Preacher's Fire

by William W. Johnstone

  For the time being, though, Preacher’s best course of action was to cooperate with them. As he always did, he would just keep his eyes open and be ready for trouble at any time. That way, if Cleve tried to double-cross him somewhere down the line, he’d be ready.

  “We’re agreed, then?” Jessie said. “We’ll all work together?”

  “Suits me,” Preacher said. “Just one question . . . what do you plan on doin’ next?”

  Jessie went back behind the desk and sat down, motioning for Preacher to resume his seat in front of the desk. Cleve remained on his feet, still watchful. His hand didn’t stray far from the place where the pistol was tucked away under his coat.

  “How much do you know about Beaumont’s business?” Jessie asked.

  “I know he really owns this place and Dupree’s and a lot of other places in St. Louis,” Preacher replied. “Some of ’em are pretty shady, but some of them are real businesses.”

  Jessie nodded. “That’s right. Does he let you in on his plans?”

  “Nope,” Preacher said with a shake of his head. “He tells me to come with him when he goes somewhere, and I go. That’s it.”

  Jessie clasped her hands together in front of her. “One of the businesses he owns is a cotton brokerage. A riverboat is supposed to dock tomorrow with a load of cotton from New Orleans that’s bound for Shad’s warehouse. But it’s not going to make it. River pirates are going to take it over, run it aground, and steal the cotton.”

  Preacher had run into river pirates before. He knew how cunning and vicious they could be. “These here pirates . . . they’ll be workin’ for you?”

  “Not at all,” Jessie said. “They work for Shad.”

  Preacher frowned. “Wait a minute. He’s gonna steal his own cotton?”

  “That’s right. The cargo is insured, you see. Shad’s men will deliver the cotton to one of his other warehouses here in St. Louis, so he’ll still have the shipment and can dispose of it discreetly, but he’ll collect the value of it from the insurance company, too.”

  “That’s mighty tricky,” Preacher said. “Most robbers I’ve ever heard about just stick a gun in somebody’s face and tell ’em to stand and deliver.”

  Cleve said, “That’s penny-ante stuff. Beaumont operates on a bigger scale than that. At the rate he’s going, he’ll soon be one of the richest men in the entire country, and most of it will have come from ill-gotten gains.”

  “So you plan to stop this riverboat hijackin’?” Preacher asked.

  “That’s right,” Jessie said. “Anything we can do to put a crimp in Shad’s plans . . . is really less than what he actually deserves.”

  Preacher couldn’t argue with that. “What can I do to help?”

  “You go with Beaumont every time he goes out?”

  Preacher nodded. “That’s right.”

  “But on a night like this, where he stays home . . . he didn’t have anything for you to do?”

  “Nope.” Preacher didn’t want to think about the reason Beaumont had stayed home tonight. He could see her for himself, sitting right across the desk from him.

  Knowing what she knew about Beaumont, how could Jessie act around him like she did? How could she—

  Preacher shoved those thoughts out of his mind. The answers to those questions were none of his business.

  “If he was going to be at home tomorrow, maybe he would send you with the men who are supposed to rob the boat,” Jessie mused as she leaned back in her chair. “I can arrange for him to be busy, and you could tell him that you want something else to do, something bigger than just guarding him.”

  “You reckon that would work?”

  “Shad admires ambition . . . as long as he doesn’t think anyone who works for him is getting too ambitious. I think it’s worth a try.”

  “And if I go with those so-called pirates . . . what then?” “We’re going to have men waiting for them,” Cleve said. “Having a man on the inside who could take them by surprise might make it easier to deal with them.”

  “To bushwhack them, you mean,” Preacher said heavily.

  “You can’t very well claim you have some sort of moral dilemma when it comes to killing Beaumont’s men,” the gambler shot back at him. “You’ve done plenty of that yourself.”

  What Cleve said was true, of course, but there was a vital difference, Preacher thought. His previous battles against Beaumont’s agents had been fought out in the open. There hadn’t been any sneaking deception involved.

