Preacher's Fire

Chapter 16

Preacher had reclaimed Horse from the livery stable where he had kept the stallion temporarily, and now Horse had a stall in the stable behind Beaumont’s house where the carriage and the team of fine black horses were kept. Lorenzo had been impressed by the rangy gray stallion, proving that he was a good judge of horseflesh. That had probably raised his opinion of Preacher somewhat, too, although Preacher knew that Lorenzo wouldn’t admit that to save his life.

Preacher walked out to the stable and saddled Horse, then rode toward the center of town, just in case Beaumont was watching. When he was out of sight of the house, he turned west and headed out of St. Louis toward Uncle Dan’s camp.

When he neared the grove of trees, he reined in and hooted like an owl. A moment later, an answering hoot came, telling him that the old-timer was still there, just as Preacher had hoped. He rode into the trees and found the camp, which had been moved a short distance from where it had been the last time Preacher was here.

“Too fiddle-footed to stay in one place for a whole week, eh?” he asked with a grin as he swung down from the saddle. Dog reared up, put his paws on Preacher’s shoulders, and licked the mountain man’s face.

“That ain’t it at all,” Uncle Dan replied. “This campsite’s just a mite better, that’s all. Better firewood, and a little closer to the crick that runs through these trees.”

“Sure,” Preacher said, knowing full well that Uncle Dan’s restless nature had had something to do with it, no matter what the old-timer said. He knew that because he was the same way. His feet always began to itch after a few days in the same place. He had already experienced that in St. Louis, although the desire for revenge on Shad Beaumont that drove him made it easy to suppress those urges.

“I been keepin’ the coffee warm for you ever’ night,” Uncle Dan went on as he took the pot from the embers of the campfire. “Figured you’d be showin’ up before now.”

“Beaumont’s been keepin’ me pretty busy. He’s still spooked from that bushwhack attempt, so I’ve had to stay close to him whenever he leaves the house.”

Uncle Dan clucked his tongue. “Must be a terrible chore, havin’ to visit saloons and whorehouses ever’ night.”

Preacher laughed. “It ain’t as entertainin’ as you might think it’d be.”

With the exception of the time he had spent with Casey, he told himself. And he’d managed to mess that up at the end and hadn’t seen her since. He hoped she was all right.

The two men sat on logs and sipped coffee while Dog lay at Preacher’s feet. Preacher reached down with his free hand and scratched between the big cur’s ears.

Uncle Dan asked, “Now that you’re workin’ for Beaumont, what do you figure on doin’? Want me to take another shot at him, so’s he’ll know he’s still got somebody gunnin’ for him?”

Preacher shook his head. “No, we got away with that once, but I don’t want you runnin’ that risk again, Uncle Dan. I’m waitin’ for Beaumont to come up with some new scheme, so I can ruin it for him.”

“How long you gonna keep that up?”

“Don’t know. Depends on what happens, I reckon.”

“You know . . . you could kill the son of a bitch just about any time now, and be halfway back to the mountains ’fore anybody knowed what happened.”

“Yeah, but there’s one problem with that.” Preacher took another sip of coffee. “I ain’t a murderer. When I kill Beaumont, it’s gonna be head-on, and he’s gonna know why he’s dyin’.”

“Well, I didn’t never say to strangle the son of a bitch in his sleep, now did I?” Uncle Dan grumbled. “Tell him who you are. You can even give him a chance to get his paws on a gun if you want. I reckon you could still kill him.”

“It may come to that. But not yet.”

Even though the embers of the fire didn’t cast much light, Preacher could feel Uncle Dan studying him. After a moment, the old-timer said, “This ain’t like you, Preacher. I may not have knowed you all that long, but I’ve heard plenty about you. You ain’t the sort o’ fella to pussyfoot around. What’s all this sneakin’ and pretendin’ to be somebody else gonna accomplish?”

That very question had been gnawing at Preacher’s brain, too. When he had first come up with the plan, he’d thought that it would be fitting to give Beaumont a taste of his own medicine. To take away the things that the man cared about and put him through the same sort of suffering that he had inflicted on so many others.

Yet as the days had gone by, Preacher had begun more and more to doubt the wisdom of this course. Uncle Dan was right. It wasn’t like him, and knowing that he had fooled Beaumont wasn’t as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be. But the plan had proceeded so far that to change it now seemed like a mistake, too.

“I don’t know,” he said in reply to Uncle Dan’s question. “I’ll think on it. I can tell you this, though . . . it ain’t gonna go on too much longer.”

“I hope not. I’m gettin’ anxious to see the mountains again.”

