Absaroka Ambush

1

It was several weeks before Preacher caught up with the wagons, and all could sense the change in him. And not just because he was riding a beautiful gray rump-spotted Appaloosa. The spotted horse was bigger than most of his breed, and had a mean look to his eyes, although he was gentle with Preacher and seemed devoted to him, which he was.

“What’s his name, Preacher?” Rupert asked.

“Thunder.”

“You’ve changed,” the young officer said.

“I reckon I have.”

“Why?”

“I got to get these ladies to the coast, and then I got Bedell and his bunch to deal with.”

“Vengeance is mine, sayest the Lord.”

“Not this time, Rupert. Not this time.” Preacher rode on ahead.

He kept mostly to himself, ranging miles ahead of the wagons.

“I can’t believe a man would love an animal so much that he would be obsessed with revenge over it,” Faith remarked to Steals Pony one evening.

“There have been more men killed over horses and dogs than over women, lady,” the Delaware replied. “Long years ago, Preacher found a little wolf pup whose mother had been killed. Preacher raised that wolf. Some whites say a wolf cannot be tamed. Whites say many foolish things. A wolf cannot be tamed like a dog, but if you gain that wolf’s trust, in that respect the wildness within can be tempered. Preacher and that wolf were inseparable for several years. Then, a man named Ben Parsons killed the wolf. Killed it because he didn’t like Preacher. This was back in, oh, I just don’t remember. Preacher finally caught up with Parsons at the rendezvous of ’28, on the south end of Bear Lake. Walked up to him, called him out, leveled a pistol, and shot the man dead. Preacher is not a man you want to cross.”

“Preacher killed a man over his wolf?”

Steals Pony shook his head. “No. Preacher didn’t own the wolf. You can’t own another living thing. You can take care of it, love it, be a friend, but you can’t own it. Preacher and the wolf were friends. Like that young man who lives down in the Colorado Rockies with a cougar and a wolf. Jamie Ian MacCallister.”

“What do you mean, he lives with them?” Eudora asked. “You mean, they stay in the house with him?”

“If they want to, yes. His wife doesn’t seem to mind. His young son sleeps with the puma. Rest assured, no one is going to bother the child when that puma is near,” Steals Pony added very dryly. “That cat weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds. Very impressive animal.”

Faith shook her head, sensing a story here for her father’s paper and for her own fledgling publication. “Where have I heard the name MacCallister?”

“The lone survivor of the Alamo,” Blackjack said. “Jamie came out here right after the Alamo fell. He married up with the gal who helped nurse his wounds and they come west soon as they could. I understand it took her a few months to get used to the way certain dangerous animals flocked to Jamie, but she soon settled right in. She don’t allow bears in the cabin though. She do draw the line there.”

“Imagine that,” Faith said, the sarcasm thick in her voice.

“What happened after Preacher shot that man?” April asked.

“Nothing,” Steals Pony said. “Nobody liked Ben much anyway.”

“It’s finally getting through to me,” Rupert said, refilling his coffee cup. “And I don’t mean any ugliness or criticism in what I’m about to say. You people have brought it all back to the basics. Your laws are so simple that they are difficult to understand. You have taken your laws from the ways of the animals, in a manner of speaking.”

“You’re right to a degree,” the Delaware agreed. “Back when we were actively trapping, a man would see another person’s traps, but you never bothered them. Stealing from a man’s traps could get you killed, and rightly so. Same with a man’s cabin. If you were in need, you could use it, but if at all possible, replace what you used. Steal a man’s horse, kill his horse or dog, and you get killed. Respect is the key. I respect your way of life, you respect mine. I respect what is yours, you respect what is mine. If a person chooses to disrespect the rights and property of others, well, we don’t see the point of keeping that person alive. Because he isn’t worth much. He takes more than he gives.”

“But among civilized people, that way of thinking went out centuries ago,” Faith pointed out.

The Delaware smiled. “Civilized people, you say?” He chuckled. “On this journey, dear lady, you have seen many Indian tepees. But you have yet to see one with a lock on the entrance.”

Five and a half months after leaving Missouri, the wagons were at last within sight of their destination. Since the aborted ambush by Bedell, there had not been a single shot fired in anger, and very few other mishaps for the ladies on the train.

Madeline Hornbuckle said, “Perhaps God, in His Wisdom, decided we had been punished enough.”

