Four men on horseback swept around the bend and charged toward Preacher and his friends. The would-be robbers had posted a single rifleman on each rim, their job being to cut down two out of the three intended victims. Then the other four would attack from the front and wipe out the remaining man.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk were still alive and kicking, and they were ready to take the fight straight to their attackers.

  That was what Preacher did, guiding Horse with his knees as he thundered toward the four men. The guns in his hands roared and spouted flame and powdersmoke.

  One of the attackers flung his hands in the air and pitched off his horse, shot clean through the body by Preacher.

  Another jerked backward and dropped the gun he held, but he managed to stay mounted as his horse veered to the side. That didn’t do him any good because Dog raced forward, launched himself into the air, and crashed into the wounded man, knocking him out of the saddle. The big cur landed nimbly on all four paws and sprang on top of the man, whose yells turned into a grotesque, bubbling scream as Dog’s sharp teeth tore into his throat.

  Nighthawk charged up alongside Preacher, eager to get into the fight. The giant warrior’s arm drew back and flashed forward. The tomahawk he threw spun through the air so fast it was hard for the eye to follow.

  The weapon seemed to reappear almost as if by magic as it struck one of the remaining men in the forehead. The tomahawk’s keen edge cleaved into the man’s skull and lodged there as blood welled around it. The dead man fell, but one foot hung in a stirrup and the madly charging horse dragged him on past Preacher, Nighthawk, and Audie.

  That left just one attacker, and by now he must have realized what a terrible mistake he and his companions had made. He hauled back hard on his horse’s reins and tried to turn the animal. The mount stumbled and lost its balance, going down in a welter of flailing legs. It rolled right over its former rider.

  Preacher and his friends reined in and were out of their saddles quickly. Nighthawk trotted around the pass, checking to make sure the would-be robbers were dead. He didn’t bother with the one Dog was still savaging, nor with the one whose horse had fallen. Preacher and Audie approached that man, their guns out and ready.

  After rolling over the man, his mount had struggled to its feet and moved off several yards. The animal appeared not to have been injured in the fall.

  The same couldn’t be said of its rider. The man lay on his back, gasping and moaning. The white, jagged end of a broken bone stuck out of his right thigh, with blood heavily staining that leg of his woolen trousers. His left arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, either broken or with a dislocated shoulder. And blood leaked from both corners of his mouth to make crimson trails across his bearded jaws.

  “This one of the varmints who paid a visit to your camp?” Preacher asked Audie.

  “Yes, I recognize him,” Audie replied. He shook his head and said to the injured man, “I sincerely wish you had decided to resist temptation, my friend.”

  “You g-go straight to … to hell, you sawed-off little bas—”

  The man got that far in his insult before a spasm went through him. His head jerked back, and cords stood out in his neck. More blood welled from his mouth.

  “I’m all … b-busted up inside,” he said when he was able to talk again. He stared up at Preacher and Audie, his eyes wide with agony. “P-Please … f-finish me off.”

  “I don’t know,” Preacher said. “I’ve never cottoned to low-down thieves, and you was about to call my friend here a dirty name, not to mention bein’ so rude as to bring up him bein’ short. There’s a heap of wolves in these mountains. Seems to me it’d be fittin’ if we was to go off and let them deal with you—”

  Audie brought up the old flintlock pistol he held and squeezed the trigger. The weapon’s dull boom echoed back resoundingly from the walls of the pass. The injured man jerked once as the heavy lead ball smashed into his forehead and put him out of his misery.

  Nighthawk had come up behind them. As the shot’s echoes faded, he said, “Umm.”

  “I agree, there was no point in prolonging the torment this poor fellow was enduring,” Audie said. “I know you weren’t being intentionally cruel, Preacher. The frontier is a harsh taskmaster and strips away much of a man’s gentler nature.”

  “I was fixin’ to shoot him,” Preacher said. “To tell the truth, I figured he might not see it comin’ as much with me jabberin’ at him that way.”

  “Ah, I understand now. You were just trying to be kind in your own rough fashion.”

  “Well, I might not go quite that far,” the mountain man said. “Like I told the varmint, I never have cottoned to thieves.”

  They rounded up the robbers’ horses and drove them on through the canyon. They would trade the animals and the gear once they got to Dutch Charley’s.

  They left the dead men where they had fallen. As Audie had said, the frontier was a harsh taskmaster, and scavengers had to eat, too.

  Even though, during his long, adventuring years, Preacher had traveled the length and width and breadth of the West and seen just about everything there was to see, when the three friends emerged from Wailing Woman Pass, he was struck by the sheer beauty of the landscape spread out before them. The colors were breathtaking—the deep blue sky, the dazzling white clouds, the soothing, restful, green pine-clad slopes. Rugged gray peaks reposed in the distance like huge, slumbering behemoths. Wildflowers provided splotches of bright color in the valleys. White foam frothed on the icy blue, swiftly flowing streams. There was no prettier place on God’s Earth than the high country, to Preacher’s way of thinking. He might roam here and there and probably would always be too fiddle-footed to do otherwise, but this was home, and here he would always return until the day came for him to cross the divide. When he did, he hoped it would be here.

