Comstock Cross Fire (2 page)

Joe's fury was so terrible that Fiona actually shrank back in shock and fear. Seeing the effect his words had had on his wife, Joe unclenched his fists and lowered his arms. “I'm sorry, darlin'. Didn't mean to scare you any more than you've already been scared. But I got a powerful need to kill and scalp those two that was holding you hostage while rapin' and nearly starvin' you to death. I'm gonna do it when they wake up so they can feel the blade of my 'hawk slicin' through their skins. I'm gonna send them both to Hell screamin' like the hounds of Hell are after them. And then I'm gonna wait for Ransom Holt and do the same thing to him.”

Fiona sat up and her lips moved without words until she got control of her voice. “Joe, I want you to kill those two horrible men. You can even slosh a bucket of water on 'em so they know they're going to die before you kill 'em. But then let's just pack up and leave with the horses. Let's just get away from this evilness and never look back or talk about what was done to me here or what was done to them either.”

Joe blinked. “You mean you want us t' just run away?”

“Yes! I've seen so much blood and death that I want to leave it all behind! Let's go to Virginia City and claim our daughter and then . . . please . . . let's find a place where Ransom Holt or whoever else that Garrison Peabody sends will never, ever find us.”

Joe stood up and shook his head. “I'm sorry, Fiona, but there ain't no such a place. Sooner or later, Peabody or Holt or someone we never even heard of but who was out to get paid t' kill us would come. It might take 'em a year, maybe ten. Maybe even fifty, when we're old and gray . . . but by gawd come they would! Rich people like the Peabody family won't ever let this go until it's all finished. And that means I gotta kill the last Peabody before he sends someone that finally kills us.”

Fiona had listened, but she wasn't really listening. “Joe,” she begged, “you know the West. You've trapped beaver, drove freight wagons, ridden, walked, or ran the rivers across every square mile of this big, wide frontier. I can't believe that you don't know places where Peabody and his people would never find us.”

“I have done all that, Fiona, but—”

“Please, think about us hiding in one of those secret places you camped in long ago while trapping beaver! Think about it for me. For Jessica. For yourself, too, Joe. For us as a family, please try and think of where we could go and spend the rest of our lives without being found.”

Joe expelled a deep breath. He looked up at the Wasatch Mountains, some of the boldest and emptiest he'd ever trapped or hunted in. Then he looked down at his poor, abused wife and raised her naked to her feet. “Look all around you, woman.”

Joe swept an arm out in a wide, all-encompassing circle. “Fiona, what do you see?”

“I see mountains. Trees. Sky and a lake way off there. A beautiful lake. Where am I?”

“This is Bear Lake in the Utah Territory. Brigham Young's got a city he's building off to the west a ways, and there's a great salt lake that won't let a man drown even if he's dead drunk. And these mountains . . . well, darlin', I know these mountains like the back of my hand. I used to trap in these mountains and we had our rendezvous here at Bear Lake. There are places in these mountains so wild that even the Indians are scarce t' find.”

Her face took on an expression of hope. “Then after we take Jessica back from the Catholic nuns, we could come back to these parts and hide forever up in these mountains. Joe, I swear that we could build us a nice log cabin. Put in a truck garden and raise some livestock. You could—”

“Shhh,” he ordered, his voice soft and sad.

Her mouth was open and she found it hard to stop the torrent of dreams she was spinning out for them. “But, Joe, we—”

“We'd live every day wonderin' if someone was comin' to find us. And, darlin', sooner or later, if the bounty was big enough, someone
would
find us. And then maybe they'd kill not only the two of us, but also our little girl and any other babies we might have borned.” Joe squeezed her hands. “Fiona, is that what you want to happen?”

“Of course not! But . . . but how could you be so sure that we'd be found? These mountains, why, they seem to go on forever!”

“They don't,” Joe said, an even deeper sadness in his words. “I once thought they did . . . but I learned they just don't. And, darlin', there are men like myself who have trapped and hunted all through these mountains. And, if offered a fortune by Peabody, they'd come and find us. They'd be hard, hungry men. Men like me who had seen their way of life taken from them and who hadn't found a path or a place for themselves since. And . . . and they'd think about that Peabody bounty and what it might do for 'em and they'd be willin' t' kill or be killed for another chance at what they'd lost.”

