Not surprisingly, Falcon asked if he could go along, too.
“You wouldn’t let me go with you when you and Preacher headed south to the border country earlier this year,” the youth said. “You claimed it would be too dangerous.”
“And it was,” said Jamie. “Didn’t I tell you about all the trouble Preacher and I ran into down there?”
“Sure you did.” Falcon’s eyes shone with excitement. “I wished I could have been there with you. I could’ve given you a hand.”
Jamie grunted. “Or gotten yourself killed, more likely, and then what would your ma have thought of me for letting that happen? Shoot, boy, I wouldn’t have been able to come home for fear of being scalped!”
“Are you saying this trip’s going to be just as bad?”
Sitting in an armchair with his long legs stretched out in front of him on the other side of the parlor, Preacher drawled, “We’re talkin’ about messin’ with the Blackfeet. To my way of thinkin’, yeah, they’re as bad as the Apaches. Probably worse. Did I ever tell you about the time they—”
“Yes,” Jamie and Falcon said in unison.
Preacher chuckled. “Well, it’s a good story.”
“Anyway,” Jamie continued, “you’re not going, Falcon, and don’t even think about trailing us because you figure we won’t send you back. I’ll deliver you back here myself if I have to. It’s been five years since those folks disappeared. A few more weeks aren’t likely to make much difference now.”
“One of these days I’ll have adventures of my own,” Falcon muttered. “You just wait and see.”
“I will,” Jamie said patiently. To be honest, he didn’t believe it would be too many more years before Falcon was off having those adventures he talked about. The youngster was eager to leave the nest.
Falcon was older already than Jamie had been when he started learning how to survive on the frontier. Of course, that hadn’t been his own choice. The Shawnee war party that had attacked his family’s farm had had something to do with Jamie Ian MacCallister growing up in a hurry . . .
The next morning, with bags and baskets of Kate’s delicious home cooking to give them a good start on their way, the eight men, sixteen horses, two pack mules, and one dog left MacCallister’s Valley and started toward Fort Laramie.
Until a few years earlier, Jamie and Preacher both knew, it had been a trading post called Fort John. Then the army had bought it and transformed it into a military outpost, the farthest one west. Soldiers stationed there protected immigrants on the Oregon Trail and tried to keep the Indian threat under control.
They had been successful in that, to a certain extent, but Preacher doubted if anybody would ever succeed in controlling the Blackfeet. He said as much to Jamie as they rode along with Colonel Sutton on a beautiful late summer day, out in front of the party of dragoons.
The officer said, “Surely you don’t mean we’ll have to wipe out the entire tribe in order to pacify them.”
“Based on all the dealin’s I’ve ever had with the varmints, I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Preacher. “I ain’t sure they’re capable of anything other than hatin’ and wantin’ to kill all of us. Of course,” he mused, “to their way of thinkin’, they’re in the right. They were willin’ to be friendly, startin’ out. It was a white man who shot one of them and made ’em all enemies.”
“But good heavens, that was forty years ago!” Sutton exclaimed. “And from what I’ve heard of the story, it was just a tragic misunderstanding.”
“That’s as may be,” said Jamie, “but the Blackfeet don’t see it that way. We were in the wrong, they were in the right, and that’s the way it’ll always be.”
“And that justifies them committing all sorts of atrocities and murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent men, women, and children in the decades since then?”
Jamie’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I’m not defending them, Colonel, just telling you how they think . . . as much as a white man can grasp it.”
“Well . . . I hope we don’t have to wipe them all out in order to achieve peace. That would be a terrible thing.”
Preacher and Jamie nodded in agreement.
Later that afternoon, when the group had stopped at a creek to let the horses and men rest for a short time, Preacher sauntered over to Jamie, tugged at his earlobe, and rasped his thumbnail along his beard-stubbled jawline.
“I know when there’s something on your mind, Preacher,” Jamie said to the mountain man. “Spit it out.”
Preacher took that literally, turning his head to spit on the ground before he said, “We got us a shadow, back there on the trail behind us.”
