The Family Jensen (3 page)

As it turned out, Bright Leaf was Crazy Bear’s cousin. She was a widow, her husband of less than a year having been killed in a rockslide several months earlier. Preacher understood a little better why Crazy Bear had taken him back to the Crow village. If Bright Leaf’s late husband had had a brother, he would have taken Bright Leaf as one of his wives. Since that wasn’t the case, Crazy Bear felt like it was his job to find his cousin a new man.

If she nursed the wounded white man back to health, then out of gratitude to her, and to her cousin Crazy Bear, surely the man called Preacher would take her as his wife. Nature would run its inevitable course.

Preacher had something to say about that. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to settle down.

Although, that verdant valley in the Big Horn Mountains would have been a nice spot to do so. Its green meadows and towering pines were watered by several creeks that ran clear, fast, and cold. Rugged gray peaks mantled with snow formed its borders, and over all of it arched the achingly blue and beautiful vault of the sky. Wildlife was abundant. A man would never lack for good hunting there.

When Preacher had gained some of his strength back, he sat outside most of the day and enjoyed his surroundings. The women and children avoided him, casting nervous glances at him from a distance. Despite the fact that he seemed harmless, he had a reputation as a bloody-handed murderer of men.

Some of the warriors stopped by to talk, and soon Preacher had a number of friends among the band. Elk Runner, Tall Tree, Paints His Face, and the others were all older men, bearing the scars of their years, much like Preacher himself. They told many stories, their powerful voices rolling out while their hands glided and swooped through the air, describing visually what had happened. With such friendships to occupy his time, the days drifted by pleasantly for Preacher.

Bright Leaf was a good cook, and the savory stew she prepared for him did much to help him regain his strength. She changed the dressings on his wounds twice a day, applying the poultice she made each time. The fever left the bullet holes and they healed, becoming puckered scars to go along with other such marks scattered around Preacher’s body, including knife scars, and the claw marks from the time he’d fought with a grizzly.

Sometimes when she changed the dressings, Bright Leaf let her fingers stray over the map of pain and trouble etched into his pale-skinned torso and murmured, “How is it you are still alive? You should be dead a dozen times over, Preacher!”

“I’m just too ornery to die, I reckon,” he told her with a grin.

Eventually, after he had been in the village about two weeks and the wounds in his side were almost completely healed, the moment arrived that he’d been expecting. Bright Leaf came into the tepee one evening wrapped in a buffalo robe instead of wearing her usual buckskin dress. She stood before him and let the robe slide off her shoulders so that it fell around her feet. Underneath it she was all smooth coppery skin and firm flesh. She lowered her eyes, shy but proud, as Preacher’s gaze played over her body.

“I would not be a good husband to you, Bright Leaf,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “You will wake up one morning, and I will be gone. I will not be here to hunt meat for you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “Crazy Bear has told me I should keep looking for a husband. But I want you, Preacher. If only for tonight…I want you.”

He reached up to her and drew her down next to him. As long as she knew what sort of man he was, he would not deny her.

“Ghost-Killer,” she said later, as they were making love. “Ghost-Killer!” Then she clutched him tightly and breathed, “You have slain my ghosts.”

Preacher hoped that he hadn’t slain Crazy Bear’s friendship with him at the same time.

Judging by the solemn, even angry expression on Crazy Bear’s face when he walked up to the log where Preacher was sitting the next day, Preacher thought the chief must know what had happened between him and Bright Leaf the night before. That hunch grew stronger when Crazy Bear sat down beside him and said, “The time has come for us to talk.”

Preacher nodded slowly. “All right, Crazy Bear. We will talk.”

Crazy Bear surprised him by saying, “Those white men who tried to kill you…why did they seek to take your life?”

Preacher answered the unexpected question with a question of his own. “Why do you ask this?”

“Because soon you will be strong enough to go after them and settle the debt for what they did to you. I would like to know the sort of man whose life I saved, and the best way to know a man is to know his enemies.”

Preacher thought that over and nodded. Crazy Bear was right, true enough. He said, “Do you know Boadley’s place?”

“The white man’s trading post on Antelope Creek?”

