Absaroka Ambush (first Mt Man)/Courage Of The Mt Man Read online

  “Have mercy on us,” Steals Pony replied.

  About that time, a lady named Madeline Hornbuckle found a very large rattlesnake curled up in her blankets and she let out a war whoop that brought the whole camp running. The snake disappeared, but no one got into blankets for the rest of the night.

  It poured from the skies the next day, and Preacher told the ladies to rest—and shake out their blankets for the umpteenth time.

  “Go kill a rattler and bring it back here,” he told Steals Pony. “That’s the only thing that’ll calm these women down. Damn bunch of city women anyways.”

  “I have a better suggestion,” the Delaware said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. You go kill a rattlesnake and bring it back here. And good luck finding one in this rain.”

  “And watch out for them Pawnee,” Blackjack added with a smile. “Way I see it, most of them hightailed back to camp. But I figure they’s maybe fifty or so who stayed behind with revenge on their minds. And they’d just love to find you ridin’ out there alone.”

  “What a bunch of friends I got,” Preacher muttered, making another walk-around of the circled wagons, slopping through the muddy and churned-up ground, the rain beating down on his hat. “Smart alecks, all of them.” Then he grinned, knowing that a man could not have better friends than those who accompanied him on this journey.

  He stopped by a wagon when he heard a hard, wracking cough. Squatting down, he looked at the three women huddled on the ground under the wagon bed. “Get that woman inside the wagon and get her warm,” Preacher ordered. “If you got any ginger root, make some tea. She’s on the verge of pneumonia. Strip ’er down to the buff and rub her good; get that blood to the surface and keep her warm. Pneumonia’s a killer out here. Oncest you get her dry, warm, and full of ginger tea, add some clove to it and she’ll go right to sleep. She’s got to rest.”

  When the men who were to be called mountain men had first arrived in the west, they had discovered that the “poor ignorant savages,” as whites called the Indians, knew a hell of a lot about medicine and healing of the body.

  Perhaps one of the reasons the breed of men called mountain men were considered so tough is that they just simply would not succumb to illness. No matter how they felt, they just kept on going.

  Rain continued to pound the pioneers during all that wet and gray day. The only bright spot was that the Pawnee had chosen not to launch another attack. Charlie and Steals Pony rode out about noon and completed a wide circle around the area. The Pawnee were indeed gone.

  “They headed north,” Charlie said, huddled under a canvas, his hands clutching a tin cup full of hot coffee. “Then they cut west. I reckon they figured the rain would cover their tracks, and it would have in another hour or so. That bunch of revenge-seekers will be hittin’ us somewheres along the Platte.”

  “I most certainly will not do that!” a woman’s voice declared across the muddy circle to the men.

  “Suit yourself, lady,” Steals Pony said, and came walking over to the small group of men.

  “What was all that about?” Preacher asked, as the Delaware poured a cup of coffee.

  “The woman said her child had gotten into poison ivy and asked me what to do about it. I told her to strip the child and dunk her into a mud puddle. That would help relieve the irritation. She refused.”

  “It works,” Snake said.

  “Of course it does,” Steals Pony said. “But I will find some goldenseal when the rain ends and that works better. Even though I was raised by whites back east, I have always felt that whites are sadly lacking in basic knowledge. It’s amazing to me that the white people have progressed as far as they have. Present company not included, of course.”

  “Folks got things too easy back east,” Snake opined. “I was told about something called a train. Runs on steel tracks. Carries people at fantastic speeds. Ain’t no horse in the world can keep up with it. Makes my mind boggle to think about goin’ that fast. What’s the point in it?”

  “If it goes that fast, how do they stop the damn thing?” Charlie asked.

  “I ain’t got no idea,” Snake replied. “Drag something behind it, I reckon. I don’t even know how they make it go no-place. I hope I don’t never see one of them things. I might decide to shoot it.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “If I could figure out where its vital organs was.”

