Absaroka Ambush

by William W. Johnstone

  Preacher headed out, a grim smile on his lips. He figured he knew that area ’bout as well as any man and better than most. It was high-up country, in the Absaroka Range, and it was country to Preacher’s liking. Bedell figured that the country was so isolated he’d be safe there. He was wrong. Dead wrong. With emphasis on dead.

  Preacher stayed north of Hell’s Canyon and rode through the Clearwater Mountains, heading for the Bitterroot Range. The nights grew colder and Thunder’s coat began turning shaggy, in preparation for the bitterness of the harsh winter that was only weeks away. Preacher knew he had him a horse that was a stayer and a friend, but there would always be a soft spot in Preacher’s heart for Hammer. He hoped that Man Above had allowed Ol’ Snake to get together with Hammer, so’s they could ride the clouds and the valleys of the Beyond. Ol’ Snake would take good care of Hammer until the day come that Preacher would finally meet up with Man Above.

  Preacher was not a religious man, not in the sense of a Bible-shouter or them that followed the fiery spoutin’ of gospel-thumpers. Preacher had been raised in the Church, but for years now he’d subscribed to the Indian way of thinking. Man Above had created all living things, and all living things that was useful to mankind had them a place up in Heaven. To the Pawnee it was Tirawa that was their principal god. The Cheyenne danced the Massaum, the animal dance, to insure that the earth would remain bountiful—their main god was Wise One Above. To the Cheyenne, the soul was Tasoom. The Sioux, and many other plains tribes, had a dance they called Gazing At The Sun, which they did to help keep troubles from them. The Mandans danced and tortured themselves while doing the O-kee-pa, dressed as animals. To the Indians, and to Preacher, it was stupid to think that animals did not have a place beside Man Above up yonder in the Beyond.

  The beaver was an engineer. The horse and the dog was man’s friend, protector, and worker. Dogs came from wolves so the wolf certainly had a place Up Yonder. Buffalo kept the plains Indians from starving, kept them dressed, and provided material for their tepees, cooking utensils, and weapons. They, too, had them a place, as did the coyote, the bear, the eagle, and lots of other animals. Preacher did have some doubts about whether the rattlesnake would make it to Up Yonder, but he figured that since Man Above had created it, the damn thing had to be good for something. He just hadn’t as yet figured out what that might be. He’d eaten rattlesnake more than once, when pickin’s was slim. They were right tasty, but he wouldn’t want to maintain a steady diet of it. Damn things was hell to catch.

  Preacher stayed just south of the Salmon River and crossed over into the Beaverhead Mountains. He was camping in the Tendoys when the first big snow of the season came. Preacher knew it wouldn’t last, and there would be many more pleasant days before winter locked up the high country, but when he pulled out, he quickened his pace, as much as the terrain would bear.

  He crossed the Divide and headed down for the Tetons, after talking with a hunting party who told him that fifteen or so white men were in the Hole. Unfriendly white men. Quarrelsome and not prone to washing very often.

  With few exceptions, the Plains Indians felt the white man was dirty most of the time ... and they were right more often than not. An Indian would break the ice in a river or pond to bathe, and do it several times a day.

  Preacher was camped along Bitch Creek when he caught the smell of wood smoke, and knew it wasn’t coming from his fire. He took his Hawken and went looking. He grinned when he slipped up on the camp and eyeballed the three men around the fire. He started coughing like a puma and watched as the mountain men jumped up, grabbed their rifles, and started looking all around them. Preacher then howled like a wolf.

  A man known only as Clapper narrowed his eyes as Preacher attempted, unsuccessfully, to contain his laughter. Clapper lowered his rifle in disgust. “Preacher!” he shouted. “Damn your eyes. Come on in here and sit and eat.”

  Clapper’s companions were Joe Morris and Dave Nolan. After swapping some highly profane insults about each other’s character, the men sat down to drink coffee and eat.

  “I heared tell you was surrounded by petticoats earlier this year,” Clapper said.

  “I was. Got most of ’em over to the Valley. Now I’m lookin’ for the men who ambushed the train and killed my good horse.”

