Preacher's Hell, page 4
Preacher ran to the door but paused as he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from two galloping horses. The men who had fled had reached their mounts and were lighting a shuck away from the trading post as fast as they could.
Preacher turned back to a scene of devastation. More than a dozen bodies lay scattered around the room amidst overturned tables and chairs. One man was badly burned, another had been torn to pieces by Dog. Preacher’s Colts had accounted for numerous others, and Nighthawk had broken a few skulls and snapped a few necks with his bare hands.
“Nighthawk, see if any o’ them varmints are still alive,” Preacher said. “If they are, don’t kill ’em just yet.”
Audie was kneeling beside Dutch Charley. As he rose to his feet, he reported, “Charley’s unconscious, but he doesn’t appear to be hurt badly.”
“Glad to hear that,” Preacher muttered as he headed for the two Salish. Audie hurried to join him.
Sahale was dead. The old man’s eyes were open but lifeless as he stared straight ahead. His arms had fallen loosely at his sides as he sat propped against the wall.
Preacher expected to find Bluebird dead, too, after she was shot at close range like that, but a sudden moan from her made both Preacher and Audie spring to her side. Carefully, with the gentlest touch he could muster, Audie took hold of her shoulders and turned her onto her back. He sat down so that her head rested in his lap.
Preacher hunkered on his heels next to the wounded young woman. The bloodstain on the front of her buckskin dress was large and still spreading. Preacher didn’t try to expose the wound. He knew there was nothing he and Audie could do for her except try to make her as comfortable as possible. Her life was fleeting and she had only moments.
Preacher had seen way too much death not to know these things.
“Rest easy there,” he told her, making his normally rough tone as soothing as he could. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Bluebird.”
Her dark eyes opened, the lids fluttering. It took a moment for her gaze to find Preacher and lock on to him. She looked up at him and asked in a husky whisper, “How … how do you know … my name?”
“Your grandfather told us,” Preacher said. “It’s a mighty pretty name, too. Suits you.”
“My grandfather—” She tried to turn her head, and Preacher knew she was looking for Sahale.
“He’s gone on to the spirit world ahead of you,” he told her. “His pain is over.”
“He will be … waiting for me … soon.”
Her eyes closed. Preacher thought she had slipped away, but after only a moment, her eyes opened again and once more she peered up at him with a strangely intent light shining in them.
“My pack … ?” She groped for it with a shaking hand.
“It’s all right,” Preacher assured her. “Nothin’ happened to it durin’ that ruckus. Whatever you got wrapped up in it oughta be just fine.”
She touched the bundle and let out a long exhalation of relief, a sigh that turned into a grimace of pain and a sharply caught breath.
“Please … you will take care of … You must promise me … You will care for …”
Preacher wasn’t going to make her journey into the realm of the spirits any more troubled than it had to be. He said quietly, “I give you my word, Bluebird, I’ll take care o’ whatever you got there. You don’t have to worry about it even a little bit.”
“And I promise, as well,” Audie said. “Whatever needs to be done, my friend and I will help Preacher see to it.”
Bluebird’s head jerked up and down slightly in a nod. “Th-thank you …”
She sighed again, this time releasing the life to which she had clung until she had obtained the promise from Preacher and Audie.
A low, gravelly voiced chant came from Nighthawk as he stood over them. He was singing a death song for Bluebird and Sahale. It might not have been the song they would have sung had they been able to do it, but it would suffice as they traveled to the next world.
Audie eased Bluebird’s head from his lap. Preacher straightened to his feet and turned to the trader. “You all right, Charley?” he asked.
By now, Dutch Charley had come to. His wife had helped him up and both of them sat at one of the tables. She clasped one of his hands in both of hers. With his other hand, he rubbed his head where he had been struck and winced.
“Ja, I will be fine,” he said. “Thank God we Germans have hard, thick heads.”
“Yeah, I ain’t gonna argue about that. You said you hadn’t ever seen those two Flatheads before. How about the bunch that busted in here? Any of them look familiar to you?”
Charley frowned in thought and opened his mouth to answer, but before he could say anything, Audie called, “Preacher!”
The surprise and urgency in his friend’s voice made the mountain man swing around quickly. He saw that Audie had moved over to the blanket-wrapped bundle that had been so precious to Bluebird for some reason. He had pulled back one of the blankets slightly and was staring at what he had revealed.
The thin, wailing cry of a baby filled the powdersmoke-tinged air inside the trading post.
“What the hell!” Preacher burst out. A few long strides carried him across the room to the corner. Nighthawk joined him, and with a scrape of chairs, Dutch Charley and his wife got up from the table and followed.
The five of them gathered around the bundle lying on the floor and stared down at it as a second cry joined the first.
Two blond-haired, blue-eyed infants, possibly twins by the look of them, lay there swaddled in the blankets, their little red faces scrunched up as they cried and waved their tiny fists in the air.
CHAPTER 5
For a long moment, the infants’ wails were the only sound in the room. Then Preacher said in a stunned voice, “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. Those are babies in there!”
