Blood on the Divide (5 page)

“Yes. Certainly. But he was such a grand figure of a man, in his homespuns and buckskins. He was so tanned and fit and looked to be the very essence of a frontiersman.”

“Probably never been west of Illynoise,” Preacher said sourly. “A damned huckster and snake-oil salesman. So he took your money. Did you ever see him again?”

“No. He was supposed to meet us in Missouri, but he sent word that he'd be delayed and for us to push on. He would try to catch up with us.”

“Sutherlin.” Preacher rolled the word around. “Seems to me like I've heard that name before.”

“Oh, he is a very famous mountain man. He has written much on the West and its people.”

“He ain't no famous mountain man out here, Mrs. MacGreagor. Least not under that name. I know them all. Lots of folks has read words written by men who come out here 'fore I did and in their minds twisted them words all around. Others has writ words about this place who ain't never set foot near here. I 'spect your Mr. Sutherlin is one of them . . . and maybe worser. Hell get his comeuppance. Bet on that. Now you go wrap up in your blankets and get some rest. We're reasonable safe here.”

Preacher was alone with his thoughts for a time, and then Betina come to where he sat, his back to a tree. She spread a blanket on the ground and sat down beside him. “Coretine is a
very
nice person, isn't she, Preacher?”

Something in the way she said it warned Preacher that he'd better be careful how he answered. Betina had taken to battin' her eyes at him of late, and a-wigglin' this and that, too. And he'd seen her givin' them both sharp and hard looks as they sat together, talkin' low. “I reckon,” Preacher replied, choosing his words careful. “She says she's headin' back East just as soon as possible.”

“Attractive, too, isn't she?”

“I ain't paid no attention to that, missy.” Which was a lie he hoped he could pull off. Coretine was a mighty handsome woman. Not near 'bout as pert as Betina, but full-figured and handsome.

Betina decided to give it a rest. She sat quiet for a time and then said, “You think they're out there, don't you, Preacher?”

“Yeah. I do. Not far away, neither. I think Red Hand has people out lookin' for us. The next few days are goin' to be chancy ones, Bet. It'll be up to you and Coretine to keep the kids quiet at all times. No runnin' around and playin' and carryin' on. They's a cave about five hundred yards over yonder. It runs about two hundred feet into the rocks. First light, I'll check it out for critters and you and Coretine take the kids in there. And don't come out until I tell you to.”

“All right, Preacher. You get some rest. You've got to be as tired as the rest of us.”

“I'll catch me a few winks.”

Preacher slept close to the canyon entrance that night, and slept very lightly. He'd found a few pistols and rifles at the ambush site and had taken them and what powder and molds and lead he could find. Before he'd laid down for the night, he'd loaded a few of the weapons and stashed them for the ladies in case of trouble. He didn't know about Betina, but Coretine had shocked him slightly when she said she would gladly shoot any savage red Indians or trashy white bastards who bothered them.

Preacher believed her, too.

At first light, Preacher checked out the cave and moved the people into it. Then he slipped through the narrow passageway and stood for a time near the hidden mouth, all senses working hard. He could neither hear nor smell anything out of the ordinary.

Moving slowly, Preacher went over the area where they had stopped the afternoon before and cleaned it up. Satisfied it would pass any quick inspection, he slipped back into the passageway and into the canyon.

He gathered up dry wood and twigs and carried them to the cave. At the mouth, under the overhang, he built a small, nearly smokeless fire and told the ladies to fix coffee and something to eat, and then put out the fire.

“T'hey're close, I'm thinkin',” he told them all as they gathered around the fire, waiting for the meat to cook. “They've lost our trail and know we're somewhere nearby. The next couple of days will tell the story.”

Preacher looked at the group, eyeballing each of them for a moment as he waited for the coffee to make. “Y'all was complainin' yesterday 'bout bein' tired. Well, you gonna get lots of rest durin' the next few days. Except for one lookout here in the mouth of the cave, I want you all to stay back in the cave unless you got to come out to do your business. Stay quiet. Do what I tell you to do and we'll come out of this pickle barrel alive.” I hope, he silently added.

Preacher ate his bacon and drank his coffee. He allowed himself a short smoke from his old pipe and then checked his weapons. He told Andy to take the first watch at the mouth of the cave and went to sit at the entrance to the canyon. One thing Preacher had learned early on was patience, and he had a deep well of that to draw on.

