CHAPTER 4
The girl stood there in a simple homespun dress from which the sleeves had been cut to leave her arms uncovered. Actually, the garment was a little ragged and worn, but on her it looked like an elegant gown as it hugged her generously curved figure. Long, straight fair hair framed a heart-shaped face. She was a mixture of innocence and worldly beauty, and the striking contrast made her even more appealing. Preacher was too old and had known too many women to ever be thrown for a loop by any of them, but even he had to admit this one was damned good-looking.
As for Hawk, he looked a little like he had been walloped between the eyes by an ax handle.
The man who had been complaining about being forced to make room for Preacher and Hawk at the bar was gawking, too. The girl offered the tankard of beer to him and went on, “Here, take this. It’s on the house, isn’t it, Mike?”
“It sure is,” Mike said. A smirk lifted the corners of his mouth. “Why don’t you take your beer over to one of the tables, mister? Maybe Chessie will bring you another one in a little while.”
“I’d be happy to,” the girl said. She pressed the tankard into the man’s hand, turned him around, and steered him toward a table. He went willingly, with a stunned smile on his face.
“You showed up just in time, darlin’,” Mike said to the girl he had referred to as Chessie. “Not that this would’ve been the first time a dandy little fracas got started in here, usually involving this woolly-lookin’ spalpeen you see before you. Ain’t that right, Preacher?”
Hawk found his voice and asked, “What did he say? I am confused.”
Preacher ignored the youngster and smiled at the gal. “Mike makes me sound like a troublemaker,” he said, “but when you come right down to it, I’m a peaceable man. They call me Preacher.”
She held out a slim white hand and said, “Chessie Dayton.”
Preacher clasped her hand, aware of how smooth her skin was against his rough, callused palm. “It’s a plumb honor to meet you, Miss Chessie.” He turned a little to nod at Hawk and added, “This here is my son, Hawk That Soars.”
“What an inspiring name,” she said, then glanced at Preacher. “He’s not a . . . savage . . . is he?”
Instead of letting Preacher answer, Hawk said, “I am savage only to my enemies, and I never make war on women. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“Oh! You speak English.”
“I am half-white,” Hawk said solemnly, “so I should know the white man’s tongue.”
“You speak it very well.”
Mike laughed and said, “Better than most of the louts who come in here.”
Preacher said, “I don’t recollect seein’ you before, Miss Chessie.”
“That’s because I haven’t worked here for long,” she said. “Mike was kind enough to give me a job after—”
She stopped short. Preacher saw something in her eyes. A flash of a painful memory, maybe. That was confirmed by Mike, who leaned both hands on the bar and said quietly, “Both of Chessie’s folks died of a fever a while back. She was left to shift for herself, so I found a place for her here, servin’ drinks.” His voice hardened as he added, “And that’s all she does.”
Preacher knew what the Irishman meant by that. Mike was warning them that Chessie wouldn’t be entertaining any men upstairs. He had a reputation for having iron-hard fists and a lump of flint for a heart, but Preacher knew Mike had a sentimental streak in him as well, like most sons of the Emerald Isle.
“Well, it’s good to know you, miss,” the mountain man said, “and I hope that life treats you a mite better in the future.”
“Thank you. Can I get you anything?”
“I reckon Mike can take care of that.”
“Indeed I can,” Mike said. He filled another tankard with ale and placed it on the bar in front of Preacher, then looked at Hawk and raised his bushy red brows quizzically.
“I want nothing to drink,” Hawk said rather curtly.
Since the youngster was half-white, Preacher didn’t know if liquor would affect him as badly as it did most Indians. Of course, Preacher had seen plenty of drunken white men, too. But either way, Hawk’s refusal of the drink wasn’t a bad thing. Since he was in surroundings that were almost totally alien to him, it was probably best that he keep a clear head.
As for Preacher, alcohol had never muddled him any, so he picked up the tankard and took a long swallow. With a nod to Mike, he said, “Good as always. Really cuts the dust.”
