“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t know where he is.”
Walter babbled something, and Katarina went on. “Neither does he.”
“Well, we ain’t got time to look for him now,” said Preacher. “Hang on to Walter, and let’s go.” He hurried them toward the trees where the other women had disappeared.
The shooting on the other side of the ridge had stopped. Preacher paused just inside the tree line and looked back at the village as snow continued to fall intermittently. He heard enough noise to know some of the Blackfoot warriors were swarming up the ridge toward where all the gunfire had been going on.
They were headed right toward Jamie, Colonel Sutton, and the rest of the bunch. Preacher knew something bad had happened over there. Either some other warriors had surprised his friends . . . or that blasted Baron von Kuhner had double-crossed them for some reason the mountain man couldn’t understand.
The more he thought about it, the more likely that possibility seemed to him. It was hard to take Jamie MacCallister by surprise, but a man he considered an ally might—just might—have been able to get away with it.
Dog whined at Preacher’s side.
Preacher nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he told the big cur. “We get to round up them women and get ’em to some place safe.”
However, he vowed to himself that as soon as he had done that, he was coming back to find out what had happened, and to give Jamie a hand if there was any way he could.
If he wasn’t too late . . .
* * *
Jamie’s jaw clenched tightly as he heard von Kuhner’s greeting to the Blackfoot chief. Obviously, von Kuhner and Stone Bear knew each other, and the only way that was possible was if the baron had had something to do with the attack on Peter von Eichhorn’s expedition five years earlier.
The idea that von Kuhner could have been a double-crossing snake back then didn’t seem all that far-fetched to Jamie.
For a long moment, Stone Bear just stared at von Kuhner. Tension stretched out the time. The Blackfoot warriors, at least thirty of them that Jamie could see in the firelight, were ready to fight. Rifles were raised to shoulders, and arrows were nocked on bowstrings.
The Prussian soldiers had reloaded their revolvers, though, and were also prepared to go to war.
Jamie and the other prisoners were between the two groups, where any outbreak of hostilities would shred them first.
Stone Bear made a curt gesture to his men, and they lowered their weapons.
Von Kuhner did likewise with the Prussians, and grinned at Stone Bear. “You look well, old friend.”
“We are not friends,” Stone Bear replied. “You traded with us. Gave us guns and supplies to help you betray your own people. We could never be friends, white man.”
Von Kuhner’s jaw tightened angrily, but the baron kept a close rein on his temper. “Then perhaps we can trade again—these prisoners for your assurance that you kept your word to me.”
Stone Bear cocked his head slightly to the side. “My word? I made no promise to you, except to let you live.” The chief sneered. “And here you are, still breathing.”
“You said those prisoners I turned over to you would lead short, painful lives with the Blackfeet. You were supposed to kill them after you’d kept them as slaves for a while!”
Stone Bear regarded him solemnly for a couple of seconds, then shrugged. “They are good slaves. Why would I kill them? You may have believed that would be their fate, but I never promised you that would happen.”
“We had a bargain—”
“And again, I kept my end of it. You are alive.”
Colonel Sutton leaned closer to Jamie and whispered, “Are you hearing all this?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Von Kuhner was behind that attack five years ago! From the way he’s talking, he even took part in it.”
Jamie nodded and said quietly, “Yeah, that’s the way it sounds to me, too.”
The baron continued to Stone Bear. “When rumors reached me that white captives had been seen in this region, I believed they could not be true. I knew all the prisoners I left with you should have been dead long before now. But I had to be sure. That is why I’ve come here. And now you tell me . . . that it is true? They still live?”
“Not all of them,” replied Stone Bear. He looked like he was getting annoyed. “All the women are alive, and two of the men.”
“Von Eichhorn?” The sharp tone of von Kuhner’s voice as he asked the question made it clear which of the captives was most important to him.
“Dead,” Stone Bear said flatly. “Long ago.”
Von Kuhner nodded, clearly relieved. “Good. Then he will never stand in the way of my ambition. All the others must die, too. I cannot take the chance that any of them might ever return to Prussia and tell the truth of what happened.”
“You cannot tell me what to do, white man,” Stone Bear snapped. “I am the chief here. My word is what will be done.”
“Then let me have them, and I’ll take care of it myself.”
A shrewd look came over Stone Bear’s face. “And what will you give me in trade if I return the captives to you?”
“More captives,” von Kuhner answered instantly with another wave of his sword toward Jamie and the other prisoners. “All these white men to torture and kill. They will provide great sport for you and your people. They are soldiers, the sort of men who, sooner or later, will come out here to wage war on you and your people and drive you from your land.”
Stone Bear let out a contemptuous snort. “That will never happen! The whites cannot conquer the Blackfeet, no matter how many soldiers they send.”
Stone Bear might want to believe that, thought Jamie, but it was pretty unlikely. There weren’t enough Blackfeet, or enough warriors from all the other tribes, to win in the long run. Eventually, they would all be vanquished and civilization would stretch all the way from one side of the continent to the other.
Whether or not that was a good thing was open for debate, and honestly, Jamie didn’t know which side of the argument he would come down on.