“A quite unexpected eventuation,” Audie agreed dryly. “And not to be too blatantly obvious in my observation, I don’t believe this unfortunate young woman gave birth to them, although she certainly demonstrated a large degree of maternal devotion toward them.”
“You mean she took care of ’em like she was their ma?”
“She fought to the death to protect them, and even mortally wounded, she clung fast to life until she had secured our pledge to care for them.”
“Yeah, I reckon nobody could’ve done more for ’em,” Preacher said. “But what I want to know is, where in blazes did they come from?”
“And why are they so important that those hardened, violent men were willing to kill to retrieve them?”
Preacher looked at his friend and asked, “You think these little’uns are what those varmints were after?”
“It seems to be the only logical conclusion.”
Preacher frowned in thought, tugged at his earlobe, and then rasped a thumbnail along his beard-stubbled jawline as his brain turned over everything that had happened.
“When that fella yelled out not to shoot, he was worried about them tykes gettin’ hit, not about Bluebird and her grandpa,” he reasoned. “They didn’t care about the two Indians, just the babes.”
Audie tickled first one infant and then the other under their chins, calming them and making their crying ease off before it died away entirely. The infants began to coo happily instead.
“You have a natural touch with them, my friend,” Dutch Charley said. “I hope when my child is born, I’ll be able to do such a good job of soothing it.”
Charley’s wife stepped forward and wordlessly held out her hands. Audie lifted one of the babies and gave it to her. The woman cradled the infant in her arms and rocked it back and forth.
Audie got to his feet, reached down, and picked up the second baby. He wrapped it in one of the blankets and gave the other blanket to Charley’s wife.
Preacher looked at Nighthawk and asked, “Any of those varmints still alive?”
The Crow warrior shook his head.
“So we can’t ask them about it,” Preacher said. “We’re back to what we were talkin’ about before Audie found these young’uns. You recognize any of this gang, Charley?”
Audie and Charley’s wife carried the babies over to the bar while Charley studied the faces of the dead men scattered around the room. Preacher and Nighthawk trailed him and waited for his verdict.
Finally, Charley sighed and said, “I feel certain that I have seen some of them before, but I cannot tell you their names or how long it has been since I saw them. I know only that they look familiar. But you know how many men pass through these parts and stop at my trading post, Preacher. The fact I have seen them before means nothing.” The trader’s brawny shoulders rose and fell. “I will continue to think about it. Something may come to me.”
Preacher nodded and said, “Thanks, Charley. Don’t reckon you’ve seen those babies before, have you?”
“They are the first infants who have ever been inside these walls. I thought my own child would be first, but fate has decided otherwise, nein?”
Preacher turned to the bar where Audie now sat on a stool with a baby in his arms. Charley’s wife stood beside him holding the other infant.
“The little rascals have anything on ’em that might tell us who they are?” Preacher asked.
“We’re not that fortunate,” Audie replied, “but there is something interesting about them, Preacher. Look at these necklaces they’re wearing.”
Preacher came closer and squinted at the object lying in Audie’s palm. It was a small stone attached to a rawhide thong looped around the neck of one of the babies.
“Each child is wearing one of these,” Audie continued. “They were hidden by the blankets at first, which is why I didn’t notice them until I picked the babies up. These stones are star garnets, Preacher.”
The stone was circular, slightly flattened, and a rich dark purple in color. A lighter-colored striation ran around the stone’s outer edge, and similar markings crisscrossed both faces, dividing it into twelve roughly equal segments. Preacher could tell that the markings were natural.
“I don’t recollect ever seein’ any rocks that look like this,” he said.
“They’re quite uncommon. As far as I know, they can be found in only two locations. There are deposits of them in India—”
“Dang it, that’s all the way on the other side of the world, ain’t it?”
“Indeed,” Audie said, “and the only other place star garnets are found is in the valley of Emerald Creek.”
Preacher frowned in recognition of the name. “That’s what folks call a stream about a hundred and twenty miles northwest o’ here, ain’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“I did some trappin’ there nine or ten years ago.” Preacher glanced at the bodies of Bluebird and Sahale. “That’s Flathead country up there, sure enough. You reckon that’s where those two came from?”
“It seems to be a reasonable theory.”
“Both of them and their horses looked wore out enough to have come that far,” Preacher mused. “And if they’d been chased the whole way, it’d sure explain how tense and unfriendly they were.” The mountain man nodded decisively. “They stole them babies from up there. Stole ’em from some white couple.”
“Umm,” Nighthawk said.
Audie said, “I agree, they didn’t strike me as the sort who would abduct infants. Not without a very good reason.”
“No offense, but Indians have stolen a whole heap o’ white children over the years,” Preacher pointed out.
“That’s true. But it’s impossible for us to know their motivation with the information we have now.”
“And probably the only way we can find out why they done it is to find whoever them little ones belong to.”
“We did promise Bluebird that we would take care of them,” Audie said. “Since it seems clear that she and her grandfather were trying to get away from whoever was pursuing them, it’s possible the young woman wouldn’t think that we were fulfilling our pledge by returning the infants to wherever they came from.”
“Well, blast it, Audie, what the hell else are we gonna do with ’em? We can’t take ’em to raise our own selves!”
The babies began to cry again.
