Preacher's Pursuit (The First Mountain Man) Read online

  Clyde Mallory’s eyes had narrowed as he looked on while his sister and Preacher danced, and Preacher wondered if he disapproved. He didn’t want to get on Mallory’s bad side, but he had to admit that he was enjoying this dance with Laura.

  The big trapper called Sanderson stood up and shuffled toward them, an intent look on his face. Preacher saw him coming and wondered what the man wanted.

  It didn’t take him long to find out.

  Sanderson reached out and tapped Preacher roughly on the shoulder. “I’m cuttin’ in on this dance, Preacher,” he declared as Preacher and Laura came to a stop in their waltz. “That’s my Uncle Dan providin’ the music, so I reckon it’s only fair that I get to dance with the lady, too.”

  Preacher hadn’t known that the old-timer was Sanderson’s uncle, and he didn’t much care either. He didn’t want to let go of Laura. However, it was her decision, so Preacher told her, “Whatever you want to do, ma’am.”

  She smiled at Sanderson and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m dancing with Preacher right now. Perhaps another time.”

  Sanderson wasn’t taking no for an answer. He said, “The hell with that,” and reached out to take hold of Laura’s arm. He pulled her away from Preacher. The fiddle playing came to an abrupt halt with a screech of the bow across the strings.

  Preacher let go of Laura because he didn’t want her to get hurt by being tugged back and forth between him and Sanderson. But that didn’t mean he was giving in. He growled, “Let go o’ the lady, Sanderson…right now.”

  “She’s dancin’ with me now,” Sanderson said. “Back off, Preacher.”

  With that, he jerked Laura against him and held her so tightly that she gasped.

  “Play that fiddle, Uncle Dan!” Sanderson ordered.

  The bow wailed on the strings, but only for a second. Preacher reached out, grabbed Sanderson’s shoulder, hauled the man around, and crashed a fist into the middle of his face. Blood spurted as Sanderson’s nose pulped under the blow’s impact.

  Laura let out a scream as Sanderson staggered away, crimson welling over the bottom half of his face. He caught himself, glared at Preacher, and launched himself forward with a furious roar. He tackled Preacher and both men went down, crashing into chairs and barrels.

  Sanderson came flying backward as Preacher hit him again. Preacher scrambled to his feet just as the short man who’d been sitting at the table with Sanderson and the others yelled, “Get ’im!”

  The two big Dutchmen lumbered toward Preacher, fists clenched. Their eagerness for a fight brought animation to their usually stolid faces. The little man was right behind them, egging them on. And Sanderson was climbing back up, his bloody face twisted by lines of rage.

  Looked like the odds were going to be three or four to one, Preacher thought. He had faced worse. He stood there grinning and lifted one hand, crooking it mockingly.

  “If you figure on whuppin’ me, boys, then come ahead,” he invited. “It’s your job, and you’ve got it to do.”

  “Damn right we’ll do it,” Sanderson rasped. “You think you’re the big he-wolf around here, but we’re gonna whip you seven ways from Sunday!”

  “You mean after you get through talkin’ me to death?”

  The four men came toward Preacher slowly now, closing in on him. Laura Mallory had fled to the counter, where Deborah Hart had her arms around her, trying to comfort her. Corliss and Jerome watched the confrontation, but didn’t make a move to interfere. As the proprietors of this trading post, they had to stay neutral in the occasional brawl. Preacher understood that, even though the cousins owed a considerable debt to him for getting them here alive.

  He didn’t want any help. He always fought his own battles, and he wasn’t inclined to change that now.

  “Wait!”

  The sharp-voiced command came from Clyde Mallory. The Englishman strode forward, putting himself between Preacher and the four men. He ignored his sister’s plea to be careful and planted himself there with his fists on his hips.

  “I say, this is hardly fair. You outnumber this man by four to one.”

  “Stay out of it, mister,” Sanderson warned. “It ain’t none o’ your business.”

  “On the contrary,” Mallory said, “that was my sister you were mauling, sir. It’s very much my affair. An affair of honor.”

