Absaroka Ambush

15

Knowing that Bedell and his people would be doubly cautious after Preacher’s raid, he let them alone for this night. It was probably for the best, ’cause the women needed the rest and, Preacher admitted to himself, so did he. He was still not 100%, but he knew he would be in a few more days.

Just before the fire was doused for the night, Preacher ruminated awhile and then stared hard at Faith, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Faith?”

She looked up. “Yes?”

“Your pa is worth considerable, ain’t he?”

“Oh, yes. He’s quite wealthy.”

“Like in thousands of dollars?”

Faith smiled. “Like in millions of dollars, Preacher.”

“Your ma?”

“She came into quite a vulgar sum of money when her parents died a few years ago.”

Preacher nodded his head. “Part of it is comin’ together now.” He cut his eyes to Eudora. “I figure Hempstead ain’t your real name, Eudora. But it’ll do far as I’m concerned. You got in a mite of trouble back east and your daddy bailed you out in the nick of time and sent you west. You reckon they’s any way that Bedell might know who you really are?”

“If he reads the newspapers, yes,” Eudora admitted. “And I see what you’re driving at. I think you’re right. My father is a prosperous man, but not wealthy like Faith’s parents. But both would pay a lot of money to get us back.”

“But only Bedell and Jack Hayes would be in on it. Maybe one or two more. The rest of them scum would be kept in the dark. Bedell promised the women to the trash to do with as they pleased. He wanted the supplies and the mules to use in his quest for gold, and Faith and Eudora for ransom. The men would be more likely to stay with him for the long haul if they had women to use along the way. Bedell planned this out long and hard, and it has damn near worked. So in his mind, we all got to die. Bertha, ladies, did any of you see what happened to Steals Pony, Snake, and Blackjack?”

The new trio all shook their heads. Brigitte said, “No. It was all so confusing and it happened so fast.”

“I got to think they made it out,” Preacher said. “I have to keep thinkin’ that.”

Preacher rolled up in his blankets and lay for a time before drifting off to sleep. There probably would be no more chances to grab any women from the train. If they had any sense, the outlaws would be placing the women in the center of the circle now. Of course, Preacher thought, if they had any sense, they wouldn’t be outlaws.

He had to keep cutting down the odds. Had to keep nibbling away at Bedell’s men. And Preacher knew that he was the only one to do that. Rupert had courage and would stand and fight. But the young officer was not a frontiersman. The ladies would also fight, but they wouldn’t be much good at sneakin’ in and out.

Preacher tried to figure how many women were captive. About a hundred, he concluded. That was too damn many for Bedell’s men to guard effectively. Then he opened his eyes wide as another thought came to him: there would be women escaping. All odds pointed to that. And if Preacher and his group stayed in front of the wagons, the women would be escaping from one terrible fate right smack into another one. Alone and unarmed in a hostile environment.

“Damn!” Preacher muttered. “Double damn,” he added.

“What are you damning now?” Faith whispered from a few feet away.

“Go to sleep,” Preacher told her.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, Preacher ruminated. Attacks from the rear would mean Bedell would have to switch more men from the front and the flanks. And after a couple of hit and run attacks on the rear, Preacher could change tactics and strike from the front. Yeah. The more he thought about that, the better he liked it. And he’d hit them just as they were ending the day on the trail, and the men would be tired and not terribly alert; maybe he’d hit them just as they were all waking up, grumbling and sleepy. “Yeah!”

“Now what?” Faith asked.

“Go to sleep,” Preacher replied, and closed his eyes.

The group unanimously agreed to Preacher’s plan.

“Of course some of the ladies will be getting away,” Eudora said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“I didn’t either ’til last night,” Preacher said, rolling up his blanket and canvas ground sheet. “Let’s hit the trail and come in behind ’em.”

That afternoon, as the group swung in behind the wagons, staying back about five miles, they came upon a body sprawled beside the trail. The woman was naked and she had been savagely horsewhipped.

“Leigh Maxwell,” Brigitte said. “She always fought her attackers until they beat her to the ground.”

Eudora covered the lady with a ragged blanket. Preacher rolled her up in the blanket and tied it securely with rope.

“They done this to set an example,” Preacher said. “Try to keep the other ladies in line. Fetch the shovel, Rupert.”

Preacher cut his eyes to the ladies. They were angry and it showed. This single act of viciousness had knotted the group together even more firmly. If there had been any reluctance on anyone’s part, it was gone now. Even Rupert was cussing under his breath. Quite ungentlemanly-like, too. The young man had some really terrible things to say about Bedell and his men.

“You got anything else to say about codes of conduct, fair trials, and lawyers and such, boy?” Preacher asked him, taking his turn with the shovel.

