As soon as the women started tunin’ up their vocal cords, Preacher and Snake rode out to the west. The sun was beginning to color the east with dawn’s silver hue.
“Snake,” Preacher said, after the camp was behind them and the voices of the women were faint in the early light and cool air of the plains. “I been knowin’ you ever since I come out here. And I been out here since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. You ain’t changed none. How old are you?”
“I don’t rightly know, Preacher. I think I’m some’eres ’tween seventy and eighty. I know I was years out here ’fore Lewis and Clark come a-traipsin’ through. You see, I killed me two men in Vermont back in ’85.”
“Seventeen eighty-five?” Preacher blurted. That was about seventeen or eighteen years before he was even born!
“Yep. I fit with Washington in the Revolution. And a mighty cruel time that was, too. Anyway, I lit a shuck for the far western lands and never looked back. Not one time has I looked back further than St. Louie.”
“Never heard another word from kith and kin?”
“Nary a peep. I reckon they’re all gone now. I’ve lived more ’un I ever figured I would. There ain’t no place west of the Mississippi that I ain’t seen, neither…well, you know what I mean. Cain’t no man see it all, but I reckon I’ve crossed ever’ crick and river there is out here. Preacher, can I ask you a favor?”
“You know you can.”
“If you’re clost by when it comes my time to check out, you bury me high, will you? You wrap me up real good and tight so’s the smell won’t make you puke, and tote me up to the highest peak you can find. Plant me there.”
“I’ll do ’er, Snake.” He cut his eyes to the old man. “You figurin’ on cashin’ in this trip, are you?”
“You never know, son. You just never know. But I got a feelin’, I do. I’ll be honest with you. I’m tired. Almighty tired. It ain’t so much that I’m tired in my body as it is I’m tired in my mind. I’ve rid all the trails there is to ride, seen all the sights—some of them a dozen times over—and I’ve buried more friends than I care to think about. They’re callin’ to me, Preach. I swear to you they is. I hear ’em in my sleep. You reckon I’m losin’ my mind?”
Preacher shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think that at all, Snake. But I do believe a man knows when it comes his time to go. I’ll plant you high, Snake. You got my word on it.”
The old mountain man nodded his head. “’ppreciate it. Takes a load off my mind, it do.”
The voices of the ladies could no longer be heard, and with one hundred and forty-seven of them shoutin’ to the Heavens, that meant the men had ridden about two miles, more or less.
“You want to stop?” Snake asked.
“Hell, no! I want to put some distance ’tween us and them females. Blackjack knows the way. I want to see what the Platte looks like.”
“It’s wet,” Snake said with a straight face.
“Thank you. I remember that much about it.”
“We gonna cross it just north of here?”
“I ain’t made up my mind yet. What worries me is why Washington wanted us to leave Missouri so soon. Ain’t no way they could have predicted this early spring with plenty of graze.”
“That’s why them extra wagons of feed was put on, Preach. At the last minute,” he added.
“But why?”
“So we stand a better chance of coverin’ two thousand miles ’fore the snows fall.”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
“You got something stuck in your craw?”
“Yeah. Plenty. All of it worrisome. You and me and the others, we’ve seen buffalo stampede, and we was lucky enough to get out of the way. You know what’s gonna happen to the women and the wagons if they get caught up in one?”
“I can make a fair guess.”
“Yeah. And on top of that, we got alkali water and Injuns to worry about. We’re gonna lose livestock and lives crossin’ rivers and run off by Injuns. These women are gonna have to boil water ’fore they drink it to keep from gettin’ sick. We was lucky back yonder that no lightnin’ was with that storm. But we’ll face it in the months ahead. We’re gonna be humpin’ it to keep this train in fresh meat. We’re gonna have to wind-lash these wagons down the grades up ahead. And I mean we. Them ladies won’t be able to do it alone. You noticed these big bastard wagons don’t have no brakes? That’s why I raised so much hell back yonder about additional heavy rope.”
Snake cut his eyes to Preacher. “You’re just a barrel of laughs today, ain’t you, Preach?”
“Hell, Snake, I ain’t even got goin’ good yet.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“I laid in a good stock of dried apples. But it won’t last the trip.”
“Scurvy?”
“You bet.”
“And the last of it?” Snake pressed. “I hope.”
“We’re gonna face dust storms, wind storms, busted wagon wheels…and the lonelies.”
“We can deal with all them things ’ceptin’ the last,” Snake said, his eyes never stopping their scanning of the countryside. “Over the last fifty-odd years, I seen big, strong men fall under the vastness of it all. I mean, go stark, ravin’ mad. You’ve seen it, too.”
Preacher nodded in silent agreement. He’d seen men succumb to the silent horizon that seemed to have no end; to the enormity of it all that reduced man to a tiny nothing. Most men just shrugged it away and accepted it. A few others lost their minds.
One or two, or more, of these women would not be able to cope with it. And then they’d have a raving lunatic on their hands.
Preacher had seen that, too.
“And let’s don’t forget them men on our backtrail,” Snake said. “They shore ain’t up to no good.”
Again, Preacher nodded. The past night, alone under one of the supply wagons, Preacher had carefully gone over the documents given him by the government man back in Missouri. Preacher was convinced the papers were genuine and that the man from Washington was up to no skullduggery. He did not believe the government man was in any way mixed up with that band of scallywags who were following them.
So what were they up to?
He didn’t know.
Who was the tall, well-dressed man who appeared to be leading the group?
He didn’t know that either.
But Preacher had him a hunch he’d know the answers to his questions pretty damn quick.
The going was slow that first day after the torrential rains, and the train made only a few miles. But under the blistering sun, the land dried out quickly and on the second day after the passage of the storm, the wagons made a good fifteen miles. The westward women had said and sung their goodbyes to the three ladies who had become discouraged, and no more was said about them, at least not to Preacher.
Preacher told Blackjack and the other mountain men to take over for a few days. He was going to lag behind and get him an eyeball full of the men following them. He had a place all picked out, and he had his good spyglass. Then Preacher decided he’d best tell Lieutenant Worthington of his plan.
“You’re not going to ambush them, are you?” Rupert asked, a worried look on his face.
“Me? Against forty or fifty armed men? Hell, no!”
“I had to ask, Preacher. Your exploits of daring-do are well known.”
“Uh-huh.” Preacher had no intention of telling the young lieutenant that he did plan—if possible—to grab one of the bunch and get the truth from him.
“In case you are not back when we reach the Platte, do we cross it when we come to it?”
“No. Stay on the south side of it. But you won’t reach it ’fore I return. I’ll be back ’fore you know it.”