Jamie nodded and said quietly, “Yeah, I know. I spotted him a ways back, probably about the same time you did.”
“You reckon it’s that boy of yours, even though you warned him about not doin’ that very thing?”
“It’s possible,” Jamie said. “Falcon’s stubborn as he can be.”
“Comes by it honest, don’t he?” Preacher asked, grinning.
“Yeah, he sure does. His mother’s the stubbornest woman I ever met.”
“That ain’t exactly what I meant.”
Jamie chuckled. “I’ll admit, I’ve been called mule-headed a few times myself.” He grew more serious. “But if that’s Falcon back there, I’m going to tan the boy’s britches before I take him back home.”
“You’re really gonna do that?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?”
Preacher didn’t respond to that. He didn’t have to. He understood Jamie’s response. Both of them were men who said what they meant and meant what they said.
“There’s another thing to consider, though,” Preacher went on. “What if that fella ain’t Falcon?”
“Then we have somebody on our trail, and I don’t like mysteries.”
“Neither do I. What say I circle around a mite and then drift back a ways? Whoever the varmint is, I ought to be able to come up on him without him knowin’ about it.”
Jamie didn’t doubt that. Preacher’s reputation for stealth was unparalleled, from one end of the frontier to the other.
“If it’s Falcon, he’ll hang back and keep an eye on us but not close in until he figures we’ve gone far enough that I won’t turn back. But if it’s not, whoever it is would likely be watching us closely enough to see you veer off. You’ll need to get ahead of us by at least half a mile before you start swinging back around.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s my plan.”
“If it’s not Falcon,” Jamie said, “it might be a good idea not to kill him if you don’t have to. I wouldn’t mind asking him why he’s following us.”
“I’ll take him alive,” the mountain man promised, “if he’ll let me.”
The two frontiersmen walked over to Colonel Sutton and quickly explained the situation to him, so he would know why Preacher was leaving the group.
“I don’t understand,” Sutton said with a frown. “Why would anyone be following us? There’s nothing about our mission to warrant such a thing.”
“That’s what I figure on findin’ out, Colonel,” said Preacher. “The rest of you just carry on and leave things to me and Dog.”
“I trust you, of course. Good luck, Preacher.”
“Probably be after dark before I get back, so don’t go to worryin’ if I don’t show up for a while.”
Once the party was mounted again and continuing on their way, Preacher gradually pulled out in front on Horse. Dog bounded ahead. The other riders would shield them from the view of the follower.
When Preacher judged he had gotten far enough ahead of the rest, he angled the stallion toward a stand of trees that grew close to the route he was following. In a matter of moments, Preacher, Horse, and Dog had vanished into the trees.
He followed a course through the heavy growth for at least half a mile, then turned back in the direction he, Jamie, and the others had come from. He didn’t go as far, perhaps a quar
ter of a mile, before turning yet again and closing in on the main trail.
When he reached a clump of boulders a hundred yards west of the trail and big enough to hide Horse and Dog, he reined in and swung down from the saddle. Preacher told them to stay and knew they would.
He took off his hat, hung it on the saddle, took a spyglass from his saddlebags, and climbed a big slab of stone. It angled enough that he was able to stretch out just below the top of it. Cautiously, he stuck his head up where he could see the trail and waited.
He hadn’t been there more than five minutes when a rider came in sight, plodding along at a deliberate pace while leading a pack horse behind him. Preacher extended the spyglass and put the lens on the lone rider.
The man’s face sprang into focus through the glass. Preacher knew instantly that it was not Falcon MacCallister following them. The hombre was considerably older, although with the shaggy black beard covering a lot of his face, it was impossible to say how much older. He had a felt hat with a broad, floppy brim crammed on the back of his head. A thatch of dark hair stuck out from under it. He wore a long coat made from buffalo hide, and underneath it was a buckskin shirt criss-crossed by bandoliers of ammunition for the Sharps rifle he carried. With his rugged, formidable looks, he didn’t seem to be the sort of gent anybody would want dogging their trail.
