Read Preacher's Journey Online
Authors: William W. Johnstone
Preacher's Journey (3 page)
FOUR
Preacher didn't bother digging a grave for the six corpses. He found a nearby gully, dumped the bodies in it with the help of Geoffrey and Jonathan, and caved in the bank to cover them. He knew it was a mite disrespectful not to treat them according to the customs of their own people, but he wasn't a 'Ree, and besides, they'd tried to kill him. He might not hold that against them, but it didn't make him inclined to do them any special favors neither.
When he and the two old-timers got back to the wagons, Preacher saw the towheaded boy standing near the dun. “Does he bite, mister?” the youngster asked.
“He just might,” Preacher said as he strolled over. “Might nip a finger right off. You got to worry more about gettin' behind him, though. He's liable to kick you if you do, and you don't want that to happen.”
“No, sir,” the boy agreed solemnly. “I'm Nathan. They call me Nate.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Nate. They call me Preacher, but you know what name I was borned with?”
“No, what?”
“Arthur.”
Nate made a face. “That's not a very good name.”
“Why, sure it is!” Preacher said with a grin. “Ain't you never heard of King Arthur and his knights?”
“Well . . . I reckon maybe. But you're not a king, are you?”
“No, but I'm somethin' better than a king.”
“What's better than a king?”
“A mountain man. A fella who lives free, who goes where he wants and ain't tied down to no old throne. I wouldn't know for sure, but I suspect it's a whole heap o' hard work bein' a king. I wouldn't want the job, no, sir.”
Nate laughed. “I don't think I would either.”
Preacher inclined his head toward the wagons. “I saw a couple of other young'uns earlier.”
“Those are my cousins, Mary and Brad. I don't have any brothers or sisters, but I will soon. That's my mama who was yelling a while ago. She's having a baby.”
Preacher nodded. “So I heard. You want a brother or a sister?”
Nate made a face again. “I don't particularly want either one. But I guess whatever I get will be fine.”
“You best be grateful you won't be an only child no more. I got a brother and sister, but I ain't seen 'em in twenty years. I miss 'em somethin' fierce sometimes.”
“Then why don't you go and see them?”
“I'll do that,” Preacher said. “One of these days. Run along now, and don't get too near this old horse. He's used to me, but he ain't very friendly with other folks. Same with the dog.”
“What's your dog's name?”
“Dog,” Preacher said. He left Nate with a puzzled frown on his face and walked toward the wagons, where Roger, Peter, Geoffrey, and Jonathan were standing and talking. As he approached, Preacher saw that another man had joined the group. He was older too, and there was a resemblance between him and Geoffrey and Jonathan. Another Galloway brother from the older generation?
That proved to be exactly right. Roger said, “Preacher, this is my father, Simon Galloway.”
Simon was stocky like Jonathan, but clean-shaven and mostly bald. He shook hands with Preacher and said, “Thank you for what you did to help us.”
“Folks out here in the mountains got to stick together,” Preacher said. “Even when they shouldn't ought to be here.”
“What do you mean by that?” Peter asked sharply.
“I mean we got to have a talk about what you folks are doin' here and what you ought to do next.”
“What we're doing is simple,” Roger said. “We're going to Oregon to settle there.”
Preacher shook his head. “There's ways to get to Oregon, but this ain't one of them. You ought to be south and west of here, heading for one of the passes through the mountains.”
“No,” Roger said stubbornly. “We're going to go around the mountains to the north.”
For a moment all Preacher could do was stare, sort of like Roger had suddenly grown a second nose or a third eye in the middle of his forehead. Finally he repeated, “Around the mountains to the north.”
“That's right. A guide we talked to a trading post a few weeks ago told us there was no good way through the mountains, so the smart travelers go around them to the north.”
Preacher closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his face. There were so many things wrong with what Roger Galloway had just said that Preacher didn't know where to begin. He settled for asking, “This fella you talked to, what was his name?”
“Let me think . . . Drummond, I believe he said.”
Preacher nodded. For all its vastness, the frontier could be a small place at times, and though he didn't know a man named Drummond, there was a good likelihood he would run into the son of a bitch sooner or later. If he did, he intended to hand him a good beatin'. Anybody who would send a bunch of dumb pilgrims off to almost certain death deserved at least that much.
