CHAPTER 9
When Preacher and Russell went into the salon, the mountain man saw that all the passengers were there, seated around a long, polished table with Count Albert Stahlmaske at the head of it.
The count’s betrothed, the beautiful, redheaded Gretchen Ritter, sat at his right. Her brothers Heinrich and Hobart—Preacher had no idea which one was which—were to her right.
Roderick sat across from Gretchen, and his and Albert’s uncle Gerhard was next to him, across from one of the twins. Senator Allingham and his wife and daughter filled up the remaining seats on that side.
Sarah Allingham gave Preacher an expectant look as if trying to tell him to sit at the other end of the table, next to her, but he and Russell took the empty chairs on the opposite side, next to the Ritter twins, with Russell at the end.
That put Preacher beside either Heinrich or Hobart and across from Margaret Allingham. He figured the empty chair at the end of the table was for Captain Warner.
Stahlmaske gave Preacher a cold stare. Obviously the nobleman had not forgotten what had happened earlier.
Allingham said, “I asked Preacher to join us, Count. Since he’s been on this journey many times, I thought he could tell us about the places we’ll be going and perhaps even entertain us with some stories of his adventures.”
“I’m not much for speechifyin’,” Preacher said. He looked at the white linen cloth on the table, the fine china, the silverware, the glasses of wine, the fancy lamp in the center of the table, and wished he was sitting beside a campfire in the high country, roasting an elk steak over the flames.
“Come, come, no false modesty, my frontiersman friend,” Stahlmaske said with a trace of arrogance that put Preacher’s teeth on edge. “I’m told that you’re the living, breathing embodiment of the protagonist in Fenimore Cooper’s recent novels. Natty Bumppo, I believe his name is.”
“Don’t know the fella,” Preacher said. He tried not to sound curt. “And most of the yarns that have been spun about me are just lies made up by varmints who sit around taverns all day and don’t have nothin’ better to do.”
“Be that as it may,” the count persisted, “you are familiar with our destination.”
“That’s true,” Preacher admitted with a shrug.
It seemed like they were waiting for Captain Warner before they ate, so he decided he might as well fill some of the time by talking about the country through which the Missouri River passed on its way to the mouth of the Yellowstone. Most of it was rolling grassland, as he had told Sarah, but they would see some good-sized hills and even a few small mountains in the distance.
“What about der savages?” the twin sitting beside him asked. “Will we have to fight them?”
“Hard to say. We’ll be passin’ through the huntin’ grounds of some tribes who don’t care much for white men. It all depends on what they take it in their heads to do.” Preacher smiled. “Problem is, the only thing harder than predictin’ what an Indian will do is predictin’ what a woman will do.”
That brought a laugh from several of the men, as well as from Gretchen Ritter—but not from Stahlmaske. The statuesque redhead spoke to the mountain man for the first time, saying, “You are a philosopher, Herr Preacher.”
“If herr is like mister, you can drop that part of it, ma’am,” Preacher told her. “As for philosophizin’, that’s right up there with speechifyin’ as far as I’m concerned. I don’t much cotton to either of ’em.”
Preacher was saved from having to go on by the arrival of Captain Benjamin Warner, who said as he came into the dining room, “Sorry you had to wait for me, folks. Just dealing with a little problem in the engine room.”
“Nothing that will make us turn back, I hope,” Senator Allingham said.
Warner shook his head.
“Oh, no, nothing that serious. It’s all taken care of now, anyway. We’ll be able to move on in the morning just as planned.”
Several women Preacher hadn’t noticed before came into the dining room from the kitchen, bringing bowls of food with them. Stahlmaske spoke to them in German, and two of the women responded with quick nods.
The third woman was thick-bodied and florid-faced, with graying red hair, and Preacher didn’t have to hear her speak to know she was Irish. He pegged the two German women as servants with the count’s party, while the Irishwoman was probably the maid for Mrs. Allingham and Sarah. He hadn’t seen any of them come on board that morning. It was possible they had already been on the Sentinel before Preacher arrived at the docks, getting ready for the arrival of their charges.
The food was a mixture of Irish and German, stew made with dried beef, carrots, and potatoes, along with black bread, and the combination went together surprisingly well. Preacher always had a good appetite, so he ate heartily and washed the meal down with a couple of glasses of the wine that Count Stahlmaske seemed rather proud of. He would have rather had beer, but a fella couldn’t have everything.
As they ate, the conversation around the table continued, and after a while Sarah Allingham spoke up, saying, “Preacher, I think you should tell us some more of your opinions about women.”
“Hush, dear,” her mother said with an air of it being a habitual reaction when Sara said something.
“No, I’m really interested,” Sarah insisted. “Do you think women should be traveling to the frontier like we are, Preacher?”
“I reckon most of the time it ain’t a very good idea,” Preacher answered honestly.
“But surely there are Indian women where we are going,” Gretchen said. “Squaws, I believe they’re called?”
