Absaroka Ambush

11

Preacher napped for about thirty minutes, then saddled up and broke camp. He was uncertain as to what he should do. Steals Pony had said only that it was a large band of men. But fifty? And why did Bedell want the wagon train? There had to be more to this than meets the eye, Preacher thought.

But what?

He didn’t know.

Preacher had always felt that the story about the men out on the coast wanting wives was a bit thin in spots. He didn’t doubt some of it. The government was trying to settle that area. He’d read in a newspaper that there were millions and millions of people back east of the Mississippi. Preacher couldn’t begin to fathom millions and millions of folks. Why, they must be fallin’ all over each other back yonder. He sure didn’t have any desire to see something as terrible as that.

So what other reason would bring Bedell all the way from New Orleans clear up to the wilderness? For a fact, the wagons were all new, and the man from Washington had said they were specially made just for this trip. But Preacher, a suspicious man by nature, had gone over the wagons personally, looking for secret hiding places where gold might be hidden. There were no specially built hiding places. They were good, strong, sturdy wagons and that’s all they were.

The Army had scouted out some of the wilderness, and reported back that there was no gold to be found west of the Mississippi. Preacher knew that was a crock of crap. He’d found him a vein years back and kept a small pouch filled with nuggets on him at all times. But not being a money-hungry man, Preacher had no special interest in the precious yellow metal.

But Victor Bedell was a money-hungry man—the thought came to Preacher abruptly.

He whoaed Hammer and slid out of the saddle, to sit on the ground and think. Maybe that was it. Maybe Bedell wasn’t after the wagons, but had some information about gold and was going after it. The mules, oxen, and the wagons, filled with supplies, would just be the cherry on top of the cake—not to mention the women. Use up the women, trade them off to the Injuns as a token of friendship, and with the additional supplies, Bedell and his men would be set for months.

“I think you may have it, old son,” Preacher said aloud.

Preacher put it out of his mind and concentrated on the hoofprints that stretched out ahead of him. Fifty men, he thought, shaking his head. Up to what?

Tonight, if at all possible, he’d find out something.

Preacher left Hammer safely hidden and Injuned the remaining two miles to Bedell’s camp. The first thing he learned was that the men with Bedell were not a bunch of greenhorns. They had a carefully staggered circle of guards out and they knew their business. He figured them for a bunch of ridge-runners from Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with maybe a few from Mississippi and Louisiana.

They were good, all right. But Preacher figured that he was better. And he knew he was when he managed to steal one of their horses and lead him into a shallow ravine and picket him quiet.

Shortly after he returned to the camp, the second shift took over, and Preacher picked out his man. The man moved around too much, and had a bad habit of turning his back to the darkness outside the circle. Preacher laid the flat side of his war-axe to the man’s noggin and dragged him off to the ravine.

Preacher didn’t tarry. He tied the unconscious man belly down across the bare back of the stolen horse and got the hell gone from there. He was betting Bedell and his men would think Injuns grabbed the fellow and would not follow in the darkness.

Preacher rode for over an hour, choosing his route carefully. He followed creeks, staying in the water much of the time to throw off and slow down any of Bedell’s men who might follow him—but he did not think any would.

Finally, miles from Bedell’s camp, Preacher swung down and let the prisoner fall to the ground. The man had been awake for quite some time, but had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, since his belly-down position on the bare back of the horse prevented him from seeing just who had grabbed him. Relief showed on his face when he realized a white man had taken him.

But that relief was short-lived when Preacher pulled out his bone-handled, long-bladed Bowie knife and touched the point of the blade to the man’s cheek. “You ever seen a man skinned alive?”

“N…n…no, sir,” the man stammered.

“You want to witness it firsthand?”

“H…hell, no!”

“You got a name?”

“Woford. Woford Lewis.”

“You ever heard of a mountain man called Preacher?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What have you heard about him?”

“That’s he’s mean, vicious, and a killer. That he’s lived with the savages for so long, he’s become one. There was a newspaper story on him back home. It said that Preacher has done gone and kilt more’un a thousand men…red savages and white men. That he fought grizzly bears and won. That he lives in a cave with a mountain lion. You know Preacher?”

“I am Preacher.”

Woford fainted.

“Shod horse,” one of Bedell’s men said, rising from his squat where he’d been studying the tracks, now hours old. “But from what I learned back in Missouri, that don’t necessary mean it was a white man. Injuns steal lots of horses.”

Victor Bedell stood silent and thoughtful for a few seconds. For the time and the place, he was very elegantly dressed. Compared to those standing around him, he was a regular dandy. “Woford was a fool. Most of you thought so and told me you did. I won’t risk lives by going after him. If this was the work of red savages, perhaps that’s what they want us to do and are waiting for us. The tracks head north. We’ll continue on west. Personally, I think we’re better off without Woford. It was a mistake to bring him.”

