Preacher's Pursuit (The First Mountain Man) Page 3

  The next morning, he returned to the trading post to pick up Horse, and as he led the stallion out of the paddock, Jake came up to him and asked, “Are you gonna take me with you this time, Preacher?” The youngster asked him that same question almost every time he paid a visit to the trading post. “I could be a big help to you.”

  “Well, I dunno, Jake. You’re a mighty big help to your ma and pa, I expect.”

  “Corliss and Deborah ain’t really my ma and pa. But I reckon you’d know that.”

  Preacher nodded. “’Deed I do. But they been takin’ care of you like you’re their own young’un, and I reckon you sort of owe them for that. And with Deborah bein’ in a family way, they’re gonna need even more help around here.”

  “Yeah, but Preacher…” An anguished expression appeared on the boy’s round face. “They say there’s gonna be a teacher on the next wagon train headin’ this way. There’s gonna be a school here. You just can’t leave me to face that!”

  Preacher sympathized; he truly did. He had never had much education himself before he left the family farm and headed West when he was about Jake’s age. He had learned to read, some on his own, some with the help of other mountain men who’d had some book learning. He could cipher some, too. A fella had to be able to do that if he wasn’t going to be taken advantage of by the fur traders.

  But the thought of sitting in a building and letting some soft-handed gent try to pound facts into his head while life was going on outside…well, that was just horrifying.

  There was nothing he could do, though, except slowly shake his head. “I’m sorry, Jake,” he said. “Maybe one o’ these days, but not yet.”

  “Damn it, I was afraid that was what you were gonna say! Am I gonna have to run off again?”

  Preacher knew how badly that would upset Corliss, Deborah, and Jerome, who looked on the youngster as a member of the family. He gave Jake a hard stare and said, “If you do, I’ll have to find you and tan your hide good, boy. That what you want?”

  Jake swallowed. He knew that there was nowhere he could go in the mountains where Preacher couldn’t find him. “All right,” he said, not bothering to hide the reluctance in his voice. “I guess I can give it a try, Preacher. But only if you promise me that one o’ these days I’ll be your partner.”

  Preacher hesitated. He wasn’t the sort of man who gave his word lightly. At the same time, he couldn’t really see himself taking some green kid under his wing and trying to teach the sprout how to take care of himself. Jake had him over a damn barrel, he thought.

  “All right,” he finally said. “But I decide when you’re ready to go with me. Deal?”

  Jake held up a pudgy hand. “Deal.”

  Preacher shook with the boy and then handed him the packhorse’s reins. “Here, hold these while I mount up.” He swung up onto Horse’s back and took the reins from Jake. He had already said his good-byes to the Harts, and to Pete Carey and Bouchard and Jock as well. He lifted a hand in farewell as he said, “Be seein’ you,” and nudged Horse into a trot that carried him through the open gates of the stockade.

  He looked back once and saw Jake standing there just outside the walls, watching him ride away.

  Preacher left the settlement behind him and worked his way up toward the pass. He was going back to the same area where he had been when the attempt on his life was made. He had traps there that still needed tending to, and he sure wasn’t going to let what happened scare him off.

  When he reached the pass, he paused to look down into the valley at the settlement. Even though he didn’t like the idea of civilization encroaching on the mountains, he had to admit to himself that he had grown fond of some of those folks down there. Corliss was a bit of a wastrel at times, Deborah could be a mite bossy, and Jerome was just downright annoying more often than not. But they were good people and had demonstrated that on more than one occasion. Jake was…well, Jake was Jake. For good or bad, there was no other kid quite like him. Preacher liked quite a few of the other folks, too. Maybe, in the long run, civilization wouldn’t be such a bad thing…

  Lost in those thoughts as he rode through the pass leading the packhorse, at first Preacher almost didn’t notice the low-pitched rumble that sounded somewhere above him.

  But he heard it, and his instincts warned him that something was wrong. He jerked his head up to peer toward the direction of the noise, and his eagle-sharp eyes saw instantly what was happening.