He wasn't at all sure about the others.

After several hours of sitting very still near the entrance, Preacher picked up the very faintest of sounds. He waved at the lookout and the boy disappeared instantly into the blackness of the cave. Preacher eased his way through the narrow passageway – just wide enough for a horse to make it through – and knelt down in the sand, listening. He could hear faint talking, but could only make out a few words.

Renegade Utes, Preacher finally concluded. Three of them. And they were very close. If he was going to take them out, it would have to be with knife and war axe. He couldn't risk a shot. Others were probably within hearing distance of the canyon.

He leaned his rifle against the wall of the passageway and slipped out into the brush and timber. Preacher, he thought, you sure can get yourself into some high-lacious predicaments. He heard movement behind him and spun around, coming face to face with a big, war-painted Ute.

The Ute was startled for a split second and did nothing. Preacher was startled and killed the brave, slashing out with his long-bladed knife and nearly cutting the man's head off. The Ute's scream died soundlessly in his ruined throat. Kneeling beside the cooling body, Preacher looked around. There was the Ute's pony, a short distance away, its mane thick with tied-on scalps. Some of them, Preacher noted, were very fresh. And two of them were hair from women.

“Brave son of a bitch,” Preacher muttered, as he wiped his blade clean on the Ute's shirt and then sheathed it. “I'll call you Killer of Women.”

He heard the sounds of a walking horse draw closer. He shoved the dead Ute under some brush and jumped up into the lower branches of a thick-trunked old tree.

Preacher pulled his tomahawk from behind his sash and waited amid the leaves. He had every intention of opening up this Ute's head with his war axe. Might have worked out right well if the limb hadn't broken off just as the Indian was walking his horse under the tree.

When the limb cracked it sounded like a gunshot, and the horse bolted, leaving the startled brave sitting on his butt on the ground for about one second before Preacher and the limb landed on him and broke his neck. The third Ute charged his pony at the noise and Preacher just had time to roll away from the axe in the brave's hand.

Grinning savagely, the renegade Ute leaped off his pony's back and ran to face Preacher just as he was getting to his feet. Both Preacher and the Ute held war axes in their hands. They slowly circled each other, each one attempting to see just how good the other was.

The Ute called Preacher a very uncomplimentary word and Preacher responded by calling him a lowlife son of a bitch whose mother slept with prairie dogs.

The Ute cried out and pulled a knife. Preacher pulled his own knife out with his left hand and the Ute frowned at that. The blade looked just about as large as the long knives the horse soldiers carried. Almost.

The Ute leaped silently as Preacher and the steel heads of the axes clanged as they met. Preacher took a wicked swipe with his knife and drew first blood as the razor-sharp blade cut the Ute's belly, although not deep enough to be called much more than a serious scratch. The Ute jumped back as warm blood oozed out of the cut.

The men once more began warily circling each other. The Ute insulted Preacher again and Preacher replied in the buck's own language, calling the Injun something slightly less than a rotting piece of maggot-infested skunk meat. It loses something in the translation. The Ute hollered and jumped at Preacher. Preacher sidestepped, leaped, and kicked the buck in the balls, doubling the brave over in sudden sickness and pain. That was all that Preacher needed. He brought the tomahawk down and split the Ute's skull open. The brave died with his eyes staring in astonishment that this could happen to him.

Preacher caught his breath and then quickly gathered up all the bows and quivers of arrows from the dead. He kept the best of the bows – it was a dandy – and filled one quiver with the best arrows. Then he ran back into the canyon and up to the cave.

“I'll be gone for most of the day and maybe part of the night. Stay absolutely quiet and away from the mouth of the entrance. I'll be back, but I can't tell you rightly when. So don't worry about me. I got to leave a false trail for the renegades.”

Out of the canyon, Preacher did some fast work in cleaning up the area and then tied the dead Utes across the backs of their horses. On foot, he led them several miles from the killing site, staying in a meandering creek most of the way, then across a rocky bank. The Indian ponies were unshod, so they would leave no slashes on the rocks.

Preacher scalped the Utes and mutilated the bodies before stringing them up with rope by their heels from a tree limb. He then jumped onto the back of a pony and, leading the other two, set out on a hard run across the grass. He walked and ran the horses for miles before jumping off and heading back to the valley on foot.