  But wasn’t something like this exactly what he’d had in mind when he decided on this masquerade? he asked himself. He’d wanted to get on the inside of Beaumont’s organization so he could wreak havoc.

  “I reckon what you’re sayin’ might work, Miss Jessie,” Preacher admitted grudgingly.

  She smiled across the desk at him. “I hoped you’d see it that way.”

  “The fellas who work on the riverboat . . . they don’t know anything about this?”

  “Not a thing,” she said. “And it’s very likely that some of them will be killed when Shad’s men attack the boat. So if you help us ruin his plans, you may well be saving the lives of those boatmen.”

  Preacher couldn’t argue with that conclusion. He gave a grim nod and said, “All right, I’ll go along with that plan. Beaumont may not, though.”

  “I know,” Jessie said. “If he doesn’t, we’ll bide our time and wait for our next opportunity to make use of you. The one thing we can’t afford to do at this point is to make him suspicious of you.” Her lips curved in a smile. “You’re our secret weapon, Preacher.”

  “Just don’t misfire,” Cleve added.

  Preacher’s eyes narrowed as he got to his feet. “Ain’t likely,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” Jessie asked.

  “We’re done here, ain’t we?”

  “I suppose.”

  “There is one more thing,” Preacher said. “I’d like to see—” He started to say “Casey,” then recalled that no one here used that name for her. “I’d like to see Cassandra again before I go.”

  “I’m not sure she’d like that,” Jessie said with a frown.

  “Well, I don’t want to upset her, but I’ve got somethin’ I want to tell her.”

  Jessie thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “All right. I suppose it would be all right. You can knock on her door, anyway, and find out if she’ll see you. However, I don’t know if she’ll be up to—”

  Preacher stopped her with a gesture. “It ain’t about that. I just want to talk to her.”

  “All right.”

  “And you might tell Brutus that we’re all friends again, in case he sees me wanderin’ around the house and decides to use that ol’ blunderbuss on me.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Cleve offered.

  They left the office together after Preacher said good night to Jessie. Once they were in the hallway, the gambler went on in a low voice, “You’d better not be planning on double-crossing us, mister. I can tell you right now, you’ll regret it if you do.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Preacher said. “Just tend to your own rat-killin’.”

  They parted company, Cleve heading for the parlor while Preacher took the rear stairs to the second floor. He found the room where he had been with Casey before and rapped quietly on the door.

  “Who . . . who’s there?” The tentative question came from the other side of the panel.

  “Jim Donnelly,” Preacher said, since that was the name she still knew him by.

  “Oh! Jim.” He heard soft footsteps on the other side of the door. “I . . . I don’t think I feel up to seeing you right now, Jim.”

  “I just want to talk to you for a minute,” Preacher said.

  “Really, I—”

  “Won’t take long.”

  She sighed. “All right. But wait just a minute.”

  He stood there in front of the door as a few seconds passed. Then Casey told him, “You can come in now.
”

  He twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was dark, and when he saw that, he knew that’s what had caused the delay. She had blown out the lamp so that he couldn’t get a good look at her. He could barely see her standing on the far side of the room.

  Preacher closed the door, shutting out the light from the corridor. “Casey, you don’t have to worry about what you look like,” he told her. “Not with me. It ain’t your fault, what Beaumont done to you.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I . . . if I hadn’t been with him.”

  “Well, now, you didn’t have a whole heap o’ choice about that, now did you?”

  “No,” she whispered. “None at all.”

  “So, like I said, it ain’t your fault. It’s that bastard Beaumont’s fault, and I’m here to promise you . . . he’s gonna pay.”

  Her gown rustled as she came closer to him. “But I don’t understand. You . . . you work for Beaumont, don’t you?”

  “Well, that’s a mite complicated.” Obviously, Jessie trusted the girl, or she wouldn’t have brought her into the office and showed Preacher her injuries the way she had. But Preacher wasn’t sure just how far they should trust her. “All I can say is that things ain’t always what they seem.”

