Preacher and The Mountain Caesar

Book 6: Preacher/The First Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Fiction; Westerns; General Fiction

Synopsis

One Man And . . .

No one remembered when he'd come to the mountains-it seemed that Preacher had always been there. He'd seen a great deal in the unmapped mountains and forests of the grand North American frontier. In fact, he'd just told a friend that he wasn't surprosed by anything anymore. But Preacher hadn't seen Nova Roma yet . . .

. . . A Deadly Dream of Glory

Suddenly, Preacher is faced with the strangest, most dangerous army the High Lonesome has ever seen. It's leader is a blood-mad fanatic right out of the ancient history books. All Preacher's got on his side are his brother mountain men: tough as hardtack good old boys like Philadelphia Braddock and Frenchie Dupree; the Arapaho warrior Bold Pony; and his surefire Walker Colt . . .

Release date: June 28, 2016

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

There’s a limit to everything, by dang it, the mountain man known as Preacher fumed to himself. At least that’s how he saw it. Birds twittered musically overhead; a fat, white-tailed deer bounded across the meadow in this lush, deep basin. Water burbled, clear and pure, in the narrow stream that cut diagonally through the upper end of the valley and left by way of the entrance gorge to the south. Only marginally on the east side of the continental divide, water courses often did not follow the rule of the land. Tangy pine scented the clear, crisp air, while small puff-ball clouds floated by overhead.

So, why in tarnation would a body come along and spoil a perfectly relaxful fall? Yet, here they were, five of the most vile, stomach-churning, unwashed, buzzard pukes Preacher had ever laid eyes upon. Worse, they looked to be fixin’ to ruin his peaceful layin’ up for winter by settling down in the selfsame valley he had staked out for its high mountain walls to the north, east, and west. Preacher found himself jealous of sharing the sure, swift stream that ran through the middle, and the ample tall, slender fir trees which abounded on the slopes, from which he could make a stout little cabin and enjoy a source of plentiful wood for heat and cooking. No, it wouldn’t do, not at all. But despite that, Preacher decided to drop down and invite these hog-dirty, walking, talking slop jars to depart.

Preacher meandered down to where the scruffy frontier trash had put up a disreputable lean-to, and hashed together a pine bough lodge which would not shed water or keep out the cold. Stupid flatlanders, no doubt, he reasoned as he neared. Preacher halted a goodly distance from the men, who had to be bone-stupid to have not noted his approach, and hollered up at the camp.

“Hello, the camp!”

“Howdie, mister. C‘mon in an’ fetch up a cup of coffee.”

“Thank’e. I’ll come in right enough.” Preacher came to within three long paces of the rude camp, then screwed a ground anchor and tied his horse to it.

Preacher entered the camp, his posture one of complete dominance. This was his valley, by damn. One of the unshaven quintet studied their visitor with open curiosity. Only a bit over what passed for average height in these days, the man had an air of power about him. From his broad shoulders and thick chest to his narrow waist, he radiated strength. The man Preacher viewed as an intruder raised a hand in a greeting. “Rest yourself, stranger. There’s coffee over yon.”

“I’ll not be stayin’ for coffee, thank you all the same. M’name’s Preacher.” He noted how their eyes widened at this news. “I come to offer you an invitation.”

“That’s mighty nice. What’s the invite for?”

“I’m askin’ you fellers to pack up your gear and be outta my valley before sundown.” His gray eyes, they noted, were cold and hard.

Surprised looks came from the five men. Lomax and Phelps grew angry at once. Windy Creek produced a snarl that came off more like a sneer, while Rush and Thumper separated from the others slightly, to get an advantage. Preacher noted all of that and accepted the fact that his invitation could be a bit more difficult to deliver than he had anticipated. They showed other obvious signs of how unkindly they took his words.

“Lomax, Windy,” barked the only one who had spoken so far. “Looks to me we have to learn this boy some manners.”

“You got that right, Phelps,” Rusk growled from nearly behind Preacher.

From a similar position at Preacher’s left rear, Thumper uttered the wheezing gasp that served him for laughter. “This is gonna be easy, Rusk. All we gotta do is jump on him and hol’ him down while Phelps and Lomax work him over a bit.”

A low chuckle came from the one Preacher identified as Windy. “Then we take him off with us like we was told. He—he—heee.” The sound of his laughter came out even worse than that of Thumper. Preacher raised his big hands, palms up and open. He took a deep breath and sighed aloud as he spoke.

