“Probably. Someday. Yeah, you will.”
“And how will we get them?”
“You work for them.”
“Where?”
“In the factories and on the farms and things like that.”
Weasel Tail stood up. “My head is aching from all this confusing talk about co-ins and factories and rocks that are worth twelve ponies. Why don't whites just give a sack of potatoes for a shirt, or a horse for a wooden box that whites live in, or a gun for a shoe and be done with it?”
“Well, because not all whites have a gun or a horse or a sack of potatoes.”
“But they have co-ins?”
“Well, yeah, some of them. Most of them.”
Weasel Tail looked down at Preacher and shook his head. “Your people are very strange. Your people want to possess so many things that are useless that you complicate your society so you must carry around pieces of metal to purchase more things that you really do not need. I think I will never understand the mind of white people. They make my head hurt. White people live in houses that cannot be moved. What do the white people do when they get tired of looking at the same thing all the time?”
Preacher chuckled. “Well, they sell their houses, I reckon.”
“Then the people put the co-ins in their pockets and go chop down more trees to build another wooden box they cannot move.”
“That's ... just about it, Weasel Tail.”
“Well. That is very foolish. What happens when all the trees are gone?”
“Weasel Tail, the trees ain't never gonna be
gone!”
“What will prevent that from happening? I have been told that there are so many whites they cannot be counted. If that is true, if they all cut down trees to build their useless wooden houses, soon there will be no more trees, am I not right?”
“Now he's got me worryin',” Rimrock said.
“Me, too,” Windy said. “He's got a point, Preacher.”
“I don't even know what in the hell any of you is talkin' about,” Caleb said.
“These clothes smell funny,” Carl said. “I'm gonna smell like a laundry for a week.”
“Oh, hell!” Preacher said. “They's trees all over the damn place. They grow up out of the ground natural. Stop worryin' about trees.”
“Somebody better worry about them,” Weasel Tail said somberly. “Trees are life. Indians know this. Whites do not. I am afraid that someday white people will cause the earth to die. Then see if you can buy another earth with your co-ins.” He waved his hand, and without another word, he and his party left the encampment.
Rimrock took the empty coffee pot down to the river for more water. Windy placed another stick on the fire. Caleb leaned back against his saddle and looked reflective. Carl was fanning himself, trying to dispel the soap smell.
Preacher shook his head. “Maybe Weasel Tail is right and we're wrong. Hell, I don't know. I just wish everybody would get along. Might as well wish for the moon.” He lay down and pulled a blanket over him. “Wake me up when it's time to eat.”
T
EN
All they could do was wait, and that was something they could do well. Carl pulled out a few days after Weasel Tail's gloom-and-doom talk, saying he'd see the men around ... when they got shut of that damn bar of soap.
“I still smell like a laundry,” he muttered as he rode away. “At least the fleas was company.”
“What's your plan, Preacher?” Windy asked, as the men lay around the fire, drinking coffee.
“I really ain't got one. I know the wagons got to pass right by here. So mayhaps I'll see to it that they get clear of the Pardees. I don't know exactly what I'll do. I'll damn shore try to talk them out of cuttin' north and settin' up yonder. That's plumb foolish.”
“Well, I don't mind waitin',” Caleb said.
“You boys want to pitch in with me and see to the needs of a bunch of hammerheaded easterners, hey?”
“It ain't as if we had a whole lot of pressin' engagements, Preacher,” Windy said.
“We ain't got nothin' else to do, Preacher,” Rimrock said. “Throw another stick on that fire, Windy. It's our lazy day.”
The men did nothing but eat, sleep, hunt for game, fish, and tell totally outrageous lies to each other and about each other. The days drifted by and blended in. Time was unimportant. They could almost make themselves believe it was very nearly like when they first arrived in the Big Lonesome. But they all knew it was not. Already, wagon ruts were being carved in what some were calling the Oregon Trail.
Then one morning the men heard the very faint sounds of bullwhips and the shouting of human voices.
“Yonder come the pilgrims headin' to the promised land,” Caleb said.
“Yeah,” Rimrock said. “They in for a jolt, I'm thinkin'. 'Cause they ain't no milk out here and the only honey usually has a bear close by it.”
“One thing about it, though,” Preacher said, recalling last year when he led a party of pilgrims to the West Coast, “by now they'll have gotten rid of much of the stuff they thought they just couldn't live without. And they'll be plenty trail wise, too.”
“What I can't figure out is just exactly where they think they'll settle up north of here,” Rimrock mused. “And what they're gonna do oncest they get there.”
“That's a mystery to me, too,” Preacher said. “But I reckon we'll know directly.”
“I wonder why the scout didn't come up on us hours ago?” Windy said.
“The fools probably don't have one,” Preacher replied. “And don't nobody go lookin' at me.”