  “It runs on steam,” Eudora said, walking up with Faith beside her. “Burning wood heats the water and the water produces steam which turns the wheels. It’s quite the coming thing. Someday the trains will be out here, too.”

  “You actual ride on one?” Ring asked her.

  “Oh, yes,” Faith said. “It’s quite an exhilarating experience.”

  “Faster than a horse?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, my, yes! Ten times faster.” It was a slight exaggeration on her part.

  “Ten times!” Snake said. “Why, that’d suck the breath right out of you.”

  “It is a thrilling ride,” Eudora said; then the ladies walked away.

  “Do you believe all that?” Charlie asked.

  “Yeah,” Preacher said. “Woman told me about it a couple years ago.” He didn’t bring up the story about a man over in France who flew through the air hanging in a basket under a balloon. That would have been just a bit too much for anybody to believe.

  Preacher wasn’t even so sure he believed that one himself.

  10

  Preacher awakened long before the others and looked up into a brilliant star-filled sky. He lay in his blankets and smiled. The storms were past and they could move on. Under the hot sun, the plains would dry faster than a man unfamiliar with it would believe. In two days they’d be choking with dust and bitching about the heat.

  Preacher had no way of knowing it, but in the spring of 1839, back in Peoria, Illinois, Thomas Farnham and thirteen other men were just leaving with a pack train, heading for the Willamette Valley in Oregon Territory. Both Preacher and Farnham were riding into destiny. That spring, the population of the United States was sixteen million people. Ninety-nine percent of it was east of the Mississippi River.

  The people had to move west. The east was getting too crowded. And the Indians would be caught up in the middle. Later in the year of 1839, the horrible Trail of Tears would take place, when the U.S. government would force many thousands of Indians from their homes in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, to the Indian country in what would someday be called Oklahoma. Several thousand men, women, and children, of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole—the Five Civilized tribes—would die on the forced march.

  “The women are up to something.” Steals Pony whispered the caution to Preacher at the cookfire.

  Preacher got a plate of food and a cup of coffee and he and the Delaware sat down on a log to eat. “What?”

  “Don’t know. But I think it has something to do with the dead women.”

  Charlie Burke and Snake came up, both carrying plates piled high with food. One thing could be said with absolute certainty about the mountain men: they could all eat enough for two or three men.

  “The women is puttin’ together a choir,” Snake said, then filled his mouth with food.

  “A choir?” Preacher looked up. “What the hell for?”

  Ring, Blackjack, and Ned, strolled up, their plates filled to overflowing. “At first light,” Blackjack said, “the women is gonna have a tribute to them three dead ladies. Singin’ and readin’ from the Bible.”

  “Damnit, I already read from the Good Book!” Preacher said. “Me and Steals Pony both done it.”

  “You tell them they can’t do it.” Blackjack settled that point quick.

  Preacher grunted, ignoring the smile on the big mountain man’s face. “Oh, hell. I ain’t gonna interfere with no Bible thumpin’ and praisin’ the Lord in song. I ain’t no heathen. But whilst that’s goin’ on, I’ll saddle up and scout ahead for a few miles. You wanna come along, Steals Pony?�
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  “Actually, I find the sound of feminine voices blending together in song quite moving. I shall stay and perhaps join in song with them.”

  Snake looked at him. “I know you got you a hellacious good education. Seventh grade, I think I heard. But I wish just once you’d talk like a damn dumb Injun.”

  Steals Pony nodded his head and grunted, “Grub heap good.” He smiled. “Are you satisfied now, Snake?”

  Snake took his plate of food and his coffee and walked off, muttering about smart-aleck Injuns. Fifteen minutes later, he had his horse and Preacher’s horse saddled and was ready to go, ’fore them females started singin’ and preachin’ and got all emotional and started blubberin’ all over the place. Snake didn’t think he could stand that.

  As soon as the women started tunin’ up their vocal cords, Preacher and Snake rode out to the west. The sun was beginning to color the east with dawn’s silver hue.

