But a man who was prepared for trouble, whether it came or not, usually lived a lot longer on the frontier.
The double gates in the stockade fence stood open right now. Preacher glanced up and saw that all of the watchtowers were manned. If the sentries saw any sign of hostiles approaching, they would sound the alarm and the gates would be closed and barred before the Indians could get there. Everyone in the settlement knew to listen, and if they heard the bell mounted on top of the trading post tolling, they knew it meant to get inside the wall as quickly as they could. All the settlers would gather there in case of trouble.
Today, though, peace reigned in the valley, and folks strolled in and out through the gates, visiting the trading post for supplies or just some conversation, then heading back to the log cabins that dotted the grassy park. With a procession of youngsters trailing him, Preacher rode through the gates as well, and brought Horse to a stop before the trading post just as Corliss Hart stepped out onto the shaded porch.
Corliss smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. He was a muscular man in his thirties with a friendly face and a shock of dark hair.
“Howdy, Preacher,” he called. “Didn’t expect to see you back here quite this soon.”
“I was lucky and already got a good load o’ plews,” Preacher drawled. He shifted Horse to the side so that Corliss could see the other two saddle mounts and their grisly burden. “Got a load o’ something else, too.”
Corliss’s smile disappeared and his eyes widened. “Good Lord!” he said. “Who’s that?”
“You tell me,” Preacher said. “They tried to kill me this mornin’.”
“Well, that was a foolish mistake,” Corliss muttered as he came down the steps from the porch and moved forward to get a closer look at the bodies. Grimacing a little in distaste, he did what Jake had done: lifted the heads by the hair and studied the faces of the dead men.
He was shaking his head when he turned away from the horses. “I’m sorry, Preacher, but I never saw them before. They look like pretty unsavory sorts, though.”
“They ain’t any sort anymore ’cept dead.”
Corliss looked at the youngsters crowding around and said, “You children run along. You don’t need to see this.” He added to his adopted son in particular, “Jake, go inside and give Deborah a hand.”
“Aw, Corliss,” the boy complained. “I seen dead folks before, you know.”
“You’ve seen too much in your life. Run along.”
Grumbling and dragging his feet, Jake went inside. The other kids went back to whatever they had been doing. Dead bodies started to lose their novelty pretty quickly. They didn’t do anything.
As Preacher swung down from the saddle, Corliss asked, “Is that blood on your shirt? You’re hurt, Preacher!”
The rangy mountain man shook his head. “Naw, not to speak of. Just got a little hide scraped off where a rifle ball come too close for comfort. I already slapped a poultice on it. It’ll be fine.”
“Deborah could take a look at it if you’d like.”
The idea of Corliss’s pretty, dark-haired wife poking around at his bare torso made Preacher a mite uncomfortable, so he shook his head. “No, thanks. It’s all right.”
“Suit yourself. Anyway, you probably know as much about treating bullet wounds as anybody else in this part of the country.”
“I’ve patched up a fair number of ’em,” Preacher admitted. “On me and on other folks, too.”
A short, slender, sandy-haired man wearing a thick canvas apron over his clothes bustled out onto the porch. “Preacher!” he said. “What’s this about dead men?”
“They tell no tales,” Preacher said. He inclined his head toward the corpses. “Wish they would, though. I’d kinda like to know why they wanted to kill me.”
Corliss’s cousin Jerome came down the steps. Unlike the easygoing Corliss, who sometimes seemed to be on the verge of dozing off even when he was wide awake, Jerome Hart was nervous most of the time, whether there was really anything to be nervous about or not.
During the journey out here, there had been a rivalry between Corliss and Jerome for Deborah’s affections, a rivalry in which Corliss had emerged victorious. For a while, it had looked as if the resulting bitterness would divide the cousins permanently. But they had made their peace and as far as Preacher knew, there had been no more problems between them.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Corliss said, referring to the two dead bushwhackers. “Take a look, Jerome, and see if you recognize them.”
Jerome frowned and hesitated. “I, uh, I’m sure that if you don’t know them, Corliss, then I wouldn’t—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Corliss snapped. “They’re dead, they can’t hurt you.” He lifted the corpses’ heads one after the other.
Jerome paled and swallowed hard as he looked at them. “I’m sorry, Preacher,” he said. “I don’t know them. I don’t think they’ve ever been here.”
“That’s what I figured when Jake didn’t recognize ’em. That younker keeps his eyes open.”
“Jake?” Jerome repeated. “You let Jake look at these…these cadavers?”
Preacher nodded. “And the other kids from the settlement, too.”
Jerome looked horrified, but he didn’t say anything. Preacher knew that the ways of the frontier were different than anything Jerome was accustomed to. Jerome was trying to get used to them, but it might take him a while.
News of what Preacher had brought in was already spreading through the settlement. People began to show up to have a look at the bodies. Anything different, even something like this, was a welcome break from the hardships of everyday life. Deborah Hart, her gently rounded belly starting to display that she was expecting, came outside and took her turn checking to see if she recognized the bushwhackers. It came as no surprise to Preacher that she didn’t. Neither did Pete Carey, the stocky jack-of-all-trades who helped the Hart cousins run the trading post.
“Well, Preacher,” Corliss said after a while, “you seem to have drawn a blank. What are you going to do now?”
Preacher spat. “Only one thing to do. Reckon I’ll need to borrow a shovel.”
“You’re going to bury them?”
“I killed ’em. I’ll plant ’em.”
Jerome said, “Surely we can give you a hand with that at the very least. And Reverend Porter can say a prayer for their souls…although I’m not sure they deserve it if they tried to murder you, my friend.”
“That’s for somebody else to sort out, not me,” Preacher said. “Once they’re in the ground, I figure on sellin’ that load o’ pelts to you fellas and the two extra horses, and then I might buy me a jug o’ whiskey.”
Corliss frowned. “But they tried to kill you, and you don’t know why! Doesn’t
