T
HIRTEEN
This is not happening, Son thought, looking back up the bloody and body-littered trail. One man could not have caused all this havoc. But he knew that one man had done it. He silently cursed Preacher. Son looked around for any of his men. He could not find a one left.
Then the thought came to him: Where was Sutherlin and Doc Judd? He had not seen either man in a hour or so. He could see Malachi and Kenrick. There was Isaac. Jeff. Dill was over there. Good God, was this all that was left? Impossible. He looked all around. The Indians were gone. He blinked and looked again. They had vanished.
Sutherlin and Doc Judd had noticed that several minutes before Son. The two men had begun working their way back down the trail. They made their way slowly and cautiously, always keeping in the brush. Once they were out of rifle range of Preacher, they began to breathe easier. They found two saddled horses, swung into the saddle, and lit out down the trail.
Then they received yet another shock for that day.
Armed Indians blocked the trail. A lot of armed Indians. Doc and Sutherlin reined up and stared. There was no way around the Indians.
One Indian rode his pony away from the others and pointed his rifle back up the trail. Doc and Sutherlin didn't need an interpreter. They got the message loud and clear.
“Can't we talk about this?” Sutherlin asked.
“No,” the Yakima said.
“I have money.”
“Don't want money.”
“There are guns and powder and shot up ahead.”
“From the dead. We will have those anyway.” He smiled. “Yours, too. Ver' soon.”
The two men cursed under their breath and slowly turned their horses around and rode back up the trail.
“Where's Ansel?” Malachi asked Kenrick.
“I ain't seen him. Maybe he broke and run and got clear, you reckon?”
“I hope. He's a good boy, that one is.”
“Malachi?”
“Yeah, boy?”
“I guess we 'bout run our string out, ain't we?”
“Looks that way. But we've had us a time, ain't we?”
“We shore have. How many squallin' and kickin' and bitin' and scratchin' women and girls you reckon we've helt down and humped, brother?”
“White women?”
“All of 'em.”
“Oh ... that'd be hard to say. I recollect the time over on the â ”
His words were cut short by the crash of Preacher's Hawken. About fifty yards ahead of them, in a bend of the trail, Jeff slowly rolled out onto the trail, a large hole right between his eyes.
Malachi looked at the last of Sutherlin's men and shook his head. “Ansel,” he called softly. “If you can hear me, listen to me. I want you to stay hid. Stay hid and don't move no matter what happens. Stay hid 'til come the dawnin' in the mornin'. Then you slip down to that raft we seen and get the hell gone from here. Good luck, boy.”
“I'll be damned if he will!” Sutherlin spoke from the saddle, only a few yards behind the brothers. “I'll kill the goofy son of a bitch myself. Come out, you stupid oaf. Come out here and face me.”
“Damn your eyes, you black-hearted bastard!” Malachi screamed at the man. He stood up, leveled his rifle, and blew Sutherlin out of the saddle before the man could protest.
Doc Judd's rifle crashed and Malachi went down to his knees, belly-shot.
Kenrick screamed curses and cocked a pistol and shot Doc Judd in the throat, almost tearing the man's head from his shoulders. Doc toppled backward from the saddle and Kenrick stood up from his crouch just as Sutherlin leveled a pistol and blew a large hole in Kenrick's head. Ansel roared and grunted and slobbered out of the brush, a pistol in each hand just as Son was running around the bend in the narrow road to see what in the hell was going on. He froze at the sight.
Ansel cocked and leveled his pistol at the dying Sutherlin and grunted and slobbered all down the front of his filthy shirt.
“You ignorant bastard,” Sutherlin told him.
“No, Ansel!” Son shouted, waving his arms frantically. “No, boy. Don't do it. Don't shoot that man.”
Ansel grinned at the man for a moment. Slowly he nodded his shaggy head. He grunted a time or two. “Aw rat,” he said, and shot Son in the chest.
Son sat down hard in the rutted and bumpy trail. “Why, boy,” he said. “I think you've killed me.”
Ansel bobbed his head up and down and grinned.
“Git out of here, Ansel,” Malachi groaned. “Run, boy.”
“Go on, Ansel,” Kenrick said. “Them Injuns around here nor no other place ain't gonna bother you 'cause you're titched in the head. Run, boy. Git gone from this killin' place.”
“Squirrelly bastard shot me,” Son groaned. “Shot me. And I was always kinda partial to him, too.”
“He liked you, Son,” Malachi said. “He really did.”
“Well ... how come the son of a bitch shot me?”
“He ain't neither no son of a bitch!” Malachi said, then pondered on that for a few seconds. “Well ... maybe.”
Sutherlin cursed the addled Ansel and lifted another pistol to shoot Ansel and Ansel put his feet to work. He whooped and hollered once and then hopped over the side of the bank and disappeared.
Kenrick lifted a pistol and blew the top of Sutherlin's head slap off.
