Cheyenne Challenge (18 page)

An attentive audience accompanied Preacher to his next stop. He took the blade of his knife and dug up a round, flattened tuber with lacy green fronds above ground. “Is that a turnip?” young Nick chirped.

“Sure is. They's stronger flavored than the ones you can grow from seed next year. When you boil 'em up with a slab of that smoked elk and some onions an' yucca' root they'll make you full an' warm.”

“What's yucca?” Nick asked, a frown creasing his forehead and button nose.

“That's them spiky, dark green leaves you see stickin' up in the sandy places. Later on they'll have waxy white blossoms on a stalk. They grow big, fat roots to store water for dry spells. Sweet as a yam,” Preacher unveiled, pleased with his role as teacher. He pointed to a shadowed gulley across the creek.

“Them long vines with the stickers are wild blackberries. They'll bloom in early May, put on dark fruit and be ready to eat in mid-August an' all September. That is if the bears don't get at 'em first.”

“Bears?” a mousey missionary squeaked.

“Oh, sure. An' if you see any out here, don't dispute their claim to the blackberries.”

“I'd shoot him an' put him in the smokehouse,” young Chris declared.

Preacher made a face. “Bear meat's sorta strong, and greasy. Sometimes tastes of fish, only fish that's gone bad. And you got to cook bear meat through and through.”

“Ugh!” several of the missionary boys chorused.

“That's about it for now. We'll look into pine nuts and woodsy things tomorrow. Now I've got to help the ladies learn to jerk venison.”

A loner all of his life, Preacher often felt ill at ease around groups of people. Yet, he had a high old time when he spent hours with the women of the camp in the task of preserving food. He worked at their side, and took them through each step in the process of cutting, seasoning, and drying strips of venison and elk. The only thing that kept it from being a total delight was that they chattered all the time. About woman things, at that.

His cheeks flamed frequently when the subject of corsets and petticoats came up. At such times, he retreated into conjecture on the problem that kept gnawing on him. Ezra Pease and his dealings with the Indians always came to the forefront of Preacher's thoughts. At last he had to take his gleanings to his companions.

Preacher sat aside his plate and licked his lips in satisfaction. “Elk ham makes a man's day, it rightly do,” he declared. “Now, I've got something eatin' at me that we need to worry over together.”

“Pease,” Nighthawk said simply.

“That's right. What do you reckon we ought to do about it?”

“We've been tied down here for better than a week,” Beartooth stated the obvious. “Who knows where Pease is now?”

“That's the point,” Preacher seized on it. “He could be lookin' right down on us this minute. And who knows what mischief he's up to. We got this here little town off to a good start. I think it's time to go out and hunt down Pease and settle his hash once and for all.”

“These gospel-shouters have ten thumbs when it comes to any real work,” Beartooth complained, contradicting his earlier statement. “Someone has to stay with them to make sure their houses don't fall down when they finish 'em.”

Preacher cocked a brow. “You ain't the world's greatest carpenter either, Beartooth.”

“But I can hit the pegs with the hammer, not my thumb.”

“Then yer elected,” Preacher said simply. “Fact is, if there's no objection, I think you all should stay on to get the job done right, whilst I go hunt down Pease. I can clear out in two days' time, find him, then come back for the rest of you. Then we can clean out that nest of rattlers.”

BOOK TWO

1

Ten of Stone Drum's Dog Soldiers crouched in the chokecherry bushes at the crest of the rim that surrounded the hidden valley occupied by the hated whites. The oldest among them, a smooth-muscled man in his mid-thirties, father of three boys and two girls, nodded, his hawk-beak nose pointing out the crude shelters erected by Pease's men. Although a quarter-mile away, he spoke softly.

“We must find Falling Horse. One of you go to the camp of Stone Drum. Our chief must know of this also.”

“They cave moved close to the land of the Blackfeet,” a younger brave observed.