So was Preacher. He could only stand civilization for a short time.

He finished his coffee, then stood up and said his good-byes to Uncle Dan. As he started out of the trees, he heard something that caught his attention. It was the muffled whicker of a horse, somewhere nearby in the thick shadows under the trees.

Preacher stiffened in the saddle. That sound hadn’t come from Uncle Dan’s horse, which meant there was another animal somewhere close to the camp. And where there was a horse, there was usually a rider. This one could be a stray, but Preacher’s gut told him that wasn’t the case.

He didn’t react visibly to the sound but kept Horse moving at a steady pace instead. As he emerged from the trees, he turned the big stallion onto the trail that led back toward St. Louis. He didn’t look back.

Every instinct in his body told him that someone was following him, though.

The lights of the town glittered in the darkness ahead of him. They were bright enough, and there were enough of them, so that a faint glow filled the sky over the settlement. Preacher didn’t slow down when he reached the streets of the town. He rode on through St. Louis toward the riverfront. The sound of raucous laughter and scraping fiddles came from the taverns he passed. Somewhere a woman cried out, but it sounded more like a scream of pleasure rather than one of pain or fear. A man cursed. Another shouted a question. The smell of the river filled the air.

Preacher turned into a narrow lane and slipped out of the saddle as soon as he was around the corner. He gave Horse’s rump a soft slap that kept the stallion moving forward. Horse wouldn’t go too far before he stopped and waited for Preacher to summon him back. It shouldn’t take long for him to find out what he needed to know, though, Preacher thought.

Sure enough, only a minute or so had gone by when another rider rounded the corner and started along the lane, following the steady clip-clop of Horse’s hooves on the hard-packed dirt. By that time, Preacher had drawn back into the impenetrable shadows that clogged the deep, recessed doorway of an abandoned building. The man who rode past never even glanced in his direction.

Even though the light in the lane was bad, Preacher’s eyesight was keen enough to tell him that the man was familiar. After a second, Preacher recalled his name. The man following him was the gambler Cleve. Preacher had seen him at both Dupree’s and Jessie’s Place. As far as Preacher knew, there was no connection between Cleve and Beaumont except for the fact that the gambler patronized places owned by Beaumont.

It seemed likely, though, that Cleve had picked up Preacher’s trail at Beaumont’s house. Was he a spy for Beaumont? Did Beaumont really suspect Preacher of some sort of treachery after all?

There was only one way to find out, Preacher thought as he slipped grim-faced out of the shadows.

He went after Cleve. The man was riding slowly enough so that Preacher had no trouble keeping up with him on foot. Preacher stayed back about a hundred yards and haunted the shadows so that he could duck out of sight if Cleve happened to look back. After a few minutes, though, Cleve reined in and stood up in the stirrups to look around. He must have realized that he’d lost his quarry, Preacher thought.

Preacher had already spotted Horse standing in front of a darkened livery barn across the street, and he recognized it now as the barn where Horse had spent one night. The stallion must have recognized the place, too, and was waiting there for Preacher to come for him.

Cleve hadn’t noticed Horse when he rode past the livery, though. That much was obvious from the way the gambler yanked his own mount around and rode up the street, moving quicker now. Preacher waited until Cleve was almost out of sight, then gave a low whistle that brought Horse trotting over to him. He mounted up quickly and rode after Cleve.

The hunter had become the hunted now.

Preacher knew that by staying well back, he ran the risk of losing Cleve. He had confidence in his own ability to trail the gambler, though. He was maybe a little less confident here in town than he would have been in the wilderness, but he still thought he could keep up with the man.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before Preacher had a pretty good idea where Cleve was going.

The man seemed to be headed straight toward Jessie’s Place.

That turned out to be the case. Cleve rode around to the back of the house. Preacher brought Horse to a stop under some trees and dismounted, then went after Cleve on foot. He reached the rear corner of the house in time to see that Cleve had led his horse into a shed at the rear of the place and left the animal there. The gambler stood at the back door, evidently having just knocked on it. When the door opened, light spilled from inside, and Brutus’s voice rumbled, “Did you find out what you went after?”

“I’ll speak to Jessie about it,” Cleve replied curtly.

“She ain’t back from Beaumont’s yet. She said for you to come in and wait.”

Cleve nodded. “All right.”

He went inside and the door closed, leaving the rear of the house in darkness again. Preacher stood at the corner of the building, frowning in thought.

Was Jessie the one who had sent Cleve to follow him? She had known that she was visiting Beaumont’s house tonight, instead of the other way around, so she could have figured that Beaumont might dismiss Preacher for the night.