“That’s right,” Preacher said. The fortress-like trading post had been built at the height of the fur trade by an Englishman named Boadley, who erected his establishment at the southern end of the Big Horns about a week’s ride from the valley. It was still there. Men who ventured into the mountains in search of pelts usually stopped at the trading post to replenish their supplies before continuing.

“I was at Boadley’s,” Preacher went on. “No one else was there except the old man, his wife, and another Indian woman who was a lot younger.”

Crazy Bear made a face. “One who sells herself to the white men?”

Preacher shrugged. Everybody had to do something in life, and he’d never been one to sit in judgment of the decisions made by other folks, as long as they didn’t cause him any trouble.

“Seven men rode in,” he continued. “I didn’t like the looks of them, but I wasn’t hunting for trouble. I had stew, a bowl of beans, and a jug, so I stayed where I was at a table in the corner and let those fellas come stomping in like they owned the place.”

“There are some men who feel they own every place they happen to be,” Crazy Bear said.

“That’s right. They were that kind. They yelled orders at Boadley, and they yelled some more when he didn’t jump fast enough.

It made the old man mad. He’s an Englishman, but he’s still got some bark on him. He didn’t say anything, though. There were seven of them, after all, and his wife was there.”

Crazy Bear nodded. “And it was not your fight.”

“Seven to two ain’t much better odds than seven to one.”

Crazy Bear snorted, as if to say when one of the two was Preacher, it changed things.

“Anyway, I hoped they’d bluster around for a while, get the supplies they were after, and leave. But then they saw the young woman, and I hate to say it, but they didn’t figure on riding out until each of them had a turn with her.”

“That is why she was there,” Crazy Bear said, his voice hard as flint.

“True,” Preacher agreed, “and if they’d all been gents about it, I reckon that would’ve been the end of it. But I heard the others talking, and from what I heard, I knew that one of them, a man they called Axel, liked to treat his women rough. They told him he had to wait until last, because by the time he got through with the woman, no other man would want to lay with her.”

Crazy Bear made a noise deep in his throat, a growl that reminded Preacher of an actual bear.

“Yeah, I didn’t like it, either,” Preacher said. “But I kept telling myself it was none of my business. I sat there for a long time trying to convince myself to stay out of it. Must have been, oh, three or four whole minutes.” Preacher looked off into the distance. “Then I got up and told Boadley I was gonna go tend to my horses.”

“But you did not tend to your horses,” Crazy Bear said.

Preacher shook his head. “Nope. I went around to the back of the place, to the little cabin next to the barn where the woman took the men. It was dark by then, and they had all been out there except Axel. He was waiting in the trading post for the last one to come back, so he could take his turn. I stayed in the shadows until the fella went inside, and Axel came out.”

“You struck him down from ambush?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that, even to a skunk like this Axel was supposed to be. Anyway, there was a chance that the things the other men said were just empty talk.”

Crazy Bear nodded. Some men were as full of hot air as a sweat lodge.

“It didn’t work out that way,” Preacher said. “I waited to see what he’d do. He hadn’t been in that cabin more than a couple minutes when I heard his fist striking that girl. She cried out and begged him not to hurt her, and he just laughed at her.”

“So you stopped him.”

The memory was still vivid in Preacher’s head. Kicking the door open, lunging into the room lit by a single candle, seeing Axel’s hulking shape looming over the young Indian woman whose face was already bloody, her nose flattened by one of the first blows to fall. Axel’s ham-like fist was lifted over his head, poised to descend again. Before it could, Preacher’s fingers wrapped around Axel’s wrist, stopping it cold. Preacher’s rangy body possessed incredible strength, and he threw Axel against the log wall so hard that the man’s eyes rolled in their sockets.

Axel then made the mistake of getting up. Preacher let the man make it to his feet, then chopped blow after savage blow to his face, breaking his nose just like Axel had done to the young woman. Axel’s face was raw and bloody when he finally collapsed onto his knees and pitched forward onto the floor.

That should have been the end of it. Preacher had thought Axel was out cold when he picked the woman up out of the crude bunk, and wrapped the blanket around her. She was Shoshoni, he saw, and he spoke her language. He told her to go out and hide until the men were gone. She scurried away into the darkness.

Content to leave Axel there to sleep off the beating Preacher left the cabin. His horse was saddled, he had already loaded the supplies he’d bought onto his pack animal, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to slip away into the night.