“That’s right. They’ve spent their whole lives out here, though. They know what’s expected of ’em, what they have to do to survive.”
“Yes, but could they survive in Berlin?” Gretchen asked.
“Or Washington City?” Sarah added.
“You might be surprised,” Preacher said. “All the squaws I’ve known have been pretty resourceful.”
“Nonsense,” the count said. “They are savages, so primitive that they are little better than animals. They could never function in a civilized society.”
“The Indians don’t consider our society very civilized,” Preacher pointed out. “In fact, most tribes think of themselves as the only true human bein’s. The rest of us are somethin’ less than that.”
Stahlmaske snorted disgustedly.
“Ridiculous.”
“If you get to spend some time with any of ’em, you might start to feel different about it.”
“I do not plan to ‘spend any time’ with the savages, as you put it.” Stahlmaske’s voice was icy. “If I even look at them for very long, it will be over the sights of my rifle.” He picked up his glass of wine. “Perhaps they are good for something—hunting.”
The others around the table were silent. Preacher was aware that Simon Russell was looking at him worriedly. Of all of them, only Russell—and maybe Captain Warner—were aware of the serious implications of what Stahlmaske had just said.
Preacher’s first impulse was to stand up, go to the head of the table, and try to beat some sense into Stahlmaske. It probably wouldn’t do any good, but he would enjoy making the effort.
Instead, with uncharacteristic restraint that he summoned up as a favor to his old friend, he said, “That’d be a mighty bad idea, Count. We’ll be runnin’ enough risks without you takin’ potshots at folks who might not necessarily want to hurt us. I promise you, though, if you kill an Indian who’s bein’ peaceful, or even wound one, we’ll have a war on our hands.”
Stahlmaske sneered and said, “I am a soldier. I do not fear war.”
“You don’t generally fight it with women around, either, do you?”
The count’s shoulders rose and fell slightly in a tiny shrug.
“I think you worry about those savages too much. Surely one civilized fighting man is worth ten or twenty of them. But I see no need to provoke unnecessary trouble.”
“That’s good,” Preacher said.
He kept what he was thinking to himself: that if Stahlmaske did anything as stupid as killing an Indian who wasn’t attacking them, Preacher just might let the rest of the tribe have the damn fool.
The talk moved on to other topics, for which Preacher was grateful. Only one more bothersome incident occurred. The passengers were lingering at the table over brandy when Preacher felt something touch his leg. He knew that riverboats had rats on them sometimes, so he stiffened and got ready to knock the vermin away from him.
It wasn’t a rat sliding up his leg, though. It was a human foot. A woman’s foot in a soft slipper from the feel of it.
Preacher drew in a deep breath. Margaret Allingham was directly opposite him, but her daughter was beside her and Sarah was long-legged enough that she was in reach, too. Preacher studied them with narrowed eyes, but neither woman’s face offered any clue as to which of them was caressing his calf through his buckskin trousers.
As he kept his own face as impassive as possible, the mysterious foot worked its way up to his knee, then went back down. He was glad the bold touch hadn’t ventured any higher. If it had, he might not have been able to keep acting like nothing was going on.
The foot went away, and he still couldn’t tell whom it belonged to. That didn’t really matter, he told himself. He intended to steer as clear of the Allingham women as he could, especially when no one else was around. He didn’t carry on with married women, and he didn’t despoil young ones.
Several of the passengers started yawning, including Gretchen.
“I am very weary, Albert,” she told the count.
He took her hand, lifted it, and pressed his lips to the back of it.
“I’ll bid you good night, then, my dear,” he said. “And pleasant dreams.”
The gathering broke up, with everyone heading for their own cabins except Preacher, Russell, and Warner, who stopped outside on the deck. Russell and Warner packed tobacco into pipes and lit them.
“I sure appreciate you holding your temper the way you did in there, Preacher,” Russell said.
“I guess I’m gettin’ a mite calmer in my old age,” Preacher said.
“You’re not that old.”
“I wasn’t that calm inside, either. If that tarnal idiot thinks he can start usin’ peaceful Indians for target practice—”
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” Russell promised. “I’ll speak to Senator Allingham, too, and see to it that he understands.”
Preacher nodded.
“That’s a good idea. And I’ll try my best not to pitch the count overboard.”
Warner chuckled and said, “On behalf of the American Fur Company, Preacher, I thank you for your restraint as well.”
Preacher said his good-nights to the two men, then walked along the deck to the middle of the riverboat, where the narrow stairs led down to the cargo deck. The outside lights had been extinguished now, but enough illumination from the moon and stars remained for Preacher to see where he was going without any problem.
He saw Dog, too, and when Preacher was about halfway down the stairs, the big cur, who had been lying down, suddenly leaped to his feet and let out a deep-throated growl. He was looking up, past Preacher.
That was all the warning the mountain man needed. He twisted around, and as he did so, orange flame spurted from a pistol muzzle in the thick shadows next to the cabins.