  Something of what he was feeling must have shown on his face, because Audie looked over at him and said softly, “It’s the same with me, Preacher. There’s nowhere else like it.”

  The encounter with the thieves slowed them down enough that the sun had gone behind the Bitterroots and twilight was beginning to settle down over the land by the time they came in sight of Dutch Charley’s Trading Post. It was a sprawling log building that had started out fairly small and been added on to several times over the years as Charley’s business increased. Behind it was a barn with an attached corral, and not far from the barn was a squat building that served as a blacksmith shop whenever Charley wanted to fire up the forge.

  One of the numerous creeks that flowed through the region ran nearby. Charley, who also had an engineering bent, had constructed a water wheel on it. He didn’t use it for anything at the moment, but he liked having it and insisted that if enough people ever moved into the area, he would build a sawmill to go with it, or possibly a grain mill. Or both.

  Numerous lights burned around the trading post, casting inviting yellow glows in the gathering dusk. As the three men rode toward the place, Audie commented, “You know, this is almost starting to look like a settlement.”

  “You hush up with talk like that,” Preacher chided him. “You remember, six or eight years ago I got mixed up with those folks who had the bright idea of startin’ theirselves a town out here, up north a ways.”

  “I recall that it was fairly successful for a while.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t last. There was always one sort of ruckus or another breakin’ out, and the British kept stirrin’ up trouble. The settlers finally gave up, and that should’ve been the end of crazy notions like havin’ towns out here.” Preacher shook his head. “We just don’t need ’em.”

  “You can’t stop things from changing with a wish and a hope, my friend.”

  “I reckon not,” the mountain man admitted. “But that don’t have to mean I cotton to it.”

  “A never-ending conundrum.”

  Nighthawk nodded solemnly.

  In the fading light, Preacher studied the corral. He didn’t see any horses, although some could be inside the barn. However, the weather was pleasant, and it seemed more likely any horses would be outside this evening.

  “Looks like ol’ Charley don’t have much business goin’ on.”

  “It’s early yet,” Audie said. “Some other travelers could arrive.”

  Without saying anything, Nighthawk leveled an arm like the trunk of a young tree and pointed across the creek.

  “You’re right!” Audie said. “Two riders approaching from the west.”

  Preacher saw them emerging from some trees about a hundred yards on the other side of the stream. They were too far away to make out any details, but he could tell from the way the horses moved with plodding gaits that they were tired, as if they’d been on a hard trail for a long time. The animals picked their way deliberately across the meadow toward the creek, one of them out in front of the other instead of side by side.

  Preacher noticed something else. The rider bringing up the rear turned his head several times to look behind them as if he were checking to make sure they weren’t being followed. Preacher shifted his gaze to the trees again and watched to see if anyone else rode out of them. He didn’t see anybody.

  The two strangers splashed across the creek, which was fairly shallow here with a rocky bed. It was easy to ford, which was a major reason Dutch Charley had decided to build his trading post at this location. They reached the buildings well ahead of Preacher and his companions, swinging around the trading post itself to head for the barn and the corral.

  “No pack animal,” Preacher commented. “They’re travelin’ light, I reckon.”

  “In a hurry, perhaps,” Audie said.

  Preacher glanced over at him. “You got the same impression I did, didn’t you?”

  “That someone might be pursuing them? As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Which don’t make it any of our business.”

  “None at all,” Audie agreed without hesitation. “And it’s entirely possible we’re misreading the situation. Even if we’re not, it might well be inappropriate for us to become involved.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want to do nothin’ inappropriate.”

  Both white men grinned. Nighthawk let out a grunt that was as close as he ever got to laughter.

  The two riders dismounted. The larger of the two opened the corral gate and led the horses into the enclosure. The other one, carrying a large, apparently unwieldy pack of some sort, walked toward the trading post in a slow, weary gait.

  Preacher frowned in surprise. Even though the light was poor, he was close enough now to see that the person heading into the trading post wore a dress over buckskin leggings.

  A woman, more than likely an Indian.

  After closing the gate, the other pilgrim pulled blankets from the backs of the horses and began rubbing the animals down. He had leaned a long-barreled flintlock rifle against the fence. Preacher saw him glance toward the weapon as he, Audie, and Nighthawk approached, but he didn’t make a move to retrieve it, concentrating on tending to the horses instead. The fellow didn’t want to provoke trouble if none was brewing.

  Preacher could tell that the man was watching them pretty closely from the corner of his eye. He was an Indian, still tall and straight but obviously of advanced years. His hair was iron gray and worn in simple braids, and his face was seamed and weathered.

  A Flathead, Preacher guessed. The man’s buckskins were plain and free of ornamentation so he couldn’t go by that, but the Flatheads were the most common tribe in this part of the country.

  Preacher reined Horse to a stop outside the corral. Audie and Nighthawk did likewise with their mounts. The old Indian swatted his ponies on their rumps and sent them trotting toward the barn. Then he turned to the newcomers and said in English, “I’ll get the gate for you.”

  “Much obliged, Grandfather,” Preacher said.

  “I am not your grandfather,” the old man replied with a hint of sharpness. He lifted the rope loop that held the gate closed and swung it back so the three men could ride in.

