The First Mountain Man (28 page)

The renegade slowly turned his head, and in the very faint moonlight filtering through the trees, looked right at Preacher.

13

Preacher lowered his gaze to the brave's chest. He knew that looking directly at a person can sometimes bring to life a sense that ordinarily lies dormant. Preacher remained as still as the tree he stood by. He willed himself to be a part of the tree, to be as one with the earth. It worked for him most of the time.

This time it didn't.

With almost a silent cry of jubilation, the brave spotted him and jumped for the creek and Preacher.

Preacher stepped away from the tree and flung the war axe. The heavy head took the brave in the face, embedding in his skull. The renegade threw up his hands, dropping his own axe, and fell without a sound to the ground, landing on his back.

“Pretty good axe,” Preacher muttered, as he went to work mutilating the body with his knife. He scalped the Indian and stuffed the hair behind the wide leather belt that for this night, replaced his bright sash. He worked the axe out of the Indians' skull and wiped the blood away on the dead man's leggings. Satisfied with his work, Preacher moved warily but quickly away from the death scene, working his way toward where he believed the main body of hostiles to be camped.

He had left his rifle in the boot, for he did not want to be hampered by a long gun this night. He had his pistols, but this was a night for knife and axe.

He moved through the brush and timber without a sound, walking a short distance and then stopping, to listen, let his eyes sweep the terrain, and to sniff the air.

A few hundred yards later, he smelled wood smoke. He stood silent for a moment, until he had pinpointed the location of the smoke. He turned to the west and moved toward the source of the smoke.

He stopped and sank slowly to the ground, on his belly, when he saw that there were too many men around the fires for him to take on. Preacher was a brave man, but he wasn't stupid.

He backed away from that camp and slipped around it, changing direction. He almost made a fatal mistake when he came to a clearing, then hesitated at the last second. Something just didn't seem right.

Then his eyes found what his sixth sense had warned him about. Two men, standing just inside the timber on the other side of the tiny meadow, thick with grass and heady night fragrance of summer's flowers.

White men, for an Indian would never have been so careless. Preacher waited, to see just how impatient the sentries might turn out to be. And it wasn't a long wait.

“This is stupid,” he heard one say, the words carrying to Preacher plain. “I can't understand what in the hell we're on guard for?”

“Hell, don't ask me, 'cause I shore don't know,” the other one replied, disgust in his voice. “Them movers shore ain't gonna try no attack, and Red Hand's done got the Cayuses offen us. I think it's plumb ignorant bein' out here when we could be warm in our blankets.”

“I left me a squaw on the Payette to join this bunch. I want some pretty bangles to take back to her. We'll have our way with them mover women 'til we git tarred of 'em a-whinin' and complainin' and squallin' and then kill 'em and go through they possessions.”

What nice folks, Preacher thought. Just lovely. While they talked, Preacher took that time to move. He slowly circled the meadow and entered the timber, working his way up to within a few yards of the so-called sentries.

“I be right back,” one of the outlaws said.

“Where you goin'?”

He mumbled something in a low voice and stepped back into the timber, unbuttoning his trousers as he walked.

He walked right into Preacher's big knife. Preacher lowered the throat-cut body to the ground, and walked right up to the remaining sentry.

“Took you long enough,” the man said. “Now stand here and keep your eyes open whilst I—”

“Die,” Preacher finished the statement as he buried a war axe in the man's skull. He grabbed the man's shirt to prevent the body from thudding the ground, and lowered the dead outlaw to the earth. He scalped both men and mutilated the bodies.

Preacher figured he'd pushed his luck just about as far as he cared to push it this night. He began his walk back to Hammer. He was about halfway back to where he'd picketed his horse when he heard the first shout, coming from 'way behind him. Someone had found the bodies of the two sentries.

He immediately dropped down to the earth, in some scrub bushes, and waited for a few moments, curious to see what would come of this.

“Goddamn you, Red Hand,” the shout came from not too far from where Preacher lay. The voice belonged to Bum. “I thought you told me you'd fixed it with the Cayuses?”

