Preacher's Peace Read online

  “I reckon you’re right,” he said. “A jury is sure to find him innocent, so why go to the bother? Ain’t goin’ to be no charge here.”

  Every patron in the saloon erupted in a loud cheer.

  “Now,” LaBarge said, pointing to Shardeen’s body. “Someone get this trash out of here.”

  Five

  After leaving LaBarge’s Tavern, Art passed by Chardonnay’s, a restaurant that advertised itself as “St. Louis’s finest dining establishment.” It had been a long time since he had eaten a meal he didn’t cook himself, and even longer than that since he had eaten in a restaurant, let alone a fancy “establishment” like this one. Opening the door just a crack, he took a sniff. Whatever they were cooking smelled awfully good to him.

  “Dog, I expect you’d better not go in here with me,” he said. This place was very different than LaBarge’s, for sure.

  Dog looked up at him as if challenging him.

  “Don’t look at me like that. This just isn’t a place for dogs, that’s all. Why don’t you just wait for me over there, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  Shaking himself in a way that caused his loose skin to make a flapping sound, Dog walked over to the corner of the porch, made a few quick turns, then settled down. His eyes were closed even before Art went inside.

  A well-dressed, dignified-looking man came to his table. “May I take your order, sir?” he asked in an affected, cultured voice.

  “What’s good?” Art asked as he looked at the menu.

  “Sir, I assure you everything on our menu is without parallel.”

  “That means it’s good?” Art asked.

  “Indeed it does, sir.”

  “All right then, I’ll have pork chops, fried potatoes, and a half-dozen hen’s eggs.”

  The waiter looked chagrined. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say pork chops, fried potatoes, and eggs?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse my asking, sir, but why would you come here to order such pedestrian fare? We have rack of lamb, pork tenderloin, coq au vin, and many other viands not served by any other restaurant in the city. You can get what you just ordered at any cheap hotel in town.”

  “You do have pork chops, potatoes, and eggs, don’t you? Hen’s eggs now, not those nasty things from a guinea.”

  “Yes, of course we have those things, but . . .”

  “And biscuits?”

  “Our bread is baked fresh daily.”

  “Biscuits?” Art repeated.

  “Yes, sir. We can prepare biscuits.”

  “Good. I’ll have biscuits. And pie. Do you have any pie?”

  “Apple and pecan.”

  “All right.”

  “All right?” the waiter asked, confused by his answer.

  “All right, I’ll have apple and pecan.”

  “Sir, you do understand, do you not, that by apple and pecan, I’m referring to two separate pies. I don’t mean something like apple-pecan pie.”

  “Yes, I want one of each.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “I’ll have beer with my dinner, and coffee with my pie,” Art concluded.

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said. “I must say, sir, your appetite is quite prodigious.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t reckon it’s catchin’,” Art said. He wasn’t sure whether he was having fun, but he knew that the waiter wasn’t.

  “Indeed, sir,” the waiter replied without a smile.

  Art watched the waiter until he disappeared into the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone standing just inside the front door, looking at him. It was a woman.

  “Art?” the woman said.

  At first, Art couldn’t see her features clearly, because she was standing in silhouette. He put his hand up to shield his eyes. Realizing that she wasn’t clearly visible, the woman moved out of the bright light.

  “Do you recognize me now?” she asked. The woman was quite pretty, with dark, almost black hair, brown eyes, and a clear, olive complexion.

  “Jennie?” Art said, recognizing someone from his past. “Jennie, is that you?”

  With a happy little laugh, Jennie hurried to him. Art stood and they embraced.

  “Yes, it’s me. I thought I would never see you again,” Jennie said.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Art told her. “Have dinner with me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jennie demurred. “I’ve never been in here before. This is a pretty fancy place. I’m not sure I would be welcome.”

  “You’re welcome anywhere I’m welcome,” Art said.

  Hesitantly, and looking around as if expecting to be tossed out at any moment, Jennie sat at the table with Art.