“Well, hell, fellers, if you’re set on joinin’ the dance, I suppose I have to accommodate.”

While they took time to digest the meaning of Preacher’s fancy words, he exploded into instant, furious action. He whipped out with one big hand and popped Lomax along the jaw. The contact sounded like a rifle shot. Preacher kept his momentum and spun to snap a hard right fist into the bony chest of Windy Creek. The skinny border rat grunted, and his eyes crossed momentarily.

Preacher followed up with a left to Windy’s unguarded cheek. Blood sprayed at the contact. A right cross produced a screeching sound from Windy’s mouth that set Preacher’s teeth on edge. The spry, if momentarily befuddled, Windy began to spit out teeth as he danced backward. Rusk and Thumper grabbed Preacher from behind the next instant. Preacher raised a heel into Thumper’s crotch and got a satisfying squeal of pain in return. Then the punches began to smack into Preacher’s middle and face.

Phelps and Lomax closed in, working with the efficiency of steam engines. Lomax, an ugly brute of short stature, pistoned his arms forward and back, pounding Preacher in the belly with hard-knuckled regularity. Phelps, tall and skinny, worked over his crime partner’s head, driving cutting, jarring lefts and rights to the planes of Preacher’s face. Blood began to flow from a cut high on one cheekbone. A ringing filled Preacher’s head as Phelps lopped him one in an ear. Pain exploded in his left eye, and the tissue began to swell immediately. He’d have a good mouse out of that one, Preacher reckoned.

He chose to ignore the efforts of Lomax. The short, pudgy hard case furiously drove his fists into slabs of work-hardened muscle to no effect, save to sap his own energy. Lomax tagged Preacher on the point of his chin, and stars blazed behind the mountain man’s eyes. Preacher sucked in a deep breath and shifted position.

“Well, hell,” he drawled, “that’s about enough of this.”

Preacher stomped a high instep on a foot that belonged to Rusk, yanked himself free, and boxed the ears off Lomax. Howling, the squat piece of human debris clapped hands to both ears and spun away from Preacher, to receive a solid kick in the rear as further reward. Eyes widening, Phelps took a step backward and tripped over a snub piece of granite protruding from the grassy turf. He caught a solid punch under the heart that knocked the air from his lungs and momentarily froze his diaphragm. He hit the ground seeing stars and listening to the birdies sing.

Ignoring that pair, Preacher turned his attention toward the remaining three. Rusk, Thumper and Windy Creek stared in confused disbelief. No one man had ever stood up to them like this. Not even just two alone. They had not been told something about this Preacher, the trio immediately suspected. Most of all, how goddamned mean he could be. Rusk, Thumper and Windy Creek exchanged worried glances. Windy was known as a champion free-for-all wrestler. It seemed his responsibility to take care of Preacher. The expressions of the other two said as much.

Windy shrugged his shoulders until they hunched to protect his neck, snuffled, and shifted his feet on the ground. When his partners in crime feinted to distract Preacher, he jumped forward, spread his arms and sought to clasp the wiry mountain man in a ferocious bear hug. Only Preacher was not there.

“Huh?” Windy grunted, then let out a howl as pain exploded in the side of his head.

How had Preacher gotten over there without him seeing it? Windy turned to face the threat, feeling ready now. No time for finesse, he reckoned. He’d just plow right in and throw his man with one massive twist of his shoulders. Or would he get clobbered in the head again?

Much to his surprise, Windy got a good hold on Preacher. He put the point of his shoulder in deep against Preacher’s ribs and set his powerful, tree-stump legs. Arms locked at the wrist, he heaved and felt the sudden give as Preacher left the ground. Elation filled Windy as he slammed his opponent down hard on the ground.

Preacher grunted, shook his head and let his mind absorb the pain that radiated from his ribs. It took him only a moment to realize that his assailant lacked the polish and skill of a true grappler. The ancient Greek art of wrestling was better understood by the Cheyenne and the Sioux than by most white men. That gave Preacher a decided advantage as he saw it. He had learned his wrestling from the Cheyenne. While Windy scrabbled to find new purchase, Preacher drew his legs up in front of him.

When his knees reached the middle of his chest, he had Windy humped up like a bison bull mounting a heifer. The illusion lasted only a second, as Preacher put all his effort into violently thrusting his legs outward. A moment’s resistance, and then Windy went flying.