The women had forded rivers, struggled over mountain ranges, fought Indians, outlaws, and the elements, seen their numbers cut by a third, and now they were within an easy day’s ride to the valley.

Eudora abruptly halted the wagons.

“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Preacher demanded, riding up to the lead wagon. “Yonder’s the damn valley!”

“We camp here,” Eudora told him.

“What!”

“We camp here,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“So the ladies can bathe and fix their hair and change into proper attire,” Rupert said. “It will do you no good to protest, Preacher. Believe me.”

Preacher opened his mouth, then closed it shut after taking a good look at the set features of Eudora and Faith. He slowly nodded his head and swung down off of Thunder. “I reckon we’ll camp here for the night.”

The men were quickly ordered to stay the hell out of the circle of wagons. Eudora pointed to a grove of trees about a hundred yards or so from the wagons and the mountain men needed no other instructions. They dutifully trudged over to the trees and made their own camp. Young Louis thought he might be exempt. Eudora gave him a swift kick in the butt with her boot and Louis quickly joined the men.

Some of the men from the Willamette Valley decided they’d ride over to check out the ladies. It took them about fifteen seconds to realize they had made a ghastly mistake. Looking at the muzzles of fifty rifles will do that to a man. They joined the other men under the trees.

And it was then that Preacher realized he had been wrong about the man from Washington. The ladies were expected, and they were spoken for. It made him feel some better about politicians…but not much.

“This is becoming a regular yearly visit for you, Preacher,” the chief banker of the post said to him, accepting a cup of coffee.

“Not no more,” Preacher told him. “This is my last run. Somebody else can look out after them poor pilgrims from here on in. You got my money?”

The banker handed Preacher a thick envelope. Preacher thanked him and took his friends aside to divvy up.

“More money than I’ve seen in many a year,” Blackjack said. “I think I’ll leave the mountains and head on down to Californey and buy me a little business of some sort.”

“You lie,” Steals Pony told him.

“Shore, I do,” Blackjack replied indignantly. “You didn’t expect me to tell the truth, did you?”

“That would be a novel experience, to say the least,” Steals Pony replied.

“What you gonna do, Delaware?” Blackjack asked.

Steals Pony cut his eyes to him. “Ride with Preacher if he wishes.”

“Yeah,” Blackjack said brightly. “I think that there’s a right good idea.”

But Preacher shook his head. “No, I ’ppreciate it. I truly do. But it’s my fight, boys. And mine alone. It’s a personal thing with me. I lost good friends on this run. They’d still be alive if it wasn’t for me. Now they lay moulderin’ in the ground. Them that we could find, that is,” he added bitterly. “Y’all lay around the post and enjoy yourselves. After I say my goodbyes, I’ll be pullin’ out ’fore the dawnin’.”

Preacher walked away.

“I don’t feel a bit sorry for Bedell and them scum that ride with him,” Blackjack said. “But I’d shore hate to have Preacher on my trail.”

Faith had walked up while Preacher was stating his intentions of going it alone. She had just washed her hair and was toweling it dry. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Let me guess. He’s going after those men, but the reason for his doing so, other than they killed some of his friends, is mainly because they killed his horse.”

“You’re learning, lady,” Steals Pony told her. “You’re learning.”

“I never will understand that man!” she said, stamping her little foot.

That night, long after the wagons and most of the tents had gone dark and nearly everyone was sleeping, Preacher pushed back the flap on Faith’s tent and stood for a moment.

She lay in her blankets, the lone lit candle highlighting the sheen of her strawberry blonde hair. Her shoulders were bare, and it wasn’t hard for Preacher to see that under the blankets, everything else about her was bare, too.

“I thought you’d come by to say farewell,” she said.

“I’m here.”

“And?”

Preacher smiled and laid his rifle aside. She watched him kneel down by her bed and take off his shirt. She noted the bullet scars and knife scars and the place where he’d once had an arrow cut out. He was powerfully muscled. He reached out and gently touched her face with a hard and calloused hand.

“Is that the best you can do?” Faith asked.

Preacher chuckled softly and pinched out the candle.

When she awakened the next morning, Preacher had been gone from the camp for several hours. He had left her a note on his pillow.

“I know yore goin to writ about me. I dont mind.

Just tell the truth.”

“I shall, Preacher,” Faith whispered. “Oh, I shall!”