Or someone who wasn’t Preacher, anyway.
Leaving the wagons to get started when the rest period was over, Preacher mounted up and rode west along the trail. Dog trotted along beside him. He loosened the reins and gave Horse his head, and the big gray stallion responded by tossing his head and breaking into a run. Dog bounded ahead, and Preacher grinned. All three of the old friends were glad to be out on their own again.
A few minutes later Preacher saw riders ahead of him, angling to cut across his path and intercept him. He knew instantly that they were Indians.
CHAPTER 4
Preacher wasn’t going to ride right into the middle of that bunch. If they wanted him, they could come to him. He reined Horse to a halt and called, “Dog!” The big cur whirled around and raced back to Preacher’s side. He unslung the flintlock rifle and rested it across the saddle in front of him. The rifle was loaded and primed, as were the pistols behind his belt and the second set of pistols he carried in the saddlebags. His thumb was looped over the rifle’s hammer, ready to cock it.
The Indians reached the trail. Instead of crossing it and continuing on their way, as he had hoped but not expected, they turned and rode directly toward him. Preacher waited calmly. He knew the worst thing he could do was turn and try to get away from them. That would just encourage them to chase him and get their blood up.
As they came closer, he saw the Indians weren’t painted for war. More than likely a hunting party. From the way they wore their hair and the markings on their buckskins, he recognized them as Pawnee. They weren’t all that friendly toward white men, but as a rule they didn’t go out of their way to be hostile.
There were seven warriors in the group, most of them young along with a couple older, more weathered men. One of those veterans edged his pony ahead as the others came to a stop. The leader raised a hand in greeting.
Solemnly, Preacher returned the gesture. “My friends,” he said in the Pawnee tongue. After so many years on the frontier, there weren’t many Indian languages and dialects he didn’t speak.
“You use our words,” the Pawnee warrior said, sounding slightly surprised.
“When a man goes among those who are not his own people, he should learn to speak their tongue.”
The warrior nodded slowly. “This is wise. How are you called?”
“I am Preacher.”
Recognition flared in the Pawnee’s eyes. Preacher was pretty sure he had never met the man before, but clearly the warrior had heard of him.
“The one known to the Blackfeet as Ghost-killer?”
Preacher nodded. He had picked up that name because of the way he had slipped into camps of the Blackfeet and slit the throats of several warriors before crawling away without anyone knowing what had happened.
He and the Blackfeet were old enemies. As a young man, he had been the prisoner of a Blackfoot band. To save his life and make his captors believe he was touched by the spirits, he had begun to preach, like a street minister he had seen back in St. Louis. All night and all day the words had tumbled from his mouth, and when he could talk no more, the Blackfeet spared him. Once the story spread among his fellow mountain men, they dubbed him Preacher, and the name had stuck.
Luckily, the fact that the Blackfeet hated him wouldn’t mean much to those Pawnee. Most of the other tribes didn’t get along that well with the Blackfeet. The Pawnee wouldn’t try to kill him just because the Blackfeet wanted him dead.
However, the power the warriors might obtain by killing a famous fighting man such as Preacher might be too strong a temptation to withstand. He saw the eagerness in the eyes of the younger men and knew he was on the knife edge of deadly danger.
“Ghost-killer does not come often to the land of the Pawnee,” the spokesman said. “Do you travel alone?”
Preacher shook his head. “I have many friends with me.” It wouldn’t do any good to lie. The caravan would be in sight at any minute. “They take wagons full of goods to Santa Fe, to sell to the Mexicans.”
Preacher didn’t think there was any chance the small hunting party would attack a large, well-armed group such as the Bartlett wagon train. But they might come back with more warriors from their village, so Preacher knew he would have to be extra watchful until the wagons were through the area.
“This is Pawnee land,” the spokesman said with a frown.
Preacher nodded. “I know. That is why we will give gifts to the Pawnee, so we may pass through in peace.”
He didn’t have any right to commit Bartlett to such an exchange, but on the other hand, Bartlett had wanted him to come along because he knew what he was doing and how to deal with the Indians. If the man had any sense, he would follow Preacher’s advice in the matter.
The older warrior nodded gravely. “This is fair,” he said. “We will wait here.”
“Good. We can talk of places we have been and things we have seen.”
Preacher’s keen eyes had spotted another warrior sitting on his pony about half a mile away. That Pawnee would watch the coming confrontation, and if there was trouble, he would race back to the village and bring help. Preacher was going to do his best to see to it that there was no trouble.
The wagons lumbered into sight. Preacher saw the outriders moving back to the wagons and knew they had spotted the Indians waiting in the trail. A few minutes later, the wagons lurched to a halt, and one of the men rode forward to find out what was going on.
Preacher waved the man in. The outrider came up wearing a nervous expression. His rifle was across the saddle in front of him. He asked, “What’s going on here, Preacher?”