  “Hammer’s dead?” Joe asked.

  “Buried him on the plains. You boys seen any signs of life over to the Hole?”

  “Not personal, we ain’t,” Dave said. “But some wanderin’ Flatheads told us they’s a group of damn fools thinkin’ ’bout winterin’ in the Hole.” He chuckled. “I allow as to how I near’bouts froze my butt off that winter me and Russell spent there. Back in ’33, I think it was. We reckoned—without tellin’ no lies ’bout it—it got down to close to seventy-five below at times. Joe Meek wintered in there last year, even after me tellin’ him it was a frozen hell.”

  Preacher nodded his head and was silent. Clapper stared hard at him. “You huntin’ these men, Preacher?”

  “Yeah. I damn sure am.” Then he told the mountain men about Bedell and what was left of his band, ending with, “On top of everything else, they killed Hammer.”

  The trio of mountain men all shook their heads in disgust, Clapper saying, “Me and the boys here would sure be proud to ride along with you, Preacher. Men like that don’t need to be out here.”

  Preacher shook his head. “No. But I thank you boys. This is my show.”

  No one bothered to point out that one against fifteen was really lousy odds. Mountain men had been fighting against odds like that from the first moment a white trapper set foot in the wilderness, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

  Preacher stood up. “I’ll go get my gear and bring it over here.”

  “Then you can tell us all about what it’s like to be surrounded by a hundred and fifty fillies for two thousand miles,” Dave Nolan said.

  Preacher’s eyes twinkled for a second or two. “Not the good parts, boys. Them’s private.”

  Preacher stared out over what was then called Jackson’s Hole. The mountains around the valley—approximately eighty miles long and fifteen miles wide—have been referred to as Teewinot by the Shosoni. Others called them Shark’s Teeth and Pilot Knobs. But the name a French trapper gave them has topped the list and remained constant over the years: The Grand Tetons. Big Breasts.

  Preacher dismounted and squatted down for a time, studying the land below him. He was high-up, just below the timber line to give him some cover. He couldn’t spot any smoke from cookfires, but he hadn’t expected to see any. Bedell wasn’t stupid, just arrogant. And he wasn’t at all certain Bedell and his gang were even in the hole. They might have moved north to the land that thunders and smokes.

  Preacher figured that’s where he’d find most of them. A couple of Shoshoni had told him that the white men had split up, the larger band moving north out of the hole and into the place of haunted spirits.

  If Preacher had his way, and he figured he damn sure would, he’d leave some more spirits up yonder to haunt the place.

  He took his time heading down, staying with the timber whenever possible and utilizing every bit of cover he could find. The temperature, he figured, was in the fifties, with nighttime temperatures in the low-thirties, and snow staying in the high country, melting during the day in the valley.

  Reaching the valley, Preacher stayed away from the scrubby floor and stayed near the base of the slopes, weaving in and out of the timber. He paused often to swing down from the saddle and view his surroundings through his spyglass. Nothing. Then he left the slopes and headed onto the valley, staying to the west side of the Snake River.

  Then he smelled the smoke. He stopped and looked all around him. But he could see no signs of fire. That meant the fire was a small one and built under low branches to dispel the smoke. The men weren’t entirely stupid, he thought.

  He swung down and picketed Thunder. Then he stood for a moment, sniffing the air. Taking his rifle, he headed out on
foot, following the smoke odor as it became stronger.

  He almost blundered straight into the small camp, catching himself just in time. The camp was a good one, well-concealed, with a little lean-to built up against the side of a bluff. The lean-to told him it was a one man camp. But he could see no man.

  Preacher didn’t want to harm some innocent, so he waited for the better part of an hour. He heard one shot, coming from the north, and figured the man had killed him a deer or elk. He made himself more comfortable and waited.

  Sure enough, the man soon came trudging back in, toting the whole carcass. Preacher figured he planned on using the hide and didn’t want to leave none of it behind for the wolves, coyotes, and bears. Although had it been Preacher who made the kill, he at least would have gutted the animal and spared himself some weight.

