The First Mountain Man (7 page)

7

“Relax,” Preacher said. “They're Bannocks. I know that brave in the lead. His name is Bad Foot.”

“Bad Foot?” Edmond said. “Why would anybody name a child that?”

“Probably 'cause he was borned with a club foot. Sometimes that's the way Injuns name their young. If I knowed y'all better I'd tell you a story about a brave I knowed once called Two Dogs Humpin'.”

“Please don't,” Penelope said quickly.

“Sounds like a delightfully naughty story,” Melody said, her eyes bright.

“I'm sorry I brung it up,” Preacher said, getting to his feet and making the sign of 'Brother' to the Indian on the lead pony.

Preacher began speaking to the brave in his own tongue, Snake. Bad Foot grinned and nodded his head and began rubbing his belly.

“They been buffler huntin',” Preacher explained. “And they gonna give us some steaks. We got some mighty fine eatin' comin' up, folks.”

“Ask him if he's ever heard of God,” Edmond said, digging in his pack for one of the many small Bibles he'd salvaged from the wagon train ambush.

“Ask him yourself. He speaks pretty good English. I's just bein' polite speakin' his tongue.”

Edmond approached the Indian cautiously, holding a Bible in his hands. Bad Foot stood smiling at him. Edmond held out the Bible and Bad Foot took it.

“Thank you,” the Indian said. “My woman thanks you. She will take it as soon as I return to the lodge. She will use it much more than me.”

Edmond's face brightened as he watched Bad Foot finger the pages. “Your, ah, woman is a Christian?”

The others wondered why Preacher was laughing so hard he had to sit down on the ground, holding his sides.

“No Christian. I take all Bibles offered me.”

“She studies them? My word. We've got to return and live with this tribe.”

“Studies? No study. Can't read. Pages thin. Make good ass wipe.”

* * *

They stopped early that afternoon. Preacher wanted to get the buffalo steaks on while they were still fresh. Besides, if he was tired, Lord knows what the others were feeling. They camped on the west side of Pacific Creek. Preacher wasn't too worried about Bum and his bunch; he figured they were at least three days ahead of them. They'd eat good this afternoon and just lay around and rest. Give the horses a much needed break, too.

He glanced over at Edmond, who still had his lower lip all poked out over Bad Foot's refusal to return the Bible. Preacher had been forced to step between the two men before Bad Foot forgot he was a peaceful Bannock and went on the warpath.

Before leaving, Bad Foot had grinned at Preacher and pointed at Edmond. He extended the index finger of his left hand and held it straight up in the air, cupping it with his right hand, making and up and down motion.

“What did that savage call me?” Edmond demanded, after the Bannocks had left.

“An asshole,” Preacher told him. “Among other things.”

“Well! I
never!”
Edmond said.

“I shore hope not,” Preacher replied, hiding his grin, and certainly not telling the man everything the hand signals had implied. “Although Injuns tolerate that type of thing better than whites do.”

“Whatever in the world are you babbling about?” Edmond asked, irritated.

Preacher shook his head. “Skip it.” He looked up at the sky. The weather had been perfect ever since leaving the cave and the little valley, but now it was about to turn foul. Preacher figured they'd be in a hard, cold rain long before dusk.

He set about building the ladies a crude lean-to. If the men wanted one, they could damn well build it themselves. As for himself, he'd just get up under a tree and sleep with his robe wrapped around him, his back to the tree. Richard and Edmond watched him for a few moments, then set about building their own shelter. Preacher eyeballed them for several minutes and concluded their rickety shelter would collapse before the night was over.

Preacher did build a small shelter over the cook-fire and then set about broiling the thick buffalo steaks. He got the shelter up just as the rains came.

The others watched him and marveled at how much a man Preacher's size could eat. He was gnawing on a half-raw steak while cooking the others.

“Learn this,” Preacher said. “Eat when you can, drink when you can, and sleep when you can. 'Cause you don't know when you're gonna be able to do any of the three again.”

“We've been eating rather well and often on this sojourn,” Richard pointed out.