“Not a thing,” Rupert replied tersely.

“Think you can shoot one of them bastards or their lowlife bitches down in cold blood, now, do you?”

The look Lt. Rupert Worthington gave Preacher was savage. “Without hesitation.”

“Good. You just might survive out here, then.”

Preacher stood away from the group as the ladies lifted their voices in a Christian song and Eudora spoke a few words over the lonely grave.

Be hundreds, maybe thousands more graves like that one, Preacher thought, as the ladies sang a final song over the remains of Leigh Maxwell. When easterners start scratchin’ the itch to move west, and the floodgates open, folks will be turnin’ this route into a regular graveyard.

We damn shore got a good start on it with this run, he concluded to himself.

The group tagged along behind the wagons for two more days after the burying of Leigh. Preacher made no moves against the outlaws.

“I want them to get a little careless,” he told Eudora. He’d already spotted the two figures stumbling along, far in the distance, and knew he’d been right in his decision to swing in behind the wagons. Two women had managed to escape their cruel captors. If this kept up, Preacher would have to steal some more horses.

Rupert galloped. “You see them, Preacher?” he asked, excitement in his voice.

“I been seein’ them, Rupert. But you’re gettin’ better at takin’ in what’s around you. See the ladies, Eudora?”

“Now I do.”

They were Maude and Agnes, sisters from Baltimore. And they was worn to a frazzle.

“They’ll come after us,” Agnes said, after a long drink of water and a bite of food. “They told us all the other evening that if anyone escaped, they’d track us down and kill us slow. They can’t be more than an hour or so behind.”

“Good,” Preacher said with a smile. “We’ll not only cut the odds down some, but we’ll have us spare mounts, too.” He looked around. “Right over there,” he said, pointing. “Let’s get into position.”

This was perfect ambush country, and Preacher was an expert at picking the right spot from which to launch one at Bedell’s men. He positioned the ladies and warned them not to move anything except their eyes. Agnes and Maude were left to rest, for the two women were running on only a slim reserve of strength. They both had been badly used and beaten more than once.

Preacher found the highest spot around and started scanning the terrain. The outlaws showed up quicker than he anticipated. Six of them, riding those fine mounts and keeping their eyes on the trail left by the escaping women. Preacher worked his way back to the group and smiled.

“They’re ridin’ right into it,” he told the group. “Let them get close in enough to see their eyes. Fire on my command. Get set.”

Bedell’s outlaws never knew what happened. Twelve rifles roared suddenly as one and the men were literally torn from their saddles and hurled to the ground, great bloody holes in all of their chests.

Preacher and Rupert jumped into the saddle to gather up the spooked horses of the dead trash while Eudora and the others made damn sure the outlaws were dead. One wasn’t quite dead. Brigitte cut his throat with no more emotion than in scalin’ a fish.

“Son of a bitch!” She spoke the only eulogy the man would ever get.

The ambush netted the group six fine horses and more supplies, blankets, and ground sheets. They had powder, shot, lead, and molds. They also now had more weapons than they could possibly use. Preacher checked them all carefully and used part of the canvas taken from the abandoned wagon to wrap them and lash the guns on a packhorse.

“When we finally make our stand,” he told the women, all gathered around, “we’ll load ’em all up and have more firepower than Bedell. I hope. But I can’t help but believe he’s got more men a-waitin’ up ahead.”

“He does.” Maude confirmed Preacher’s suspicions. “I overheard men talking about that more than once. But the second group is days ahead of the wagon.”

“Where?” Preacher asked.

“I don’t know the precise spot. Just that they would be waiting at the spot where the wagons cut north.”

“That’s a long way from here,” Preacher said. “I know ’xactly where it is. We got time to cut the odds plenty more before then.”

“I can hardly wait,” Brigitte said, wiping her knife clean on her britches.

When his men had not returned by dusk, Victor Bedell felt the first seed of doubt enter his mind. He had now lost eleven men to Preacher, and they were still days away from the rendezvous point. Including Jack Hayes and the two thugs with him, Bedell was down to forty men and the twenty women he’d personally recruited for this journey. Savage bitches, he thought. In many ways, they had blacker hearts than most of the men who rode with him. They were vicious, coarse, and cheap…but what did you expect? Angels?

Bedell made up his mind. They would have to abandon some of the wagons. He just didn’t have the men and women to drive them all and still keep outriders looking for hostiles. And they would have to abandon some of the mules. Bedell hated mules anyway. He’d hated them since the time one had kicked him clear over a fence when he was a boy. And they would have to abandon some of the supplies; Bedell had sense enough to know that he couldn’t afford to overload the wagons, for he’d heard that this trail turned into a hard one later on.