  “Are you going to . . . kill him?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see about that.”

  He heard a soft, swishing sound as she came still closer to him. “If you do, Jim, I want you to know that I’ll be so—”

  “You don’t have to say anything else. I just wanted you to know that justice is gonna catch up to Beaumont, sooner or later.”

  “Jim.” She reached out in the darkness and found his arm with her hand, stopping him as he started to turn toward the door. “Jim, you don’t have to go just yet, do you?”

  He felt her lean against him, and as his arms instinctively went around her, he realized the last sound he’d heard had been her robe falling to the floor. Her nude body was soft and warm in his embrace.

  “You’ll have to be gentle with my face,” she whispered, “but as for the rest of it . . . you don’t have to be gentle at all.”

  Chapter 19

  Preacher hadn’t asked Jessie how she was going to keep Beaumont from making his usual rounds the next afternoon. He didn’t want to know.

  But whatever she did—sending word to Beaumont that she wanted to come to his house again that afternoon, Preacher supposed—it must have worked, because shortly after Beaumont rose late in the morning and had a leisure breakfast, he sent for Preacher and told him, “I’m not going to need you until this evening, Donnelly.”

  Preacher put a frown on his face. “Boss, if I’ve done somethin’ that don’t suit you, and that’s why you don’t need me around as much all of a sudden—”

  Beaumont stopped him with a curt gesture and said, “That’s not it at all. I don’t intend to go out this afternoon, and I’m not worried about anyone bothering me here in my own house. If you think I’m going to dock your wages for the time I don’t need you at my side, you can ease your mind about that. I still intend to pay you the same.”

  “Oh.” Preacher nodded but kept the frown on his face. Beaumont didn’t know it, but he had just played right into Preacher’s hands. “No offense, boss, but I ain’t sure I like bein’ paid when I ain’t doin’ anything to earn those wages. That ain’t the way I was raised. You got anything else I could do to help out?”

  Beaumont took a sip of the brandy-laced coffee he had at the end of every breakfast and began impatiently, “No, you can do whatever you—Wait a minute.” A thoughtful look appeared on his face. “You’ve done very well at your job, Jim. Would you be interested in perhaps trying something other than being my bodyguard?”

  Preacher gave a nonchalant shrug, but he allowed interest to flicker in his eyes. “I’ll do whatever you say, boss. I always figured to move up in the world, though.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Beaumont said with a laugh. “I have some men doing a job for me this afternoon, and I can always use another good man to help out. Plus, it might not hurt to have someone else there to look out for my interests. There are a lot of men who are willing to work for me, but that doesn’t mean I can fully trust all of them.”

  Again, Preacher had an uneasy suspicion that Beaumont had seen through his ruse and was just toying with him. That was one more reason Preacher didn’t like this damned playacting. He preferred to have everything out in the open, so that he always knew where he stood.

  Beaumont seemed to be completely sincere, though, so Preacher nodded and said, “You say the word, boss, and I’ll be glad to take care of whatever chore it is you got for me.”

  “Excellent. You go down to Red Mike’s and find a man named Dugan. Tell him I said that you’re to go along on the job this afternoon.”

  Preacher nodded again. “Red Mike’s. Dugan.” He didn’t like the idea of paying a visit to that particular waterfront dive, since he had patronized it on previous visits to St. Louis. He looked totally different now, though, and he would try to disguise his voice a little as well.

  “Oh, and Jim,” Beaumont said, “you’d better take a rifle with you, and an extra pistol as well.”

  Preacher let a grin spread slowly over his rugged face. “Sounds to me like there’s gonna be some excitement.”

  “Well, let’s put it this way,” Beaumont said. “I don’t think you’re going to be bored.”

  Then, as Preacher turned away, Beaumont added something under his breath that he would have just as soon not heard.

  “And as soon as Jessie gets here, neither will I.”

