Four
Preacher’s sleep was restless that night, haunted by dreams of the stunned expression on Abby’s face as the pistol balls tore through her and stole her life away. He had lost friends and even loved ones to violence in the past, like Jennie and the Shoshone woman Mountain Mist, and it never got any easier.
When he awoke the next morning, the pounding throb in his head had subsided to a dull ache, but it was still there, fueled by the bullet graze and the bad memories. He pulled on his buckskins and high-topped moccasins and stumbled downstairs, drawn by the smell of coffee.
The main room of the tavern was empty except for Ford Fargo, who leaned on the bar sipping from a steaming cup. “Pour me one o’ those,” Preacher said.
Fargo went over to the big iron stove where the coffeepot simmered, and complied with Preacher’s request. He carried it back to Preacher, who grasped the cup eagerly and gulped down some of the contents. The coffee was hot enough to blister his mouth, but he didn’t much care at the moment.
“Abby’s service will be later today,” Fargo said. “Couldn’t find a preacher who was willin’ to say words over a gal like her, so I figured on doin’ it myself.” He paused. “Unless you’d like to do it. You got the name for it and all.”
Preacher shook his head. “You knew her a hell of a lot longer than I did, so any speechifyin’ that’s to be done, you need to do it. Besides, I ain’t a real preacher.”
“If I was, I ain’t sure I’d claim it. Don’t the Good Book say we ain’t supposed to judge other folks? I figure Abby deserves to be laid to rest proper, but all the churchgoin’ folks just turned their noses up at the idea. Good thing we got a public cemetery here in St. Louis now. They can’t stop me from buryin’ her there.” Again Fargo paused. “I reckon she’d like it if you was there.”
“Why? Because I’m the one who got her killed?”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. Those bastards were after me. I just don’t know why yet, or who they were. But one of these days I’ll find out.”
Fargo shook his head. “I’ll bet they’re not even here in the settlement anymore. If I tried to kill you and botched the job, I’d be runnin’ as far and fast as I could.”
A chilly smile played over Preacher’s face. “And it wouldn’t do you any good.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’d be afraid of.”
The tavern keeper fried up some salt jowl and flapjacks for his breakfast and shared them with Preacher. After eating, the mountain man said that he was going to see about replenishing his supplies before setting out for the wilderness again.
“I don’t figure on stayin’ here in town any longer than I have to,” he added. “Bad things happen in towns.”
He knew he was oversimplifying matters, but there was no disputing the truth of his statement. Of course, bad things could happen anywhere, but at least out there on the frontier, Preacher was better able to guard against them. He knew the dangers that lurked on the prairie and in the mountains better than he did the ones in the settlement.
“The buryin’ will be at noon,” Fargo told him as he went out. Without looking back, Preacher waved to show that he had heard.
He spent the morning visiting one of the general stores and telling the proprietor what he wanted. The man promised to gather the supplies together and have them ready whenever Preacher wanted to pick them up. Then Preacher went to the office of the fur company where Joel Larson worked.
“I heard about what happened,” Larson said as the two men shook hands. “Sorry about the girl. Why do you think those men attacked you?”
Preacher shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve made a lot of enemies in my time. Also, somebody took a shot at me while I was still on the river yesterday afternoon, about a mile north of the settlement. Could be that whoever it was made another try for me.”
Larson sat down behind his desk and clasped his hands together. “Here’s another possibility. They might have seen us strike a deal for your pelts, or they could have been in the tavern when I paid you. It’s possible that they were just thieves after your money.”
Preacher frowned as he considered that suggestion. Of all the things to die for, money seemed just about the most ridiculous to him. But he knew not everybody felt that way. Not by a long shot.
“I reckon you could be right,” he said with a nod. “I don’t know for sure what those two fellas looked like, but I got an idea. Wanted to know if maybe you’d seen them around.” He gave Larson as good a description of the killers as he had.
The fur company man listened carefully, but shook his head when Preacher was finished. “Sorry. That doesn’t ring a bell. There are probably hundreds of men in St. Louis wearing buckskins or shabby suits and beaver hats.”
“Yeah, I know.” Preacher stood up and added with a decisive nod, “But I’ll find ’em. I aim to settle the score for Abby. I ain’t overly fond o’ lettin’ gents get away with shootin’ at me neither.”
Larson got to his feet and shook hands again. “Well, good luck to you, Preacher. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
“Sure will.”