  The man laid the deer down with a sigh and propped his rifle against the carcass. Then he straightened up, with both hands to the small of his back, and arched backward, sighing with relief, for the deer was not a small one. Preacher stepped out, his Hawken leveled, and the man’s eyes widened in shock.

  “Just stand easy and raise your hands,” Preacher told him. “And I might decide not to kill you. Start makin’ funny moves and I’ll blow your kneecap off and leave you here to die.”

  “I told Bedell you was a devil,” the man said. “I told him you’d not give up. And I was right,” he added bitterly.

  “Where’s Bedell?”

  “Gone north, up into the Absarokas. Him and most of the gang.”

  “How many?”

  “Hard to say and I ain’t lyin’ ’bout that. Half a dozen more finally linked up with us some weeks after the failed ambush in the rocks. They got six of the women with ’em. Lara and Kim died on the trail.”

  “Give me a guess.”

  “I’d say twelve men and the women. They’s five or six others like me who decided to go it alone. Providin’ you let me live, what’s my chances of makin’ the winter here?”

  “Poor to none,” Preacher told him. “If Injuns don’t get you, a grizzly might. If the bears don’t eat you, the weather will more than likely kill you. This ain’t no place for a damn pilgrim. Whereabouts in the Absarokas?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s the God’s truth. Somewheres along the river is all I know. Them Frenchys with Bedell said they knowed a place.”

  Preacher stared at the man for a moment. “When did you join up with Bedell?”

  “I didn’t leave out from Missouri with him, if that’s what you mean. And I didn’t have nothin’ to do with the ambushin’ of the train and the usin’ of the women. I ride the dark trails, I’ll admit that. But I ain’t no rapist.”

  “But I only got your word for that.”

  “That’s true. But I got me a tintype of my mother in my purse. How many outlaws you know would do that?”

  Preacher grunted. “You got you two pistols outside your coat. How many you got inside your coat?”

  “None.”

  Preacher leveled the Hawken, the muzzle straight at the man’s belly. “If you’re lyin’ you’re dead. Drop them pistols on the ground and open your coat.”

  The man did exactly as he was told. He was carrying no other weapon save a knife on his belt.

  “Dress out that deer and fix us something to eat,” Preacher told him, sitting down on a large rock. “You cook me a nice meal and I might just go on and leave you be. I’m a man who ’ppreciates good food.”

  “I’ll fix you a feast!”

  “You better.”

  He did. After Preacher had eaten enough for two men, he belched and wiped his hands on his buckskins. “You missed your callin’, man. You ought to open you a eatin’ place.”

  “You let me go, and I will. I’ll swear on the Bible and my mother’s picture.”

  Preacher thought about that for a moment. “You pack your gear and get gone from here. Take the south trail out of the Hole. They’s a tradin’ post south and some east of here. On the Green. If the Injuns ain’t burned it down, that is. Follow the Green on down and you’ll find the trail back east. West is the cutoff, east is back home. Go back home. Don’t never let me see you west of the Mississippi again.”

  “You’re lettin’ me go?”

  “Git!”

  Fifteen minutes later the man was gone. Preacher had let him take his rifle, his pistols, and a bait of grub.

  Preacher followed the man for a-ways, and then brought his horses in close and cleaned out the lean-to, laying down fresh boughs for his bed. Then he set about jerking some of the venison. He fixed another steak for his supper, hung the meat up high, away from his camp, so’s the bears couldn’t get at it, and lay down to rest, his rifle and pistols at hand just in case the man he’d cut loose had a change of heart. He rested well that night and awakened fresh and ready to go.

  A light snow had dusted the Hole during the night, but Preacher knew it would be gone by midmorning. The sky was blue and nearly cloudless and the sun was bright. He had him another venison steak for his breakfast and stowed his smoked meat, leaving the deer carcass for the animals. They had to eat too. He pulled out, taking the west trail, following Cottonwood Creek up to Jenny Lake. There, he camped for the night, after eating enough fresh caught fish to grow gills. Five miles out of camp the next morning, he smelled smoke, and it wasn’t no little one-man fire, neither. He felt he’d finally come up on the breakaway band of Bedell’s men that the outlaw he’d cut loose had told him about. Checking his rifle and pistols, Preacher set out on foot.

