Absaroka Ambush

16

At the end of the second day after learning that Preacher and the others were tagging along behind them, a thoroughly disgusted Bedell glared at the scout for that day. “Well?”

“They’s still back yonder,” the man reported. “Just a-ploddin’ along.”

“Did you let yourself be seen as I told you?”

“Yes, sir, Mister Bedell. I showed myself up no more than five hundred yards from the wagons.”

“What did Preacher do?”

“He waved at me.”

“He did what?”

“Waved at me.”

Bedell cussed, loud and long. He’d been doing quite a lot of that the past couple of days. He’d also been toying with the idea of meeting with Preacher and trying to work something out between them. He kept vacillating on the thought, finally giving it up and putting it out of his mind. Having firsthand and quite painful knowledge of Preacher’s volatile temper, Bedell reached the conclusion that even if he called for a gentleman’s agreement, and met the mountain man unarmed, Preacher would probably just shoot him on the spot.

Preacher was little better than a damn savage himself, Bedell thought. Breeding always tells.

“We’ll just push on,” Bedell told his men and women. “And stay alert. If Preacher waits much longer, we’ll have him where we want him.”

Just after dusk, Preacher was belly down in the grass, not a hundred yards from Bedell’s circle of wagons. He had not come to attack, although he would if the opportunity presented itself, but to observe. Just as he had guessed, Bedell had put the women in the center of the camp. No way in hell he could help them while they were located there.

Preacher sensed, more than heard, movement behind him and to his right. He moved only his eyes. Indians. Kiowa or Cheyenne, probably, and they were moving in closer.

Preacher, he said to himself, now you have really gotten your butt in the pickle barrel.

Preacher waited, motionless. The night had turned cloudy, the stars and moon not visible, and it smelled like rain. Which was why Preacher had decided to visit Bedell’s camp. He now wished he had stayed back in his own camp. He very slowly turned his head to the left. Indians over there, too. Crap!

He wondered if there were any behind him. He surely hoped not. If one of them crawled on top of him, it was going to be one hell of a surprise for both of them.

Not to mention damned unpleasant for one of them.

Preacher had left his horse about a mile back, in a deep ravine. He had switched horses for this ride, but nevertheless did not want the fine mount to be stolen.

Preacher remembered a slight depression about fifty yards behind him. Fifty yards, he thought. Might as well be fifty damn miles with scalp-huntin’ bucks all around him. But he sure couldn’t stay here. He started making like a crawdad; a very slow-moving one.

Come on rain, Preacher urged the elements. Start comin’ down in sheets.

Then the clouds shifted and faint moonlight began to illuminate the area.

Son of a bitch! Preacher thought. My medicine sure ain’t no good this night. He kept backing up and, much to his surprise, reached the protective depression in the earth. He slid down and landed right on top of the biggest and meanest-looking Kiowa brave he had ever seen.

They both jumped back and for about two seconds, Preacher and the brave looked at each other in shock and surprise.

Then Preacher hauled off and hit that Injun just as hard as he could with his fist, right on the side of the jaw.

Didn’t faze that brave. That Kiowa just crouched there on his knees in that big hole in the earth and grinned an evil curving of the lips at Preacher, pure murder in his eyes.

“Oh, hell,” Preacher muttered, just as shots roared from the circled wagons and Preacher reached for his knife.

The Kiowa opened his mouth to scream victoriously and raised his war-axe at the same time. Preacher cut him wide open, from one side of his belly to the other, with his big bone-handled knife and then came around again and damn near took the brave’s head off with the next swipe.

Preacher was out of that hole in the ground and moving like he had bees in his drawers. He had always liked to run, and most always won the footraces at the rendezvous. He beat his best record this night. He figured he made that mile to his horse in about six minutes. He was really pickin’ ’em up and puttin’ ’em down. Behind him, Bedell’s men were filling the air with lead balls as fast as they could and probably not hitting a damn thing—Kiowa being what they are.

He got gone from there swiftly. Back in camp, he had things organized in two minutes flat, with every rifle and pistol they had out and loaded and everybody in position.

But the attack never came. The Kiowa probably had their eyes on the larger train and failed to notice the small group of wagons, miles behind. Whatever the reason, Preacher decided his medicine had changed to the good.

Preacher delayed the morning pullout until he had made a wide circle of about two miles all around his camp. There was no smoke from the west, so he reckoned the Kiowa attack had failed. He led the wagons on, making good time, but being very cautious.

The Kiowa had taken their dead with them, of course, but Bedell hadn’t even bothered to take the time to bury his dead men, “his dead” not being really accurate. The only dead were four women from the original group.

