Preacher's Fire

Chapter 17

Preacher stayed right where he was, although for a second he considered trying to leap out of the line of fire, twist around, and jerk his own pistol from behind his belt.

But maybe this was exactly what he wanted, he realized, so he said, “Take it easy, Brutus. It’s just me, Jim Donnelly.”

“Donnelly!” Brutus boomed. “What the hell are you doin’, skulkin’ around out here? Damn it, man, I was just startin’ to trust you.”

Before Preacher could answer, the window above his head was thrust up, and Cleve leaned out with a gun in his hand. “What’s going on out here?” the gambler demanded. “Who’s that standing there?”

“It’s that fella Donnelly,” Brutus replied. “I just caught him skulkin’ around. Looked like he was eavesdroppin’ on you and Miss Jessie.”

And that was why he hadn’t heard Brutus until it was too late, Preacher thought. He’d been concentrating on what Jessie and Cleve were saying inside the office and had missed the small sounds Brutus must have made as he came around the house. That had to be how the man had approached, because Preacher was certain the back door hadn’t been opened.

“Donnelly!” Cleve exclaimed. “By God, I was just—” He stopped short, probably because he didn’t want to admit that he had been following Preacher tonight. Preacher wasn’t going to let him get away with that, though.

“I know what you were doin’,” Preacher said, allowing some harsh anger to creep into his voice. “I heard you and Miss Jessie talkin’ about it. You were followin’ me, because you don’t trust me.”

Jessie came up beside Cleve at the window and said tensely, “Evidently with good reason. Bring him into the house, Brutus. We have to find out how much he knows.”

Brutus came closer with the old, short-barreled musket. From the way the muzzle flared out, Preacher knew the weapon was old, probably from colonial days. But if it had been well cared for—and from the looks of it, it had—and still worked properly, the heavy ball the blunderbuss fired could indeed blow a fist-sized hole all the way through him at this range. Preacher didn’t want to risk it, and besides, this gave him a good excuse to talk to Jessie and Cleve. He kept his hands half-raised and in plain sight as he walked to the back door with Brutus behind him.

Once they were inside, they used a rear hallway to reach Jessie’s office, avoiding the parlor where customers were talking and laughing with the women who worked here. Preacher could hear them. Jessie and Cleve waited in the office, and both of them wore grim expressions when Preacher walked in ahead of Brutus. Cleve’s pistol was still in his hand.

“Close the door, Brutus,” Jessie ordered.

“You want me to stay, Miss Jessie?”

She shook her head. “No, I think we can handle Mr. Donnelly.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Go tend to the house.”

“Yes’m. But you just holler if you need me.” Brutus put his face close to Preacher’s and glared murderously. “You best behave yourself, Donnelly.”

He turned and stalked out, taking the blunderbuss with him.

Jessie nodded toward an armchair in front of the big desk that dominated the room. “Sit down,” she told Preacher.

He did as she said. She went behind the desk and sank into the big, leather-upholstered chair there. Cleve stood beside her, the pistol still pointing in Preacher’s general direction. Preacher felt pretty good about his chances of taking the gun away from the gambler any time he wanted to . . . but right now, he didn’t want to.

“How much did you overhear?” Jessie asked as she gave Preacher a stern, level stare. Even at a moment such as this, when she was angry and maybe even a little scared, she was still stunningly beautiful, he thought.

He said, “Enough to know that the two of you are plottin’ against Shad Beaumont.”

Cleve’s lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. “I say we go ahead and kill him. Brutus can get rid of the body so that no one will ever find it.”

Preacher didn’t wait to see how Jessie would respond to the suggestion. He said, “If you do that, you’ll be losin’ an ally.”

That statement put his opposition to Beaumont right out in the open. If they really were trying to trick him into admitting that, the next few seconds might prove to be extremely dangerous. He was ready to lunge across the desk at Jessie if he saw Cleve’s finger tightening on the trigger. He figured the gambler would be less likely to shoot if he thought Jessie might be in the line of fire.

Instead, Cleve just frowned in puzzlement, and Jessie’s lips thinned. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I reckon you must have some sort of grudge against Beaumont. Well, you ain’t the only ones.”

Cleve asked, “Are you saying that you’re his enemy, even though you work for him?”

Preacher smiled slightly. “An old Chinaman called Sun-tzu once said it was a good idea to keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

Cleve stared at him. “How does a farmer hear about Sun-tzu?”

Preacher shrugged. He wasn’t sure he wanted to reveal who he really was, just yet, but if he had, he could have explained that many of the men who came to the Rocky Mountains as fur trappers were educated, well-read men. Some of them could quote Shakespeare, Milton, and other poets for hours on end. As it happened, Preacher had heard another mountain man named Audie talking about Sun-tzu, and the name and the quote had stuck in his head.

Instead of going into all that, though, he said, “I reckon I must’ve heard it somewhere. It makes good sense, don’t it?”

“What do you have against Beaumont?” Jessie asked sharply.

“I reckon that’s my business.”

“And how do we know that you’re telling the truth? You could be lying just to save your skin.”

“You ain’t told me why you’re pretendin’ to be his friends while you’re really working against him,” Preacher pointed out.

Jessie leaned back in her chair and continued giving him that cool, level stare for several seconds. Then she said, “You’re right. But I’ll do better than tell you. I’ll show you.” She got to her feet. “Wait here. Cleve, you’ll keep an eye on him?”