“Drummond told you wrong,” Preacher said mildly. “There ain't no way to go around these mountains. They run from somewhere way up in Canada all the way down to Mexico. You could go north from now on and never get to the end of 'em.”
All five of the men looked at him with worried frowns. Jonathan said, “That can't be right. Mr. Drummond seemed so sure.”
“He was havin' some sport with you. Reckon he didn't care that what he told you might wind up gettin' you killed.”
“It can't be that bad,” Simon said shakily. He had the reddish nose and the veined eyes of a heavy drinker. Preacher wondered if earlier, during the Arikara attack, he had been hiding out in one of the wagons, sucking on a jug of whiskey.
“It's that bad,” Preacher said, his voice flat with certainty. “Winter's comin', and probably comin' fast. There's been a snow or two already in these parts, and one day soon a sure-enough blizzard will come roarin' down out o' the north. When that happens, the temperature will drop down to thirty or forty below zero, the wind'll blow so hard you won't be able to stand up, and when it's all over there'll be three or four feet of snow on the ground, deeper in the drifts.”
Peter turned pale, which made the bushy black eyebrows stand out even more against his face. “My God! How could anyone live through something like that?”
“You can't unless you've got some good shelter, which same you ain't likely to find around here.”
“Then what should we
do
?” Geoffrey asked.
do
?” Geoffrey asked.
“Maybe we could go south to one of those passes you mentioned,” Roger suggested to Preacher.
“If it was earlier in the year, maybe, but those passes are all blocked by snow already. They're only open for a few months during the summer and early fall. Hell, nobody goes west at this time of year.”
“We were delayed leaving the settlements, and we had no choice but to press on.”
“You had a choice. You could've waited until next spring.”
Roger shook his head. “No. We couldn't.”
“Well, you're in a mess now, pure and simple,” Preacher said. “Way I see it, there's only one thing you can do: turn around and hit back east as fast as you can. There's a little settlement 'bout a hundred and twenty miles east of here called Garvey's Fort. You could winter there and start out again next spring, with a real guide this time. Folks don't need to start across the mountains without somebody who knows where he's goin'.”
“A hundred and twenty miles will take us at least two weeks,” Roger pointed out. “You said a blizzard could strike at any time.”
“It can. But who knows, maybe you'll be lucky and the really bad weather will hold off for a spell. You'll make better time once you get out of the mountains and back on the plains. It'll be close, but it's the only chance you got.”
Roger asked the question that Preacher had been dreading. “You'll take us there?”
“You must know the way, Preacher,” Jonathan put in. “We'll get lost again if we don't have a guide. You as much as said so.”
Roger frowned a little. Preacher had already figured out that Roger was the leader of this ill-advised expedition, despite being younger than his father and uncles. Roger seemed to be the driving force for them being here in the first place. Preacher's harsh words had struck a blow at his pride.
But Roger was practical too, and knew the party needed help. Quietly, he said, “We won't have a chance if you don't show us the way.”
Preacher sighed, knowing that it was true. “I reckon I ain't got nothin' better to do,” he said. “It's too late in the day to pull out now, but first thing in the mornin' we'll get these wagons turned around and head east. If the birthin' is over and done with by then, I mean.”
There hadn't been any screams from the wagons for quite some time, but there hadn't been the squall of a newborn baby either, as Preacher had halfway expected to hear. Now, Peter looked toward the wagons and called, “Angela?”
Preacher turned to see a woman climbing out the back of one of the canvas-covered vehicles. She was in her twenties, he judged, and looked tired. She pushed back strands of honey-colored hair from her face as Peter and Roger hurried toward her. Her slender figure made it clear she wasn't about to give birth, and Preacher figured she hadn't done it recently or she wouldn't look as spry as she did. This had to be Peter Galloway's wife, who had been helping Roger's wife Dorothy.
Along with Preacher, the older men trailed after Roger and Peter. Roger gripped Angela's hand and said eagerly, “Is it over? Do I have another son or a daughter?”
Wearily, Angela shook her head. “It was a false alarm,” she said. “Dorothy's not ready to give birth yet. I'm sorry.”
“Not ready?” Roger repeated. “But I . . . I don't understand. She was in labor. . . .”