The men and women and children stared at the four mountain men. And stared. Finally a man mounted on a fine bay horse stepped out of the saddle and pointed a finger at Preacher.
“You there!” he shouted. “Come here.”
The mountain men looked at each other and all smiled. Preacher raised his voice and told the man, “You got something you want to say to me, get over here and say it. The distance is the same for you as it is for me.”
The man flushed a deep red. “I am not accustomed to such impudence, sir,” he called. “My name is Samuel Weller.”
“I'm proud you know your name,” Preacher told him. “If a man don't know nothin' else, he shore ought to know his name. I fought a bear oncest in the woods and lost, so he took my name. Folks started callin' me Preacher. So if you run into a bear with a Christian name, leave him be. It's me.”
Weller stared at Preacher for a moment. Then he walked toward the men, stopped, and shook his head. “That is utter balderdash, sir. Are you mad?”
“I ain't even upset. Are you?”
Several of the men and women in and alongside the wagons at the front of the train started laughing, and Weller's face again turned crimson. Preacher figured right off that he hadn't made any points with Weller. Not that he gave a damn.
“You there!” Weller pointed his whip handle at Rimrock. “We are in need of an experienced guide to lead us to our final destination. Are you interested?”
“I ain't even curious,” Rimrock told him.
Weller opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it as the name Preacher began sinking in. Preacher! The man who had rescued the missionaries and then led the wagon train to the Pacific. My word! The man was a living legend.
Weller walked over to where Preacher and the other mountain men stood, rifles in hand, pistols and knives hung all about them. Good Lord, he thought, facing the men, but they certainly were a disreputable-looking bunch. But they all seemed... quite capable. He looked at Windy. For a man of his small size, he certainly had a bold and reckless demeanor about him.
Weller looked at the bulk of Rimrock. The man was very nearly a giant. Certainly capable of breaking a man in two. Rimrock grinned at the man.
Caleb was a long and lean and lanky man, but Weller knew those types of men could possess extraordinary endurance and strength. Preacher was, well, Preacher. Wide shoulders and hard-packed muscle in his arms. Huge wrists. The man had only a stubble of beard, so obviously he shaved quite often. But there was one more thing about Preacher that Weller had missed at first glance, but not now. The man was dangerous. Not dangerous in the unpredictable sense, but dangerous in that he would be a bad man to have as an enemy.
Weller cleared his throat and was about to speak when a woman's voice cut him off.
“Oh, Preacher!”
Miss Drum came rushing up, quite unladylike, Weller thought, and threw her arms about Preacher's neck and boldly kissed the man right on the
lips!
Weller was taken aback by the utter brazenness of it.
“Preacher! I just knew I'd see you again,” she exclaimed, and kissed him again.
Preacher's eyes were wide with shock. Embarrassed, he disentangled himself from the woman and held the well-endowed young lady at full arm's length. “Betina. You're lookin' well.”
“To say the least,” Rimrock muttered.
“Amen, brother,” Windy whispered.
Caleb stared at the woman.
“I just knew we'd meet again, Preacher,” Betina gushed. “Were you waiting for us to come along?”
“Well ... tell you the truth, yes. I was wantin' to talk you folks out of this crazy notion of headin' north, and point you either west to the Oregon Territory or back home.”
She shook her curls. “Preacher, we are going to build a town just north of here. Along the banks of the Wind River. We shall have shops and stores and a church and a school. Isn't that right, Mr. Weller?”
“That is correct, Miss Drum,” the man said â a bit stiffly, Preacher thought.
Preacher took off his hat and rubbed his forehead with a hard and callused hand. “Betina, listen to me, girl. There ain't nothing up there where you're talkin' about 'ceptin' Injuns. It's too soon for all this, girl. You've had you a taste of how wild and savage this land can be. But you ain't seen nothin' until you winter out here. That is, providin' you and the rest of these good folks
survive
'til the winter. Betina, there ain't nothin' up yonder. No trails, no roads, no civilized folks, no nothin'. There ain't nothin' 'tween Fort William and Fort Hall 'ceptin' wilderness, Injuns, and renegades. It's a fool's errand you're on, girl.”
She stared at him for a long moment and Preacher knew he had not dissuaded her. “I am determined, Preacher. We shall have our town to the north.”
Then Weller had to stick his mouth into it. “We shall trust in the Lord, Preacher,” Weller said. “He has guided us this far, and we shall continue to bask in the light of His providence.”
“Mayhaps you be right, Weller,” Preacher said.
Weller beamed his delight at that.
“'Cause I reckon that old sayin' holds true,” Preacher added.
“And what might that be, sir?”
“That the Good Lord looks after drunks, children, and fools!”
* * *
“This ain't right what you're doin', Preacher,” Rimrock bluntly told him.