On the other hand, she could have simply been acting on Beaumont’s orders and serving as an intermediary between him and Cleve, although Preacher couldn’t really see why Beaumont would go to that much trouble.

The best way to find out the truth was to wait until Jessie got back, so that’s what Preacher settled down to do.

About an hour later, he heard the clatter of carriage wheels in front of the house. Several vehicles had passed by on the street while he was standing in the shadows, waiting, but this one came to a halt. Preacher ventured to the front corner of the house and watched as Lorenzo opened the door of Beaumont’s fancy carriage and helped Jessie climb out.

“Thank you, Lorenzo,” she told him.

The driver tipped his hat. “My pleasure, Miss Jessie.”

Then Jessie came up the walk to the house. Preacher could see well enough to tell that she had a shawl draped around her shoulders.

Brutus met her at the door. “Cleve’s back,” he said, his deep voice carrying in the still, quiet night. “He’s waitin’ for you in your office.”

“Thank you, Brutus.” Jessie’s tone was brisk and businesslike now. As she disappeared into the house and Brutus shut the door, Preacher turned and hurried along the whitewashed side of the house. He had never been in Jessie’s office, but he had been around the house enough in the past week to have figured out that it was in the rear of the house.

Only one window back there had the glow of lamp-light showing through it. Preacher headed for it. The night was warm, and he hoped that the window would be open, at least a little.

It was. He crouched underneath it and was able to hear clearly as Jessie came in and said, “Hello, Cleve.”

A chair scraped as the gambler stood up. “Jessie,” he said. “You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

“Just tell me what you found out. Were you able to follow Donnelly?”

“Yes, your hunch was right. Beaumont told him he could leave the house tonight, since you were coming over there.”

“Where did he go? Some dive down by the river?”

“Hardly.” Cleve paused. “I followed him to a spot about a mile west of town. He met someone there, under some trees, and talked to them for a while. I couldn’t get close enough to see who it was, though, or to hear what they were saying.”

“Then he is up to something! I knew it!” Jessie’s voice was breathless with excitement. “But what?”

“I don’t know, but I think we need to keep an eye on him. If he really had something to do with that shot at Beaumont, as you suspect, then he’s planning something and wanted to get close to Beaumont for a reason.”

From the sound of it, Preacher thought, Jessie hadn’t sent Cleve to follow him on Beaumont’s behalf. If anything, it almost sounded like the two of them didn’t like Beaumont any more than Preacher himself did.

That was confirmed a moment later when Jessie said, “We have to find out who Donnelly is and what he’s after. We don’t want him getting in the way when we make our own move against Shad.”

“I agree.”

“Where did he go when he got back to town? To Beaumont’s house?”

“I don’t know, damn it,” Cleve replied with a note of bitter disappointment in his voice. “I hate to admit it, Jessie, but I lost him somewhere in town.”

“Lost him!” Jessie sounded upset, and maybe a little scared. “He didn’t know you were following him, did he?”

“I don’t see how he could have. I was very careful.”

In the darkness outside the window, a grin tugged at Preacher’s mouth. Cleve might be a good gambler and able to take care of himself in town, but he was no frontiersman.

“We’ll have to figure out some other way to find out what we need to know,” Jessie mused. “Maybe Cassandra could get it out of him. He seemed to like her.”

Preacher’s interest perked right up at that comment. He hadn’t seen Casey in a week, and he was starting to get a mite worried about her.

Evidently with good cause, too, because Cleve asked, “How’s she doing?”

“She hasn’t recovered from what Beaumont did to her,” Jessie said, “but she’s getting better. Another week and she might be all right.

Preacher stiffened, and a cold finger ran along his spine. What the devil could Beaumont have done to Casey to make her keep out of sight for two weeks? He must have hurt her pretty bad to do that.

Maybe what he ought to do, he thought, was march right in there and put his cards on the table with Jessie and Cleve. If they were out to bring Beaumont down, too, they could prove to be valuable allies.

But what if it was a trap of some sort? he asked himself. What if they knew somehow that he was out here, eavesdropping on their conversation, and were testing his loyalties?

Preacher gave an abrupt shake of his head. He couldn’t rule out that possibility completely, but it was far-fetched enough so that he couldn’t take it seriously.

He didn’t have time to ponder the question any more, because at that moment, he heard the metallic clicking of a gun hammer being cocked behind him, and in a voice like the rumble of distant drums, Brutus said, “Don’t you move, mister, or this old blunderbuss of mine will blow a hole in you.”