Absaroka Ambush

3

Preacher approached the outlaw camp cautiously. He was already sure that’s what it was, for Indians had told him several times that no trappers were in the Hole or in the land that thunders up north of the Hole.

Three men and a woman were sitting around the fire. But there were five saddle horses at the picket line. Preacher sank down in the brush and waited. He was not close enough to make out what they were saying, only able to catch a word or so every now and then. They would all laugh from time to time. It was a dirty sort of laughter, followed by a lot of profanity, exactly what he’d expect from the low-life types in the rough camp. Preacher winced at some of the language being spoken. Preacher and his friends were no angels, and they could cuss with the best of them, but the language being used around the fire was of the sewer variety, and the words from the woman’s mouth were just as bad, or worse, as the filth coming from the men.

When the fifth man finally made his appearance, coming in from the north, Preacher used the noise the man made settling in, as a cover to move in close enough to catch all the words being spoken. The newcomer poured a cup of coffee and sat wearily down with the group. “I went up high,” he said; now Preacher could hear the words clearly. “No signs of anybody else in here with us. No smoke, no movement. Nothing. I think we’re clear.”

“Curtis’s camp ain’t that far to the south,” a man said. “He’d have smoke from a fire.”

“I ’spect he pulled out shortly after he left us,” another man offered. “He never did have no stomach for this kind of work. He was a cook back east.”

“But he killed three people!” the woman protested.

“He poisoned them,” yet another man spoke.

Oh, wonderful! Preacher thought. And I et up his cookin’ like a starvin’ hog.

“Curtis never did like it out here,” the first man said. “He wanted to go back to civilization. Hell with him. I don’t trust no poisoner no way.”

“You reckon Preacher give up the hunt?” the woman asked.

“I ’spect he did, Nelly. There ain’t no one man gonna take out after no twenty men alone. I just wish we’d have brung along some of them women we had. I liked to hear ’um holler when all of us started humpin’ ’um.”

Then the men and the woman started mouthing and laughing about some of the most perverse and vulgar remembrances of the kidnapping, and the days and nights that followed. It made Preacher’s stomach churn. He lifted his rifle and ended the foul discussion by putting a ball right between the eyes of one of the men. The outlaw’s head snapped back and for a moment, he had a very odd expression on his face, before his heart told his brain he was dead. Then the man fell forward, face-first into the fire.

Preacher jerked out his pistols and let them roar just as the outlaw’s hair caught on fire with a flaming, whooshing sound. Preacher was now standing up, a pistol in each hand, and he was cocking and firing the complicated weapons as fast as he could. When the pistols had emptied, Preacher stood completely enveloped in a thick cloud of gunsmoke and the campsite was littered with the dead, the screaming, and the dying.

Preacher shifted positions and reloaded, paying no attention to the howling of the badly wounded. The woman was screaming vile curses at him—the worst language he had ever heard come out of a woman’s mouth. He reloaded his rifle last and then stepped into the clearing. Two were left alive, a man and the woman, and they would not be long for this earth.

The first dead man’s head had cooked to steaming and it was a dreadful smell. Preacher pulled him out of the fire and rolled the carcass off to one side.

Nelly, screaming the vilest of curses at Preacher, reached for a gun and cocked it. Preacher quickly leveled a pistol and put an end to the profane shrieking.

The camp was suddenly very silent. The one mortally wounded survivor lay on the ground, shot twice through the stomach, and stared in silence at Preacher.

“You got anything to say,” Preacher told him, “I ’spect you better get it said quick-like. ’Cause you sure ain’t long for this world.”

The last words out of the man’s mouth were horrible curses, all directed at Preacher. Then he gasped, closed his eyes, and died.

“I sure wouldn’t want to go meet my Maker with them words bein’ my last,” Preacher remarked. “But trash is trash right to the end.”

Preacher put out the fire and packed up what supplies he felt he could use. He took powder, shot, caps, and lead and secured his new supplies on a second packhorse. He’d be damned if he was going to waste his time and energy on burying such trash as these. He left them where they lay and pulled out, heading for the land that smokes and thunders.

As he rode away, he did not look back at the dead. Overhead, the buzzards were already circling.

