Preacher's Fire Read online

  Preacher was about to fire at Beaumont, when a big shape suddenly leaped forward and got in the way. Brutus lunged at Beaumont just as the man pulled the trigger. Even over the blast of the pistol, Preacher heard the meaty thud of lead striking flesh. Brutus grunted in pain and reeled backward, crashing into Preacher as he did so.

  “A trap!” Beaumont yelled as he cast a furious, wild-eyed glance over his shoulder at Jessie. “It’s a damned trap! You betrayed me, you bitch!”

  Preacher had gone down under Brutus’s massive weight. It was like having a house fall on him. He was stunned, the breath knocked out of him. He tried to lift his pistol and shove Brutus aside so he could get a shot at Beaumont, but the man ducked through the parlor door and vanished.

  Screams came from inside the parlor, and then a second later Preacher heard glass crash. He finally managed to get out from under Brutus, but by the time he reached his feet and hurried to the parlor door, Beaumont was gone. The front window, which had been covered by heavy curtains, was shattered and the curtains had been pulled down. As Preacher looked at the damage, he realized that Beaumont had dived through the window to escape.

  Several of the girls who worked here were in the parlor, along with a couple of customers. They all stared fearfully at Preacher, who realized he still had the pistol in his hand. He was about to tell them that they were in no danger when a scream came from the hallway behind him.

  “Brutus!”

  He wheeled around and saw Jessie on her knees next to the big man. She put her trembling hands on either side of his face and turned his head so that he appeared to be looking at her, only his wide, staring eyes were empty and lifeless now. As Preacher watched, a large red stain continued spreading across the front of Brutus’s white shirt.

  Preacher didn’t know what the hell Brutus had been trying to accomplish by leaping at Beaumont that way. Maybe he had thought that he could knock Beaumont’s gun aside and keep anyone else from getting killed. Maybe it had been just instinct that made him move toward trouble instead of away from it, since his job was to keep ruckuses from breaking out here in the house. No matter what Brutus’s motive, his actions had gotten him killed.

  And maybe saved Preacher’s life in the process.

  That was just one more mark against Beaumont, Preacher thought as he saw tears rolling down Jessie’s cheeks. One more score to settle with the bastard.

  Preacher reached down and grasped Jessie’s arm as she continued sobbing over Brutus’s corpse. “We got to get out of here,” he rasped. “You heard Beaumont. He thinks you’re to blame for what just happened here.”

  “I . . . I am,” Jessie choked out. “It’s my fault Brutus is dead.”

  “No, it ain’t, but we can worry about that later. Beaumont’s got men workin’ for him all over St. Louis. He won’t have to go very far before he finds some of them and heads back here.”

  Jessie let Preacher tug her to her feet. She used the back of her hand to paw at her wet, red eyes.

  “You’re right,” she said. “With his temper, he’s liable to come back with a bunch of men and . . . and burn the place down. We have to leave, find some place to hide . . .”

  Preacher nodded. “Where’s Cleve?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe at Dupree’s. Not here, though. He should be safe, at least for a while. Shad may not suspect him of being involved in this. We need to find him and warn him—”

  “Later,” Preacher said. “For now, let’s just get you out of here.” Something else occurred to him. “And Casey—I mean Cassandra—too.”

  Jessie stared at him. “Cassandra?” she repeated. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “You saw how Beaumont was when he lost that shipment of cotton. He might’ve beaten her to death that night if he’d gotten anywhere near her. How mad do you reckon he’s gonna be about you and me double-crossin’ him?”

  Preacher saw understanding dawn in Jessie’s eyes. “You’re right. He’ll take out his rage on her. All the other girls should get out of here, too, just in case.”

  “Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Preacher agreed.

  Jessie turned to the parlor. Her voice was still strained with the grief of Brutus’s death, but she managed to make her tone brisk and businesslike as she said to the customers, “I’m sorry, but because of all this trouble, we’re closing down for the rest of the day. Please leave now.”

