Blood on the Divide by William W. Johnstone Page B

wilderness. They were a totally ruthless, savage, and lawless pack of degenerates in a land that had never known any type of law except for tribal law ... and no tribe would have anything to do with the Pardees. Only tribal outcasts, like Red Hand and those that followed the renegade.
    Miles and days behind the Pardee gang, four men rode. They rode with rifles across the saddle horn. Small bands of Indians saw the four men and did not bother them. A band of warring Blackfeet saw the four men and let them pass without trouble. There was something in the way the men sat their saddles and held their rifles that caused the Blackfeet to hesitate. And they knew that one of the men in the group was the man the Blackfeet called Killing Ghost. The band of warriors who watched the four men ride on were not afraid of Killing Ghost, known to the white as Preacher, but they respected him. They knew that should they attack, there would be heavy losses and no gain for them. So to attack was foolish.
    The Blackfoot raiding party sat their ponies and watched the four men ride out of sight.
    â€œThey ride after the white renegades,” one brave said.
    â€œGood,” the subchief said. “I hope they catch them and kill them all.” He turned his pony’s head and the others followed.
    â€œWonder why them Blackfeet back yonder let us go?” Caleb asked, during a break for water.
    â€œBy now, that Ponca’s spread the word that we’re after the Pardees and no one else,” Preacher said. “Most Injuns hate the Pardees as much as we do. But they’re ’feard of them. I had a Pawnee tell me one time that the Pardees had good medicine workin’ all the time. And there ain’t never no less than ten or twelve of them.”
    â€œA Pawnee?” Windy questioned, knowing how Preacher felt about the Pawnees. “You actual had a conversation with a Pawnee?”
    Preacher smiled. “I had my good knife to his throat. He had to talk to me.”
    * * *
    The great monetary collapse of the late 1830s was sending people westward by the hundreds. Most were cautious enough to populate states and territories east of the Missouri River. But there were others who heard the westward-ho call and ventured on. Naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.”
    Most of those who went west knew very little about the country into which they were traveling. Much of what they did know was wrong. Actually, very little was known about the wilderness west of the Missouri River. There were those movers who turned back, telling tales of savage hordes of wild red Indians, and of terrible sicknesses and bad water that killed when tasted. Still others told of the awful loneliness of the great plains that drove some people mad.
    But still they came. For whatever reasons, they came. Alone, in pairs, often entire families. The story is told about the pioneer who, when he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, fell to his knees and wept because he could go no further west. No one knows if the story is true or not, but it is attributed to the British novelist Charles Dickens.
    By the late 1830s, cabins were beginning to dot the wilderness. Many of them belonged to trappers, but many were also family dwellings of easterners who headed west and, for one reason or another, came to a spot and went no further. All too often in the early days, they were never heard from again.
    * * *
    â€œThat’s a damn cabin down yonder!” Rimrock said.
    The four were resting their horses on a ridge.
    â€œIt wasn’t there last year,” Preacher commented. “’Cause I come this way.” He stared at the lonely cabin. “Anyways, it ain’t much of a cabin.”
    â€œYou be right about that,” Caleb said. “But it’s new. I don’t think they’s anybody to home. The day is cool and they ain’t no smoke from the chimney.”
    â€œWhy would