Preacher's Fire

Book 16: Preacher/The First Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

A Mountain Man In Disguise A big city like St. Louis is the last place where a mountain man like Preacher would pick a fight. But how else will he get at the ruthless power broker who is using fear and bloodshed to take over the Western fur trade? A Killer In Control Shaving his beard, posing as a greedy hayseed from Ohio, the Preacher comes face-to-face with Shad Beaumont--who is leaving St. Louis with an army of hired gunmen. . .with the Preacher on his tail. And A Fire That's Just Begun To Erupt The odds couldn't be worse and the battleground couldn't be better. For the wild frontier is no place for fancy plots or poor disguises--but a fine spot for a killing ground. . .

Release date: December 9, 2009

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 321

Sample

The killers lying in the tall grass heard the singing while the two men were still on the other side of the hill. Their voices were loud and raucous, and although the members of the Pawnee war party didn’t really understand the words, it was clear from the tone that the song was a bawdy one.

It was a shame the white men had chosen such for their death song.

Because most certainly, they were about to die.

The six Indians waited patiently. They had spotted the riders and the two pack horses heading toward them and had concealed their own horses in the trees. Watching from the top of the hill, they had seen the white men coming straight toward them and had decided to lay their ambush here. Two of the warriors had rifles they had taken from dead white men in the past. The other four were armed with bows and arrows. The riflemen would attack first, standing up and firing at the whites. Then the bowmen would finish them off, if they survived the shooting.

Then the Pawnees would take the scalps of the white men.

It would be a good afternoon’s work.

The song came to an end. One of the whites, an old man by the cracked sound of his voice, said loudly, “Whoo-ee, Preacher, that’s a good ’un! Let’s sing another. How about the one about the one-legged gal and the deacon? You know that one? It goes like this.”

The old man topped the hill as he started bellowing out the new song. The two Pawnee riflemen leaped to their feet as soon as they saw the wide-brimmed felt hat and the long white hair and the white beard. They had raised their rifles to their shoulders before they realized that the saddle of the horse next to the old man was empty.

Off to the left, the dull boom of a flintlock sounded, and one of the Pawnee died as a heavy ball smashed into the side of his head, collapsing his skull and pulping his brain. He hadn’t even had time to turn toward the unexpected threat.

His companion did, though, and he saw a tall white man with a dark beard stalking toward him on the side of the hill. The white man tossed aside the empty rifle, and his hands swooped down to pull two flintlock pistols from behind his belt. The Pawnee let out a cry of angry surprise and tried to swing his rifle around, but the movement had barely started before smoke spurted from the muzzle of both pistols. Three out of the four balls from the double-shotted loads slammed into the Pawnee’s chest, driving deep into his body and knocking him backward off his feet.

All the shots had roared out in a matter of heartbeats, shocking the other four Pawnee into immobility for a second. But that spell broke, and they leaped to their feet, yipping and howling in outrage at the deaths of their companions.

Their reaction came too late.

Death was already among them.

A couple of long-legged bounds took Preacher into the middle of the war party. Dog was right behind him, leaping through the tall grass. Preacher swung the empty pistol in his right hand and caved in a warrior’s skull as Dog took down another one and ripped his throat out with a slash of sharp teeth and powerful jaws.

Preacher pivoted and kicked another man in the groin, doubling him over. Dropping the pistols, Preacher grabbed the Indian’s head, and brought his knee up into the man’s face. Blood spurted from the Pawnee’s crushed nose as Preacher shoved him into one of the warriors who remained on his feet. Their legs tangled, and both Indians fell toward Preacher.

He yanked the long, heavy-bladed hunting knife from the sheath at his waist and brought it up into the body of the uninjured Pawnee. The blade went in cleanly, penetrating deep into the warrior’s chest. Preacher ripped it free and stepped back in time to see the lone remaining Pawnee about to loose an arrow at him.

From the top of the hill, Uncle Dan Sullivan’s rifle boomed. Blood, brains, and bone combined into a pinkish spray as the ball blew away a good chunk of the warrior’s head. The arrow flew from the bow, but it went into the dirt halfway between Preacher and the Indian.

As the echoes of the shot rolled away across the grassy hills, Preacher looked up at Uncle Dan and called, “Could’ve been a mite quicker on the trigger. He almost had me.”

The stocky old-timer grinned and stroked his long white beard as he rested the rifle across the saddle in front of him. “Wanted to make good and sure of my shot,” he said. “These old eyes o’ mine ain’t as good as they used to be.”

Preacher grunted. He happened to know that Uncle Dan’s eyes were almost as keen as those of an eagle.