“This is not Cayuse work,” Red Hand's voice was tight with anger but still controlled. “I have the assurances of the warriors in this area that we are to be left alone.”

“Well, who else would be workin' this area?” Jack Harris asked.

“Preacher,” Moses said quietly. “He's amongst us, boys.”

“That ain't possible!” Bum shouted. “He's good, but he ain't that good.”

“Aii-yee!” the call pierced the night, as the bodies of the Indians were found.

The men began running toward the sound and Preacher slipped out of the bushes and started toward his horse, circling wide of the timber where he'd left the dead Injuns. Heading deeper into the timber, Preacher stopped when he caught movement just ahead of him. Two Indians running almost noiselessly through the timber, both of them carrying rifles. They ran past Preacher, not more than twenty feet from where he stood. No sooner had they jogged past, Preacher stepped out and continued on toward Hammer.

A shot split the night far behind him. “I got him!” someone called.

Preacher smiled as he walked. You got one of your own, you fool, he thought. What a pack of ninnies.

He reached Hammer, swung into the saddle, and headed south, following an old game trail. When he felt he had put enough distance behind him, Preacher stopped and made a cold camp for the rest of the night. He went to sleep smiling, knowing there would be damn little sleeping in the camp of Bum and Red Hand for the remainder of this night.

* * *

Preacher met the wagon train a few miles south of where the trail crossed the Powder. Two of Red Hand's warriors had made the mistake of trailing Preacher out of the Wallowas. He now had their scalps tied to Hammer's mane, in addition to the other scalps he'd taken.

“Wagh!” Nighthawk said, spying the scalps. “You had an interesting night of it, did you not, Preacher?”

“Got right borin' there toward the last,” Preacher replied. “Weren't no fun left to it foolin' with greenhorns, so's I pulled out. But I reckon I did leave them in some manner of disarray, I 'spect.”

“What are those things?” Swift asked, riding up and pointing to Hammer's mane. A half a dozen others rode with him, including Edmond and Richard.

“Scalps, Swift. Human hair. The top-knot, mostly. When I make war, I like to leave the enemy a little sign that it ain't nice to fool with Preacher.”

“That's disgusting!” a mover said.

“Actually,” a mover said,“ I have read where some historians believe the white man originated scalping, not the Indians. What say you about that, Preacher?”

Preacher shrugged his shoulders. “Some tribes scalp, others don't. Most do. I 'spect scalpin's been goin' on ever since the knife was invented. That's what I think. Swift, they's a right nice place to circle about two mile ahead. Circle 'em tight, 'cause we close to the action now. Keep everyone inside and when folks got to leave the circle, have armed men with them at all times.”

The wagonmaster gave the mountain man a curt nod of his head and turned his horse. The others followed, except for Richard and Edmond.

“I think them scalps of yourn done irritated the man, Preacher,” Dupre opined. “They cut agin the grain of his Christian holdin's.”

“It's a barbaric practice and I fail to see what you have accomplished by doing it,” Edmond put his penny's worth in.

“Demoralization,” Richard said.

“Do what?” Beartooth asked, looking at the missionary.

“It lowers the morale of the enemy.”

“Oh. Do tell?” the big mountain man said. “Do that mean that Preacher done good?”

Richard noticed the twinkle in the man's eyes and sighed. He held a strong suspicion that these mountain men were not nearly so ignorant as they would like others to believe. On more than one occasion he had noticed lapses in their horrible grammar that led him to believe they were merely having a good time at the expense of others.

“I would have to say yes to that question.”

“Wagh!” Beartooth hollered. “You a hero agin, Preacher.”

Dupre put a hand to his heart and proclaimed, “My hero!”

“I think I am going to faint,” Nighthawk lisped.

“I'm of good mind to just shoot all of you,” Preacher said, and rode off.

* * *

When the wagons had been circled and the women were busying themselves with preparing supper, the mountain men gathered at their own camp, as always away from the main body of movers, and talked.

