right.”
“Not knowin’ the land and the animals can get a body dead,” Preacher told him. “I’ll start like you don’t know nothin’. Which is not that far from the truth. Snakes.”
“Huh?”
“Snakes. Tell me what you know ’bout ’em.”
“I know to leave some of them alone.”
“Wise, but not near enough.”
“Well … I know a poisonous snake’s got to coil before they strike.”
“Wrong. A rattler can short-strike at you with just the power of his neck. You ’member that. And this, too: Rattler meat is good to eat. I’ve et a poke of it. Right tasty. But be damn shore the critter is dead ’fore you start to skin it. They get right hostile ifn you’s to jerk the hide off ’fore they’s dead.”
Kirby smiled. “Wouldn’t you?”
Preacher laughed. “’Spect so. Injuns was gonna skin me alive one time, up on the Platte. That’s how I got my name, Preacher. I preached to them heathens for hours. Didn’t think I knowed so many words. Even made me up a language that day and night. Called it the unknown tongue. But I made believers out of them savages. I reckon they thought I was crazy. Injuns won’t harm a crazy man — most of ’em, that is. They think he’s kind of a God. Finally that chief just put his hands over his ears and told his bucks to turn me a-loose. Said I’s a-hurtin’ his ears something fierce. I got my pelts and rode out of there without lookin’ back.” He chuckled at the long-ago memory.
“And you’ve been called Preacher ever since.”
“Yep.”
Preacher had blindfolded the young man and spun him around like a top. Removing the sash, Preacher asked, “Which direction you facin’, Smoke?”
Kirby shook his head, looking around him. “North.”
“Wrong. You looked at that moss on yonder tree, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That kind of thinkin’ can get you kilt. Moss, ifn there’s light and water enough, can grow all the way ’round a tree. Man can wander ’round in circles and die believin’ that moss only grows to the north.”
“Then —”
Preacher answered the unspoken question. “Sun, stars, lay of the land, and a feel for them all. Come a time, Smoke, you’ll just know. It won’t take long.”
The days passed into weeks, and Kirby’s education grew, and so did he, gaining weight, filling out with hard muscle.
The young man pointed his finger at a bush full of berries. “I know about them — we got them in Missouri. Don’t eat them, they’re poison.”
Preacher grinned. “But some birds do.”
“Yes. But you said not to believe that old story that anything a bird eats a man can eat.”
“That’s right. See them flowers over yonder. Right purty and lots of birds eat ’em. But they can kill a man, or else make him so sick he’ll wish he was dead. Oak tree yonder. I’ve knowed folk to boil the bark and make a bitter- tastin’ tonic. Never cared for the stuff myself.”
“Why?”
“’cause it tastes like pisen water. And I just don’t care to drink no pisen water.”
As they traveled, they would occasionally encounter roaming bands of Indians, most of them friendly to Preacher. Once, after they had palavered with a band of Cheyenne, Kirby looked back in time to see one of the braves making a circling motion at his temple with a forefinger. He told Preacher.
“Sure. Sign for a crazy person. Let ’em keep believin’ it. We’ll keep our hair.”
“Why do Indians think a crazy person is a God?”
“Well, they believe he’s possessed by gods — nearabout the same thing to them. And the Injuns don’t want no bad medicine with no God.
“They don’t worship like we do, Smoke. Injun worships the sun, the stars, the trees, the moon, the rivers. Nearabouts ever’thing. Least the Injuns I know does. They can’t rightly tell you why they think a man crazy is thataway. I’ve heared twelve different versions from twelve different medicine men. Don’t none of ’em make no sense to me.”
During their wanderings, they met trappers and hunters, a few of whom rode from the west. Kirby would always ask about Emmett. But no one had seen him or heard about him. It was as if the man had dropped off the face of the earth.
“Idaho is wild, Smoke,” Preacher told him. “Only a few places settled. We ain’t heard nothin’ by next spring, we’ll strike out for the Hole.”
1867
The pair spent the winter of 1866–67 in an old cabin on the banks of the Colorado River, with the northern slopes of Castle Peak far to the south, but visible on most days. Here, the pair ran traps, hunted, and on the bitter cold days and nights, stayed snug in the cabin built some forty years earlier by a long-dead friend of Preacher’s.
“What happened to the man who built this cabin?”
“He got tied up with a mountain lion one afternoon,” Preacher said. “The puma won.”
In the spring of ’67, they sold their pelts at a post and rode out for the northwest.
“Show you where we used to rendezvous, Smoke. Back ’bout ’30, I think it were. Worst damn place I ever been in my life. We called it Fort Misery. First time I ever et dog. Warn’t too bad as I recall.”
