Massacre Canyon (12 page)

“Better take your hand away from that gun, mister,” Preacher drawled. “If you don't, I'd be happy to take it away from you and stick it in a place where it ain't gonna be comfortable for you at all.” The old mountain man paused, then added, “Of course, a dandy such as your own self might just like it.”

The gambler on the other side of the poker table was already angry. Now his face flushed even darker, and the hand he had started to slip under his fancy coat moved another inch closer to destiny.

A saloon girl with piled-up blond hair and a low-cut red dress leaned over beside the gambler and said something into his ear in a low voice. Preacher couldn't hear many of the words, but he picked up a few.

“. . . old man . . . kill you . . . crazy . . . Preacher . . .”

He narrowed one eye at the gambler and gave him the old skunk-eye. If the fella already thought he was a loco old codger, it wouldn't hurt anything to convince him even more.

The gambler drew in a deep breath and said, “All right. No harm done, I suppose. I can be the bigger man about this.”

“What you can do,” Preacher said, “is pull your sleeves back so we can all see the rigs you got for holdin' cards you want to switch out when you get a bad hand. Then you can push that pile o' winnin's in front of you back into the center of the table where the rest of us can divvy it up. That's what a lowdown, four-flushin', tinhorn card cheater like you ought to do before he gets hisself kilt.”

The gambler's breath hissed between clenched teeth. He said, “If you weren't an old man—”

“If I wasn't an old man, I'd be dead. I ain't, so that ought to tell you I know how to stay alive and make sure the other fella don't. That easy enough for you to understand?”

The other four men sitting at this baize-covered table in the O.K. Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, had been watching this confrontation with great interest. During the course of the evening, all of them had lost steadily to the gambler, who had given his name as William Gale. The pots had not been huge, but Gale's “luck” had been such that he'd amassed a pretty big pile of winnings. Clearly, he didn't want to give them up.

One of the men at the table said, “If you're a card mechanic, Gale, you're a pretty good one. I've been in Deadwood since Hickok was here, and I've learned how to spot a cheat. Let's have a look up your sleeves, like the old man says.”

It had been less than five years since Wild Bill Hickok was shot by Jack McCall in the Number 10 Saloon, but they had been tumultuous years and anybody who had been there during that time had gained some valuable experience.

A couple of the other players nodded in agreement with the man who had spoken. One of them said, “If you don't have anything to hide, Gale, you won't mind showing us your sleeves.”

“An innocent man doesn't like to have his honor impugned!”

Preacher said, “If you was an innocent man, that might carry some weight with me. But since you ain't . . .”

“Oh, all right,” Gale said with a look of disgust on his smooth-shaven face. He used his right hand to fiddle with the left sleeve of his coat.

Preacher was ready for a trick. When Gale suddenly thrust out his left arm, Preacher moved even faster. He lunged across the table, caught hold of Gale's wrist, and shoved that arm toward the ceiling. Not straight up, though, because Preacher didn't want a bullet going through the ceiling and into a second-floor room to injure a soiled dove or one of her customers.

Instead, when the derringer in Gale's hand popped, the little slug went harmlessly over the heads of everyone in the saloon and embedded itself in one of the thick beams that held up the ceiling. Preacher's other hand bunched into a fist and smacked into Gale's jaw with enough force to send the gambler's chair over backwards.

Preacher was around the table and kneeling beside Gale before anyone knew what was happening. While he was moving, the old mountain man had drawn his knife. He laid the razor-sharp edge against Gale's throat.

“That little pissant gun o' yours has got a second barrel, I see,” Preacher said into the shocked silence that now filled the O.K. Saloon. “If you're thinkin' about shootin' me with it, old son, you got to ask yourself... do you really think a skeeter bite like that's gonna kill me 'fore I shove this knife all the way through your neck to your spine? It's sharp enough it'll go through you easier'n a purty little speckled trout a-glidin' through a mountain stream. Are you askin' yourself, Mr. Tinhorn?”

Gale's hand opened. The derringer with its unfired barrel fell a couple of inches to the floor.

