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

  He went back to the place where he had left Horse. Grass and water were nearby, so it was as good a place as any to wait for night to fall. Preacher found a comfortable spot to stretch out underneath a tree, and with a frontiersman’s ability to snatch sleep whenever he got a chance, he dozed off right away, confident that Dog and Horse would let him know if anyone came around.

  Hell, they had already saved his life once today.

  Preacher’s light but restful sleep continued until after dusk had settled down over the rugged landscape. His eyes opened as he came awake, but otherwise he didn’t move for several minutes as he let his vision adjust to the darkness and listened for anything unusual nearby. The only sounds he heard were the usual nighttime rustlings of small animals in the brush. He turned his head, saw Dog lying nearby with his head on his paws and Horse contentedly cropping at some grass.

  Time to get up and get busy, Preacher told himself.

  A rumbling in his midsection reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning. It would be a hell of a note if he was sneaking up on some bastard to cut his throat and a growling belly gave him away. So he took the time to eat a biscuit and some jerky from the meager supply in his saddlebags, washing the food down with clear, cold water from the stream.

  Then he patted Horse on the shoulder, said, “Stay here, old boy, I’ll be back in a while,” and set out on his mission.

  His killing mission.

  Chapter 12

  The sentries belched and farted, scratched themselves, muttered complaints under their breath…in short, each of them might as well have been shouting Here I am! to Preacher.

  Fairfax’s lieutenant had posted six men around the camp. Normally, that might have been enough to guard against any intruders, but Preacher wasn’t just any intruder. Like a living shadow, he drifted through the darkness and came up behind the man he had chosen as his first target.

  The luckless bastard didn’t know Preacher was anywhere around until the mountain man’s arm looped around his neck and clamped across his throat like an iron bar. Preacher could have choked him to death or even broken his neck, but he ended it even quicker and cleaner than that, with nearly a foot of cold steel that drove easily into the man’s back and pierced his heart. The man gave one spasmodic jerk as he died, but didn’t let out a sound or cause any other racket.

  Preacher lowered the body to the ground, grimacing a little as he did so. He didn’t like killing in cold blood like that, but he had done it before when necessary and would again. This varmint had done his damnedest to kill Preacher earlier in the day, so Preacher wasn’t going to lose any sleep over what he’d just done.

  Moving through the darkness like a ghost, Preacher closed in on the next sentry and disposed of him in the same manner, with the same results and lack of noise. The third man was stronger and managed to struggle a little, but in the end he died, too.

  Preacher let the other three guards live. It always made a man nervous when the fella beside him died and he knew good and well it could have just as easily been him.

  He entered the camp itself then. He’d waited until everything quieted down for the night. The men had been drinking and playing cards and talking, and some of them didn’t crawl into their blankets until well after dark. Now, however, they all seemed to be sound asleep. Raucous snoring came from some of the figures on the ground.

  Dog had stayed behind in the woods, even though a tiny whine showed that he didn’t like it. If Preacher got in trouble, though, all it would take was a whistle and a thickly furred bundle of fury and slashing teeth would descend on the camp.

  For now, Preacher crawled among the sleeping men, selecting his targets. Time and again he struck, clamping his left hand over a man’s nose and mouth or around his throat and then driving the blade in with his right. A couple of them thrashed in their death throes, but no more than a man would who was having a vivid dream. The whole thing was so quiet and discreet, there wasn’t even much blood.

  And when he had killed three more men, Preacher drifted out of the camp like a wisp of smoke from the still-smoldering campfire. He knew that he could have disposed of more of them, but such mass slaughter went beyond what he was prepared to do. He would rather just frighten off the others, and he hoped that the discovery of the bodies in the morning, if not sooner, would have that result.

  He rejoined Dog in the woods, and they both went back to the spot where Horse waited. Horse tossed his head when Preacher came up, and then shied away, something Preacher wasn’t used to.

  “What’s gotten into your fool head?” he asked the stallion, then glanced down toward the hand he had reached out with and realized why Horse was spooked.

  Preacher’s hand was dark with blood. Horse must have smelled it on him. He had wiped the knife blade, but hadn’t realized that the gore was on his hand as well.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. He bent over and wiped his hand on the grass. Dew was already beginning to form. It helped wash away the crimson stain, but Preacher knew not all of it would wipe off. What was left behind would just have to wear off.

  Too bad the stains on a man’s soul wouldn’t wear off the same way.

  Angry shouts jolted Colin Fairfax out of a restless slumber, haunted as usual by dreams—no, nightmares—of Preacher. At first, he thought some of the men were probably arguing with each other about something, most likely something trivial.

  But as he sat up and rubbed sleep out of his eyes, he realized that the shouts contained a note of fear, too. Something had happened that had the men spooked.

  Preacher.

  Fairfax didn’t doubt for a second that the mountain man was involved. He grabbed his pistol and bolted out of the small tent where he slept. He was the only one in the group to have such a luxury, and he knew the men resented it. He didn’t care. After everything he had been through, he deserved a modicum of comfort.

  He pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders as he looked around the camp in the gray, predawn light. Most of the men were up, standing around looking stunned. Three of them still lay wrapped up in their blankets, though, evidently sleeping soundly through the commotion.