He could tell that she didn't want to believe him. “Would they, Joe? Would they really?”

“Yep. I would were I them.”

“No!” she cried. “You wouldn't sneak up on a man and his wife and child and kill them for money!”

“I killed women before,” he admitted. “I've killed for a lot less money than Peabody would be offerin'.”

Fiona quickly looked away, and when Joe tried to reach out and turn her around to face him, she pulled out of his reach.

“Fiona,” he said, seeing how her whole thin body was trembling. “I
have
killed women. But none of 'em for money. An' I killed a couple of murderin' whores once down in Santa Fe. But I swear that I ain't killed anyone for money since I've knowed you. I swear it.”

She turned to face him, and she searched every inch of his scarred face looking for truth. Finally, she said, “I believe you.”

“And you also need t' trust me,” he told her. “Trust me to know what I'm doin' is the right thing . . . the only thing . . . that can save us.”

After a long moment, Fiona dipped her chin. “So how are you going to kill Ransom Holt when he comes here to collect my head?”

“I don't rightly know yet,” Joe admitted. “Holt has my description, sure as anything, just like I know what he looks like. But he's never laid eyes on me and that's the advantage.”

“What if he brings men with him? What if he's got men to help him?”

“Then I'll kill them, too,” Joe vowed. “I'll just kill all them dirty sonsabitches.”

“You're that sure you can do it?”

“I am,” Joe Moss vowed. “As God is my witness and you are my love and my life, I will kill whoever comes—right to the very last man.”

Fiona shivered as a breeze touched her thin, bruised body. She looked over at the two unconscious bounty hunters that Joe had laid low, and then she said, “All right, Joe. Kill those two now and then we'll kill Ransom Holt and anyone else who comes for my head.”

Joe drew out his tomahawk and spotted a rusty tin water bucket. He grabbed the bucket and filled it from the trough, saying, “Fiona, maybe you ought t' go inside that dugout for a few minutes and get whatever is worth takin'. I'll do what needs doin' out here.”

“Are you going to wake them up and kill them slow?”

“Yep. That's 'xactly what I have in mind.”

“Then I need to watch.”

Joe was a hard man and not surprised by much of anything, but when his sweet Fiona uttered those words, he was shaken to the marrow of his bones. “You want t' watch them die screaming and being scalped? It'll be a slow, bloody thing.”

“They did slow, bloody things to me in that dugout,” Fiona said, her eyes hard and fierce. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, sayeth the Lord.”

“And so it will be,” Joe replied as he drew his tomahawk, threw back his head, and sang out to the sky a terrible, primal scream.

The Indians called him Man Killer, and today he would add fresh scalps to his belt as God and Fiona would witness.

2

“WHAT'S THIS SONOFABITCH'S name?” Joe asked, ready to dump the pail of water on the bounty hunter's bleeding head.

“That's the one in charge,” Fiona said, pointing a shaky finger at the unconscious man. “His name is Jedediah Charles. The other one is named Ike. I never heard his last name.”

Joe raised the bucket and emptied its cold contents on Jedediah Charles. Both of the unconscious bounty hunters had taken hard whacks across the skull from the flat of Joe's tomahawk, but he'd hit Jedediah the hardest. Now Joe was wondering if this one could be revived or if his skull had been fatally crushed.

Jedediah stirred and moaned. “He's alive,” Joe announced, going for another pail of water. “But he's in bad shape.”

“Maybe you should just let him die,” Fiona hedged, suddenly feeling a twinge of guilt despite the terrible outrages that had been committed against her body by the pair.

“Too easy,” Joe said, bringing back the second pail and sloshing it in the man's face, bringing him to full wakefulness.

Jedediah coughed and sat up, his eyes still dazed. He blinked and sputtered; then his eyes regained their focus and he stared at Joe Moss, who was drawing his tomahawk from his belt sash. At the sight of Joe and the bloodstained tomahawk, Jedediah became fully alert. He tried to scoot backward in the mud, but Joe jumped forward, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and then used his tomahawk to slice off one of the struggling man's ears.

