Preacher's Showdown

“This is it,” Corliss said. “This is the place for our trading post.”

Jerome nodded as they stood looking over a broad, grassy park at the foot of the slope that led up to South Pass. The meadow had a creek for water, plenty of grass for livestock, and trees for logs with which they would build a large, sturdy trading post. An uneasy truce between the cousins had grown into acceptance and the beginnings of friendship again. There had been no more talk about splitting up.

For one thing, since the deaths of Robinson and Neilson, they were short-handed. It was going to take everybody to make a success of this enterprise, including Jake, who had agreed to stay with the cousins, at least until the next spring.

“But the next time you come by here, Preacher,” the boy warned the mountain man, “you’re gonna have to take me with you. I’ll be ’most grown by then.”

“We’ll see,” Preacher said with a grin as he got ready to ride. He had packed some supplies on Horse and was anxious to get on up into the mountains, where the beaver were just waiting for him to trap them.

The rest of the journey had passed without incident. Preacher and Jake had both been forced to handle one of the teams, a job that Preacher didn’t like. He had managed all right, but if he never saw another ox’s rear end, that would be just fine with him.

Jerome, Blackie, and Pete Carey were all healing from their injuries. Blackie and Carey were going to stay on and help build the trading post; then Carey planned to continue working there while Blackie went back to trapping.

Everyone gathered around to say good-bye to Preacher. Deborah hugged him, and so, after a second’s hesitation, did Jake. “Thanks for bringin’ me along, Preacher,” the youngster said. “Even with all the fightin’, I like it a whole heap better out here than I did in St. Louis.”

Preacher grinned. “I sort of feel the same way, son,” he said.

“Hello!” Jerome said. “Someone’s coming.”

They turned to see a rider headed toward them, leading a packhorse. After a moment, Preacher recognized the man, who wore a coonskin cap with the tail dangling in front of his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he told the others. “It’s a fella I know named Bouchard, another trapper.”

Bouchard reined in and raised a hand in greeting. He stared at the wagons for a second, then said, “Sacre bleu, Preacher, what is this? The beginnings of a new town?”

“You never know,” Preacher said. He waved a hand at the others. “These folks are settin’ up a tradin’ post.”

“Oui, I think I heard something about that. And a good thing it is, too, because there is a wagon train full of settlers about three days behind me.” Bouchard poked a thumb back over his shoulder as he spoke. “They will be needing supplies, I imagine.”

“Three days?” Jerome said. “We can’t build a trading post in three days!”

“So we’ll sell to ’em out of the wagons,” Corliss said with a grin as he put an arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a minister with that wagon train, would you, M’sieu Bouchard?”

The bearded trapper nodded. “I believe there is.”

“Good.” Corliss beamed down at Deborah. “I think we’re going to need to have a wedding.” Deborah smiled. Corliss glanced over at Jerome and added, “That is, if there’s a best man available.”

“There is,” Jerome said. Then he clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to work, everyone! There’s a lot to do before those wagons get here!”

They were all so busy, they didn’t even notice when Preacher and Bouchard rode away. Jake realized they were gone and looked around quickly, spotting the two men just as they disappeared into the trees as they climbed toward the pass.

He lifted a hand and waved anyway, not caring whether Preacher could see him or not.

As they rode, the Frenchman said, “It is unusual to see you with greenhorns such as those, Preacher. You guided them out here, oui?”

“Yeah,” Preacher said. “I seem to keep gettin’ roped into that sort o’ thing.”

“Any trouble along the way?”

Preacher thought about everything that had happened and then shook his head. “Nope. Not too much.”

Something was still bothering him, though. They hadn’t buried all the bodies of the men that had attacked the wagon train and kidnapped Deborah, but Preacher had checked all the corpses before the wagons rolled on westward.

The man in the beaver hat hadn’t been among them.

The fella had either been wounded and crawled off somewhere else to die, Preacher told himself, or else he had slipped away during all the confusion of the battle. But either way, he was a dead man, because Preacher didn’t figure there was any chance somebody like that could survive out here on his own, so far from civilization. If a grizzly didn’t get him, a wolf would, and if somehow he escaped from those predators, the elements or the Indians would take care of him.

Still, Preacher would have liked to know for certain sure that the bastard was dead.

But you couldn’t have everything, he told himself as he rode on toward the mountains with Bouchard. Looking at the wild, magnificent landscape around him, he thought again that no, a man couldn’t have everything ...

But a fella who lived out here on the frontier came mighty damned close to it.

Two months later

Shad Beaumont stared in amazement at the gaunt, filthy scarecrow of a man who had been brought into his study in his big house on the outskirts of St. Louis. The beaver hat was long gone and the clothes were in tatters, but Beaumont recognized the man despite that. But only barely, because Colin Fairfax had changed a great deal.

He looked like a man who had been to hell and back.

“What happened?” Beaumont demanded.

Fairfax was swaying with exhaustion. He had to put a hand on Beaumont’s desk to steady himself as he leaned forward and croaked, “Preacher . . . Preacher happened. Killed poor Schuyler and ruined everything. Nearly killed me.” A cackle of laughter that sounded like it was touched with insanity came from the tortured throat. “But he didn’t. I made it back. The animals didn’t get me, and neither did the Indians. And you know what kept me going?”

Beaumont could only shake his head as this crazed mockery of a man.

“Preacher kept me going,” Fairfax whispered, and despite everything, the light of hatred burned brightly in his sunken eyes. “I knew I had to live so that someday, somehow . . . I can kill that damned Preacher.”