Miles to the north, Villiers stared morosely into the fire. The grease from the meat on the spit cracked and popped as it hit the flames. To the east and north, Granite Peak, almost thirteen thousand feet high, was clearly visible, the summit poking out from the clouds.

“You reckon Preacher’s a-comin’?” Logan asked him in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Villiers replied in a whisper. “You can damn well bet he’s comin’. And he’ll keep on comin’ ’til we’re all dead or gone to China or some goddamn place. I wish I’d never got mixed up in this mess.”

“Let’s you, me, Trudeau, and Pierre slip out and get gone.” Logan’s voice was very low. “We’ll head to Canada, change our names, and start over.”

“Man, can’t you understand what I been tellin’ you people over and over?” Villiers replied. “We done a harm to Preacher. He don’t forgive and he don’t forget. Not ever. He’ll hunt us all to the grave. And then probably come back and haunt us. We got to stay together and stop him. Splittin’ up is the worst thing we could do.”

“Are you skirred, Villiers?”

Villiers slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. I’m scared, Logan. Preacher tracked a man from down near the Sangre de Cristos to clear up into Canada years back. He found him camped along the Battle. Left him dead on the riverbank. Wouldn’t even bury him. You know what that man done? Stole his pelts. That’s all. Just stole his pelts. You understand what we’ve done? We’ve kilt his friends and his horse, kidnapped women and girls and boys and tortured ’em and raped ’em and worser. And you ask me if I’m scared? Man, I’m so scared, I’m bound up so’s I can’t even take a decent crap. Now go away and leave me alone.”

Sitting away from Villiers, Bedell’s own thoughts were very much like those of the Frenchman. For the very first time in his long life of crime and mayhem, Victor Bedell was frightened. He had not been frightened of Preacher before. Yes, the man had thoroughly whipped him in a fight in St. Louis, but it had not been a fair fight. Preacher had fought like a savage, kicking, gouging, and biting, and otherwise engaging in pugilistic conduct unbecoming of a gentleman.

But now Bedell knew that Preacher was never going to give up. He was going to track them all down and kill them. Over a goddamned horse! Bedell had never heard of anything so ridiculous. A horse was just a damn dumb animal. Like a stupid dog. You beat it until it minded you, or if it didn’t, then you killed it.

“But no one tracks down and kills another human being over a goddamned horse!” Bedell blurted out loud.

Villiers turned his head to stare at the man. “That’s what you think,” he said sourly. “I have. You kill a man’s horse out here, you damn near condemn him to death. Logan’s killed a man over a horse.” Logan looked up and grinned when Villiers added, “Of course, Logan was stealing it from the man at the time.”

“Ridiculous!” Bedell said, but all the men could detect the slight note of fear in his voice.

Preacher tracked the band of outlaws north over the Divide and up the east side of the lake and into the Absaroka Range. Whoever was doin’ the guidin’, Preacher deduced was keepin’ way to the east of the scalding waters. Preacher had high hopes of sitting Bedell down on one of them big holes just about a minute before she blew. That blowhole would give his arrogant butt a cleanin’ the bastard would never forget.

But Preacher concluded the chances of his bein’ able to do that were slim to none.

Preacher figured he’d just have to settle for shootin’ the no-count.

Maybe he could find him some wanderin’ Blackfeet and hand Bedell over to them. The Blackfeet could get real inventive when it came to ways of dealin’ with the likes of Bedell. They could make it last a long time.

Preacher went to sleep thinking of how Bedell would look after the Blackfeet got done with him. He knew one thing for a fact: that way of gettin’ rid of Bedell would damn sure please the ladies who survived the wagons’ trip west.

Preacher spent the next two weeks scouring the land for some sign of Bedell and his bunch. He roamed from Avalanche Peak clear up to Slough Crick looking for a sign of them. But Bedell and his pack of hyenas seemed to have just dropped off the face of the world. That would have been just fine with Preacher, but he knew that men like Bedell and them who rode with him seemed only to survive when the good and the decent died young.

Preacher was determined to change that, at least for this go-around.

When Preacher awakened the next morning, he stretched in his blankets and took him a lung full of high mountain air. With the cold air, he sucked in the strong smell of wood smoke and the faint odor of frying bacon.

He smiled and came out of his blankets like a puma on the hunt. He dressed quickly, knowing that it was no bunch of Indians fryin’ bacon. “Got you!” he said.