Preacher's Fire

Chapter 23

Preacher was standing behind and to one side of Beaumont. When Beaumont said Casey’s name, Preacher felt a wave of cold hatred go through him. The hell with this, he thought. His hand moved toward the pistol tucked behind his belt.

Jessie’s eyes widened in apprehension as they flicked toward Preacher. He saw pleading in them, pleading for him not to give the game away. Beaumont must have been too caught up in the evil thoughts filling his head to notice Jessie’s reaction, because he didn’t look around at Preacher.

With a supreme effort of will, Preacher pulled his hand away from his gun before he ever touched the butt of the pistol. He felt the muscles in his arm tremble from the suppressed urge to kill Beaumont.

He wasn’t made this way. The whole plan had been a mistake. He could see that now, but unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one involved. The lives of Jessie and Cleve might well depend on him carrying on with the masquerade.

Relief shone in Jessie’s eyes as she saw that he wasn’t going to kill Beaumont right here and now.

“That’s not a good idea, Shad,” she said. “Cassandra is . . . indisposed.”

“Oh? I’m disappointed.” Beaumont sounded like he could barely comprehend the idea that someone would dare to disappoint him.

“It’ll be better if you come upstairs with me,” Jessie went on as she rested her hand on Beaumont’s arm again.

“I suppose.” Beaumont turned to look at Preacher. “We’ll be here for a while, Donnelly. You can feel free to amuse yourself. After the day you’ve had, I’m sure you can use some diversion.”

“Sure, boss,” Preacher said.

Jessie moved to link her arm with Beaumont’s, and for a second, he couldn’t see her face but Preacher could. She mouthed the words thank you at him, then turned to go arm in arm toward the stairs with Beaumont.

Preacher heard laughter and talking from the parlor and knew he could go in there and pick any of the girls who were available to take upstairs. Right now, however, that wasn’t what he wanted. He waited until Jessie and Beaumont had disappeared up the elegant, curving staircase, then turned to look for Brutus.

He didn’t have to search. The big man must have been somewhere close by, waiting for his opportunity. He was already there in the hallway. He rumbled, “Mr. Cleve wants to talk to you.”

“And I want to talk to him,” Preacher said.

“He’s in one of the card rooms. This way.”

Brutus led Preacher to one of the small rooms that opened off the corridor. Inside was a round table covered with green felt, lit by a lamp that hung from the ceiling above its center. The light was concentrated on the table and the chairs around it, leaving the rest of the room cloaked in shadows.

Only one of the chairs was occupied at the moment. Cleve sat at the table laying out a hand of solitaire. As Preacher and Brutus came in, he used his hands to sweep the cards together and left them in an untidy pile in front of him.

“I told you Beaumont would come here,” Cleve said with a smile as he looked up at Preacher.

Brutus closed the door and remained in the room, leaning against the panel and crossing his arms over his massive chest. That was one more indication that he was aware of the plans Jessie and Cleve had made, as well as Preacher’s involvement in them. Cleve wouldn’t have allowed him to stay, otherwise.

“You figured he was so mad over what happened on the river he’d have to let it out by thrashin’ some poor whore?” Preacher said.

“That’s right. Who did he choose? Not Cassandra again, I hope. She’s just now getting back to something approaching normal.”

Preacher pulled out one of the chairs and sat down at the table without waiting for an invitation. “That’s who he picked,” he said, “but Jessie wouldn’t allow it. She went with him herself.”

Cleve had been idly straightening the cards. At Preacher’s words, he stopped and frowned. “Jessie?” he murmured. He started to get up from his chair, then sank back down and went on, “Nothing to worry about. She won’t let him get away with any ugly behavior.”

“How’s she gonna stop him if he loses control of himself ?”

“She’ll kill him,” Cleve replied with a shrug. “We’d rather keep him alive, of course, so that we can ruin a few more of his plans and steal some more profits out from under him, but if she has to, she’ll cut his throat, or perhaps blow his balls off with that little pistol she carries. That would be most appropriate. The one thing she won’t do . . . is let him hurt her again.”

“So he did whale on her before, the way he did on Cassandra?”

“That’s right. What do you think turned her against him?”

“I don’t know. Greed?”

Cleve shook his head. “Jessie’s not a greedy person. Me, on the other hand . . .” His voice trailed off into a laugh.

“What does she want, then, if it’s not the money?”

“Revenge? Power? Simply to be free of Beaumont, which she knows she never truly will be as long as he’s alive?” Cleve went back to straightening the cards, picking up the deck in his long, slender fingers and tapping it on the table to even the edges. “I’d say that all of those things play a part in her actions.”

“That’s why she was willin’ to have that riverboat crew murdered so they couldn’t tell anybody about me double-crossin’ Beaumont?”

