“Suit yourself. Don’t expect me to pray over him.”
“I can do that. I brought a Bible with me, of course.”
Digging a grave in the mud proved to be a difficult chore, and the men given the task by Bartlett were muttering curses under their breath before they were finished. The hole kept filling up with water. Finally they got the grave deep enough, and Bartlett had the dead raider wrapped in a blanket. A couple of the bullwhackers lowered him into the soggy earth.
Bartlett got out his Bible, asked God to have mercy on the soul of the departed, whose identity was unknown, and then motioned for his men to fill in the grave. By the time that was done, it was early afternoon and the sun had passed its zenith.
Preacher walked out on the trail and tested its firmness with his boots. Hours of sun and wind had dried the ground somewhat. Bartlett followed the mountain man and asked, “Do you think we can leave now?”
“We’ll give it a try,” Preacher replied with a nod. “If it looks like the wagons are about to bog down, we can always stop again.”
Bartlett called orders, and the bullwhackers hitched up their teams. Roland saddled Casey’s horse and then his own. Preacher grinned as he heard Lorenzo grumbling about how nobody saddled his horse for him. He had to do it himself despite the fact that he was an old man.
“I reckon it’s better to be a pretty girl than a old geezer,” Lorenzo muttered.
“I don’t know about that,” Preacher said. “Casey’s had a hard life at times.”
“Yeah, well, so have I. It don’t matter none. Nobody fusses over me.”
Preacher suddenly lifted up Lorenzo’s hat and planted a kiss on top of the old man’s bald head. “There,” he drawled. “That make you feel better?”
“Gimme that hat!” Lorenzo snatched it away from Preacher and started swatting at the mountain man with it. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you about respectin’ your elders?”
Despite the tomfoolery, several worries nagged at the back of Preacher’s brain, and hoorawing Lorenzo wasn’t going to make them go away.
When everything was ready, Bartlett rode along the line of wagons and waved his hat over his head. “Move out!” he shouted. “Wagons
The bullwhackers popped their whips and bellowed at their teams. The oxen leaned forward against their harnesses and lurched into motion. With loud sucking sounds, the wheels pulled free of the mud. The sounds continued as the wagons rolled along the trail.
Preacher watched the wheels. They left deep ruts behind them, but they kept turning. It was the best he could hope for. Progress would be slower than usual as the oxen trudged through the mud and fought its clinging grip on their hooves, but any progress was better than none.
Bartlett, Roland, and Casey were at the head of the caravan. Preacher rode up alongside them and said, “Looks like there’s a good chance the wagons won’t get stuck.”
“Splendid!” Bartlett said. “Finally we can put more ground behind us.”
“Well . . . maybe not as much as you’d hope.”
Bartlett looked over at Preacher with a frown. “What do you mean? The wagons are moving.”
“This morning while I was out trying to track the critter that was lurkin’ around camp last night, I came across a creek. Reckon in normal times it wouldn’t be much more’n a trickle, maybe even a dry wash, but after that gullywasher yesterday, these ain’t normal times. The stream was flooded.”
“You mean we won’t be able to ford it?” Roland asked.
Preacher nodded. “That’s what I’m sayin’. I don’t know for sure that it crosses the trail, but it was runnin’ northeast to southwest, so there’s a good chance it does. And if it does, we’ll probably have to wait for the water to go down before we can get to the other side.”
Bartlett said, “How long will that take?”
“Depends on how much water’s runnin’ in it. Might just be a few hours, in which case we might be able to ford today while it’s still light. But it could be as long as another day.”
“Another day lost!” Bartlett exclaimed. “My God, does everything out here in this wilderness conspire to cause trouble for a man and ruin his plans?”
“Sometimes it seems like it,” Preacher admitted. “But your plans ain’t ruined, just delayed a mite. We’ll get across sooner or later. It’s still possible we won’t have to ford that creek at all.”
That much luck was not with them, however. Less than an hour later, Preacher spotted the dark, muddy line of the flooded creek stretching across the trail in front of them. He reined in and pointed it out to Bartlett.
“Should we stop the wagons?”
Preacher shook his head. “No, there’s no reason not to push on until we get to the creek. That way we’ll be ready to ford it as soon as we’re able to. I’ll ride ahead and take a look.”
He had barely pulled out ahead of the others with Horse moving at an easy lope when he heard hoofbeats right behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Casey following him. She came up even with him.
“No need for you to come along,” he told her. “You can go back with Roland and his pa if you want to.”
“But I don’t want to,” Casey snapped. “I want to talk to you, Preacher.”
He bit back an exasperated curse. If she wanted to have that conversation, then maybe it was time. They could clear the air instead of having the future hanging over them all the way to Santa Fe.
“All right,” he said. “Go ahead and talk.”
