Preacher's Fire

Chapter 11

“You son of a bitch!” the black man yelled. “You landed right in my nasturtiums! I’m gonna thrash you within an inch of your life!”

“Well, you threw me here, you damn fool!” Preacher shouted back as he leaped to his feet. “Nobody does that to Jim Donnelly!”

Preacher knew he couldn’t take it easy in this fight. He had drawn an opponent who was too fast and strong for that. If he didn’t put his best effort into it, he might wind up crawling away with broken bones, and he couldn’t afford that.

So this time he waited for the other fella to throw the first punch, and when the big, hamlike fist came sailing toward his face, he slipped aside so that it barely grazed his ear as it went past and stepped in to hammer a right into the man’s sternum.

That was a good move, or at least it would have been if Preacher’s fist hadn’t felt like it had just slammed into a brick wall. The man brought up a looping left that clipped Preacher on the side of the head and sent him rolling on the ground again as rockets went off behind his eyes.

“Damn it, you’re in my flowers again!”

The man reached down and slapped his massive hands on Preacher’s shoulders. As he hauled Preacher upright, Preacher sent his right fist whistling skyward in an uppercut that caught the big man on the jaw. Preacher had hoped that anybody as solid in the middle as the black man might have a glass jaw, but that hope was dashed as the man shrugged off the blow and started shaking Preacher like a terrier shaking a rat.

The big son of a bitch had to have a weak spot somewhere, Preacher thought, so he went for the most likely area.

He kicked the fellow in the balls.

Finally, something went right. The man’s eyes widened, and the black face turned an ashen shade of gray. His hands slipped off Preacher’s shoulders. He didn’t double over in agony as most men would have done, but at least he hunched his shoulders and bent over a little as he clutched at his injured groin.

Preacher clubbed his hands together and swung them against the corded muscles on the left side of the man’s neck. That sent the man staggering to his right. While the man was off balance, Preacher kicked his right knee. That leg collapsed, dumping the man on the ground. Preacher landed on top of him and swung his clubbed fists again, back and forth, slamming them into the man’s face twice.

“That’ll be enough.”

The cold, dangerous voice spoke from the porch. Preacher twisted his neck to look back over his shoulder. He saw the sandy-haired man from the ferry standing there, a small but deadly pistol in his hand. The gambler pointed the gun at Preacher. It was cocked and ready to fire.

While the gambler held the pistol rock steady, a woman rushed past him and hurried off the porch into the yard. “Brutus!” she cried. When she reached Preacher, she struck at him with a small fist and said, “Get off him, you bastard!”

“Jessie,” the gambler said in a warning tone, “don’t get between me and—”

It was too late for that warning. Preacher grabbed the woman’s wrist and pulled her in front of him as he stood up. Using a woman as a shield really rubbed him the wrong way—hell, that was what Buckhalter had done with Lorraine when the Pawnee war party attacked the wagon train—but Preacher thought it might be something “Jim Donnelly” would do in circumstances like this.

“Take it easy, mister,” he said as he jerked the woman against him. He had twisted her so that her back was to him, and he felt the enticing curve of her hips as he pressed against her. “Just put that gun down.”

“I’ll kill you for this,” the woman spat furiously. “I’ll kill you myself. And if you’ve hurt Brutus, I’ll make sure you take a long time to die!”

“You take it easy, too,” Preacher rasped in her ear. “Everybody needs to just settle down, damn it. I didn’t come here lookin’ for trouble.”

On the ground, the black man called Brutus groaned, but he didn’t show any signs of getting up soon.

“Jessie,” the gambler said, “what do you want me to do?”

“Put your gun away, Cleve,” she told him. She glared back over her shoulder at Preacher. “I’ll deal with this . . . gentleman.”

She might as well have called him the most obscene name in the book, judging by her tone. Even though the gambler lowered his gun, Preacher didn’t let go of Jessie. He said, “This is your place?”

“That’s right.”

“Call off your dogs, then. I don’t want to hurt nobody, least of all a gal as pretty as you.”

