Preacher's Justice Page 4

  “Why would you pay off someone else’s mortgage?” Epson asked. He frowned. “Wait a minute. Have you made the loan yourself? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re paying off the loan because you have made it yourself. You are going into banking.”

  “No. All I’m doing is paying off the loan on behalf of an interested party.”

  “I see. And what loan are you paying off?”

  “I’m paying off the loan on the House of Flowers.”

  “You are paying off the whore’s loan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you do such a thing?”

  “I assure you, sir, I am not paying the loan from my own funds. As I said, I am doing so on behalf of an interested party. He doesn’t want this Miss Jennie to know that he is doing it.”

  Epson stroked his jaw as he studied Ashley. “Are you saying that she doesn’t know her loan is being paid off?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I am curious. Who is her benefactor? Some businessman in town?”

  “I don’t believe I’m at liberty to say who it is,” Ashley said. “I wasn’t told that I couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t given permission to tell either. Therefore, I feel ethically bound to keep his identity a secret.”

  “Ha!” Epson said. “I was right, wasn’t I? It is some local businessman. And of course he would make the payment through someone else if he wanted it kept secret. Like as not, it’s one of the same men who, in public, call for that house to be closed, while in private, are amoung her biggest supporters. Who is it? The mayor?”

  “I told you . . . I don’t believe I’m at liberty to say. It doesn’t matter anyway. All I intend to do is pay off the note. Now, are you going to accept the money, or what?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I’ll accept the money.”

  Later that same afternoon, Jennie herself called at the bank. Seeing her the moment she stepped through the door, Epson went over to meet her.

  “Yes, Miss Jennie,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I wonder if we could speak in private for a few moments,” Jennie said.

  “Yes, of course we can. Come over here to my desk. We can talk there without being overheard.”

  There were no other women in the bank, but there were several male customers. Most of them knew who Jennie was, and many of them had been paying customers at the House of Flowers. It would have been easy to pick out her customers, for while the others stared at Jennie in unabashed curiosity, her customers looked away pointedly, pretending they didn’t even see her.

  Epson led Jennie through the gate of the small, fenced-in area that surrounded his desk. He offered her a chair, then sat as well.

  “Now, Miss Jennie, what is it that we can only discuss in private?”

  “Recently, some people have been attempting to close down my business,” Jennie said.

  Epson scratched his cheek with his forefinger. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You would be talking about the Women’s Auxiliary of the St. Louis Betterment League.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you also know that chief among these women is Mrs. Abernathy.”

  Epson nodded. “Sybil Abernathy, yes.”

  “Doesn’t her husband have something to do with this bank?”

  “Yes indeed, he is the chairman of the board of directors of the bank.”

  “I thought as much.” Jennie opened her portmanteau and fished out a piece of paper. “According to the contract, even if I am not in arrears, the bank can call in the remainder of my loan at any time. Is that right?”

  “Yes, but . . . ”

  “That’s what I thought. That’s why I want to pay off the entire loan today. That way there will be no chance for the bank to foreclose.” Jennie began writing a bank draft. “I believe the amount is four hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

  Epson was silent for a long moment, and Jennie looked up at him questioningly. “Am I not right?” she asked.

  Epson wondered what he should do. Though he had not yet posted the paperwork, he had accepted the money from William Ashley to pay off her debt. He couldn’t tell her this, though, because he had been specifically instructed not to.

  “Mr. Epson, is four hundred and seventy-five dollars correct?” Jennie asked again.

  “Uh, yes,” Epson said. He would take the money now and decide later what to do.

  Jennie wrote the draft and handed it to him.

  “I’ll, uh, take care of this for you,” Epson said.

  Jennie smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I may be worried for no reason at all, but Mrs. Abernathy seems to be quite a determined woman. I fear she may convince her husband to exercise the foreclosure clause in the contract. I would rather just own the house free and clear, so that there is no question.”