  None of the men argued with her. They didn’t want to be around any more shooting, so they hurried out, averting their eyes as they stepped around Brutus’s body in the hallway.

  “You, too,” Jessie told the scantily clad women in the parlor once the customers. “Pack up whatever you need and get out as quick as you can. The house is closed. When you go upstairs, pass the word to the rest of the girls, and any customers who are still up there, too.”

  “But, Jessie,” one of the whores wailed, “what are we going to do? Where will we go?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.” Then she turned to Preacher and went on, “Come on, let’s get . . . what did you call her? Casey?”

  “Yeah, that’s what she told me to call her,” Preacher said as they left the parlor and headed for the staircase.

  “I wonder why she never mentioned that to me.”

  Preacher didn’t have an answer for that.

  Jessie paused at the top of the stairs. “What are we going to do about Brutus?” she asked as she looked back down toward the hall where his body lay.

  “Ain’t nothin’ we can do,” Preacher replied. “We’ll have to leave him there and hope that Beaumont gives him a decent burial.”

  “He won’t,” Jessie said with bitterness in her voice. “You know he won’t.”

  “It ain’t likely,” Preacher agreed with a shrug. “But we can’t tote his body with us.”

  Jessie sighed. “No, of course not.” She started toward the door of Casey’s room.

  The door swung open before she got there. Casey must have heard the shots and the rest of the commotion downstairs and been watching fearfully through a narrow crack. Her face with its fading bruises was pale as she looked at Jessie and Preacher.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. Her gaze went to Preacher. “Jim . . . ?”

  He could explain later about how that wasn’t really his name. Right now he said, “Get your gear together, Casey. You’re comin’ with us.”

  “What are you talking about? I . . . I have a job here—”

  “The house is closed,” Jessie said. “For good. I’m leaving. And I’m not going to leave you here for Shad—”

  Casey gave a choked cry before Jessie could finish that sentence. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll grab a few things, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

  She ducked back into the room. While Casey was gathering her things, Preacher asked Jessie, “Do you have a carriage or a wagon, something we can use to get you and Casey away from here?”

  “There’s a buggy in the barn out back. I think all three of us can crowd into it.”

  Preacher nodded. He wanted to get the two women to Uncle Dan Sullivan, who could be counted on to do his best to keep them safe.

  That would leave Preacher free to come back here to St. Louis and settle things once and for all with Shad Beaumont.

  True to her word, Casey emerged from her room a minute later, carrying a small carpetbag. She had pulled on a gray dress instead of the robe she’d been wearing a few moments earlier. She looked pale and frightened but composed, a description that fit Jessie as well.

  “I’m ready,” Casey said. “Thank you for not leaving me here.”

  Jessie put a hand on her shoulder. “We’d never do that.” She added, “Let’s go down the rear stairs.”

  As they began to descend the stairs, Casey said, “What about Brutus? Is he coming with us?”

  “I’m sorry, Cassandra. Brutus . . . is dead.”

  Casey gasped and stopped on the stairs
to look at Jessie in shock. “Dead?”

  “One of those shots you must have heard killed him.”

  “Who fired it?”

  “Who do you think?” Jessie asked in a grim, angry voice.

  “Beaumont,” Casey breathed.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know,” Preacher said. “He busted through a window and lit a shuck out of here. But I’m bettin’ he didn’t go far, and it won’t be long until he’s back.”

  They reached the house’s rear entrance. Preacher gripped his pistol tightly and said, “Best let me go first and make sure nobody’s lurkin’ out there.”

  “Be careful, Preacher,” Jessie said.

  Casey turned her head to look at him. “Preacher?” she repeated. “I thought your name was Jim Donnelly? Or did Jessie mean that you’re a minister?”

  Preacher gave a short bark of laughter. “Not hardly. Preacher’s just what they call me.”

  “Just like you evidently prefer to be called Casey,” Jessie put in.

  Casey’s face flushed. “I’ll explain that later,” she said.