  “What’s going on here?” Fairfax demanded. “What’s happened?”

  Sherwood lumbered over to him and reported in a sullen voice, “Berryman just come in from guard duty and says that Johnson, Wilmont, and Deever are layin’ out there in the woods dead.”

  “Dead!” Fairfax repeated. “What happened to them?”

  Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer.

  “They were all stabbed in the back,” Sherwood said heavily. “Looked like with a big huntin’ knife. And that ain’t all, Boss…” Sherwood gestured toward the men who were still in their blankets. “The son of a bitch was here, too. Somebody tried to shake Hawkins awake and…well, see for yourself.”

  Fairfax walked over to the man Sherwood indicated. He bent down to pull the blanket aside, but his hand stopped before he reached it. The blanket was draped across the man’s face so that his right eye was visible, and even in the poor light, Fairfax could tell there was no life in it. The man stared up sightlessly.

  Grimacing, Fairfax flicked the blanket back anyway. What he saw only confirmed his initial judgment. Hawkins was dead, with his features set in lines of agony. Fairfax noted the rent in the blanket now, surrounded by a small bloodstain. The wound hadn’t bled a lot because the knife had penetrated the man’s heart, stopping it almost immediately.

  “The other two are just like that,” Sherwood said from behind Fairfax. “He was here. You know it was him.”

  Fairfax nodded and pulled the blanket over Hawkins’s face again. “Yes,” he said as he straightened. “I know it was him.”

  “What are you gonna do about it?”

  Fairfax turned to face his angry second in command. “We’re going to kill him, of course,” he declared. “That’s why we came out here, after all. This is just more proof, as if we needed any, how dangerous Preache
r is. He must be disposed of.”

  “He was right here in the camp! He could’ve killed us all in our sleep!”

  “I doubt that. He would have been discovered if he’d stayed here much longer. He did his dirty work and then ran, like an animal.”

  Sherwood shook his head and said, “You’re wrong.” He didn’t seem to be worried about offending Fairfax anymore. “Nobody knew he was here. Six men on guard, and he kills half of them without anybody noticin’, then sneaks in here and kills three more men. The man’s a damn ghost! He can’t be killed!”

  Angry, frightened mutters of agreement came from some of the other men.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s as human as anybody, and he’ll die just like anybody else.”

  Even as Fairfax spoke, though, a nagging doubt was in the back of his mind. He thought of all the times Preacher had come within a hairbreadth of death, and yet the man was still alive. Maybe there was something mystical about him…

  Fairfax forced that thought out of his head. It was bad enough that Sherwood and the other men were starting to think such things. He couldn’t allow himself to give in to that. If he did, he was as good as beaten.

  One of the men stepped forward. “I say we get the hell out of here and head back east. This Preacher fella is too much.”

  “Do you want to go back to Shad Beaumont and tell him that you failed?” Fairfax asked coldly. “Because I don’t.”

  The man looked uneasy at the thought of reporting failure to Beaumont. But then he said, “Maybe I won’t go back to St. Louis. Maybe I’ll head someplace else, like down to New Orleans. I never been there.”

  Mutters and nods of agreement came from several of the men. Fairfax sensed how tenuous the grip he had on them was. They would desert him in an instant, and that was exactly what would happen if he didn’t do something to put a stop to this brewing mutiny.

  “All right,” he said as his mind worked to come up with a desperate ploy. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but…Beaumont put a bounty on Preacher’s head. Five hundred dollars to the man who kills him, and a thousand to be split among the rest of the group who make it back alive with proof of Preacher’s death.”

  No such bounty existed. It was a figment of Fairfax’s imagination. But the men didn’t have to know that until they got back to St. Louis, and by then Preacher would be dead. That was all Fairfax really cared about. At this moment, all that mattered was keeping the men from bolting.

  “The boss didn’t say anything about no bounty to me,” Sherwood said with a suspicious frown.

  “Of course not,” Fairfax replied, making himself sound supremely confident. “It was going to be a surprise when we got back. A reward for work well done.”

  Another man spoke up, saying, “No wonder you kept wantin’ to kill Preacher yourself. You wanted that five hundred dollars!”

  That prompted more angry muttering, and for a second Fairfax worried that his hastily conceived lie was going to backfire on him.

  But he said calmly enough, “Not at all. I’m more interested in seeing Preacher dead. If I killed him, I planned to add the five hundred to the pot we’ll all split. That only seems fair.”

  He wasn’t sure they believed him, but he saw enough doubt in their eyes to embolden him to continue. “So you see, Preacher’s actually done us a favor. Once he’s dead, the bounty will be split into larger shares now.”

  Again, it seemed like he might have misstepped as resentment sprang up on the faces of several men, but then greed overwhelmed any anger they might have felt at his callousness. They began talking among themselves and nodding.

  Sherwood said, “I still ain’t sure I believe it, but I reckon anything’s possible.”

  “You’ll believe it when you’ve got the coins in your hand.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Sherwood rubbed his heavy, beard-stubbled jaw. “So what do we do now?”