  And with that, he reached up and slapped Sanderson across the face.

  Chapter 8

  For a moment Sanderson was too stunned to do anything except stare at Clyde Mallory, the same thing that everybody else in the trading post was doing.

  Then he howled, “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Preacher had been around enough Englishers and highfalutin’ Easterners to know the answer to that question. Mallory had just challenged Sanderson to a duel.

  “I told you, this is an affair of honor,” Mallory said. “As such, we shall settle it like gentlemen.”

  Sanderson sneered. “That’s where you’re wrong, mister. I ain’t no gentleman.”

  And as if to prove it, he slugged Mallory in the jaw.

  “Clyde!” Laura cried in horror as the unexpected punch drove her brother backward. Mallory would have fallen if Preacher hadn’t been there to catch him. Laura started forward, but Deborah held her back.

  “Don’t worry,” Deborah told her. “Preacher will take care of this.”

  Laura turned to look at her. “How do you know?”

  “Because he always does.”

  Preacher had his arms hooked under Mallory’s arms, holding him up as Mallory shook his head groggily. “I say,” the Englishman mumbled, “wha…what happened?”

  “Sanderson walloped you a good one,” Preacher told him.

  “But…but I challenged him to a duel. I told him it was an affair of honor…”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t got any.”

  “In that case…” Mallory straightened, getting his legs back solidly underneath him and squaring his shoulders. “I suppose there’s no choice except to settle this with fisticuffs.”

  “Are we gonna fight or not?” Sanderson shouted.

  Mallory put up his fists and cocked his arms in a boxing stance. “Come ahead, you insufferable ruffian.”

  “Clyde, you don’t have to get mixed up in this,” Preacher warned.

  Mallory turned to look at him. “On the contrary, Preacher, I already—”

  Sanderson lunged at him, swinging wildly. The other three men rushed Preacher.

  Chaos ensued.

  Mallory seemed to have recovered from the punch. He ducked under Sanderson’s roundhouse swings and then straightened to pepper the trapper in the face with a series of short, sharp blows. None of the Englishman’s punches traveled very far, but they landed with stinging force. Sanderson’s head rocked back under the impact.

  Meanwhile, the two Dutchmen grabbed Preacher’s arms and pulled him backward, lifting his feet off the floor so that his back slammed into the trading post’s log wall. They pinned him there and the short man moved in, grinning as he prepared to hammer his fists into Preacher’s belly.

  He never got the chance. Since the Dutchmen were holding him up anyway, Preacher drew his knees up and then straightened his legs. His heels crashed into the chest of the man in front of him. The fella sailed backward and landed on a table that collapsed under him as its legs splintered.

  Preacher heaved with both arms. There was an incredible amount of strength in his seemingly lean frame. The two Dutchmen blundered into each other and bumped heads pretty hard. That made them let go of Preacher, who seized the opportunity to grab each of them by the back of the neck. He rammed their heads together even harder.

  Unfortunately, their skulls seemed to be made of solid rock. One of them wrapped his arms around Preacher in a bear hug and started spinning him around.

  Meanwhile, Sanderson got lucky. One of his flailing punches clipped Mallory on the chin and knocked the Englishman back a step, interrupting the series of jabs that had made S
anderson’s face even bloodier. Sanderson made the most of his chance and hooked a hard left into Mallory’s brisket. Mallory staggered backward and gasped for breath as his face turned gray.

  Sanderson closed in, fists cocked to smash the momentarily defenseless Englishman into oblivion. But at that moment, a dizzy Preacher, being whirled around by the Dutchman, saw what was about to happen and kicked as high as he could at the precise second when his opponent swung him past Sanderson. Preacher’s foot hit Sanderson in the back of the head and sent him pitching forward. Mallory twisted away so that Sanderson ran head-on into the wall instead.

  The other Dutchman was yelling something in his guttural lingo. The one holding Preacher stopped spinning, but Preacher’s head didn’t. The room tilted crazily, and he seemed to see three men coming at him, fists poised. He knew there was only one of them, but he ducked all three punches anyway, hoping the real one would miss him.

