Blood on the Divide (7 page)

Preacher held the razor-sharp blade to the renegade's throat. The renegade was wearing the buckskin dress of a Ponca
berdache.
A homosexual. Many Indians believed that the moon appeared to boys during puberty and offered both a bow and a woman's pack strap. If the boy hesitated in reaching for the male symbol, the moon gave him the pack strap, and a female life-style. It was as good a theory as any.

“I ain't belittlin' your way of life, Pretty Little Fallin' Star,” Preacher said sarcastically, speaking in the
berdache's
tongue. He had no way of knowing what the Ponca's name was, but he wanted him to know that he spoke it and knew all about him. “But if you want to continue your way of life, you better not tell me no lies.”

The Ponca was no coward, for he was a veteran of many battles, but the look in Preacher's eyes spoke silent volumes. And the Ponca knew about the mountain man called Preacher. Many in his own tribe – before he got kicked out – called Preacher White Wolf. The Mandans called him Man Who Kills Silently. The Dakotas called him Bloody Knife. The Crow sang songs about his bravery and fierceness, as did most of the tribes, including the Blackfoot.

“I will not lie,” the Ponca said.

“The Pardees and Red Hand. Where are they?”

“Red Hand has left Pardee for a time. Probably half a moon or more. They will meet again when the next wagons try to cross. I do not know where Pardee and his people have gone, nor do I care. I left them and Red Hand. Their viciousness sickened me. War is one thing, but they go too far. A puking vulture would make better company.”

Preacher pulled the knife away from his throat and stood up, sheathing the huge blade. “Get out here,” he told the Ponca. “Go on back to match-makin' in your tribe.”

“I cannot,” the Ponca said. “They have banished me forever. I am nothing. I am nobody. They even took my name. I would be better off dead.”

“All right,” Windy said, hauling out a pistol and cocking it, ready to give the Ponca his desires.

“Wait a minute,” Preacher said. “He leveled with us. Let him go his way.”

The Ponca stood up from the ground, straightened his dress, and then swung onto his pony, showing a lot of leg. It was not a thrill for any of the mountain men. He looked at Preacher. “They plan to steal children from the next train.”

Rimrock's face grew hard. “To sell them to slavers?”

The Ponca shook his head. “To use them and then kill them.” He rode away without looking back.

“We might not be able to wipe out Red Hand's bunch,” Preacher said. “But we can damn sure put a dent in the Pardees' operation.”

“Providin' we can find them,” Caleb said, mounting up.

Preacher stepped into the saddle and picked up the reins. “We'll find them. 'Cause if we don't, a lot of kids is in for a rough time of it.”

* * *

The Pardees and their followers left the abused and tortured body of the last woman captive dead on the ground. The carrion birds and the varmits would soon take care of the body. To the best of their knowledge, no one was now left alive to connect them with any atrocities. The gang of cutthroats and brigands saddled up and headed out.

The Pardee gang had long been a scourge in the wilderness. They were a totally ruthless, savage, and lawless pack of degenerates in a land that had never known any type of law except for tribal law ... and no tribe would have anything to do with the Pardees. Only tribal outcasts, like Red Hand and those that followed the renegade.

Miles and days behind the Pardee gang, four men rode. They rode with rifles across the saddle horn. Small bands of Indians saw the four men and did not bother them. A band of warring Blackfeet saw the four men and let them pass without trouble. There was something in the way the men sat their saddles and held their rifles that caused the Blackfeet to hesitate. And they knew that one of the men in the group was the man the Blackfeet called Killing Ghost. The band of warriors who watched the four men ride on were not afraid of Killing Ghost, known to the white as Preacher, but they respected him. They knew that should they attack, there would be heavy losses and no gain for them. So to attack was foolish.

The Blackfoot raiding party sat their ponies and watched the four men ride out of sight.

“They ride after the white renegades,” one brave said.

“Good,” the subchief said. “I hope they catch them and kill them all.” He turned his pony's head and the others followed.

“Wonder why them Blackfeet back yonder let us go?” Caleb asked, during a break for water.

“By now, that Ponca's spread the word that we're after the Pardees and no one else,” Preacher said. “Most Injuns hate the Pardees as much as we do. But they're 'feard of them. I had a Pawnee tell me one time that the Pardees had good medicine workin' all the time. And there ain't never no less than ten or twelve of them.”

“A Pawnee?” Windy questioned, knowing how Preacher felt about the Pawnees. “You actual had a conversation with a Pawnee?”

Preacher smiled. “I had my good knife to his throat. He had to talk to me.”

* * *

The great monetary collapse of the late 1830s was sending people westward by the hundreds. Most were cautious enough to populate states and territories east of the Missouri River. But there were others who heard the westward-ho call and ventured on. Naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.”

Most of those who went west knew very little about the country into which they were traveling. Much of what they did know was wrong. Actually, very little was known about the wilderness west of the Missouri River. There were those movers who turned back, telling tales of savage hordes of wild red Indians, and of terrible sicknesses and bad water that killed when tasted. Still others told of the awful loneliness of the great plains that drove some people mad.

But still they came. For whatever reasons, they came. Alone, in pairs, often entire families. The story is told about the pioneer who, when he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, fell to his knees and wept because he could go no further west. No one knows if the story is true or not, but it is attributed to the British novelist Charles Dickens.

By the late 1830s, cabins were beginning to dot the wilderness. Many of them belonged to trappers, but many were also family dwellings of easterners who headed west and, for one reason or another, came to a spot and went no further. All too often in the early days, they were never heard from again.

* * *

“That's a damn cabin down yonder!” Rimrock said.

The four were resting their horses on a ridge.

“It wasn't there last year,” Preacher commented. “'Cause I come this way.” He stared at the lonely cabin. “Anyways, it ain't much of a cabin.”

