The Family Jensen Read Online Free

fled from him. He didn’t feel a thing when his head fell back against the tree trunk with a solid thud.
     

    The aromatic smell of woodsmoke filling his nostrils was the first thing Preacher recognized as awareness began to seep back into his brain. Then, not surprisingly, he heard the crackle of flames and felt warmth on his face. After a moment he figured out he was lying on something soft, near a fire.
    He kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular. Although he had just come to, his instincts were already working. Since he didn’t know where he was or what was going on around him, the smart thing to do was to not let on that he was awake.
    He moved a hand slightly and felt something soft yet bristly. A thick fur robe of some sort, he decided. He sniffed the air and under the woodsmoke smelled bear grease and something else, a faint musky scent.
    A woman. She began to sing softly to herself, under her breath, confirming Preacher’s guess.
    All those sensations were intimately familiar to him. He had spent many winters with various tribes, sharing a lodge or a tepee with a comely squaw. Sometimes when he visited those tribes again a few years later, he found little ones trailing after those squaws who’d wintered with him. He never tried to be a pa to those kids. He’d always figured that a restless varmint like him, who would probably come to a bad end, didn’t have any business trying to act like a father. Might as well ask the wind to be a good parent. It wasn’t going to happen.
    As he lay on the fur robe Preacher thought about what he remembered from earlier and decided that the big, ugly Indian must have taken him to a village rather than kill him. He kept his eyes closed, shifted his body a little, and realized he had bandages wrapped tightly around his torso. His side felt stiff and hot where the rifle ball had torn through it, but whoever had tended to the wounds had packed each of them with a healing poultice. Preacher knew that with time and proper care, he would heal.
    Of course, it was possible the redskins were trying to save his life so they could kill him in their own way, in their own sweet time. He knew such things happened.
    Preacher hadn’t gotten a very good look at the beadwork and decorations on the big Indian’s buckskins, but he thought they indicated the man was a Crow. The Crow got along with white men about as well as any of the tribes did, and better than some. They didn’t hate everybody with a white skin, as the Blackfeet did, nor were they devoted to war like the Sioux. Preacher had always gotten along well with the Crow, and he hoped the impression he’d gotten from that brief glimpse was correct.
    The woman stopped singing. He heard her moving around, and then she was beside him. He felt the cool touch of a wet cloth on his skin as she wiped his face with it. He thought he might as well go ahead and take a chance.
    He opened his eyes.
    The woman drew back with a little gasp when she saw that he was awake. In her own tongue, she said, “He lives.”
    “I do live,” Preacher replied in the same language, which he had recognized instantly as Crow. He was fluent in the lingo. “Thanks to you.”
    The woman shook her head. She was young, probably no more than twenty summers. She had a round, pretty face, with dark eyes. Her hair, as black as a raven’s wing and slick with bear grease, was parted in the center and pulled into braids on each side of her head.
    “You live because of Crazy Bear,” she told Preacher. “He is the one who brought you here.”
    “You bound up my wounds?”
    She nodded. “Yes, after packing them with moss and herbs that will heal them.”
    “Then I owe you a debt of gratitude as well. How are you called?”
    The woman hesitated, then said, “Bright Leaf.”
    “Thank you, Bright Leaf. I am called Preacher.”
    She leaned back again. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Ghost-Killer,” she whispered.
    He saw fright in her big, dark eyes and