Rampage of the Mountain Man

out in his birthday suit. He could feel a warm summer breeze blowing all over him. Might’ve been pleasant under other circumstances, but not here and now.

“Shameful!”

Whoever was doing all that yammering wasn’t helping matters either. In fact, Preacher thought it made his head throb even worse listening to the varmint. So he pushed himself up into a sitting position, blinked his bleary eyes open, and said, “Shut the hell up, why don’t you, mister?”

Several people were standing nearby in the street. One of them carried a lantern, and even though its light was dim, Preacher squinted because it seemed like a glare to his eyes. His head spun dizzily from sitting up, but it settled down after a few seconds. There were four men and two women standing there, all of them soberly dressed in dark clothes. Probably on their way to or from a prayer meetin’, he thought. And almost certainly they hadn’t expected to run into a naked man along the way.

That thought reminded him that he was bare-ass, and he sort of hunched over trying to cover things up. His pistols lay nearby in the street. When he lifted a hand to his head and gingerly touched the spot on his skull that hurt the worst, the fingertips came away smeared with blood.

Mutters of disapproval still came from the little group of citizens. Preacher snapped, “Are you folks blind? Can’t you see I been shot?”

“Oh, dear,” one of the women said. “I do believe he is hurt. We have to help him.”

The man who had been going on at length before said, “He was probably injured in some drunken brawl over a woman of ill repute, Martha.” Preacher knew it was him because he recognized the shrill, hectoring tone.

“That doesn’t matter, Walter,” the woman insisted as she took a step toward Preacher. “The Lord said for us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. The Good Samaritan stopped to help without asking who that poor man was or what had happened to him.”

Preacher hunched over more as the woman approached. “Ma’am, I appreciate the sentiment, I surely do,” he rasped, “but I’d be obliged if you and the other lady would move along and let your men-folks give me a hand. It’d be more fittin’ and proper.”

“Nonsense,” she said as she reached his side and bent down to take hold of his arm. “Let me help you up.”

She was a hefty woman, and Preacher didn’t have much choice except to go along with her. With her supporting him, he climbed to his feet. The dizziness got to him again for a second, causing him to sag against her. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself.

“Here now! Stop that! Good heavens, sir, have you no shame?” That was Walter again. Preacher figured he was probably Martha’s husband.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he murmured as he straightened. “I was a mite out of my head there for a minute. Didn’t mean to give no offense.”

“That’s quite all right,” she told him. “How badly are you injured? Do you need us to take you to a physician?”

Preacher felt of the wound on his scalp again. It was just a short, shallow furrow where the pistol ball had barely grazed him. That had been enough to knock him down and make him pass out for a few minutes, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage.

“I reckon I’ll be all right,” he told the woman. “That shot just nicked me, and this old skull o’ mine is pretty darned thick.”

Walter snorted, as if to say that he certainly believed that.

“At least take my husband’s coat,” Martha said.

This time Walter said, “What! Martha, you can’t just offer my coat to this…this reprobate!”

Preacher’s head felt steady enough now for him to bend over and pick up his pistols. As he straightened, he saw Walter peeling off the long black coat.

“Now we’re being robbed!” Walter said. “Here, take the coat. Just don’t hurt any of us, I implore you, sir!”

Preacher wanted to ask the fella if he was touched in the head, but he was tired of this whole encounter and just took the coat instead, saying, “I ain’t stealin’ your coat. You can come down to Fargo’s tavern any time you want and get it back. I’ll leave it with ol’ Ford.”

Walter swallowed hard and said, “That’s all right. I…I’ve heard of that tavern. I wouldn’t set foot in a place like that!”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a little boy name of Jake, would you?” Preacher muttered as he shrugged into the borrowed coat. Walter was built sort of stout, so the garment hung pretty loosely on him, but it was long enough to cover the essentials.

“What? I don’t have any children.”

“More’s the pity,” Martha said.

Preacher wasn’t so sure about that. If he was a kid, he wouldn’t want a stiff-necked varmint like Walter for his pa. But folks didn’t really get a choice about things like that, he supposed.

The important thing was that the two men who had killed Abby were long gone by now, and Preacher had no idea where to look for them. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize them if he saw them again, although he thought there was a pretty good chance he would. While he was still in St. Louis, he would be keeping an eye out for a pair of gents, one short and one tall. He thought the tall one had been wearing buckskins, and the short one had sported that beaver hat he’d caught a glimpse of going down the stairs in the tavern.

He said good night to the folks who had found him and started back toward Fargo’s, the tails of Walter’s coat flapping around his legs. He felt pretty foolish walking into the tavern that way, but even though some of the patrons looked mighty hard at him, nobody snickered. In fact, an air of gloom hung over the place, and Preacher figured out why as a couple of men started down the stairs from the second floor, carrying a blanket-shrouded shape.