A woman's voice asked, “Preacher, are you causing a ruckus again?”

“No such thing,” Preacher said without looking around to see who had spoken. He knew the voice. “Just wonderin' why you let cheatin' trash like this in your place, Elizabeth.”

A very attractive woman in a stylish dress walked around them. Wings of raven-black hair curled around her face. Her eyes were a beguiling greenish-gray. She had a tiny scar just above the right end of her upper lip, but it didn't detract from her beauty. If anything, it just made her more lovely. Preacher happened to know that she was in her late thirties, but she looked ten years younger than that.

“No one else has complained about Mr. Gale here,” she said.

Preacher kept the knife at Gale's throat as he pushed back the man's right coat sleeve to reveal a complicated arrangement of cables and metal clips.

“I was wrong about one thing,” the old mountain man said. “I thought he had one o' these contraptions on both arms, but there was a spring holster for that derringer up his other sleeve.”

Elizabeth Langston's mouth tightened in anger. That didn't make her any less pretty, either.

“I don't allow card sharps in my establishment, Mr. Gale,” she said.

“Get . . . get this madman away from me!” Gale gasped. He had trouble getting the words out because of the knife at his throat. “He's going to kill me!”

“I'm not sure anyone here would particularly care,” Elizabeth said coolly. She waved an elegantly manicured hand toward the pile of money on the table and added, “Gentlemen, help yourselves to Mr. Gale's stake. I'll trust you to divide it in the correct proportions. Please, no squabbling.”

“There won't be any, ma'am,” one of the cardplayers assured her. “We just want back what Gale took from us by cheating.”

While they were doing that, Elizabeth looked down at the gambler again and said, “The only reason I'm asking Preacher not to kill you, Mr. Gale, is because the businesses here in Deadwood are making an attempt to live down, at least somewhat, the town's rather lurid reputation. Not too much, mind you. It wouldn't be good for anyone if Deadwood got too tame. But spilling a gallon of blood on the floor isn't a good thing, either. It's difficult to clean up, as well.”

Preacher asked, “Is that your way of sayin' you don't want me to carve this varmint a new grin?”

“I'd appreciate it, yes.”

“Well, all right, since I'm in the habit of agreein' when a good-lookin' gal makes a suggestion.” Preacher leaned over and brought his face even closer to Gale's. He said in quiet, dangerous tones, “But you better light a shuck outta this town, mister. If I ever see you again, I ain't gonna be happy, and there probably won't be anybody as generous as Miss Elizabeth here around to ask me not to kill you.”

Gale started to swallow, then stopped. He nodded his head, barely moving it, just enough to demonstrate his agreement with what Preacher had said.

Preacher took the knife away from Gale's throat and stood up. A tiny drop of blood showed on the gambler's throat where the blade had nicked it. Gale touched a finger to the drop and smeared it across the tip. Fear and hatred warred in his eyes as he looked at Preacher while he climbed shakily to his feet.

“Leave the derringer on the floor and get out,” Elizabeth ordered him.

Gale turned and started toward the saloon's entrance. His gait was none too steady. He didn't even try to pick up the hat that had fallen off his head when Preacher knocked him down, let alone retrieve the derringer.

Preacher picked up the little gun instead, once Gale was gone and things began to get back to normal in the saloon. He broke it open, removed the expended cartridge and the live round from the barrels, and snapped it closed again.

“You want this peashooter?” he asked Elizabeth.

She took it and said, “I'll give it to my friend Andrew. He's a gunsmith. He can probably sell it.” She nodded to the money left on the table. “The others have already taken what they had coming to them. You need to get what you lost, too, Preacher.”

He grinned and said, “Reckon I'll leave it for the house. Weren't really all that much, and I consider it a fair price for the entertainment value of gettin' to wallop a damn tinhorn.”

“He could have killed you, you know. I happened to be watching. He was pretty fast with that hideout gun.”

“I was faster.”

“By a whisker.”

Preacher chuckled and rasped his fingers over the beard stubble on his grizzled jaw.

