Preacher found the highest spot around and started scanning the terrain. The outlaws showed up quicker than he anticipated. Six of them, riding those fine mounts and keeping their eyes on the trail left by the escaping women. Preacher worked his way back to the group and smiled.
“They’re ridin’ right into it,” he told the group. “Let them get close in enough to see their eyes. Fire on my command. Get set.”
Bedell’s outlaws never knew what happened. Twelve rifles roared suddenly as one and the men were literally torn from their saddles and hurled to the ground, great bloody holes in all of their chests.
Preacher and Rupert jumped into the saddle to gather up the spooked horses of the dead trash while Eudora and the others made damn sure the outlaws were dead. One wasn’t quite dead. Brigitte cut his throat with no more emotion than scalin’ a fish.
“Son of a bitch!” she spoke the only eulogy the man would ever get.
The ambush netted the group six fine horses and more supplies, blankets, and ground sheets. They had powder, shot, lead, and molds. They also now had more weapons than they could possibly use. Preacher checked them all carefully and used part of the canvas taken from the abandoned wagon to wrap them and lash the guns on a packhorse.
“When we finally make our stand,” he told the women, all gathered around, “we’ll load ’em all up and have more firepower than Bedell. I hope. But I can’t help but believe he’s got more men a-waitin’ up ahead.”
“He does,” Maude confirmed Preacher’s suspicions. “I overheard men talking about that more than once. But the second group is days ahead of the wagon.”
“Where?” Preacher asked.
“I don’t know the precise spot. Just that they would be waiting at the spot where the wagons cut north.”
“That’s a long way from here,” Preacher said. “I know ’xactly where it is. We got time to cut the odds plenty more before then.”
“I can hardly wait,” Brigitte said, wiping her knife clean on her britches.
When his men had not returned by dusk, Victor Bedell felt the first seed of doubt enter his mind. He had now lost eleven men to Preacher, and they were still days away from the rendezvous point. Including Jack Hayes and the two thugs with him, Bedell was down to forty men and the twenty women he’d personally recruited for this journey. Savage bitches, he thought. In many ways, they had blacker hearts than most of the men who rode with him. They were vicious, coarse, and cheap . . . but what did you expect? Angels?
Bedell made up his mind. They would have to abandon some of the wagons. He just didn’t have the men and women to drive them all and still keep outriders looking for hostiles. And they would have to abandon some of the mules. Bedell hated mules anyway. He’d hated them since the time one had kicked him clear over a fence when he was a boy. And they would have to abandon some of the supplies; Bedell had sense enough to know that he couldn’t afford to overload the wagons, for he’d heard that this trail turned into a hard one later on.
He hated to leave the barrels of flour, salt pork, and sugar, but he would be more than happy to leave the feed for those goddamn mules. He hated mules.
Preacher sat his saddle and stared at the dozen wagons sitting motionless on the trail. The mules were still hitched up to them. He couldn’t figure that. If Bedell had abandoned the wagons—and it sure looked like that’s what he done—the least the sorry bastard could have done was unhitch the poor critters and let them fend off the land. It was late in the afternoon and had turned hot. The wind was kicking up a lot of dust.
“Stay put until I scout this out,” Preacher told the group, stowing away his spyglass. “Them damn wagons might be filled with riflemen. But the way them mules are fidgetin’ and sufferin’ down there, I doubt it. They smell that river and want a drink bad.”
Preacher slipped down to the unexposed side of his horse and circled the wagons a couple of times, studying the strange scene by looking under his horse’s neck. The mules sure appeared glad to see another living creature, even if it was nothing more than a damn horse.
Preacher slid off his horse at a run and rolled under the rear wagon, his pistols at the ready. But he could tell the wagons were void of human life. He quickly inspected them all and waved for the group to come on.
He was unhooking the mules when they rode up. “Take these poor critters to water,” he told them. “Haul back on ’em now, they’re some thirsty.”
