The Family Jensen (5 page)

Even at that distance, Preacher could tell an atmosphere of tension filled the camp as the dust from the arrival of the Sioux warriors settled. The darkness made it impossible to get an accurate count, but he estimated that the newcomers numbered about thirty. The white men were betting their lives the Indians would abide by whatever bargain had been struck with them.

“Greetings, Lupton,” one of the warriors said in English. “What do you have for us this time?”

“Great bounty, Chief. Fifty oxen, and nearly half that many female slaves.”

Red Moccasins made a curt gesture with the lance he carried. “Oxen!” he said with disgust in his voice. “What need do the Sioux have of oxen when there are more buffalo on the plains than there are stars in the sky?”

“You don’t have to hunt these critters, chief, and risk having some of your warriors caught in a stampede. You can slaughter one for meat any time you need to.”

Red Moccasins shook his head. “A true warrior fills his belly and the bellies of his family with his own skills! Only a woman would do as you say!”

The tension in the air grew worse. Preacher wasn’t surprised by Red Moccasins’ reaction to Lupton’s proposition. The Sioux war chief regarded it as an insult. One more such spark might set off an explosion of violence that would leave the outlaws dead and their captives in the hands of the Sioux. That might not be such a bad thing—it would cut down the odds against Preacher and Crazy Bear—except for the fact that some of the women and girls might be killed in the fighting.

“I apologize, Red Moccasins,” Lupton said. “I know better than to make an offer like that to a man such as yourself. We will keep the oxen, but the slaves are yours. We ask only safe passage through your lands, and a dozen buffalo hides.”

“And all the loot they already stole from the wagon train,” Preacher added in a whisper to Crazy Bear. The Crow chief spoke little English, so Preacher had been keeping up a running translation for him.

Crazy Bear nodded and said in his own tongue, “The Blackfeet would have taken the oxen as well as the prisoners. Those white men were ready for whichever tribe they encountered.”

Preacher agreed. The man called Lupton must have traded with the Indians before. He probably made a regular business of smuggling guns and whiskey to the various tribes, as well as preying on immigrant trains whenever he got the chance. He had slipped for a moment there with his Sioux customers, a mistake that had come close to getting him and the others killed, but that moment of danger seemed to have passed.

“You have a jug?” Red Moccasins asked.

“Of course,” Lupton replied.

The chief gestured with his lance again. He and his men began to dismount.

Lupton said to one of his men, “Build a fire. The chief and I are going to parley.”

There would be a lot of talk before Lupton and Red Moccasins settled the details of the deal they were striking. The parley might last until morning. The rest of the Sioux and the other outlaws would share the whiskey the white men had brought along, and most likely share the women as well. It would be a long, ugly night.

But it could pay some dividends for him and Crazy Bear, Preacher thought. By morning a lot of their enemies would be drunk and less alert.

The two men put their heads close together. “We cannot kill all of them,” Crazy Bear said. “Not even Ghost-Killer could do that.”

“You’re right,” Preacher agreed. “And we can’t drive off in those wagons, either. That would be too slow We’ll have to slip in before dawn and take the women out of there on foot. Then we’ll stampede the horses through the camp and scatter them. Maybe that’ll give us time to get the women into the hills and hide them.”

Crazy Bear nodded. “It is not a good plan…but with two against fifty, it is all we can do.”

The Crow chief was right about that. They’d likely wind up getting themselves killed, Preacher thought, but there was no alternative.

The white outlaws had kindled a fire and they heaped wood on it until the flames leaped high and cast a garish light over the camp. In that glare, Preacher and Crazy Bear got their first good look at their enemies.

The man called Lupton, who sat down to negotiate with Red Moccasins, was tall and rail-thin, with a jutting spade beard. Preacher recognized the Mayhews from his encounter with them at Boadley’s trading post. They were all brawny, fair-haired men. Clint Mayhew, the oldest and the leader of the clan, sported a silvery beard. The rest of the outlaws were typical frontier scum, some dressed in homespun and whipcord, the others in buckskins.

They were heavily armed. Preacher saw lots of rifles and pistols around the camp, although all the pistols seemed to be single-shot flintlocks. He didn’t spot any of the new Colt revolvers, just Dragoons like he carried or the earlier model Patersons.

After a while, Lupton stood up, went over to the wagons, and said, “Climb out of there, ladies. Make it quick now.” Evidently, Red Moccasins demanded a look at what he would be getting if he dealt with the white men.

