“What do you mean?”
Preacher cocked an eye at him. “Girls, boy. You know.”
Kirby shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t know nothin’ about girls.”
Preacher paled.
“I figured you’d tell me about females.”
“Lord Gawd!”
“You mean I have to ask Him!”
“Don’t blaspheme, young man,” Preacher said sternly. “Come a time — and this ain’t the time,” he was quick to add, “you’ll learn all there is for a man to know ’bout females.” He grimaced. “And a bunch you don’t want to know. Most aggravatin’ creatures God ever put on this here earth. Can’t live with ’em, can’t do without ’em.”
“That’s what my father used to say. But he’d always grin at Ma when he said it.”
“He better grin,” Preacher replied.
Kirby read for a time while Preacher slept by the fire. When Preacher awoke, Kirby asked, “What do we do when spring does get here?” His thoughts were suddenly flung far, to his father, wondering where he was, if he was still alive.
“I start learnin’ you good. And you start bein’ a man.”
“I wonder where my Pa is?”
“He’s either on the way to doin’ what he set out to do; he’s already done ’er, or he’s doin’ it.”
“Or he’s dead,” Kirby added.
“Mayhaps,” Preacher’s words were soft. “We all get to see the elephant someday.”
“I don’t know the whole story, Preacher. Pa said you’d tell me when it was time. I reckon it ain’t time just yet.”
“That’s so, Smoke.”
“All right. But I’ll tell you this, Preacher: If those men he went after killed him, I’ll track them down, one by one, and I’ll kill them. And anyone who gets in my way.” His words did not come from the lips of a boy; but a man grown in many ways.
Preacher had a sudden flash of precognition, the foreseeing coming hard, chilling the old mountain man.
“Yep,” he said. “I reckon you will, Smoke.”
The warm winds once again blew, and this time they were the real advance guard of spring. First to show their appreciation of the cycle of renewal were the peonies, bursting forth in a cacophony of color. The columbine, which would one day be the official flower of the yet-to-be-admitted state of Colorado, cast forth its contribution to spring, in colors of blue and lavender and purple and white. The valleys and foothills, the plains and mountains exploded in a holiday of technicolor.
And on that day, Preacher packed his gear and told his young friend to do the same. “Walls closin’ in. Time to get movin’. Time for you to start learnin’.”
With their Henry repeating rifles across their saddles, the pair rode out, heading northeast from the North Fork, into the timber and the mountains. Still, one hour each day, the boy called Smoke practiced with his deadly Colts, perfecting what some would later write was not only the first fast draw, but the fastest draw.
Those few who would get to know the man called Smoke would say he was even faster than the legendary Texas gunfighter, John Wesley Hardin; possessing more cold nerve than Wild Bill; meaner than Curly Bill; and as much a hand with the ladies as Sundance. But for now, Kirby was learning, and the mountain man taught him well.
Still spry as a cat and tougher than wang-leather, Preacher taught Kirby fistfighting and boxing and Indian wrestling. But more importantly, he taught him to win in a fight — and taught him that it didn’t make a damn how you won. Just win. He taught him to kick, gouge, throw, and bite.
“Long as you right, Smoke, it don’t make no difference how you win. Just be sure you in the right.”
“Not knowin’ the land and the animals can get a body dead,” Preacher told him. “I’ll start like you don’t know nothin’. Which is not that far from the truth. Snakes.”
“Huh?”
“Snakes. Tell me what you know ’bout ’em.”
“I know to leave some of them alone.”
“Wise, but not near enough.”
“Well … I know a poisonous snake’s got to coil before they strike.”
“Wrong. A rattler can short-strike at you with just the power of his neck. You ’member that. And this, too: Rattler meat is good to eat. I’ve et a poke of it. Right tasty. But be damn shore the critter is dead ’fore you start to skin it. They get right hostile ifn you’s to jerk the hide off ’fore they’s dead.”
Kirby smiled. “Wouldn’t you?”
Preacher laughed. “’Spect so. Injuns was gonna skin me alive one time, up on the Platte. That’s how I got my name, Preacher. I preached to them heathens for hours. Didn’t think I knowed so many words. Even made me up a language that day and night. Called it the unknown tongue. But I made believers out of them savages. I reckon they thought I was crazy. Injuns won’t harm a crazy man — most of ’em, that is. They think he’s kind of a God. Finally that chief just put his hands over his ears and told his bucks to turn me a-loose. Said I’s a-hurtin’ his ears something fierce. I got my pelts and rode out of there without lookin’ back.” He chuckled at the long-ago memory.
“And you’ve been called Preacher ever since.”
“Yep.”
Preacher had blindfolded the young man and spun him around like a top. Removing the sash, Preacher asked, “Which direction you facin’, Smoke?”
Kirby shook his head, looking around him. “North.”
“Wrong. You looked at that moss on yonder tree, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That kind of thinkin’ can get you kilt. Moss, ifn there’s light and water enough, can grow all the way ’round a tree. Man can wander ’round in circles and die believin’ that moss only grows to the north.”
“Then —”
Preacher answered the unspoken question. “Sun, stars, lay of the land, and a feel for them all. Come a time, Smoke, you’ll just know. It won’t take long.”
The days passed into weeks, and Kirby’s education grew, and so did he, gaining weight, filling out with hard muscle.
The young man pointed his finger at a bush full of berries. “I know about them — we got them in Missouri. Don’t eat them, they’re poison.”
Preacher grinned. “But some birds do.”
“Yes. But you said not to believe that old story that anything a bird eats a man can eat.”
“That’s right. See them flowers over yonder. Right purty and lots of birds eat ’em. But they can kill a man, or else make him so sick he’ll wish he was dead. Oak tree yonder. I’ve knowed folk to boil the bark and make a bitter-tastin’ tonic. Never cared for the stuff myself.”
“Why?”
“’cause it tastes like pisen water. And I just don’t care to drink no pisen water.”
As they traveled, they would occasionally encounter roaming bands of Indians, most of them friendly to Preacher. Once, after they had palavered with a band of Cheyenne, Kirby looked back in time to see one of the braves making a circling motion at his temple with a forefinger. He told Preacher.
“Sure. Sign for a crazy person. Let ’em keep believin’ it. We’ll keep our hair.”
“Why do Indians think a crazy person is a God?”
“Well, they believe he’s possessed by gods — nearabout the same thing to them. And the Injuns don’t want no bad medicine with no God.
“They don’t worship like we do, Smoke. Injun worships the sun, the stars, the trees, the moon, the rivers. Nearabouts ever’thing. Least the Injuns I know does. They can’t rightly tell you why they think a man crazy is thataway. I’ve heared twelve different versions from twelve different medicine men. Don’t none of ’em make no sense to me.”
During their wanderings, they met trappers and hunters, a few of whom rode from the west. Kirby would always ask about Emmett. But no one had seen him or heard about him. It was as if the man had dropped off the face of the earth.