Preacher left the office. Something Larson had said had gotten him to thinking. That boy Jake he had talked to the day before, down by the river, had seemed like an observant little cuss. Maybe if the men who had killed Abby had been down there, too, and had seen Preacher strike the deal with Joel Larson, as Larson had suggested, then Jake might have seen the men who’d been watching Preacher. He had to admit that it was a long shot but he believed it was worth checking out.
All he had to do was find the boy.
* * *
Everyone in St. Louis who was of the less-than-honest persuasion knew Shad Beaumont, or at least knew of him. Schuyler Mims and Colin Fairfax didn’t have any trouble finding the man, who was rumored to have a finger in every criminal pie in the region. They just asked around in the dives and whorehouses until a grossly overweight madam with hennaed hair pointed upward with a fat thumb and said, “Yeah, Shad’s upstairs with two o’ my girls right now.”
“Two?” Schuyler repeated with his eyes widening.
The madam gave a bawdy laugh. “Yeah. Shad’s got what you’d call well-developed appetites.”
“Downright greedy, that’s what I’d call it,” Schuyler muttered.
“I wouldn’t call it that to his face,” the madam advised. “Not if you want to keep on breathin’, my friend.” She rubbed her hands together. “Now, could I interest you boys in some female companionship? Best-lookin’ girls in town, and they’re all clean as a whistle, too.”
Schuyler and Fairfax both doubted the validity of those claims, and besides, they didn’t have enough money to pay for even one soiled dove to smile at them, let alone to pay two for anything else. So Fairfax said, “Thanks, but we’ll just wait for Shad.”
“Not in here, you won’t,” the madam said with a frown. “This is a classy place. Can’t have bums loiterin’ around.”
The brothel was one step up from a pigsty as far as Fairfax was concerned. With a sigh, he remembered some of the parlor houses he had visited back in Philadelphia, when he was a young man with money and connections.
Those days were long gone, of course. He said to his partner, “Come along. The street is still public.”
“Just don’t clutter up my doorway,” the madam snapped. “I got customers who want to get in and out.”
“Indeed,” Fairfax muttered as he motioned for Schuyler to follow him and left the building.
They took up a position across the street and hoped that Beaumont wouldn’t be inside the whorehouse all day. A man had to tend to his business sometime, even a criminal. Schuyler and Fairfax were both tired. They had slept in an alley behind one of the fur warehouses, since they couldn’t afford anything better, and the night hadn’t passed restfully for either of them.
“You watch for Beaumont,” Schuyler suggested. “I’m gonna keep an eye out for Preacher.”
“He doesn’t know where to find us.”
“Yeah, but he could come amblin’ along the street and recognize us by pure dumb luck. We don’t know how good a look he got at us.”
“It couldn’t have been much of one,” Fairfax said. “The room was full of powder smoke, and that redheaded girl was between him and us.”
“Yeah.” Schuyler sighed. “I sure am sorry about what happened to that gal.”
“It was an accident. We can’t be held responsible for an accident.”
“Yeah, but she’d still be alive if we hadn’t tried to kill and rob Preacher.”
Fairfax shook his head. “You can’t be sure about that. Her next customer might have slit her throat, or beaten her to death. Whores get killed all the time. There’s no point in wasting any sympathy on them.”
“Yeah, I reckon you’re right,” Schuyler said, but he didn’t sound like he was totally convinced of that.
An hour dragged by before a big man with a close-cropped brown beard came out of the brothel across the street. He wore a dark suit and a fancy vest and a beaver hat, and the summer sun glinted on the stickpin in his cravat. He really looked too good for such a place, but adaptability was one of the reasons for Shad Beaumont’s success—he could make himself at home almost anywhere, from a cheap whore’s crib to the drawing room of the finest mansion in town.
The other reason was that he was totally ruthless and would kill anybody who crossed him, and folks knew that.
Fairfax nudged Schuyler, and Schuyler nudged him back. “All right, all right,” Fairfax muttered, and he started across the street with Schuyler trailing a pace behind him.
Before they could intercept Beaumont, a couple of burly men in rough work clothes moved swiftly to get in front of them. Fairfax had noticed them in the street earlier, and had even considered the possibility that they were waiting to talk to Beaumont, too, but now he realized they were Beaumont’s bodyguards.
Fairfax stopped short and held up both hands, palms out. “Please, gentlemen,” he said. “We mean your employer no harm. We just wish to speak with him on a business matter.”