As the women climbed out of the wagons and lined up like terrified sheep, Preacher looked for the woman who’d given Jord Mayhew so much trouble earlier. It was impossible to tell which one she was. He didn’t see anyone who had dark hair as long as the woman who’d grabbed Jord’s knife had. Maybe it was braided and put up.

Red Moccasins walked up and down the line of prisoners, leering at them. He stopped to grab one woman’s hair and jerk her head up so that he could glare into her face. When he came to one with large breasts, he pawed them and laughed. Finally he turned to Lupton and nodded, signifying that he would take the captives in trade.

A faint rustling sound to Preacher’s left caught his attention. He turned his head in that direction and frowned. The noise continued. It seemed to be about twenty feet away. He tapped Crazy Bear on the shoulder and nodded in that direction. Crazy Bear returned the nod. With less sound than a snake would have made, Preacher crawled through the grass toward the rustling. A wild idea had leaped into his head, and he wanted to see if he was right.

When he was in position, he lay still and let whoever was skulking through the grass come to him. The growth parted near him. He heard panting and knew it came from both exhaustion and fear. He waited until the woman was right beside him to make his move. She seemed to have no idea he was there, and he knew the ordeal she had gone through had drawn her nerves so tight she would try to scream as soon as he touched her.

He made sure that when his left hand shot out in the darkness, it closed tightly over her mouth. At the same time, he wrapped his other arm around her and threw himself on top of her so she couldn’t move.

She bucked underneath him, struggling frantically, but she was no match for his strength. His hand over her mouth prevented her from making any sounds other than a couple of muffled squeaks that wouldn’t travel more than a few feet. Keeping her pinned down, Preacher put his mouth next to her ear and whispered urgently, “I’m a friend! Stop fightin’, lady. I’m here to help you.”

He repeated it several times before the words finally penetrated her frightened brain. Her struggles eased and then stopped. He went on, “Don’t try to get away, and don’t make a sound. You understand? I’ll let go of you, but you got to promise you won’t yell or jump up.”

A couple seconds went by, and then the woman nodded.

“All right,” Preacher said. “I’m gonna take my hand away from your mouth. If you make a racket, you’ll get us all killed, understand?”

He moved his hand away. She didn’t cry out. She just lay there panting as she tried to catch her breath.

Then she whispered, “Thank you.” The English words were understandable enough, but they had a heavy accent.

“I’m gonna get off of you now.” Preacher slid to the ground beside her. While he was lying on top of her, he had felt the long hair that hung down her back. “You’re the gal who grabbed the knife earlier and almost cut Jord Mayhew, ain’t you?”

More words in that foreign tongue tumbled out of her mouth. Preacher figured she was cussing Jord again. He let her go on for a few seconds before he stopped her.

“I don’t understand what you’re sayin’, but I know you’re upset and I don’t blame you the least little bit. Did any of those varmints hurt you?”

“No. Not yet. That big ugly one, Jord, he was the first who tried.”

“I’m glad you speak some English, ’cause I don’t understand that other jabberin’ you were doin’.”

“Romany. It is the language of my people. We are…how you say…gypsies.”

Preacher understood. He had seen gypsies on some of his trips back east in St. Louis and Philadelphia. With their dark hair and eyes and swarthy skin, they reminded him a little of Indians. He had never been around them enough to learn their lingo, though.

“I’m called Preacher,” he told her. “What’s your name?”

She hesitated, as if still unsure whether to trust him, then said, “Mala.”

“Mala. That’s a mighty pretty name. You got any kinfolks in those wagons?”

“My brother’s wife, Nadia. I was traveling with her and my brother Gregor, and my father and grandfather.” Her voice caught a little as she added, “They…they are all dead now, except for me and Nadia.”

“I’m sorry,” Preacher said, knowing what she said was true. All the men with the wagons had been wiped out, even the old-timers. “My friend and I saw the wagon train. We know what happened. We’ve been trailin’ that bunch ever since.”

“You followed us? Why?”

“To help you ladies who were captured, and to settle a score with the Mayhews and the rest of those varmints they’re with. They killed some young men from the village where my friend lives.”

“Your friend…he is a savage?”

“He’s a Crow chief,” Preacher said. “But he won’t hurt you. He hates the Sioux, and he hates the Mayhews and them others. We’re gonna try to get all the gals away from ’em.”