  Epson nodded again. “Yes, I’m sure you are doing the right thing,” he said. He picked up the draft and put it in his pocket. “I’ll have the title delivered to you.”

  “Thank you again,” Jennie said, getting up from her chair. Epson stood quickly, then walked with her to the door. He stood in the door and watched as her driver helped her climb into her carriage. Then he returned to his desk and sat there for a long moment, contemplating what he should do.

  It was not until that moment that he realized what an opportunity had been dropped in his lap. He was due to leave on the very next day for his new job in Philadelphia. Neither Jennie nor, amazingly, Ashley before her had asked for a signed receipt. That meant he could leave St. Louis 950 dollars richer, and no one would ever be the wiser.

  That is exactly what Epson did. And although he had come through some difficulty, it looked now as if Mr. Fontaine was willing to accept his side of the story. The only fly in the ointment was Mr. Miller’s trip to St. Louis.

  If Miller talked to Jennie, he might believe her version of the story. She was, after all, a very pretty young woman who could be very persuasive. If there was only some way to keep him from talking to her.

  Epson stood at the window for a moment longer, and the solution came to him. It wasn’t something he would have wanted to do, and it certainly wasn’t anything he could do personally. But the situation had been forced upon him. Jennie herself had forced it upon him.

  Turning away from the window, Epson sat at the small writing desk in his room and wrote another letter. This one was short and to the point.

  Make my problem go away.

  With the letter, he included a draft for one hundred dollars. If the intent of his message wasn’t understood, the amount of money he was paying to carry out the operation would certainly make itself understood.

  He just hoped that the letter reached St. Louis before Miller did.

  FOUR

  A lone rider, tall and rawhide lean, sat his saddle easily as the horse picked its way down from the high country. Preacher was riding one horse and leading two more. The pack animals were carrying five hundred plews each, beaver pelts perfectly skinned, dried, and stretched so as to be of the finest quality.

  The trail followed alongside a meandering brook where cool, sweet water broke white over rocks as it rushed downhill. At the end of the trail there would be Rendezvous, a gathering of mountain men and traders, trappers and fur dealers, Indians, whiskey drummers, Bible salesmen, whores, friends and strangers.

  Many a mountain man spent his entire winter thinking ahead to the next Rendezvous, using it as an incentive to help him through the long period of isolation. Preacher wasn’t one of them. He reveled in his isolation, and enjoyed being alone in the vastness of the Rocky Mountains. There were times, during the winter, when he would see, another trapper in the distance. Some would go out of their way to close that distance, to visit and palaver.

  Preacher would not. In fact, he often changed trails to avoid these occasional meetings. For him, Rendezvous was a necessary part of doing business. It was not two weeks of drinking, gambling, and whoring.

>   Those who knew Preacher best understood this about him, and accepted it. He wasn’t exactly a misanthrope—he was friendly enough when he was with others, and no one could want a better friend than Preacher. He had been known to have more than a few drinks on occasion, would bet on an honest game of cards or a shooting match, and was not without experience with women. But for the most part, he was sober, upright, honest, and hardworking. These attributes were admired by all, but few could emulate them.

  Preacher could smell the Rendezvous first, the aroma of coffee and cooking meat, the smell of wood and tobacco smoke, and the more unpleasant odor of scores of bodies, unwashed for months, gathered in one place.

  Next, he could hear it. The sounds of people began to intrude upon the sounds of nature until soon, the babbling brook was completely overpowered by loud, boisterous talk, raucous laughter, and the high, skirling sound of a fiddle.

  Finally, he rode into a clearing and saw it: men and women clad in buckskin and feathers, homespun and store-bought suits, bits of color, flashes of beads, silver and gold. Dozens of tents and temporary shelters had been erected, many of them little more than canvas flaps protruding from the wagons that had brought the traders, dealers, and goods here from back East.