Preacher stopped in his rolling of blankets into canvas groundsheet and looked up at the man. “You don't mean to tell me that you're stayin'?”
“I got to, Preacher. These people ain't got a prayer out yonder on their own.”
Preacher stood up. “Rim, there ain't even no good
trail
that leads up yonder to where these fools want to go. You know that as well as me. We've all been there. There ain't nothin' there. So why there, Rim? Answer me that.”
“I don't know the answer to that, Preacher. But that there little gal thinks the world and all of you, and if you turn your backside to her at this time of need, then you a mighty sorry excuse for a man.”
Preacher's eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to one side and stared at the man. “I've killed men for sayin' a hell of a lot less than that to me, Rimrock.”
Rimrock met the stare without blinking. “I don't think you ever kilt no man just 'cause he spoke the truth,” the big man said calmly.
That stung Preacher. He frowned and shook his head in disgust. He'd been friends with these men for too many years to have something like this drive a rift 'tween them. He sighed heavily. “All right, Rim. All right. Hell, I'd a probably been back come the mornin' noways. I'll help you take these people into the wilderness. Has any of 'em told you exactly where it is they want to go?”
Preacher listened and his eyes grew wider. When Rimrock finished, Preacher said, “Now I know they're all plumb crazy. That ain't farmin' country. That country ain't good for nothin'. Are you sure about this?”
“He had the location all writ now and he read it off to me.”
“Something is bad wrong with this, Rim. That's a good thirty-five or forty miles north of this trail. The only visitors they'll have will be them lookin' for scalps.”
“I done pointed that out to them. Weller said the Lord would see to their safety.”
“Is he a gospel shouter?”
“If he ain't, he shore ought to be. Are you goin' to talk to him about this folly?”
Preacher shook his head. “No need. We ain't gonna change their minds. But I thought Betina was boundened and determined to reach the Oregon Territory and that Coretine person was headin' back East with the kids?”
“I reckon they changed their minds.”
“I reckon they did at that. When do they want to make the turn north?”
“Right here, come the mornin'.”
“Lord help us all.” Preacher nodded his head and secured his bedroll behind the cantle of his saddle. “You know the way, Rim. I'll leave sign along from time to time. I'll see you in a couple of days. I want to travel light, so see to my pack animal and possessions, will you?”
“I'll do it, Preacher. See you.”
Preacher swung into the saddle and rode out, past Betina's wagon. She was tending a small fire and had coffee on. She smiled up at him. “Coffee, Preacher?”
“Thank you kindly, but no. I got to push on. I'll see you in a couple of days. Then we'll talk.”
Her face brightened. “I'm looking forward to that.”
“Yeah,” Preacher said dryly, then rode away.
He made a lonely camp that evening not too far from a slow-moving little creek. If it had a name, Preacher didn't know it. “Fools,” he muttered to his tiny fire hidden in rocks. “Someday this might be a settled land. But it's too damn soon now for people to even try.”
He emptied his coffee pot and put out the fire as the shadows began creeping in. Drinking his coffee and munching on a biscuit he'd swiped from a mover's wife that morning, Preacher tried to make some sense out of this move. He'd asked Weller, but the man turned mum on him. No sense in that either. He could understand people wanting to go to California or the Oregon Territory â sort of â but this move ...
Then it came to him.
“Shore, there it was, right there in front of me all the time,” Preacher muttered to the shadows. “So damn plain I couldn't even see it.”
He could see Sutherlin's fine hand in this. Had to be. And the reason the Pardees couldn't be found was 'cause they wasn't back at their mountain hideout... they was waitin' up on the Wind River. Or at least was headin' that way. Had to be it. Sutherlin would have the wagons leave the more-or-less-established trail west and head north to settle in a country that only mountain men, a few Army scouts, and Indians had ever seen. Then when the movers was busy with building cabins and such, they'd hit them, Pardee's gang and Red Hand. They wipe them out, burn the wagons and structures, sell the women and girls for slaves and whores, and then vanish. The movers wouldn't be missed for months, at least until spring, and by that time, their bones would be bleached white and scattered by varmits. And the odds were, no one would ever know what happened to them.
“Quite a plan, if I got it figured out right,” Preacher muttered. “But how did Sutherlin get tied in with the Pardee bunch? And what did he get out of this?”
Preacher knew the answer to that immediately. The fee for organizing the train, of course. But how many times could he get away with something like this?
“Plenty, if he's smart,” Preacher said aloud. “Let two or three trains through, and hit the third or fourth one.” And Preacher knew then why the Pardee bunch was sometimes not heard of in the Big Lonesome for months at a time: they staggered the territories where they operated. They'd ride hundreds of miles to strike, and then beat it back to the Lonesome with their booty and hide out for a time. Then they'd move to another location to strike again.