“You ain't never wintered out here,” Preacher told him, not quite sure what sojourn meant, but not wanting to appear plumb ignorant. He kind of figured it had something to do with traveling. “Snows can come a-howlin' this time of year. Catch you flat-footed. Makes a fat rabbit look as good as airy steak you ever et.”

“Will you please stop speaking like some ignorant savage?” Edmond yelled at him, startling them all. “You have some education. I know you do. Why do you persist in speaking like some addle-brained buffoon?”

“Bothers you, do it?” Preacher adjusted the steaks over the flames. “Why is that, Brother Edmond?”

But Edmond sulled up and sat under his leaky lean-to, refusing to speak.

“You got something stuck up in your craw, spit it out, Brother,” Preacher told him. “Anger's a vile thing to keep all bottled up. Might even make a feller sick. You liable to come down with the collie-wobbles or the nobby-noodles or something worser than that.”

“There you go again,” Edmond broke his silence. “I won't even ask you what those ridiculous illnesses might be.”

“They aren't nothin', Brother.”

“And stop calling me Brother. I am not your brother. You don't even worship God. How could you be my brother?”

Preacher smiled. “You still got your lips all pooched out 'cause of what Bad Foot done. And who says I don't worship God? I do in my own way. Who says your way is right and mine is wrong? Why, I've even worshipped the Almighty at the Great Medicine Wheel over in the Bighorns. I bet that's something you never studied in your fancy Eastern colleges.”

“I've never even heard of it,” Edmond muttered.

“High up in the mountains, it is. 'Bout ten thousand feet or more. White stones in a circle, measurin', oh, 'bout seventy-five or eighty feet. Got twenty-eight spokes. And on a river 'bout fifty, sixty miles to the west of there, they's a great stone arrow, pointin' direct at the wheel. Lots of stories 'bout them things, but the Crow say the Sun laid out the wheel to teach the tribe how to make a tipi. I told y'all how the Plains Injuns feel about the sun and the earth. I'm gonna tell you something else: when I stood there in that circle, I got me a strange feelin', I did. Spiritual feelin'.”

“Are the Crow dangerous?” Richard asked.

“Depends on how you look at it. They love to steal horses. They're fine horsemen. I know an ol' boy name of William Gordon. Mountain man. He had him a Crow chief tell him that if they killed the white man, they wouldn't come back, and they couldn't steal no more of the white man's horses. So they'll steal from the white man, but they won't kill him. Howsomever, that don't hold true all the time. You get some young buck lookin' to make a name for hisself so's he can impress the girls, he might just take your hair. It don't happen often, but it do happen. All in all, though, I trust the Crow not to kill me. But I sleep with one eye on my horses when I'm in their territory.”

Preacher looked at the steaks and said, “They's ready. Come get this food and eat good.”

Over supper, Melody said, “The Indians who attacked the wagon train, Preacher—what did you say they were?”

“Arapaho. Strange bunch of people. They stay to themselves mostly, but sometimes they will hook up with the Cheyenne. They ain't got no use for most white people. They's been talk of the Cheyenne and Arapaho comin' together to fight. Both tribes hate the Kiowa. I been hearin' talk that they's goin' to band together and head on the warpath against the Kiowa. Odd, 'cause the Kiowa and the Cheyenne used to be friends. I don't know what happened. The Arapaho will tell you he is your friend, but he ain't—not really. How's your meat?”

“It's delicious,” Edmond said. “”And please let me apologize for my earlier outburst. It's been, well, a trying time for all of us.”

And it ain't nearabouts over, Preacher thought.

* * *

“I can't figure where he's takin' them,” George said. “He's headin' straight west.”

“Has to be Fort Henry on the Yellowstone,” Bull said. The huge knot on his head had gone away, but the memory of who gave it to him had not. He dreamed nightly of killing Preacher.

“But there ain't no soldier boys there,” Bum said. “That's a civilian fort. And that shore ain't gettin' them folks no closer to the Oregon Trail.”

