Six
Preacher turned, still holding the shovel, and saw a man in tight gray trousers and a black swallowtail coat standing there, holding a beaver hat. The man was about Preacher’s age, clean-shaven so that it was apparent he had a rather heavy jaw. His hair was dark and thick. There was nothing of the frontier about him, but he was sturdily built, as if he had done at least some hard work in his life.
“I’m Preacher,” the mountain man said. “What can I do for you?”
The stranger made a vague gesture that took in their surroundings and said, “I hate to intrude on your grief, sir, but it’s rather important that I talk to you. My name is Corliss Hart, and I have a business proposition for you.”
Preacher frowned. “I already sold the load of plews I brought in to Joel Larson.”
“I don’t want to buy your furs,” Corliss Hart said with a shake of his head. “I’d like to hire you.”
“To do what?”
“I’m in need of your services. I should say, my cousin and I are in need of your services.”
Preacher wasn’t in a very good mood, but he managed to restrain the impatience he felt. “Services as what?” he asked, wishing that Hart would get to the point.
“As a guide for a party heading west,” Hart said. “I’m told you’ve performed such a function in the past.”
“Yeah, but not always of my own choosin’,” Preacher said, thinking about how he had gotten roped into helping out those troublesome pilgrims a couple of winters earlier when a bunch of angry Arikara warriors were after them. Then, just a little more than a year ago, he had been forced by circumstances to help out an artist fella from back East who had come to the frontier to paint portraits of the Indians, only to wind up in a whole heap of trouble.
“We’re prepared to pay you, of course, and I think you’ll find that my cousin and I can be quite generous.”
“It ain’t a matter of money. I got things to do here in St. Louis.” Preacher was thinking about the two men who had killed Abby. Even though he’d had no luck in locating them so far, he was far from ready to give up. In fact, when the Good Lord made him, He hadn’t put much “give-up” in Preacher’s nature.
“Well, our wagons aren’t leaving for a few days yet,” Corliss Hart said. “Perhaps that would give you time to conclude whatever business you have here, and then you could go with us.”
“Wagons?” Preacher repeated with a frown. “You ain’t talkin’ about immigrant wagons, are you?” More and more people were heading west to settle, and Preacher didn’t like that trend. There was talk that big wagon trains full of immigrants would start rolling toward the Pacific Northwest in the next few years. The whole frontier was going to fill up before you knew it, he thought.
“No, Jerome and I are businessmen, not colonizers like Stephen Austin down in Texas. We have six wagons full of supplies that we brought out here from Chicago. We plan to travel to the Rocky Mountains, find a suitable location, and set up a trading post. We need an experienced man not only to guide us, but also to advise us on the best location for such a business venture.”
Preacher didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. There were some trading posts in the mountains already, but they were few and far between and had all been set up by tough men who knew what they were doing. The chances of a couple of greenhorn merchants from Chicago succeeding at such a venture—or even surviving for very long, for that matter—were slim.
But everybody had to start somewhere, Preacher supposed. When he had set out on his own as a boy, he was a greenhorn, too. All he’d had going for him were his grit and determination and willingness to work and learn. He had been lucky enough to fall in with some fellas who could teach him how to get along on the frontier. Maybe Corliss Hart and his cousin Jerome would be fortunate in that regard, too.
But they might have to find somebody besides Preacher to give them a hand, because he figured on being busy, at least until he found the men he was looking for. After that, if Hart and his cousin hadn’t already left with their wagon train, maybe he would consider hiring on with them. Their money would spend as good as anybody else’s.
“Sorry,” he said with a shake of his head. “I might be done by the time you’re ready to leave, or I might not, so you’d best find somebody else.”
“Are you sure? We were told that no one knows the mountains, and the area between here and there, better than you do.” Corliss Hart fidgeted with the hat he held in his hands. “And we were also told that you’re probably the toughest man between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean.”
Preacher had to chuckle at that. “I wouldn’t know. I ain’t fought everybody between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean. Leastways, not yet. Gimme time.”
“You won’t reconsider?”
“Nope.”
Fargo put in, “You might as well give up, mister. Preacher’s the stubbornest man on the frontier, that’s for sure.”
“I reckon I’ll take that as a compliment,” Preacher told the tavern keeper with a smile.
Hart sighed. “Very well. If you change your mind, we’re staying at the Excelsior Hotel.”
“All right,” Preacher said with a nod. He didn’t think it was very likely that he would be visiting the cousins.
Hart turned and trudged back toward the main part of the settlement, putting his hat on as he did so. Fargo watched him go and said, “That fella looked like he had plenty o’ money, Preacher. Job might’ve paid pretty well.”
