“Preacher wishes to spend the winter in our village,” Raven said.
Two Bears frowned a little at that, but he said, “That will be for Bent Leg to decide.”
After the events of the evening, everyone was tired. Preacher, Audie, Nighthawk, and Lorenzo rolled up in their blankets to sleep. They didn’t have to worry about standing guard tonight. The Assiniboine would take care of that.
“They ain’t gonna murder us in our sleep, are they, Preacher?” Lorenzo asked quietly from his bedroll before Preacher dozed off.
“Not likely,” Preacher replied. “If they wanted us dead, they could’ve done it before now. Some folks think that Indians are tricky, but they really ain’t, leastways when it comes to killin’. They’re pretty straightforward about that.”
“Oh, well, I’ll sleep really good now,” Lorenzo said.
Preacher tilted his hat down over his eyes.
“I intend to.”
And he would have, too, except for some reason he kept thinking about Raven’s Wing.
The lodges of the Assiniboine village were built along the banks of a creek that flowed through the valley. When winter clamped its frigid grip on the land, the stream would freeze over and the people of the village would have to chop down through the ice to get water and fish. But it would help sustain them through the long, gray, cold months.
Right now, even though the air was chilly, there was no snow on the ground, and all the evidence of the ice storm several days earlier had melted and vanished. The creek still bubbled along, making its merry music. Winter was almost close enough to reach out and touch, but it wasn’t here yet.
Two Bears was right about the celebration. Happy cries went up from the people of the village when the group rode in the next day and they saw Raven’s Wing on the back of Two Bears’ pony, riding in front of him. Women and children pressed around the riders, reaching out to touch her as if they couldn’t believe she had been returned safely to their midst, and dogs barked and added to the commotion. The warriors who hadn’t been part of the rescue party stood to the side, arms crossed, nodding in grave satisfaction that the mission had been successful.
There were plenty of curious looks cast toward Preacher and his companions, too, but since they had ridden in with Two Bears and the other warriors, the rest of the band was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were friendly.
The crowd around Two Bears’ pony parted so that Bent Leg could limp through the opening. The old chief embraced Raven’s Wing as she slid from the pony’s back to the ground.
“The one who is like a daughter to me has returned,” Bent Leg announced. That wasn’t really necessary, since everybody could see her with their own eyes, but important occasions such as this demanded a certain formality. When Two Bears had dismounted, Bent Leg gripped his hand.
Then the chief turned toward the newcomers, who had swung down from their saddles, and said loudly, “Preacher!” He threw his arms around the mountain man and pounded him on the back.
Preacher returned the enthusiastic greeting.
“It is good to see Bent Leg again,” he said.
“Many winters have passed since last you visited. We have each of us grown old since then.”
“Maybe I have,” Preacher said with a grin. “You still look the same as you always did, Bent Leg.”
“You lie like a white man.” Bent Leg threw back his head and laughed. He turned to Audie and said, “Little Man, another of my old friends. The village of Bent Leg is truly blessed today to have such visitors.”
He bent to embrace Audie with another round of back-slapping. Bent Leg’s greeting for Nighthawk was more reserved. The Crow and the Assiniboine were not enemies, but they were not the same, either. The tribal differences were minor, though.
Bent Leg turned back to Preacher.
“Did Two Bears and the others find you when they sought Raven’s Wing?”
“They did,” Preacher said.
Raven spoke up, saying, “It was Preacher and his friends who rescued me from the Gros Ventre.”
Bent Leg looked surprised, and Two Bears scowled a little. He had planned to save Raven’s Wing, but circumstances hadn’t worked out that way.
“We owe you a great debt, my old friend,” Bent Leg said to Preacher.
“It’s already paid,” Preacher told him. “But there is a great courtesy you could do for me and my friends, if you would.”
“Speak it, and it shall be done,” Bent Leg assured him.
“We’re lookin’ for a place to spend the winter, and we can’t think of anywhere we’d rather do that than right here with the Assiniboine.”
Bent Leg nodded.
“So shall it be. You will be our honored guests until the spring comes.”
“Thank you, old friend.”
“There are widows in the village whose husbands had no brothers,” Bent Leg said with a twinkle in his eye. “And some unmarried women as well.”
There wasn’t much pretense to these people. They had their societal rules, of course, and Preacher respected them. But they didn’t go out of their way to repress folks’ natural instincts and appetites, like most of the so-called civilized societies did. Preacher had always found their honesty refreshing.
Right now, though, he was more interested in having a place to wait out the winter than he was in finding a woman to warm his blankets during those cold months. That would come in time, in the due course of events.
“We will see,” he told Bent Leg, who nodded gravely.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Lorenzo asked in English. “They gonna let us stay?”
“Yep,” Preacher said. “For the next six months or so, Lorenzo, this is gonna be home, sweet home for us.”
CHAPTER 8
More than a week had passed since the trouble at Blind Pete’s Place. During that time, an ice storm had forced the five men to hole up for a couple of miserable days, but then they had been able to ride on, heading north toward the Canadian border.
Willie Deaver was pretty sure they had passed the border by now and were actually in Canada. The men they were supposed to meet ought to be waiting for them somewhere close by.
Unless St. John and his people had grown impatient and left. Deaver wasn’t going to be happy if that happened.
So it was with a sense of relief that he spotted a thread of smoke curling into the sky up ahead as he and his men rode along a twisting hogback ridge. That was the signal he’d been looking for during the past two days.
Deaver pointed out the smoke to Caleb Manning and said, “That’s got to be them.”
“Or else it’s comin’ from some fur trapper’s cabin,” Manning said.
Deaver shrugged.
“We’ll be able to tell when we get there.”
They followed the smoke and soon descended from the ridge, entering a small valley where a cold wind whipped down from the north. Deaver led the way with Manning riding behind him.
Bringing up the rear were Cy Plunkett, Darwin Heath, and Fred Jordan. Plunkett was a rotund little Englishman who was much tougher than he looked. Heath was thin and dark, with a narrow face deeply pocked by the childhood illness that had almost killed him. Jordan was a big, blond man who was always grinning, no matter what sort of terrible thing he was doing