Читать книгу Preacher's Fury - William W. Johnstone - Страница 7

Blind Pete leaned on the counter as he laboriously entered numbers in the ledger book that lay open before him. He chewed at the graying blond mustache that drooped over his mouth. He had learned to cipher as a young boy in Dusseldorf, but it had never come easy to him.

Despite what Preacher had said, Pete hadn’t taken any coins from the pockets of Deaver, Manning, and the other men to pay for the damages caused by the brawl. If Deaver had woken up to find someone rifling his pockets, there would be hell to pay. Besides, there really hadn’t been that much damage.

Pete made sure to have a loaded shotgun lying on the counter in front of him when the men regained consciousness. As they came around, groaning and cursing, Pete had told them, “Preacher and the others are gone. There will be no more trouble here, ja?”

Caleb Manning had looked like he wanted to take out his anger on the proprietor, but Deaver had stopped him.

“Let it go,” Deaver said. “It ain’t Pete’s fault that Preacher and his friends jumped us. If there’s a score to settle, it’s with them.”

That reasonable attitude had surprised Pete, but he welcomed it. He was even more surprised a few minutes later when Deaver laid a five-dollar gold piece on the counter and said, “That’s for the whiskey we drank and the trouble we caused. Are we square, Pete?”

Pete’s first impulse was to pick up the coin and bite it to make sure it was real, but he suppressed that and nodded instead. “Ja, we are square.”

“So we’re welcome back here?”

Pete understood now. Deaver didn’t want to be banned from the trading post, a ban that Pete could enforce with his cannon if he chose to.

“Ja, of course.”

“Obliged.” Deaver had turned to his companions and snapped, “Come on. We’re ridin’.”

Night had fallen now. The trading post’s other customers had gone on their way, except for a couple of trappers who were spending the night in the little rooms at the back of the building. They would be moving on come morning. The gate in the stockade fence was closed and barred, and one of the men who worked for Pete was on guard duty. The other three workers were probably asleep in their quarters in the barn by now.

The only light in the main room of the trading post was the candle that burned on the counter and cast its flickering light on the ledger. Pete dipped his pen in the inkwell and wrote a few more numbers in his cramped, precise script.

The front door swung open.

Pete looked up in surprise. It was rare for him to have customers this late. And the guard in the tower would have blown on the trumpet that was kept up there to announce visitors. Anyone who rode up in the dark would be challenged before they were let into the compound.

Clearly that hadn’t happened, because two men strode into the trading post and started toward the counter where Pete stood.

Through the thick spectacles that perched on his nose with a ribbon attaching them to his collar, he recognized the newcomers. Deaver and Manning. Seeing them here again made a cold ball of apprehension form in the pit of Pete’s ample belly.

“Mein herrs,” Pete greeted them. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Deaver said. His hat was thumbed back so that his thatch of straw-colored hair stuck out from under it. “I realized that we forgot something when we left this afternoon.”

“Oh? What was that?”

“We forgot to ask you if you know where Preacher and his friends are goin’.”

Pete placed both hands flat on the counter and leaned forward slightly. He shook his head from side to side, even though he had heard Preacher say that they were going to the village of Chief Bent Leg of the Assiniboine.

If he told that to Deaver and Manning, though, they might follow Preacher and the other men and cause more trouble. Pete didn’t want that.

“They never mentioned where they were going,” he said. “They just bought some supplies from me and rode out.”

“Did you see which direction they headed?”

“Nein. No.”

Deaver smiled and shook his head.

“Now, see, Pete, I’ve got a problem. I think you might be lyin’ to me.”

“You have no right to speak to me in such a way,” Pete said with an angry glare.

“Oh, I’ll talk to you any way I want, you big fat Dutchman.” Deaver flicked a glance at Manning and nodded.

Pete knew he was in trouble. He started to straighten and reach under the counter for the shotgun he had placed there earlier, but before he could move, Manning whipped out a hunting knife and plunged it down into the back of Pete’s right hand. The point of the blade penetrated cleanly all the way through the hand and buried itself in the wood, pinning Pete to the counter.

Pete let out a bellow of pain and tried for the shotgun with his other hand. Before he could reach it, Deaver brought out a pistol and fired.

The heavy lead ball smashed into Pete’s left shoulder, shattering the bone. Pete roared. The agony he felt might have caused him to collapse, but the knife holding his hand on the counter kept him upright.

“Now, see, you should have convinced me right off that you were tellin’ the truth,” Deaver said. The ugly smile never left his face.

One of the trappers who was renting a bunk came running into the trading post’s main room, drawn by the yelling and the shot. He carried a flintlock rifle slanted across his chest and wore only a pair of long underwear.

Before the man could even demand to know what was going on, Manning pulled a pistol with his right hand. He used his left to keep the knife planted firmly in Pete’s hand, which had blood puddling under it. Manning lifted the gun and fired, the dull boom of the shot filling the room.

The ball punched into the chest of the man who had just run into the room. He staggered back a step, dropped his rifle, and fell to his knees as a bloodstain bloomed vividly on the long underwear. He pitched forward on his face and didn’t move again.