Preacher almost ran right into a Cheyenne war party, but this was not a band of renegades. And it was a war party returning from battle, not going into it. While he got along well with the Cheyenne, most of the time, he did not feel like pressing his luck this time. It would be sometime in the future before Preacher would learn that this Cheyenne war party had struck at a Kiowa camp and, during the battle, two chiefs had been killed, Gray Thunder and Gray Hair. That battle would start negotiations between four tribes: Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche. They would later make a peace that has lasted to this day. A pact of nonaggression between their tribes.

But on this day, all Preacher wanted to do was save his white butt. He jumped into a muddy ravine and hugged the mud until the war party had passed. Slipping and sliding and cussing, Preacher made his way back out and on to the valley. It was full dark and he was tuckered when he reached the entrance.

He told Betina to stoke up the fire and fix him some coffee and food whilst he cleaned up at the spring. Then, with the mud washed off of him, and over bacon and bread and coffee, Preacher told the group what had happened.

“You killed three right outside the entrance?” Betina gasped.

“Yeah. One of them by accident.” He told the kids about the limb breaking and his falling out of the tree and onto the Ute and that got them all giggling.

Even Preacher smiled at his own antics.

“How many miles did you run today, Mr. Preacher?” a girl asked.

“Oh, mayhaps twelve or fifteen, I reckon. Not far enough for me to get my second wind though. I like to run. Keeps a body in good shape. I usually win all the footraces at the rendezvous. Which I was goin' to this year,” he added glumly. “On the Wind River.”

A little girl snuggled up close to him. “Don't be sad, Mr. Preacher,” she said. “We'll all see that you don't get lonesome.”

Preacher was at first startled, then amused. He was not a man to whom emotions such as gentleness and compassion came easy. “I 'spect you will, button,” he said with a gentle smile. “Yes sirree, I 'spect you will at that.”

* * *

The group stayed in the valley for a week, with only Preacher venturing out daily to check for signs and smoke. If any renegades came close, he did not hear nor see them. The group was running low on supplies, and Preacher decided it was time to head for Fort William, which was a trading post, not a military fort.

“Are the bad people gone, Mr. Preacher?” a girl asked.

“Bad people will never be gone, honey,” the mountain man told her. “They'll be bad people around you all your life. You just got to keep one eye out for them all the time. Let's pack up and get gone, folks.”

With Preacher in the lead, Hawken across his saddle horn, the party started out across the Lonesome Land, as some called it. Short-grass and sagebrush country. The name Wyoming came from the Delaware Indian term
maughwau wama,
meaning “big plains.” In the late 1830's, Fort William – named after William Sublette, William Anderson, and William Patton, later to be called Fort John, for John Sarpy, and then later to be designated a U.S. military fort and renamed Fort Laramie – was a busy, bustling place. In 1836, the rotting logs that made up the outer walls were replaced with a fifteen-foot-high adobe wall, with higher bastions. Friendly Indians traded there, and it was a safe haven for weary travelers, of which, Preacher had noted sourly, there was a-plenty of lately.

All work stopped when a lookout spotted Preacher and his party approaching the fort and gave out a shout. The men, and the few women at the fort, all turned out to stand and watch silently. They all could accurately guess at what had happened.

Preacher looked around for a face he might know and spotted the mountain man named Caleb. “Where's the soldier boys, Caleb?”

“Gone out chasin' Blackfeet, Preacher. This all that's left of the wagon train?”

“Yep.” Preacher swung down and took the jug offered him by Caleb. He took a deep pull and sighed as the whiskey hit his stomach. “Mighty refreshin', Caleb. Good goin' down.” He cut his eyes to the bedraggled party of boys and girls and two women. “Three of them yonder in that pack is all that's left of that settlement I told you about. Woman and her two kids. Red Hand and the Pardee brothers hit them. It was bad. I don't know what in the hell any of 'em is gonna do. I'm right glad to be shut of them, personal. I've 'bout had my fill of people for a month or so.”

“I do know what you mean. I was fixin' to head out in a couple of days. Figurin' on headin' up towards Pierre's Hole. You shore welcome to travel along if you like.”

“Since you ain't no hand when it comes to flappin' your gums, Caleb, I'll take you up on that invite. I best get these poor sad pilgrims settled in. I'll catch up with you later on.”

“I'll be around. I got to supply.”

Preacher walked over to Betina and Coretine. “Ladies, I plan on pullin' out in a couple of days. So I reckon I'll get my goodbyes said here and now.”