“Time enough to worry about that after I’ve settled the score with the two skunks who did for Abby.”
“Once you sink your teeth into something, you don’t let go easy, do you?”
“Not hardly,” Preacher said.
* * *
He spent the rest of the day circulating through the waterfront taverns, and there were plenty of them along the river. In each place, he nursed a beer and bought drinks for anybody who was willing to talk to him and answer his questions. But he didn’t find anyone who recognized the admittedly vague descriptions of Abby’s killers.
Irritated by his lack of success, he was on his way back to Fargo’s place late that afternoon when he heard a voice behind him say, “Hey, Preacher! I been lookin’ for you.”
Preacher stopped short and turned around. He recognized the voice as Jake’s, and sure enough, the round-faced youngster stood there a few feet away.
“Good Lord, son,” Preacher said. “I been lookin’ for you, too. I reckon we must’ve kept on missin’ each other.” He stepped over to Jake and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see that ruckus between me and your pa this mornin’.”
“I’m not,” Jake said as he looked up at Preacher. “I was glad to see you whip him like that. I just couldn’t believe it at first. I never seen anybody knock him down before. But he had it comin’. He thrashes me all the time on account of I’m sinful, he says. Seems to me like beatin’ on somebody smaller’n you would be just as sinful as anything I ever done, though. Maybe even worse. I reckon I hate him.”
Preacher frowned and said, “You don’t want to go talkin’ like that about your own pa.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Well, maybe what he does to you ain’t right, but I’m sure it’s because he loves you and thinks that’s what he oughta do to help you grow up proper.”
“Yeah, but that don’t make it hurt any less when he takes a strap to me.”
Jake had a point there, Preacher thought.
“If that’s the way you feel, how come you run off like that?” he asked.
Jake hung his head and didn’t meet Preacher’s eyes. “It made me feel so good every time I saw you wallop him that I reckon I was ashamed of myself. I mean, a boy ain’t supposed to like it when he sees his own pa bein’ whipped, is he?”
“I guess it depends on the circumstances, and how that pa treats his boy,” Preacher said with a shrug. He wasn’t used to having conversations like this, and didn’t feel too comfortable with it himself.
“Yeah, that’s what I finally decided, too. So then I figured I ought to find you and thank you for what you done, and ask you a question.”
“What sort o’ question?”
“Are you goin’ back to the mountains?”
Preacher nodded. “Yeah. Not right away, but sooner or later I will.”
“When you go . . . can I go with you?”
That question took Preacher by surprise and made his thick, dark eyebrows rise into twin arches.
“Go with me?” he repeated. “You mean to the mountains?”
“Yeah. I’ll make you a good partner if you’ll just give me a chance. I can pull my weight, I swear. I know how to shoot a rifle already, and I’ll bet if you’d teach me, I could learn how to handle a beaver trap with no trouble. I’m pretty smart, if I do say so myself.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Preacher said, “but that don’t mean you’re ready to go to the mountains. Hell, you ain’t but what, ten years old?”
“I’m eleven, nearly twelve.”
“Well, that ain’t anywhere near old enough.”
Jake gave him a shrewd look and asked, “How old were you when you left home, Mr. Preacher?”
“I told you, you can forget about callin’ me Mister,” Preacher said. “And it ain’t any o’ your business how old I was when I went out on my own. I was older’n you are now, I can tell you that much for damn sure.”
As a matter of fact, he’d been only two years older, but he wasn’t about to tell Jake that. The boy already had too many damn fool notions in his head.
“It ain’t fair,” Jake complained. “If I stay here, my pa’s just gonna beat me worse an’ worse. He’ll be mad ’cause you whipped him, and he’ll take it out on me from now on.”
Preacher scowled. “Maybe I need to have another talk with him and let him know that wouldn’t be a good idea. I reckon he might listen to me.”
“Yeah, for a while, because he’d be scared of you. But you said it yourself, Preacher. You’ll be goin’ back to the mountains. Once you’re gone, Pa won’t be scared no more, and then he’ll thrash me within an inch o’ my life if I do the least little thing wrong or do somethin’ that he considers a sin. And you won’t be anywhere around to stop him.”
Preacher’s scowl darkened. The little varmint had another point.
But even so, the frontier was no place for him. Preacher had to find another solution.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take you to see a friend o’ mine named Ford Fargo.”
“Is that Mr. Fargo who owns the tavern down by the river?”
“Yep, that’s him. Maybe he could hire you to give him a hand around the place. If he does, he might find a place for you to sleep.”