“False labor. It's not uncommon, and it feels like the real thing. Sometimes it can take all day to pass, and Dorothy had an unusually strong bout of it. She's all right now, though.”
“I don't believe it,” Roger muttered. “I was so sure it was time. . . .”
Angela smiled and patted her brother-in-law's arm. “Babies come when they're good and ready,” she said, which was pretty much the same thing Preacher had said earlier. “Don't fret, Roger. I'm sure everything will be fine.” She looked over at Preacher. “Who's this?”
Preacher took off his broad-brimmed hat and nodded to her. “Ma'am,” he said. Angela Galloway was the first white woman he had seen in over a year.
“This is Preacher,” Jonathan said. “He helped us when those Indians attacked us earlier.”
Angela smiled. “I heard the shooting, but I was too busy at the time to see what was going on. Thank you, sir, for your help.”
“I'm just glad I came along when I did,” Preacher said, and somewhat to his surprise, he realized it was true. He didn't have any use for movers, especially ones that were dumb as rocks, but likely they would all be dead by now if he hadn't come along, including those kids. He had buried enough innocent folks in his life and figured he would bury more before it was over, but at least he didn't have to today.
“Preacher's going to help us get back,” Roger said.
“Get back? I thought we were going on to Oregon as soon as Dorothy delivers.”
“Evidently there's no way to get there the way we were going,” Peter said to his wife, “and if we don't return to what passes for civilization out here as quickly as possible, we're all going to die in a blizzard.”
Angela pressed a hand to her breasts and stared at Peter. “My God! You . . . You can't be serious.”
Peter nodded toward Preacher. “Ask him. He was the one who said it.”
Angela turned toward Preacher again. “Is it true? Are all our lives in danger?”
Preacher told her the truth. Something in her blue eyes told him she could handle it.
“Ma'am, y'all were in danger the first day you set foot west of the Mississippi.”
FIVE
When he awoke, Nah Ka Wan fully expected to find that he had died and was ready to be welcomed into the spirit world by Neshanu Natchitak, the Chief Above. His physical body would be taken into the earth by Mother Corn, who had dominion over all things in that fleshly realm, and used to help make the grass grow and the flowers bloom when spring came once again to the land.
Instead, he was alive. He knew that because pain worse than any he had ever experienced now filled him. A groan escaped from his mouth.
“He lives,” a voice said in the tongue of the Sahnish.
The words came from above him, somewhere close by. Nah Ka Wan forced his eyes open and saw the grave, painted face of Badger's Den, the medicine man who had accompanied Swift Arrow's war party. The face of Badger's Den went away and was replaced by the fierce features of Swift Arrow himself.
“Nah Ka Wan,” Swift Arrow said. “Where are the others?”
Nah Ka Wan struggled to make his mouth work. His lips parted, but at first only husking sounds came out. When at last he was able to form words, he said, “Dead . . . all dead.”
“How?” Swift Arrow demanded.
“Killed by . . . the whites we sought . . . except one . . . a wolf got him . . . the wolf was with . . . a hair-faced white man . . . He killed all the others. . . .”
“One man killed five Sahnish warriors?” Swift Arrow sounded as if he could not believe such a thing.
Nah Ka Wan nodded weakly.
Swift Arrow turned and spoke to Badger's Den. “There was no hair-faced white man with them when they came near our village. He has joined them since then.”
“You think it could be the one called Preacher? He has hair on his face and travels with a wolf.”
“I do not know. But if Preacher is with them, is it bad medicine?”
“Preacher is never good medicine for his enemies,” Badger's Den said.
Nah Ka Wan closed his eyes to rest. He had heard of this Preacher; most who lived on the plains and in the mountains had heard of him. Among the Indians he was famous because of the grizzly bear he had slain with only a knife, almost losing his own life in turn to the great beast.
The Sahnish revered the bear. Many warriors slew them in order to take their skins. Swift Arrow himself wore a robe made from the skin of a bear, with the head left on so that it sat atop Swift Arrow's own head. Nah Ka Wan hoped to have a robe of bearskin someday, when he was a mighty enough warrior.
First, though, he had to recover from his ordeal. He roused from his half sleep and murmured, “How did you find me?”