Beaumont didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them as he strode past, but at Fairfax’s mention of business, he paused and glanced over. Making a motion for his men to wait, he asked, “What sort of business?”
Fairfax inclined his head toward Schuyler. “My partner and I would like to work for you. It’s said that you’re the sharpest man in St. Louis.”
Beaumont chuckled and said, “If that’s true, I didn’t get that way by hiring just any broken-down bums who come stumbling along wanting a job, now did I?”
Fairfax’s pale face flushed with anger. “We’re not bums,” he insisted, “and I wish people would stop referring to us that way. We’re good men, smart and able to follow orders.”
“And we can take care of ourselves,” Schuyler added.
Beaumont lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so? We’ll just see about that.” He made a curt gesture again to his bodyguards. “Boys, hand these two their needin’s.” An ugly grin appeared on his face. “If they live through that, then we’ll see about finding jobs for them.”
* * *
Preacher headed for the fur warehouses. Jake had said that his father worked at one of them, and Preacher figured he would ask around until he found the boy’s pa. Then the fella could tell him where Jake was.
It took a while for him to find the right place, but at the fourth warehouse, after asking the first man he saw if he had a son named Jake or knew anybody who did, Preacher heard what he wanted to hear. The fella pointed out one of the other workers who was bundling up dried pelts so they could be loaded on a riverboat and shipped back east. “I think Jonathan over there has a boy named Jake.”
“Much obliged,” Preacher said with a nod. He walked over to the man called Jonathan, who was a dark-haired, dour-faced gent with the heavy muscles that working in a warehouse gave a man. He scowled at Preacher as the mountain man came up to him.
“You need somethin’, mister?” Jonathan asked in a brusque tone.
“I’m lookin’ for a little fella name of Jake, about ten years old, I’d say. Got brown hair and sort of a round face. He’s mighty inquisitive and likes to talk.”
Jonathan’s scowl deepened. “That sounds like my boy, all right. What do you want with him? What’s he done wrong? If he’s stolen from you or done something else sinful, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life.”
“No, nothin’ like that,” Preacher said. “I just want to ask him a couple of questions. He seemed like a right nice little varmint, if you don’t mind the chatterin’.”
“He’s like all children . . . full of sin. You have to steer them onto the right path as forcefully as you can. Do you have any children, sir?”
“Not that I know of,” Preacher said.
Jonathan didn’t care for that answer. “Don’t make light of the Lord’s commandments, sir.”
“Didn’t know I was,” Preacher said, starting to grow impatient. He was surprised at how many holier-than-thou folks he was running into on this trip to St. Louis. But self-righteousness was something else civilization was good for, along with stinking up the air. “Look, I just want to talk to your boy. If you’ll tell me where to find him, I’ll go on and won’t bother you no more.”
“I don’t know where the little scoundrel is, but if I was a wagering man, I’d say that he’s getting into trouble, wherever he is.”
“But you ain’t a wagerin’ man, are you?”
“Of course not. It’s—”
“Sinful,” Preacher finished for him.
Jonathan’s face darkened with outright anger now. “Are you making fun of me?”
“I’m just tired o’ gettin’ a sermon instead o’ answers. And even though it ain’t none o’ my business, I ain’t too fond of the way you been talkin’ about the boy. He seemed like a pretty good kid.”
“He’s my son. I’ll talk about him and deal with him any way I see fit.”
“Yeah, and one o’ these days he’s liable to run off, too.”
“He wouldn’t dare. He knows he would pay dearly for such an unholy act of defiance.”
Preacher was sick of talking to this gent. With a disgusted shake of his head, he turned away. He would just have to find Jake some other way, he supposed.
A powerful hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Wait just a minute,” Jonathan said. “If you think I’m going to tolerate such a show of disrespect from a reprobate who’s probably as big a heathen as those filthy redskins you no doubt consort with—”
Preacher turned around fast, knocking Jonathan’s hand off his shoulder. The warehouse worker was just as tall as he was and heavier, but Preacher packed an incredible amount of strength in his lean frame.
“Mister, I’m gonna give you one more chance not to act like such a miserable human bein’,” he grated. “You may talk fancy and think that you and the Lord are on such good terms, but to me you’re nothin’ but a bag o’ hot air.”
“You can’t talk to me like that, you sinner!” Jonathan shouted.
And with that he swung a big, malletlike fist straight at Preacher’s head.