That was a relief even to his motley band of surly cutthroats, thugs, rapists, thieves, and ne’er-do-wells. Woford had been generally disliked. Back in Kentucky Woford had killed his mother and father in a dispute over money, and, over the ensuing years, had left a bloody trail of rape, murder, and mayhem. Not that the men riding with Bedell were any better—they weren’t—they just liked to think they were.

Bedell and his pack of two-legged hyenas mounted up and pulled out.

Woford didn’t know much, but when he awakened from his faint, tied head down from a limb, looking at Preacher about to light a fire only inches from his hair, he was more than happy to share his limited knowledge with the legendary man. Woford was so scared he peed in his longhandles. Preacher disgustedly cut him down and bodily threw him into a creek to cut the smell and then hauled him out and slapped more piss out of him. It only took about five minutes to reduce Woford to a trembling, crying shell, huddled on the ground, begging for his life.

Bedell had him a map, supposedly showing where a large deposit of gold was, and he and his gang were heading there. Once they had the gold, they were going to stake out, claim, and then rule a large portion of the northwest. A king and his soldiers, was the way Woford put it.

And Preacher had guessed right about the wagon train. When Bedell had learned about it, they had hastened their departure in order to fall in behind the train. Later on up the trail, they planned to attack the train, have their way with the women, then kill or trade them to the red savages, and take the supplies.

The men with Bedell were terrible people, Woford said, a sly look in his eyes. “Me, I was shorely duped,” he said. “I thought they was really swell guys going on a grand adventure. I would never have come along if I’d a known what kind of criminals they really was.”

“You’re a liar,” Preacher told him. “And a damn bad one, at that. Shut your mouth while I figure out just what I’m goin’ to do with you.”

“Please, sir,” Woford begged. “I have my aged mother and poor crippled sister back home to support.”

Preacher looked at him in disgust. Woford wisely shut his mouth and said no more.

“Where are your friends gonna hit the wagons?” Preacher asked.

“Please, sir. They are not my friends. I told you, I was hoodwinked. I’m a good man. I…”

Preacher popped him in the mouth with a hard fist that bloodied Woford’s lips. “Liar!”

“What are you going to do with me?” Woford whined.

“I ain’t made up my mind about that, yet. Now shut up.”

At first light, Preacher tossed the unlucky hooligan onto his horse and stood glaring up at him. “I ought to kill you. I know that. But I can’t kill no unarmed man, ’specially one that’s as yellow as you. But hear me well, Woford Lewis. If I ever see you again, no matter where it is, I’ll kill you on the spot. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir, Mister Preacher. Are you gonna give me a gun?”

“No.”

“Dear God in the Heavens!” Woford wailed. “I’m surrounded by red savages and unarmed. I won’t stand a chance out here.”

Preacher had had enough; he slapped Woford’s horse sharply on the rump and the animal jumped out into a run, with bareback-riding Woford hanging on to the mane, his butt bouncing up and down, and hollering for dear life.

On his return trip Preacher stayed north of Bedell and his men and swung wide, hooking up with the wagon train just as they were making camp for the evening. Preacher said not a word to anybody until he’d poured himself a cup of coffee and grabbed up a hunk of bread and some bacon from the pan. Lieutenant Worthington, Eudora, Faith, and a few other women had gathered around Preacher and his friends.

“There was fifty of ’em,” he said, after chewing and swallowing a mouthful of the bread and bacon. “I snatched one out of camp, read to him from the scriptures, and he was right glad to tell me everything he knew. Which wasn’t much, by the way. Now they’s forty-nine of ’em.”

“You killed that man?” Faith blurted.

“Nope. I just slapped him around some and then turned him loose.” He told the crowd everything that he had learned from Woford, then poured him another cup of coffee, and sat down on the ground.

“You know this Bedell person, Captain?” Eudora asked. It irked Lieutenant Worthington to hear her call Preacher “Captain,” and she knew it.

“I know him. He’s a bad one. And that scum he’s got with him is just as bad. And they ain’t amateurs, neither. They’re mean and low-down, but they’re all game to the end.”

“Ain’t Bedell the one you whupped in St. Louie, Preacher?” Blackjack asked.

“One and the same. He’s a cheat, a murderer, a liar, a whoremaster—beggin’ you ladies’ pardon, but he is—and anything else mean and low-down you can think of. Army run him out of St. Louis; had a noose waitin’ for him, they did. The man will do anything. He’s as poison mean as a copperhead.”

“You have a plan, Captain?” Eudora asked.

