CHAPTER 31
They left Thad Hopkins’s body where it had fallen and pushed on a couple of miles deeper into the Black Hills before finding a place to camp for the night. It had been several years since Preacher had been here. He was reminded once again what a beautiful part of the country this was, with thick forests, stark, rocky upthrusts, and cold, clear, fast-flowing streams. It was easy to see why the Sioux considered these hills sacred.
Since they weren’t out on the open prairie anymore, for the first time in several days Preacher built a small fire so they could have hot food and coffee for supper that night, using the supplies that Hopkins and Brill had brought along in their saddlebags. They had pitched camp under some overhanging rocks, so the flames couldn’t be seen from very far away and the rocks would disperse the smoke.
Oliver had been moping about the way he’d allowed Hopkins to get loose, but the meal seemed to lift his spirits some. He and Chessie sat close together as they ate, which probably made him feel better, too.
“I should give you your jacket back,” she said. “It’ll probably get cold at night here in the mountains.”
“All the more reason for you to keep it,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.”
Preacher said, “Hopkins and Brill had blankets with ’em. Either of you can wrap up in them if you need to.” He added wryly, “Might be a good idea to check ’em for crawlin’ varmints first, though.”
“What about you and Hawk?” Chessie asked. “Won’t you get cold?”
“We’ll be fine. We’re used to livin’ out in the open like this.”
Hawk said, “I am Absaroka. I do not feel the cold.”
Which was a bald-faced lie, Preacher thought. Without a doubt, Indians were more accustomed to physical hardships than folks from back East like Oliver and Chessie, but that didn’t keep them from getting cold. That was why they always had plenty of soft, thick buffalo robes in their lodges and tepees. Hawk wasn’t going to admit that in front of Chessie, though.
Preacher thought he might need to have a talk with the boy. Hawk couldn’t help it that he was attracted to Chessie, but he ought to be smart enough to see that she had her attention focused on Oliver Merton. Being determined was one thing; being downright muleheaded was another.
Preacher allowed the fire to burn down to embers after the meal was over. Chessie rolled up in a blanket and fell asleep right away, apparently exhausted by another long day and yet another dangerous ordeal that easily could have resulted in her death. Preacher didn’t know what she had expected when she’d decided to come along on this expedition, but more than likely she had realized by now that she’d bitten off a pretty big chunk of trouble.
As he sat by the glowing coals of the fire, his thoughts turned from Chessie to Edgar Merton. It had come as a surprise to him that Merton had spent time on the frontier. Obviously, something important had happened while Merton was out here, or else the man wouldn’t have been so determined to return years later.
Usually, when a man was haunted by something to that extent, one of two things was responsible, Preacher reflected: love . . . or money.
He wondered which one had brought Edgar Merton back to the Black Hills.
* * *
When it came time to arrange the guard shifts that night, Oliver said, “After what happened earlier, are you sure you trust me to keep watch, Preacher?”
“Yeah, I do,” the mountain man replied. “You made a mistake. Everybody does, sooner or later. Just don’t make the same one again.”
Hawk said, “Some mistakes can get you killed. Or worse, others.”
Oliver nodded sheepishly. “I know. I’d never have forgiven myself if that bastard had hurt Chessie. If there was some way to send her back to St. Louis, just like that, where she’d be safe again, I’d do it in an instant.”
Preacher wasn’t sure Chessie had been all that safe on her own back in St. Louis, although he was confident Red Mike would have tried to look after her. If she and Oliver both survived this expedition, she might be better off than she would have been under any other likely circumstances.
If it looked like the best deal to her, would she betray them and go back to Hoyt Ryker? Preacher didn’t believe she would. Like Oliver, Chessie seemed to have grown up some during this hazardous journey. But he supposed only time would tell.
The night passed quietly, during Oliver’s watch as well as the others, and in the morning the group pushed farther north into the mountains. The supplies Hopkins and Brill had brought along were running low, but that afternoon Hawk brought down a young deer with an arrow and they had fresh meat for supper, as well as enough to take along with them for the next day.
After they had eaten, Oliver said, “We’ve seen several creeks since we got into these hills. How do you know we’re headed for the right place?”
“Won’t know for sure until we get there,” Preacher replied. “And I won’t claim I’ve been over every foot of ground in these parts. Pert near, though. And I only remember one spot where two creeks come in from the west like that in deep gulches and flow together in a deep hollow surrounded by hills. The Sioux call the place Owayásuta. Hard to translate exactly, but it sort of means to approve of something . . . the way they want the spirits to approve of them.”
“But if we get there and don’t find my father and Ryker and the others?”
“Then we’ll keep looking,” Preacher said.
As things turned out, it never came to that. The next day, as the group was making its way in a generally northward direction, allowing for the terrain, Hawk paused, lifted a hand and pointed, and said, “There.”
