The men dismounted and hugged each other and danced around, whooping, hollering, and filling the air with profane insults. While the mountain men sated their appetites of jubilation, Eudora halted the wagons and started a fire for coffee and food. Preacher told his friends what had transpired.
“That’s about it, I reckon,” Preacher said. “Them no-count trash killed Hammer, and I aim to avenge my good horse.”
The men nodded solemnly. They knew how deeply a man could feel about the loss of a good horse or dog. Since the domestication of animals, more men have probably been killed over horses and dogs than have been killed over women. Leaving a man alone and without a horse in hostile country was just about the same as signing his death warrant.
The mountain men then sat, drank, and ate and listened to the women tell of what had happened to them…and to those they had buried.
“They got to be kilt then,” Snake opined when the women had finished. “It offends me to have to breathe the same air as men who done things like that.”
The women then sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed (Rupert included), and listened to the suggestions the mountain men had as to what should be done to Bedell and his followers. Some of the suggestions were quite inventive. The women were learning quickly that the mountain men, while often-times unshaven and shaggy, and certainly hard, crude, and lewd to the eyes and ears of so-called civilized easterners, operated under a strict code of conduct. Step across their invisible line, and one faced death at their hands.
“So they’re linkin’ up with another party of outlaws up the trail, hey, Preacher?” Blackjack asked.
“Yep.”
“How many?” Steals Pony asked.
“I don’t know. Twenty-five or so, I’d guess. And I don’t know whether Bedell’s headin’ for California or the northwest. Mayhaps he had plans to split up. But now…I’d take me a guess that he’s gonna stay together and head for the gold he claims he’s found.”
“Then we got to hit them ’fore he links up with them others,” Snake said. “We let him get too strong, and we ain’t gonna be able to do nothin’.”
Preacher nodded his head in agreement. “That’s right. But I don’t see no way of gettin’ ahead of Bedell. We can’t leave the wagons. They’d be looted and burned ’fore we got ten miles.”
“Then he must be slowed down or stopped for a day or so,” Rupert said. “Allowing us time to catch up.”
“Good thought, boy,” Snake said. “You got a plan?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Just below where the rivers split,” Steals Pony said, “there is a place where three men could stall the wagons for as long as need be. You have dozens of weapons here, Preacher. You give us extra rifles and caps, shot and powder, and we’ll ride on ahead and buy you the time to close the gap.”
“Sounds good to me,” Preacher said.
“When do we leave?” Snake asked.
Blackjack stood up. “Right now.”
Bedell sat on the ground drinking a cup of coffee. He still had trouble believing Preacher was really dead. He wanted desperately to believe it…but try as he might, something deep within him would not let the doubts fade.
Later on, after he’d had time to think over what his scouts had reported, he’d wanted to scream at them, asking them why they had not worked their way closer to the smoke and made certain that the damn meddling mountain man was dead.
But, it was too late now.
After that one successful attack by the savages, the wagons had encountered no trouble at all. The trip could now be called monotonous. And hot, Bedell thought, looking up at the sun, now just beginning its westward dip. It was time to end the rest and food break and get moving.
Tom Cushing approached him. “The women have requested they be allowed to bathe, sir. And to tell the truth, we all need a good wash and scrub. Ain’t a one of us that ain’t gettin’ right gamey.”
Except me, you oaf! Bedell thought. Well, why not? They certainly weren’t in any imminent danger. “Very well. Post the guards and take your baths.”
Several thousand miles away, in the nation’s capital, the man who had recruited Preacher and seen to the gathering of the women who wanted to move west and start a new life sat in his office and stared out at the rain. He took a sip of coffee and spat it out. The coffee had turned cold.
“Miserable weather,” he muttered. He could never understand why anyone would want to build a city in the middle of a damn swamp. He wished he could have gone along with the wagon train, for he truly loved the western frontier. He’d been along when the Iowa Territory had been formed in ’38 and had traveled with the Army up to the border of Canada. What a grand adventure that had been. But the President would not post him for long outside of Washington. He had asked so many times, and had been turned down an equal number, that it had now become something of a joke.
He stared out at the rain and the ominous storm clouds that were continuing to build over the capital city. He sure wished he was out on the plains with Preacher and those other characters he’d gathered around him. The man from Washington felt he was missing the time of his life.
Yes, he concluded, Preacher and the ladies must be having the adventure of their lives.
He turned back to his paperwork with a sigh.
Preacher rode about a mile from the lead wagon. The Great Plains had opened her vastness to summer and it was hot. The wagons were making good time—better time than Preacher had expected—but they were still many days away from the agreed-upon ambush point. Only days if the weather stayed good, a few weeks if it turned sour.
He twisted in the saddle and looked back at the wagons, then slowly scanned the plains that lay all around him. This country could crack a man’s brain-box wide open. He knew. He’d seen it happen. It was just miles and miles of nothing but more miles and miles. Some folks called it the Big Lonesome. When the buffalo started moving, Preacher had felt the ground actually tremble under the impact of thousands of hooves. The herd might be miles away, but a body’s feet could register the deadly awesomeness of a thundering herd of the shaggy beasts. If a man was to get caught afoot with a stampeding herd of buffalo comin’ dead at him…well, Preacher had seen that, too. There wasn’t enough left of the man to bury.
The ladies had been unusually quiet for the past couple of days, and Preacher knew the country was getting to them. It was the awful aloneness of it all. The endless rolling plains, the horizon that just never seemed to quit. Even Rupert had stopped his vocal flights of prose in describing the journey. Well, almost stopped.
But Preacher had seen the young man toughen, mentally and physically, almost right before his eyes. And the journey had really just begun, for what lay ahead of them was ten times rougher than what they’d traveled over since leaving the jump-off point back in Missouri. If Rupert stayed in the army, which he’d said he was going to do, he’d be a fine officer. And this trip would be the steel that would reenforce his backbone. He had courage a-plenty, Preacher had seen that. The young man would do to ride the river with. And there wasn’t no finer compliment a mountain man could give than that one.
Preacher dismounted and let the lead wagon catch up with him.
“Trouble, Captain?” Eudora asked, pulling up beside where he stood.
“Naw. Just takin’ a rest. We’re makin’ good time. You handle this long team of mules like you was born to it, Eudora.”
“We understand each other,” the New Englander said with a smile. “I knew to get their attention right off and I did. They know I won’t take any guff from them.”
Preacher swung back into the saddle. He was beginning to feel the hair on the back of his neck bristle. Something was wrong. “Just keep headin’ west, lady.” He rode back to the last wagon, where the sisters, Maude and Agnes, were handling the double-teams. Maude held the reins, Agnes cradled the rifle.