  In front of him, and slightly to the right, Preacher suddenly saw a flash of light and a puff of smoke At almost the same instant he heard the shot and the sound of a ball whistling past his ear.

  Looking over in surprise, he saw Henri Mouchette toss his rifle aside, clawing for the pistol he had stuck down in his trousers. This was Preacher’s third encounter with Mouchette this year, and it looked like this one was going to settle the score between them—one way, or the other.

  Preacher leaped from his horse, not away from Mouchette, as Mouchette, might have suspected, but directly toward him. Mouchette was caught off guard by Preacher’s unexpected reaction. Rather than pulling his pistol cleanly, he dropped it as he jerked it from his trousers. Preacher shoved him hard, and Mouchette staggered back, a tree breaking his fall.

  Mouchette pulled his knife and held it in front of him, palm up, the knife moving back and forth slowly, like the head of a coiled snake.

  “That’s all right,” Mouchette said. “I’d rather gut you than shoot you anyway. Shootin’ kills too fast.”

  Preacher held a hand out in front of him, as if warding Mouchette off. He pointed at Mouchette.

  “That was you that tried to shoot me a couple of months back, wasn’t it?” Preacher asked.

  “You’re damn right it was,” Mouchette answered. He nodded toward the pack horses Preacher had brought in. “By rights, them should be my plews. You pulled my traps out of the water and set your own.”

  “We went through all of that,” Preacher said. “My traps were there first. You pulled them out and replaced them with yours. I was only returning the favor.”

  “Who give you title to that creek anyway?” Mouchette asked.

  “Nobody has title to any land up here,” Preacher replied. “It’s first come, first served, same as it’s always been. And I was first there.”

  “You wouldn’t even have know’d about it iffen you hadn’t heard me talkin’ about it last year.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. I’ve trapped that same creek for five winters now,” Preacher said. “You can ask anyone here.”

  “That’s right, Mouchette. I know he was there three years ago ’cause he took me in for the winter when I got stoved up,” one of the trappers said. He, like several others, had been drawn in to the commotion. From other parts of the camp, people were moving as well, coming quickly to see what was going on.

  “Yeah, well, it don’t matter none now ’cause he ain’t goin’ to be trappin’ it no more. I aim to split him open from his gullet to his pecker.”

  Mouchette lunged forward and made a swipe with his knife. The move was unexpectedly quick, and Preacher barely managed to dance back out of the way.

  “Mouchette, I don’t want to fight you,” he said. “If you’ve got a dispute with me, we can take it up with the trappers’ court.”

  Trapper’s court wasn’t an official court; it was just a group of trappers who would hear arguments from both sides of a dispute, then suggest a settlement. Their suggestions had no power of law, only the power of public opinion, but for most mountain men, that was binding enough.

  “Yeah, Mouchette, take it up with trappers’ court,” one of the others said, picking up on Preacher’s suggestion.

  “Nah,” Mouchette replied, his evil grin spreading. “I think I’ll just kill the son of a bitch, then there won’t be nothing to settle.” He lunged forward again, but this time Preacher was ready for him, and he easily slipped the knife thrust, then countered with a hard blow to Mouchette’s ear.

  Mouchette jumped back, then put his hand to his ear.

  That gave Preacher the opening he needed, and he reached for his knife, only to discover that it wasn’t on his belt. He looked back toward his horse and saw that his knife was in a scabbard on a belt that was hanging around the saddle pommel. His rifle was in the rifle boot, and his pistol was in the saddlebag. He was bare-handed against Mouchette.

  “Well, now,” Mouchette said when he noticed Preacher’s predicament. “Ain’t this somethin’? ’Peers to me like you’ve come to a knife fight without a knife.”

  Mouchette crouched over and held the knife in front of him, still moving it back and forth. The smile that spread across his face wasn’t one of mirth, but rather one of smug satisfaction. Mouchette, who was from New Orleans, had grown up with the knife. Even in a fair fight, he might have had an advantage. But as Preacher was unarmed, there was nothing fair about this fight.

