Preacher let himself sink into the mud until only the top of his head and his nose remained above the surface. He was behind a clump of grass and could not be seen. His one rather fervent wish was that there was not a big rattler sunning on the clump. The sun would be cycling soon, shadowing the valley in darkness. Preacher would mud swim out of the bog under cover of night. He rather hoped that some of the men would step into the bog, but he knew that was not very likely.

  Sir Elmore reached up and jerked Zaunbelcher back into the mud and safe from rifle shot and they lay quite still for several long moments before they began cautiously working their way back to solid ground.

  “Oh, drat! I lost my saber,” Sir Elmore said.

  “Excellent,” Zaunbelcher said. “I hope you never find the damn thing.”

  The rest of the man-hunters waited until shadows began casting long pockets of darkness before they moved. And even then, they did so very cautiously. None of them had been able to spot Preacher and they did not know whether he was still out there in the bog.

  “Creep out of that swamp or whatever it is careful-like,” Bones called to Elmore and Wilhelm. “Stay low leadin’ your horses back here. We got to get gone,” To Van Eaton he said, “Have the boys start draggin’ the wounded out.”

  “Right.”

  “What about Scott?” a man called.

  “Leave him,” Bones said, cutting his eyes to Van Eaton.

  “You boys get gone,” Van Eaton said. “I’ll see to Scott.”

  Preacher heard the calling back and forth and let the men leave, noting which direction they took. Just in case they were trying to setup a trap — something he doubted — Preacher remained in the bog for an hour after they’d left. Then, at full dark he carefully worked his way out of the bog and back to his camp, about three miles away. He washed himself at a tiny run-off and brushed the now dried mud off his buckskins. Something was nagging at his mind but he could not bring it to full light. He shook his head and gave it up. It would come to him.

  He cooked his supper and boiled his coffee over a tiny fire. As he ate and drank, he tried to figure out what was nagging at him. He knew it was something he’d seen, and seen that day, but whatever it had been remained elusive to him. He laid out his blankets and with rifle and pistols fully charged and close to hand, Preacher sighed and went to sleep.

  He awakened with a grunt of anger about an hour later. Scalps. That’s what he’d seen. There had been scalps tied to the manes of the horses of them silly foreigners.

  And one of them had been Eddie’s.

  Sixteen

  “So much for the generals leadin’ us anywhere,” Van Eaton groused that evening. “I told you it was a bad idea.” Van Eaton shrugged that off. He already knew it was a bad idea. He glanced around at his shot-up men. They were a pitiful-looking bunch and a lot of the enthusiasm for the hunt had been knocked out of them by Preacher. Bones had never before encountered such a man as Preacher. What Bones didn’t know about any number of things would fill volumes, but just about any experienced mountain man would have behaved pretty much the same as Preacher as far as fighting ability went. Most mountain men would have been content to just run Bones and his so-called man-hunters out of the mountains, and then they would have gone on about their business. But there were a few who would have done just exactly what Preacher was doing.

  “We got to find us a hidey-hole and stay low ‘til Andy gets back,” Bones said. “The men just ain’t in any shape to go much farther and they damn shore ain’t in any shape to mix it up with Preacher.”

  “You mighty right about that,” Van Eaton said.

  Up until almost that very moment, if Bones and his bunch had really wanted to give up the hunt, Preacher just might have let them go. But not after seeing Eddie’s scalp tied onto the mane of that horse. That snapped it with Preacher.

  Preacher lay for a long time in his blankets after the nagging thought had awakened him in all its horror. Bones and them knew that was a white boy they dragged and scalped . . . or scalped and then dragged, the dread thought came to him.

  The dirty scum! He didn’t give a damn if those that went for supplies came back with a hundred extra men. Anybody who joined up with Bones Gibson, Van Eaton, and them silly and savage foreigners was dead meat.