“A bit less vehemence, old friend,” Audie said. “You’ve upset them.”
Preacher grimaced. “Didn’t mean to do that. You can settle ’em down again, can’t you?”
“I’ll try.” Audie began rocking the infant he held back and forth as he spoke in low, soothing tones. Charley’s wife did likewise. The babies grew quieter.
Keeping his voice down to a rumble, Preacher said, “The way I see it, we got to find out where they came from and who they belong to. That don’t mean we have to just turn ’em back over to whoever their folks are, though.”
Audie nodded slowly. “True enough. If we discover that they came from a bad situation, we’ll have to figure out something else we can do. But we need more information in order to reach a wise decision.”
Preacher chuckled and said, “Charley asked where we were gonna be goin’ next. I reckon we know now.”
Audie let the star garnet necklace dangle around the baby’s neck again and tucked the blanket tighter around the infant.
“These little fellows are going to need names,” he said. “Since we have no idea what their parents dubbed them, I suggest that we call them Romulus and Remus. According to mythology, they were orphaned and raised by wolves before eventually founding the city of Rome.” Audie smiled. “We don’t know whether their parents are still alive, but the three of us are a bit wolflike, I suppose. And then there’s Dog, who has been mistaken for a wolf on many occasions.”
“I reckon that’ll work—” Preacher began.
Charley’s wife spoke up, interrupting him. She had been poking around in the blanket in which the infant she held was swaddled. She smiled as she said something in her native tongue. Preacher understood some of it, and Nighthawk appeared to be even more fluent. He said, “Umm,” to Audie.
“What’s that? Are you certain?” Audie threw his head back and laughed. “In that case, Romulus and Remus aren’t appropriate names at all. They were brothers, and what we have here are a boy and a girl! Brother and sister, beyond a doubt.”
“Huh,” Preacher said. “I reckon it’s hard to tell at this age without takin’ a closer look. What are we gonna call ’em, then?”
Audie gave that some thought for a moment and then said, “I propose that we dub them Apollo and Artemis, after Zeus’s twin children. That will allow us to continue the mythological connection.”
“Fine by me,” Preacher said. “Apollo’s the boy, right?”
“Correct.”
“All right, we’ll take ’em home and see if we can figure out why Bluebird and her grandpa were runnin’ away with them.”
“And if it turns out they had a good reason for taking the children?” Audie asked.
“Then we’ll have to do some more figurin’,” Preacher said.
Earlier, they had left the six dead ambushers where they had fallen in Wailing Woman Pass. Now, with twice as many corpses to deal with, they couldn’t be quite so callous. Dutch Charley had a trading post to run, after all, and just throwing the carcasses in a gully as Preacher might have preferred would create an unpleasant odor and attract all sorts of scavengers.
Charley’s wife prepared the bodies of Bluebird and Sahale for burial by wrapping them in blankets. Nighthawk placed them in a storeroom for the night. They would be laid to rest in the morning, as the Salish people were one of the tribes where the dead were interred in the earth rather than placed on scaffolds or in trees.
Preacher and Nighthawk dragged the other corpses behind the barn. If wolves carried some of them off during the night, that was fine. The ones that remained would go in a mass grave once Bluebird and Sahale had been tended to properly.
It was grim work but had to be done. All in all, that was a lot of killing for one day, Preacher reflected before he dozed off that night, but sometimes a man was forced into it.
He didn’t lose a minute’s sleep over any of the varmints he’d sent across the divide. They had murdered the two Indians and had it coming, as far as he was concerned.
He woke up the next morning to the sound of infants crying, something he hadn’t experienced very many times in his life. He found Audie sitting at the bar trying to get the babies to suck on rags soaked with sugar water.
“Hilda said that when she cleaned Bluebird’s body, she could tell the girl hadn’t been nursing the babies, so it seems they’ve been weaned. I think they’re just being contrary by refusing to cooperate with me.”
“Hilda?” Preacher repeated.
“That’s what Charley calls her. It’s not actually her name, of course.”
Preacher shook his head. “You know, it never occurred to me that I didn’t know her name. She’s always just been Charley’s wife. Hilda, eh? Well, it kinda suits her.”
“I agree.”
“She’s going to have a baby. You reckon she could nurse these two?”
“Unfortunately, no. Her milk hasn’t come in yet. But we need to be able to feed them ourselves, anyway—we can’t very well take Hilda along with us when we start out for Emerald Creek.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Ah, here we go!” Audie said as the baby in his arms began to suck on the rag. “Apollo is feeding. I’m sure I can convince Artemis to, as well. It’s not the best possible arrangement, of course, but at least we can give them some sustenance this way and keep them alive until we find out what we need to do next.”
“This may come as a surprise to you,” Preacher said, “but I don’t know hardly nothin’ about takin’ care o’ babies. I had little brothers and sisters … or maybe it was cousins … Been so long ago, I don’t rightly remember for sure. But I never had much to do with tendin’ to ’em when they was real little.”
“I suppose you do know how to change a diaper, though, don’t you?”
Preacher’s eyes widened. “Good grief, Audie, are you serious?”
“Completely,” the little man said.
