t know either of them. They looked and dressed like pilgrims. With a sigh, Preacher knew he just couldn’t squat back behind a skinny bush and watch two white men get tortured to death. The screamin’ and hollerin’ tended to get on a person’s nerves. So that left only two options: leave or fight.

  He slipped back to Hammer and fetched his other two charged pistols, checking them carefully and hoping they wouldn’t misfire when he most desperately needed them. He rubbed Hammer’s nose and whispered to the animal, calming the big horse and taking comfort from him.

  “I’m a-fixin’ to stick my nose into the fire ag’in, Hammer. Way I see it, I ain’t got no choice in the matter. Goddamn pilgrims is gonna be the death of me yet. So you just rest for a time and be here when I get back.”

  Preacher slipped up the ravine until it narrowed down to nothing. He crawled on his belly for a few yards until coming up behind another skimpy bush. There would have been nothing to this in the lushness of the real wilderness, with thick stands of timber and growth aplenty.

  He peeked around the scrub bush and saw smoke beginning to rise. These young Utes were fixin’ to have themselves a high ol’ time with the prisoners. Probably going to start out by burnin’ the feet of the men. That way even if the men did get loose, they couldn’t run away. The backs of the Utes was toward him, so Preacher closed the distance by a few more yards, then a few more as a wild shriek of pain tore from the throat of one of the captives.

  “Hell with this,” Preacher muttered, coming up on one knee and leveling the Hawken. He let a ball fly. The big ball caught one buck in the center of his back and the brave pitched forward, landing with his face in the fire. His hair caught on fire and sent up a fearful odor.

  Preacher dropped his rifle and jerked out two pistols, running toward the momentarily confused scene. One older Ute, reacting faster than the others, quickly notched an arrow and let it fly. It missed Preacher by a good foot and he never stopped his running charge. He let a pistol bang. The ball struck the buck in the hip and turned him around, knocking him to the ground. He pulled the trigger of the second pistol and it misfired. Preacher added some pretty fancy cussing to the wild hollering of the Utes and jerked out the last brace of pistols, knowing that he was in real trouble now. There were four pissed-off Utes standing facing him, and he had two charged pistols.

  One of the men all trussed up kicked out with his bare feet and caught a Ute behind his knees, knocking the buck to the ground. A brave with a lance in his hands and a scream on his lips charged Preacher. Preacher gave him a ball of lead at nearly point-blank range and the Ute’s chest was suddenly smeared with blood. An arrow missed Preacher’s head by inches and Preacher gave that brave his last ball. The shot knocked the Ute down, but didn’t kill him right off. He lurched to his feet and staggered toward Preacher, a knife in his hand.

  Preacher grabbed up the lance and met the brave, just as the Ute the man had knocked down jumped to his feet. The buck with the knife tried to fake Preacher out, but the mountain man was an old hand at this. Preacher gave him the point of the lance in the belly, driving through. The Ute screamed, dropped the knife, and wrapped his fingers around the shaft of the lance as he sank to his knees.

  Preacher broke the lance off in him and met the two Utes charging him, screaming their rage and hatred at this interloper. Preacher swung the lance like a club and took one out with a wicked blow to the head. He jammed the broken end of the lance into the belly of the last Ute and the Ute fell back, jerking the lance from Preacher’s hands. The last Ute standing faced Preacher with a knife. The trussed-up captives were methodically kicking the hip-shot Ute in the head with their bare feet.

  Preacher could see out of the corner of his eye that the buck was unconscious and would probably not survive the vicious kicks to the head. But the prisoners were plenty mad and scared and taking that out on the Ute’s head. Preacher knew their feelings very well.

  The Ute facing Preacher told him in no uncertain terms what he thought of Preacher. Preacher replied in the warrior’s own tongue that he pretty well felt the same about the Ute, then grinned and added that he felt the Ute looked like a stinking pile of buzzard puke.