  Suddenly, a knife whizzed by in front of Preacher and stuck in the tree beside him.

  Preacher had no idea who it came from, and didn’t know who to thank. But at this point, he had no time to consider such things. He pulled the knife from the tree, then faced Mouchette. The easy, confident smile left Mouchette’s face, but the determination did not.

  “Good,” Mouchette said. “I like it better this way. Wouldn’t be no fun in killin’ you ’lessen you fight back some.”

  Armed, Preacher was no longer at a disadvantage. His posture mirrored that of Mouchette’s. He came up on the balls of his feet, crouching slightly, holding the knife firmly—but not too tightly—palm-up in his right hand. The two men began moving around each other warily, now entirely circled by people who had come from all over the Rendezvous, drawn to the spectacle of a fight to the death.

  Mouchette moved in, raised his left hand as if to shield what he was going to do, then raised his knife hand to come in behind that shield. Preacher raised his left hand to block. Seeing the smile of triumph on Mouchette’s face, Preacher realized, almost too late, that he had been suckered. He had reacted exactly as Mouchette wanted him to react.

  Mouchette moved his knife hand back down swiftly, as quickly as a striking snake, and he thrust toward Preacher. Preacher managed to twist away, barely avoiding the killing thrust, but not escaping entirely. He felt the knife burn as it opened a cut on his side.

  Even as Preacher was avoiding Mouchette’s deadly stab, he responded with a quick counterthrust. Mouchette, thinking he had won, wasn’t prepared for the instantaneous response. He was wide-open to Preacher’s attack. Preacher’s knife went under Mouchette’s ribs, slipping in cleanly, easily, all the way to the hilt. Mouchette let out a grunt, as if he’d had the breath knocked out of him. The two men stood together for a second. Then Preacher felt Mouchette falling as his body tore itself off the knife, ripping open an even larger wound.

  Mouchette fell onto his side, then rolled over onto his back. He looked up at Preacher.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Boys, I come here to kill this son of a bitch. Instead, he kilt me. Now, ain’t that a hell of thing?”

  Mouchette wheezed a few times; then the ragged breathing stopped and his eyes, still open, glazed over.

&nbs
p; “Whose knife?” Preacher asked, holding up the knife he had used to kill Mouchette.

  When nobody spoke up, Preacher looked over toward the tree where he had gotten the knife. Grasping the point of the blade with his thumb and forefinger, he threw the knife at the tree, sticking it in the trunk in almost the same place from which he had pulled it a moment earlier.

  “You done what you had to do,” one of the trappers said, and several others agreed.

  “Mouchette was a pain in the ass,” another insisted. “If there was ever any son of a bitch needed killin’, it was him.”

  Nodding, but with no verbal response, Preacher walked over to his horse. Taking off his shirt, he lay it across the saddle while he examined the wound on his side. Fortunately, the cut wasn’t very deep, and already it had stopped bleeding. He was putting his shirt back on as someone approached him. Preacher could tell by the way he was dressed that this was one of the traders from back East.

  The trader looked over the pack animals. “Looks like you had a good season,” he said.

  “Tolerable,” Preacher replied.

  The trader looked at the pelts more closely, folding them back to examine several of them.

  “More than tolerable, I’d say. These are some of the best I’ve seen brought in since I been here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You the one they call Preacher?” the man asked.

  “I am,” Preacher said.

  “I work for Mr. Ashley. William Ashley? I believe you know him.”

  “Yes, I know him,” Preacher said.

  Preacher had done business with Ashley many times before. In fact, he had once negotiated a peace with the Indians for Ashley and his traders. In this world of few contacts, and even fewer friends, William Ashley was a man that Preacher would count as a friend.

  “Mr. Ashley said to treat you fair.”

  “He always has. That’s his way,” Preacher replied.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot. He told me to give this to you,” the trader added, handing an envelope to Preacher.