Preacher put it out of his mind and concentrated on the hoofprints that stretched out ahead of him. Fifty men, he thought, shaking his head. Up to what?
Tonight, if at all possible, he’d find out something.
Preacher left Hammer safely hidden and Injuned the remaining two miles to Bedell’s camp. The first thing he learned was that the men with Bedell were not a bunch of greenhorns. They had a carefully staggered circle of guards out and they knew their business. He figured them for a bunch of ridge-runners from Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with maybe a few from Mississippi and Louisiana.
They were good, all right. But Preacher figured that he was better. And he knew he was when he managed to steal one of their horses and lead him into a shallow ravine and picket him quiet.
Shortly after he returned to the camp, the second shift took over, and Preacher picked out his man. The man moved around too much, and had a bad habit of turning his back to the darkness outside the circle. Preacher laid the flat side of his war-axe to the man’s noggin and dragged him off to the ravine.
Preacher didn’t tarry. He tied the unconscious man belly down across the bare back of the stolen horse and got the hell gone from there. He was betting Bedell and his men would think Injuns grabbed the fellow and would not follow in the darkness.
Preacher rode for over an hour, choosing his route carefully. He followed creeks, staying in the water much of the time to throw off and slow down any of Bedell’s men who might follow him—but he did not think any would.
Finally, miles from Bedell’s camp, Preacher swung down and let the prisoner fall to the ground. The man had been awake for quite some time, but had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, since his belly-down position on the bare back of the horse prevented him from seeing just who had grabbed him. Relief showed on his face when he realized a white man had taken him.
But that relief was short-lived when Preacher pulled out his bone-handled, long-bladed Bowie knife and touched the point of the blade to the man’s cheek. “You ever seen a man skinned alive?”
“N…n…no, sir,” the man stammered.
“You want to witness it firsthand?”
“H…hell, no!”
“You got a name?”
“Woford. Woford Lewis.”
“You ever heard of a mountain man called Preacher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What have you heard about him?”
“That’s he’s mean, vicious, and a killer. That he’s lived with the savages for so long, he’s become one. There was a newspaper story on him back home. It said that Preacher has done gone and kilt more’un a thousand men…red savages and white men. That he fought grizzly bears and won. That he lives in a cave with a mountain lion. You know Preacher?”
“I am Preacher.”
Woford fainted.
“Shod horse,” one of Bedell’s men said, rising from his squat where he’d been studying the tracks, now hours old. “But from what I learned back in Missouri, that don’t necessary mean it was a white man. Injuns steal lots of horses.”
Victor Bedell stood silent and thoughtful for a few seconds. For the time and the place, he was very elegantly dressed. Compared to those standing around him, he was a regular dandy. “Woford was a fool. Most of you thought so and told me you did. I won’t risk lives by going after him. If this was the work of red savages, perhaps that’s what they want us to do and are waiting for us. The tracks head north. We’ll continue on west. Personally, I think we’re better off without Woford. It was a mistake to bring him.”
That was a relief even to his motley band of surly cutthroats, thugs, rapists, thieves, and ne’er-do-wells. Woford had been generally disliked. Back in Kentucky Woford had killed his mother and father in a dispute over money, and, over the ensuing years, had left a bloody trail of rape, murder, and mayhem. Not that the men riding with Bedell were any better—they weren’t—they just liked to think they were.
Bedell and his pack of two-legged hyenas mounted up and pulled out.
Woford didn’t know much, but when he awakened from his faint, tied head down from a limb, looking at Preacher about to light a fire only inches from his hair, he was more than happy to share his limited knowledge with the legendary man. Woford was so scared he peed in his longhandles. Preacher disgustedly cut him down and bodily threw him into a creek to cut the smell and then hauled him out and slapped more piss out of him. It only took about five minutes to reduce Woford to a trembling, crying shell, huddled on the ground, begging for his life.
Bedell had him a map, supposedly showing where a large deposit of gold was, and he and his gang were heading there. Once they had the gold, they were going to stake out, claim, and then rule a large portion of the northwest. A king and his soldiers, was the way Woford put it.
And Preacher had guessed right about the wagon train. When Bedell had learned about it, they had hastened their departure in order to fall in behind the train. Later on up the trail, they planned to attack the train, have their way with the women, then kill or trade them to the red savages, and take the supplies.
The men with Bedell were terrible people, Woford said, a sly look in his eyes. “Me, I was shorely duped,” he said. “I thought they was really swell guys going on a grand adventure. I would never have come along if I’d a known what kind of criminals they really was.”
“You’re a liar,” Preacher told him. “And a damn bad one, at that. Shut your mouth while I figure out just what I’m goin’ to do with you.”
“Please, sir,” Woford begged. “I have my aged mother and poor crippled sister back home to support.”
Preacher looked at him in disgust. Woford wisely shut his mouth and said no more.
“Where are your friends gonna hit the wagons?” Preacher asked.
“Please, sir. They are not my friends. I told you, I was hoodwinked. I’m a good man. I…”
Preacher popped him in the mouth with a hard fist that bloodied Woford’s lips. “Liar!”
“What are you going to do with me?” Woford whined.
“I ain’t made up my mind about that, yet. Now shut up.”
At first light, Preacher tossed the unlucky hooligan onto his horse and stood glaring up at him. “I ought to kill you. I know that. But I can’t kill no unarmed man, ’specially one that’s as yellow as you. But hear me well, Woford Lewis. If I ever see you again, no matter where it is, I’ll kill you on the spot. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir, Mister Preacher. Are you gonna give me a gun?”
“No.”
“Dear God in the Heavens!” Woford wailed. “I’m surrounded by red savages and unarmed. I won’t stand a chance out here.”
Preacher had had enough; he slapped Woford’s horse sharply on the rump and the animal jumped out into a run, with bareback-riding Woford hanging on to the mane, his butt bouncing up and down, and hollering for dear life.
On his return trip Preacher stayed north of Bedell and his men and swung wide, hooking up with the wagon train just as they were making camp for the evening. Preacher said not a word to anybody until he’d poured himself a cup of coffee and grabbed up a hunk of bread and some bacon from the pan. Lieutenant Worthington, Eudora, Faith, and a few other women had gathered around Preacher and his friends.
“There was fifty of ’em,” he said, after chewing and swallowing a mouthful of the bread and bacon. “I snatched one out of camp, read to him from the scriptures, and he was right glad to tell me everything he knew. Which wasn’t much, by the way. Now they’s forty-nine of ’em.”
“You killed that man?” Faith blurted.
“Nope. I just slapped him around some and then turned him loose.” He told the crowd everything that he had learned from Woford, then poured him another cup of coffee, and sat down on the ground.
“You know this Bedell person, Captain?” Eudora asked. It irked Lieutenant Worthington to hear her call Preacher “Captain,” and she knew it.