She was stunning, no doubt about that. Even though Preacher hadn’t really gotten a good look at her yet, he was sure about that much. She was tall and slender—coltish would be a good word to describe her—and yet her body had plenty of womanly curves. Long, light brown hair swept around her face, over her shoulders, and down her back. The part that covered her ears had been curled into tight ringlets. She wore a fine, light blue gown that hugged her body. If she was a whore, she was one of the prettiest Preacher had ever seen. She looked more like she ought to be a rich man’s wife.

She said to the man on the porch, “Cleve, go back inside and send Terence and Micah out here to help Brutus.”

The gambler frowned. “You’re sure?”

“I’m certain.”

Cleve shrugged. “It’s your house.”

He tucked the gun away under his coat and disappeared through the door, which he left open behind him.

“Are you going to let me go?” Jessie asked Preacher, her voice cold with scorn.

“That depends. Are you gonna sic more of your men on me?”

“No. Not unless you cause more trouble.”

Preacher still had hold of her wrist, so that her arm was doubled behind her back. He released it and stepped away from her. She turned to glare at him as she used her other hand to rub the wrist he’d been gripping.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?” She had green eyes, Preacher saw now, and they were flashing with the emerald fire of anger. “This is a respectable neighborhood. I can’t have people brawling on my front lawn.”

“Wasn’t my idea,” Preacher snapped. “Your darky grabbed me and threw me in the flower bed, and that seemed to make him go loco.”

“Brutus takes great pride in his flowers,” Jessie said with a nod. “What were you doing coming to the front door, anyway? Tradesmen are supposed to go to the back.”

“I’m not a tradesman. I’m a customer.”

Jessie smiled. “Dressed like that? I don’t think so. You couldn’t afford to be a customer here, Mister . . . ?”

“Donnelly,” Preacher said. “Jim Donnelly.”

“Well, Mr. Donnelly, this is the most exclusive, and might I add, expensive house in St. Louis. Unless you’ve saved everything you’ve earned from your farm in the past, say, five years, I seriously doubt that you can afford to pay us a visit here.”

“But you don’t know that, and neither did he.” Preacher nodded toward Brutus.

Before Jessie could respond, two more men came out of the house and hurried across the lawn. They were white, and although they weren’t as big and burly as Brutus, they looked plenty tough. One of them asked, “You want us to run this varmint off, Miss Jessie?”

She shook her head. “No, just help Brutus inside and make sure that he’s all right. I can deal with Mr. Donnelly.”

“Are you sure?” the other man asked.

The angry look she gave him at the question made him step back and hold up his hands.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “Come on, Terence, let’s do what the lady says.”

Together, they helped Brutus to his feet. He seemed to be regaining his senses to a certain extent. He sent a murderous scowl in Preacher’s direction as the two men helped him into the house.

“You’ve made an enemy,” Jessie commented.

“Wasn’t my intention. But I wasn’t gonna let him toss me around like a rag doll and stomp me, neither.”

She ignored that and continued in a haughty tone, “I think we’ve established that this isn’t the place for you, Mr. Donnelly. Why don’t you just move on? There are places down at the riverfront—”

“Yeah, I know. I ain’t interested in those soiled doves. I want somethin’ better.”

A chilly smile curved her full, red lips. “We can’t always get what we want, Mr. Donnelly.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to the fella who owns this place?” Preacher shot back at her. “We’ll see what he says about it.”

Her face remained cool and unperturbed, but he caught the flicker of surprise in her eyes. “I’m the owner,” she declared. “That’s why it’s called Jessie’s Place.”

Preacher snorted. “Women don’t own businesses. Not even whorehouses.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken. And you’ve just become even more offensive. I have to ask you to leave now.”

Her hand came up from the folds of her dress gripping a little pistol that must have been stashed in a hidden pocket. The barrel was short but big enough around to tell Preacher that the gun still packed a potent punch despite being undersized. Jessie thumbed back the hammer as she raised the weapon.

“I assure you,” she went on, “at this range, this will blow a suitable hole in you.”

Preacher didn’t doubt that for a second. He was also aware now that she had been armed the whole time and could have pulled out that pistol and shot him any time she wanted to. That made a cold finger go down his backbone.

