Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Read Online Free PDF Page A

tidy cabin on the Snake River. They put out a good table, what with smoked salmon, plenty of elk and venison, a root cellar full of camus bulbs, wild onions, yucca root, some grown turnips and other eatables. Yet, they also kept a pouch of juniper berries to flavor the raw, white liquor they distilled each summer for the following cold time.
    When they drank that awful stuff, they got snake-pissin’ mean. Philadelphia could not count the number of times he had been caught up in one of their brawls. The two of them spent most of each winter covered with lumps and bruises. And Lord help the outsider who strayed within range of their fists. Naw, he concluded. He’d best avoid that situation.
    He also had a standing welcome from the Crow to visit them in Montana Territory. They had always been friendly to the whites exploring in their land. He even knew he would have a nice, tractable bed warmer to occupy his lodge. Only Philadelphia reckoned as how he had more than his share of half-Crow youngsters runnin’ around the High Plains already. No need to build another.
    That left him with the long journey to Bent’s Fort. In this late year of eighteen and forty-eight, the place was but a pale shadow of its past glory. Only two factors remained, neither of them related to the Bent brothers. There’d be whiskey. Good, clean whiskey, aged in barrels and filtered through charcoal. But a winter there would cost him an arm and a leg. The soft, deerskin pouch around his neck still hung with respectable weight, but the gold would be soon gone at Bent’s. Better pass that up for another day.
    Which brought him to his final choice. He could head southeast and check out the Ferris Mountains in Wyoming. If that didn’t suit, and the weather held, he could go on south to Trout Creek Pass. There, he had heard, some of the good old boys had taken to hanging out over the cold months. He could jaw a little, play cards and checkers, and have a warm bunk to roll up in at night. No pliable Crow girl, nor any hard floosie, for that matter, but a comfort to a man getting on in his years.
    By jing! That’s just what he would do. Check out the rumors about a man willing to pay out real gold for fighting men in the Ferris Range; then, if it didn’t pan out, he’d go on to Colorado country and the High Lonesome. He might even run into his old sometime partner, Preacher. What with the fur trade all but moribund, Preacher and some of the old boys had taken to hanging a mite closer to civilized living. Might be he could benefit by that, too.
    Philadelphia Braddock clucked to his packhorse and yanked on the rope around its neck. Long ride to Trout Creek, but only a day or two now to this outfit in the Ferris Mountains. He’d give them a took-see—that’s what he’d do.

3
    Three days later, in a wide valley, set off by seven low hills, Philadelphia Braddock stumbled upon a sight he could not believe. Alabaster buildings shined from the crests of several of the seven hills that clustered in the upland vale. It became obvious to Philadelphia that some serious construction work was going on along the slopes of the three still vacant hills. Flat, layered plain trees had replaced the usual aspen, and tall, slender pines, of a blue-gray color Philadelphia had never seen before, lined a wide, white, cobblestone roadway that led from the south end of the basin to tall gates in what looked like a plastered stone wall that surrounded a portion of the four occupied hills. From his angle, Philadelphia could not tell if the rampart ran all the way around. This was one whing-ding of a puzzler.
    He had never heard of any settlement sprouting up in the Ferris Mountains. Certainly nothing like this. Why, it was a regular city. “I’ll be blessed,” he said aloud to his horse.
    The animal replied with a snort and shake of its massive head. A spray of slobber put diamonds in the air. A peremptory stomp of a hoof