“That’s Judy Barnes,” Eudora said, standing over one woman with an arrow still in her chest. “I never did learn the names of those two,” she pointed, “but that’s Rosanna there. I don’t know her last name—sorry.”

“Fetch some shovels,” Preacher said, suddenly very weary of it all. These women had come west to start over and make a new life for themselves. Their intentions were good and they’d proved to be a stouthearted bunch of ladies. “Damnit!” Preacher kicked at the ground. “Damnit to hell, anyways!”

The others let him cuss, rant, rave, and stomp around. They knew what was bothering him.

“I ain’t never known it to fail,” Preacher said, winding down. “Ever’ time the damn government tries to do something, they foul it up. Those nincompoops can’t do nothin’ right. And it just keeps on gettin’ worser and worser. They could have checked them women out better. But they didn’t. Hell, I seen right off we had a bunch of whores in the group. Them people in Washington must breathe different air than the rest of us. I read in the newspapers about how people change when they go off up there.” He snatched the shovel out of Rupert’s hand and started jabbing at the earth. “Go find you another one and start diggin’.”

“Yes, sir,” the startled young officer said.

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I ain’t your daddy. Damn politicians must go total deaf, dumb, and blind when they get elected. They lose all common sense. I was in St. Louie one time and had the misfortune to wander in a meeting hall where a senator or representative or somebody trying to be one of them fools was a-talkin’. I swear to God Almighty, that pompous jackass talked longer, used the biggest words, and didn’t say a goddamn thing that made no sense to me a-tall. Somebody would ask him a simple yes-or-no question and he’d take ten minutes to answer it and when he was through, ever’body was more confused than they was before. And the fool still hadn’t answered the question. But he’d talked so damn long that nobody could remember what the question was in the first place.”

The women had busied themselves digging graves, and even though it was a solemn time, most could not hide the smiles on their lips, for having just come from the settled east, they knew far better than Preacher just how accurate his words really were.

“Goddamn politicians,” Preacher said, flinging dirt every which way. “I started to go for my gun to shoot that loudmouth. Wish I had now.” Preacher paused in his digging. “Come to think of it, I believe that fool was elected President and somebody did shoot him! Or shot at him. Maybe it was a duel. I disremember. News is usually two or three years old, time it gets out here. Who the hell is this Martin Van Buren, anyways?”

“He’s a good man,” Eudora said. “For a lawyer.”

“A lawyer?” Preacher looked up, horrified. “A damn lawyer is president? That’s disgustin’.”

“He is responsible for creating the true and separate Democratic Party,” Rupert said.

“The what?” Preacher asked.

“It’s a political party. Like the Whigs. As a matter of fact, William Henry Harrison is a Whig and he’ll probably be the next president. Van Buren is becoming increasingly unpopular among the people.”

“Why?” Preacher asked.

“Why are you so interested, Preacher?” Cornelia asked. “Do you vote?”

“Kinda hard to find a place to vote out here, Missy. But I have voted a time or two when I was in a village here or there. And then I’ve had other opportunities to vote, but when I seen the caliber of men runnin’ for office I opted not to. Be right interestin’ to see what Congress is like a hundred or so years from now. Be more brayin’ jackasses runnin’ around there than a body could count. Ever’one of them talkin’ out of both sides of their mouth a-tryin’ to please ever’body and even a damn fool knows that’s impossible. So they all end up pleasin’ nobody.”

No one offered to argue that because they all felt it was a valid statement.

For the rest of the time the group worked in silence burying the dead. When that was done, Eudora read from the Bible and the ladies sang a sad song.

“Group sure is gettin’ thinner and thinner,” Preacher said to his horse.

Bedell sent three men out to scout their backtrail. But since Preacher had decided on a late start, and then stopped to bury the women, the scouts did not ride far enough to spot Preacher and the wagons. Instead they mistook a dust cloud for smoke, and raced back to Bedell with the erroneous news.

“You’re sure it was smoke?” Bedell asked, his spirits lifting.

“Positive. Them savages must have hit them after we run ’em off. Preacher and them women is buzzard bait now.”

Bedell smiled. “Excellent. Very good, boys.” Bedell happily put Preacher out of his thoughts. He gathered the prisoners and told them what his scouts had found. “So there is no point in trying to escape,” he warned them. “You’d be committing suicide. So my advice to you all is just settle down and accept your fate. You cannot change it.”

The shoulders of the women sagged in defeat. That evening, Bedell selected a very young and very pretty woman to satisfy his perverse desires. Her screaming shattered the night for hours.