Some men at one of the tables were calling for service. Mike pointed them out to Chessie and handed her a bucket of beer. As she left to deliver the bucket, Mike said to Preacher and Hawk, “I appreciate you fellows holding your temper just now.”
“We didn’t come in here lookin’ for a fight,” Preacher said. “We’re more interested in findin’ a place to spend a night or two before we head back to the mountains.”
“Did you bring in a load of pelts to sell?”
Preacher nodded. “Yeah. Made a deal for ’em with Vernon Pritchard over at the American Fur Company.”
Mike frowned and asked, “Has he paid you yet?”
“No, we’ll go by there tomorrow and pick up the money. Why do you want to know? I’ve got a few gold and silver pieces, I can pay for our rooms—”
Mike stopped the mountain man with a wave of his hand. “It’s not that. I was just going to warn you that if you’re carrying a very big sum, it’d be a good idea for you to get out of St. Louis as quickly as you can. ’Tis not as safe here as it once was. You’d be better off out on the trail.”
“Yeah, I keep hearin’ that,” Preacher said, “but we were out on the trail when we got ambushed a couple of days ago.”
“Ambushed!” Mike repeated. “What happened?”
Between sips of beer, Preacher explained to the tavern keeper about the two men who had taken potshots at him and Hawk.
“I put their horses down at Fullerton’s along with our mounts,” Preacher concluded. “Ol’ Ambrose recognized ’em. Said he had them there in his stalls for a few nights, and that the men who were ridin’ ’em came into town with a bunch of other hard-lookin’ fellas. The boss seemed to be a big man with one of those fancy curlicue mustaches.”
“Like this?” Mike pantomimed a mustache that curled up on the ends.
“That’s what Fullerton said.”
Mike leaned on the bar again, frowned darkly, and said, “Preacher, I’ve seen that fella in here. He’s Hoyt Ryker.”
Preacher was taking a drink as Mike spoke. He stopped, slowly lowered the tankard to the bar, and stiffened.
“Ryker?”
“None other.”
“He didn’t have a mustache like that the last time I saw him.”
“No, I don’t suppose he did,” Mike said. “How long ago was it that the two of you had that run-in?”
Preacher rubbed his darkly beard-stubbled chin and frowned in thought as he tried to remember. After a moment he said, “Got to be three or four years. Maybe even longer.”
“Yeah, Ryker’s changed some since then. He’s gotten bigger and meaner, if that’s possible.”
Preacher grunted. “Wouldn’t have thought it was.”
His mind went back to his previous encounter with Hoyt Ryker. The trouble hadn’t happened here in Red Mike’s but rather in another tavern, closer to the river and even more of a dive. A tall, brawny young man had come in and started boasting of his prowess at throwing a knife. Preacher had no use for braggarts, so he ignored the man as best he could.
Others in the tavern had egged him on, though, daring him to back up his boasts. All of them were drunk, including the young man, but that hadn’t stopped him from grabbing one of the serving girls, shoving her up against the wall, and ordering her to stand there as he took out a long, heavy-bladed hunting knife. He’d claimed that he could stand across the room, throw the knife, and put it within six inches of the girl’s ear.
Preacher figured the proprietor might put a stop to this dangerous tomfoolery, but the man didn’t seem to care as long as his customers kept spending money. And if the man with the knife missed . . . what was one wench more or less in this world?
Finally, Preacher’s disgust had forced him to his feet. The knife thrower was standing there with a big, drunken grin on his face as he drew back his arm and got ready. Other men shouted encouragement and furiously placed bets on whether or not the girl would survive.
On the other side of the room, the pale, terrified girl shook like she had the ague. The young man had warned her not to move, though, or else he’d give her a beating. And none of the riverfront scum in this place would stop him . . .
Except for one man whose home was the mountains.
