Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Read Online Free PDF Page B

place. By then, one of the footmen had recovered himself enough to spring up on his sandals and cock his arm, the hand holding his pilum behind his right ear. He let the spear fly with deadly accuracy.
    Sharp pain radiated through Braddock’s right shoulder as the smooth point penetrated flesh and bone and pinned his shoulder blade to his ribs. Stunned by the sudden, enormous pain, Philadelphia nevertheless managed to swivel at the hips and bring up his Hawken. Leveled on his assailant’s chest, Braddock cocked and triggered the weapon. The big, fat .56 caliber conical bullet smashed through the soldier’s sternum and ripped a big hole in his aorta.
    His sandals left the ground, and he crashed backward head over heels, to sprawl in the dirt. His valiant heart rapidly pumped the life from his body. Philadelphia Braddock did not wait to check his results, though. He put boot heels to the heaving flanks of his mount and sprinted for the distant pass that opened on the white cobblestone roadway.
    With each thud of a hoof, new agony shot through Philadelphia’s body. The lance flopped wildly up and down, caught in his muscular back. He did not stop, though, until safely beyond the crest of the ridge. Then he scabbarded his Hawken and painfully wrenched the pilum from the wound it had made. His last thought was, What the hell did I stumble into? Only then did he allow himself to pass out.
    * * *
    Preacher began his morning with the usual grumping about, slurping coffee too hot and strong to bear for normal persons, and a lot of scratching. He interspersed these activities with a lick of a brown wooden lead pencil and careful application of it to a scrap of precious paper.
    He preferred the newfangled gypsum plaster for chinking logs in his cabin walls. Clay mud did all right, he allowed, but often came with an unwelcome harvest of bugs. He also needed some nails to hold door and window frames together and to build furniture for his digs. When he saw the size of his list, he decided to call it a day for the work in progress and head off for Trout Creek Pass and the trading post.
    He could also pick up flour, cornmeal, beans, sugar and more coffee beans. With the meat he had already killed, dressed out and smoked, he figured to be set for the long, cold months just around the corner. But he would also have to get a bag of salt. He had not as yet built a corral, so he had to chase down his hobbled mount, the big roan, Cougar, and the sorrel gelding packhorse. That accomplished, he carefully stored all his supplies safely out of the way of raccoons, bears, and wolves alike, and departed. He didn’t even cast a casual glance over the graves of those who had so recently come to kill him.
    * * *
    Slowly, the late-summer, pale blue sky frosted over with a thin skein of high cirrus clouds. At first, Preacher paid it no mind. The weather often did this in late August. An hour later, the leaden overcast had blotted out the sun and brought a single worry that furrowed to Preacher’s brow. What the heck. It was too early to snow, he felt certain of that.
    Fat, black bellies slid low over the highest peaks an hour and a half later, the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, and Preacher began to worry about how close winter really was with this harbinger of a late-August snowstorm. Odd, he considered. Even a tenderfoot counted on snow not beginning in the High Lonesome before September.
    Had his mental calendar slipped a cog? No, not likely. Shoot, the big, gray Canadian honkers had not yet put in their annual appearance far below and beyond the eastern slopes of the Shining Mountains. What a joy they were to observe from on high, their heavily populated vee formations winging their way south for the winter. With the same regularity they used to hail the approach of the cold, each spring they were also the first heralds of warm weather returning. Yet, it seemed that this time nature had even outsmarted them.
    Tiny flakes,