Mala asked the same question the dying John Spaulding had asked earlier in the day. “How many men do you have?”

Preacher gave her the same answer he had given Spaulding. “The two of us.”

She exclaimed quietly in her native tongue. “There are forty men in that camp, all of them killers. There is nothing you can do against such odds!”

“We’ll see about that. First we’ll get you somewheres safe that we can leave you—”

“No,” Mala said. “If you are going to try to rescue the others, I will help you.”

“You were tryin’ to get away,” Preacher pointed out.

“And I am ashamed that I abandoned my brother’s wife and the others. It seemed there was nothing I could do. So when Jord Mayhew let me go when the Indians came, I slipped away and hid in the brush while the other men weren’t looking. Then I crawled out here. I…I knew that even if I got away, I would probably starve to death or be eaten by a wild animal, but I thought that was better than being a slave to savages.” She reached out to clutch Preacher’s arm. “But now…now that I have a chance to fight…now that I can kill some of those terrible men before I die…I would go back.”

Preacher thought it over for a second and then nodded. Having Mala along might make it easier to get the other women away from the wagons. They would trust her, where they might not believe what he told them.

“Come on,” he told her. “Stay low and be as quiet as you can. I’ll take you to Crazy Bear.”

“Crazy Bear? I thought you said your friend was an Indian.”

“That’s his name,” Preacher explained. “He is kind of big and, well, ugly like a bear.”

“I do not care, as long as he will help me kill some of those evil men.”

“We’re gonna have to kill a lot of ’em if we’re gonna have any chance of gettin’ out of here,” Preacher said.

As Preacher and Mala crawled back toward the place he’d left Crazy Bear, Preacher lifted his head enough to see what was going on. The flames of the campfire still leaped high in the air. The women had been herded back into the wagons, and the white men and the Sioux were passing jugs of whiskey back and forth in celebration.

That was a risky thing to do—you could never tell what an Indian would do when he’d guzzled down enough who-hit-John—but Red Moccasins’ warriors had demanded the firewater. They would fall into a drunken stupor sooner than the outlaws would, so as long as Lupton’s bunch and the Mayhews were careful not to start any ruckuses, they would probably be all right.

When Preacher and Mala crawled up to Crazy Bear, the Crow chief had his knife in his hand in case he needed to fight. Preacher whispered, “It’s all right. I brought one of the women back with me. She’s the one who tried to carve a hunk out of Jord Mayhew.”

Crazy Bear grunted. “For a woman she is very brave, or perhaps very foolish.”

Preacher was glad they were talking in the Crow tongue, not in English. He suspected Mala would take offense if she knew Crazy Bear had said she might be very foolish. She’d certainly seemed to have a fiery nature when she was going after Jord and the other men with that knife.

“She wants to help us rescue the other women, so I’d say she’s very brave.”

“But she was fleeing and abandoning them.”

“She was scared and didn’t know what else to do.”

Crazy Bear thought about it and then shrugged. “How is she called?”

“Her name is Mala.”

“Mala,” Crazy Bear repeated. “It is a good name.”

“What did he just say about me?” Mala asked in English.

“He said you were very brave,” Preacher told her, which was only stretching the truth a mite.

“Give me a weapon, and I will show you how brave I am.”

Preacher chuckled. “Yeah, I remember. Here.” He drew a narrow-bladed dirk from a sheath he’d slipped into the top of his left boot and pressed the grip into her hand. “I reckon you know how to use it.”

“Let me at that damned Jord Mayhew. I will carve off his man parts.”

“Yeah, that sounds mighty entertainin’,” Preacher said. “I reckon his squallin’ while you did it would wake up the whole camp, though, so if you do have to use that blade on one of the varmints, try to cut his throat instead. That way he can’t make any noise.”

Mala nodded. “Yes. What you say makes sense. I will remember. When will we go to the camp?”

“Not for a while yet. We need to let them Sioux warriors get good and drunk first.”

“So we wait, while God knows what happens to Nadia and the other women?”

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Preacher replied to her angry question, “but we don’t have any choice if we want to save their lives.”

Mala waited in silence, but Preacher could sense her fuming. Crazy Bear leaned toward him and said, “She is full of spirit, as I told you.”

“Yeah, she’s full of somethin’, all right. I just hope she can keep it under control until it comes time for us to make our move.”