Preacher bounded to his feet in time to meet Rusk and Thumper. Rusk caught the brunt of Preacher’s fury. Hard fists pounded his chest and gut until Rusk dropped his guard; then Preacher went to work on the youthful, if dirty, face of the junior thug. Rusk’s grunts and groans changed to yips of pain. Preacher spread the nose all over Rusk’s face a second before Thumper grabbed him.

Thumper had only begun to pull Preacher around when he got hit low and painfully, an inch above his wide trouser belt. The power in Preacher’s punch lifted Thumper off the ground. Before he even had time to wonder where the blow had come from, Preacher sent him into a hazy twilight land. The big, thick-legged mountain man spun around to see what opposition remained.

In that instant, he discovered that the fight had turned serious. Off to one side, Windy Creek held a .70 caliber horse pistol. To Preacher’s front, Lomax stood hunched over, breathing hard, and he had a knife out, held low, the edge up in a ripping position. From behind Preacher, Rusk, coughing and retching, pulled a short, ground-down sword. That made the day look a little darker, Preacher reasoned.

“We ... gonna ... fix ya ... for this, ya ... bastid. You boys,” a panting Phelps grunted, “throw down on him. We’ll ... hold him ... while Lomax ... carves out his liver.” Then he, too, drew a big .70 caliber horse pistol.

Faced with this opposition, Preacher did a quick reappraisal. Confronting the .70 caliber muzzles, and wickedly sharp edges, he found their attitude decidedly hostile. Cranky enough, he reckoned, that he’d best do something about it. He twisted his face into a semblance of amiability and raised a distracting left hand.

“Well, heck, fellers, why’in’t you tell me this was supposed to be a gunfight?” With that he dropped his other hand to the smooth walnut butt-grips of one of his marvelous .44 Walker Colt six-shooters and whipped it out with a suddenness that left the others still thinking about what they should do next.

With cold precision, he blasted two of the woolly-eared men into the arms of their Maker. His first two slugs punched into Phelps’s chest. He rocked back and sat abruptly on his skinny butt. Preacher ducked and spun, to send two more rounds into the surprised face of Windy Creek. Belatedly, Windy’s .70 caliber horse pistol discharged into the ground with a solid thud. Preacher ignored it to turn and menace the remaining simpleton trash.

Rusk and Thumper fired as one. A fat ball moaned past Preacher’s ear, low enough to the shoulder that he could feel its wind. He gave the shooter, Thumper, a .44 slug in the hollow of his throat. It landed the thug backward in a heap beside the dying Phelps. Rusk’s eyes went wide. He had fired his only barrel and had no time to reload. He gained precious seconds, in which to go for a second pistol in his belt, when Lomax charged with a bellow, his knife at the ready.

“Some of us just never get the word,” Preacher said with tired sadness as he shot Lomax squarely in the chest. “A feller never takes only a knife to a gunfight,” he explained to the dying man at his feet. Then Rusk fired again.

His bullet cut a thin line along the outside of Preacher’s left shoulder. With an empty six-gun in his hand, Preacher dived and rolled for cover behind a fallen tree trunk while he drew a second magnificent .44 Walker Colt, which he had taken off the outlaw named Hashknife a couple of years earlier, and answered Rusk with fatal authority.

Rusk dropped his suddenly heavy pistol and staggered backward. Preacher took the precaution of cocking the Colt again. Then he looked around himself. None of the enemy moved, except the gut-shot Rusk, who moaned and curled up on himself, his legs trembling feebly. Preacher crossed to him. He knelt beside the dirty-faced low-life and spoke with urgency in his voice.

“What brought all that on?”

“Come to get ... you, Preacher,” Rusk panted.

“Why? What got into your heads to do a fool thing like that?”

“We ...” The dying man’s voice took on a cold, haunting note as he gasped out his last words. “We was sent.” For a short while convulsions wracked the body; then Rusk went stiff, his death rattle sounded and he relaxed into the hands of the Grim Reaper.

Preacher rose slowly, his mind awhirl with puzzlement. “‘We was sent,’ ”he repeated. “Now who in tarnation would have a mad-on at me big enough to send five worthless trash bags like that to even a score?” He let the question hang in the warm, late-August air while he went about rounding up the tools needed for grave digging.

No stranger to the process of burial for his fellow man, Preacher much preferred that the task be left to others. For his own part, when he ever gave it thought, Preacher much preferred a Cheyenne or Sioux burial platform when it came time to give up the ghost. Let them deck him out in his finest, lay him on a bed of sweet pine boughs, on a platform made of lodgepole pine saplings and rawhide strips, exposing him before God and man, to let the elements do their best with him.