“How can we ever thank you?” Coretine asked.

“Ain't no thanks needed from nobody. I done what most any man out here would have done. Y'all got your mind made up as to where you're goin' from here?”

“We're . . . talking about it,” Betina said. Preacher picked up on the hesitation but thought nothing of it.

“Luck to you all,” Preacher replied, and then he walked away after waving at the kids. He was no hand at prolonged goodbyes. He headed to the store to get him a jug and then settle down for a night of serious drinking.

* * *

Preacher and Caleb pulled out two days later, long before dawn touched the skies. Preacher had deliberately avoided all contact with Coretine and especially with Betina. He didn't know what the ladies had in mind, and wasn't all that interested in finding out. Preacher had years back decided that his was to be a solitary existence in the Big Lonely. While he enjoyed an occasional dalliance with the ladies, red or white, there was no room in his life for a permanent female companion. By noon of the second day on the trail, the mountain man had put Betina and Coretine out of his mind.

* * *

Preacher and Caleb started out for Pierre's Hole, but as mountain men are wont to do, they got sidetracked, piddlin' around, lookin' at this and that, and running into a friend or two they hadn't seen in months or even years.

“Another year,” Caleb said, breaking the silence that had lasted for hours as they rode along, “furrin' will be all gone. Done. Two year at the most.”

“Seen it comin' three, four year ago,” Preacher replied. “That's why I quit. Mainest reason I quit when I did. You know we're bein' followed?”

“Yep. Blackfeet.”

“I sold me a pelt at the rendezvous back in '33 for six dollars,” Preacher said. “Two year ago same quality fur brought one dollar. Knew it was time to quit. How many you figure they is tryin' to sneak up on us?”

“Too damn many people comin' into this country ain't heppin' none,” Caleb replied. “I swear this country's gettin' crowded. Oh, 'bout ten, I reckon. Three, four of 'em done broke off and circlin'. I figure they'll set up an ambush at the pointy rocks.”

The two mountain men had headed west from Fort William, riding for the Sweetwater Crossing. Once past that, they had planned on heading through the Rattlesnake Range and then on up to the hot springs. Maybe. Who the hell knew for sure? Neither man had anyplace in particular to go and nobody waiting on them should they decide to head there.

“You primed and ready to blow?” Preacher asked.

“I'm ready to bang all the way around.”

“I have done everything I know to do to be friends with the Blackfeet,” Preacher mused aloud. “And I have made a few friends. But them and the Pawnee has wooled me around for years. I'm a-gettin' right tired of it. Did you gleam how they was armed?”

“Arrows, mostly. Some old muskets.”

Until the repeating rifle came to be, most Indians preferred to stay with bows and arrows or lance, for eight to ten arrows could be aimed and let loose in the time it took to reload a musket. And the Indian never had enough powder or shot.

“I'd rather not have no trouble,” Preacher said. “If they'll just go on and leave us be, I'll not be the first to fire a ball.” He chuckled. “Ol' John Colter finally had his belly full of the Blackfeet. Way I heared it, after they grabbed him and stripped him nekked as a newborn, they made him run. Chased him for hours. Wasn't long after that John give it up and said he'd never come back out here again.”

“He didn't, neither,” Caleb said. “Died back in '13, I think it was. St. Louie.”

Preacher nodded his head and cut his eyes. “Them Injuns done vanished on us, Caleb. We best be ready.”

“Yeah, you be right there, ol' hoss. They gonna be 'spectin' us to take the easy way through the pointies. So how you want to play this?”

“We'll take the south end when I holler. By the time them hid in the rocks get over to the south side, we'll be around the rocks and sittin' there cocked and ready to re-duce their number considerable.”

“We there.”

“You ready?”

“Give a shout.”

“Now!” Preacher yelled, and their mounts and packhorses leaped forward. From the rocks, shouts of disgust and anger rose from the throats of the Blackfeet as they realized they had been tricked.

Preacher and Caleb slid to a halt, leaped from their mounts amid a jumble of boulders, and waited. The Blackfeet, unable to tell where the mountain men had gone, were confused for a moment, shouting at one another. Two leaped nimbly to the highest point of the maze of rocks and carelessly sky-lined themselves for just a moment. Two Hawken rifles roared, their huge balls tearing great holes in the chests of the braves.