“We followed the sounds of the bear,” Swift Arrow replied. “We came upon him standing over you, rolling you around on the ground with his paws. You did not move, and we feared that the bear had slain you. So we killed the bear and took his skin, and then we saw that you still lived, though your arms and legs are dead.”
Nah Ka Wan did not know what Swift Arrow meant by that. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that he could not. Crying out, he asked that his arm be lifted so that he could see his hand. The flesh was white and had no feeling in it, like that of a corpse.
The cold had done it, Nah Ka Wan thought, the cold of the stream and then the greater cold of the air. His arms and legs had died and would never return to life, so the rest of him might as well have died too. He could no longer hunt or fight or even take care of himself.
“Slay me!” he cried. “Slay me!”
“We cannot,” Swift Arrow said solemnly. “To do such would be an insult to Neshanu Natchitak, who governs all. It must be his hand who takes you. It must be the will of the Chief Above.” He added, “But I say this to you: You will not live. The bear wounded you.”
Nah Ka Wan closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, grinding his teeth together and fighting back tears.
“We must go on,” Swift Arrow said after a moment. “Tell us where to find the hair-faced one and the rest of the whites.”
Nah Ka Wan swallowed hard. The war chief was right. Vengeance was all that mattered, and now the blood debt was greater than ever before, because of the warriors who had died today. He opened his eyes again and forced himself to tell Swift Arrow that they should find the stream and follow it. That would take them to the whites.
Swift Arrow gave orders that Nah Ka Wan should be lifted and propped against the trunk of a tree, so that he could look around and see the place in which he was going to die. It was on the side of a hill, with trees all around and a mountain rising before him to a snow-crested peak. To the right, the land fell away in a series of valleys so that Nah Ka Wan could see for miles and miles. It was a good place to die, he decided.
He looked down at himself and saw that he had been wrapped in the skin of the bear. His chest and stomach burned where the bear had ripped them open while rolling him on the ground. The beast had not been trying to hurt him, only to decide what he was. But the harm had been done anyway, and along with the damage he had suffered from the cold, it was all too much to be overcome. He knew that the time remaining to him could be numbered in heartbeats. The sun slipped below the peak as he watched, and the air began to grow colder.
“We leave you now,” Badger's Den said as the war party walked away. “Soon you will be with Neshanu Natchitak. Tell him that you were a brave warrior, and he will welcome you.”
Nah Ka Wan nodded but could not speak, because his teeth had begun to chatter again. For a time, a slight warmth had come into his body, but it was gone now. The deep cold had returned.
Badger's Den joined the others, and soon they vanished into the trees. Nah Ka Wan was alone on the hillside as the light faded from the sky. The bearskin was tucked snugly around him, but it did nothing to counter the frigidness that consumed him from within.
As the stars began to come to life in the darkening sky over the mountains, Nah Ka Wanâwhose name meant He Who Is Fortunateâdied, wrapped in the skin of the bear.
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The first thing Preacher did was to get a bucket from one of the wagons and use water from the creek to put out that damned fire. It gave off enough smoke to announce their presence for miles around. Then he showed the others how to dig a fire pit, bank rocks around it, and build a fire that gave off warmth but little smoke or light.
“That fire's not big enough to provide enough heat,” Peter complained. “It gets cold out here at night.”
“I never would've guessed,” Preacher said dryly, making an effort to control his temper. “Everybody'll just have to bundle up a mite more.”
“Do you think any more Indians will attack us?” Roger asked.
“No way of knowin' just yet. Could be the ones who jumped you were renegades and there ain't any more of them around here. But if they were from a larger war party . . .” Preacher shrugged and left the rest of it unsaid.
He was still mighty puzzled by the whole thing, he thought as he hunkered by the fire and put some coffee on to boil. The 'Rees shouldn't have been here. The Arikara were more agricultural than a lot of tribes, and actually seemed to like farming. Though they hunted as well, they also traded the grain and other crops they grew to other tribes for meat. Because of their farming, they were more tied to the land and tended to wander less. Originally from farther south, most of them now lived on the plains between the North Platte and the Missouri Rivers. There must have been a mighty good reason for a war party to pick up and head west a hundred miles into the edge of the mountains.