He also struck Preacher as a man who would put up a fight rather than allow himself to be taken prisoner.
They’d just have to see about that.
Preacher slid back down the rock and tucked the spyglass away, then mounted up and set out to follow the follower. He stayed well back and used every trick he knew—which were considerable—to keep the man from spotting him on his back trail.
As far as Preacher could tell, the fella never even checked to see if anybody was behind him. That was confidence—or carelessness.
Jamie and Colonel Sutton knew not to expect him back until after nightfall, so he didn’t get in any hurry. He didn’t close in on his quarry until the sun had set and shadows had started to gather. Letting his instincts guide him, Preacher reined Horse to a stop, slid down from the saddle, and told the stallion to stay put.
“Come on, Dog,” he said quietly to the big cur. The two of them drifted off into the thickening gloom like phantoms.
Preacher dropped to one knee in some brush as he heard something moving around up ahead. A man spoke, but no one answered. More than likely, the hombre was talking to his horse. Men who spent a lot of time on the trail often did that.
Preacher had his hand on the back of Dog’s neck. He leaned over and whispered in the big cur’s ear, “Hunt.”
Dog moved off through the brush, as silent as a shadow.
Preacher waited patiently for Dog to return. That didn’t take long. Dog appeared out of the night and nudged his shoulder, then turned to head back the way he’d come from. Preacher followed, equally silent.
A few minutes later, he carefully parted some brush and peered through the opening. The moon hadn’t come up yet, but millions of stars had winked into life in the sweeping ebony sky overhead, providing enough light for his keen eyes to see the black-bearded man sitting on a log. A few yards away, the saddle mount and pack horse cropped at the grass.
Preacher could tell by the sounds the man was making that he was chewing on some jerky. Not a very satisfying meal, but better than nothing. Preacher supposed the man didn’t want to build a fire for fear of giving his presence away to the group he was following.
The fella probably would have given a lot for a cup of coffee right now, thought Preacher. So would he. Jamie and Sutton and the others would be brewing up a pot in their camp, and it almost seemed like Preacher could smell it.
Preacher pushed that thought aside and shifted in the brush until he was behind the man. Then he slid the right-hand Colt Dragoon out of its holster, looped his thumb over the hammer, and straightened from his crouch as he stepped out of the brush. The sound of him cocking the gun was loud in the night.
“Just sit right where you are, friend, and this here Dragoon don’t have to go off,” he told the man on the log.
Chapter 12
The man sat up a little straighter, but other than that, he didn’t move.
“Take it easy, friend,” he said, using the same word Preacher had but making it sound even more insincere. “You don’t want that gun goin’ off by accident.”
“If it goes off, it won’t be no accident,” Preacher assured him. “How about stickin’ your hands up?”
“Sure, sure.” The man complied with the order. His voice was a little thick and muffled, probably because of the piece of jerky he still had in his mouth.
“Now stand up and turn around.”
The man did so. As he faced Preacher, he chewed a couple of times and then swallowed. “You’ve plumb ruined my supper, you know.”
“I don’t figure I’ll lose any sleep over it. Who in blazes are you, mister, and why are you ridin’ this trail?”
Preacher didn’t say anything about Jamie, Colonel Sutton, and the other soldiers ahead of them. There was a slim chance this man hadn’t been following them and was, instead, just a lone pilgrim headed in the same direction. If that turned out to be the case, there was no need to give him any details about the rest of the party.
“The way you sound, you must consider this trail your own private property,” the man returned in surly tones. “That ain’t the way it works, mister. I got as much right to be here as anybody el—Son of a buck! Is that a wolf?”
Dog had moved up alongside Preacher and pressed against the mountain man’s leg. A low, menacing growl came from the big cur’s throat.
“Well, I can’t rightly say. Bound to be some wolf blood in him, I reckon. You want to see just how wild and untamed he is?”
“Keep that filthy damn beast away from me,” the stranger blustered. He moved back a step, even though Preacher hadn’t told him to. Clearly, the sight of Dog had raised a deep, instinctive fear in him.