  High above him in the pass, rocks had begun to fall, taking other rocks with them, and in little more than the blink of an eye, thousands of tons of stone had gathered steam and were sliding down the slope right toward Preacher, crushing everything in their path.

  Chapter 4

  Dust billowed up from the avalanche, but the thick gray cloud didn’t obscure the vanguard of the slide. Preacher could see the massive boulders bounding down the slope like they were no more than pebbles. Any one of those giant rocks would be enough to smash him into something that didn’t even resemble a human being.

  That is, if he waited around and let one of the stony bastards land on him.

  He dug his heels into Horse’s flanks and leaned forward over the stallion’s neck, yelling encouragement to the animal as Horse lunged ahead in a gallop. Dog ran alongside, stretching his legs to keep up with the stallion. Preacher hung on tightly to the packhorse’s reins and dragged it along with them.

  He had known instantly that their only hope was to charge straight ahead. The angle of the slide made it impossible for them to turn around and get clear in time, going that way.

  There was a slim chance, though, that they might be able to get ahead of it. Horse was an ugly, hammer-headed brute, but he had speed and strength and stamina to spare.

  The same could not be said of the packhorse, however. Preacher realized that after only a few strides by Horse. The other animal was holding them back. If Preacher hung on to the reins, they were all doomed.

  Hating to do it, both for the sake of the packhorse and for the supplies that the horse carried, Preacher let go of the reins and called to his own mount, “Let ’er rip, you son of a gun!”

  The roar of the falling rocks was deafening now. Preacher watched the inexorable advance of the slide from the corner of his eye as Horse raced along the winding trail that led through the pass. Those twists and turns slowed them down; a flat, straight run would have given them a better chance.

  But a fella had to play the cards he was dealt…and Preacher would always stay in the hand until the end. He’d be damned if he would fold.

  He glanced around, saw that Dog was falling behind. “Come on!” he yelled, not knowing if the big cur could hear him over the unholy racket or not. “Come on, you shaggy varmint!”

  Dog lunged ahead harder, digging for all the speed he could muster. The two animals were Preacher’s best friends in the world, and he wasn’t going to leave either of them behind. He slowed Horse slightly, and Dog drew closer.

  “We’ll make it together, or we won’t make it!” Preacher said through gritted teeth.

  On they raced, until it seemed that the roar of the avalanche would be enough to crush them by itself, until the dust reached them and clogged Preacher’s mouth and nose and stung his eyes, until it seemed that the whole world was about to come crashing down on top of them.

  Then suddenly, they were in the clear as they broke out of the great swirling cloud. The earth shook under them as countless tons of rock came smashing down a mere matter of yards behind them. Smaller rocks pelted them, and Preacher lifted an arm to protect his head. Even a fist-sized chunk of stone might catch him in the head and knock him out of the saddle, and then the edges of the slide could still engulf him.

  Gradually, the punishment eased and the rumbling began to die away. Preacher slowed his mount. Horse’s sleek hide was covered with foamy sweat and his sides heaved from the exertion. Dog’s head hung low and his tongue lolled from his mouth as he padded along. Preacher was a mite weary from the
strain himself, but at least he hadn’t had to do any of the running. His gallant companions had handled that.

  He reined Horse to a stop and leaned forward to pat the stallion on the shoulder. “You’re the damned finest horse any man ever rode,” he said. He looked behind him regretfully. Dust still obscured the pass. The packhorse was back there somewhere, trapped under the avalanche. Poor son of a gun had never had a chance, Preacher thought.

  Then he lifted his head and looked up toward the rimrock. It was possible that the rock slide had started on its own and that it had been just a coincidence that he was traveling through the pass at that moment.

  Yeah, it was possible…but he didn’t believe it.

  Not for a damned second.

  Somebody had been up there watching him, waiting for just the right moment to shove one of the precariously balanced boulders that littered the rimrock and launch that avalance into deadly motion. Luckily for Preacher, Horse, and Dog, whoever it was had misjudged things a mite. Just enough to give them the narrow hope of escape that they had seized so fiercely.