“Maybe it is,” Jack Harris said. “Preacher knows everybody in the wilderness. They's bound to be some trappers and the like hangin' around Henry. He could get some of them to ride with him down to Forth Hall for protection and then get them pilgrims hooked up with another wagon train headed west. Once that was done, we'd be out of luck.”

“How many days you figure they're ahead of us?” Bum asked.

“Maybe two—three at the most. We're travelin' a lot harder than they is. But if we're gonna catch up, we got to push harder still.”

“This ain't gettin' us no closer,” Bobby said, lurching to his feet with the help of a branch he was using for a crutch. “Let's ride.”

Slug, also using a tree limb for a crutch, rose painfully to his one good foot. “I'll follow Preacher clear to the blue waters if I have to,” he said, his face tight with the pain from his broken ankle. “I owe him, and this is one debt I damn sure intend to pay.”

Beckman hobbled to his feet, grimacing at the pain in his wounded leg. “Let's ride, boys. Hell, even if we get to Fort Henry and they're still around, there ain't no law there. Cain't nobody do nothin' to us. If them pilgrims say we attacked them, it's our word agin theirs. And they's more of us than there is them. If anything's said about our wounds, we'll just say we was attacked by Injuns.”

Moses dumped water on the fire and stirred the ashes. Outlaws they were, but none of them wanted to be anywhere near a raging, out-of-control forest fire.

“Get the horses,” Bum said. “We got to put some miles behind us.”

None of them—Preacher included—knew whether Fort Henry was still operating. Andy Henry had built several forts, beginning back in 1807 when he built a fort on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Big Horn. Then another fort was built in 1810 near the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison rivers. Blackfeet destroyed that one. Then in 1811-1812 another fort was thrown up on Henry's Fork of the Snake. Blackfeet and hard winters put that one out of business. Back in '23 another, sturdier fort was built and so far as any of the men knew, it was still operating.

They could only hope.

* * *

Preacher plunged them across the Snake and into the wilderness of the Teton Range and into Washington Territory. He picked up the pace, knowing by now that those behind him would have figured out where he was going. Problem was, Preacher didn't know if the fort was still standing, much less in business. He hadn't been over this way in several years. There had been several Injun uprisings in that time. He'd asked Bad Foot about it, but the sub-chief had only shrugged his shoulders in reply. Which might have meant anything or nothing.

With an Injun, you just never knew.

The side of Richard's head was still tender to the touch, but the wound had healed nicely. Edmond had gotten over his mad with Preacher, Penelope was still a bitch, for the most part, and Melody, seeing her advances thwarted, had taken to not speaking to Preacher. Which suited Preacher just fine. He didn't have time to fool with some love-struck female.

If he had any kind of luck, in a couple of weeks he'd be done and through with the whole damn bunch of them and the entire misadventure would be behind him.

With any kind of luck.

They rode right into a storm and had to seek shelter from the cold driving rain that had bits of ice in it. The ice, driven by high winds, cut like tiny knives on bare skin.

“These late spring storms can be pure hell,” Preacher said, almost shouting to be heard over the howl of the wind as it came shrieking down off the mountains. “We might wake up in the mornin' and they'll be a foot of snow on the ground. You just never know this high up.”

“It sounds like the wailing of a million lost souls,” Edmond said. “I've never heard or felt anything like this.”

“That's a right good way of puttin' it,” Preacher agreed. “Never had thought of it like that.”

“But if we can't travel,” Richard said, shouting the words, “neither can those behind us.”

“Don't bet on it,” Preacher told him. “This storm might be local. It might not be doin' nothin' fifteen miles to the east of us. Sorry.”

Preacher managed to throw up a windbreak and get a fire going. But all in all it was going to be the most miserable night the pilgrims had yet spent on the trail. Preacher took it in his usual manner: calmly and philosophically. He knew there was no point in bitching about it; wasn't nothing he nor anyone else could do about it.

The rain soon changed to snow and in a very short time, the land was covered in white. The snow, whipped by the high winds, soon reduced visibility to near zero.