A groan made Preacher look around. The Indian whose nose he had busted was still alive. The man lay on the ground, writhing from the pain in his nose and his balls. Still holding the knife, Preacher went over to him and dropped to a knee beside him.

With his left hand, Preacher took hold of the Pawnee’s long black hair and jerked his head up. He laid the razor-sharp edge of the blade against the man’s throat, pressing hard enough so that a drop of blood welled out and trickled down the taut skin.

“You thought to ambush us,” he said in the Pawnee tongue, having recognized the warrior’s tribe by the markings painted on the man’s face and the bead-work on his buckskins. “That was a mistake. Are there any more of you around here, or were you and your brothers raiding alone?”

“I speak your filthy . . . white man tongue,” the man gasped, his voice choked by the blood that had run from his ruined nose into his mouth.

“Is that so?” Preacher said in English. “All right, then. You can answer my question. How many more of you are there in these parts?”

“Go ahead and . . . kill me! I will tell you . . . nothing! Cut my throat, white man!”

Preacher thought about it for a second, then shook his head and said, “Nope, I reckon not.” He took the knife away from the nicked place on the Indian’s throat. “Dog!”

The big, wolflike cur edged closer, his lips curling away from his teeth as he snarled at the Pawnee.

“I ain’t gonna cut your throat,” Preacher went on. “I’m just gonna let Dog here gnaw on you for a while.”

He saw the fear in the Indian’s eyes as Dog approached.

“He’s got a mean streak in him,” Preacher went on. “Likes to play with his food for a while before he eats it. He’s liable to start at your toes and just sorta . . . nibble his way up.”

The Pawnee swallowed hard. His eyes were wide, and he seemed to have forgotten about his busted nose and the kick in the crotch.

“What band are you from?” Preacher asked. “Who’s your war chief?”

“St-Standing Elk,” the Pawnee said.

Preacher nodded toward the other members of the war party, who lay scattered around the hillside, dead. “Is he one of these fellas?”

The Pawnee shook his head. “No. We were scouts . . . from a larger party.”

“Where’s Standin’ Elk and the rest of your bunch?”

The Pawnee started to look stubborn again. Preacher made a small motion, and a snarling, slavering Dog bent his head toward the Indian’s legs.

“One sleep toward the sunrise!” the Pawnee cried. “It is the truth!”

Preacher waved Dog back. The big cur retreated with obvious reluctance.

“How many?”

“As many as the fingers of four hands.”

Twenty more warriors, then. A formidable bunch. He and Uncle Dan would avoid them if possible, Preacher thought.

“All right,” Preacher said as he straightened to his feet. “I reckon we’ll tie you up and leave you here. The rest of your bunch will come along and find you sooner or later.”

The Pawnee sneered up at him. “Go ahead and kill me. I have shamed myself by talking to you.”

Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “There are a few hombres in this world who’re bad enough I might be tempted to kill ’em in cold blood. You ain’t one of ’em, old son.”

“Then let me . . . die in battle.” The Indian’s fingers groped for the handle of the knife at his waist.

“You ain’t fit to fight right now. I reckon I kicked your balls halfway up to your throat.”

Preacher started to turn away. Behind him, the Pawnee struggled to climb to his feet. Uncle Dan said warningly, “Preacher . . .”

With a sigh, Preacher turned around again. The warrior had made it upright and managed to pull his knife from its sheath. He raised the weapon and lunged awkwardly toward Preacher.

Preacher waited, hoping that the stubborn varmint would collapse or pass out or something, but when the blade started to thrust toward his chest, he had to act. He knocked the Pawnee’s knife aside and stepped in to bring up his own blade and bury it in the warrior’s chest. The man sighed and dropped his knife as he sagged toward Preacher.

“What’s your name?” Preacher asked.

“Bent . . . Stick,” the Pawnee forced out.

“Well, if anybody ever asks me, I will tell them that the warrior called Bent Stick died in battle, with honor.”

Gratitude flickered in the Indian’s eyes, then died out along with everything else. Preacher lowered the corpse to the ground.

Uncle Dan had ridden on down the hill and now sat nearby on his horse, still holding the reins of Preacher’s horse and the two pack animals. The old-timer nodded toward the body and asked, “How’d you know he’d talk if you threatened him with Dog?”

“I saw him eyein’ the old boy,” Preacher replied. “Some folks are more scared of one particular thing than they are of anything else. Might be dogs or snakes or, hell, I don’t know, bugs. I took a chance that with this fella, it was dogs.”

“Looks like you was right. We gonna try to avoid that war chief Standin’ Elk and his bunch?”

“Damn right,” Preacher said. He pulled up a handful of grass and used it to wipe the blood from his knife before he slid the blade back into its sheath. “We’ve got places to go and things to do, and I don’t want anything slowin’ us down.”