He and Eudora and Faith inspected the wagons and found fodder for the mules and plenty of food and spare clothing for them all.
“I don’t understand this,” Faith said.
“We cut them down so thin Bedell doesn’t have the men to drive the wagons,” Eudora explained. “Right, Captain?”
“That’s it. But he must be more of a black-hearted son that I thought to leave those poor mules to suffer in harness.”
“I drove mules as a boy,” Rupert said. The statement surprising the hell out of Preacher. “I can fix these harnesses to increase the team size. We can hook the tongues of the spare wagons to the underpinning of the front wagon and only have to use six drivers instead of twelve. That way we’ll still have ample guards out. But I’ve first got to determine which mules are the leaders.”
“Well . . . you just go right ahead, there, Rupert,” Preacher said. “You get them rigged up and we’ll all be back in business, by God.”
“They’re right behind us!” a scout reported to Bedell.
“Who?” Bedell demanded.
“Preacher and a bunch of men!” the excited scout said. “I seen ’em with my own eyes. They’ve hitched up the wagons we left behind and are comin’ on. The wagons are double-teamed.”
“You saw Preacher, probably,” Bedell replied. “But the others are women dressed as men. Preacher double-teamed those goddamn mules because he didn’t have enough people to drive single wagons—just like us.”
“What are we gonna do?” Rat-Face asked. Preacher had accurately pegged the name back in Missouri. Everyone called the man Rat-Face. He looked like a two-legged rat, and was just as vicious and sneaky.
“We’ll not ambush Preacher again,” Jack Hayes said, riding up. “I say we attack.”
“Yeah,” a thug called Tater said. “Just ride right over ’em. We can do it.”
Bedell looked at Tater. The man was not known for his intelligence. For that matter, neither was Jack Hayes. Bedell shook his head. “Our losses would be too great. Even if we managed to succeed, which I doubt we could, our numbers would be cut in half. And then where would we be?” Before anyone else could answer, he said, “I’ll tell you where we’d be. In the middle of hostile country with not enough men to fight off an Indian attack. You want that?”
No one did.
Bedell sat his saddle in silence. He really didn’t know what to do about Preacher. To launch an attack against those behind would be folly. Bedell guessed, and guessed accurately, that Preacher had armed the women well. Each one of them would have six or seven, or more, loaded weapons available. To charge into that would be the end of Bedell’s plans.
No, they would have to hold out until the rendezvous point, then they could deal with Preacher and the women. Bedell twisted in the saddle and looked behind him.
He’d be doing a lot of that before his game was played out.
“Why don’t they attack?” Faith asked. Supper was over and the fire put out before darkness fell. This close to Bedell, there would be no night fires. “I would.”
“I think,” Rupert said, “Bedell has calculated the odds of conducting a successful attack and found them not to his liking.”
“You’re learnin’, Rupert,” Preacher said, lying on his blankets, his head on his saddle. “I took a terrible chance by pullin’ us this close to that trash, but it looks like it worked. Bedell’s worried, and I intend to keep him that way for a few days.” He drank the last of his coffee and tossed out the grounds that remained at the bottom of his cup. “It would still be too risky for me to tr
y anything for a few days. Them outlaws will be shootin’ at the wind.”
“What do we do now?” Brigitte asked.
Preacher rolled up in his blankets. “Go to sleep.” And he did.
Sixteen
At the end of the second day after learning that Preacher and the others were tagging along behind them, a thoroughly disgusted Bedell glared at the scout for that day. “Well?”
“They’s still back yonder,” the man reported. “Just a-ploddin’ along.”
“Did you let yourself be seen as I told you?”
“Yes, sir, Mister Bedell. I showed myself up no more than five hundred yards from the wagons.”
“What did Preacher do?”
“He waved at me.”
“He did what?”
“Waved at me.”