“You mean I could live in a tavern?” Jake sounded astonished by the idea.
“Well, yeah.”
Jake grinned. “Where all those nice-lookin’ young women work?”
“You’re too young to be concernin’ yourself about things like that,” Preacher told him in a stern voice. He wasn’t sure he was right about that, however. Jake seemed plenty interested in the idea of being around the soiled doves who worked at Fargo’s place.
Keeping a hand on Jake’s shoulder, Preacher steered him toward the riverfront. As they walked, he said, “Now I got a question for you.”
“I ain’t sure I ought to answer it, seein’ as how you won’t let me to go to the mountains with you.”
Preacher reined in his impatience and said, “You can go back to your pa if you want.”
“No, no, what is it you want to ask me, Preacher?”
“Yesterday, when I got to the settlement and was makin’ my deal with Mr. Larson to buy my furs, you were watchin’ pretty close, right?”
“Yeah. You were carryin’ a rifle, two pistols, a knife, and a tomahawk, and you looked about as savage as a Injun.”
“Did you notice anybody else watchin’ me and Larson?”
Jake looked puzzled. “You mean like somebody skulkin’ around like a Injun?”
“That’s right.”
Jake thought about it for several seconds, making faces as if that much mental activity made his brain hurt, before finally shaking his head and saying, “Sorry, Preacher, I don’t recollect nothin’ like that.”
Preacher tried to jog the boy’s memory by saying, “These fellas I’m talkin’ about, one of ’em was tall and wearin’ buckskins, and the other one was shorter and had on an old suit and a beaver hat.”
“Nope, I just didn’t see ’em.”
Preacher swallowed his disappointment. “All right. I’m obliged to you anyway for answerin’ the question.”
So this trail was yet another dead end. Preacher didn’t get discouraged. He knew that sooner or later Fate would lead him to the two men he sought.
The tavern was already busy when they reached it. Dusk was settling down, and men who had finished their work for the day were eager to quench their thirst and maybe play a little slap-and-tickle with the serving gals. Nobody paid much attention to Jake when Preacher took him inside. While it wasn’t that common to see a kid in a tavern, neither was it unusual to come across somebody Jake’s age guzzling down a shot of whiskey. A lot of youngsters were on their own because their folks had died or abandoned them or the kids had run away. They fended for themselves. It was a hard life. The ones who toughened up quickly were the ones who survived.
“Who’s your friend?” Fargo asked when Preacher brought Jake up to the bar.
“His name’s Jake,” Preacher said.
Fargo reached across the bar to shake hands. “Well, I’m mighty pleased to meet you, Jake,” he said. “What’re you doin’, associatin’ with an old scoundrel like Preacher here?”
“Preacher’s gonna teach me how to be a mountain man,” Jake declared.
“Now dad-gum it!” Preacher burst out. “I never said any such thing. Jake got some crazy idea in his head that he was goin’ back to the mountains with me, but I never said he could. I thought maybe you could find a place for him here, Ford.”
“Here at the tavern, you mean?”
Preacher nodded. “Yeah. Got to be some chores around here he could do to pay for his grub and a roof over his head.”
Fargo scratched at his jaw and frowned in thought. “There’s always plenty o’ work around the place, that’s for damn sure. I might could use a boy to help out.” He looked at Jake. “Where are you from, son?”
“Right here in St. Louis.”
Fargo gave Preacher a surprised glance. “Is that so? You got kinfolks here?”
“Just my pa. Jonathan Brant. He works in one of the fur warehouses by the river. You wouldn’t know him, though. He’d never set foot inside a tavern. He says they’re all dens of iniquity, whatever that is.”
Churchgoers must like that word, Preacher thought, remembering how one of the men who had found him the night before after he’d been knocked out had used it.
Fargo started shaking his head. “Sorry, Preacher,” he said. “I can’t take the boy.”
“Why not?”
“You heard him. He’s got a pa right here in town. Hell, the fella works just a few blocks away! If I kept the boy here and he found out about it, he’d have the law on me, sure as shootin’.”
“You heard what Jake said. His pa wouldn’t ever find out, because he’d never come in here.”
Stubbornly, Fargo continued to shake his head. “Somebody might recognize the boy and tell his pa that he’s here. Then I’d be liable to be thrown in jail for child-stealin’! Nope, I’m sorry, Preacher, but I just can’t do it.”
Preacher glared at Jake. “Now what in blazes am I gonna do with you?”
“I told you,” Jake said, grinning up at him. “Take me to the mountains with you.”