  “When Carla described the person who came to her rescue, I thought of you. Then when she said that the only name you gave the deputy was Art, I knew it was you. So I checked with Mr. Ashley, and he said he saw you come into Chardonnay’s. I just had to come in here to see for myself.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Art said. “I’m really happy to see you, Jennie. How are you doing? What are you doing in St. Louie?”

  “I own my own whorehouse,” Jennie said proudly and without irony. “Carla, the girl you helped, is one of my boarders.”

  “I thought she worked for LaBarge.”

  “She does. She just works for me part-time—but not as a, well . . . you know what I mean, I think. What are you doing in St. Louis?”

  “I brought in my winter’s trapping,” Art said. “I could have sold it at Rendezvous, but I decided to bring the plews in myself this time.”

  “Rendezvous,” Jennie said. “Oh, I remember those. They were always exciting, and could have been fun if I hadn’t been hauled around as Eby’s slave.”

  At that moment the officious waiter came out of the kitchen carrying Art’s order on a tray. Seeing Jennie, he stopped. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “She is with me,” Art said. “She would like to order. I’ve invited her to eat with me.”

  “No,” the waiter said. “Absolutely not. I do not allow her kind in here.”

  “You do not allow?” Art asked. “I thought you were just the waiter. What does the owner say?”

  The waiter smiled. “The owner is my father-in-law. He would say exactly what I am saying. Prostitutes are not allowed in here.”

  Jennie reached her hand across the table and put it on Art’s hand.

  “It’s all right, Art,” Jennie said. “I told you that I wouldn’t be welcome. I’ll leave now. I don’t want to make any trouble.”

  “Oh, there’s no trouble,” Art said easily. He stood. “I’ll leave with you.”

  “But sir, you aren’t being asked to leave,” the waiter said.

  “As far as I’m concerned, I was,” Art said. “I told you the lady was my friend.”

  “But what about your food?” the waiter said.

  “You eat it.”

  The waiter looked at the pork chops, fried potatoes, and half-dozen eggs.

  “Oh, sir, I couldn’t possibly eat . . . this,” he said, screwing his mouth up distastefully.

  “Then feed it to the pigs,” Art said. “Come, Jennie.” He started toward the front door with her.

  “But you haven’t paid for your meal,” the waiter called to him.

  “What meal? You don’t expect me to pay for a meal I haven’t eaten, do you?” Art called back.

  Jennie laughed. “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked. “I’ll fix you the best meal you’ve ever eaten.”

  “Miss Jennie, I’ll just take you up on that,” Art said.

  As they stepped out the front door of the restaurant, Dog stood up and started toward them.

  “Oh!” Jennie said, recoiling back against Art.

  Art chuckled. “Relax, he won’t hurt you.”

  “What is that? A wolf?”

  “No, Dog is a dog.”

  “Dog is a dog?”

  “Yes. His name is Dog.”

&nbs
p; “Why would you name him something like that?”

  “That’s the name he picked out for himself,” Art said without further explanation.

  “Well, I certainly don’t understand men—or dogs, in this case,” she said with a slight laugh.

  * * *

  Art finally got his pork chops, fried potatoes, eggs, biscuits, and gravy, and he was positive the meal was better here than it would ever have been at that fancy restaurant. Jennie not only cooked his supper for him, it was obvious that she enjoyed doing it.

  “It’s nice having someone to cook for,” Jennie said as she took a steaming apple pie from the oven.

  “It’s nice having someone to cook for me,” Art said.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, of course it is.” He looked into her dark eyes and liked what he saw there. He remembered every moment he had been in her presence, everything that had happened to them together.

  “Dog seems to be enjoying his meal,” Jennie said. Dog was eating from a plate she had put on the floor for him. “You, me, Dog, it’s almost like a family, isn’t it? I mean we could . . .” Jennie stopped in mid-thought and looked at Art with a wistful smile. Her eyes were deep and pensive and Art looked directly into them. Then he turned away quickly, as if ashamed of the fact that he had gotten a momentary glimpse of her unguarded soul.