Bedell cussed, loud and long. He’d been doing quite a lot of that the past couple of days. He’d also been toying with the idea of meeting with Preacher and trying to work something out between them. He kept vacillating on the thought, finally giving it up and putting it out of his mind. Having firsthand and quite painful knowledge of Preacher’s volatile temper, Bedell reached the conclusion that even if he called for a gentleman’s agreement, and met the mountain man unarmed, Preacher would probably just shoot him on the spot.
Preacher was little better than a damn savage himself, Bedell thought. Breeding always tells.
“We’ll just push on,” Bedell told his men and women. “And stay alert. If Preacher waits much longer, we’ll have him where we want him.”
Just after dusk, Preacher was belly down in the grass, not a hundred yards from Bedell’s circle of wagons. He had not come to attack, although he would if the opportunity presented itself, but to observe. Just as he had guessed, Bedell had put the women in the center of the camp. No way in hell he could help them while they were located there.
Preacher sensed more than heard movement behind him and to his right. He moved only his eyes. Indians. Kiowa or Cheyenne, probably, and they were moving in closer.
Preacher, he said to himself, now you have really gotten your butt in the pickle barrel.
Preacher waited, motionless. The night had turned cloudy, the stars and moon not visible, and it smelled like rain. Which was why Preacher had decided to visit Bedell’s camp. He now wished he had stayed back in his own camp. He very slowly turned his head to the left. Indians over there, too. Crap!
He wondered if there were any behind him? He surely hoped not. If one of them crawled on top of him it was going to be one hell of a surprise for both of them.
Not to mention damned unpleasant for one of them.
Preacher had left his horse about a mile back, in a deep ravine. He had switched horses for this ride, but nevertheless did not want the fine mount stolen.
Preacher remembered a slight depression about fifty yards behind him. Fifty yards, he thought. Might as well be fifty damn miles with scalp-huntin’ bucks all around him. But he sure couldn’t stay here. He started making like a crawdad; a very slow moving one.
Come on rain, Preacher urged the elements. Start comin’ down in sheets.
Then the clouds shifted and faint moonlight began to illuminate the area.
Son of a bitch! Preacher thought. My medicine sure ain’t no good this night. He kept backing up and much to his surprise reached the protective depression in the earth. He slid down and landed right on top of the biggest and meanest-looking Kiowa brave he had ever seen.
They both jumped back and for about two seconds, Preacher and the brave looked at each other in shock and surprise.
Then Preacher hauled off and hit that Injun just as hard as he could with his fist, right on the side of the jaw.
Didn’t faze that brave. That Kiowa just crouched there on his knees in that big hole in the earth and grinned an evil curving of the lips at Preacher, pure murder in his eyes.
“Oh, hell,” Preacher muttered, just as shots roared from the circled wagons and Preacher reached for his knife.
The Kiowa opened his mouth to scream victoriously and raised his war-axe at the same time. Preacher cut him wide open, from one side of his belly to the other with his big bone-handled knife and then came around again and damn near took the brave’s head off with the next swipe.
Preacher was out of that hole in the ground and moving like he had bees in his drawers. He had always liked to run, and most always won the footraces at the rendezvous. He beat his best record this night. He figured he made that mile to his horse in about six minutes. He was really pickin’ ’em up and puttin’ ’em down. Behind him, Bedell’s men were filling the air with lead balls as fast as they could and probably not hitting a damn thing—Kiowa being what they are.
He got gone from there swiftly. Back in camp, he had things organized in two minutes flat, with every rifle and pistol they had out and loaded and everybody in position.
But the attack never came. The Kiowa probably had their eyes on the larger train and failed to notice the small group of wagons, miles behind. Whatever the reason, Preacher decided his medicine had changed to the good.
Preacher delayed the morning pullout until he had made a wide circle of about two miles all around his camp. There was no smoke from the west, so he reckoned the Kiowa attack had failed. He led the wagons on, making good time, but being very cautious.
The Kiowa had taken their dead with them, of course, but Bedell hadn’t even bothered to take the time to bury his dead men. ’His dead’ not being really accurate. The only dead were four women from the original group.