  It did, grazing his ear but doing no real damage, at least to Preacher. The same couldn’t be said of the man holding him. He caught the blow from his cousin or brother or whatever he was full in the face. His knees unhinged, and he let go of Preacher as he folded up on the puncheon floor.

  That left Preacher free but still dizzy. He swayed backward just as the remaining Dutchman launched an uppercut. The punch might have taken Preacher’s head off if it had landed, but instead, it whizzed harmlessly past his nose.

  Before the man could try again, Clyde Mallory brought his clubbed hands down on the back of the Dutchman’s neck. The man slumped to one knee. Mallory hit him again the same way, but still the Dutchman didn’t go all the way down. He moved his shoulders like he was shaking off a troublesome insect and started to lumber to his feet again.

  As the Dutchman came upright, Preacher said, “Hey!” His head had finally settled down a mite, and he had his feet under him now as he pivoted slightly at the waist and threw a punch. It smashed into the Dutchman’s jaw like a pile driver, and that finally did the trick. The big man’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he toppled over like a felled tree crashing to earth in the forest.

  That left Preacher and Mallory facing each other. Both men were breathing hard. Their clothes were disheveled, and their faces bore the marks of battle.

  But as their eyes met they grinned, each feeling the bond that develops almost instantly between men who have shared the rigors of combat.

  “Good…fight,” Preacher panted.

  “Splendid!” Mallory managed to gasp. He held out his right hand. “Shake!”

  They shook, each man wincing a little because their hands were sore from punching their enemies.

  Groans came from the other men, and as Preacher and Mallory turned they saw that Sanderson, the short man who had wrecked the table when he landed on it, and the first Dutchman were struggling to get to their feet again.

  “This clash appears not to…be over…after all,” Mallory said.

  “Then we’ll just have to…whup ’em again,” Preacher said.

  A shot blasted out just as Sanderson and his two allies made it to their feet. The roar was so loud that it froze everybody. A voice said, “Pete, that’s enough, consarn your stubborn hide!”

  The old-timer whose fiddle-playing had set off the brawl indirectly—Uncle Dan, Sanderson had called him—strode forward. He had set the fiddle aside and now his gnarled hands clasped a brace of pistols instead. Smoke curled from the barrel of the weapon he had fired into the ceiling.

  “Damn it, Uncle Dan, stay outta this!” Sanderson said. “You seen with your own eyes what these fellas did!”

  “Durned tootin’ I seen it. I seen two men whup the hell outta four, and pretty handy they was about it, too! And you started the fight by disrespectin’ that English gal to boot. I know damned well your ma didn’t raise you to behave like that ’cause she was my sister.” The old man drew a deep breath and blew it out in a gusty sigh, fluttering the long white beard. “Reckon this is the first time I’ve been glad that she’s passed on, God rest her soul. She don’t ever have to know that you act like a total jackass when you been drinkin’, boy…that is, unless she’s lookin’ down from heaven and cluckin’ her tongue over your antics right now!”

  Sanderson couldn’t stop himself from glancing toward the ceiling, as if worrying that his dear, departed mother could peer right through it from whatever heavenly mansion she occupied. He looked down again, all the way to the floor this time, and shuffled his feet.

  “Aw, hell, Uncle Dan—”

  “Don’t aw-hell me. You been around here long enough to know what a durned fool stunt it was to go up agin Preacher. Now go over there and shake the hands o’ those men and tell ’em they fought a good fight.”

  “I ain’t a-gonna—”

  Uncle Dan drew himself up to his full height, which still left him a good foot and a half shorter than his nephew. “Am I gonna have to whup you, too, to make you behave like a decent human bein’?”

  Sanderson muttered and cussed and looked around, but he couldn’t find any way out. Preacher saw that, and managed not to grin at the man’s dilemma. Finally, Sanderson came over to him and Mallory and stuck out his paw.

  “That was a good fight,” he said with a curt nod. To Mallory, he added, “Mister, I’m sorry for disrespectin’ your sister.” He glanced back at Uncle Dan. “My ma taught me better.”