  “Snake,” Preacher said, after the camp was behind them and the voices of the women were faint in the early light and cool air of the plains. “I been knowin’ you ever since I come out here. And I been out here since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. You ain’t changed none. How old are you?”

  “I don’t rightly know, Preacher. I think I’m some’eres ’tween seventy and eighty. I know I was years out here ’fore Lewis and Clark come a-traipsin’ through. You see, I killed me two men in Vermont back in ’85.”

  “Seventeen eighty-five?” Preacher blurted. That was about seventeen or eighteen years before he was even born!

  “Yep. I fit with Washington in the Revolution. And a mighty cruel time that was, too. Anyway, I lit a shuck for the far western lands and never looked back. Not one time has I looked back further than St. Louie.”

  “Never heard another word from kith and kin?”

  “Nary a peep. I reckon they’re all gone now. I’ve lived more ’un I ever figured I would. There ain’t no place west of the Mississippi that I ain’t seen, neither…well, you know what I mean. Cain’t no man see it all, but I reckon I’ve crossed ever’ crick and river there is out here. Preacher, can I ask you a favor?”

  “You know you can.”

  “If you’re clost by when it comes my time to check out, you bury me high, will you? You wrap me up real good and tight so’s the smell won’t make you puke, and tote me up to the highest peak you can find. Plant me there.”

  “I’ll do ’er, Snake.” He cut his eyes to the old man. “You figurin’ on cashin’ in this trip, are you?”

  “You never know, son. You just never know. But I got a feelin’, I do. I’ll be honest with you. I’m tired. Almighty tired. It ain’t so much that I’m tired in my body as it is I’m tired in my mind. I’ve rid all the trails there is to ride, seen all the sights—some of them a dozen times over—and I’ve buried more friends than I care to think about. They’re callin’ to me, Preach. I swear to you they is. I hear ’em in my sleep. You reckon I’m losin’ my mind?”

  Preacher shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think that at all, Snake. But I do believe a man knows when it comes his time to go. I’ll plant you high, Snake. You got my word on it.”

  The old mountain man nodded his head. “’ppreciate it. Takes a load off my mind, it do.”

  The voices of the ladies could no longer be heard, and with one hundred and forty-seven of them shoutin’ to the Heavens, that meant the men had ridden about two miles, more or less.

  “You want to stop?” Snake asked.

  “Hell, no! I want to put some distance ’tween us and them females. Blackjack knows the way. I want to see what the Platte looks like.”

  “It’s wet,” Snake said with a straight face.

  “Thank you. I remember that much about it.”

  “We gonna cross it just north of here?”

  “I ain’t made up my mind yet. What worries me is why Washington wanted us to leave Missouri so soon. Ain’t no way they could have predicted this early spring with plenty of graze.”

  “That’s why them extra wagons of feed was put on, Preach. At the last minute,” he added.

  “But why?”

  “So we stand a better chance of coverin’ two thousand miles ’fore the snows fall.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.”

  “You got something stuck in your craw?”

  “Yeah. Plenty. All of it worrisome. You and me and the others, we’ve seen buffalo stampede, and we was lucky enough to get out of the way. You know what’s gonna happen to the women and the wagons if they get caught up in one?”

  “I can make a fair guess.”

  “Yeah. And on top of that, we got alkali water and Injuns to worry about. We’re gonna lose livestock and lives crossin’ rivers and run off by Injuns. These women are gonna have to boil water ’fore they drink it to keep from gettin’ sick. We was lucky back yonder that no lightnin’ was with that storm. But we’ll face it in the months ahead. We’re gonna be humpin’ it to keep this train in fresh meat. We’re gonna have to wind-lash these wagons down the grades up ahead. And I mean we. Them ladies won’t be able to do it alone. You noticed these big bastard wagons don’t have no brakes? That’s why I raised so much hell back yonder about additional heavy rope.”

  Snake cut his eyes to Preacher. “You’re just a barrel of laughs today, ain’t you, Preach?”

  “Hell, Snake, I ain’t even got goin’ good yet.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “I laid in a good stock of dried apples. But it won’t last the trip.”