  Realizing that she had gone further then she intended, she changed the subject. “Uh, do you want some more coffee?”

  Art held out his cup. “Yes, I’d love some,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Art ate ravenously, enjoying the meal as much as any he had ever eaten, appreciating it as much for Jennie’s company as for the food itself. Her voice, her laugh washed over him like a rain shower. And the food was delicious.

  “Oh,” he said after he had put away his third piece of pie. “I have something for you.”

  Jennie looked surprised. “You have something for me? But how could that be? Did you know you were going to see me here?”

  “No,” Art said. He smiled. “Finding you here was a very happy accident.”

  “Then I don’t understand. What do you mean you have something for me?”

  “It’s something that a friend of mine bought,” he said. “And his last wish was that I give it to a pretty girl. Well, you are the prettiest girl I know.”

  “Why, thank you, Art,” Jennie said, beaming over the compliment. “But what do you mean, his last wish?”

  He told Jennie about Clyde, how Clyde was one of the two men who had rescued him many years ago, and how Clyde had been coming to St. Louis with him. He told also of the Indian attack that had cost Clyde his life.

  “I know who Clyde is,” Jennie said, wiping away a tear. “He is the one who saved your life by shooting Bruce Eby. His name is also on my letter of manumission. He was one of the witnesses, along with Pierre Garneau.”

  “They were good men, both of them,” Art said. He pulled the dress from his pack and showed it to her.

  “Oh, Art!” Jennie said. “It is beautiful!” She reached for it. “Can I?”

  “Of course. It’s yours.”

  Jennie held it up to herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful,” she said. She held up her finger. “Wait, I’ll be back.”

  Jennie disappeared for a few minutes, then returned, wearing the dress. She had removed her heavy “professional” makeup. Now, in the simple and beautiful Indian dress of white doeskin, Art could see her for what she really was—the girl he remembered her to have been some dozen years before. He felt a catch in his breath.

  “Jennie,” he said quietly, the words almost caught in his throat. “You look like a queen.”

  Jennie laughed, then did a pirouette and a curtsy. “Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said. “And thank you for this dress. I will treasure it, always.”

  Thursday, July 22, 1824

  St. Louis was too noisy. It seemed to Art that there had been something going on all night long, from boat whistles, to bells, to people laughing and yelling in the saloons and dram shops. Then, shortly after sunrise, the sawmill started again, its terrible screech filling the morning air. Though he had barely managed to sleep through all the other noise, this one woke him up.

  Art, bare from the waist up, stood at the second-floor window, looking out on the busy street below. Across the street, a shopkeeper was sweeping his front porch, the broom making a scratching sound against the planking. A fully packed wagon clattered by while, somewhere nearby, a carpenter was hammering vigorously.

  “Good morning,” Jennie said. Coming up behind him, she put her arms around him and leaned into his back. By that action, Art realized that she was naked. “Do you want some breakfast?” she asked.

  “Uh, maybe later,” Art said, turning toward her.

  With her now-familiar happy little laugh, Jennie led him back to the bed they had shared the night before. Dog, lying curled up over in the corner, didn’t even open his eyes.

  * * *

  “I never knew anyone who could eat as many eggs as you can,” Jennie said with a laugh as she put two more onto Art’s breakfast plate.

  “I like hen’s eggs,” Art said. “And there aren’t that many chickens in the mountains, so anytime I get into town, I eat as many as I can.”

  “It’s a good thing you don’t live in town. You’d keep a whole henhouse busy just laying eggs for you.”

  Art broke the egg, then sopped up the yellow with a biscuit.

  “No chance of me ever living in town,” Art said. “I couldn’t stand the noise. And as for hens . . .” He just grinned.

  “Most folks who live here just sort of blank it out of their minds,” Jennie said. “It gets to where you don’t even hear it anymore.”

  “For you maybe, not for me.”