Not that any of that mattered. The only important thing at the moment was the dangerous predicament he and his surviving allies found themselves in.
As that thought crossed his mind, he wondered about one of his allies in particular.
“Preacher,” he muttered to himself, “where in blazes are you?”
Chapter 36
Preacher had to take hold of Katarina’s arm to guide her through the dark forest. She gripped Walter’s hand with her other as they followed Dog, who picked out a path for them with his keen-eyed gaze.
“Dog, find them other ladies,” Preacher ordered in a whisper. “Find!”
The big cur’s nose dropped lower to the ground as he searched for the scent.
“Who are you?” Katarina asked Preacher, keeping her voice down so it couldn’t be heard very far off.
“A friend,” he told her. “Call me Preacher. I’m here with some other fellas who’ve come to get you away from them Blackfeet.” He didn’t add that some of those other men probably were dead now, based on the shooting he had heard on the other side of the ridge.
Not Jamie, though. He couldn’t imagine Jamie MacCallister being dead, no matter what kind of low-down double cross Baron von Kuhner might have pulled.
Preacher indulged his curiosity and asked Katarina, “Do you happen to know a gent name of Adalwolf von Kuhner? Calls hisself a baron?”
A sharply indrawn breath told him she recognized the name, all right. “That man—” she started to exclaim.
Dog stopped short and made a little noise in his throat.
Preacher heard somebody else draw in a quick, deep breath and figured whoever it was planned on screaming. He let go of Katarina’s arm and sprang forward. When he bumped into somebody in the darkness, he reached out to where he thought the person’s head ought to be, and clapped his hand across the woman’s mouth before she could mak
e a sound.
“Don’t yell!” he told her. “I won’t hurt you. You’re all right. Katarina, tell them—” He hung on tightly as the woman in his grip struggled to get free. Those struggles came to an end as Katarina loosed a swift torrent of German words.
“If I let go of you,” he said to the woman he held, “you promise you won’t start caterwaulin’?”
Katarina hesitated a little over the unfamiliar word then figured the essence of it and translated that, too.
After a moment Preacher felt the woman nod and took his hand away from her mouth, hoping she would remain quiet. When she did, he unwound his other arm from around her waist.
“Are they all here?” he asked Katarina. “Did they manage to stay together?”
She spoke, and a chorus of voices answered. Turning to Preacher, Katarina said, “They’re all here.”
“Are any of ’em hurt?”
Again, German words went back and forth. To Preacher, most of it sounded like somebody clearing their throat, but he supposed it all made sense to the women.
“Marion and Ingeborg tripped and fell while they were running,” reported Katarina. “They’re shaken up, but not actually injured.”
“Well, that’s good. Gettin’ you gals outta that Blackfoot village without anybody gettin’ killed or even hurt bad is a heap more luck than we had a right to expect.” Of course, they were still a long, long way from being safe, he thought, but he kept that bleak assessment to himself.
The fleeing women had stopped in a small hollow ringed by trees. Some of them were still panting as they tried to catch their breath after their desperate flight.
Preacher could make out their vague shapes as they stood nearby. “All y’all sit down and rest for a spell. Dog’ll let us know if any varmints come skulkin’ around.”
“You speak very . . . colorfully,” Katarina told him before she translated what he had just said.
Preacher chuckled. “I never had much education, except in the school of stayin’ alive.”
“The most important lesson of all.”
“Most of the time, yeah. You and Walter sit down and rest, too.”
“What about the Blackfeet? Their village is still very near.”
“I reckon they’re busy with other things right now.” Preacher had a hunch Stone Bear and his warriors had hurried over the ridge to find out what all the shooting was about over there. It was possible the captives’ escape hadn’t even been discovered yet.
Meanwhile, he wanted to take advantage of this brief respite to maybe clear some things up. “A few minutes ago, when I mentioned Baron von Kuhner, you acted like you recognized the name,” he said to Katarina.
“Of course I recognize the name. That monster!”
Standing so close to her Preacher felt a shudder go through her. “I ain’t arguin’. I never cared for the fella, myself. But you’re gonna have to explain why you think he’s a monster.”
“Because he’s responsible for the deaths of many innocent people . . . and for the five years of hell the rest of us have gone through!”
That was enough for Preacher’s nimble brain to make a leap of logic. “Von Kuhner was to blame for your bunch gettin’ jumped by the Blackfeet all those years ago,” he guessed.
“Worse than that.” Katarina drew in a breath. “He and men working for him . . . mercenaries with no loyalty to anyone except him . . . actually carried out the attack. They slaughtered many of our companions and then handed the rest of us over to Stone Bear.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“I know our original captors were white men.” Quickly, she filled him in on the chain of events, starting with the attack on their camp and ending with their five years of captivity in Stone Bear’s village.
“I knew there was something familiar about the voice of the man who spoke to me while I was blindfolded. Finally, it came to me where I had heard it before. I had met Adalwolf von Kuhner several times in the past at various parties and functions.”
“You were friends?” asked Preacher, astonished.
