Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor had found his slightly bent sword and was waving it around. Zaunbelcher had moved quickly to the other side of the clearing. “Break camp, men!” Elmore shouted. “We follow and attack. To your steeds, men. Hurry.”

  No one paid the slightest bit of attention to him. By now the man-hunters had all come to the conclusion that his Lordship was crazy as a bessie bug, and those with him weren’t that far behind. Sir Elmore finally realized that no one was listening to him and walked off to pout.

  “Well, we’ll follow, for sure,” Bones said. “But before we attack, I want to look this situation over.”

  “You mighty right about that,” Van Eaton agreed. “Dirk and them others is no pilgrims. And them gospel-shouter men didn’t look like no pushovers to me.”

  “I just wonder where that damn Preacher is taking them?” Lige. Watson pondered aloud.

  Preacher was taking the missionaries just as far away from the valley of the man-hunters as he could, driving them hard.

  In two and half days, Preacher had pushed the wagons over thirty miles. A phenomenal feat considering the country in which they were traveling. But there was just no way to hide the trail the wagons left in their wake.

  Preacher wasn’t too worried about any Indian attack, for the Indians would see he was taking the whites out of their territory, and that basically was what they wanted. But he was moving them out of Ute and Arapaho country and onto the edge of Cheyenne territory. Although Preacher had always gotten along fairly well with the Cheyenne, a body just never knew when a band of young bucks might happen along and take that moment to attack.

  “Notional,” Preacher told Otto as they rode side by side. “Injuns is notional people. I reckon I understand ‘em ‘bout as well as any white man, and I’ll be the first to tell you even after all the years I spent out here I don’t really know all that much. A man can ride into near’bouts any Indian village and get fed and put up for the night and treated right well. It’s when you try to leave that it gets right testy. Don’t ask me why they do that, ‘cause I just don’t know.”

  “Because they are savages,” Otto said. “Uneducated, Godless savages.”

  “They’re uneducated accordin’ to the white man’s point of view, yeah. Smart as a body can get in their own right. I done told y’all they ain’t Godless.”

  Dirk rode up. The women were handling the reins to the teams, while the men ranged front and back and to the sides of the tiny train. Dirk had been lagging back about five miles. “No sign of Bones yet, Preacher.”

  “They’ll be along. But I think I can get us down to the hot springs for a soak ‘fore they catch up to us. The ladies is gonna enjoy these springs.”

  They sure did, and it was only with the greatest of effort that the men didn’t try to sneak a peek at the ladies as they bathed and soaked and squealed and giggled in their birthday suits, splashing and playing in the hot water.

  Dirk stuffed rags in his ears and wandered off to read the Bible. Simpson and Jim volunteered to stand watch about a mile from the springs, and Will rode off to see about shooting some game. When the ladies were done the men took turns washing off days of grime and soaking out the kinks and stiffness in weary muscles and joints. Upon their return from the hot waters, Prudence got to battin’ her eyes something fierce at Dirk — who was a fine-lookin’ man — and swishin’ her bottom and sashshayin’ about. Dirk got so flustered he walked into a tree and damn near knocked himself goofy. Preacher figured if he could get Dirk and Prudence together and toss a bucket of cold water on them, he’d have enough steam to run one of them big ugly and terrible soundin’ locomotives he’d seen Back East.

  Preacher finally had to take off into the hills to get away from Patience. There was nothing he liked better than a good roll in the blankets with a fine-lookin’ filly. But this was neither the time nor the place for a romantic tussle. However, he had learned a few years back that missionary women wasn’t no different from other women when the candle got snuffed out and they got cozy. Loud, too. Preacher couldn’t hear out the one ear for two days after a night with one particularly fine-lookin’ gospel-shouter lady, a few hundred miles west and north of where they was right at the moment.