  The longer he thought about that previous afternoon, the more scalps he could identify. Wind Chaser had a streak of gray right down the center of his hair. Preacher had seen that one tied to the mane of Van Eaton’s horse. Wind Chaser’s woman’s hair had a sort of auburn tint to it, since she was the daughter of a mountain man. Bones had been displaying that one. And their kids had taken after their mother, with lighter hair than the others in the tribe. Preacher had seen their scalps, too.

  Preacher looked up at the starry heavens. This high up, the stars seemed so close he could almost reach out and touch them. But Preacher was in no mood to appreciate the beauty of the night. He had something else on his mind.

  Killing.

  Preacher picked up their trail about mid-morning. And for a moment, it confused him. The trail led south and east. Dismounting, he studied the tracks. There was still the very faint outline of older tracks, and he recognized those as being the men who had left for supplies and returning from Bent’s Fort. Horses and mules. Then he realized what Bones was doing. His bunch was pretty well shot up and hurtin’. So he was tryin’ to link up with his other party, hopin’ they was bringin’ reinforcements. Preacher figured that when they joined up, they’d hole up for a time, and then come after him with a vengeance.

  “Suits me,” Preacher muttered. “Just fine. The more the merrier, Bones. Bones. Somebody shore named you right. ‘Cause your bones is gonna bleach white as snow in these mountains, you kid-killer. I swear it.”

  Preacher didn’t follow Bones and the others. He turned around and headed back north. He wanted time to kill a couple of deer, make some pemmican, smoke and jerk some meat, and just lounge around and eat some venison steaks. He’d found him some wild peas and prairie turnips and wild taters. Mix all that up with some pieces of venison and toss in some rose hips and sage and a body had him a lip-smackin’ good stew. Preacher got all hungry around the mouth just thinkin’ ‘bout it.

  The weary and bloodied bunch linked up with Andy Price and the gang of men he was bringing back from Bent’s Fort. Bones eyeballed the bunch and figured about half of them would turn back once they took a good look at the Rockies. Fifteen or twenty more would pull out after the first sneak attack by Preacher. Those that stayed would be lean and mean and hard and tough.

  “They’s another bunch comin’ up behind me,” Andy told him. “I tole ‘em to head on back. This ain’t no game. But they’re still comin’ on. They’re city toughs. Some of them come all the way from New York and Philly and Boston and them places. I don’t understand how they’ve made it this far. They don’t appear to know north from south. And you never in your borned days seen so many different kinds of guns. One of ‘em’s got two pistols. Each has a cylinder that holds six rounds and revolves. He called them revolvers. Strange lookin’ things.”

  “They’re what?” Van Eaton asked.

  “Revolvers,” Andy repeated.

  “How do they work?” George Winters asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Andy said. “But I don’t think they’ll ever catch on.”

  “Did you hear anything about the hunt back at the fort?” Bones asked.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s about all that folks talk about. And that’s strange, too.”

  “How so?” Van Eaton asked.

  “Well, they was a goodly number of mountain men there, but none of them seemed to be a bit concerned about Preacher. Near’bouts all of them said the joke was gonna be on us. One big mountain man told a bully boy from New York — let’s see, how did he put it? Oh, yeah. “Ye’ll nar leave them mountains ifn ye go yonder with a blood lust for Preacher. Ye been warned by us who knows White Wolf. Heed our words.”

  “How about Jim Slattery and them writers who left us?”

  “They never showed up, Bones. Nobody there has seen hide nor hair of them.”

  “Injuns got them,” Van Eaton opined.

  Bones was thoughtful for a moment. “That mob comin’ up behind us just might be what we need. Preacher will be so busy tryin’ to figure out what to do, mayhaps some of us can slip off durin’ the confusion and kill him.”

  Sir Elmore had walked up. He said, “Say now. That is an excellent thought. By jove, I believe you’ve quite probably stumbled upon the solution to our problem.” He patted Bones on the shoulder. “A very admirable bit of ruminative prowess, my good man.” He smiled and walked off to share the good news with his fellow adventurers.

  Andy shook his head. “I was hopin’ them fellers would learn to talk right whilst I was gone.”