“No! Never friends. Mere acquaintances.” Katarina shuddered again. “The man is a brute and a boor. One time, he made a very improper suggestion to me—Never mind. I am certain he was the one responsible for what happened, even though I never actually laid eyes on him that time.”
“I’ll take your word for it. He seems like the sort of hombre who’d do somethin’ like that.”
“But I do not understand,” said Katarina. “You say he came to this place . . . with you? Why would he do that?”
Preacher explained how the government of the German Empire had requested aid from the United States in finding out what had happened to Peter von Eichhorn’s party, and how the expedition headed by Colonel Finlay Sutton had come to Blackfoot country.
“But that makes no sense,” Katarina protested. “Von Kuhner would never want us found. That would ruin all his plans, the reason he wanted us dead in the first place. He is ambitious and believes that he should sit on the throne someday. Peter would have stood in the way of that, so von Kuhner seized the opportunity—our trip to America—to get rid of him.”
The theory she had just laid out made sense to the mountain man. He speculated. “Von Kuhner must have figured that, even though you were still alive when he turned you over to Stone Bear, you wouldn’t live very long as slaves of the Blackfeet. If those rumors of white captives in these parts reached him, he could’ve gotten worried and figured he’d best find out for sure who was still alive . . . and dispose of you for good.” Preacher shook his head. “No offense, but it would’ve made a heap more sense for him to make sure all of you were dead the first time, instead of countin’ on Stone Bear to finish the job for him.”
“But you see, that is exactly the sort of vicious cruelty I would expect from Adalwolf von Kuhner. He wanted those of us who survived the initial attack to suffer greatly before we died. Especially the ladies. I’m certain I’m not the only one who ever rejected his crude advances. And Peter, who was his real target, did in fact die less than twenty-four hours after we reached the Blackfoot village.”
“Sounds like von Kuhner’s even worse ’n I figured he was.”
“He is a monster,” Katarina said again. “If I ever get the chance, I will kill him myself.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Preacher said. “I’m more interested in gettin’ you ladies outta here, and in findin’ out what happened to my friends. It’s lookin’ more and more like all that shootin’ we heard a little while ago was von Kuhner double-crossin’ ’em.”
“Yes, he’s certainly capable of that.”
“So now that you’ve rested a spell, we’re gonna start workin’ our way along this ridge, and then we’ll go up and over it and look for a place the rest of you can hole up while I come back and find out what happened.”
Katarina clutched his arm. “No! You must keep us with you. You . . . you cannot leave us alone.”
He felt her trembling again.
“You do not know how hard I have worked . . . how difficult it was . . . to keep all the others alive . . . to keep them from giving up . . .” She sobbed a broken little sound.
Preacher put his arms around her and drew her tightly into a comforting embrace. He patted her on the back and said quietly, “You’ve done just fine, ma’am. You’ve done more ’n anybody could’ve ever expected from a . . . a . . .”
“A spoiled, pampered countess?” She laughed a little through her tears and hugged him around the waist. “It’s all right. I . . . I know what most people would think of me, especially you egalitarian Americans.”
“I don’t rightly know what that word means,” he told her, “but this is one American who thinks you’ve done a mighty fine job of survivin’. Now you’ve got to do it for a while longer, because I don’t plan on lettin’ that skunk von Kuhner get away with what he’s done.”
“No. He cannot get away with it. If we need to hide so you can go after
him, I . . . I suppose we can do it.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Preacher. “Come on.”
* * *
The snow had started to fall harder while they were talking. Clouds of the white stuff swirled in the air, began to pile up in places on the ground, and catch in the branches of the trees.
That was all right with Preacher. It would serve as a distraction for the Blackfeet and also help hide the tracks he and the ladies and Walter left as they tramped through the forest with Dog in front of them on the scout for trouble.
The weather might be a problem in other ways, though. Since they’d been asleep under bearskin robes, the ladies had dashed out of that lodge dressed only in buckskin dresses, and without the leggings and moccasins they usually wore. Their bare feet were in danger of freezing, and the rest of their bodies would be chilled clear through. At the very least, he needed to find a spot where they would be out of the wind.
Worry over the fates of Jamie, Colonel Sutton, and the others—even Roscoe Lomax—gnawed at Preacher’s mind. He wasn’t given to brooding, so it didn’t distract him from what he needed to do, but the feelings were still there.
There hadn’t been any shooting behind them for a long time. The fight was over, and that was worrisome, too.
A few times, the other ladies started to whine and complain, but Katarina shut that down in a hurry. She spoke to them in a sharp tone of command, and even though Preacher didn’t know what she said, it was effective. The ladies quieted down and kept moving.
When they had followed the ridge for a mile or so, he had them turn and start up the slope. Too long since he’d been through there, he didn’t remember all the physical features in the area. He would have liked to find a cave but didn’t know if any were nearby.
The climb was hard on the ladies, but with urging from Katarina, they made it. Some of them even helped the others, taking their arms to brace them as they struggled upward. In the dark, Preacher didn’t know which were countesses and which were servants, and supposed that didn’t matter anymore. The hardships of the past five years would have obliterated those sorts of distinctions. They had all been slaves together.
When All Hell Broke Loose Page 23
