CHAPTER 1

The two men stood facing each other. One was red,the other white, but both were tall and lean, and thestiff, wary stance in which they held themselves beliedtheir advanced years. They were both ready for trouble,and they didn't care who knew it.

Both wore buckskins, as well, and their faces werelined and leathery from long decades spent out in theweather. Silver and white streaked their hair.

The white man had a gun belt strapped around hiswaist, with a holstered Colt revolver riding on each hip.His thumbs were hooked in the belt close to each holster,and you could tell by looking at him that he was ready tohook and draw. Given the necessity, his hands wouldflash to the well-worn walnut butts of those guns withblinding speed, especially for a man of his age.

He wasn't the only one with a menacing attitude. TheIndian had his hand near the tomahawk that was thrustbehind the sash at his waist. To anyone watching, itwould appear that both of these men were ready to tryto kill each other.

Then a grin suddenly stretched across the whiskeryface of the white man, and he said, "Two Bears, you oldred heathen."

"Preacher, you pale-faced scoundrel," Two Bearsreplied. He smiled, too, and stepped forward. The twomen clasped each other in a rough embrace and slappedeach other on the back.

The large group of warriors standing nearby visiblyrelaxed at this display of affection between the two men.For the most part, the Assiniboine had been friendly withwhite men for many, many years. But even so, it wasn'tthat common for a white man to come riding boldly intotheir village as the one called Preacher had done.

Some of the men smiled now, because they hadknown all along what was coming. The legendary mountainman Preacher, who was famous—or in some casesinfamous—from one end of the frontier to the other, hadbeen friends with their chief Two Bears for more thanthree decades, and he had visited the village on occasionin the past.

The two men hadn't always been so cordial with eachother. They had started out as rivals for the affections ofthe beautiful Assiniboine woman Raven's Wing. For TwoBears, that rivalry had escalated to the point of bitterhostility.

All that had been put aside when it became necessaryfor them to join forces to rescue Raven's Wing from agroup of brutal kidnappers and gunrunners. Since thatlong-ago time when they were forced to become allies,they had gradually become friends as well.

Preacher stepped back and rested his hands on TwoBears's shoulders.

"I hear that Raven's Wing has passed," he saidsolemnly.

"Yes, last winter," Two Bears replied with an equallygrave nod. "It was her time. She left this world peacefully,with a smile on her face."

"That's good to hear," Preacher said. "I never knewa finer lady."

"I miss her. Every time the sun rises or sets, everytime the wind blows, every time I hear a wolf howl orsee a bird soaring through the sky, I long to be withher again. But when the day is done and we are to betogether again, we will be. This I know in my heart.Until then ..." Two Bears smiled again. "Until then Ican still see her in the fine strong sons she bore me, andthe daughters who have given me grandchildren." Henodded toward a young woman standing nearby, whostood with an infant in her arms. "You remember myyoungest daughter, Wildflower?"

"I do," Preacher said, "although the last time I saw her,I reckon she wasn't much bigger'n that sprout with her."

"My grandson," Two Bears said proudly. "Little Hawk."

Preacher took off his battered, floppy-brimmed felthat and nodded politely to the woman.

"Wildflower," he said. "It's good to see you again." Helooked at the boy. "And howdy to you, too, Little Hawk."

The baby didn't respond to Preacher, of course, buthe watched the mountain man with huge, dark eyes.

"He has not seen that many white men in his life,"Two Bears said. "You look strange, even to one soyoung."

Preacher snorted and said, "If it wasn't for this beardof mine, I'd look just about as much like an Injun as anyof you do."

Two Bears half-turned and motioned to one of thelodges.

"Come. We will go to my lodge and smoke a pipeand talk. I would know what brings you to our village,Preacher."

"Horse, the same as usual," Preacher said as hejerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the big graystallion that stood with his reins dangling. A large,wolflike cur sat on his haunches next to the stallion.

"How many horses called Horse and dogs calledDog have you had in your life, Preacher?" Two Bearsasked with amusement sparkling in his eyes.

"Too many to count, I reckon," Preacher replied."But I figure if a name works just fine once, there ain'tno reason it won't work again."

"How do you keep finding them?"

"It ain't so much me findin' them as it is themfindin' me. Somehow they just show up. I'd call it fate,if I believed in such a thing."

"You do not believe in fate?"

"I believe in hot lead and cold steel," Preacher said.

"Anything beyond that's just a guess."

Preacher didn't have any goal in visiting the Assiniboinevillage other than visiting an old friend. He hadbeen drifting around the frontier for more than fiftyyears now, most of the time without any plan other thanseeing what was on the far side of the hill.

When he had first set out from his folks' farm as aboy, the West had been a huge, relatively empty place,populated only by scattered bands of Indians and ahandful of white fur trappers. At that time less than tenyears had gone by since Lewis and Clark returned fromtheir epic, history-changing journey up the MissouriRiver to the Pacific.

During the decades since then, Preacher had seen theWest's population grow tremendously. Rail lines crisscrossedthe country, and there were cities, towns, andsettlements almost everywhere. Civilization had cometo the frontier.

Much of the time, Preacher wasn't a hundred percentsure if that was a good thing or not.

But there was no taking it back, no returning thingsto the way they used to be, and besides, if not for thegreat westward expansion that had fundamentallychanged the face of the nation, he never would have metthe two fine young men he had come to consider hissons: Smoke and Matt Jensen.

It had been a while since Preacher had seen Smokeand Matt. He assumed that Smoke was down in Colorado,on his ranch called the Sugarloaf near the townof Big Rock. Once wrongly branded an outlaw, SmokeJensen was perhaps the fastest man with a gun to everwalk the West. Most of the time he didn't go looking fortrouble, but it seemed to find him anyway, despite allhis best intentions to live a peaceful life on his ranchwith his beautiful, spirited wife, Sally.

There was no telling where Matt was. He could beanywhere from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border.He and Smoke weren't brothers by blood. The bond betweenthem was actually deeper than that. Matt had beenborn Matt Cavanaugh, but he had taken the nameJensen as a young man to honor Smoke, who had helpedout an orphaned boy and molded him into a fine man.

Since Matt had set out on his own, he had been adrifter, scouting for the army, working as a stagecoachguard, pinning on a badge a few times as a lawman....As long as it kept him on the move and held a promiseof possible adventure, that was...