LITMIR.BIZ

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stay the night here, anyway. We just wanted to pick up some supplies.”

      “I will give you a good price if you tell me what you need, so you can load them up and leave.”

      Preacher looked at Audie and Nighthawk.

      “What about you fellas? Are we all ridin’ together and headin’ for Bent Leg’s village?”

      “That strikes me as a more than agreeable course of action,” Audie said. Nighthawk just nodded.

      “All right, Pete,” Preacher said. “We need flour, salt, dried apples, beans, maybe a little coffee and molasses if you got it, and some salt jowl.”

      Pete nodded and said, “I will put everything in a bag.”

      “We’ll go saddle our horses,” Audie said. “Come on, Nighthawk.”

      Ten minutes later, the four men were ready to ride out. Preacher had settled up with Pete for the supplies.

      “Much obliged,” Preacher said after he’d swung up into the saddle on Horse’s back. “Too bad about the trouble.”

      Pete waved that off as he stood on the trading post’s porch. He glanced back over his shoulder. Deaver, Manning, and the other three men were still out cold, but they would probably be coming around soon.

      “Men like that, trouble always follows them,” he said. “You should watch your back, Preacher.”

      “I always do,” Preacher said with a smile. He lifted a hand. “So long, Pete.”

      “Guten tag, mein freund,” Audie called.

      “You talk that Dutch lingo?” Lorenzo asked as they rode toward the gate.

      “Ein bischen,” Audie answered.

      “No, I ain’t bitchin’,” Lorenzo said with a frown. “I don’t care what you talk.”

      “Nein, nein.”

      “Ten,” Lorenzo said. “That’s what comes next. What’re we countin’, anyway?”

      “You might as well give up,” Preacher told him. “He’ll pick at you all day if you let him.” He turned in the saddle and let out a piercing whistle. Dog came running from somewhere in the compound. “Sorry if you didn’t get to do as much visitin’ as you’d like,” Preacher told the big cur. “But we got places to go.”

      They rode out of the stockade, putting the trading post behind them and heading north toward a range of snow-capped mountains. A cool breeze blew in Preacher’s face. It smelled good.

      CHAPTER 3

      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

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