He walked over to retrieve his pistols from the place he had dropped them. He reloaded them first, then picked up his rifle and loaded it. He always felt a little naked when his guns were empty.

“If you hadn’t seen them birds fly up and guessed there might be somethin’ waitin’ for us on this side of the hill, them redskins would’ve had the drop on us,” Uncle Dan said as Preacher swung up into the saddle on the rangy gray stallion known only as Horse. “That was pretty smart of you, havin’ me go on singin’ whilst you slipped around the side of the hill and snuck up on ’em.”

“But if there was no ambush, I’d’ve wound up lookin’ a mite foolish, wouldn’t I?”

“Better to be foolish and alive, I always say.”

Preacher couldn’t argue with that.

“How far you reckon we are from St. Louis?” Uncle Dan went on.

“Be there in another week, just about, I’d say.”

“That arm of yours gonna be good and healed up by then?”

Preacher lifted his left arm. It was splinted and wrapped up from elbow to wrist, but at this point, that was more of a precaution than anything else.

“It’s pretty much healed now,” he said. Several weeks had passed since the bone had been broken about halfway down his forearm. “I can use it without any trouble. It just aches a little ever’ now and then.”

“Well, you best be careful with it. You want to be at full strength when we get there. Killin’ that bastard Beaumont ain’t gonna be easy.”

“No,” Preacher said, thinking of all the evil that had been done because of the man called Shad Beaumont, “but it sure is gonna be satisfyin’.”

Preacher had left his family’s farm at a young age, driven by an undeniable wanderlust. Many of the years since then had been spent in the Rocky Mountains, although his fiddle-footed nature had taken him as far south as Texas and as far north as Canada. He had also made a number of trips back east to St. Louis, and that was his destination now.

He wasn’t going there to sell furs that he had trapped in the mountains, though, as he had done in the past.

This time, he was going to kill a man.

Twice now, Shad Beaumont had dispatched agents to the mountains in an attempt to take over the fur trade. Beaumont was the boss of the criminal underworld in St. Louis, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to branch out, to spread his unholy influence over the mountains, and when Preacher had helped foil his first effort in that direction, Beaumont hadn’t hesitated to send hired killers after him.

Preacher was still alive, and those would-be assassins were dead, but they weren’t the only ones who had died. Innocent folks had been killed, and Preacher was filled with righteous wrath over those deaths. Some of the people who had died hadn’t exactly been what anybody would call innocent, but they hadn’t deserved to die, and Preacher wanted to avenge what had happened to them, too.

It all added up to Preacher going to St. Louis and confronting the arch-criminal on his own stomping grounds. Venturing into the lair of a vicious animal was always dangerous, but it was also the fastest, simplest way to deal with the threat.

So Preacher and Uncle Dan Sullivan had ridden out of the mountains, following the North Platte River to the Missouri and then following the Missouri on its curving course through the heart of the country toward St. Louis. Uncle Dan had his own grudge against Beaumont, since his nephew Pete Sanderson had died as a result of Beaumont’s latest scheme. Over and above that, Preacher and Uncle Dan had become friends, and the old-timer hadn’t wanted Preacher to set out alone with a broken arm. It was true that by now Preacher’s arm was almost healed, but he had to admit, it had come in handy having Uncle Dan around to help with setting up camp and tending the horses and all the other chores that had to be taken care of when a fella was riding just about halfway across the continent.

Today, of course, Uncle Dan had proved to be even handier than usual by blowing that Pawnee’s head off before he could ventilate Preacher’s hide with an arrow.

The two men rode roughly parallel with the river, through the rolling hills about a mile south of it. The Pawnee and the Cheyenne liked to lurk in these parts, waiting for unwary travelers to come along, and they were worse along the river. Of course, you could run into hostiles just about anywhere out here, as Preacher and Uncle Dan had seen with their own eyes today.

They didn’t encounter any more trouble before nightfall, but they made a cold camp anyway and had a skimpy supper of jerky and hardtack. The two men took turns standing guard during the night.

Other than the sounds of small animals, the prairie was quiet and peaceful, and there had to be about a million stars up there in the deep black heavens, Preacher thought as he lay in his blankets and gazed upward briefly before dozing off. The stars were like jewels, shining with a brilliant intensity, and Preacher felt as if he could just reach up and pluck them out of the sky. He would be a rich man if he could do that.

But he wouldn’t be a free man anymore, not with the sort of freedom that he had craved all his life, and he wouldn’t trade that for all the diamonds and emeralds and rubies in the world.

The next day, they pushed on south and east toward St. Louis. Around mid-morning, Preacher reined in suddenly and leveled an arm to point at the ground ahead of them.

