“Being around the animals all the time while they’re, well, you know?” Casey suggested.
Preacher stopped just inside the doorway and turned around to keep an eye on the house. “Just get that buggy ready to go,” he said.
The women got to work while Preacher watched for trouble. The smooth, swift efficiency with which they got the horse hitched to the buggy told Preacher they’d been telling the truth about knowing what they were doing. Within just a few minutes, they had the buggy ready to roll. Casey’s carpetbag was stuffed behind the seat.
“Aren’t you taking anything with you, Jessie?” she asked as they started to climb onto the seat.
The look Jessie cast through the open doors of the barn at the house was positively venomous. “There’s nothing in there that wasn’t paid for by Shad Beaumont,” she said. “I don’t want any of it.”
“I reckon I understand that feelin’,” Preacher said as he sat down by Casey, who was in the middle. “Jessie, you’d better handle the reins, in case I have to do any shootin’.”
“All right.” She picked up the lines, slapped them against the horse’s rump, and called, “Hyaaahhh!” The horse surged forward against its harness, and the buggy rolled out of the barn. Jessie sent it rolling fast along the drive that circled around the house to the road.
When they reached the front of the house, Preacher saw that Beaumont’s carriage was gone. He had expected as much. Beaumont had probably run straight back to the vehicle and ordered Lorenzo to get away from there as fast as he could. Because Beaumont believed that he had walked into a trap, he probably thought there were more men in the house who wanted to kill him.
It would have been nice to have some allies, Preacher thought, instead of just him and a couple of women and an old man declaring open war against the most powerful criminal in St. Louis, maybe the most powerful one west of the Mississippi. But at least things were out in the open now, and Preacher couldn’t help but be a little relieved by that. He didn’t know how Beaumont would react to what had happened, but it seemed likely that he would gather up a small army of hired killers and come after his sworn enemy.
That would be all right with him, Preacher mused as a bleak smile tugged at his mouth. “Head west out of town,” he told Jessie. “I’ll show you where to go.”
If Beaumont came after him, that would save him the trouble of going after Beaumont. Preacher didn’t care about the odds.
He just wanted to have Beaumont in his sights one more time.
Chapter 26
The sun sank toward the western horizon as the buggy rolled westward. After a few moments of silence, Casey said, “Do either of you want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“I reckon you deserve an explanation,” Preacher said. “Me and Beaumont are old enemies, even though we didn’t ever actually meet until about a week and a half ago. He’s been sendin’ folks to the Rockies for the past year or so, tryin’ to take over the fur trade out there, and I been stoppin’ those plans.”
“So you’re a mountain man?”
“Yeah.” Preacher smiled. “I just shaved off my beard and dressed in reg’lar clothes instead of buckskins to make Beaumont think I was somebody else. I told him my name was Jim Donnelly, and he believed me.”
“Then there really isn’t a Jim Donnelly?”
“Well, I reckon there must be at least one fella named that somewhere,” Preacher said, “but I ain’t him.”
“If you hate Beaumont, why did you go to work for him?” Casey’s eyes lit up as she thought about the question she had just asked. “Oh, I know! You were trying to get inside his organization so you could destroy it and get back at him for all the bad things he’s done.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s about the size of it. Problem is, it never did work out quite like I figured it would. I reckon I just ain’t cut out for playactin’.”
Jessie said, “It would have worked if we’d had more time. We just didn’t count on that bastard Garland Buckhalter showing up and recognizing you.”
“That was his first name? Garland?” Preacher shook his head. “I don’t reckon I ever heard it until now. Never expected to see the varmint again, either. I figured the Pawnee got him.”
“He came into the house about an hour ago,” Jessie explained as she snapped the reins and kept the horse moving briskly. “Brutus heard him talking to some of the girls. He said he’d been out on the plains for the past couple of weeks, on foot, dodging Indians. He was finally able to steal a horse yesterday, and that meant he was able to get the rest of the way to St. Louis a lot faster.”
“Probably killed the fella he stole that horse from, too,” Preacher said.
Jessie nodded. “More than likely. He also did a lot of talking about you, Preacher, mostly about how you had ruined all his plans and caused him to fail Beaumont . . . and how he was going to kill you if he ever saw you again. Brutus overheard that and warned me, and I told him that if you came in, he should keep you away from the parlor until Buckhalter was safely upstairs with one of the girls.”
“He did his best,” Preacher said. “He just didn’t have any luck.”
“Not this time,” Jessie said, a catch in her voice. “Brutus’s luck ran out . . . and so did ours.”
Preacher grunted. “We’re still alive, ain’t we? I’d say we still got some luck on our side.”
“We’re alive, but Brutus isn’t. He was a good man. He helped me a lot over the past couple of years, since Shad put me in charge of the house.”
“Before that—”
“Before that, I was just one of the whores who worked there,” Jessie said. “Is that what you wanted to know, Preacher?”