  Preacher moved the pilgrims out the next morning. He’d heard tell of a tradin’ post about four days from the springs and though he’d never been there, he decided to make a try for it. The missionaries were sorely in need of supplies. By this time, there were over a hundred and fifty trading posts scattered through the West. In two years trading posts had sprung up all over the place as more and more people were leaving their homes east of the Mississippi and heading west.

  “Don’t expect no fancy place like y’all seen in St. Louis,” Preacher warned the ladies. “And the men there will likely ogle you gals from toes to nose. White women is scarce out here.”

  It was the most disreputable looking place the missionaries had ever seen. But it was a right busy post, doin’ business with Indian and white alike. Preacher spoke with a couple of trappers he’d met over the years and knew slightly, then went inside to get a drink of whiskey.

  Damned if the first person he spotted when he stepped up to the rough bar was a man who’d swore on his mother’s eyes he’d someday kill Preacher.

  Mean Pete Smith almost swallowed his chewing tobacco when he looked up and saw Preacher. His mouth dropped open and his eyes bugged out.

  “Shut your mouth, Pete,” Preacher told him. “Flies is uncommonly bad this year.”

  “You!” Mean Pete hollered.

  “In the flesh.”

  Mean Pete stood up.

  “Take your rough stuff outside,” the owner of the post said. “I’ll brook no trouble in here.”

  “Shut up,” Mean Pete told him. “Me and this rooster here got things to settle ‘tween us.”

  “Whiskey,” Preacher told the man behind the planks, doing his best to ignore Mean Pete. “And don’t gimmie none with no snake-heads in it.”

  The man looked hurt. “I serve only the finest of whiskey, sir.”

  “Right,” Preacher said drily. “Aged a full two days at least. Put a jug out here.”

  The bar was separated from the mercantile part of the post by a log wall. A brightly colored blanket served as a door.

  “You better enjoy that drink, Preacher,” Mean Pete said. “’Cause it’s gonna be the last’un you’ll have.”

  Preacher poured and sipped and grimaced. “I was wrong. This here stuff was aged ‘bout one day.”

  “Did you hear me?” Mean Pete roared.

  “Oh, shut up, Pete,” Preacher told him. “You said the same thing last time we hooked up and I left you on the floor. Now sit down and be quiet.”

  Mean Pete wasn’t about to sit down and shut up. He had taken an immediate dislike to Preacher years back and challenged him to a fight. Preacher whipped him. For the last twenty or so years, every two or three years Mean Pete would come up on Preacher, challenge him to fight, and Preacher would tear his meat house down.

  After gettin’ his butt bounced off the floor six or eight times, Preacher figured Mean Pete was about the hard-headedest man he’d ever met. Now here he was again. Only now it seemed like he wanted gunplay. Preacher was tired of gunplay. Weary of it. And he didn’t want to kill Mean Pete. He turned to face Pete.

  Preacher asked, “Pete, where in the world did you ever get the name of Mean Pete?”

  “Haw?”

  “Your name. Who was the first to call you Mean Pete?”

  “I disremember. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I was just curious. ‘Cause I ain’t never heard of no kick and gouge you ever won. And when them Kiowa come at us down on the Canadian that time all I ‘member seeing from you was your big butt runnin’ off. So how in the world can you be called Mean Pete?”

  “Preacher,” Mean Pete took a step closer, his hands balled into fists, “I just ain’t a-gonna stand here and let you in-sult me. I’m a-fixin’ to stomp your ugly face. And then I’m a-gonna shoot you.”

  “In that order?”

  Mean Pete flushed and took another step. He was a couple of inches taller than Preacher, and maybe twenty five pounds heavier. Neither Preacher nor Mean Pete noticed when the blanket was drawn back and the missionaries all crowded into the opening, staring at the scene before them.

  Mean Pete gave a whoop and a holler and jumped at Preacher. Preacher drew back and busted him smack in the face with the full jug of whiskey and Mean Pete hit the boards. Pete didn’t even moan. He was cold out.