“My men …” Pete rasped. “They will—”

“They won’t do a damned thing,” Deaver said. “The rest of the boys have finished cuttin’ their throats by now. You should’ve posted a better guard, Pete. That poor fella up in the tower was wearin’ a bloody grin from ear to ear before he knew what was happenin’ to him.”

Pete groaned. His employees were dead, and so was one of his customers. He didn’t know where the other trapper was. Probably hiding, hoping these vicious animals would overlook him.

“I’ll ask you again, and you better not lie to me,” Deaver said. “Where was Preacher goin’?”

“I don’t—” Pete began.

Manning leaned on the knife and twisted it. The razor-sharp blade cut deeper in Pete’s hand. Pete couldn’t hold in the scream that welled up his throat.

His wounded shoulder was bleeding heavily. He felt the hot flow dripping down his arm as it dangled uselessly at his side. He knew he would pass out soon, so if he was going to fight back, it had to be now.

He suddenly jerked back as hard as he could with his right arm, putting his considerable strength behind it. The knife sliced through muscle and bone and filled Pete with pain worse than any he had ever known existed, but abruptly his hand was free. He had forced the knife to cut its way right out.

He couldn’t make a fist with that ruined hand, but he could swing his whole arm. He threw himself forward over the counter and crashed his forearm against the side of Manning’s head. The blow knocked Manning into Deaver, and both of them got tangled up for a minute. That gave Pete time to roll off the front of the counter and land on his feet.

He kicked Manning in the groin and barreled into Deaver, knocking the smaller man off his feet. If he could get outside, Pete thought, he might be able to give Deaver’s men the slip in the darkness. He would probably still bleed to death, but at least he would have a chance to get away.

He was only halfway to the front door when a pistol roared behind him. Something smashed into the back of his left knee, knocking that leg out from under him. He tumbled to the floor, knocking over some boxes that clattered down around him.

Pete tried to lift himself, but neither of his arms worked well enough now. Deaver rushed up and kicked him in the jaw. Stunned, Pete rolled onto his back.

Deaver leaned over him, cursing.

“I’ll kill you, you blasted—”

“Wait a minute,” Manning croaked. He stumbled into Pete’s view, which was blurry now because his spectacles had fallen off. Pete could still see well enough to know that Manning was clutching himself where he’d been kicked, and Pete felt a little bit of satisfaction from that, anyway.

Manning went on in a pain-wracked voice, “Let me … work on him. He’ll tell us … what we want to know.”

“Yeah,” Deaver said. “That’s a good idea. Let’s cut these trousers off of him.”

Pete started to bellow in outrage even before he felt the touch of the cold steel. Once he did, the bellows turned to shrieks of pain.

And in the end, of course, he told them how the mountain man and his companions had talked about spending the winter in the Assiniboine village. Deaver and Manning believed him this time. After being tortured like that, no man could have uttered anything except the truth.

Pete knew there was no hope for him now. He was hurt too badly to recover. But he managed to husk out, “Go ahead … and kill me.”

Deaver shook his head and grinned.

“I don’t think so. That’d be too easy. There are some knives over there in a case, Caleb. Get a couple of them and we’ll stake him out.”

They spread his arms, and Manning drove a knife through the palm of each hand, then used a maul to hammer the blades even more deeply into the floor.

“What about his feet?”

Deaver shook his head.

“He ain’t goin’ anywhere, just like that.” He jerked a thumb at the rooms in the back. “Go check those out and make sure nobody else is back there. We’re not leavin’ anybody alive except for the Dutchman here, and he won’t be alive for very long once we burn this place down around him.”

Pete groaned. Bad enough they were going to kill him, but did they have to destroy the business he had worked so hard to build, too?

Clearly, nothing was beyond the viciousness of animals such as these.

A moment later, through the red haze that was beginning to fill his head, Pete heard a pistol shot. He knew that Manning had just murdered that other fur trapper. Now no one would ever know what had happened here or who was responsible for this atrocity.

“I threw around some coal oil,” he heard Deaver say. “Get that candle. We’ll light it and get out of here.”

A moment later, Pete heard the whoosh of flames and felt their heat against his face. In a matter of seconds, they were all around him, rapidly turning into an inferno.

The roaring blaze behind them turned the night sky an ugly, garish shade of orange as Deaver, Manning, and the other three men rode away from the trading post. Manning shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and Deaver asked, “Feelin’ any better?”

“Not much. That old man deserved everything he got.”

“Yeah, but at least he told us where to find Preacher.”

Manning hesitated, then said, “We don’t have time to go after him right now, Willie. You know that. We’ve got to rendezvous with those other fellas. I was willin’ to come back here tonight, but—”

“Don’t worry,” Deaver broke in impatiently. “I haven’t forgotten about that business we have to take care of. But Pete said Preacher was plannin’ to winter with Bent Leg’s bunch of redskins. And our business won’t take us all winter. There’ll be plenty of time later on to teach that son of a bitch and his friends a lesson they’ll never forget.”

“All right,” Manning said with a grin and a nod. “I like the sound of that.”

They rode on as the flames leaped high behind them, consuming Blind Pete’s Place and everything in it.

Yes, sir, Deaver thought, it was going to be a long winter.

Especially for Preacher.