“All right,” he said with ill grace. “I’m leavin’. But you remember my name. It’s Jim Donnelly.”

“I’m not liable to forget it soon, after all this commotion you’ve caused.”

“And remember somethin’ else,” Preacher went on. “That big fella Brutus, who I reckon is supposed to handle any trouble around here . . . I beat him. Whipped him good. Maybe what you need is somebody tougher.”

Jessie’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re talking about yourself, I suppose?”

“I’m just sayin’ he was a lot bigger’n me, but it was him who wound up goin’ down and stayin’ down.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Donnelly. Don’t come back here again.”

Despite her flatly spoken words of dismissal, Preacher knew he had seen a flicker of interest in her eyes. He had made a good point, and she knew it. He let a smile play briefly over his face, but only after he had turned away so that she couldn’t see it.

This was a start, anyway.

Dupree’s was next.

The saloon was closer to the waterfront than Jessie’s Place, but it wasn’t a dive, either. It stretched along an entire city block, with the entrance at the corner. Preacher lingered at a hash house across the street, keeping an eye on the place from a table by the window. He had used up a few more of his precious coins buying some supper, but he had finished that a while back and now the proprietor was casting some hard looks at him from behind the counter.

He was about to stand up and wander out of the place, figuring he would take up a position in an alley and watch from there, when a carriage pulled up in front of Dupree’s. The sun had set, but enough light remained for Preacher to make out the shiny brass fittings and expensive dark wood of the vehicle. A team of four fine black horses was hitched to the carriage, and a black driver in a top hat was perched on the high seat. It sure looked to Preacher like the sort of carriage that a man such as Shad Beaumont would drive around in.

Preacher stood up and strolled out of the hash house so that he could see better as the driver climbed down nimbly from the seat. The man opened the carriage door and then stepped back deferentially. The man who climbed out of the vehicle was tall and wore a beaver hat. A cape was draped over his shoulders. That was all Preacher could tell about him at first.

Then the man turned around and held out a hand to help someone else disembark from the carriage. The light spilling through the big front windows of Dupree’s revealed the man’s face to Preacher in silhouette. It was a handsome face sporting a close-cropped dark beard. The man was smiling.

He had good reason to smile, Preacher saw a moment later as the second passenger stepped down from the carriage. She was a blonde with a mass of curly hair under a stylish hat. Not too tall, but very well shaped and expensively dressed. She said something to the man, who laughed and linked his arm with hers. They went up the steps to the boardwalk and into Dupree’s.

Preacher had continued ambling across the street as if he had no particular place to go and was in no hurry to get there. When he reached the other side, he stepped up onto the boardwalk and looked through the window. The two new arrivals were being ushered to a table in the back by a man in a dark suit who was probably the proprietor.

But likely not the owner, Preacher thought. He was convinced that Shad Beaumont really owned Dupree’s, just as he felt sure Jessie’s Place belonged to Beaumont.

And what about Jessie? Did she belong to Beaumont, too?

Preacher frowned slightly as that thought crossed his mind. Why should it matter to him what sort of arrangement Jessie had with Beaumont? The only reason she might be important was if he could use her to get to his quarry.

He turned toward the carriage, where the driver had climbed to the seat again and was packing chewing tobacco into his cheek. Preacher gave him a friendly nod and said, “Evenin’.”

The man didn’t return the greeting. He was old and wizened and didn’t look like he was in the habit of talking to riffraff on the street.

“Mighty nice carriage you got here,” Preacher went on.

The driver sniffed. “Tain’t mine, and you know it.”

“Yeah, but you get to drive that fine team of horses. I got to say, that’s some of the best horseflesh I’ve seen in a long time. I guess Mr. Beaumont don’t want nothin’ but the best.”

“What Mr. Beaumont wants or don’t want ain’t for the likes o’ you to be talkin’ about.”

That was easy, Preacher thought . . . and about time, too. He said mildly, “Didn’t mean any offense, old-timer.”

Then he turned, pushed the door open, and stepped into Dupree’s.