  “Now, by God,” he muttered. “I start riddin’ the land of two-legged vermin.”

  Three

  Preacher approached the outlaw camp cautiously. Hewas already sure that’s what it was, for Indians had told him several times that no trappers were in the Hole or in the land that thunders up north of the Hole.

  Three men and a woman were sitting around the fire. But there were five saddle horses at the picket line. Preacher sank down in the brush and waited. He was not close enough to make out what they were saying, only able to catch a word or so every now and then. They would all laugh from time to time. It was a dirty sort of laughter, followed by a lot of profanity, exactly what he’d expect from the low-life types in the rough camp. Preacher winced at some of the language being spoken. Preacher and his friends were no angels, and they could cuss with the best of them, but the language being used around the fire was of the sewer variety, and the words from the woman’s mouth were just as bad, or worse, as the filth coming from the men.

  When the fifth man finally made his appearance, coming in from the north, Preacher used the noise the man made settling in, as a cover to move in close enough to catch all the words being spoken. The newcomer poured a cup of coffee and sat wearily down with the group. “I went up high,” he said, now Preacher could hear the words clearly. “No signs of anybody else in here with us. No smoke, no movement. Nothing. I think we’re clear.”

  “Curtis’s camp ain’t that far to the south,” a man said. “He’d have smoke from a fire.”

  “I ’spect he pulled out shortly after he left us,” another man offered. “He never did have no stomach for this kind of work. He was a cook back east.”

  “But he killed three people!” the woman protested.

  “He poisoned them,” yet another man spoke.

  Oh, wonderful! Preacher thought. And I et up his cookin’ like a starvin’ hog.

  “Curtis never did like it out here,” the first man said. “He wanted to go back to civilization. Hell with him. I don’t trust no poisoner noway.”

  “You reckon Preacher give up the hunt?” the woman asked.

  “I ’spect he did, Nelly. There ain’t no one man gonna take out after no twenty men alone. I just wish we’d have brung along some of them women we had. I liked to hear ’um holler when all of us started humpin’ ’um.”

  Then the men and the woman started mouthing and laughing about some of the most perverse and vulgar remembrances of t
he kidnapping, and the days and nights that followed. It made Preacher’s stomach churn. He lifted his rifle and ended the foul discussion by putting a ball right between the eyes of one of the men. The outlaw’s head snapped back and for a moment, he had a very odd expression on his face, before his heart told his brain he was dead. Then the man fell forward, face-first into the fire.

  Preacher jerked out his pistols and let them roar just as the outlaw’s hair caught on fire with a flaming whooshing sound. Preacher was now standing up, a pistol in each hand, and he was cocking and firing the complicated weapons as fast as he could. When the pistols had emptied, Preacher stood completely enveloped in a thick cloud of gunsmoke and the campsite was littered with the dead, the screaming, and the dying.

  Preacher shifted positions and reloaded, paying no attention to the howling of the badly wounded. The woman was screaming vile curses at him; the worst language he had ever heard come out of a woman’s mouth. He reloaded his rifle last and then stepped into the clearing. Two were left alive, a man and the woman, and they would not be long for this earth.

  The first dead man’s head had cooked to steaming and it was a dreadful smell. Preacher pulled him out of the fire and rolled the carcass off to one side.

  Nelly, screaming the vilest of curses at Preacher, reached for a gun and cocked it. Preacher quickly leveled a pistol and put an end to the profane shrieking.

  The camp was suddenly very silent. The one mortally wounded survivor lay on the ground, shot twice through the stomach, and stared in silence at Preacher.

  “You got anything to say,” Preacher told him, “I ’spect you better get it said quick-like. ’Cause you sure ain’t long for this world.”

  The last words out of the man’s mouth were horrible curses, all directed at Preacher. Then he gasped, closed his eyes, and died.