Bedell made up his mind. They would have to abandon some of the wagons. He just didn’t have the men and women to drive them all and still keep outriders looking for hostiles. And they would have to abandon some of the mules. Bedell hated mules anyway. He’d hated them since the time one had kicked him clear over a fence when he was a boy. And they would have to abandon some of the supplies; Bedell had sense enough to know that he couldn’t afford to overload the wagons, for he’d heard that this trail turned into a hard one later on.
He hated to leave the barrels of flour, salt pork, and sugar, but he would be more than happy to leave the feed for those goddamn mules. He hated mules.
Preacher sat his saddle and stared at the dozen wagons sitting motionless on the trail. The mules were still hitched up to them. He couldn’t figure that. If Bedell had abandoned the wagons—and it sure looked like that’s what he done—the least the sorry bastard could have done was unhitch the poor critters and let them fend off the land. It was late in the afternoon and had turned hot. The wind was kicking up a lot of dust.
“Stay put until I scout this out,” Preacher told the group, stowing away his spyglass. “Them damn wagons might be filled with riflemen. But the way them mules are fidgetin’ and sufferin’ down there, I doubt it. They smell that river and want a drink bad.”
Preacher slipped down to the unexposed side of his horse and circled the wagons a couple of times, studying the strange scene by looking under his horse’s neck. The mules sure appeared glad to see another living creature, even if it was nothing more than a damn horse.
Preacher slid off his horse at a run and rolled under the rear wagon, his pistols at the ready. But he could tell the wagons were void of human life. He quickly inspected them all and waved for the group to come on.
He was unhooking the mules when they rode up. “Take these poor critters to water,” he told them. “Haul back on ’em now, they’re some thirsty.”
He and Eudora and Faith inspected the wagons and found fodder for the mules and plenty of food and spare clothing for them all.
“I don’t understand this,” Faith said.
“We cut them down so thin, Bedell doesn’t have the men to drive the wagons,” Eudora explained. “Right, Captain?”
“That’s it. But he must be more of a black-hearted son than I thought to leave those poor mules to suffer in harness.”
“I drove mules as a boy,” Rupert said, the statement surprising the hell out of Preacher. “I can fix these harnesses to increase the team size. We can hook the tongues of the spare wagons to the underpinning of the front wagon and only have to use six drivers instead of twelve. That way we’ll still have ample guards out. But I’ve first got to determine which mules are the leaders.”
“Well…you just go right ahead there, Rupert,” Preacher said. “You get them rigged up and we’ll all be back in business, by God.”
“They’re right behind us!” a scout reported to Bedell.
“Who?” Bedell demanded.
“Preacher and a bunch of men!” the excited scout said. “I seen ’em with my own eyes. They’ve hitched up the wagons we left behind and are comin’ on. The wagons are double-teamed.”
“You saw Preacher, probably,” Bedell replied. “But the others are women dressed as men. Preacher double-teamed those goddamn mules because he didn’t have enough people to drive single wagons—just like us.”
“What are we gonna do?” Rat Face asked. Preacher had accurately pegged the name back in Missouri. Everyone called the man Rat Face. He looked like a two-legged rat, and was just as vicious and sneaky.
“We’ll not ambush Preacher again,” Jack Hayes said, riding up. “I say we attack.”
“Yeah,” a thug called Tater said. “Just ride right over ’em. We can do it.”
Bedell looked at Tater. The man was not known for his intelligence. For that matter, neither was Jack Hayes. Bedell shook his head. “Our losses would be too great. Even if we managed to succeed, which I doubt we could, our numbers would be cut in half. And then where would we be?” Before anyone else could answer, he said, “I’ll tell you where we’d be. In the middle of hostile country with not enough men to fight off an Indian attack. You want that?”
No one did.
Bedell sat his saddle in silence. He really didn’t know what to do about Preacher. To launch an attack against those behind would be folly. Bedell guessed, and guessed accurately, that Preacher had armed the women well. Each one of them would have six or seven, or more, loaded weapons available. To charge into that would be the end of Bedell’s plans.
No, they would have to hold out until the rendezvous point; then they could deal with Preacher and the women. Bedell twisted in the saddle and looked behind him.
He’d be doing a lot of that before his game was played out.
“Why don’t they attack?” Faith asked. Supper was over and the fire put out before darkness fell. This close to Bedell, there would be no night fires. “I would.”
“I think,” Rupert said, “Bedell has calculated the odds of conducting a successful attack and found them not to his liking.”
“You’re learnin’, Rupert,” Preacher said, lying on his blankets, his head on his saddle. “I took a terrible chance by pullin’ us this close to that trash, but it looks like it worked. Bedell’s worried, and I intend to keep him that way for a few days.” He drank the last of his coffee and tossed out the grounds that remained at the bottom of his cup. “It would still be too risky for me to try anything for a few days. Them outlaws will be shootin’ at the wind.”
“What do we do now?” Brigitte asked.
Preacher rolled up in his blankets. “Go to sleep.” And he did.
16
At the end of the second day after learning that Preacher and the others were tagging along behind them, a thoroughly disgusted Bedell glared at the scout for that day. “Well?”
“They’s still back yonder,” the man reported. “Just a-ploddin’ along.”
“Did you let yourself be seen as I told you?”
“Yes, sir, Mister Bedell. I showed myself up no more than five hundred yards from the wagons.”
“What did Preacher do?”
“He waved at me.”
“He did what?”
“Waved at me.”
Bedell cussed, loud and long. He’d been doing quite a lot of that the past couple of days. He’d also been toying with the idea of meeting with Preacher and trying to work something out between them. He kept vacillating on the thought, finally giving it up and putting it out of his mind. Having firsthand and quite painful knowledge of Preacher’s volatile temper, Bedell reached the conclusion that even if he called for a gentleman’s agreement, and met the mountain man unarmed, Preacher would probably just shoot him on the spot.
Preacher was little better than a damn savage himself, Bedell thought. Breeding always tells.
“We’ll just push on,” Bedell told his men and women. “And stay alert. If Preacher waits much longer, we’ll have him where we want him.”
Just after dusk, Preacher was belly down in the grass, not a hundred yards from Bedell’s circle of wagons. He had not come to attack, although he would if the opportunity presented itself, but to observe. Just as he had guessed, Bedell had put the women in the center of the camp. No way in hell he could help them while they were located there.
Preacher sensed, more than heard, movement behind him and to his right. He moved only his eyes. Indians. Kiowa or Cheyenne, probably, and they were moving in closer.