Preacher had neither wife nor, as far as he knew, living child to mourn him, or to quarrel over any possessions he might leave behind—although he wasn’t real certain about the children bit. That’s what Preacher hated most about the white man’s way of caring for the dead. If a feller had anything to amount to a hill of beans, and had so-called loved ones left behind, getting possession of that hill of beans always made enemies of those who professed to most love the departed. Instead of supporting each other in their mutual loss, they quarreled like greedy children to divide even the clothes the poor feller left behind.

Preacher stopped in his task of digging holes for the hard cases he had fought. Why couldn’t they do like the Injuns, and gather to lend support to one another? And in the process, leave a feller in peace? Let him take his most prized belongings with him to Nah’ah Tishna—the Happy Hunting Ground? Preacher sighed, wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and returned to the chore he had given himself.

They came upon him shortly before twilight. An old man, his gray hair hanging to his shoulders, unkempt and stiff from being a long time unwashed. He was brewing coffee at his small camp in a mountain valley when the skinny pair of urchins drifted silently out of the woods and stood staring gauntly at the cooking fire. It took a moment for the old man to notice their presence. When he did, he gave a start and grasped at the left side of his chest.

“Land o’ Goshen, youngins. You gave me a real start. Don’t you know better than to slip up on a camp like that?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion and unacknowledged alarm. There could be others out there, lurking, to attack when he became distracted.

“We—we got lost,” stammered the skinny, yellow-haired boy with the biggest, cornflower blue eyes old Hatch had ever seen.

“Where you from?”

“We—uh—we don’t know, ’cause we don’t know where we are now,” the boy answered evasively.

“Now that ain’t any sort of answer. Whereabouts is your home?”

Together they looked at the ground. “Other side of the high mountains. We got took off by some bad folks.”

Hatch doubted that. Even so, he pressed for something by which to identify them. “You got names put on you?”

“Yes—yes, we do. I’m Terry, an’ this is my sister, Vickie.”

Hatch canted his head to one side and made a smile. “Vickie—Victoria, eh? Like the English Queen, huh?”

“I—I suppose so, sir,” her sweet, young voice responded.

“What’s your end handle?” Hatch demanded.

“We—uh—do you mean our last name?” Terry asked.

Hatch studied them closer then. Both were barefoot and in threadbare clothes that were hardly more than rags. They had missed a good many meals; bones stuck out everywhere. Their eyes were a bit too bright, feverish mayhap. The boy had a ferret quality to him, his face narrow, hollow-cheeked, eyes close together; and he was somewhat buck-toothed. He wouldn’t look a person directly in the eye, either.

The girl, Victoria, if that was her name, had a precious quality about her. For all her grime and stringy yellow hair, she could smile enough to charm the demons outta perdition. Her figure, although still undeveloped and boyish, held a certain promise. She stood before him now, toes turned in and touching, the hem of her skirt swaying around her knees as she twisted and turned, hands behind her back. Her attitude convinced Hatch.

“There’s some extra grub. Welcome to it. But first, you gotta go to the crick and clean up a mite.”

“Oh, thank you, sir,” Vickie chirped. They started off to the creek hand-in-hand.

“Hold on there,” Hatch called after them. “You can’t go in there nekid together. One at a time.”

“At home we never have ... ,” Terry blurted, then paused, an expression of nervous wariness flickering across his face. “I mean—er—we never had to do it that way when we had a home.”

“Well, you’re gettin’ too old to jump in bare together. Just do as I say.”

They took their turns, looking unhappy about it, then returned to the warmth beside the fire. Hatch handed them plates piled high with stew and fresh, flakey biscuits.

“Go on. Eat hearty. You could use a little meat on those bones.”

Eloy Hatch glowed with an unusual contentment when he rolled up in his blankets that night. It made him feel good to do something kind for others. Especially youngsters cut off from hearth and home. Tomorrow he’d see about trimming the lad’s hair. Maybe scare up a button or two so’s to cover more of their bodies. He might even take them along with him to the trading post, where Ol’ Rube would know, if anyone did, where to find them a home.

He drifted off to sleep with these good thoughts. They held him in such deep slumber, until near midnight, that Eloy Hatch never felt a thing when Terry slid the slender knife blade between Eloy’s ribs and pierced his heart. When Hatch’s death throes ceased, Terry and Vickie quickly stripped the corpse and campsite of all valuables, took the prospector’s horses and stole off into the night. Half a mile from the scene of their latest murder and robbery, they paused to embrace. Vickie shivered with the excitement of their bloody handiwork, and her skin was cold to the touch.