Preacher had left his cover and was squatting above the men, watching it all, his hands filled with pistols, shaking his head at the wild scene.
Ansel ran down the bank and to the raft. He untied the rope and jumped on, grabbing the pole and shoving off. He went floating merrily down the river, singing church songs at the top of his lungs.
The Indians watched him leave and all made the sign of a crazy person. Ansel would not be bothered by any Indian.
“There was two more of your gang got clear for a minute or two,” Preacher spoke from above the dead and dying. “They jumped in the river and tried to swim clear. I don't think they made it.”
“What happens to us?” Kenrick asked.
“I reckon you'll just lay there and ex-pire,” Preacher told him.
“I wish I'd never laid eyes on you, Preacher,” Malachi said, his voice very weak.
“That's probably true.”
“I hate you, Preacher,” Son said.
“Man shouldn't ride off to his judgment day with no hate in his heart,” Preacher admonished the man. “That wouldn't set well with the Lord, I'm thinkin'.”
“Who gives damn what you think?” Kenrick said.
Preacher tried his best to look deeply hurt and extremely offended. He couldn't quite pull it off. “My dear sainted mommy did.”
“You didn't have no mommy” Malachi said. “You was thrown up here on the earth from the hellfires.”
“My daddy would have broke off a limb and wore your ass out if he heard you say that, Malachi. My daddy was strong on them thumb-sized branches, he was.”
Several Indians had gathered around, picking up rifles and pistols and shot pouches and powder horns.
“Y'all can have their scalps if you've a mind to,” Preacher told them. “But I'd appreciate it if you'd wait until they's all dead 'fore you jerked 'em off.”
“Jesus Christ!” Son yelled.
“He make prayer to white man's God?” a Yakima questioned.
“Well ... sort of,” Preacher replied.
Kenrick laid his head down and rattled and died.
“My brother's daid!” Malachi wailed. “Oh, Lord!”
“He make prayer to God?” the Yakima asked.
“In a way,” Preacher told him.
“White man pray funny.”
“Some do. But if you think this is something, you should have seem them all-day singin's and shoutin's we used to have back in the hills. I got me enough religion in one day to last a whole lifetime. That gospel shouter damn near drown-ed me in that cold-ass creek that day I turned to the Lord.”
“You?” Malachi sneered.
“Yeah, me. I been baptized.”
“In what? A keg of gunpowder.”
“You 'bout to make me mad, Malachi.”
“Help me, goddamnit!” Son squalled.
“Help you do what?” Preacher asked. “You doin' a right good job of passin' without no help from me.”
“Well, I was washed in the blood of the lamb myself!” Malachi said.
“You was washed in blood, all right,” Preacher said. “But not of no lamb.”
“I hate you,” Malachi said.
“I'll see you in hell, Preacher!” Son yelled. Then he screamed. “Oh, God, it hurts, it hurts.” He jerked a couple of times and bought the farm.
Preacher stood up and holstered his pistols.
“Don't leave me for the savages, Preacher!” Malachi whispered.
“You can't give me no good reason why I shouldn't.”
“I'm a Christian.”
Preacher spat on the ground. “Well, I'll just consider them Yakimas Romans then.” He turned and walked away.
F
OURTEEN
Ansel came up on a very waterlogged Clubb clinging to a log and dragged him on board the raft. A few miles further down, Isaac waved frantically from the north shore of the river at the men in the raft and Ansel somehow managed to get the raft over to the outlaw and get him on board.
“Just get us away from here,” Isaac panted. “Get me away from that mountain man from Hell. I ain't never gonna go past the Mississippi again. I swear on the Good Book I ain't never gonna do it.”
“What are you gonna do once we're safe?” Clubb asked with a groan, his shattered knee swollen and throbbing with pain.
“Farm,” Isaac said. “Go to church and become a Christian. Find me a good woman and settle down. Never again will I raise a hand against a fellow man. Or woman,” he added.
Ansel giggled.
Preacher pointed his horse's nose east, heading back to intercept the wagon train. He stopped briefly to look at Dirk. The Englishman lay dead by the trail. “You should have stayed in England,” Preacher said, then lifted the reins and rode on.
A hundred yards further on, he came up on a gut-shot and dying man. “Who the hell are you?”
“Curt Morgan,” the man gasped. “No, you didn't shoot me. Sutherlin stabbed while I was tryin' to get away from you. Him and that damn Doc Judd both stuck me.”
Preacher stepped down and squatted by the man. Curt had been stabbed twice, once in the chest and once in the belly. There was nothing Preacher could do for him and told him so.
“I know it. I'm done for. I hooked up with this bunch about three weeks ago. Knew I was makin' a mistake when I done it. They all dead?”
“Near 'bouts.”
Curt nodded his head. “A sorry lot they was, too. I tried to get shut of them, but them crazy damn Pardees said they'd shoot me if I tried. Stay with me. I ain't got long.”
“I'll stay with you.”