  “Scurvy?”

  “You bet.”

  “And the last of it?” Snake pressed. “I hope.”

  “We’re gonna face dust storms, wind storms, busted wagon wheels…and the lonelies.”

  “We can deal with all them things ’ceptin’ the last,” Snake said, his eyes never stopping their scanning of the countryside. “Over the last fifty-odd years, I seen big, strong men fall under the vastness of it all. I mean, go stark, ravin’ mad. You’ve seen it, too.”

  Preacher nodded in silent agreement. He’d seen men succumb to the silent horizon that seemed to have no end; to the enormity of it all that reduced man to a tiny nothing. Most men just shrugged it away and accepted it. A few others lost their minds.

  One or two, or more, of these women would not be able to cope with it. And then they’d have a raving lunatic on their hands.

  Preacher had seen that, too.

  “And let’s don’t forget them men on our backtrail,” Snake said. “They shore ain’t up to no good.”

  Again, Preacher nodded. The past night, alone under one of the supply wagons, Preacher had carefully gone over the documents given him by the government man back in Missouri. Preacher was convinced the papers were genuine and that the man from Washington was up to no skullduggery. He did not believe the government man was in any way mixed up with that band of scallywags who were following them.

  So what were they up to?

  He didn’t know.

  Who was the tall, well-dressed man who appeared to be leading the group?

  He didn’t know that either.

  But Preacher had him a hunch he’d know the answers to his questions pretty damn quick.

  The going was slow that first day after the torrential rains, and the train made only a few miles. But under the blistering sun, the land dried out quickly and on the second day after the passage of the storm, the wagons made a good fifteen miles. The westward women had said and sung their goodbyes to the three ladies who had become discouraged, and no more was said about them, at least not to Preacher.

  Preacher told Blackjack and the other mountain men to take over for a few days. He was going to lag behind and get him an eyeball full of the men following them. He had a place all picked out, and he had his good spyglass. Then Preacher decided he’d best tell Lieutenant Worthington of his plan.

  “You’re not going to ambush them, are you?” Rupert asked, a worried look on his face.

  “Me? Against for
ty or fifty armed men? Hell, no!”

  “I had to ask, Preacher. Your exploits of daring-do are well known.”

  “Uh-huh.” Preacher had no intention of telling the young lieutenant that he did plan—if possible—to grab one of the bunch and get the truth from him.

  “In case you are not back when we reach the Platte, do we cross it when we come to it?”

  “No. Stay on the south side of it. But you won’t reach it ’fore I return. I’ll be back ’fore you know it.”

  “You will be careful?”

  Preacher grunted. Careful? Every time Preacher thought Rupert might be showing some sense, the lieutenant had to go and mouth some stupid remark. Out here, a body best be careful twenty-five hours a day.

  Preacher left within the hour. Hammer was getting on in years, but he was still twice the horse of anything that could be found in the train’s herd. And Hammer loved the trail and loved to run. But Preacher had made a promise to Hammer, and when this journey was over, he planned to keep that promise. He’d turn the big horse loose with a bunch of mares and let him enjoy the rest of his life. He knew just the valley, too. Isolated and lovely. Preacher had staked that valley out for himself. He had him a young Appaloosa horse there that he’d been training, as big as Hammer and just as mean and strong.

  And that animal was as loyal to Preacher as a good watchdog too, probably because Preacher broke a horse in gentle ways. He had no use for a man who would mistreat a dog or a horse.

  Preacher headed for a series of bluffs he’d checked out a few days past, an upthrusting of rocky-faced cliffs that had torn out of the earth hundreds of thousands of years back. Sandstone, Preacher thought. But they had a good stand of timber on top which would offer plenty of cover. From up-top he could see for miles and there were plenty of spots where water gathered and held.

  He gave Hammer his head and let him set his own pace. The big horse would trot for a while, then slow to a walk. Hammer could sense no urgency in his master, so when he tired, he stopped and rested. Had his master wanted it, Hammer would have run until his heart burst.