“I'd say I had the advantage on him there, for sure.”

Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. She said, “Come over to my table and have a drink with me.”

“Like I said, I always like to oblige pretty women.”

Elizabeth signaled to one of her bartenders and led Preacher to a table located in a small alcove in the rear of the barroom. As they sat down, she asked, “How long have you been in Deadwood this time?”

“Just rode in this afternoon,” he told her as he thumbed back his battered old hat to reveal thinning salt-and-pepper hair. Mostly salt.

“And you've already been involved in a shooting and a near-knifing. You never change, do you, Preacher?”

“No, ma'am. And I don't intend to, neither.”

It was true that change came slowly, if at all, to Preacher. Like Elizabeth Langston, he didn't show his age, but the discrepancy was even greater in his case. He could have passed for fifty, instead of three decades older than that.

Since the days when he had been one of the most famous mountain men of the fur trapping era, Preacher had gotten a little scrawnier. His hair was a little whiter, his permanently tanned skin a little more leathery. He wasn't quite as spry as he had been in his younger days . . . which meant he was still faster, more agile, and more dangerous than nine out often men he encountered. He still wore fringed buckskins, but instead of the flintlock pistols he had once carried, he wore holstered Colt revolvers on both hips. He was fast and deadly accurate with them, too, although not at the same level as Smoke and Matt Jensen, the two young men who were the closest thing to family he still had.

The bartender brought a bottle and two glasses to the table. Elizabeth poured the drinks for her and Preacher.

“This is the best stuff in the house, you know,” she said.

“I'm sure it's mighty good.”

“But it's all who-hit-John to you, isn't it?” she asked, smiling.

Preacher sipped the whiskey and smacked his lips in appreciation.

“Yeah, but it's
good
who-hit-John.”

Elizabeth laughed, then grew more serious as she asked, “Did you mean what you said earlier about always trying to oblige a woman?”

“Of course.”

“Then I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Ask away.”

She looked at him over her glass and said, “I need you to kill some men.”

The mining claims around Deadwood were all located in the deep, heavily wooded gulches formed by Deadwood Creek and the other streams in the area. Over the past few years, since the settlement's first boom, many of those claims had been consolidated and taken over by various mining companies and syndicates. It was hard for an individual miner with his pick and shovel, his pan, and his long tom sluice to compete against companies that could afford the latest equipment and the workers to use it.

But some small claims still existed, and one a couple of miles up the gulch from Deadwood was being worked by a man from West Virginia named Frederickson and his four sons. The youngest son, Billy, was only nineteen years old and had recently gotten married to a girl a couple of years younger named Margaret, who was known as Mattie.

“My daughter,” Elizabeth Langston said to Preacher as they sat at her private table, after telling him briefly about the Frederickson clan and their mining claim.

Preacher had wondered where she was leading with this tale, and now he had an inkling.

“You're sayin' she didn't want to marry this boy Billy Frederickson?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“No, not at all. It was Billy's idea, but Mattie went along with it quickly enough, even though I didn't give my permission. She didn't care about that. I think my disapproval made her even more determined to go through with the marriage.”

“Yeah, young'uns are like that,” Preacher mused. “I never knew you had a daughter, Elizabeth.”

She smiled thinly and said, “A woman who's in the saloon business . . . among other things . . . tries to shield her children from the less savory side of her life. In my case, Mattie is my only child, so I was even more protective of her. She'd been in school in Philadelphia, but she ran away and came out here on her own. She wanted to be with me.” Elizabeth gave a small shrug. “I couldn't argue with that sentiment, even though I worried a great deal about letting her stay here. As it turns out, I was right to worry.”

“She got mixed up with Billy Frederickson and then hitched to him.”

“That's right. I tried to explain to her what a primitive, unpleasant business it would be to live on a mining claim, but with the stars in her eyes, she couldn't hear me.”

“Well,” Preacher said slowly, “I'll allow it's prob'ly a rougher life than what she's used to, but it was her own choice, unless you're claimin' this here Billy Frederickson done kidnapped her. That'd put a different face on things, I reckon.”