“You be right about that,” Caleb said. “But it's new. I don't think they's anybody to home. The day is cool and they ain't no smoke from the chimney.”

“Why would anybody build a cabin here?” Windy questioned.

“Who knows why an easterner does anything?” Preacher posed the question as he gave Hammer his head and started down the ridge. The others followed.

The men stopped just out of good rifle range of the cabin and spread out, studying the lonely cabin set well back from the banks of a creek.

“I'm goin' in,” Preacher said, and kneed Hammer forward. He stopped in the weeded-up front of the cabin and hallooed it several times. His shouts of greeting echoed back to him. Preacher swung down and walked up to the front door, noticing that it was hanging slightly open on its leather hinges. The hinges were cracked and dried nearly useless.

Standing to one side, so the logs of the wall would stop any ball, he pushed open the door with the muzzle of his rifle. Before he could step inside, Rimrock called, “I'm going around back.”

“I'm goin' inside for a look around,” Preacher said.

Dust covered everything. But not one thing was out of place. A musket hung over the fireplace, and a brace of pistols in holsters were hung on the back of a chair. The table had been set for a meal, with four plates and four cups and real silverware. Preacher picked up a dust-covered spoon and hefted it. Good quality stuff, too. He looked in the blackened kettle hanging over the long-dead ashes in the fireplace. Something had been cooking in the pot, but all that was now left was a hardened glob of whatever it had been.

Pack rats had been at work; their sign was evident. But by and large, everything was as it should be.

There were three rooms and a loft. Preacher climbed the loft ladder and looked around. Nothing out of order. Two floor pallets had been made up and they had not been disturbed by any human hand. He climbed back down and walked out into the back.

“We got some skeletons out here,” Caleb said.

“This is spooky, boys,” Preacher said. “Damn strange. Any arrows about?”

“Nothin',” Caleb said. “And we been castin' about for sign. Critters got at the bodies, o' course, but none of the skulls has been cracked open by war axes.”

“Pox might have got them,” Preacher opined. “The reason the house was untouched might be 'cause the Injuns consider this an unnatural place of death and won't go near it.” But he really didn't believe that. If they had the pox, why would they all run out into the backyard? He had no idea what had happened to the pioneer family and realized that, like so many other mysteries, he probably would never know. And it really didn't matter.

“What about the bones?” Windy questioned.

“I reckon we can scoop them up and plant them,” Rimrock said. “That skull over yonder probably belonged to the man, and that one there is the woman. Them two over yonder was the kids.”

The men got their shovels and started digging. “Seems to me like we're shore buryin' a lot of folks this go-around,” Caleb remarked.

“You should have been with me at the wagon train,” Preacher said, ending that topic.

* * *

No one knew where the Pardees hid out when they weren't rampaging around the ever so slowly populating wilderness, stealing and killing and raping. Preacher and his friends looked for the gang, but they had dropped out of sight.

In the wilderness, if one wished not to be found, it was easy to disappear within the millions and millions of acres of plains and timber and mountains. But not so easy for a large gang. They had to cook, had to have coffee, and that meant more than one fire for a dozen or so men. Somebody would see the smoke.

“Have not seen them, Preacher,” a Cheyenne called Big Belly told him. “But Red Hand went north and west, to the mountains. This much I know is true.”

“Why so far away?”

Big Belly shrugged his shoulders. “I cannot say what I do not know.”

Preacher and his friends pushed on, all sharing the feeling they were chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. They headed west, and when they came to a spot that seemed familiar to them, they made camp. The Indians knew they were there, of course, but the mountain men had long ago made friends with most of the tribes ... except for the Blackfeet. Most of the Indians looked upon the mountain men as being one of them, wanderers and hunters and lovers of the earth. But the men kept a sharp eye out nevertheless. You just never could tell.

“No point in us wearin' ourselves out looking for the Pardees,” Preacher said. “They got them a hidey-hole and they's dug in tight. If there is any wagon trains headin' west, and I pray they ain't, they'll be loathe to leave the safety of the fort with all the killin' goin' on.”

“You hope,” Caleb said, as he dug a shallow pit for the fire and lined the rim with rocks. “Movers bein' what they is, some of them would walk through the hellfires to get west. I never seen the like.”

Windy brought back a battered and blackened coffee pot filled with water and set it to boil. “Reckon what month this is?” he asked.

“May, I think,” Rimrock said. “Since I give up furrin', I don't pay much attention no more. Preacher, we best be mindful of what that driftin' Mandan told us about them Contraires.”

Preacher nodded his head in agreement. The Cheyenne warrior society called Contraires were extremely unpredictable. If they meant no, they said yes. They washed in dust and dried off in water. Nearly everything they did was backwards, except in battle. They was nothing backward about them in battle. The Cheyenne believed they possessed magical powers, but Preacher knew from personal experience that they bled and died just like anyone else. But they were fine warriors and to be feared.

“You got somethin' gnawin' at you, Preacher,” Caleb said. “You want to spit it out?”

“Yeah, I do,” Preacher admitted. “Any of you boys ever heard of a man named Sutherlin?”

Caleb, Rimrock, and Windy exchanged glances. “How come you ask that?” Windy inquired.

“'Cause I think he's crooked as a snake. I think the bastard's workin' with the Pardees.”

The men chewed on that for a moment. “I heard of him,” Windy said. “He lives back East. Ain't he some kind of organizer of wagon trains west?”

“That's him. Betina told me he was the one who spoke to her and them others back East. He was supposed to meet them for the trip west, but backed out. Now I got me an idea that he's done this before.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Rimrock said. “But you ain't got no proof of that.”

“Not a bit. Just a gut hunch is all.”

“Who would know that we could ask out here?” Caleb questioned.

“One of them damn Pardees, that's who,” Preacher said.