  “You’re right, there ain’t no time now,” Preacher said. “We’ve already spent too much time gabbin’ and not enough takin’ off for the tall and uncut.”

  He swung the door open and stepped outside. It was late afternoon, so there were no shadows for a bushwhacker to hide in. On the other hand, there was no darkness to conceal the movements of Preacher and the two women, either. He pivoted from side to side, the pistol leveled and ready, but there was no sign of danger. For the moment, this quiet neighborhood appeared to be safe.

  Preacher knew how deceptive appearances could be, though, and how things could change in a hurry with little or no warning. He turned back and motioned for the women to hurry.

  “Come on!”

  They came out the back door. Preacher hustled them toward the barn.

  “Can you hitch up the buggy horse?” he asked Jessie, expecting her to say that she didn’t know how.

  “Of course,” Jessie answered without hesitation.

  “I’ll help,” Casey added. “I used to live on a farm, so I know all about hitching up a team.”

  Despite the tension, Jessie let out a hollow laugh as they hurried into the barn. “I grew up on a farm, too. What is it about being farm girls that turns us into whores?”

  “Being around the animals all the time while they’re, well, you know?” Casey suggested.

  Preacher stopped just inside the doorway and turned around to keep an eye on the house. “Just get that buggy ready to go,” he said.

  The women got to work while Preacher watched for trouble. The smooth, swift efficiency with which they got the horse hitched to the buggy told Preacher they’d been telling the truth about knowing what they were doing. Within just a few minutes, they had the buggy ready to roll. Casey’s carpetbag was stuffed behind the seat.

  “Aren’t you taking anything with you, Jessie?” she asked as they started to climb onto the seat.

  The look Jessie cast through the open doors of the barn at the house was positively venomous. “There’s nothing in there that wasn’t paid for by Shad Beaumont,” she said. “I don’t want any of it.”

  “I reckon I understand that feelin’,” Preacher said as he sat down by Casey, who was in the middle. “Jessie, you’d better handle the reins, in case I have to do any shootin’.”

  “All right.” She picked up the lines, slapped them against the horse’s rump, and called, “Hyaaahhh!” The horse surged forward against its harness, and the buggy rolled out of the barn. Jessie sent it rolling fast along the drive that circled around the house to the road.

  When they reached the front of the house, Preacher saw that Beaumont’s carriage was gone. He had expected as much. Beaumont had probably run straight back to the vehicle and ordered Lorenzo to get away from there as fast as he could. Because Beaumont believed that he had walked into a trap, he probably thought there were more men in the house who wanted to kill him.

  It would have been nice to have some allies, Preacher thought, instead of just him and a couple of women and an old man declaring open war against the most powerful criminal in St. Louis, maybe the most powerful one west of the Mississippi. But at least things were out in the open now, and Preacher couldn’t help but be a little relieved by that. He didn’t know how Beaumont would react to what had happened, but it seemed likely that he would gather up a small army of hired killers and come after his sworn enemy.

  That would be all right with him, Preacher mused as a bleak smile tugged at his mouth. “Head west out of town,” he told Jessie. “I’ll show you where to go.”

  If Beaumont came after him, that would save him the trouble of going after Beaumont. Preacher didn’t care about the odds.

  He just wanted to have Beaumont in his sights one more time.

  Chapter 26

  The sun sank toward the western horizon as the buggy rolled westward. After a few moments of silence, Casey said, “Do either of you want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  “I reckon you deserve an explanation,” Preacher said. “Me and Beaumont are old enemies, even though we didn’t ever actually meet until about a week and a half ago. He’s been sendin’ folks to the Rockies for the past year or so, tryin’ to take over the fur trade out there, and I been stoppin’ those plans.”

  “So you’re a mountain man?”

  “Yeah.” Preacher smiled. “I just shaved off my beard and dressed in reg’lar clothes instead of buckskins to make Beaumont think I was somebody else. I told him my name was Jim Donnelly, and he believed me.”

  “Then there really isn’t a Jim Donnelly?”