Elizabeth shook her head again.

“No, like I said, she went out there of her own free will. But what she found waiting for her . . . well, it was worse than just the hardships of living on a mining claim. I started to hear rumors, so I tracked them down. A lot of people in this town owe me favors, Preacher. I heard the same story, independently, from several different sources. It seems the Fredericksons . . . the father and all four sons . . .” She had to draw in a deep breath and visibly brace herself before she could go on. “It seems that they subscribe to a theory of sharing everything equally. All of them regard Mattie as their wife . . . with all that entails.”

For a moment, Preacher just stared across the table at her. He didn't trust himself to speak. When he finally did, he said, “That's a mighty rotten thing.”

“Yes,” she agreed with a faint, humorless smile. “I've been told that Mattie tried to leave, but they wouldn't let her. One of them watches her all the time while the other four work the claim. You can see why I want you to go out there, kill those bastards, and bring my little girl back to me.”

Preacher had a hunch that even if he killed the Fredericksons and returned Mattie to her mother, it wouldn't be as simple getting her back as Elizabeth seemed to think . . . or hope. There were other angles to consider, too.

“Most folks'd go to the law with a problem like this,” he said. “You've got a sheriff here in Deadwood.”

“Yes, and he's a good man, too,” Elizabeth agreed, “but Mattie and Billy Frederickson are legally married. You know that the authorities won't step into something like this. In the eyes of the law it's a private matter between husband and wife.”

She was probably right about that, he decided. Even though civilization was breaking out all over the frontier these days, in many cases the simplest, most effective thing was for a man to stomp his own snakes.

Or for a woman to do likewise. If he went along with what Elizabeth was asking, he'd be the boot and she'd be the one doing the stomping.

As if sensing his hesitation, she reached across the table and clasped his left hand in both of hers.

“I know it's a terrible thing to ask of you,” she said. “To kill those men—”

“I ain't worried about killin' any varmint who's in need of killin',” Preacher interrupted her. “And from the sound of it, them Fredericksons sure fall into that bunch. You're talkin' about five to one odds, though . . . and I ain't as young as I used to be.”

“I've known you for fifteen years, Preacher,” she said. “I don't think you've aged a day in that time.”

“It ain't always the years. It's the miles, and I been a whole heap of 'em.”

“You're also the man who used to slip into Blackfoot camps and cut the throats of a dozen warriors while they slept. You're the Ghost Killer.”

“Was. Anyway, you've maybe been listenin' to too many stories. You know how some folks like to blow a thing up bigger'n it really is.”

“We can talk around and around this, Preacher. What it comes down to is, will you help me and my daughter? I won't insult you by saying that I'll make it worth your while—”

“Good,” Preacher said.

“But I can tell you that I'll be in your debt for the rest of my life.”

Preacher sat there with a frown on his rugged face. If what she had told him was true, the Fredericksons were skunks and needed to be dealt with as such. And it was true that he and Elizabeth had a history. She hadn't really appealed to that, hadn't asked him to help her for old times' sake, but he couldn't really escape that aspect of the situation, either.

“I'll have to look into it,” he finally said. “Make sure that what you've been told is the truth.”

“I'm convinced it is, but I can understand why you'd want to be, too,” she said, nodding.

“Then, if somethin' needs to be done, I'll do it. Can't promise that all five of 'em will wind up dead, though. If there's only one man guardin' Mattie, it shouldn't be too hard to get her away from him.”

“Then they'll come into town, demand that Billy's lawful wife be returned to him, and the sheriff won't have any choice but to go along with what they want.”

She was probably right about that. But just because something was legal didn't mean it was right. Preacher had learned that a long time ago.

“We'll see,” he said. “Anyway, if they're the sort o' hillbillies and ridge runners who'd do such shameful things to start with, there's a mighty good chance they won't let this be settled peacefully.”

“They are,” Elizabeth assured him. “You're going to have your hands full, Preacher. And I want you to be careful.”

“That probably ain't gonna be possible, neither,” the old mountain man said.