  “How long are you going to stay in town?”

  “Only another day or two,” Art replied. “I’ll need to get supplies and some livestock and start back for this winter’s trapping.”

  “So, you’re going to go back into the mountains all alone?”

  “Yes. That is, I’ll be alone unless Dog comes with me.”

  “Is Dog going with you?” she asked pointedly.

  Art looked over at Dog, who, having eaten his own breakfast, was lying on the floor with his chin resting on his two front paws. “I don’t know, that’s up to Dog.”

  “You say you couldn’t live in the city because of the noise. I don’t know how you can spend an entire winter in the mountains all by yourself. I know I certainly couldn’t.”

  “It’s nice up there,” Art said. “The stars are so big and bright that you get the feeling you could reach up and pull one down. And the silence is wonderful. After the first snow, it is so quiet that you can hear the wind singing through pine boughs half a mile away.”

  “You can keep your silence. I prefer civilization.”

  “Well, I reckon that’s why God didn’t make everything the same color,” Art said. Finishing his eggs, he stood up. “I’d better see to my supplies.”

  “You don’t have to leave, you know,” Jennie said. “You could stay here in St. Louis. Or we could go somewhere else, down to New Orleans maybe.”

  Art looked at Jennie for a long time before he opened his mouth. Just as he started to speak, Jennie put out her hand to stop him.

  “No, don’t,” she said. She shook her head and bit her bottom lip.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t say what you were going to say.”

  “How do you know what I was going to say?”

  “I just know, that’s all. You were going to tell me that there could never be anything between us.”

  Art took Jennie’s hand in his.

  “I wasn’t going to say that, Jennie. There is something between us, and there always will be. But I can’t live in the city, and you wouldn’t survive in the mountains. The Indians have a saying. A fish and a bird might fall in love, but where would they live?”

  Jennie’
s eyes flooded, then a tear slid down each cheek. She forced a smile through the tears.

  “Which one of us is the fish?” she asked. “And which is the bird?”

  “You’re the bird,” Art said. “A beautiful bird.” He raised Jennie’s hand to her own cheek and caught each of the tears with the tips of her fingers. Then he moved those fingers to his lips, where he kissed them.

  Jennie nodded, struggled to speak. “Art, will you come back? Will I see you again?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Art said.

  Jennie said, “I think you will be back too. And until you do return, I will always have last night to remember you—to remember us by.”

  * * *

  The strange small doorbell jingled as Art stepped into William Ashley’s furrier establishment. Ashley came from the back of the building. He was as dapper and precise as he had been at their first meeting.

  “Well, if it isn’t my friend with no last name,” Ashley greeted. “Come for your money, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’ve got it right here,” Ashley said. He opened a ledger book and ran his finger down the column until he came to what he was looking for. “They were nearly all top-quality plews, by the way. Out of one hundred eighty-three, only thirty-seven were less than first-class. That leaves one hundred forty-six at five dollars and ten cents each, coming to seven hundred forty-four dollars and sixty cents; thirty-seven at three and a half dollars each, for one hundred twenty-nine dollars and fifty cents, minus the twenty-dollar advance brings it to a grand total of eight hundred fifty-four dollars and ten cents. How do you want that, in cash, credit, or a bank draft?”

  “Credit?”

  “That means I’ll keep it on the books for you until you leave. That way you won’t be carrying so much money around.”

  “Oh,” Art said. He stroked his jaw as he studied Ashley for a long moment.

  Ashley chuckled. “Look, if you’re worried about me cheating you out of the money, why don’t I just give it to you now.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about you cheating me,” Art said. “I think I could convince you to give me what is mine.”

  This time Ashley’s chuckle was an out-and-out laugh. “I reckon you could, Art, I reckon you could. I heard about the little fracas between you and Shardeen down at LaBarge’s Tavern yesterday. Fact is, the whole town has heard of it in gruesome detail. You don’t strike me as the kind of person a man would want to cross.”