  “Well, I reckon there must be at least one fella named that somewhere,” Preacher said, “but I ain’t him.”

  “If you hate Beaumont, why did you go to work for him?” Casey’s eyes lit up as she thought about the question she had just asked. “Oh, I know! You were trying to get inside his organization so you could destroy it and get back at him for all the bad things he’s done.”

  Preacher nodded. “That’s about the size of it. Problem is, it never did work out quite like I figured it would. I reckon I just ain’t cut out for playactin’.”

  Jessie said, “It would have worked if we’d had more time. We just didn’t count on that bastard Garland Buckhalter showing up and recognizing you.”

  “That was his first name? Garland?” Preacher shook his head. “I don’t reckon I ever heard it until now. Never expected to see the varmint again, either. I figured the Pawnee got him.”

  “He came into the house about an hour ago,” Jessie explained as she snapped the reins and kept the horse moving briskly. “Brutus heard him talking to some of the girls. He said he’d been out on the plains for the past couple of weeks, on foot, dodging Indians. He was finally able to steal a horse yesterday, and that meant he was able to get the rest of the way to St. Louis a lot faster.”

  “Probably killed the fella he stole that horse from, too,” Preacher said.

  Jessie nodded. “More than likely. He also did a lot of talking about you, Preacher, mostly about how you had ruined all his plans and caused him to fail Beaumont . . . and how he was going to kill you if he ever saw you again. Brutus overheard that and warned me, and I told him that if you came in, he should keep you away from the parlor until Buckhalter was safely upstairs with one of the girls.”

  “He did his best,” Preacher said. “He just didn’t have any luck.”

  “Not this time,” Jessie said, a catch in her voice. “Brutus’s luck ran out . . . and so did ours.”

  Preacher grunted. “We’re still alive, ain’t we? I’d say we still got some luck on our side.”

  “We’re alive, but Brutus isn’t. He was a good man. He helped me a lot over the past couple of years, since Shad put me in charge of the house.”

  “Before that—”

  “Before that, I was just one of the
whores who worked there,” Jessie said. “Is that what you wanted to know, Preacher?”

  He grunted. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “I know. You don’t strike me as the judgmental sort.”

  Preacher didn’t say anything for a moment, then went on, “Anyway, I’m obliged to you for shootin’ Buckhalter. Reckon you probably saved my life.”

  “For a second, I thought about letting him kill you,” Jessie said bluntly. “If he had, that wouldn’t have exposed what Cleve and I have been doing. We could have continued without your help.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  For a long moment, Jessie didn’t answer. Then she said, “I don’t know. Instinct, maybe. I saw Beaumont and Buckhalter about to shoot you, and I didn’t even really think about what I was doing. I just lifted my gun and . . . pulled the trigger.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did.”

  “So am I,” Casey said. “I would have hated it if anything happened to Preacher. I’m glad you shot that man Buckhalter, Jessie.”

  A little laugh came from Jessie. “I was aiming at Shad. I’m afraid I’m not a very good shot with a pistol.”

  Preacher looked over at her, and then he laughed, too. Luck had been with him, all right, even more than he’d known.

  By now dusk was settling down over the landscape west of St. Louis. Preacher directed Jessie toward the grove of trees where Uncle Dan was camped, while he kept an eye on their back trail for any signs of pursuit.

  It was almost completely dark by the time they reached the place. When they had approached within earshot, Preacher motioned for Jessie to rein in, then lifted his voice and called, “Uncle Dan! It’s me, Preacher! You in there?”

  “Come ahead, boy!” the old-timer replied. “I heard the buggy comin’, but didn’t know who ’twas!”

  Uncle Dan stepped out of the trees as Jessie drove up to the grove. Dog followed him, a ghostly gray shape in the shadows. Uncle Dan had his rifle in his hands, ready to use it if he needed to.

  Preacher hopped down from the buggy as Jessie brought it to a halt. He slapped Uncle Dan on the back and gave him a rough hug.