But Axel wasn’t unconscious. The strength in his brawny body allowed him to shake off the thrashing Preacher had given him and struggle to his feet while Preacher was still halfway between the shed and the trading post. Axel had pulled the knife from the sheath on his belt and charged after Preacher, bellowing like a maddened bull as his long legs covered the distance in just a few fast strides.

Preacher had time to whirl around. Starlight glinted off the blade of the knife in Axel’s hand. Instinct sent his own hand flashing up as the blade swept down. Preacher grabbed, twisted, shoved…and Axel screamed as he suddenly found himself with twelve inches of cold steel buried in his belly.

Preacher’s fingers were still wrapped around the wrist of the hand that clutched the knife. The muscles in his arm and shoulder bunched under the buckskin shirt as he ripped the knife across Axel’s midsection. The keen blade sliced deep, opening up a huge, gaping wound. Axel kept screaming as coils of guts spilled out over his fingers.

Those dying shrieks brought Axel’s companions bursting out the back door of the trading post. Light from inside the building spilled over the gruesome scene.

Preacher was already moving. He could have shot it out with them then and there, and on reflection, maybe he should have. But he hadn’t set out to kill anybody on that particular night. He wanted to be left alone. Moving swiftly like a shadow, he reached his horse, jerked the reins loose from the hitch rail, and swung up into the saddle.

All sorts of yelling was going on behind him as he hit the trail. He heard men shouting Axel’s name, and then muzzle flame bloomed redly in the darkness behind him. They didn’t have a hope in hell of hitting him. He was gone.

The mountains rose in front of him, part of the frontier that had been his home for decades.

“You did not think they would be able to follow you,” Crazy Bear said as he and Preacher sat on the log.

“I didn’t think they’d bother. They didn’t seem all that fond of Axel. But I reckon I misjudged them. They came after me.”

Crazy Bear looked at him for a long moment. “It must have been hard for a man like you to leave instead of fight.”

“When a man gets to be my age, there are times when he’s tired of killing.”

“I have not seen as many summers as you, my friend, but enough so that I know what you say is true,” Crazy Bear said with a nod. “But now that they have come after you, you will go after them.”

Preacher nodded. “They had their chance to let it go. Now it’s my turn.”

Preacher didn’t go after the men immediately. He wasn’t quite in good enough shape to do that. Instead, he remained in the Crow village another week, resting and recuperating. Bright Leaf shared his blankets every night. If Crazy Bear knew about that, the chief didn’t say anything, and Preacher was grateful. He didn’t want to be enemies with a man who had saved his life.

In talking with Crazy Bear, he discovered the chief had been out hunting by himself that day, as he was in the habit of doing. Crazy Bear had a certain loneliness about him. He had risen to his position of leadership because of his great physical strength and his cunning as a warrior, but his size and freakish appearance made him something of an outcast even in the tribe he led. All the other warriors had great respect for him, but that didn’t necessarily make them his friends. And the women of the village, who might normally wish to marry a chieftain and bear his children, were a little afraid of Crazy Bear.

So Preacher felt some sympathy for him and spent a lot of his time talking to the chief. Preacher had had many adventures during his life on the frontier, and Crazy Bear seemed to enjoy hearing about them.

They were sitting on rocks outside the tepee Preacher shared with Bright Leaf when shouts from the other end of the village drew their attention. Crazy Bear rose to his great height and said, “There is trouble.” He strode off, his long legs carrying him quickly toward the source of the commotion.

Preacher went after him and caught up by the time they reached a group of warriors and women clamoring around someone. The crowd parted when Crazy Bear demanded in a loud voice to know what had happened. Preacher frowned when he saw a young warrior in blood-stained buckskins lying on the ground. An older woman, probably the boy’s mother, was on her knees beside him swaying and wailing.

Crazy Bear knelt on the young man’s other side and slid a big hand under his shoulders. The wounded warrior was still breathing. He opened his eyes as Crazy Bear gently lifted him and propped him up in a sitting position.

“What happened to you, Anteater?” Crazy Bear rumbled. “Where is your brother?”

The young warrior struggled to speak. He managed to gasp out, “Storm Cloud…is dead. White men…shot him…the same white men…who shot me.”