  “Sorry,” Preacher said as he nudged the stallion into the corral. “I don’t reckon I meant any offense.”

  The old man waved a gnarled hand. “It is nothing. I was too quick to speak. It has been a long day.”

  “You and your wife have come a long way?”

  “I do not travel with my wife. She is my granddaughter.” The old man smiled. “So, I actually am a grandfather. I should not be insulted by being called one.”

  Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk dismounted after leading their pack horses and the horses they had claimed from the dead robbers inside the corral.

  “Folks call me Preacher,” the mountain man said. “This here is Audie, and that walkin’ mountain over there is Nighthawk.”

  “I am Sahale. It means ‘in a high place.’”

  “Pleased to meet you. You folks are Flatheads, is that right?”

  Sahale frowned. “We are Salish. Our ancestors never flattened their heads. The first white men who came to this land were confused by our sign language and believed that was what our people were saying.” He raised his hands and pressed the palms against the sides of his head. “This is just the sign for our tribe. It has no other meaning.”

  “It’s easy for folks to get things wrong without meanin’ any harm. What’s your granddaughter’s name?”

  “Chimalus. It means ‘bluebird.’”

  “Pretty name,” Preacher said. “We’d best tend to these horses.”

  Sahale looked at the half-dozen saddled but riderless mounts and commented dryly, “You seem to have an abundance of them.”

  “It’s a long story. Well, come to think of it, I guess it ain’t all that long. The fellas who owned these horses figured on robbin’ and killin’ me and my friends.” Preacher spat. “They don’t need the horses no more.”

  Sahale had nothing to say to that. He picked up the rifle, ducked between two poles in the fence, and walked toward the trading post.

  “Quite a dignified old man,” Audie said quietly. “I wonder what he and his granddaughter are running from.”

  “We could ask him, but I ain’t sure he’d tell us,” Preacher said. “He seems a mite proud and stiff-necked.”

  They put that question out of their minds for the next few minutes as they unsaddled all the horses and rubbed down the ones they had been riding. The horses went over to a long water trough to drink. Nighthawk found bags of grain in a shed and poured some into a bin so the animals could eat. The two ponies ridden by Sahale and his granddaughter joined in, although not without some squabbling among the horses as they established a hierarchy.

  By the time Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk left the corral and walked toward the trading post, all the light had faded from the western sky except a shallow arch of gold just above the mountaintops. Preacher pulled the latch string on the back door and led the way inside after telling Dog to stay put.

  Flames leaped and danced in the huge fireplace that took up most of a side wall. A pot-bellied, cast-iron stove stood at the far end of the big main room. Between the two sources of heat, it was pleasantly warm. A tangy blend of tobacco smoke from Dutch Charley’s pipe mixed with the smells of roasting meat and baking bread and filled the air.

  Shelves packed with assorted trade goods took up much of the space in the room. A bar ran along the back with tables in front of it. Dutch Charley himself stood behind the bar with his huge hands resting on the polished planks. He was a tall, broad man with a red face, a sweeping mustache, and a halo of wispy fair hair around his head. His last name was Hennenburger, Preacher recalled, but everybody in the mountains just called him Dutch Charley.

  His wife was an Indian woman he had met on the way out here and brought with him. She stood at a stove behind the bar stirring something—probably stew—in a large iron pot.

  The other two people in the room sat at a table on the far side of the room, well away from the light of the fireplace and the glow cast by lanterns hanging on chains from the roof beams. Sahale sat with his back against the wall and the rifle lying on the table close at hand. He wasn’t hunting trouble, but trouble might be hunting him. Clearly, he intended to be ready for it if it found him.

  His granddaughter sat with her back to the room. At the end of the table, in the narrow space on the puncheon floor between the table and the wall, lay the large pack she had carried into the building earlier. She kept glancing over at it, Preacher noted, almost as if she were afraid it was going to get up and run away under its own power.

  That odd thought had just gone through his head when she half-turned on the bench to look at him. The compelling beauty of the dark-eyed gaze she cast upon him stopped him in his tracks.

  CHAPTER 3

  Indian women were just like any other kind, Preacher had found. Some were mighty pretty, and some weren’t. This young woman was pretty, with smooth skin, dark eyes, and hair like a raven’s wing, parted in the middle and woven into two thick braids that draped over her shoulders and hung down in front of the fringed buckskin dress she wore.

  In a voice that crackled with irritation, she asked in English, “What do you want, white man?”

  “Not a thing other than to say howdy, ma’am,” Preacher replied. “Me and my friends met your grandpa outside. We figured we ought to come over and pay our respects.”

  “You have done so,” she said. “You should leave us alone now.”

  The old man spoke to her in their native tongue. Preacher savvied enough of it to know he was telling her there was no reason to be rude. Indians valued civility and nearly always were polite unless they were provoked.

  On the other hand, Preacher wasn’t one to force his company on anybody who didn’t want it. He lifted a hand to the wide brim of his brown felt hat and touched a finger to it as he nodded.

  “If that’s the way you feel, we’ll bid you a good evenin’, then,” he said.

  “And safe travels in the future,” Audie added.