  “No such luck,” Van Eaton said. “They’s even worser than before.”

  Preacher spent his time relocating his caches of supplies, jerking a goodly amount of meat, resting and eating and getting ready for war. He was completely unaware of the second band of men hunting him. While Bones was waiting for the wounds of his men to heal, and Preacher was preparing himself mentally to dispose of the entire worthless, no-count, disagreeable lot of them, summer came to the mountains in full bloom. The valleys were pockets of color in all hues.

  Utes had returned from a very successful hunt and were puzzled by the disappearance of Wind Chaser and his small band. Warriors from Wind Chaser’s village were frantically and desperately searching for their families. But so far they failed to search the little valley where Eddie and Wind Chaser and his band had met their deaths. But they would. The wilderness was vast, and it was impossible to look everywhere. The warriors from Wind Chaser’s village mistakenly headed north and west in their search, and the little valley, now covered with summer’s blossoms, remained untouched, for the time being.

  Had they run into Dark Hand, he could have and would have told them what had happened, but Dark Hand had traveled north and east, to rejoin his own people, who were camped over in the unorganized territory that lay just south of the Missouri River.

  Sir Elmore had found his saber but wisely kept it sheathed and out of sight because Baron Zaunbelcher had threatened to break it if Elmore ever drew it again.

  Most of Bones’s men were healed up enough to ride, and those that weren’t properly healed could either suffer the discomfort and ride, or stay and be left behind. All chose to ride.

  The second band of man-hunters was just about the most disreputable looking bunch of ne’er-do-wells that Bones had ever seen. And when the likes of Bones Gibson thought somebody was trash, they couldn’t get much lower if they crawled under a snake’s belly.

  Bones had ridden back to eyeball the second bunch, to see if there might be any men in there that he could use. He found a few possibilities, but for the moment, would stay with what he had. He was back up to strength, just over forty men.

  This bunch, he thought sourly, would not last a week in the mountains, not if just one of them made a hostile move against Preacher. Preacher would turn on them like a wild animal and run them all back to the Mississippi. If they made it that far. Bones wisely decided to distance himself from this mangy looking pack of so-called man-hunters.

  “You there!” the gruff shout stopped Bones as he was just riding off.

  Bones turned to stare at the burly lout who was striding toward him. “What do you want?”

  “Where’s this here murderer called Preacher?”

  Bones laughed at him. “You want him, you find him.”

  “I’m Lige Watson.” The man acted as though that was supposed to mean something.

  “So?”

  “I’m the toughest man in all of Pennsylvania.”

  Bones laughed at him. “Then you best head on back to Pennsylvania, Watson. ‘Cause out here, you’re nothin’.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Not for very long, you won’t.” Bones left it at that and rode away.

  “Holy jumpin’ elephants!” Preacher said, peering through his spy glass. He took a second look just to make certain his eyes weren’t deceiving him. They weren’t.

  It looked to him like about forty or so in the first bunch, and that would be Bones’s men, for he could pick out Bones in the lead. Another forty or so in the second bunch, layin’ back about a mile behind Bones.

  “I shore am gettin’ to be a right popular feller,” Preacher muttered, putting away his glass. “Damned if that ain’t a regular army down yonder. Forty in one bunch and forty in the other. They gonna be failin’ all over one another ‘fore this is through.” He smiled a wicked curving of his lips. “I’m gonna have me some fun come the night.”

  What was fun to Preacher could be downright unsettling to others . . . and sometimes lethal.

  The floor of the long narrow valley was dotted with campfires, with a dark space about a mile in length between the two camps of man-hunters. Lige Watson, the self-appointed leader of the second bunch, walked through the camp, inspecting ‘his men,” as he liked to call them.

  To Lige, they looked like a very formidable army. In reality, they were about as sloppy a rag-tag bunch of losers as had ever gathered anywhere. The group was made up of those types of people who are constantly out for an easy dollar, who expect the world to give them a handout, who always blame others for their problems, who could never keep a job because the boss ‘picked on them.” Among the second group were strong-arm boys, thieves, hustlers, pimps, forgers, murderers, rapists, and every other kind of no-good anybody would care to name.