“Be glad to,” the gambler replied, hefting his pistol slightly.

Jessie came out from hehind the desk, went around Preacher’s chair, and left the room. As she did so, Preacher caught a hint of her perfume. It smelled mighty good, sort of like a meadow full of wildflowers on a spring morning in the high country.

“I still say it would be simpler to kill you,” Cleve said when Jessie was gone. “I could tell her you tried to escape, and I had to shoot you.”

“Reckon she’d believe you?”

“I think so.”

Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t advise tryin’ it.”

Cleve tried to meet him stare for stare but couldn’t quite do it. As the gambler’s eyes flicked away, he said, “Jessie generally knows what she’s doing. I’ll string along with her . . . for now.”

A couple of minutes later, the door into the office opened again. Preacher looked around, saw that Jessie was coming back into the room. She had someone with her, and when she stepped aside, Preacher realized that the woman behind her was Casey. The blonde wore a robe and had her head down so that Preacher couldn’t see her face, but he knew it was her.

“You said you wanted to know what we had against Shad Beaumont,” Jessie told him. “This is just one thing, among many.”

She reached out, cupped a hand under Casey’s chin, and gently lifted the blonde’s head so that Preacher could look into her face.

Preacher had seen a lot of bad things in his life. He’d been in a war and seen men blown apart by cannon fire. He had seen whole families, including the youngsters, killed and mutilated by Indians. What he was looking at now was nowhere near as bad as those things.

But it was bad enough to make him come up out of his chair, his hands clenching angrily into fists as he surveyed the damage that had been done to Casey’s face. Both eyes were blackened and still swollen half-closed. Her nose had been broken and reset, but it would probably never look like it had before. Bruises mottled her cheeks and her jaw. Her lips were puffy and had healing cuts on them. More bruises on her neck showed where a big hand had brutally strangled her.

“Beaumont,” Preacher breathed.

“That’s right,” Jessie said. “He held her down and nearly choked the life out of her while he beat her again and again with his other fist. He did this with his bare hands, Mr. Donnelly, and it’s not the first time he’s treated . . . one of my girls . . . this way.”

Preacher caught the slight hesitation in Jessie’s voice and wondered if Beaumont had ever beaten her like that. When Beaumont was around, she seemed friendly and flirtatious, more like a lover than an employee. Obviously, that was just an act.

Casey said in a hoarse voice, “Can I . . . go back to my room now?”

“Of course, dear,” Jessie told her. “I’m sorry I had to bring you in here. But Mr. Donnelly wanted to know why we feel the way we do about Shad Beaumont.”

Casey looked at Preacher before she left. She seemed embarrassed that he had seen her this way, but at the same time, he thought he recognized a hint of a smile on her puffy lips, as if she were glad to see him again. He hoped things would work out so that they could spend some more time together, one of these days.

Once Casey was gone, Preacher asked Jessie, “What did she do to set Beaumont off?”

“Nothing. Nothing that she could remember, anyway. He just flies into these rages sometimes, for no apparent reason. I think it’s because he’s so full of vile hatred and scorn for everybody in the world that from time to time he can’t hold it in behind that smooth façade he puts up.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “He’s an evil man, Mr. Donnelly. A truly evil man.”

“I know. It’s because of him that a bunch of innocent folks I know are dead.”

“I don’t doubt it for an instant.”

Preacher looked over at Cleve, who had finally lowered his gun, although he hadn’t put it away. “How about you? What’s your part in this?”

“You mean, what grudge do I bear against Beaumont?” Cleve shook his head. “None, really. I just think that someone else would be better suited to run things around here.”

“In other words, you. You’re just ambitious.”

“Not that ambitious,” Cleve said with a laugh. “I was speaking of Jessie. She’s the one who should be in charge, not Beaumont. I’ll be quite content just to help her achieve that goal.”

And cash in for himself at the same time, Preacher thought. He didn’t say it, though, because he figured that Jessie was smart enough to have figured it out for herself by now.

She was regarding him with a curious, intent look. “You had something to do with that attempt on Shad’s life, didn’t you? It must have been a friend of yours who shot at him, so you could pretend to save him and get him in your debt.”

“That’d be a tricky thing to do,” Preacher said, impressed that she had figured it out so easily.

“It was a smart thing to do. He trusts you now, because of that. I began to wonder about it when neither Cleve nor I could find out anything about who it might have been that shot at him. Shad has plenty of enemies in St. Louis who’d like to see him dead, but if any of them had worked up the courage to actually try something like that, the word would have gotten around. That meant it almost had to be a stranger. And since you were a stranger in town as well . . .”

Preacher shrugged. It was an admission that she was right.

“And you’re not a farmer from Pennsylvania, either,” she went on. “There’s a sense of danger that seems to follow you around. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a man who’s always so alert for trouble. You didn’t learn that trudging along behind a plow.”

Preacher still didn’t say anything.

Jessie smiled. “I can make a guess who you really are. There’s a man that Beaumont’s afraid of, so afraid that he’s put a bounty on his head. A man from the Rocky Mountains who has ruined several of Shad’s plans and killed dozens of his agents. I think you’re that man, Mr. Donnelly.”

Cleve stared at the mountain man. “You mean that this fellow is—”

Jessie cut him off with a nod. “That’s right,” she said. “I believe that this is the famous Preacher.”