  “We bury these men,” Fairfax said, “and then we start looking for Preacher again.”

  Sherwood grunted. “We may not have to look very hard.” He nodded toward the blanket-wrapped corpses. “He’s liable to come to us again.”

  “Indeed he will,” Fairfax said as an idea suddenly began to form in his brain. “Indeed he will…because we’re going to have something that he wants.”

  Laura Mallory stepped into the cabin and looked around. It was newly built and freshly furnished, with a puncheon floor, furniture that had been brought out from St. Louis on the wagon train, and even curtains hanging over the windows, something that couldn’t be found in any of the other cabins in the settlement.

  “It’s lovely, Clyde,” she said with a smile on her face. “Thank you.”

  “Only the best for you, my dear,” Clyde Mallory said. “It’s not what you’re accustomed to, obviously, but perhaps it will suffice while we’re forced to remain here in this godforsaken wilderness. I’m not sure why Lord Aspermont is so interested in this territory.”

  Laura’s smile disappeared, a frown taking its place. Her eyes turned chilly. “You know how important the fur trade is,” she snapped, “but more than that, these mountains have some of the most abundant natural resources on earth. My God, you’ve seen the forests. Can you imagine how much lumber could be cut from those trees? Not to mention the minerals that may be here.” She shook her head. “Besides, do you want those damned Americans to have it? They’ve already taken so much from us.”

  A faraway look appeared in her eyes as she thought about the father who had gone away to war and never come back. He had fallen in the Battle of New Orleans, a victim of the raw barbarians who had opposed the king’s forces there.

  Only later had the truth come out: That battle was fought after the war itself was over. The news of the treaty simply had not reached either side in time to prevent the bloody clash. So all the deaths suffered there had been pointless.

  But they wouldn’t have happened if not for the upstart Americans, and Laura Mallory would never forgive them for that, nor for what her father’s death had done to her mother. Stricken by grief, the poor woman had wasted away and finally died, leaving Laura and her brother alone in the world.

  Alone and penniless…until Lord Aspermont, one of their father’s old friends who held some mysterious high position in His Majesty’s Government, had contacted them and offered them a job. It would require some special talents, and a certain degree of ruthlessness, but Lord Aspermont believed that Laura and Clyde could handle it because they possessed the most vital quality of all.

  A deep and abiding hatred for the Americans.

  “Of course I’ll do whatever is necessary to thwart their expansion,” Clyde said now. “If they’re allowed to settle this vast territory, their grip on the continent will never be shaken loose. We have to stop them before they control everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

  “We will,” Laura said with a solemn nod. “The rifles are all right?”

  Mallory sounded impatient as he said, “You keep asking me that. The guns are fine. No one will find them, concealed as they are in those false bottoms of the wagons. As soon as the man who’s supposed to put us in contact with the Indians arrives, we’ll get in touch with the savages and strike a bargain with them, just as Lord Aspermont planned. It won’t be long until this whole part of the country is overrun with well-armed redskins who want nothing more than to drive the Americans from their land.”

  “The king’s land,” Laura corrected him, “once the Americans have abandoned it. Then we’ll deal with those savages properly.” She stepped to the door and looked out across the settlement and the neighboring fields all the way to the snowcapped mountains that ringed the lush valley. “It’s only a matter of time, Clyde…only a matter of time until the streams are running red with American blood.”

  Chapter 13

  Lying at the top of a giant, slab-sided rock, Preacher watched as several hundred feet below him the line of horsemen wound through the trees, heading east. He tried to count them,
but the vegetation was too thick to determine the exact number. He was confident, though, that there were either fifteen or sixteen of them.

  “Should be sixteen,” Preacher said to Dog, who lay beside him. “There were twenty-two yesterday, and I did for six of ’em last night. I ain’t the best in the world at cipherin’, but I can count that good anyway.”

  Dog’s tail brushed against the rock as it wagged back and forth.

  “Of course, there may be sixteen,” Preacher went on. “I can’t rightly tell. But if there’s one fella missin’, it don’t have to mean anything. He could’ve got sick and died, or struck out on his own when the rest of the bunch turned back.”

  Even as he mulled it over, though, Preacher felt uneasy. Survival on the frontier often depended on the little things, the sort of details that folks often overlooked…like whether there were sixteen men or only fifteen.

  The one thing Preacher was sure of was that Colin Fairfax was leading the group of men down below. He could see the beaver hat on the man riding in front with the burly second in command next to him. The riders were striking almost due east, heading for one of the passes that led out of the valley. It appeared that Preacher’s nocturnal visit had had the desired effect.

  The men who had been trying to kill him were now cutting and running, and they weren’t wasting any time about it either. At the rate they were going, they would be through the pass and out of the valley by the end of the day, on their way back to St. Louis or wherever they came from.

  Preacher wasn’t going to just assume that they were leaving, though. He intended to follow them until they were well away from his stomping grounds. He didn’t like neglecting his traps, but some things were more important.

  He slid down the rock. Dog bounded down with him. Horse waited at the bottom. Preacher picked up the reins and swung into the saddle. He rode east, too, following a trail that roughly paralleled the one the men were using.