Good Sky nodded again and a flicker of smile lighted his face. “That is why when we attack we must do it swiftly, with all our warriors. None must escape to tell their friends the Blackfeet.” He looked around at the men with him. “Young Bear, you are lightest, can move fast without tiring your pony. Go to Stone Drum. Ottar, you go to Falling Horse. The rest will stay here, keep watch, guide our Dog Soldier brothers to this valley.”

Young Bear's chest swelled. “We are strong enough to take them now.”

“I think not. It is better that we wait,” Good Sky ruled.

That wait lasted three days. Young Bear and Ottar rounded up all of the roving Dog Soldiers who had been searching for the whites and brought them to the valley. There, Falling Horse laid his plans for the attack. He saw at once that some of the whites would no doubt break free of their initial charge and escape the camp that had been established. Yet, he wanted to cause what damage they could.

“We are not enough in numbers to close off both ends of the valley,” he instructed the eager warriors. “We can come from both sides, to increase their confusion. It is best after that to ride to where we can join forces and fight our way back through one side.”

Wiser heads nodded agreement. “To be quiet and surprise them is important,” Falling Horse cautioned.

Without further discussion, the Cheyenne set out to make ready for war. Many of the Dog Soldiers painted themselves and their ponies for the event. Others made up in soft tones of brown and green, in order to sneak up close on the unsuspecting whites before the signal was given to charge. When everyone had reached his proper place, a ruby-throated warbler call advised Falling Horse of this. The time had come.

* * *

Suddenly the peaceful atmosphere of the camp shattered at the sharp-edged war cries of the hundred Cheyenne. Arrows rained from the sky and made a pin cushion of one hard case. His wails and shrieks of agony joined the battle sounds of the Dog Soldiers. Ponies at a gallop, they thundered toward the assortment of tents and brush shelters from upstream and down.

“B'god it's Injuns!” Two Thumbs Buehler shouted in astonishment. His hands darted toward his rifle.

Ezra Pease jolted from his folding camp stool and rushed to the open flap of his tent. Spurts of smoke jetted skyward as the Cheyenne opened up. Belatedly, some of his own men returned fire.

“Hold tight,” Pease shouted. “We out-gun them.”

“How do you know?” came a nervous challenge. “There could be hunnerds of them.”

“You dolt!
We're
the ones selling the guns,” Ezra Pease snapped, wondering how he had come to have so many lamebrains in the gang.

It soon became clear that the Indians advanced in a two-pronged attack. With them they brought firebrands, which they threw into the brush shelters. Flames licked high in scant seconds. A screaming man staggered out of one, his body engulfed by fire. Terrified by this, several of the thugs made a run for the brushy slope of the basin. Fire from London-made fusils erupted in their faces. One man caught two arrows from so short a range that only the fletchings protruded from his shirtfront. The captive boys still with Pease wailed in confusion, uncertain as to where their safety lay. For all their superiority in firepower, Ezra Pease soon saw they had no choice but to make a run for it.

“Harness the teams,” he bellowed, regretting the inevitable loss of his stout tent.

Then, totally unexpected, when the two wings of the charge met near the middle of camp, the hostiles turned in one direction and dashed out of the encircling white men. Although not before they had snatched up a case of rifles, two kegs of powder and one of bullets packed in layers of sawdust. Three, who had been able to understand the pleas of the captive white boys, had youngsters behind them on their ponies. Pease roared his anger after them.

“Damn them! Damn them all. They think they can come in here and take what they want, eh? Then run like whipped dogs. They'll not get away with it.” Still contemptuous of Indians in general, Ezra Pease made yet another mistake. “There can't be more than forty of them. Everyone mount up. I want them hunted down and killed, every last one.”

* * *

Two wagons ambled into the missionaries' valley late the next afternoon. They presented a sorry sight. Both wagons had broken down repeatedly on the rough trail north of Trout Crick Pass. Silas Phipps suffered from withdrawal from alcohol and his orphans all appeared sickly. They stumbled around like walking corpses and all of the missionaries agreed that they needed considerable care.

