Free Blood on the Divide by William W. Johnstone

buck’s days of warfare ended.
    Caleb rammed home ball and patch and cocked his rifle just as a Blackfoot flung himself inside the circle of rocks. The mountain man dropped the muzzle of the Hawken and pulled the trigger, the muzzle only inches away from the buck’s face. The brave was unrecognizable as he hit the ground.
    To any Indian, fighting what appears to be a losing battle is stupid. The attack broke off and the remaining Blackfeet vanished. Preacher and Caleb quickly reloaded and got the hell gone from that area. They left the dead where they had fallen, knowing their friends would be back for them. Neither Preacher nor Caleb felt any rancor for the Blackfeet. No hard feelings. It was just one way of life clashing with another. Other tribes, such as the Crow, were working with the white man and making peace. But the Blackfeet would remain hostile for years, as would the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Dakota, the Apache, the Kiowa, and many other tribes.
    The mountain men were the first to see the writing on the wall, so to speak, although had it been really visible in print, many would not have been able to read it. The white man was coming, and in many cases bringing his wife and kids with him; they were coming just as surely as one season follows another. And the Indian would have no more success in stopping that westward advance of the whites than he would in stopping the snow that fell or the sun that shone. They would kill a few, but for every one killed, fifty, a hundred, a thousand would take their place.
    And to the mountain man, it was sad, in a way. For their way of life was being taken from them as well.
    Preacher and Caleb moved on, once more assuming their northwesterly course. Just wandering, hoping to see a valley they had not yet seen, or to belly down by a cold, rushing creek for a drink of water from a mountain runoff. They were of a breed whose time had just about run out. They had made their mark upon a land and the land would always bear that signing. Many mountain men would simply disappear into history and never be heard from again. No one would know what happened to them, or where they were buried, or if they were buried. For in the wilderness, death in a hundred different ways waited around every bend and twist in the trail. Some would go back East and write about their adventures for an eager public.
    But not Preacher. Preacher would go on to become even a larger legend. He would be a larger-than-life guide, tracker, scout, warrior.
    Miles from the site of the brief but deadly battle with the Blackfeet, Caleb whoaed and sniffed the air. “You smell that, Preacher?”
    Preacher did. “Yeah.” His words were softly spoken. “That smell don’t never change. Death up ahead.”

S IX
    It was Jack Larrabee. His back was to a tree and his weapons were by his side. They had been carefully placed there. Two arrows protruded from his chest. Blackfeet arrows. Out of respect for his fighting ability, the Blackfeet had not scalped or mutilated the body of the mountain man. They had left his eyes in his head so he could see his way into the land that lay beyond earth life.
    Casting about the battle site for sign, Preacher found four blood trails and Caleb found two more.
    â€œHe put up one hell of a fight,” Caleb remarked. “Two musket balls in him and two arrows ’fore they brung him down. They’ll be singin’ songs about Jack come this evenin’ and for many more evenin’s to come.”
    â€œFor a fact.”
    The Blackfeet had also left his horse and his possessions, meager though they were.
    The man had escaped the renegade attack on the wagon train only to be ambushed by the Blackfeet.
    â€œHe was trackin’ the Pardees and another small group,” Preacher called, studying the sign on the ground about fifty yards from where Jack lay.
    Caleb looked up from his digging in the rocky ground with a small shovel and nodded his head.