Crazy Bear lifted Anteater’s shirt to check the wound. Preacher saw a red-rimmed bullet hole on the right side of the youngster’s chest, where the ball must have penetrated Anteater’s lung. He couldn’t have long to live. Sheer stubbornness and the desire to bring the news of what had happened to the village had kept him hanging on.

Crazy Bear leaned closer. “Where were these white men?”

“Near…Owl Rock…Storm Cloud and I were…hunting there…We did not see them…until they opened fire on us…”

“How many?”

Anteater gave a tiny shake of his head. “Not sure…As many as…the fingers of both hands…maybe more.”

Crazy Bear glanced up at Preacher. “The men from Boadley’s place?” he asked.

“Could be,” Preacher said. “There were only six left when I rode away from there, but they could’ve joined up with some other fellas.”

Crazy Bear turned his attention back to the wounded Anteater and said, “Did you fight them?”

“No,” the young warrior said. “We never…had a chance…to fight back. They just…shot us and then…laughed about it. I heard them…while I lay in the grass…unable to move…They thought I was dead…They said…killing redskins was…great sport.”

Preacher’s jaw tightened in anger. Fury burned inside him. He told Crazy Bear, “That sounds like the same bunch, all right. No-good polecats, every damn one of ’em.”

Anteater went on, “I did not understand…all their words…but I heard them say…they would wait there…for the wagons. Then when they were no longer…looking at me…I crawled away and hid…and rested until…I could come back here.”

“You are certain that Storm Cloud was dead?”

Anteater lifted a shaking hand and touched a finger to the center of his forehead. “One of their bullets…hit him here.”

Crazy Bear nodded grimly. No one could survive a wound like that.

“I had to come back…to tell our mother…what happened,” Anteater gasped out. That brought another wail from the woman. The young warrior tried to reach out toward her, but his hand stopped suddenly and his arm fell at his side, limp in death. His last breath came out of him in a long sigh.

Crazy Bear lowered him to the ground again and stood up, stepping back to let the women of the tribe take over. They would tend to the body and to the grieving mother.

The warriors gathered around Crazy Bear, their faces taut with anger. Tall Tree said, “We must do something about this.”

“We must find the white men who did this and kill them,” Elk Runner added.

“I will find them,” Crazy Bear declared. “Ghost-Killer and I will find them.” He looked at Preacher, who jerked his head in a curt nod. “But we will go alone.”

That brought protests from the other warriors, who wanted to help avenge the wanton murder of the two young men, but Crazy Bear wouldn’t be swayed from his decision. The village was not a large one, with only two dozen warriors, and despite the fact that they would outnumber the white men, at least according to what Anteater had seen, a pitched battle against a better-armed force might not leave enough men to defend the village if the Blackfeet or some of their other enemies were to attack. It was good strategy on Crazy Bear’s part, Preacher thought, and would help to insure the continued safety of the rest of his people.

Of course, the two of them going up against five-to-one odds—or worse—was a mite reckless. Preacher already knew that Crazy Bear didn’t intend to take on the killers directly. The chief was too smart for that.

The warriors weren’t happy about it. Grumbling, the crowd broke up, and Crazy Bear and Preacher walked back toward Preacher’s tepee.

“It will not be easy, two against ten or more,” Crazy Bear said.

“Yeah, but we’ll be able to take ’em by surprise,” Preacher said. “They don’t know that we know they’re at Owl Rock.”

He had seen that landmark several times in the past. It was several miles east of the village, on the eastern edge of the Big Horns, a tall column of rock with some rounded bulges on the top that made it look a little like an owl.

“What are these wagons they spoke of?”

Preacher shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s been some talk back in the settlements about trying to establish a trail up the east side of the Big Horns, an offshoot of the Oregon Trail that would lead to the Montana country. Damn fool idea if you ask me. Too many Sioux and Cheyenne up there to ever settle that territory for good. But somebody could be tryin’ to take a wagon train in that direction.” Preacher rubbed a hand over his grizzled jaw as he thought. “If a bunch of outlaws was to hide at Owl Rock, they could ambush any wagons that came along. If that’s what they’ve got planned, I’d sure like to put a stop to it.”