“I think we'll have at least one full day of safe crossin',” Dupre offered. “That'll put about half the wagons on each side of the Powder.”

“That's the way I see it,” Preacher concurred. “Then when the men is busy on the second day, Bum and Red Hand will hit us and they'll come a-foggin', boys. There ain't gonna be no feeler attacks. They'll try to make the first one do it.”

“And they's a chance they could do 'er, too.” Beartooth offered up the sobering thought. “We're gonna be spread pretty damn thin.”

“Everybody that can shoot is gonna have to be well-armed,” Preacher said. “We got weapons aplenty, so Jim, you check each wagon for powder and shot. Dupre, see that every boy of age and the girls, too, if they can handle a gun and they parents allow it, is armed. Beartooth, you and Hawk check out the crossin' at first light.” He paused for a moment. “I shore hope God looks down and smiles on fools, 'cause we sure got a bunch gathered here. Includin' us,” he added.

* * *

Red Hand and Bum were still livid over the dead that Preacher had left behind him. Some of Red Hand's renegades were very nervous about continuing with the planned fight that lay ahead of them. Preacher's medicine was too good, they warned Red Hand. There will be other wagon trains—plenty of them, so the talk goes—so why not wait? Let this one go on.

“Fools, cowards, old women, fops!” Red Hand yelled at them, shaming them. “Look around you. We are two hundred strong. Preacher is but one man. The others with him are nothing. The whites in the train are not skilled fighters. They are women and small children. No. We attack as planned.”

He walked to Bum's side. “This better work, outlaw. If the first day does not find us in control of the wagons, we will have men leaving us. Both yours and mine.”

“Your warriors thinkin' that Preacher's medicine is too strong, Red Hand?”

Red Hand stared hard at the man. His dark eyes were unreadable. “Yes,” he finally said. “And maybe it is.” He turned and walked away.

Jack Harris had stood quietly and listened to the exchange. Now he felt he had to speak his mind. “Bum, that took a hell of a man to do what Preacher done the other night, and an even better man to slip away oncest it was done. Some of the boys is right edgy, I got to say.”

Bum nodded his head. “I think Preacher's even got Red Hand thinkin' 'bout quittin'. I don't think he will quit. His honor's at stake now. But he's thinkin' on it.”

“So is some of our people.”

“You?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Not me. I'm in this 'til it's over. One way or the other. Way I see it, Preacher and all them others has got to die. If they was to get through and tell what they know 'bout us, the Army would be shore to send men in after us, and all that'd be waitin' for us would be a rope. And that makes my neck hurt just thinkin' 'bout it.”

Bum was sure in agreement with that. “This time tomorrow, Jack, they'll be plenty of women and girls for us to be usin'. And a few of us will have gold aplenty to spend back East. Me, I'm gonna take my share and retire from this business. I'm gonna change my name and buy me a little business of some sort back acrost the Muddy and settle down. Civilization is movin' this way, and it's comin' fast. Ten years from now, they'll be people all over this area.”

Jack doubted that. In fact, he doubted everything that Bum had just said. The man was an outlaw, and that was all he would ever be. He watched as Bum walked over to the small fire and poured a cup of coffee.

Get out of this!
His mind warned him.
Pack your kit and saddle up and ride.

But he knew he wouldn't do that. Knew he had to finish the wagon train and actually look down on Preacher's dead, bloated body. And the bodies of everyone on that train. He had a good thing going, this leading wagon trains to ambush. If anyone lived to talk about it, he'd be finished.

“What you ponderin' so heavy, Jack?” Bum asked him.

Jack forced a smile. “Thinkin' about all them women on the train.”

“We gonna have us a high ol' time for sure,” the outlaw said with a grin. “I cain't hardly wait.”

Ride out!
the words again popped into Jack's brain. He shook his head to clear it.

He looked at his comrades, sitting and squatting and standing in small groups. They were filthy. Clothing hanging in rags. Stinking and unshaven and ignorant. They were working ten times harder being on the dodge side of the law than they would holding down regular jobs.