The sleeves of the young man’s homespun shirt were rather loose and hung down a little. Standing twenty feet away, Preacher drew his own knife and let fly without a lot of posing and posturing as he aimed. The blade flew true, pierced the man’s shirtsleeve without touching the flesh underneath, and pinned the garment to the wall behind the man, jerking him a step along with it. He let out a startled shout and dropped the knife.
Preacher had walked across the suddenly quiet room, kicked the fallen knife aside, and then turned to look at the girl and say, “Go on and get outta here, darlin’, while you got the chance.”
While he was doing that, the boastful young man, his face twisted with hate, reached up with his other hand, wrenched Preacher’s knife free from the wall, and tried to plunge the blade into the mountain man’s back.
Preacher had expected that. He turned, seemingly leisurely, and caught hold of the young man’s wrist before the thrust could strike him. A twist hard enough to make bones grind together had sent the young man to his knees and brought a cry of pain to his lips. With his other hand, Preacher easily plucked the knife out of the man’s suddenly nerveless fingers.
“A man who’s truly good at somethin’, whether it’s knife-throwin’ or anything else, don’t have any need to show off about it, especially if it means puttin’ somebody else in danger,” Preacher had told him, the words clear in the still-hushed tavern. “You’d do well to remember that, son.”
The young man stared up at him. His teeth were bared in a grimace as he said, “What did you just do . . . old man? Seemed like . . . showing off . . . to me.”
“Nope,” Preacher had said. “Just did what I had to to keep you from hurtin’ that poor girl.” Finally, he released the man’s wrist and stepped back. The man slumped forward, cradling the throbbing arm against his body. Preacher said, “If I hear about you hurtin’ her or anybody else, I’ll be back to see you.”
With an effort, the young man had lifted his head and said in obvious pain, “You don’t scare me . . . mister. One of these days . . . you’re gonna be sorry . . . you crossed Hoyt Ryker.”
“That’d be you?”
“Damn right!”
Preacher grinned. “I never knew a man who referred to his own self by name that way to be worth a bucket of warm piss.”
Then he had turned and walked out of the place. He’d had a hand near the butt of one of the flintlock pistols stuck behind his belt, just in case the young braggart’s pride made him try something else. Preacher had been out of patience by that point, and if anything had happened, he would have gone ahead and killed the man.
But it hadn’t happened, and Preacher hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Hoyt Ryker since then. The story had gotten around the riverfront, though, about how Preacher had humiliated the young man. He figured Ryker had left town and gone someplace where nobody would have heard about the incident.
Now Preacher said, “So Ryker’s back in these parts, is he?”
“That’s right,” Red Mike said. “He came in here with some other men a while back. I didn’t recognize him at first, but somebody told me who he was. Then I could see it, even though that fancy mustache makes him look quite a bit different.”
Hawk said to Preacher, “Another of those old enemies of yours that seem to be lurking under every rock?”
Preacher blew out a contemptuous breath. “I had one little scrape with him, that’s all. Ain’t hardly worth rememberin’.”
“You can bet Ryker’s never forgotten it,” Mike said. “I haven’t seen him around for a few days, though, so maybe he’s moved on.”
“It don’t matter to me, one way or the other,” Preacher said.
He wasn’t surprised, though, to hear that the two would-be thieves he had killed had been affiliated with Hoyt Ryker. Most men were a mixture of good and bad, but some were just pure skunk and Ryker fell into that category. Preacher had heard rumors about various robberies and killings that might have involved Ryker. Under the circumstances, it made sense to assume that the men riding with him were the same sort.
Preacher didn’t have much time to think about that, because just then another commotion caught his attention. He looked around and saw that another man had come into Red Mike’s place. This newcomer was striding across the room, bumping men out of his way, and leaving behind some angry, profane muttering. He was well dressed in high-topped black boots, gray whipcord trousers, and a brown jacket over a fancy vest and white shirt. A black beaver hat sat on dark blond hair. Well-groomed and handsome, he didn’t belong here in this rough frontier tavern. Anybody could see that.
Anybody could tell what he was after, too. He stalked straight toward Chessie Dayton with a determined expression on his face.