Crazy Bear grunted and said, “I care nothing about any white settlers. Their wagons wear great ruts in the earth. Their numbers crowd the land. They should all go back and leave this country to the real people.”

Preacher understood why Crazy Bear felt that way, and to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure but what he agreed with the Crow chief, at least for the most part.

Preacher had seen the crowded cities back east and knew that more and more people wanted to leave their squalor and journey west, where there was plenty of land free for the taking—for anyone who could grasp the opportunity and hold it. That westward tide wasn’t going to stop any time soon, and in the end, trying to oppose it was just as futile as attempting to stop a real tide. Preacher was pretty sure it couldn’t be done.

So he didn’t argue with Crazy Bear. He just said, “Right or wrong, the people with the wagons don’t deserve to be robbed and murdered. But when you and I kill those white men, chief, it will be to avenge the deaths of Anteater and Storm Cloud, not to protect any settlers.”

“You are well enough to travel, and to fight?”

Preacher nodded. “Just let me get my gear together.”

Crazy Bear had brought Preacher’s saddle mount and pack animal back to the village with him, the day he had saved the mountain man from the ambush. In the three weeks since, the horses had been grazing nearby, growing fat and lazy. They would have to start earning their keep again.

Preacher’s guns and supplies were in the tepee. When he walked up, Bright Leaf was standing there, a worried look on her face. She said, “Some of the women told me what happened to Anteater and Storm Cloud. They say you are leaving, Preacher.”

She had stopped calling him Ghost-Killer, which was fine with him. He nodded and said, “Yes, Crazy Bear and I are going after the men who killed those young fellas.”

“These are the same men who hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “They could well be. Or they might belong to a different bunch. I won’t know until I lay eyes on ’em.”

“Either way, they are bad men. Cruel. Violent. Ruthless.”

“I don’t reckon there’s much doubt about that.”

“You are not well enough—” Bright Leaf began.

Preacher stopped her by putting his hands on her shoulders. “Thanks to you, I am well. Or close enough to it that it doesn’t matter.”

Bitterness edged into her voice as she said, “Then I wish I had not taken such good care of you. I wish you were still too weak to throw your life away like this.”

“I don’t intend on throwin’ anything away, especially my life,” Preacher told her with a smile.

“But you do not know what will happen.”

“Nobody does. That’s one of the things that keeps life interestin’.”

“Life is safer when it is not interesting.”

Preacher couldn’t dispute that. Safer, maybe…but a whole hell of a lot more boring.

“I have to get my things,” he said.

She stepped aside. “I will not stop you.” As he started past her, she added, “When you have killed the men you seek…will you come back to our village?”

Preacher hadn’t thought about that. He was well enough that once the grim errand he and Crazy Bear were about to set out on was done, he could go on with his plans. One more season of trapping was as far ahead as he ever thought. He could spend that season there. Beaver were still plentiful in the area.

But…if he spent the season in the valley, then wintered there as well, it might be too easy to stay on for good. He might grow too accustomed to having his belly filled with Bright Leaf’s cooking. He might get too used to waking up with her body snuggled warmly against his. If that happened, he would grow soft and fat.

Was it truly better for a man to be cold and hungry and lonely? All he knew was he had spent much of his life in just such circumstances, and he was still alive. The edges of his entire being were still honed to a keen sharpness. If he ever lost that, there was no telling what might happen to him.

Bright Leaf was still looking at him, waiting for his answer. Preacher met her gaze and said, “I might come back…someday.”

“But not now.”

“No,” he said. “Not now.”

She nodded, then glanced away, obviously unable or unwilling to look at him any longer. He knew he had hurt her and wished he had been able to avoid that. But the only way would have been to turn her away when she first came to him, and that would have hurt her, too. At least they had had a few days and nights of happiness.

Preacher went into the tepee. When he came out wearing his old buckskins that Bright Leaf had cleaned and mended for him and his broad-brimmed beaver felt hat, he carried his rifle and had his pistols tucked behind his belt. His hunting knife was in its sheath, and his saddlebags were slung over his shoulder.

Bright Leaf was nowhere to be seen. Preacher didn’t look for her. He went to find Crazy Bear so they could get their horses and set out on their mission of vengeance.