Read Preacher's Journey Online
Authors: William W. Johnstone
Preacher's Journey (8 page)
THIRTEEN
“Oh, my God!” Peter exclaimed. He seemed quite shaken by what he had just heard.
Preacher doubted that Angela had really used the phrase “come hell or high water,” but that wasn't important. What mattered was that their group was about to increase by one. He said, “Let's hustle on back and get that fire built. I don't know much about birthin' babies, but I do know we're liable to need plenty o' hot water!”
They hurried on to the wash and slipped and slid down the caved-in bank. Roger Galloway, his father, and his uncles were all gathered around the wagon where Dorothy Galloway was. Roger looked quite agitated, and the older men seemed worried too. Unlike the first time, when Dorothy's screams hadn't unnerved them, this time they were taking it harder, probably because they were already on edge from the Indian attack and the strain of not knowing when the Arikara would strike again.
Peter dumped his load of wood where Preacher indicated; then Preacher added some of the branches he was carrying and put the others aside to be used later. He laid the Hawken on the ground and knelt beside the pile of wood. Getting busy with flint, steel, and tinder, he had a tiny flame flickering within a minute. He leaned over, blew on it, and watched it grow. Some of the wood caught, but the fire spread slowly. Preacher was patient and worked with it, keeping at it until the flames leaped and glowed brightly.
Inside the wagon, Dorothy gave a piercing cry that made the men gathered outside jump. Preacher straightened from the fire and said, “Somebody get a pot and start some water boilin'.” He looked around and spotted Nate. “Go check on your cousins,” he told the youngster.
Nate scurried off while Preacher climbed out of the wash again and looked back toward the west. The light was almost gone, but he didn't see anything moving. He wasn't confident, though, that there was nothing out there. Nobody was better than an Injun at not being seen when he didn't want to be seen.
Dorothy screamed again.
It was going to be a long night, Preacher thought.
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Nate had last seen his cousins Mary and Brad in the wagon belonging to their ma and pa, Nate's Uncle Peter and Aunt Angela. He went there first, proud that Preacher had entrusted him with a job, and pulled the canvas flap at the rear aside to look in. He didn't see the two younger kids, but that didn't mean they weren't here. The interior of the big wagon was heaped with goods the family was taking to Oregon, along with their bedrolls and several pieces of furniture. Mary and Brad could be hiding somewhere, or they might have crawled into a hole and gone to sleep.
“Mary! Brad!” Nate hissed. “Are you in here?”
There was no answer.
Nate frowned. His cousins looked up to him; he was older, after all, and a natural leader. He didn't think they would ignore him.
Unless they were playing some sort of game with him. That was possible, even though this wasn't a good time.
“Consarn it, if you're in here you better speak up,” he said. “Preacher told me to find you, and we got to do like he says.”
Still no response from the dark interior of the wagon. Muttering under his breath, Nate climbed in and started to look around. He knew all the good hiding places, of course, since he was a kid too. But Mary and Brad weren't in any of them.
That meant they were either outside or in one of the other wagons. Nate hadn't seen them outside when he got back with Preacher and Uncle Peter, and he knew for darn sure that they wouldn't go anywhere near the wagon where his ma was a-hollerin', so that left the wagons belonging to his Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Jonathan. Nate knew the two older men were really his great-uncles, since they were Grandpa's brothers, but he still called them uncles.
They were good about not being bothered by young-'uns, not like some grown-ups, so Nate thought it was possible his cousins were poking around in one of their wagons. He dropped to the ground and hurried over to check the two vehicles.
He didn't find Mary and Brad in either of them.
Now he was starting to get a mite worried. It wouldn't be like them to run off, but with the superiority of his years, Nate thought that you never could tell with kids. They were liable to do most anything. He glanced toward his ma and pa's wagon, where the adults were gathered around talking in low tones, all except for Ma and Aunt Angela, who were inside the wagon, of course. Nate looked up and down the wash as far as he could see in either direction. He didn't spot Mary and Brad anywhere.
He saw something else, though, and when he looked closer he felt his heart sinking. Small footprints in the snow led away from one of the wagons over to the western edge of the wash, which ran north and south. When the tracks reached the bank, they turned and started north, following the course of the wash. The old stream that had carved out the gully sometime in the dim past had twisted and turned, so the wash didn't run straight. It had a lot of bends in it. The first one to the north was about a hundred yards from the camp. Mary and Brad could be right around that bend, Nate told himself, hiding from the others and thinking it was all a grand joke.
He turned his head, looking from the footprints to the grown-ups and back again. It was getting dark, but he could follow those tracks in the snow. Once the stars came out, it would be fairly light, and the moon would be up in a while too. Nate knew he ought to go get Preacher and tell him that the kids were gone, but if he did that, they would get in trouble. Uncle Peter was a tempersome man, and if he got mad at Mary and Brad for running off, he was liable to blister their butts. Even if it was just a joke on their part.
I can find them,
Nate thought.
I can find them and bring them back before anybody even knows they're gone.
Nate thought.
I can find them and bring them back before anybody even knows they're gone.
Besides, Preacher had given him this job. Go check on your cousins, the mountain man had said. Nate had been watching Preacher for several days, ever since he'd joined up with them, and he thought Preacher was just about the grandest fella he had ever seen. He was tough enough to fight Injuns and smart enough to live on the frontier, and although Nate looked up to his father, in the space of only a few days he had decided he wanted to be just like Preacher when he grew up. Preacher would be proud of him if he went and found the two younger kids and brought them back, Nate thought.