  Preacher wanted to hitch Horse into motion again and start circling through the rugged terrain, heading upward toward the rimrock to find out exactly what had happened. But after the valiant dash that had saved Preacher’s life, Horse was too played out for any more effort right now. The stallion had to rest for a while.

  That was all right, Preacher told himself. He would get up there before the day was over, and when he did, he would find the sign that the man who started the avalanche had left behind. There was always sign of some sort, if a man knew how to look for it.

  Preacher knew, and once he had the trail, he wouldn’t lose it.

  That fella didn’t know it yet, but he had bought himself a world of trouble when he rolled that stone.

  Horse was strong enough that he recovered quickly, but Preacher gave him a little extra time anyway, waiting until midday before starting the climb to the rimrock. Preacher had some jerky and a biscuit in his saddlebags, so he and Dog made a skimpy lunch on that.

  Then he rode the rest of the way through the pass and began the arduous task of circling back and climbing, following faint game trails that most men barely would have been able to see. Horse was almost as sure-footed as a mountain goat, so Preacher didn’t hesitate to trust his life to the stallion’s balance, even though at times hundreds of feet of empty air yawned right at his elbow.

  By the middle of the afternoon, they reached the rimrock where the avalanche had started. Dog ran forward and sniffed the ground. Preacher dismounted and left the reins dangling as he hunkered down and studied the place that interested Dog. He saw some pebbles that had been disturbed recently, so that their undersides now lay upward, and he knew the man who’d tried to kill him had walked along here.

  “Trail, Dog,” he said.

  Nose to the ground, Dog followed the command, leading Preacher away from the rimrock’s edge. A few minutes later, they came to a place where fairly fresh droppings and the marks of steel-shod hooves on the rock told Preacher that three horses had waited here for a while.

  Three men, Preacher reflected. One to hold the horses, two to push a boulder over the edge and start the avalanche. And the dumb bastards hadn’t even tried to hide the evidence that they’d been here.

  Of course, they had assumed that they were going to kill him and that no one would ever follow them.

  They would find out just how wrong they were about that.

  Even now, they probably thought he was dead. After escaping from the avalanche, he had stayed close to the side of the pass so that anyone looking down from above might not be able to see him. The dust had been too thick for anybody to see anything for a while, and once it cleared away, there would have been no sign of him from the rimrock. The natural thing would be to think that the huge rock slide had caught him and crushed the life from him.

  Preacher whistled Horse over to him and swung up into the saddle. He followed the scratches on the rocks left by the horseshoes, and Dog stayed on the scent for good measure. The men hadn’t made any effort to hide their trail, more evidence that they thought Preacher was dead.

  The tracks led northwest through rugged but beautiful country. The men had dropped down quickly from the heights of the pass to a long, grassy valley watered by a stream that sparkled in the sunlight as it flowed over a rocky bed.

  Preacher had been through here many times in his wanderings. He knew the country well. To the north was the area known as Colter’s Hell, named after the legendary mountain man John Colter. At first, folks had thought he was crazy when he came back and reported that there was an area where geysers of steaming water shot hundreds of feet in the air and bubbling mud pits stank of brimstone, like they were entrances to Hades. Of course, as it turned out, the place really existed and Colter hadn’t been exaggerating. Preacher had seen it more than once with his own eyes.

  The would-be killers might be headed there, or their destination might be closer. Preacher didn’t know and didn’t care. He would stay on their trail wherever it led.

  Since he had given Horse that extra rest, he kept the stallion moving at a fast pace now. The men who were his quarry had been dawdling along, yet another indication they didn’t think anybody could be following them. The sign Preacher saw told him that he was closing in on them. He might even catch up to them before nightfall.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted that. Might be easier to deal with them once they had camped for the night. Let them fill their bellies, maybe pass around a jug…

  Then see how they liked it when the man they thought they had killed rose right up out of that grave under hundreds of tons of rock.