Terry quickly warmed her in the shelter of his strong arms. Their eyes got lost in one another’s, and they sighed heavily. “But he was nice, Terry.”

“If we hadn’t done it, we’d get a powerful beatin’ when we got home, Vic, you know that.”

A sigh. “Yes, you’re right, Terry.” She raised on tiptoe and kissed him on one cheek. It would be all right now, she knew; it would be like always.

Face hidden entirely behind the slouch brim of a disreputable, soft, old felt hat, the man moved with exaggerated caution between the lodgepole pines on the northern slope. To his left, another buckskin-clad figure paused, brown eyes searching the terrain from under a skunk-skin cap, a long-barreled Hawkin rifle at the ready, until his partner halted behind a large fir tree. Then he went into motion, downhill, for a short distance. He pulled up sharply behind the protruding bulb of a gigantic granite boulder.

The first man advanced again. The loose coat he wore opened in the slight breeze to reveal a barrel chest and a narrow waist, which put a lie to the salt-and-pepper hair that protruded from under the dirty old hat. With practiced ease, they continued to leapfrog to the valley floor. They glanced back up the steep slope. Each tried to figure out how to get the other to offer to make the long climb back to get their horses and pack animals. A voice spoke to them from the cover of the treeline.

“One-Eye, Bart, you boys coulda saved yourselves a passel of extra walking if you’d just rid straight in.”

One-Eye Avery Tookes cocked his head to one side. “Preacher? B’God’s bones, it is you, ain’t it?”

“Alive an’ in one piece,” Preacher allowed. “An’ I saved you the trouble of bringin’ those mangy critters down here.”

That set well with both visitors. They let out satisfied bellows when Preacher came into the open, leading their livestock. Then the one Preacher called Bart pursed his thick lips and appraised his old friend with soft, brown eyes.

“We been lookin’ for you,” Bart Weller advised. He cut his eyes to the fresh mounds of earth and stones close by. The turning of his head caused the tail of his disreputable cap to sway as though alive. “Looks sorta like trouble found you first.”

Preacher sighed heavily and rubbed his hands together. “That it did, an’ puzzlesome at that. But the tellin’ will go better over a pot of coffee an’ a bit o’ rye.” He led the way to his partially constructed cabin and added fuel to the fire in an Indian-style beehive oven-stove combination. He told his old friends about the five men and their actions in the valley. While he talked, the water in the pot came to a boil. Preacher added coffee and an egg shell. One-Eye noted that the shell had considerable size to it and was of a bluish tint. Preacher spotted his curiosity.

“Duck eggs. When I first come into this hole, I found some ducks that liked it rightly enough that they made it a year-round home. Every couple of days, I’d nick an egg from each of the six nests. Et the eggs, saved the shells for coffee. Nothin’ settles grounds quite so good. Now, as I was tellin’ ya,” Preacher said launching back into his account of the scruffy intruders.

While he talked, he paid close attention to his visitors. He had known Bart Weller longer. Why, from way back at the Rendezvous in ’27, he thought. Didn’t seem that his hair had a strand more of gray in it than the day they’d met. A quiet fellow, he had already partnered up with One-Eye Avery Tookes before the Rendezvous. Been together ever since. One-Eye Avery was a legend all to himself.

Of an age with Preacher and, like that venerable mountain man, one of the last of the breed, he had not sacrificed an eye to obtain his High Lonesome moniker. Indeed, he still had the clear, light blue orbs with which he had been born. The first white man who, in a drunken rage, had attacked a then much younger Avery Tookes had been bent on snuffing out the life of the adventurous, youthful trapper. Avery had defended himself admirably, until the huge brute got him in a bear hug. Not eager to kill the man, Avery had resorted to his only other line of offense. He had gouged out the man’s eye with a long, thick thumbnail. Howling, the lout had given up, and Avery answered the questions as to why he had not finished the job with the remark that he reckoned one eye was enough. His newfound friend, Preacher, had promptly dubbed him Ol’ One-Eye.

That had been years ago, yet both men had maintained their health and strength. If you saw them from behind, it would be difficult to distinguish one man from the other. From the front, One-Eye’s big, bulbous red nose was a sure giveaway. Tookes had invited Preacher to spend the season trapping with him and his partner. Preacher knew Bart Weller to be a man with plenty of sand, and more knowledge about beaver than any human should possess. He had readily agreed, a. . .