me, Preacher.”
“You sure you ain’t gonna talk us all to death instead?” Preacher drawled. He glanced at Jessie and Casey. Both women had been beaten, and blood ran from an ugly cut on Casey’s cheek. But Preacher saw anger and defiance and determination still blazing in their eyes, so he wasn’t too surprised by what happened next.
Both women threw themselves at Beaumont, chairs and all.
They crashed into his thighs and sent him toppling forward just as he pulled the trigger. The shot missed, the ball humming past Preacher’s ear to smack into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Preacher leaped forward and swung his leg, kicking the knife out of Beaumont’s other hand. Then he backed off and drew the pistol that was still loaded.
“Get up, Beaumont,” he ordered. “Get up and get away from those gals.”
Beaumont pushed himself onto hands and knees, then climbed to his feet. He backed away from where Jessie and Casey lay on the floor, still tied to the overturned chairs. The smoke in the room was getting thicker now. Lorenzo spoke from the doorway behind Preacher.
“We’d best be gettin’ outta here, boy. This place is gonna be comin’ down ’fore you know it.”
Preacher slid his knife from its sheath and handed it back to Lorenzo. “Cut the women loose and see that they get out of the house,” he said. “Just don’t get between me and Beaumont while you’re doin’ it.”
Lorenzo hurried to do as Preacher said. He cut Jessie’s bonds first, then Casey’s.
“Why are you helping him, you stupid nigger?” Beaumont demanded. “You work for me!”
Lorenzo straightened and handed the knife back to Preacher. “So did my son,” he said. “His name was Brutus. You
“Sorry? Why should I be sorry? None of you matter!” Beaumont laughed. “You’re just a bunch of niggers and whores and bumpkins! You’re nothing compared to me, you hear? Nothing!”
“Well, then, it’s nothin’ that brought you down, boss,” Lorenzo said.
Preacher sheathed the knife and said, “Get ’em out of here, Lorenzo.”
Casey caught at his arm. “What about you, Preacher? You have to come, too!”
“She’s right,” Jessie added. “You have to come with us, Preacher.”
“I’ll be along directly,” Preacher promised. “As soon as I’m finished here.”
The women didn’t want to go, but Lorenzo succeeded in hustling them out of the room. The crackling of the flames was loud now, and smoke hung in the air so thickly that Preacher’s eyes and nose and mouth stung.
A fit of coughing wracked Beaumont, but when he recovered, he laughed. “What are you going to do now?” he asked. “Give me a gun so we can fight a duel? Let me have my knife back so we can settle this with cold steel?”
Preacher peered over the barrel of his pistol at Beaumont, locking eyes with the man. Thinking of Uncle Dan and Brutus and everyone else who had died, he said, “I’m gonna do what I should have done a couple of weeks ago.”
Beaumont’s eyes barely had time to widen in shocked realization before Preacher pulled the trigger.
Preacher left the body where it fell. The burning mansion could serve as a suitable funeral pyre for Shad Beaumont. It was more than the man actually deserved. His corpse should have been tossed into the mud for the pigs, but Preacher was too damned tired to do anything but turn and walk out as the place burned down behind him.
Casey, Jessie, and Lorenzo were waiting for him outside. The two women ran to him and threw their arms around him. As good as that felt, Preacher knew they couldn’t afford to waste any time.
“Let’s get out of here while everybody still ain’t quite sure what’s goin’ on,” he said. They slipped away into the shadows, leaving the shouting, agitated citizenry of St. Louis behind them, along with Beaumont’s men who weren’t aware yet that their employer was never coming out of that inferno.
A couple of blocks away, they found Beaumont’s carriage, with the team hitched to it. Some of Beaumont’s men must have driven it out of the carriage house to save it in case the fire spread that far. Nobody was around at the moment, so Lorenzo opened the door and grinned as he motioned for Preacher, Jessie, and Casey to climb inside.
“Ladies. Gentleman.”
“It ain’t fittin’,” Preacher started to protest.
“It damn sure is!” Lorenzo responded forcefully. “Now get in there, boy, and let’s light a shuck outta here.”
Preacher chuckled and shook his head, but he didn’t argue anymore. He just climbed into the carriage after Jessie and Casey. Lorenzo closed the door, scrambled up to the driver’s seat, and took up the reins. A moment later, the carriage was rolling away.
That was how it came to be parked on a hillside several miles north of town the next morning, overlooking the Mississippi River. Preacher had directed Lorenzo to the spot where he had left Horse and Dog when he started downriver on the little raft, so he could pick up his two old trail partners. Then they had found this spot and camped. Jessie was preparing some breakfast from the supplies Preacher had been planning on taking with him as he headed west with Beaumont in pursuit. Things hadn’t worked out that way, of course, but Beaumont was still dead and the two women were safe. Preacher knew he was going to miss Uncle Dan, though, and he was sure Lorenzo would miss Brutus.
Preacher cleaned the wound on Casey’s cheek as best he could. “That’ll need a sawbones to sew it up, or it’ll leave a scar,” he told her.
She shook her head. “I’m not going back to St. Louis, and I don’t care if there’s a scar. Do you, Preacher?”
“Why would it matter to me?” he asked with a frown.