Hours dragged by. Preacher was used to waiting, motionless and silent. So was Crazy Bear. A man learned to do that when he was hunting wild game, or else he went hungry a lot.

Mala didn’t have that ability. She shifted around in the grass. She muttered to herself, sometimes in English and sometimes in the strange language she’d called Romany. Preacher wanted to tell her to hush up and be still, but he figured it wouldn’t do any good. As long as she didn’t cause enough commotion to alert the men in the camp that somebody was hidden in the tall grass, he supposed her fidgeting and muttering wasn’t hurting anything.

It was damn annoying, though.

From time to time, a woman’s cry floated over the prairie. The sounds made Mala more upset. Preacher understood and told her in a whisper, “Hold on. We’ll get ’em out of there as soon as we can.”

The stars wheeled through the sky overhead. Preacher lifted his head occasionally to check the camp, and each time he saw fewer men moving around. Many of the Sioux had passed out from the whiskey, and some of the outlaws were drunk and either asleep or only semi-conscious. Preacher had a strong hunch Lupton posted sentries and those men would still be awake and alert.

Finally, when the faintest tinge of gray appeared in the eastern sky, Preacher told Mala, “All right. It’s time.” He said the same thing to Crazy Bear in the Crow tongue. Switching back and forth between the languages so that both of his companions understood, he went on, “We’ll split up. Mala and I will circle to the left and head for the wagons to get the women out. Crazy Bear, you go around to the right and close in on the horses. Any sentries you come across, kill ’em as quiet as you can.”

Crazy Bear nodded. “Signal me when you are ready for me to stampede the horses.”

“I’ll howl like a panther,” Preacher said. He grinned in the darkness. “I can make it sound real, and that’ll spook them horses even more. We’ll head up into the foothills with the women just as fast as we can. I seem to remember there’s a canyon up there that might be a good place to hide ’em. It’s narrow, and one man could hold off quite a few.”

“I know the place,” Crazy Bear said. “I will come there when I have killed as many of the enemy as I can.”

“Don’t be too stubborn about it and stay too long,” Preacher said. “We’ll have a better chance of gettin’ those gals outta here if we’re both still alive.”

Crazy Bear turned to Mala. “May the spirits smile on you, valiant one,” he told her.

“What did he say?” she asked Preacher.

“He was wishin’ you luck.”

“Oh.” She looked at the Crow chief. “Good luck to you, too, Crazy Bear.”

He gave her a curt nod, then crawled off into the grass, disappearing quickly.

“He is big,” Mala said, “but not really that ugly.”

“You ain’t seen him in broad daylight yet,” Preacher said.

He motioned for her to follow him and started crawling to his left. He didn’t hurry, but he didn’t waste any time, either. When they reached the trees that covered the slope, Preacher stood up in the thick shadows and reached down to take Mala’s arm. He helped her to her feet and put his mouth next to her ear.

“As much as you can, try to step where I step. Let your weight down easy. Keep your balance all the time, and don’t let that pigsticker bang against anything.”

“I will be careful,” she promised. Her breath was warm against his ear as she spoke. He felt the warmth of her body near his, as well, but didn’t think anything about it. She was an ally in a desperate fight, that was all. The fact that she was also a beautiful young woman didn’t even enter his thoughts, the way it might have if he had been twenty years younger.

Like the ghost the Blackfeet considered him, Preacher glided silently through the shadows under the trees. Each of his senses was operating at peak efficiency. He heard a faint movement up ahead at the same time he smelled unwashed flesh.

A sentry leaned against a tree trunk. In the darkness, Preacher’s cat-like eyes were able to make out his shape. He had his hand wrapped around the barrel of his rifle and the weapon’s butt rested on the ground beside his feet. At that late hour of his shift, the guard was struggling to stay awake.

Preacher drew the long-bladed hunting knife at his waist. Striking with the swift, silent deadliness of a viper, he slid his left arm around the sentry’s neck, jerked him back, forced his head up, and slashed the blade across the luckless outlaw’s throat, slicing deep into it. Hot blood spurted from the severed artery. The man let go of his rifle and started to struggle, even though he was already doomed. Preacher didn’t want him thrashing around and making a racket, so he drove the heavy brass ball at the end of the knife’s grip against the man’s temple. The blow was enough to stun him. He sagged in Preacher’s grip and finished bleeding to death in silence.