  Preacher turned to the man behind the bar. “If the whiskey had been worth a damn, I wouldn’t a-done that. And if you want pay for that snake-head poison, get the money from him.” He pointed to Mean Pete. “Now give me a good jug ‘fore you make me mad.”

  Patience fanned herself vigorously. “My word!” she whispered to Prudence. “He is such a forceful man.”

  Patience and Prudence were awakened that night by Preacher’s somewhat drunken singing. It was a ditty he’d learned from a boatman in St. Louis one time and it was about a Scottish lassie named Lou Ann MacGreagor and her red sweater. Seems she filled it out rather well. The ditty seemed harmless enough until Preacher got to the second half of the song. Those verses concerned themselves with Lou Ann’s undies . . . or as it turned out in the next verse, her lack of them. Just as Preacher got all tuned up to sing a few more verses, each one raunchier than the other, Patience and Prudence immediately began singing hymns, loudly. As Preacher’s singing became lustier, the other missionaries quickly joined in Christian voice.

  By all accounts, it was a rather odd mixing of tunes. Somehow, between Preacher’s bellering and the sweet harmonies of Patience and Prudence and the others, Lou Ann MacGreagor got to the promised land and got all mixed up with the prophets and everybody was girding their loins and dancing naked on the rock of ages with the angels and the meek.

  A drunken Arapaho staggered out of the bam, where he’d been imbibing with some friends and joined in, singing in his own tongue about a lost love . . . which in this case was his horse.

  Preacher woke up the next morning rather confused. He just could not remember ever hearing that ditty sung in quite that manner.

  He finally put it off to bad whiskey. But he couldn’t understand why Patience and Prudence and Hanna and Jane and Sally were all giving him such dirty looks.

  By noon it appeared that Preacher had been forgiven for his night of drunkenness and people were once more speaking to him, not that it mattered one whit to Preacher whether they spoke or not. His head hurt anyway.

  “That loutish fellow back there,” Otto said, riding up beside Preacher. “Mean Pete. Will he be coming after you?”

  “Naw,” Preacher said. “He was drunk. He never does remember our fights . . . might be ‘cause they’re so short. The one thing he does remember is that he don’t like me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He took one look at me years back and decided he didn’t like me. We been havin’ these head-buttin’s ever since. Mean Pete is kind of a strange feller.”

  “I’m sure he must have his good points.”

  “If he does, he sure keeps ‘em hid right well.”

  “Where are you taking us, Preacher?”

  “Bent’s Fort.”

  “But, sir . . .”

  Preacher shook his head. “Otto, you and the others is fine people. Good people, and you mean well. But ain’t none of you needs to be out here in the wilderness. Come back in ten years. You want to save souls, practice on whites first, ‘cause the Injuns don’t want you. I told you the Injuns got their own religion and they’re happy with it. You’ve told me time and again that you want to farm. Fine. Go to Arkansas or Louisiana or East Texas and farm. You and Hanna have kids and be happy. You can find heathens to convert anywhere. This whole country’s gonna bust loose in a few years. The Injuns claim all this country as their own. They pretty much put up with us trappers ‘cause I reckon we’re all more Injun than white after all this time out here and we don’t meddle in their affairs.”

  “But, sir . . .”

  “Hush up an’ listen to me. When we get to the fort, y’all hook up with wagons headin’ Back East and go. Now, damnit, Otto, you know in your heart and your brain that I’m right.”

  The man sat in his saddle in silence for a time. He slowly nodded his head. “Yes, you’re right, Preacher.” He smiled. “But it has been a grand adventure.”

  “Tell your grandkids about it. Write a book about it. And think kind thoughts of me.”

  “Patience will be disappointed. She, ah, likes you, Preacher.”

  “She’ll get over it. She’ll find her some fine Christian man and get hitched up and I’ll be just a fadin’ memory in her mind. Now go tell the others what we’re doin’, Otto.” Patience and Prudence both let out a howl at the news, but they soon settled down as Otto convinced them that they could better serve their church in a more civilized area. Now all Preacher had to worry about was getting the pilgrims to safety. He knew a place about two days away where mountain men tended to gather for a ride to Bent’s Fort. If he could reach them before Bones and his bunch caught up with them, the missionaries would be safe, for Bones and his man-hunters would never attack a dozen or so mountain men. If they were foolish enough to do that, it would be the last time they ever attacked anyone.