Preacher shook his head. “I surely don’t. But startin’ tomorrow, we’ll have more outriders roamin’ a couple miles from the train. In all directions. And y’all ain’t gonna be seein’ much of me. I’m gonna be doggin’ Bedell and his men.” He cut his eyes to Blackjack and the huge mountain man smiled. Blackjack knew that doggin’ Bedell’s gang wasn’t all that Preacher would be doing.

He’d be head-hunting, too.

Lieutenant Worthington came to Preacher later on that evening and asked if he could sit and talk.

“Sure,” Preacher said. “The ground’s free.”

“I think I shall disobey orders and have my men unpack and wear their uniforms from this point on.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have discussed it with my sergeant and I believe that merely the sight of the United States Army would deter Mister Bedell from any acts of violence against the wagon train.”

The mountain man paused in his lifting of the coffee cup. “All eight of you?” Preacher asked softly, pouring the young officer a cup of coffee.

Rupert looked over the small fire at him, frowned for a moment, and then grinned boyishly. He shook his head. “I see what you mean, Preacher. Yes. Thank you for not letting me make a fool of myself.”

“We all get to do that bunches of times over the years, Rupert. You boys stay in civilian clothing. That’s my thinkin’ on it. Them pretty uniforms make dandy targets.”

The young officer was silent for a moment, sipping his coffee. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “I love this country, Preacher. What’s it like further on?”

“The most inspirin’ thing you’ll ever see. Exceptin’ the second comin’ of Christ, I reckon. It’ll grab you, son. When you get in the middle of what we call the Rockies, it’ll fling something fierce all over you. And if you’re lucky, it’ll never turn you loose. I ain’t got the words to describe it. It’d take a man with a poet’s heart to put it in words. You’ll feel like you’re so close to God, you can just reach right out and touch his face.”

“That is lovely, Preacher,” Faith said. Neither man had heard her walk up.

Rupert immediately sprang to his feet and whipped off his hat. Preacher sat where he was and grunted his greeting. But he did snag another coffee cup, fill it up, and wave the woman to a ground sheet.

“Thank you,” Faith said, sitting down and accepting the cup of coffee. She smiled at Preacher. “You have the soul of a poet and don’t realize it, Preacher.”

“Just don’t let it get around. Something like that would ruin my reputation.”

Then Sergeant Scott called for the lieutenant, and Rupert excused himself and vanished into the shadowy darkness.

“You’re leaving in the morning?” Faith asked.

“Long before dawnin’, Missy.”

“Aren’t you ever afraid, Preacher? I mean, out here?”

“Hell, yes! Man who says he ain’t never been afraid is either a fool or a liar. You just got to overcome it, live with it, and go on about your business.”

“You think we’re really in trouble, don’t you? You believe that this Bedell person and his thugs will actually attempt to harm us.”

“Yes, I do, Missy. And I ain’t a man to deliberately cause a person undue alarm. I ain’t no see-er into the future. I can’t tell you where or when Bedell will strike. But strike he will. Y’all got to be extra careful. I got to convince you of that. He’ll come on like a real gentleman. He can do that. I ’spect that what him and his men has planned is to get all mixed up with the members of the train and then strike like lightnin’ when your guard is down. That’s what I think.”

Blackjack and the other mountain men were staying away from Preacher and the lady on this night. The wagon train was quieting down as the women were preparing for their night’s rest. Guards had been doubled. Slowly, the fires were being extinguished within the huge circle.

“You best get on back to your wagon, Missy,” Preacher told her. “People will talk.”

“You care about things like that, Preacher?” she asked, standing up.

“Not one twit.”

“Neither do I,” she whispered.

Their eyes met and held for a moment. Faith smiled at Preacher and then walked away into the gloom of the pale canvas-ringed circle. She stopped, turned around, and stared at him for a moment.

Preacher lay back on his blankets, his head on his saddle, and looked up at the diamond-pocked heavens far above him. After a moment, he sighed heavily. “That woman’s gonna get you in trouble,” he muttered.

“Hee-hee-hee,” Blackjack giggled from a few yards away, and Ned, Steals Pony, and the other mountain men joined in the snickering.

“Oh, shut up!” Preacher told them.

Charlie Burke then stepped out of the shadows and went swishing across the clearing like a fop, both hands on his hips. He sashayed about. Soon Blackjack and the others stepped out and began mincing about like fops, with the huge Blackjack closely resembling a drunken grizzly bear. Preacher just lay on his blankets and let them have their fun.

Preacher had to stick his fist in his mouth to keep from laughing when he spotted Eudora, Faith, and about twenty other ladies all hunkered down on the ground, peering intently through the wheel spokes at the foppish dancing and other strange antics of the mountain men.

He figured Blackjack and the others would have some tall explainin’ to do come the dawnin’.