Carefully, Preacher lowered the corpse to the ground. He wiped the blade on the man’s shirt and straightened. Touching Mala’s arm to let her know she should follow him he catfooted his way toward the wagons again.

She moved more quietly than he had expected her to. She seemed to have a natural talent for that sort of thing, he thought. Gypsies had a reputation for being sneaky. In Mala’s case it seemed to be deserved, at least as far as being able to slip unnoticed through the shadows.

Another guard stood near the wagons. Preacher waited for a long moment, studying the camp. The fire had burned down some, but still provided enough light for him to see Lupton and Red Moccasins sitting beside it, talking. Most of the Sioux warriors were sprawled around the camp, snoring in their whiskey-induced slumber. Some of the white men were asleep, too. A few were still passing a jug back and forth. None of them seemed to think they were in any danger whatsoever. Their confidence bordered on arrogance.

On the frontier, arrogance could get a man killed pretty damn quick-like.

Preacher didn’t see any of the women or girls around the camp, which meant they were all in the wagons. Good. The guard posted near the vehicles moved back and forth, trying to stay awake. Preacher slipped into the thick shadows between the wagons and waited until the guard passed just outside the shrouding darkness.

The man was one of the Mayhews. He let out a long, weary sigh…and that was the last sound he ever made. The next instant, Preacher’s left hand clamped like iron over his mouth and pulled him backward across the wagon tongue into the shadows. At the same time, the knife in Preacher’s other hand drove into the man’s back. The mountain man guided it with practiced ease between a couple ribs so that the razor-sharp blade penetrated the guard’s heart. It paralyzed the man, and in a couple seconds he went limp.

Preacher lowered the body, then turned and whispered to Mala, “Come with me.”

They slipped along the side of a wagon that was away from the fire. Preacher cut the ropes that held the arching canvas cover over the vehicle and pulled it away from the sideboards. Then he told Mala, “You do the talking. Tell them to come with us. But be mighty quiet about it, all of you.”

“I understand,” she said. She stuck her head and shoulders through the opening Preacher had made and hissed to get the attention of the captives. “Wake up! Wake up, we must go!”

Several of the prisoners exclaimed in surprise, but others were already crying and whimpering so Preacher hoped the sounds wouldn’t be noticed. The gypsy woman quickly hushed them up, saying, “It’s Mala! I have come back for you. Be quiet now, we must go.”

Preacher held his breath, hoping the women would understand and realize their lives depended on swiftness and silence. After a moment, Mala backed away slightly from the wagon and held the canvas up so one of the captives could climb out of the vehicle. From the size of the dim shape, Preacher figured it was a girl, not a full-grown woman.

The escaping prisoner was followed by another and another. “This is Preacher,” Mala told them. “He is a friend and will help us get away. Do as he says.”

Preacher pointed into the hills and whispered, “Head that way as fast as you can. Be careful. Don’t make any more noise than you have to. Watch out for each other and give a hand to whoever needs it. Keep movin’ no matter what you hear goin’ on back here.”

The women and girls were clearly terrified, but they understood it was their only chance of escaping the awful fate planned for them. They moved off into the darkness in ones and twos as others continued to climb out of the wagon.

When the first wagon was empty, Preacher and Mala moved on to the second one. No one seemed to have missed the guards Preacher had killed. There hadn’t been any uproar yet. Preacher cut the canvas loose, then whispered, “Let’s get these other women out.”

The second part of the rescue operation went off without a hitch. When all the women were out and moving up the hill through the trees, Preacher said to Mala, “All right, you’ll have to look after ’em now. It’ll be light soon, so you ought to be able to find your way into the foothills. Keep an eye out for that canyon Crazy Bear and I were talking about. That’s where we’ll rendezvous with you in a little while.”

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Improve the odds as much as I can,” Preacher said. “Get goin’.”

“Preacher…”

“No time,” he said as he glanced at the lightening sky. “Go!”

Mala went, hurrying up the wooded slope after the others. Preacher waited until she was out of sight, then he turned to face the camp. He sure as hell hoped Crazy Bear was ready to stampede those horses.

Preacher pulled both the Dragoon Colts from behind his belt, looped his thumbs over the hammers, stepped out from behind the wagons, threw back his head, and let out a scream that sounded just like the cry of a blood-crazed panther.