Preacher had spotted it at the same time as his son. A tendril of gray smoke climbed into the sky ahead of them, visible above the tops of the pine, spruce, and bur oaks that covered the slopes of the valleys folding into each other.
“What is that?” Oliver asked.
“Somebody’s got a good-sized fire goin’ a mile or so ahead of us,” Preacher said.
“Indians? As you said, they consider this their domain.”
Hawk snorted and said, “Not even the Sioux would be so careless. Smoke like that in the middle of the day is the work of white men.”
“Then we’ve found them,” Oliver said with excitement creeping into his voice. “Who else would be here in these mountains?”
“Well, I’ve heard tell of a few fellas who came here to trap,” Preacher said, “but unless they were real greenhorns, they’d have enough sense not to tell the world where they are. I reckon I agree with Hawk. Ryker and his bunch have stopped for some reason, and they’re big enough fools to have built a fire like that.”
“Maybe we can rescue my father and deal with them, then.” Oliver paused and frowned. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but . . . we’re going to have to kill them, aren’t we? We can’t just take my father away from them and go on. They’ll come after us.”
“Afraid you’re right,” Preacher said, nodding. “If Ryker’s got his hands on somethin’ he thinks is valuable, he ain’t the sort to let go of it without a fight.”
“But we’re outnumbered.”
“Not as badly as we were against the outcasts,” Hawk pointed out. “There were many of them and a few of us, and yet here we are.”
Oliver looked at Chessie and said, “You were the one who told my father to talk to Ryker. I got the feeling that you two were . . . friends.”
So the youngster wasn’t quite as thickheaded as he seemed sometimes, Preacher thought.
“I didn’t know what sort of man he was then,” Chessie said with an embarrassed look on her face. “And we were never that close, anyway. After everything that’s happened, Oliver, I don’t care what happens to Hoyt Ryker, and that’s the truth. I swear it. If he got the chance, I’m sure he would kill the three of you.” She swallowed hard. “And whatever he had in mind for me, I know it wouldn’t be good.”
Preacher said, “You can bet a brand-new hat on that. All right, we’ve done some plain talkin’ here, and I reckon we all know where we stand. What we need to do now is find out why Ryker and his bunch have stopped, and then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”
Oliver looked worried. “Do you think something’s happened to my father? If he can’t give Ryker directions on where to go next, that could mean he’s . . . he’s . . .”
“We’ll find out,” Preacher said again, “and there ain’t no use in worryin’ until then.”
They moved out, heading toward the smoke. When they were half a mile away, Preacher called a halt again and said, “Ryker will have guards posted, more than likely, so the rest of you will stay here while I go scout around a mite.”
“I should come with you,” Hawk said immediately.
The mountain man shook his head. “I don’t cotton to the idea of leavin’ Oliver and Chessie here on their own. Dog will come with me, in case I run into trouble.”
Hawk didn’t like the decision, but he didn’t argue with it. Instead he said, “You should take a pistol with you.”
“Now, that I’ll do,” Preacher agreed.
Oliver handed him the pistol the young man had been carrying. Preacher tucked it behind his belt, then said quietly, “Come on, Dog.” With the big cur beside him, he loped off into the forest and within moments could no longer see the others behind him, which meant they couldn’t see him, either.
No one alive could move through the wilderness with more stealth than Preacher, which was one reason his enemies among the tribes feared him so much. Dog had learned to be almost his equal. The two of them circled the smoke to come at it from a slightly different direction, and it wasn’t long before they were looking out through small gaps in thick brush at Hoyt Ryker’s camp.
Ryker and his companions had brought the wagons to a halt on a relatively level bench that thrust out from the side of a mountain. The area in front of the wagons was open ground, which meant it would be difficult to approach from that direction.
Behind the camp, however, a rocky bluff rose almost perpendicularly to a height of a hundred feet. Preacher studied it intently for a moment, then shifted his attention to the men moving around the wagons and the campfire.
He saw Pidge, who seemed to have recovered from the wounds he’d suffered earlier in the journey. Three men tended to the mules or repaired harnesses, while one squatted next to the fire and watched a coffeepot sitting at the edge of the flames.
That left Ryker and one more man unaccounted for. Preacher had a hunch the missing member of the expedition was standing guard somewhere nearby. But there was no sign of Edgar Merton, and Preacher figured Ryker was probably wherever the wealthy easterner was.
That made him look toward the covered wagon. He couldn’t see into it from where he was, but after watching the vehicle for several minutes, he saw Hoyt Ryker climb over the tailgate and drop to the ground. Ryker didn’t look happy, and when Pidge approached him, Ryker snapped at him. Preacher could tell that even though he couldn’t make out the words. Pidge stood there looking a little like a whipped dog as Ryker stalked away.
That made Preacher even more interested in the wagon with its canvas cover. Since Edgar Merton wasn’t anywhere else around the camp, that was really the only place he could be. That is, if Merton was still alive . . .
Preacher knew he was going to have to get a look into the wagon to find out.