  When he was no more than an hour behind them, Preacher slowed down and maintained that distance. Dog whined a little in eagerness, but Preacher just smiled and said, “Just be patient, old fella. We’ll settle up with those varmints before much longer.”

  The sun dipped behind the mountains to the west, and night settled down quickly. Preacher waited until he spotted the tiny orange eye of a campfire and then steered for it, still taking his time. It didn’t surprise him that the men had built a fire. He’d been able to tell from the trail they left that they were greenhorns. Still potentially dangerous, of course, but not as experienced in the ways of the frontier as some.

  When he was close enough to smell the wood smoke, he dismounted and tied Horse’s reins loosely to a sapling. The stallion would be able to pull free if he needed to.

  “Stay here, fella,” Preacher said quietly as he patted Horse on the shoulder. “Come on, Dog.”

  Horse threw his head up and down as if he didn’t appreciate being left behind, but he didn’t try to pull loose. Preacher and Dog padded off into the darkness.

  The Indians knew Preacher by many names, most of them having to do with his expertise at killing. They frightened their children with tales of this white man who came in the night like a phantom and left death behind him, silent and lethal. Preacher knew this and did nothing to discourage it. A reputation as a dangerous man could be an annoyance at times, but mostly it came in handy.

  Dog at his side, he moved through the night with an uncanny stealth practiced over many perilous years on the frontier. The glow of the campfire was visible through the trees from time to time, but Preacher didn’t really need to see it or smell the smoke. Now that he knew where he was going, his uncanny sense of direction would have taken him right to his destination without anything else.

  He and Dog didn’t make a sound as they closed in on the camp. When Preacher was close enough to hear the men talking, he went to the ground and tugged Dog down beside him. They lay there listening. Preacher hoped that the men would drop some hints into their conversation about why they had tried to kill him.

  The tone of their voices told him he’d been right about them having a jug. It sounded like they’d been passing it around for a while. Most of their comments were profane observations about the talents of various whores who p
lied their trade in the waterfront taverns of St. Louis. That confirmed another of Preacher’s suppositions, that they weren’t frontiersmen. They had come out here from back East, probably recently.

  Had they come all this way just to kill him? That was crazy, he told himself, and yet he couldn’t rule it out.

  They finally got around to talking about their attempt on his life. One of the men said in a slightly whiskey-slurred voice, “Wish I could’a seen that damn Preacher’s face when all those rocks started comin’ at him.”

  “Prob’ly shit right in his pants,” another man said with a giggle that put Preacher’s teeth on edge.

  The third man said, “Important thing is that he’s dead. Thass all that matters. Now gimme that damn jug!”

  “Get your hands off it! You been hoggin’ it all night!”

  “The hell you say! I’ll learn you to talk to me like that!”

  “Dadgum it, Parker!” That was the first man, trying to make peace between the other two. “You can’t just—Oh, shit! No!”

  The roar of a gunshot drowned out his voice, then another shot blasted and somebody screamed.

  Preacher bit back a curse of his own.

  So much for that plan, he thought bitterly.

  Chapter 5

  He lunged to his feet and burst out of the brush surrounding the clearing where the camp was located. His keen eyes took in the scene instantly, noting the rocks and the logs scattered around that the men had been using for seats by the fire in the center of the clearing.

  One man lay on his back, kicking and thrashing as he screamed. His hands pawed at his chest, where blood bubbled and spurted between his fingers from a wound. Preacher figured the first shot had downed that gent.

  He couldn’t tell who had fired the second shot or what the result of it had been, because the other two men were rolling around on the ground on the other side of the fire. The red light from the flames glittered on the knives they held. Each man was trying to bury his blade in the other’s body, and as Preacher entered the clearing, one of them succeeded. He managed to get on top and drive his knife down into the chest of the other man, who howled in pain as the steel penetrated his body. He jerked and shuddered and then went limp. Preacher could tell from the knife’s location that it had pierced the man’s heart.