“Our supplies ran out two days ago,” Helen informed the concerned mission folk. “We haven't had anything to eat since then. Peter has a fever. Please, can you help us?” she appealed to a compassionate committee of women.

“Oh, you poor dears. We'll get you fed right away. Where is the sick boy?”

“In the front wagon,” Helen told Patience Bookworthy.

“Now, you keep yer hands off that boy,” Silas Phipps growled. “He's just faking being sick to get out of work.”

Preacher didn't like the cut of the man at first sight. He had a meanness about his mouth and little, squinty eyes, that darted from place to place, as though assessing the value of everything in sight. His lack of concern for the children didn't sit right, either. It was this that made Preacher decide to step in.

“Are you a doctor?” the mountain man demanded.

“No, I ain't. An' it's none of your concern,” Phipps snapped.

Preacher produced a grim smile, a sure warning sign to any who knew him. “Since you're not a doctor, you don't know any more about how sick that boy is than I do. Let the women take care of him.”

Phipps had time by then to gauge the size and metal of the man confronting him. Coward that he was, he backed down a little. “They can ply him with some soup, and maybe some medicine. We could all use something to eat. But mind, they're not to touch him or take him out of those clothes.”

Preacher wondered on that throughout the day and into the next. Peter responded to the ministrations of the missionary women and roused out of his fevered state by mid-afternoon. Once the affliction had left him, he ate ravenously. Talk went around the new settlement about asking the wanderers to remain in the valley. Preacher objected to that, but withheld comment.

On their second full day in the valley, the children had lost some of their listlessness and befriended children among the missionaries and refugees, in spite of the efforts of Silas Phipps to prevent that. When several of the boys, including young Peter, went downstream to take a bath, Preacher went along to stand guard.

When the lads had undressed, little Nick stared at Peter, eyes wide with wonder. “Jehoshephat! What happened to you?” he blurted.

“It's ... nothin',” Peter responded quietly, his face aflame with humiliation.

“Don't tell me that,” Nick persisted. “Someone whomped on you real fierce.”

“NO! No one did it. I—I . . . fell. Fell off the wagon,” Peter invented in desperation.

Made curious by the anxious tone in Peter's voice, Preacher cut his eyes to where the boys stood naked and knee-deep in the chill creek. His eyes widened and turned as hard as high quality flint when he saw all the scars on Peter's back. Fresh purple welts criss-crossed the boys shoulders, the small of his back and his skinny buttocks. It brought a flash of fury.

Then Preacher recovered his go-easy, mountain man outlook. Not his business, he decided. Some kids needed more rough handling to be brought up right. Might be that Phipps feller told the truth. Then he recalled that the Indians raised some mighty fine youngsters without ever laying a hand on them. Small wonder Phipps didn't want the women to see Peter's back.

Preacher dismissed his immediate concern. They'd spend only another day and a night in the valley, resupply what they could and then Phipps would be told to move on. He'd point the way back to Trout Crick Pass to Phipps and bid him good luck. These youngin's weren't his to be worrying over, Preacher allowed. He turned back to his guard duties.

With Preacher keeping watch for predators of the two and four-legged varieties, the boys splashed and played with the lye soap bar until they turned a bit blue around the lips and shivered violently. Only then would they admit that the water might be a bit chilly. They climbed from the stream and toweled dry. Then Nick, who was small for his age, and a size with Peter, presented the latter boy with a fresh change of clothes. Tears of gratitude and affection filled Peter's' eyes and he turned away to hide them from the other lads. When they had all dressed, Preacher marched them back to the settlement.

There he found Cora Ames all atither over the condition of the older girls. “There's something very wrong in the lives of these children,” she announced sternly.

“Such as?” Preacher prodded, the knowledge of Peter's frequent beatings clear in his mind.

“They won't say anything, in fact they deny that something... unpleasant has been going on.”

