“No thanks, but I’m obliged for the offer. I handle most of my own problems without any help.”
“I can see that,” Chisum said. “I’m curious about a couple of things. Where did you learn to fight like that? An ordinary man can’t kill almost a dozen men the way you did single-handedly without getting a scratch.”
Smoke thought about Preacher a moment. “I had a real good teacher, an old mountain man up in Colorado. If I had to try to explain it, I suppose I’d say he had a born instinct for taking care of himself in any situation. He lived alone in the wildest part of the Rockies. He never depended on anyone else. He survived in a place where all odds said he couldn’t, goin’ up against Indians like the Crows, Blackfeet, the Utes, and the Shoshoni back when the Indian wars were at their worst. After a spell, most tribes got to where they respected him… even made friends with him. Some of the Crow medicine men believed he was a medicine man himself, even though his skin was white and his eyes were the wrong color. He earned their respect as a fighting man, and they left him alone to hunt an’ run his traps.”
“It sounds to me like you were very close to him, whoever he was.”
Smoke felt a slight twinge when the old memories came back. “I reckon we were real close, if that’s the right word. He went by Preacher. He told me the last time I saw him his first name was Arthur. I never knew his last name.”
“Is he… gone now?”
Smoke downed the last of his drink, not wanting to discuss Preacher any longer. “Can’t say for sure. He’d be close to ninety by now, if he’s still alive. When I left him, it was at his request. He’d been wounded mighty bad and looked for all the world like he was gonna die. He asked me to dress him in his best buckskins an’ a sash, which is the way old-time mountain men want to be buried. Then he ordered me to leave that high country for good, to get clear of the trouble brewin’ there, He rode off on his favorite mare. That’s the last I ever saw of him, an’ I believe it was the way he wanted it, so I wouldn’t know if he’d lived or died. Preacher had a hell of a lot of pride, an’ I’m sure this was his way of sparing me from seeing him pass on, or as mountain men say, cross over.“(See 'The Last Mountain Man')
“Haven’t you ever wondered what became of him?”
Smoke stood up, stretching his legs. “I owe him too much not to respect his wishes.”
Chisum got up, a puzzled expression on his face. “What an unusual story,” he said, following Smoke over to the front door to show him out.
“G’night, Mr. Chisum,” Smoke said, to end any further talk about Preacher or Smoke’s beginnings. “We’ll be up before first light to get that herd started.”
“My men will help you get them started north,” Chisum said as Smoke started for the bunkhouse.
“We’ll be grateful,” he said without turning around, lost in an unwanted memory, of the day Preacher was dressed in his best beaded buckskins, badly wounded from a scrape with men who had tracked him into the Needle Mountains, putting a rifle ball all the way through his hip, a wound that was badly festered by the time he found Smoke.
Smoke glanced up at the stars, hoping that somewhere those same stars were shining down on Preacher, perhaps at the high mountain pass Ned Buntline told Cal and Pearlie about. Was the man dressed in an albino buffalo robe truly Preacher?
Smoke knew he would never know, and that was the way Preacher had wanted it.Twenty-eight
Driving half-wild longhorns away from their home range could be tricky business, Smoke knew from experience, and as they put a few lead heifers in motion northward, some tried to turn back. A cowboy had to ride up at just the right time in order to get the animals moving in the right direction.
The young Herefords were another matter. Gentled by being around men feeding them in corrals, they plodded along at the back of the herd quietly.
Smoke leaned out of the saddle and shook hands with John Chisum. “Pleasure doin’ business with you,” he said, watching Pearlie and Duke lead the cattle north over the very same hills where he’d killed six of Jessie Evans’s men.
“The pleasure has been all mine,” Chisum replied. “You be careful, Smoke Jensen. Don’t let those owlhoots riding for Dolan jump you.”
Smoke grinned. “I’m always careful,” he said, urging his horse forward to ride around the herd so he could scout the way for several miles before the cattle came.
Dawn had just come to South Springs, casting golden light over tree-studded hills and shallow valleys. Off to the east, the Pecos River was a thin, distant line of deeper green where cottonwoods and grass were nourished by its waters. It was a peaceful beginning, as the heifers and bulls moved away from the Chisum ranch. Smoke wondered how long it would stay this way.
Keeping the Pecos in sight, he led them over grassy meadows where the cows would have plenty of grazing. Once the herd got settled to the trail, the likelihood of a stampede would be less of a worry.
When he’d scouted ahead for a couple of miles, Smoke turned back to see how the herd was moving, and when he topped a rise he could see them strung out in good trail fashion, traveling along at a slow pace, with the Hereford bulls bringing up the rear, an expected outcome since their legs were far shorter and they would have more trouble staying up with longer-strided longhorn cows.
“So far, so good,” he said under his breath. The land they were traveling was empty, no houses or signs of civilization in sight as far as the eye could see.
They were passing through what Chisum called the Haystack Mountain range, little more than foothills to a man who knew the Rockies. Water was plentiful in creeks and arroyos. With so much grass and water, the cattle would have an easy time of it until they reached drier regions to the north.
An hour later, Smoke tensed in the saddle when he saw Duke Smith headed his way at a fast trot. Smoke swung his horse to ride to meet him.
“Nothin’s wrong,” Duke said quickly, when he saw the look on Smoke’s face, “but we did see this horse an’ rider way off to the west, an’ he didn’t stay long afore he plumb disappeared.”
It could be someone riding to warn Evans of their departure from Chisum’s ranch, although he didn’t want to
