“Well, I didn’t never say to strangle the son of a bitch in his sleep, now did I?” Uncle Dan grumbled. “Tell him who you are. You can even give him a chance to get his paws on a gun if you want. I reckon you could still kill him.”
“It may come to that. But not yet.”
Even though the embers of the fire didn’t cast much light, Preacher could feel Uncle Dan studying him. After a moment, the old-timer said, “This ain’t like you, Preacher. I may not have knowed you all that long, but I’ve heard plenty about you. You ain’t the sort o’ fella to pussyfoot around. What’s all this sneakin’ and pretendin’ to be somebody else gonna accomplish?”
That very question had been gnawing at Preacher’s brain, too. When he had first come up with the plan, he’d thought that it would be fitting to give Beaumont a taste of his own medicine. To take away the things that the man cared about and put him through the same sort of suffering that he had inflicted on so many others.
Yet as the days had gone by, Preacher had begun more and more to doubt the wisdom of this course. Uncle Dan was right. It wasn’t like him, and knowing that he had fooled Beaumont wasn’t as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be. But the plan had proceeded so far that to change it now seemed like a mistake, too.
“I don’t know,” he said in reply to Uncle Dan’s question. “I’ll think on it. I can tell you this, though . . . it ain’t gonna go on too much longer.”
“I hope not. I’m gettin’ anxious to see the mountains again.”
So was Preacher. He could only stand civilization for a short time.
He finished his coffee, then stood up and said his good-byes to Uncle Dan. As he started out of the trees, he heard something that caught his attention. It was the muffled whicker of a horse, somewhere nearby in the thick shadows under the trees.
Preacher stiffened in the saddle. That sound hadn’t come from Uncle Dan’s horse, which meant there was another animal somewhere close to the camp. And where there was a horse, there was usually a rider. This one could be a stray, but Preacher’s gut told him that wasn’t the case.
He didn’t react visibly to the sound but kept Horse moving at a steady pace instead. As he emerged from the trees, he turned the big stallion onto the trail that led back toward St. Louis. He didn’t look back.
Every instinct in his body told him that someone was following him, though.
The lights of the town glittered in the darkness ahead of him. They were bright enough, and there were enough of them, so that a faint glow filled the sky over the settlement. Preacher didn’t slow down when he reached the streets of the town. He rode on through St. Louis toward the riverfront. The sound of raucous laughter and scraping fiddles came from the taverns he passed. Somewhere a woman cried out, but it sounded more like a scream of pleasure rather than one of pain or fear. A man cursed. Another shouted a question. The smell of the river filled the air.
Preacher turned into a narrow lane and slipped out of the saddle as soon as he was around the corner. He gave Horse’s rump a soft slap that kept the stallion moving forward. Horse wouldn’t go too far before he stopped and waited for Preacher to summon him back. It shouldn’t take long for him to find out what he needed to know, though, Preacher thought.
Sure enough, only a minute or so had gone by when another rider rounded the corner and started along the lane, following the steady clip-clop of Horse’s hooves on the hard-packed dirt. By that time, Preacher had drawn back into the impenetrable shadows that clogged the deep, recessed doorway of an abandoned building. The man who rode past never even glanced in his direction.
Even though the light in the lane was bad, Preacher’s eyesight was keen enough to tell him that the man was familiar. After a second, Preacher recalled his name. The man following him was the gambler Cleve. Preacher had seen him at both Dupree’s and Jessie’s Place. As far as Preacher knew, there was no connection between Cleve and Beaumont except for the fact that the gambler patronized places owned by Beaumont.
It seemed likely, though, that Cleve had picked up Preacher’s trail at Beaumont’s house. Was he a spy for Beaumont? Did Beaumont really suspect Preacher of some sort of treachery after all?
There was only one way to find out, Preacher thought as he slipped grim-faced out of the shadows.
He went after Cleve. The man was riding slowly enough so that Preacher had no trouble keeping up with him on foot. Preacher stayed back about a hundred yards and haunted the shadows so that he could duck out of sight if Cleve happened to look back. After a few minutes, though, Cleve reined in and stood up in the stirrups to look around. He must have realized that he’d lost his quarry, Preacher thought.
Preacher had already spotted Horse standing in front of a darkened livery barn across the street, and he recognized it now as the barn where Horse had spent one night. The stallion must have recognized the place, too, and was waiting there for Preacher to come for him.
Cleve hadn’t noticed Horse when he rode past the livery, though. That much was obvious from the way the gambler yanked his own mount around and rode up the street, moving quicker now. Preacher waited until Cleve was almost out of sight, then gave a low whistle that brought Horse trotting over to him. He mounted up quickly and rode after Cleve.
The hunter had become the hunted now.
Preacher knew that by staying well back, he ran the risk of losing Cleve. He had confidence in his own ability to trail the gambler, though. He was maybe a little less confident here in town than he would have been in the wilderness, but he still thought he could keep up with the man.
Anyway, it wasn’t long before Preacher had a pretty good idea where Cleve was going.
The man seemed to be headed straight toward Jessie’s Place.
That turned out to be the case. Cleve rode around to the back of the house. Preacher brought Horse to a stop under some trees and dismounted, then went after Cleve on foot. He reached the rear corner of the house in time to see that Cleve had led his horse into a shed at the rear of the place and left the animal there. The gambler stood at the back door, evidently having just knocked on it. When the door opened, light spilled from inside, and Brutus’s voice rumbled, “Did you find out what you went after?”
“I’ll speak to Jessie about it,” Cleve replied curtly.