“That’s Judy Barnes,” Eudora said, standing over one woman with an arrow still in her chest. “I never did learn the names of those two,” she pointed, “but that’s Rosanna there. I don’t know her last name. sorry.”
“Fetch some shovels,” Preacher said, suddenly very weary of it all. These women had come west to start over and make a new life for themselves. Their intentions were good and they’d proved to be a stouthearted bunch of ladies. “Damnit!” Preacher kicked at the ground. “Damnit to hell, anyways!”
The others let him cuss, rant, rave, and stomp around. They knew what was bothering him.
“I ain’t never known it to fail,” Preacher said, winding down. “Ever’ time the damn government tries to do something, they foul it up. Those nincompoops can’t do nothin’ right. And it just keeps on gettin’ worser and worser. They could have checked them women out better. But they didn’t. Hell, I seen right off we had a bunch of whores in the group. Them people in Washington must breathe different air than the rest of us. I read in the newspapers about how people change when they go off up there.” He snatched the shovel out of Rupert’s hand and started jabbing at the earth. “Go find you another one and start diggin’.”
“Yes, sir,” the startled young officer said.
“Don’t call me ’sir.’ I ain’t your daddy. Damn politicians must go total deaf, dumb, and blind when they get elected. They lose all common sense. I was in St. Louie one time and had the misfortune to wander in a meeting hall where they was a senator or representative or somebody trying to be one of them fools was a-talkin’. I swear to God Almighty, that pompous jackass talked longer, used the biggest words, and didn’t say a goddamn thing that made no sense to me a-tall. Somebody would ask him a simple yes or no question and he’d take ten minutes to answer it and when he was through, ever’body was more confused than they was before. And the fool still hadn’t answered the question. But he’d talked so damn long that nobody could remember what the question was in the first place.”
The women had busied themselves digging graves, and even though it was a solemn time, most could not hide the smiles on their lips, for having just come from the settled east, they knew far better than Preacher just how accurate his words really were.
“Goddamn politicians,” Preacher said, flinging dirt every which way. “I started to go for my gun to shoot that loudmouth. Wish I had now.” Preacher paused in his digging. “Come to think of it, I belie
ve that fool was elected President and somebody did shoot him! Or shot at him. Maybe it was a duel. I disremember. News is usually two/three years old time it gets out here. Who the hell is this Martin Van Buren, anyways?”
“He’s a good man,” Eudora said. “For a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Preacher looked up, horrified. “A damn lawyer is president? That’s disgustin’.”
“He is responsible for creating the true and separate Democratic Party,” Rupert said.
“The what?” Preacher asked.
“It’s a political party. Like the Whigs. As a matter of fact, William Henry Harrison is a Whig and he’ll probably be the next president. Van Buren is becoming increasingly unpopular among the people.”
“Why?” Preacher asked.
“Why are you so interested, Preacher?” Cornelia asked. “Do you vote?”
“Kinda hard to find a place to vote out here, Missy. But I have voted a time or two when I was in a village here or there. And then I’ve had other opportunities to vote, but when I seen the caliber of men runnin’ for office I opted not to. Be right interestin’ to see what Congress is like a hundred or so years from now. Be more brayin’ jackasses runnin’ around there than a body could count. Ever’one of them talkin’ out of both sides of their mouth a-tryin’ to please ever’body and even a damn fool knows that’s impossible. So they all end up pleasin’ nobody.”
No one offered to argue that because they all felt it was a valid statement.
For the rest of the time the group worked in silence burying the dead. When that was done, Eudora read from the Bible and the ladies sang a sad song.
“Group sure is gettin’ thinner and thinner,” Preacher said to his horse.
Bedell sent three men out to scout their backtrail. But since Preacher had decided on a late start, and then stopped to bury the women, the scouts did not ride far enough to spot Preacher and the wagons. Instead they mistook a dust cloud for smoke, and raced back to Bedell with the erroneous news.
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