“You found out about that?” Cleve seemed surprised. “The men we hired weren’t supposed to take care of that part of the job until after you were gone.”

“They didn’t wait quite long enough,” Preacher said in a grim, flinty voice. “I heard the shots and went back, saw the riverboat burnin’.”

Cleve shrugged again. “Well, you have to admit, it was effective.”

“Was the fire Jessie’s idea?”

“What?” Cleve shook his head. “Jessie didn’t know anything about that, Preacher. It was all my idea.”

Preacher felt relief go through him. He hadn’t wanted to believe that Jessie was capable of such a thing, but truly, he didn’t really know.

“You didn’t think Jessie came up with that, did you?” Cleve went on. The gambler shook his head. “Even if it had occurred to her that your secret needed to be protected, she wouldn’t have given the order for those riverboat men to be killed.”

“Then why did you?” Preacher asked.

Cleve sat up straighter. “Because someone had to! When I threw in with Jessie on this, I knew I might have to make some of the difficult decisions that she couldn’t make.”

“Like murderin’ innocent men?”

“Beaumont has murdered innocent men. At least, he’s been responsible for it, many times. And you saw what he did to Cassandra. A man like that is worse than an animal, because he knows what he’s doing. He just doesn’t care.”

Preacher couldn’t argue with any of that. He knew Cleve was right about how bad Shad Beaumont was. He still wasn’t sure that justified sinking to Beaumont’s level.

There was no way to go back and change things now though. He just said, “I don’t like it,” and left it at that.

Cleve chuckled. “Then it’s a good thing you’re not in charge here, isn’t it?”

Preacher let that go, although it wasn’t easy, and said, “What’s next?”

“Jessie and I haven’t decided yet. We were thinking that some of Beaumont’s warehouses might just happen to burn down.”

Preacher shook his head. “You do somethin’ like that, you’ll risk burnin’ down the whole town, includin’ this place. You don’t want to take that chance. You’d be better off cleanin’ out those warehouses instead and movin’ the goods somewhere else.”

“That would involve killing the guards. I thought you were opposed to that much bloodshed.”

“I ain’t gonna lose any sleep over somebody who takes money from Beaumont, knowin’ the sort of varmint he is,” Preacher said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t have to kill the guards, just knock ’em out.”

Cleve looked across the table at him. “Do you know anyone stealthy enough to accomplish something like that?”

“I might,” Preacher said. “I just might.”

Cleve thought about it for a moment and then began to nod. “I’ll talk it over with Jessie, but it’s not a bad idea. That way the merchandise isn’t destroyed. The profits from it go into our coffers instead. Which makes me wonder . . . just how big a share are you expecting out of all this, Preacher?”

“I ain’t all that interested in the money, either. I’m after a different payoff.”

“Making Shad Beaumont’s life a living hell and then killing him?” Cleve guessed.

Putting it like that made it sound even worse, Preacher thought, and yet that was exactly the goal that had brought him to St. Louis. Never again, he vowed. From here on out, whenever he had a score to settle with a man, he would do it right out in the open.

“Let’s just figure out which of those warehouses you want to clean out first,” he said.

Three nights later, in the dark of the moon, Preacher stole through an alley near the riverfront. He had a bandanna tied over the lower half of his face like a damned highwayman, which he didn’t like, but it was necessary to conceal his identity because it was possible someone might see him and recognize him if he didn’t wear it.

His destination was a warehouse full of stolen goods supplied by a ring of thieves working for Beaumont. Jessie had agreed with the plan Preacher and Cleve hatched, and now Preacher was carrying out his part of it.

He had waited until after midnight to slip out of his quarters at Beaumont’s house and make his way here. According to what Jessie had been able to find out, there were two guards outside the warehouse and two more inside. She knew this because Beaumont’s men sometimes patronized her house when they had been lucky at cards and were particularly flush. A whore could always find a way to make a man talk and never even realize just how much information he was spilling.

Evidently things had gone well three nights earlier when Jessie took Beaumont upstairs. Preacher didn’t like to think too much about that, but clearly Beaumont hadn’t given in to his rage while he was with her, and that was the important thing. Since the ambush during the attempted riverboat robbery, Beaumont had resumed his normal routine for the most part, although he spent some of the time asking questions in waterfront dives, trying to find out who was behind what had happened. Preacher accompanied him on those trips and saw firsthand how Beaumont wasn’t having any luck with his investigation. Jessie and Cleve had done a good job of covering their tracks.