Unless, as he had mentioned, the warriors were renegades who had been forced to leave the tribe for some reason. In a case like that, there was no telling where the exiles might roam. Preacher actually hoped that was what had happened. If there was a larger war party on the loose in these parts, odds were their path would cross that of the wagon train, and probably sooner rather than later.
Roger Galloway sat down beside Preacher. “When we make it to this Garvey's Fort, will you spend the rest of the winter there too?” he asked.
“Ain't decided yet. Dependin' on the weather, I might come back up here so's I can get an early start on my trappin' come spring.”
Roger hesitated. “I was, ah, hoping that we might persuade you to spend the winter there and then lead us on to the Oregon Territory in the spring.”
“I never signed on to be no wagon train guide.”
“I know that. But we've all heard of you, Preacher. Nobody knows the Rocky Mountains as well as you do. Why, you were one of the first men to explore this wilderness!”
Preacher grunted. “One of the first white men, you mean, and even that ain't right. There was French trappers up here even before Lewis and Clark came traipsin' through on their way to the Pacific, and Jesuit missionaries too. Black Robes, the Injuns call 'em. For a while there was even a settlement of sorts not far from here, a place called New Hope. Long gone now, of course. So there's lots of fellas who know their way around. You can find somebody to guide you.”
“Well, I'll accept that for now,” Roger said. “I reserve the right to hope that you change your mind, though.”
“Reserve all you want,” Preacher said as he used a thick piece of tanned buffalo hide to protect his hand as he picked up the hot coffeepot.
The party had plenty of supplies, so he didn't feel bad about sharing their food and coffee. Angela Galloway, Peter's wife, carried a plate of food in to Dorothy, who was resting in Roger's wagon. Preacher had learned that Roger and Peter each had a wagon, and Geoffrey and Jonathan drove the other two vehicles. Simon rode pretty much wherever he could.
The kids wanted Preacher to tell them stories about living in the mountains, so he obliged by spinning a cleaned-up version of some of the incidents that had happened to him. He told them about fighting the grizzly with a knife, but didn't go into detail about the terrible wounds he had received from the critter's claws. He told them about some of the Indians he had known, concentrating on the friendly ones and leaving out any mention of the grisly tortures he had seen meted out by the unfriendly ones. He supposed that he made the frontier sound like a nicer, safer place than it really was, but he was talking to young'uns after all. Time enough for them to know the truth when they was growed.
It was their parents' responsibilityâand now, by extension, his too, because he had agreed to help themâto see to it that they got a chance to grow up.
Eventually the kids grew sleepy and turned in. So did all three of the old-timers. Roger went off to sit in the wagon with his pregnant wife. That left Peter and Angela to sit by the fire with Preacher, and Peter had made it clear that he didn't care for the mountain man's company. After just a few minutes, he stood up and said, “I'm going to bed. Come along, Angela.”
“I'll wake you up in a couple of hours,” Preacher said.
Peter stared at him for a second and then asked, “Whatever for?”
“To stand your turn on watch, of course. You fellas post a guard and take turns standin' watch, don't you?”
“We haven't found it necessary so far to do so,” Peter said.
Lord, how had they stayed alive this long? Preacher asked himself. Aloud he said, “Well, it's necessary now. It's a whole heap necessary. You'll stand two-man guard shifts, switchin' out every couple of hours.”
“Who's going to stand guard with you?”
“I'll be all right by myself. I ain't likely to doze off.”
Angela Galloway said, “I could keep Mr. Preacher company. I'm tired but not really sleepy.”
“Absolutely not!” Peter exclaimed.
Preacher smiled at Angela. “I'm obliged for the offer, ma'am, but it ain't needful. You go on with your husband and get some rest.”
“You're sure?” Angela asked.
“Yes, ma'am.”
She got to her feet and said, “All right, then,” but she didn't look all that happy about going off to their wagon with Peter. Preacher frowned as he watched them go. Ever since he had run into these folks, he had gotten the feeling that something was wrong. He wondered if the obvious tension between Peter and Angela was part of it, or if there was more going on.
He sipped coffee from the tin cup in his hand, relishing the strong black brew, and listened to the night around him. He had a brace of pistols tucked in his belt, and both Hawkens lay on the ground beside him. He was ready if trouble came at him from the darkness.
It might be a different story, though, if the trouble came from within the camp. That was going to be harder to guard against.
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