  Mallory shook hands with him. “Apology accepted, old man…that is, if my sister agrees.”

  “Of course, Clyde,” Laura said quickly, obviously eager to get the trouble over with. “I’m sure this gentleman meant no harm.”

  He turned to look at her. “I surely didn’t, ma’am. I was just, uh, overcome by your beauty. That an’ the fact that it’s been a hell of a long time since I danced with a white woman.”

  Laura blushed in the lamplight, which just made her prettier.

  Sanderson shook hands with Preacher, too, and said with a hint of nervousness in his voice, “No hard feelin’s?”

  “No hard feelin’s,” Preacher agreed. Sanderson had been forced into the apologies, but Preacher sensed that he was mostly sincere. Like a lot of men who had come to these mountains, Sanderson was rough around the edges but basically a decent sort.

  Sanderson gestured to the other men who had joined in the fight and went on. “Same goes for Dennison and the Van Goort boys, I hope? Denny’s like me…he don’t think too straight sometimes when he’s been drinkin’.”

  “That’s the gospel truth, Preacher,” Dennison agreed with a nod.

  “And the Van Goorts, they don’t speak much but that Dutchy talk o’ theirs, so I ain’t sure they even really knew what was goin’ on.”

  Preacher nodded to the Dutchmen and said, “No hard feelin’s, boys.”

  They returned the nod and smiled and said, “Yah, yah,” which Preacher took to mean they were content to call a truce, too.

  Corliss came forward and said, “All right, fellas, it’s all over now…right?”

  “Yeah,” Sanderson said.

  Uncle Dan added, “And since it was our fault that table got busted up, we’ll pay for it.”

  For a second, Sanderson looked like he wanted to argue about that, but then he nodded and sighed. “Yeah, that’s right, Mr. Hart. We’ll pay for it.”

  Corliss clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry too much about it, Pete. We’ll work out an arrangement the next time you bring in a load of pelts and get square that way.”

  “Sure, that’d be fine.” Sanderson looked relieved that no money would be coming out of his pocket right now, but if Preacher knew Corliss Hart, and especially Jerome Hart, he suspected that the cousins would come out ahead in the long run on this deal.

  Uncle Dan shepherded his charges back to their table. Preacher thought there probably wouldn’t be any more fiddle-playing tonight, and he was right. The men left the trading post shortly after that.

  Preacher sat down at another table with Laura and Mallory. The Englishman ran his fingers through
his sandy hair, felt his jaw, and smiled ruefully.

  “That big fellow could certainly hit. His fist felt a bit like the kick of a mule.”

  “You’ve been kicked by a mule?” Preacher asked.

  “Indeed, while I was posted in India. All armies, I suspect, use mules for transport, and at times they can be recalcitrant.”

  “Not to mention downright ornery.”

  “Yes, that, too,” Mallory agreed with a chuckle.

  “You two should be ashamed of yourselves, brawling like that,” Laura scolded. “You’re acting now almost as if you enjoyed it.”

  “It was a rather exhilarating few minutes, wasn’t it, Preacher?”

  “It was,” Preacher said.

  “And we were merely defending you, my dear,” Mallory pointed out to Laura.

  “Yes, but I didn’t ask you to…Never mind. I can see that this is an argument I stand little or no chance of winning, so I’ll just say that I’m glad you’re both all right.” She looked back and forth between the two men. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

  “A bit battered and bruised, but no real damage, eh?”

  Preacher nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  Corliss came over with the jug Preacher had been drinking from earlier. “Lucky this didn’t get busted in all the commotion. I assume you still want the rest of it, Preacher?”

  “I sure do.” Preacher took the jug and held it out toward Mallory. “Have a drink?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” The Englishman took the jug and tilted it to his mouth with the same sort of expertise that the mountain men demonstrated. The fiery liquor gurgled into his mouth and down his throat. Preacher watched the muscles working as Mallory swallowed. Mallory put away a hefty slug before he lowered the jug, said, “Ah,” and wiped the back of his other hand across his mouth. “Splendid,” he said as he pushed the jug back across the table to Preacher.