“I ain't never seen nobody like you in all my life, Preacher. Nobody in their right mind tackles twenty-odd men alone.”
“Somebody had to,” Preacher said simply. “What was left turned on each other. Damnest thing I ever seen.”
“Don't let the savages get me, Preacher.”
Preacher smiled. “These Yakimas are friendly. They was just runnin' a bluff like I asked them to. They wouldn't have hurt none of you had you tried to leave.”
Morgan shook his head. “We was suckered.”
“Right down the line.”
“Well, I'll be damned.” Morgan smiled for a second, then closed his eyes and died.
“Probably,” Preacher said.
Days later, Preacher hooked up with the wagon train just as they were making camp for the night. He accepted a cup of coffee from Rimrock and sank wearily to the ground, stretching out with a sigh.
“Y'all ain't got nothin' to fight but the elements from here on out,” Preacher told them, as movers began gathering around. “The gang of brigands is gone. Three or four got clear, but I 'magine they're headin' east just as fast as they can.”
He did not elaborate and nobody asked him to. The mountain men knew they would hear the story later from Indians. Preacher was already a legend in the Big Lonesome, and whatever he did was usually remembered by one tribe or another and talked and sung about.
“Where you bound for, Preacher?” Rimrock asked.
“The Rockies. I got me a cravin' to be alone for a time. I think I'll head 'way down deep in the mountains and just do nothin' for a while. I was goin' on to the Coast to see a little filly, but I changed my mind. I might get myself into a trap I couldn't get out of.”
He drank his coffee and relaxed for the first time in days. He stayed by the fire as the wagon train pulled out early the next morning. The pioneers waved at him as they rode and walked past, and Preacher returned the farewells. A few moments later, the silence wrapped itself around Preacher.
While he had the safety of others around him, Preacher had taken a bath the past afternoon and washed his longhandles. He reckoned he'd gotten most of the fleas off him and discouraged what remained.
He lay back against his saddle and relaxed by the fire, a fresh pot of coffee on the rocks by the fire. His horses grazed nearby and it was a comforting sound. A pleasurable sound. What else does a man need? Preacher pondered. The Indians are right in a lot of way, he thought. The white man worries about things that are not important. The Injun don't have no watches or clocks so he don't know whether it's nine o'clock in the mornin' or two o'clock in the afternoon and don't give a damn. Time takes care of itself.
A wolf pack loped up to scavenge amid what the movers had left behind in the garbage pile. They lowered their heads and looked at Preacher, sprawled by the fire.
“Go ahead,” he told them. “I ain't gonna bother you.”
Preacher had never been afraid of wolves and they had never bothered him. Unlike most men, Preacher had taken the time as a boy to understand their ways and pay heed to what he had learned, and to keep on learning about their ways. That was all it took â that and a bit of caution. Don't make no sudden moves around them, don't get between a male and his mate, and don't never try to make a pet out of one, for that was impossible. A wolf is a wild animal and you can't tame no wild animal. It wasn't fair to the animal to even try.
He'd known of men breeding dogs with wolves. He didn't approve of that. A dog is a dog and a wolf is a wolf. Problem was, when you done something like that, a body never knew which side was gonna be the dominant one. If it was the wolf, the animal might turn on you. If it was the dog, what the hell had you accomplished? It went a'gin' the order of things. Nature knew what it was doin', and Preacher didn't believe in jackin' around with nature.
The wolves snarled and mock-fought and tussled over this and that and Preacher watched them and was content. They had some pups with them and the mother and father was teachin' them things they would need to survive.
The big male, and he was a big one, walked over to where Preacher lay, staying about twenty-five feet from the man. Preacher didn't look the wolf in the eyes, for that was a sign of challenge and he damn sure didn't want to challenge no one-hundred-and-fifty-pound timber wolf to nothin'. When the wolf understood that Preacher was subservient to him, and meant him no harm, he shook his big head and rejoined the pack. Occasionally he would glance over to where Preacher lay by the fire.
“Don't never trust no human, brother wolf,” Preacher spoke to him. “That would be a big mistake. Stay clear of humans, for they're afraid of you, and whatever a human person is afeard of, they tend to kill instead of understandin'. You run wild and free and wonderful like God intended you to do, and stay shut of humans.”
After a time, the pack moved on and Preacher began packing up his gear. The wilderness lay all about him, clean and fresh, except for the pile of garbage the movers had left behind. And that irritated the mountain man. Why the hell can't people clean up after themselves and leave things as they found 'em? Why the hell do people think they have the right to come in and mess up whatever they touch? 'Fore long they'll be a goddamn garbage pile stretchin' from the Mississippi clear to the Pacific Ocean, Preacher thought sourly.
Why the hell can't we have a place that's left wild and free and untouched just like nature intended it to be?
He threw back his head and howled. In the distance, in the timber, a wolf answered his call, then another one joined in, and soon the pack was talking to him. Preacher grinned.
Felt good to be one with the wilderness.