“Only you don't think that's the truth?”

Cora cut her big, blue, troubled eyes to him. “Oh, Preacher, all I have are suspicions. But they seem to be in absolute terror of that Mr. Phipps.”

“We'll have to keep an eye on Phipps, for as long as they're here with us then,” Preacher offered.

“Will you, Preacher? It's all I can ask, I suppose. And, tell the others, too. Beartooth, Dupre, and Nighthawk?”

“Sure, Miss Cora. Done without sayin'. Ain't none of us cottons to the man. I reckon it was him who gave Peter a powerful beatin'. More than one, at that.”

Cora's hand flew to her mouth to cover her astonishment. “How badly was the boy injured?”

“I reckon it's what gave him that fever. Some of them stripes was deep, could have festered.”

“Why, that's monstrous.”

“May seem so to you an' me, Miss Cora. But if they belong to him, it ain't again' the law. He can do whatever he wants with 'em, short of actual killin' one.”

Stubborn anger colored Cora's next words. “Not if he's doing what I think he's done to those girls.”

Preacher lost any doubt about her concerns. His lips thinned into a hard line. “So, it's that way, huh? Might be I should have a little talk with Phipps.”

“I'm afraid that might make things worse for them all,” Cora pleaded for restraint.

“Not until he got off his back and outta the splints I'd be puttin' him in,” Preacher rumbled.

* * *

Preacher thought at first he was dreaming of a wounded rabbit. Yet, the pitiful cries had more volume than the squeak of a hurt animal. He came fully awake when they changed to outright screams.

“No! Please, no! I won't let you. It hurts. I won't!” a child's voice penetrated the haze in Preacher's head.

A short distance away, Nighthawk roused from sleep also. “That's a child,” the Delaware stated thickly.

“Yep. An' I got an idee where it's comin' from.” Preacher slipped into moccasins, drew up his buckskin trousers and padded off into the darkness. Nighthawk followed him to the source of the sounds of anguish and humiliation.

Preacher sprang up onto the lip at the base of the tailgate to the second wagon that belonged to Silas Phipps. He had been guided there by the soft, dim glow of a candle burning inside. He was the first among the occupants of the valley to see Silas at his evil pleasure.

Phipps had pulled the thin dress off the skinny, naked form of little Gertha, the ten-year-old. Gertha wretchedly, hot trails of tears coursing down her cheeks. Feebly she batted at the pawing hands of Phipps.

With a roar, Preacher bent inward and grabbed the perverted vermin by the back of his collarless shirt and scruff of his neck. With no more seeming effort than jerking a fly clear off a square of sticky paper, Preacher yanked Silas Phipps out of his wagon and hurled him onto the ground. Nighthawk stood over the astonished Phipps.

“Not even the filthy buzzard-puke that rides for Dirty Dan Frazier would do a low-down thing like that, you bastard!” Preacher roared.

“Them orphans mine. I can do with them what I want,” Phipps wailed in his defense. “Besides, she likes it. Purrs like a li'l kitten she does.”

That set Preacher's control boiling over. “Move over, Nighthawk. This'uns got him a powerful whuppin' comin'. Git up, you sick son of a bitch.”

Phipps cowered, arms up and curled around his head for protection. “Don't you touch me. I didn't do no harm.”

Fire burned in Preacher's eyes as he reached down and dragged Phipps to his boots. “How many o' them little girls have you pestered?” he grated through his fury.

“Only the older ones. Them that's nine or over,” came a whimpered reply.

“What about what you done to Peter?” Preacher prodded, his vision filled with the purple welts on the skin of the boy's pale back.

“Yeah—yeah, him, too, a couple of times. An' Billy, too.”

Shocked to stupefication by this disgusting revelation, Preacher responded with his fists. His big knuckles mashed into Phipps' lips, pulped his nose, split the skin under one eye. Phipps bleated in terror, twisted and pulled in an attempt to escape this terrible punishment. Preacher gave him no slack.