For a man who had crawled into Indian camps and slit the throats of several warriors without any of the other Indians knowing a thing about it until morning, sneaking up on these warehouse guards didn’t pose much of a challenge for Preacher. Even though it was late, raucous laughter and the scraping notes of a fiddle came from a nearby tavern, helping to cover up any sounds he might make as he approached the big double doors of the warehouse. Two men sat on kegs near the doors, one on either side, and while they might be tough gents, their senses didn’t come anywhere near being as keen as those of a Blackfoot or Crow warrior. Preacher slipped along the brick wall of the building until he was close enough to reach out and touch the nearer of the two guards.

He struck swiftly and without warning, his left arm shooting out to loop around the guard’s neck and jerk the man to his feet. Preacher’s arm closed so tightly that the guard couldn’t let out a yell, couldn’t even croak. The sound of the keg overturning alerted the other guard, though, so Preacher didn’t waste any time. He rushed the guard he held across the twenty or so feet separating him from the second of Beaumont’s men and rammed the first guard into the second one as that man leaped to his feet. Their heads cracked together, and both men went limp and slumped to the ground.

That left the two inside. Preacher knew the doors were barred on the inside, so he had to get the other two guards to open up. He left the two he had knocked out lying on the ground and used his fist to pound on one of the doors.

When he heard footsteps approaching inside the warehouse and saw the glow of lantern light seeping through the narrow crack between the doors, he bent and hoisted one of the unconscious men to his feet. He knew their names were Tompkins and Rice. There was a viewing slot cut into the warehouse door, and when it was thrust back and a bar of light shone through it, Preacher stood halfway behind the man he held, so that the guard inside the warehouse couldn’t get a good look at him. He saw the gray-shot beard jutting out from the chin of the unconscious man and knew this was Rice he held.

“Something’s wrong with Rice,” he rasped, muffling his voice a little against the man’s shoulder. “He just moaned and fell over. Might be his heart.”

“Son of a—Hold on,” the guard on the other side of the door said. Preacher heard the bar being lifted, and then the other door opened a couple of feet.

“Bring him in here. Maybe one of us ought to fetch the sawbones.”

Preacher kept his head ducked down as he lugged the limp form through the narrow opening. One of the inside guards swung it closed behind him and lowered the bar again.

“Better not tell the boss about this,” he said. “We ain’t supposed to open up for any reason. Rice still owes me two dollars from that last poker game, though, and by God, I don’t want him dyin’ before he pays me!”

A smile tugged at Preacher’s mouth. Greed, like lust, was something that could bring a man down without much trouble.

“Well, here, see if he’s got it on him,” Preacher said. He gave the unconscious figure a hard shove toward the man at the door, then whirled and kicked the man with the lantern in the belly. The man doubled over and started to fall. Preacher grabbed the lantern before it could drop to the floor, shatter, and start that fire he wanted to prevent.

A harsh curse came from behind him. He swung around in time to see that the second guard had gotten tangled up with the man Preacher had knocked out, just as Preacher had hoped would happen. The guard had gone to one knee and was trying to get up. Preacher met him with a hard, looping right that stretched him out on the warehouse floor, out cold.

The man Preacher had kicked in the belly was still gasping for breath, but he was also trying to work a pistol out from behind his belt. Preacher brought the barrel of his pistol crashing down on the man’s head, knocking him out as well.

The whole thing, start to finish, had taken less than three minutes.

Preacher set the lantern down on a crate, lifted the bar holding the doors closed, and went back outside for the other guard. When he had all four of them inside, he used some rope he had brought with him to tie their hands and feet, then pulled some more bandannas from his pocket and blindfolded them as well, so they wouldn’t be able to see what was going on if they regained consciousness before the men hired by Jessie and Cleve finished cleaning out the stolen merchandise from the warehouse.

Then Preacher opened the door a little, stuck the lantern out, and waved it from side to side three times. That was the signal. A few moments later, he heard the creak of wheels as several big freight wagons rolled toward the warehouse. He swung the doors wide open to let them in.

He was surprised to see that Cleve himself was at the reins of one of the wagons. The gambler grinned at him and said, “Good work. You didn’t have to kill any of them.”

“Said I wouldn’t,” Preacher replied.

Cleve nodded and lifted a hand in farewell. “We’ll handle it from here.”

“Those fellas better be alive when you leave. They ain’t any threat to you now.”

“Fine,” Cleve said as he hopped down from the wagon he had brought to a halt. “You have my word.”

Preacher wasn’t sure what that was worth, but for now he had to accept it. He nodded and left the warehouse, trotting away through the shadows.

A few blocks from the warehouse, he stopped in an alley and pulled the bandanna from his face. It felt good to have it off. He just wasn’t cut out to be a thief, even though he was helping to steal from a thief and a murderer.

As he walked away into the night, he wondered how long he would have to be back in the mountains before he started to feel clean again.