  Really, the social and moral difference between Bones’s group and Lige’s bunch was minuscule. There wasn’t a man in either group worth the gunpowder it would take to blow his brains out.

  “Lookin’ rale good,” Lige said to his friend, Fred Lasalle, after completing his walk-through of the camp. “I’d put these boys up aginst just about any group twicest our size.”

  “Did you git to talk to any of them royal highnesses?” Fred asked.

  “Well, sort of. I spoke to one and he tole me that in all his years he had never stood so dost to such an odorous cretinous moronic specimen of foul humanity.”

  Fred blinked. “Well, you done good, then, din you?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I reckon so.”

  “What do all them words mean, Lige?” Derby Peel asked.

  “Means we all right, I guess.”

  “Thought so.”

  With the exception of the rendezvous of the mountain men, which had now ceased to be, never had such a large gathering of white men occurred in the Rockies. The stench of unwashed bodies could be smelled for hundreds of yards. No self-respecting Indian would get within an arrow’s range of such a group. The smell alone probably contributed to saving their lives from Indians looking for a scalp.

  “Whew!” Preacher muttered, as he drew closer to the encampment. His nose wrinkled at the stench of unwashed bodies. A buzzard would have a tough time competing with this bunch, he thought.

  Preacher lay on his belly in the tall grass less than fifty yards from Lige’s camp and looked over the scene that unfolded before him. It was only slightly less than incredible. The fools had fires blazin’ that were big enough to roast a whole buffalo. The big ugly bully-lookin’ man someone had called Lige was probably the leader of this skunk-pack, Preacher reckoned. He looked like a man who had a real high opinion of himself the way he strutted around. Preacher took an immediate dislike to him. He’d seen men like Lige before, men who’d come to the mountains and tried to fit in with other trappers. They had not lasted long. Mountain men were hard to impress.

  “Well, boys,” Lige said to his friends who’d come west with him. “Tomorrow we start huntin’ down this Preacher person. I don’t figure on it takin’ no more than a week. Prob’ly less than that.”

  Preacher smiled and moved closer until he reached a pocket of darkness. Then he stood up and slipped into the camp. Many of the men were dressed in buckskins so no one paid any attention to Preacher as he walked through the camp and straight up to Lige.

  “Howdy,” Preacher said. “I got a message from Bones if you be Lige.”

  “I’m Lige. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, Mister Lige, don’t get mad at me, I’m just deliverin’ the message. Bones said for your men to bring your cups and come on over. They’s whiskey a-plenty and food for all. Says both our bunches had best get to know one another. But he said for me to tell you to keep your butt out of his camp. Says if you show up he’ll stomp your gizzard out.”

  “He said what?” Lige hollered.

  “Oh, he said a lot, Bones did. But I dasn’t repeat most of it. It was right insultin’ and personal.”

  “You tell me, mister!” Lige growled the words, as a large crowd gathered around.

  “Well, now, don’t get mad at me,” Preacher said.

  “I’m not gonna get mad at you. You just tell me what Bones said.”

  “Well, he said you smelled worser than a skunk and prob’ly had about as much sense as a jackass. And he called your mamma some real turrible names, he did. I just won’t repeat them slurs aginst a good woman. I just won’t do it. God might strike me dead.”

  Lige was so mad he was hopping up and down.

  “If you don’t mind,” Preacher said. “I’d like to leave that bunch of name-callers over yonder and join up with you, Mister Lige. I think Bones is settin’ up an ambush for your boys. That’s what it looks like to me. Besides that, I just cain’t abide a man who’ll call another man he don’t even know a low-down, no-good, buzzard-puke-breath, dirty son of a bitch like Bones said you was.”

  Lige’s eyes bugged out and his face turned red. His ears wriggled and his adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “You stay here,” he said to Preacher, finally finding his voice. “I think you a good man. Let’s ride, boys. We got a nest of snakes to clean out.”