Comstock Cross Fire (3 page)

Let Eli and Dalton earn their pay here and now. Let them take Moss down, and then let them help me get the two captives up to the base of the Comstock Lode, before I kill the brothers and take Peabody's money all for myself. And yes, it would all be in Comstock gold
.

“How do you want to handle this?” Dalton asked, wiping his face with the back of his dirty sleeve.

Holt gave the question some serious thought before he answered. “I've been dogging Joe Moss and his whore a long, long time. He's murdered enough of my informants to have gotten my description. He'll recognize me by my size the second he lays eyes on me from any distance. So here's what we'll do, boys.”

Ransom Holt quickly outlined a simple, but what he believed would be an effective, plan to take Moss alive.

“That's it,” he said. “Eli and I will circle around behind that dugout. Give us an hour, Dalton. Then you ride straight in like you were ignorant and prove to us how accurate you really are with that buffalo gun. Shoot Moss, but don't you dare kill the man, because we've already agreed that would cost us a lot of gold.”

Dalton nodded with understanding, yet he had a question. “But won't Moss figure I heard the screams and came to interfere?”

“That's why we'll wait an hour before we close in behind Moss . . . or whoever else is doing the killing and torturing.”

Dalton licked his lips because he was getting more and more nervous. “I don't like to be separated from my brother, Mr. Holt. Maybe—”

“
Maybe,
” Holt spat, “you should just do what I've ordered! Or else maybe you and Eli should turn those horses around and ride out with your damned empty pockets and I'll take all that reward money from Peabody!”

The two brothers exchanged glances, and they could read each other's minds.

“All right,” Eli, who was the older and the leader of the brothers, finally decided out loud. “We'll do it exactly as you say, Mr. Holt. But I want to have Moss in my gun sights before my brother rides up to that dugout. If it's really Joe Moss that's doin' the torturin', he's a crack shot and he'd not hesitate to shoot my brother right out of his saddle.”

“Fair enough,” Holt agreed.

The brothers nodded to each other in mutual acceptance.

“Then let's get to it,” Holt said, feeling his heart begin to pound. He'd been searching for Joe Moss and his woman for long, hard months, and now he was just about to have them both.

“Gawd, that's a different one screaming now,” Eli said, cocking an ear to the north. “Screaming even louder than the first did.”

“My money says that we're about to meet Joe Moss at last,” Holt replied, picking up his reins. “I just hope that his woman is still alive so that we can take them both back to Virginia City.”

“If she ain't, we can still take her head back, can't we?”

“Sure,” Holt said. “Peabody wouldn't be satisfied without her head. Just hope that the pickling doesn't wrinkle her face up so much that she is beyond recognition by the time we reach the Comstock Lode.”

“Or bleach out her red hair,” Eli mused with morbid curiosity. “I've a notion that could happen to red hair.”

Holt frowned because he hadn't taken that into consideration. “Maybe if the woman is dead, we can cut off her head and pack it in salt. Might hold up better in the heat across the desert.”

“Might,” Dalton said. “Salt would crust up the blood and hair, but it might not change the red color.”

“Might not at that,” Eli agreed with an eager smile.

“Let's ride,” Holt ordered. “Dalton, you got a watch so you'll know when the hour is up?”

“Yeah,” the man said, pulling out a cheap pocket watch and consulting its face. “Stole it off a drunk whose throat I cut when he was passed out in Laramie.”

“It's now two-ten? Right?” Holt asked, consulting his fine gold pocket watch.

“Close enough,” Dalton said, grinning. “Eli, you better have him in your sights by ten minutes after three.”

“Oh, I will,” Eli promised as he rode away following Ransom Holt.

3

“ARE THEY BOTH dead, Joe?”

“Yeah, well, almost.” Joe held up their bloody scalps. “These will go with the others I've taken.”

Fiona had come out of the dugout carrying a feed sack filled with salt pork and a few other things of little value. She had also found what a poor Indian woman might consider to be a dress. Now she stopped and stared at the two bodies. “Joe, Ike is still breathing.”

“He's knockin' on Hell's gates,” Joe said. “But he just don't have the strength left to knock very loud.”

Fiona forced herself to look at the two still figures. “You can't just leave them here like that!”

“I'll be damned if I'll bury the likes of 'em,” Joe vowed.