  The young Ute lunged and Preacher drew the first blood with his good knife. The wound was not serious, but it did give the brave something to think about.

  The Ute cursed Preacher.

  “You better sing your death song,” Preacher told the war-painted brave.

  The Ute leaped and Preacher’s knife ripped into the brave’s belly as Preacher’s left hand clamped down on the Indian’s wrist and held the knife hand firmly away from him. Preacher twisted the knife, ripping upward with the cutting edge. The Ute’s face grimaced as the pain tore through his guts and the blade finally ripped into the heart. The pain turned to death. Preacher jerked out his knife and let the Ute fall to the bloody and churned-up ground.

  He ran to the trussed-up men and sliced their bonds with the bloody knife. “Grab up a pony and let’s get gone from here. Them gunshots was probably heard by other Utes. How come them Injuns didn’t take your weapons when they overpowered you?”

  “The first bunch did,” the one with the slightly charred foot said. “Then they took off after our partners and left us with this bunch.”

  “How far back?”

  “A good eight to ten miles,” the second man said. “If our friends can find any kind of shelter, they’ll off the savages. I’m sure of that.”

  Some of the tenseness went out of Preacher. The sounds of the shooting would not reach eight miles. Preacher gave the men a longer second look. Pilgrims. Their clothing was store-bought and their hats new. Burned Foot even had him a gold watch on a fancy fob.

  “All right, you boys take it easy. Look around and strip you some moccasins off a dead buck and get you a knife from them. I’ll get my guns and horse.”

  “One of these red savages is still alive.”

  “That’s his problem. Either kill him or let him be. Don’t make no difference to me.” Preacher quickly reloaded and trotted back to Hammer, who was waiting patiently for him in the ravine. “Place is fillin’ up with amateurs, Hammer.” Preacher swung into the saddle. “Seems like all we been doin’ is pullin’ pilgrims out of trouble. It’s gettin’ to be a right wearisome thing.”

  “I cannot find footwear that fits me properly,” Burned Foot complained as Preacher rode up.

  “Well, my goodness!” Preacher told him. “I guess that means we’ll just have to ride right out and find where them Utes tossed your boots, won’t we?
”

  “There is no need for sarcasm,” he admonished Preacher. “We are strangers in this savage land.”

  “I never would have guessed. And the land ain’t savage. It just ain’t worth a damn for nothin’ around here. Mount up. Let’s go find the bodies of your partners.”

  “The bodies?”

  “Yeah. The bodies. If they’re still alive, I’ll eat a raw skunk. Let’s go.”

  Preacher turned Hammer’s head and rode off, not waiting to see if the men were following. The trail left by the Utes was plain as the nose on a man’s face, and he figured even a pilgrim could follow it.

  The men caught up with him and Burned Foot said, “There are dead people back there.”

  “Do tell? What about them?”

  “Well, it’s the Christian thing to bury them, wouldn’t you say? I mean, they did inflict some horrible pain upon my person, but they are human beings.”

  “I don’t know whether I’m a Christian, or not. But if you want to bury ’em, you can just ride on back there and start diggin’.”

  The two men thought about that for a moment and said no more about it. “What were you doing out this way, sir,” the second man asked. “Exploring?”

  Preacher sighed mightily. He shook his head. “No, pilgrim, I was lookin’ for the man in the moon. Do you two have names?”

  “But of course,” Burned Foot said. “I am Miles Cason and this is my best chum, George Martin.”

  Preacher looked at him. Chum? “Pleased, I’m sure.”

  The two men waited. And waited. Finally, George said, “To whom do we owe our lives, sir?”

  “Your mamma and daddy, I reckon.”

  “My foot hurts like the devil!” Miles said.

  “What is your name, sir?” George asked.

  “Preacher.”

  “Preacher?”

  “Yep. Just Preacher. See the smoke over yonder, boys?” He pointed. “Did y’all have wagons?”

  “Yes. Two of them. To carry our supplies. We’re out here hunting gold.”