He hated to leave the barrels of flour, salt pork, and sugar, but he would be more than happy to leave the feed for those goddamn mules. He hated mules.

Preacher sat his saddle and stared at the dozen wagons sitting motionless on the trail. The mules were still hitched up to them. He couldn’t figure that. If Bedell had abandoned the wagons—and it sure looked like that’s what he done—the least the sorry bastard could have done was unhitch the poor critters and let them fend off the land. It was late in the afternoon and had turned hot. The wind was kicking up a lot of dust.

“Stay put until I scout this out,” Preacher told the group, stowing away his spyglass. “Them damn wagons might be filled with riflemen. But the way them mules are fidgetin’ and sufferin’ down there, I doubt it. They smell that river and want a drink bad.”

Preacher slipped down to the unexposed side of his horse and circled the wagons a couple of times, studying the strange scene by looking under his horse’s neck. The mules sure appeared glad to see another living creature, even if it was nothing more than a damn horse.

Preacher slid off his horse at a run and rolled under the rear wagon, his pistols at the ready. But he could tell the wagons were void of human life. He quickly inspected them all and waved for the group to come on.

He was unhooking the mules when they rode up. “Take these poor critters to water,” he told them. “Haul back on ’em now, they’re some thirsty.”

He and Eudora and Faith inspected the wagons and found fodder for the mules and plenty of food and spare clothing for them all.

“I don’t understand this,” Faith said.

“We cut them down so thin, Bedell doesn’t have the men to drive the wagons,” Eudora explained. “Right, Captain?”

“That’s it. But he must be more of a black-hearted son than I thought to leave those poor mules to suffer in harness.”

“I drove mules as a boy,” Rupert said, the statement surprising the hell out of Preacher. “I can fix these harnesses to increase the team size. We can hook the tongues of the spare wagons to the underpinning of the front wagon and only have to use six drivers instead of twelve. That way we’ll still have ample guards out. But I’ve first got to determine which mules are the leaders.”

“Well…you just go right ahead there, Rupert,” Preacher said. “You get them rigged up and we’ll all be back in business, by God.”

“They’re right behind us!” a scout reported to Bedell.

“Who?” Bedell demanded.

“Preacher and a bunch of men!” the excited scout said. “I seen ’em with my own eyes. They’ve hitched up the wagons we left behind and are comin’ on. The wagons are double-teamed.”

“You saw Preacher, probably,” Bedell replied. “But the others are women dressed as men. Preacher double-teamed those goddamn mules because he didn’t have enough people to drive single wagons—just like us.”

“What are we gonna do?” Rat Face asked. Preacher had accurately pegged the name back in Missouri. Everyone called the man Rat Face. He looked like a two-legged rat, and was just as vicious and sneaky.

“We’ll not ambush Preacher again,” Jack Hayes said, riding up. “I say we attack.”

“Yeah,” a thug called Tater said. “Just ride right over ’em. We can do it.”

Bedell looked at Tater. The man was not known for his intelligence. For that matter, neither was Jack Hayes. Bedell shook his head. “Our losses would be too great. Even if we managed to succeed, which I doubt we could, our numbers would be cut in half. And then where would we be?” Before anyone else could answer, he said, “I’ll tell you where we’d be. In the middle of hostile country with not enough men to fight off an Indian attack. You want that?”

No one did.

Bedell sat his saddle in silence. He really didn’t know what to do about Preacher. To launch an attack against those behind would be folly. Bedell guessed, and guessed accurately, that Preacher had armed the women well. Each one of them would have six or seven, or more, loaded weapons available. To charge into that would be the end of Bedell’s plans.

No, they would have to hold out until the rendezvous point; then they could deal with Preacher and the women. Bedell twisted in the saddle and looked behind him.

He’d be doing a lot of that before his game was played out.

“Why don’t they attack?” Faith asked. Supper was over and the fire put out before darkness fell. This close to Bedell, there would be no night fires. “I would.”

“I think,” Rupert said, “Bedell has calculated the odds of conducting a successful attack and found them not to his liking.”

“You’re learnin’, Rupert,” Preacher said, lying on his blankets, his head on his saddle. “I took a terrible chance by pullin’ us this close to that trash, but it looks like it worked. Bedell’s worried, and I intend to keep him that way for a few days.” He drank the last of his coffee and tossed out the grounds that remained at the bottom of his cup. “It would still be too risky for me to try anything for a few days. Them outlaws will be shootin’ at the wind.”

“What do we do now?” Brigitte asked.

Preacher rolled up in his blankets. “Go to sleep.” And he did.