  Red Mike’s was the kind of place where a man could get his throat cut, and the only thing anybody would worry about would be not getting the blood on them. Preacher had been there before on previous trips and also with Beaumont. Until a year or so earlier, Preacher had never even heard of Shad Beaumont, and he wouldn’t have guessed that the man owned Red Mike’s. Preacher had always assumed that the red-bearded giant who tended bar there and gave the place its name was the proprietor. It turned out that wasn’t the case, however.

  Preacher tied Horse to one of the hitch rails in the next block. It was possible that one of the regulars at the tavern might recognize the rangy gray stallion and say something about it belonging to the mountain man called Preacher. Of course, there were a lot of gray horses in St. Louis, and without Dog around, and without his buckskins and beard, Preacher thought there was a good chance he could continue pulling off the pose as Jim Donnelly.

  With his long-barreled flintlock rifle cradled under his arm and a pair of double-shotted pistols tucked behind his belt, he walked into Red Mike’s. All the guns didn’t draw a second glance. Even at midday like this, the windowless place was gloomy inside, lit only by several candles. The air was heavy with the mingled smells of smoke, unwashed flesh, stale beer, whiskey, piss, and puke.

  In other words, it smelled like civilization to Preacher.

  He was used to it, though, or at least as used to it as he was going to get, so he ignored the stench and went to the bar, which was nothing more than rough-hewn planks laid across whiskey barrels. With a nod to the hulking, redbearded figure on the other side of the boards, Preacher said, “Howdy, Mike. Dugan around?”

  “Who’s askin’?” Red Mike rumbled. Then he squinted at Preacher and went on, “Oh, yeah, you’re that new fella who works for Mr. Beaumont.” The bartender’s attitude changed subtly. Beaumont commanded respect, and to a lesser extent, so did the men who worked for him. Mike jerked a thumb toward a door at the back of the room. “Back yonder.”

  “Obliged,” Preacher said with a nod.

  Several men stood at the bar with cups of whiskey or buckets of beer in front of them. A few others were at the tables scattered around the tavern. The place would be busier later on. There weren’t even any serving girls in here now to deliver drinks and let themselves be pawed by the rough, drunken patrons. None of the men paid any attention to Preacher as
he walked past, heading for the room at the rear of the building.

  He opened the door and walked in without knocking. Instantly, the four men sitting at a rickety table passing around a bottle turned toward him and lifted pistols, cocking the weapons as they rose.

  Preacher’s instincts told him to duck back out the door and start blazing away with his own guns, but he checked the impulse and managed to just look startled instead.

  “Take it easy there, boys,” he said. “I ain’t lookin’ for trouble.”

  “What are you lookin’ for?” one of the men asked. He was an ugly, lantern-jawed man with black hair under a tattered coonskin cap.

  “I was told to ask for a fella name of Dugan.”

  “And who told you that?” Coonskin Cap demanded.

  Preacher smiled thinly, but his eyes remained cold. “I reckon if you’re Dugan, you know the answer to that as well as I do.”

  Coonskin Cap studied him intently for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah, this is the fella that Beaumont told us to look for. Put your guns away.” As he lowered the hammer on his own pistol and slid the weapon behind his belt, he went on, “I’m Dugan.”

  “Donnelly,” Preacher introduced himself. He hadn’t known that Beaumont was going to tell the men he was coming.

  “Yeah, I know.” Dugan waved a bony hand at the other three men. “This is Wilkins, Schrader, and Troy.”

  Preacher nodded to them. He didn’t want to seem overly friendly.

  And the truth was, he didn’t feel the least bit friendly toward these men. They were about to go out and attack a riverboat and probably murder some of the crew members, as well as helping Beaumont swindle an insurance company. Preacher had heard vaguely of insurance, and while he didn’t fully grasp the concept of it, it seemed a little like a swindle to him, too. But not as bad as the sort of things Beaumont did, that was for sure.

  Reminding himself that he wasn’t supposed to know anything about a riverboat or a shipment of cotton, he said, “The boss didn’t tell me what we’re doin’ this afternoon. I supposed one of you fellas would explain it to me.”