“You’d best answer my questions, then,” Preacher said. “Who are you, and what are you doin’ here?”
Just for emphasis, he nudged Dog slightly with his leg, prompting the big, shaggy cur to growl again and lean forward. Dog knew how to play his part well.
Maybe too well, because the man’s nerve suddenly snapped. Instead of babbling the answers Preacher wanted, he let out a harsh, incoherent yell and dived over the log at the mountain man in a mixture of rage and panic.
In that split second, Preacher remembered the promise he’d made to Jamie about bringing the prisoner back alive. That caused him to aim high. The Dragoon’s thunderous boom should have struck fear into any man, but this one was too far gone to be thinking straight. He went low, tackled Preacher around the thighs, and drove him over backward.
Preacher clubbed at the man’s head with the heavy revolver, but the fella jerked aside so the blow landed on the back of his left shoulder. He dug a knee in Preacher’s stomach and got his right hand on the mountain man’s face. He didn’t mind fighting dirty as his fingers clawed at Preacher’s eyes.
Dog snapped and snarled, darted in and then back out without biting because Preacher and his opponent began rolling over on the ground and the big cur couldn’t get a good bite of the enemy. Preacher slashed with the Colt again and the barrel thudded against the man’s head, but it didn’t seem to do much damage. It didn’t slow the varmint down, that was for sure. He continued kicking and punching and gouging. In that buffalo coat, it was like trying to fight a big, hairy, stinking whirlwind.
When they stopped rolling, the stranger was on top again, and had clamped his right hand around Preacher’s throat while his left grabbed Preacher’s wrist to keep him from striking again with the gun. The man was big and powerful and pinned Preacher’s gun hand to the ground. He bore down on Preacher’s throat with all his strength.
But the odds were against him. Dog’s jaws closed on the back of his neck. The man screamed as Dog hauled h
im backward off Preacher.
Preacher rolled to hands and knees and then surged to his feet. A few yards away, Dog snapped at the man, who was still screaming as he flailed his arms around, trying to protect his face and ward off the big cur.
“Dog!” Preacher snapped. “Guard!”
Dog stopped biting and backed off a couple of steps, but his teeth were still bared and he almost quivered with the desire to tear into the man again. A low, continuous growl came from his throat.
“Settle down!” Preacher told the man. “He ain’t gonna hurt you . . . for now.”
The man stopped screaming, but he was breathing heavily as he pushed himself up on one hand and held out the other hand toward Preacher. That hand trembled as the man said, “Keep . . . keep that devil away from me!”
“He won’t bother you none, unless I tell him to. Which is exactly what I’m fixin’ to do if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
“Fine! My name’s Lomax! Roscoe Lomax.”
The name was vaguely familiar to Preacher, although he was certain he and this fella had never crossed paths before. He sorted through his memories for a moment, then frowned and asked, “You a bullwhacker?”
“That’s right. I’ve been out and back on the Santa Fe Trail a heap of times.”
Preacher nodded. “I recall hearin’ stories about you. They wasn’t what you’d call good ones, neither.”
“Some folks are just jealous of me,” muttered Lomax. “On account of me bein’ the best damn bullwhacker on the Santa Fe, and a hell-roarin’ he-bear when it comes to fightin’ and drinkin’ and sparkin’ the gals!”
“Spare me the boasts, old son. Tellin’ me your name is only half of what I asked you. I’m still waitin’ to hear what you’re doin’ in these parts.”
“Ain’t I got a right to be where I want to be? Ain’t this still a free country?” Lomax’s voice rose angrily, but he shrank back a little as his tone prompted a louder growl from Dog. “But I reckon it won’t do no harm to tell you. I’m lookin’ for a man named MacCallister. Jamie MacCallister. And actually, I ain’t really lookin’ for him, because I know where he is.” Lomax inclined his head in the direction where Jamie, Colonel Sutton, and the others would be camped for the night. “He’s up yonder a ways, travelin’ with some soldiers.”
When All Hell Broke Loose Page 8