  Preacher’s luck held and two days later, a few hours before dusk, he led the wagons into the encampment of mountain men.

  “Wagh!” a huge bear of a man shouted, rising from the ground upon spotting Preacher. “It’s Preacher, boys. With a whole passel of pilgrims.”

  “That’s the man who told us you were a man of the cloth, Preacher,” Otto said.

  “Horsehide!” Preacher hollered. “You big ugly moose!

  Ho, Papa Griz. I brung you boys salvation. God knows you heathens need some.”

  “We was ridin’ for the mountains to lend you a hand, Preacher,” a man called.

  “Hell, I don’t need no help. But I’d like to prevail upon you boys to help these fine folks I got with me.”

  The mountain men took one look at Patience and Prudence and Preacher knew his worries were over. The missionaries would be safe. Preacher would resupply from his friends and then head back to confront and once and for all close the book on Bones and his man-hunters. Preacher wasn’t lookin’ forward to it, but it was something that had to be done. He sat down by the fire and stretched his legs out with a contented sigh. Most of the wild and woolly and uncurried mountain men were gathered around the missionaries, unhookin’ the teams, helping the ladies down from the seats and ogling Patience and Prudence, hopin’ to catch a glimpse of a nicely shaped ankle. These men were as wild as the wind and just about as hard to handle, but they could be as protective as a mamma bear with her cubs.

  Preacher took the cup of coffee handed him. “Word from the Injuns we’ve talked to is you’ve raised unholy hell with them ol’ boys a-huntin’ you, Preacher,” a man known as De Quille said.

  “Yeah? Well, I’m a-fixed to raise me some more hell with them.”

  “You want a couple of us to ride along with you?” Preacher shook his head. “Naw. There ain’t but about thirty or forty of ‘em.”

  De Quille smiled. “Seems to me there was two bunches of about forty each started out after you, Preacher.”

  “I been whittlin’ ‘em down some.”

  “Do tell? I got news, Preacher. Them warrants on you has been lifted. There ain’t no charges against you. It’s all personal on both sides now, ain’t it?”

  Preacher looked at him and his eyes told the whole story. De Quille nodded his head. “That’s what I figured,” he said.

  Eleven

  The next morning, Patience and Prudence held a short service before they pulled out. It was a strange, yet wonderful and moving scene. The rough and wild-looking mountain men standing with heads uncovered and bowed while the ladies sang sweetly and Otto said a short prayer. Fifteen minutes later, after the goodbyes, the wagons were rolling eastward.

  Preacher sat by the fire, deep in thought, and finished the pot of coffee. He was trying to figure out a way to tell the men with Bones and those silly foreigners that all warrants against him had been lifted and if they killed him now, it would be murder. Then he wondered if that news would make any difference? Probably not, but he was going to try. Providing he could do so without getting his head shot off. One way or the other, he was going to end this man-hunt. If he could do it without spilling another drop that would be wonderful. But he had strong doubts. Like De Quille had said, and no matter how many excuses Preacher made, this was personal now.

  Preacher made certain the fire was out, then he packed up and swung into the saddle. Might as well get this over with.

  * * *

  Bones and party had no knowledge of any trading post any closer than Bent’s Fort, so they were riding straight south while Preacher was heading straight north. All of them heading straight toward canyon country. The only difference was, Bones and his bunch got lost in the maze of twists and turns and blind canyons. Preacher did not.

  Preacher looped around the tortured maze of canyons, thinking even Bones would have more sense than to get all tangled up in there. He had stopped north of the canyons to rest and water his horse when the smell of death touched his nostrils . . . that sickly stench that he knew so well.