“Look at those tracks,” he told Uncle Dan.

The old-timer had brought his mount to a stop, too. Now he edged the horse forward and leaned over in the saddle to study the faint markings on the ground.

“Unshod ponies,” he said after a moment. “Looks like about twenty of ’em, too. That’d be Standin’ Elk and his glory boys, just like ol’ Bent Stick said.”

Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “Headin’ north toward the river, I’d say. Maybe figure on ambushin’ a flatboat or some pilgrims who come along on horseback, headin’ for the mountains.”

Uncle Dan spat on the ground. “None of our business. Anybody venturin’ into this here country had damned well better know there’s Injuns about. It’s ever’ man’s duty to keep his own eyes open and his powder dry.”

“You’re right,” Preacher said. “Looks like Standin’ Elk and his war party passed through here early this mornin’. I’m glad we missed ’em.”

“You and me both, Preacher.”

Preacher lifted the reins and heeled Horse into motion. With Dog bounding out ahead, as usual, and the pack animals trailing them, the two men rode across the trail left behind by the Pawnee war party.

They didn’t see any other signs of human beings until later in the day. The solitude was magnificent, with just the two men and their horses—insignificant specks, really—moving leisurely across the vast, open prairie. Eagles cruised through the arching bowl of blue sky. Antelope raced by, bounding over the landscape with infinite grace and beauty. Herds of buffalo as seemingly endless as a brown sea drifted slowly this way and that, following the grass and their instincts. Preacher always felt more at home in the mountains than anywhere else, but the prairie held its own appeal, too.

Came a time, though, late that afternoon, when Uncle Dan pointed to the northeast, toward the river, and said, “Look at that dust up yonder.”

Preacher nodded. “Saw it ten minutes ago.”

“Well, why in blazes didn’t you say somethin’ about it then?”

“Wanted to see how long it’d take you to notice it,” Preacher replied with a grin.

“Uh-huh. And if you hadn’t spotted it first, you wouldn’t admit it, would you? Let a feeble old man beat you to it.”

“You’re about as feeble as a grizzly bear. You are old, though.”

“You will be, too, one o’ these days, if you live long enough. Which means you better stop mouthin’ off to your elders. Now, what’re we gonna do about that dust?”

“Why do we have to do anything about it?” Preacher asked as he shrugged his shoulders. “Probably just some buffs driftin’ along the river.”

“You know better’n that,” Uncle Dan said. “Buffler move too slow to raise a cloud o’ dust except when they’re stampedin’, and if that was the case, there’d be even more of it in the air. No, I seen dust like that before. It comes from ox hooves and wagon wheels.”

“A wagon train, in other words.”

“Damn right.”

Preacher sighed. The same thought had occurred to him, but he had pushed it out of his head. He didn’t want anything else interfering with the mission that was taking him back east to St. Louis.

Now that Uncle Dan had put the problem into words, though, Preacher knew he couldn’t very well ignore it.

“And you know what them pilgrims may be headed right into,” Uncle Dan went on. “They keep movin’ upriver, they’re liable to run smack-dab into Standin’ Elk and that Pawnee war party.”

“They’re bound to know they might encounter hostiles. You said it your own self this mornin’, Uncle Dan. Anybody who’s gonna come out here on the frontier needs to keep his eyes open and his powder dry.”

The old-timer ran his fingers through his beard and scratched at his jaw. “Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? But I was thinkin’ more o’ fur trappers and river men. Fellas who can take care o’ themselves. There’s liable to be women n’ kids with that wagon train.”

Preacher figured it was a safe bet there would be women and children with the wagon train. He had seen it happening all too often in recent years. With the population growing back east, folks were starting to get crowded out. They wanted to come west to find new land and new opportunities. He supposed he couldn’t blame them all that much. He had done pretty much the same thing himself, after all.

But he hadn’t dragged a wife and a passel of young’uns with him when he lit out for the tall and uncut. In fact, he’d been nothing but a youngster himself, with no one else to be responsible for. He couldn’t imagine a man packing up his family and bringing them out here.

These days, a lot of men did just that, though. Preacher didn’t figure the trend would stop any time soon, either. Once it had started, trying to stop it was like standing in front of an avalanche and hollering, “Whoa!”

“You think we ought to go warn ’em,” he said now to Uncle Dan. “Tell ’em to be on the lookout for Standin’ Elk.”

“Seems like the neighborly thing to do.”

“I don’t recollect askin’ a bunch of immigrants to be my neighbors,” Preacher pointed out. “Fact of the matter is, I wish they’d all stayed back east where they belong.”

“Wishin’ that’s like tryin’ to push water back up a waterfall,” Uncle Dan said, which worked just as well as thinking of the tide of immigrati. . .