Jedediah screamed and clapped his hands against the side of his head, trying to staunch all the blood pouring through his fingers. Joe had a remedy for that. He dropped his tomahawk, drew his bowie knife, and cut off all the man's fingers on both hands, leaving only his quivering thumbs.

“Ahhh!” the man screamed at the top of his lungs. “Oh, my gawd, you're killin' me!”

“How's it feeling?” Joe asked as the bounty hunter howled. “You liked rapin' and starvin' my poor wife, did you?”

“No!” Jedediah bawled. “I'm sorry! Honest to God I'm sorry! Don't do this to me!”

“You're sorry?” Joe asked, his voice as dry and brittle as broken glass. “Why, Jedediah, you haven't began t' learn what sorry really is.”

Joe grabbed the man's long, greasy hair, and with practiced ease he cut a plate-sized piece of scalp. Jedediah howled even louder when Joe dangled the man's scalp before his bulging eyes. “How's it look to ya now, Jed? Take a good, long, and last look, you sorry, stinking piece of dog shit!”

“Joe, I can't stand this!” Fiona cried in protest. “Just put him out of his misery.”

“He'll have to do that for his own damn self,” Joe said, his own blood hot with revenge as he went to get another pail of water and rouse the second bounty hunter for slaughter.

 

About a mile to the south and behind a rocky bluff, Ransom Holt reined in his horse and raised a hand for silence. “Someone is dying,” he said, more to himself than to the two hired killers who rode at his side. “Dying hard, too.”

“Do you think that Jedediah Charles is killin' the Moss woman right now?” one of the men asked.

“No,” Holt decided. “I've heard women screaming in childbirth and none ever sounded like that. It's a man that's dyin'.”

“Maybe one of them is killing the other over the Moss woman.”

“Maybe,” Holt conceded. “It could also be Indians having their blood sport. But I'm thinking that Joe Moss somehow found the dugout and his wife. If that happened, then I believe that he is taking his bloody revenge on Jedediah and his partner.”

The two hired killers exchanged glances, and the one named Dalton said, “If that's the case, we can kill Moss and get
two
rewards from Mr. Peabody. One for Joe and one for his wife.”

“Wait a minute,” said the one named Eli. “Didn't Mr. Peabody change his mind and say he wanted them both brought back alive so that they could be hanged in Virginia City?”

“That's right,” Holt agreed, dragging out his six-gun and making sure it was ready. “Mr. Peabody has a hangman and two nooses waiting, the
choking
kind of nooses. He wants to see Moss and his woman strangle to death on a tree limb. So, boys, this could be our lucky day because those two are worth more to Peabody alive than dead.”

One of the hired killers pulled a double-barreled shotgun out of its scabbard, saying, “Moss won't be captured without a hard fight. Everything we've heard about the man is bad, and the Indians we talked to don't call him Man Killer for nothin'.”

Ransom Holt snorted with derision. “Moss is just an old trapper well past his prime. He's dangerous, sure. But he's no match for the three of us. Now, is he?”

“Hell, no!” the brothers replied in unison.

Holt studied the men. “Glad to hear you boys say that. If we can take Moss and his woman alive, you'll be paid double what you were already promised.”

“In Comstock gold,” Dalton said, patting the butt of a buffalo rifle that he could use to shoot down a man with deadly accuracy from a half mile's distance.

“Yeah,” Holt agreed. “In Comstock gold.”

Eli and Dalton were brothers known for their random and constant viciousness. They were of average size physically, but there was a deadly aura about both men that gave even Ransom Holt cause for concern. If Eli and Dalton even suspected that they could deliver Moss and his wife to Peabody and collect all the bounty money, Holt knew he was likely to be back-shot between the Utah Territory and Nevada.

Holt sat a moment longer, listening to the horrible screams of someone who was obviously being tortured to death by an expert. Ransom Holt was a very, very big and powerful man. He knew that Joe Moss was also said to stand tall . . . a couple inches over six feet . . . but Holt was six feet five and he was younger, heavier, and stronger than Joe Moss. He had almost been hoping to kill Moss with his bare hands, but after hearing of all the dead men that Moss had scalped, Holt decided that it would be foolish to take a chance.