That was all it took to convince him. None of the grown-ups were paying any attention to him at the moment. He went over to where the tracks led off to the north and started following them.
In a matter of moments, he was out of sight of the wagons.
Not surprisingly, Dorothy Galloway did not have an easy time of this birth. She was already weak and sick, and a long, hard labor might be enough to do her in, Preacher thought as he talked quietly with the Galloway men. They winced every time Dorothy let out a yowl inside the wagon, and Preacher knew exactly how they felt. At a time like this, men were about as much use as tits on a boar hog.
He couldn't afford to forget about their situation. Life had to go on, and Preacher was nothing if not a practical man. After a while, he said, “We better get some supper started, and somebody needs to stand guard.”
“I'll do that,” Simon Galloway volunteered, surprising Preacher. So far, the man had had to be nudged into doing anything useful. The glance Simon cast toward the wagon, though, told Preacher that he just wanted to get away from what was going on in there.
“Take a rifle and go up on the edge of the wash then,” Preacher said to him. “Find you a place to hunker down where you won't be too visible, and listen as hard as you can. Keep your eyes open too. If you see anything worrisome, don't holler. Just get back down here on the double and tell me about it.”
Simon nodded. “I can do that. It's going to be cold away from the fire, though.”
“It ain't like you got to stay up there all night long. We'll spell you after a while.”
“All right.” Simon took a rifle out of one of the wagons and climbed out of the wash.
Jonathan and Geoffrey offered to fix supper. That left Roger and Peter to talk together and be responsible for feeding wood into the fire, as well as for fetching Angela anything she needed. Preacher and Dog moved up on the eastern rim and roamed north and south several hundred yards. Preacher didn't expect any trouble to come at them from that direction, but you never could tell. Death could be lurking just about anywhere on the frontier.
He didn't get so far away that he couldn't hear the cries from the wagon. By the time he got back, they had stopped again, and he saw Angela Galloway standing with Roger and Peter. She was bundled up in a heavy coat with a shawl around her head, covering her hair. As Preacher walked up, she said to him, “I was just telling Roger that it looks like this may take quite a while. I don't expect the baby to be born until sometime along toward morning, if that soon. We may have to stay here for several days. Dorothy will be too weak to travel when this is over.”
Preacher frowned. “The longer it takes us to get to Garvey's Fort, the bigger the risks we're runnin'. That snowstorm a couple of days ago was just ol' man winter gettin' warmed up.”
“I can't help it,” Angela replied, shaking her head. “I'm just telling you the way things are. Too much strain on Dorothy is going to kill her.”
Roger's face grew even more haggard at his sister-in-law's blunt declaration. Peter looked concerned too. He said, “If we need to stay here, we'll stay, and that's all there is to it.”
What they were liable to do, Preacher thought, was sit there until the rest of that Arikara war party caught up. Then they would be in for even worse trouble than if a blizzard caught them on the plains.
At the same time, he understood how the others felt. They didn't want to risk Dorothy's life . . . at least not any more than they already had by bringing her out here in her condition.
“I reckon we'll stay as long as we need to,” he said. “But when we do get movin' again, we'll have to push mighty hard. If you think the pace has been fast up till now, it's gonna get even faster.”
Roger and Peter nodded, but Preacher figured they didn't fully understand. Angela said, “I need to get back in the wagon and see to Dorothy. She'll probably have more contractions any time now.”
“You're sure her water broke?” Roger asked. “This isn't another false labor?”
Angela smiled wearily and laid a hand on his arm for a moment. “This is the real thing, Roger. You'll be a father again, sometime in the next twelve to eighteen hours.”
Birthin' was sure a long, painful process, Preacher thought. He was mighty glad he would never have to go through it. Having fought a grizzly bear and lived through it, he wasn't sure but what he would rather do that again than endure what Dorothy Galloway was going through now.
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After he had eaten the supper that Jonathan and Geoffrey prepared, Preacher climbed up on the western bank of the wash and quietly called Simon's name. Simon answered, and Preacher walked over to the clump of rocks where the older man had posted himself.
“Anything unusual goin' on out there?”
“Well, you have to remember that I'm not all that familiar with what's usual out here,” Simon replied. “But to answer your question, no, I didn't see or hear anything alarming.”
“That's fine. Go on down and get you a surroundin'.”
“What?”
“Somethin' to eat,” Preacher explained. “Get some supper.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Simon moved off into the darkness, and a moment later Preacher heard him climbing down into the wash.
Preacher settled down on one of the rocks and peered into the night. The stars shone brightly overhead and cast enough light for him to be able to see the trees and the hills, and farther away the mountains. His breath fogged in clouds in front of his face. It was cold tonight, but not as frigid as it had been the past two nights.
The Galloways might make it, he thought. Really, for a bunch of greenhorns, they had been damned lucky so far, but there was nothing saying that their luck wouldn't hold. They might even make good settlers if they ever reached the Oregon Territory. He liked the two old-timers, Geoffrey and Jonathan, because they seemed willing to learn, and Roger might be all right once he grew up a little more. Peter and Simon, well, Preacher didn't know about them. A frontiersman had to have a bit of a reckless streak in him, or he would never come out here in the first place. But Peter was hotheaded and acted before he thought, and that was a good way to get killed. Simon was just weak, the sort who would one day crawl into a jug of whiskey and never come out.
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