“But . . .”

Joe's voice hardened. “After what they did to you, why should you care?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “But I don't want to just leave them out here to rot or be eaten by animals. And . . .”

She couldn't finish.

“And what?” Joe asked.

“And I can't abide you carrying their scalps.”

Joe frowned. “Fiona, I carry all the scalps of them that did me wrong and I kilt to settle the score.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Just . . . just leave them here. Leave all your scalps here.”

Joe's pride was offended, but when he looked at his poor wife and realized how much suffering and torment she'd endured, he could not refuse her simple request.

“All right,” he agreed. “I'll drag these dyin' bastards into that dugout and toss in their scalps along with the others I got. Then we'll fire it all up and send 'em on their merry way to Hell.”

“Thank you,” Fiona said with obvious relief. “We're going to get our daughter back from the nuns. Our darling little Jessica. We can't have her ever knowing what took place here. Do you understand me, Joe?”

“You mean you don't want her to know about this pair and how I kilt, then scalped 'em?”

“That and what they did to me. It's our secret cross to bear.”

“I ain't bearin' no cross of no kind,” Joe argued. “I kilt these two and I wish I could have kilt 'em over and over 'cause of what they done to you, Fiona. I can't change the way I feel about that.”

“I know. But this is something I want to put behind us.”

“Sure,” he said with some confusion. “We'll . . .” Joe's words froze in his throat. “Man on horseback comin' this way.”

Fiona shrank back toward the dugout. “Oh, Joe, don't let them get me again! Please.”

Joe reached for his Henry rifle and levered a shell. “Ain't nobody ever going to hurt you again,” he promised, watching the horseman trot steadily toward them and noting that the horseman carried a big rifle in his hands.

“Is it Ransom Holt?” Fiona cried, her lips trembling. “Is it Ransom Holt comin' to chop off my head?”

“It ain't Holt,” Joe assured her. “I been told Holt is a big, big man. This 'un is average-sized. It ain't Holt and he ain't goin' to hurt either one of us. If anyone else is gonna die this day, it'll be this man a-comin'.”

“Joe, he's dismounting!”

Joe's eyes narrowed and he watched the man tie his horse to a tree next to a fallen log. To Joe's amazement the stranger actually waved, and then sat down behind the tree and laid his big rifle across the log.

“Fiona, get inside the dugout!” Joe shouted, grabbing and shoving her toward the hole in the hillside.

Fiona threw herself at the dugout's entrance, and disappeared just as the big buffalo rifle boomed.

A second later, Joe heard a faint whistle, then the sound of the heavy-caliber slug as it struck the side of the dugout, missing him by less than a foot. He saw the lone rifleman begin to reload what Joe knew from its bark was a .52-caliber breech-loading Sharps. Joe knew that the man was good and that he wouldn't miss a second time, but he also knew that the killer would have to reload the Sharps and that would take him about twenty precious seconds.

“Goddamn you!” Joe bellowed, bursting into a hard run toward the man behind the log. If he was fast enough, he might be able to get to the rifleman before he could reload. There really wasn't much cover between him and the man with the buffalo rifle, but Joe was slender and fast. He'd get him or he'd shoot him dead at close range.

Either way, the stranger was as good as scalped.

Joe was halfway to the rifleman and had his own Henry rifle up and ready to fire when he heard a shrill scream from behind. His head whipped around and he saw Ransom Holt and another man with a shotgun burst out into the open. Fiona was nowhere in sight. Holt jumped into the dugout and the man with the shotgun stood guard outside.

Joe skidded to a halt and turned to shoot the man with the shotgun even as Fiona's screams reached his ears from inside the dugout.

“Fiona!” he shouted. “I'm comin'!”

In his panic, Joe fired on the run, which was dumb, and he missed. He grabbed the revolver at his side and raised it, but then something like the kick of a mule hit him in the back and he went down. The last thing he heard was Fiona's final scream and then he lost consciousness, shot in the back by the buffalo rifle.

 

“Is he alive?” a gravelly voice asked.

“Yeah. He's hit bad, but I shot to wound, not kill, 'cause I remembered you sayin' Mr. Peabody would pay us more if they was alive.”

“Good damn thing that you remembered, Dalton. Get the woman to bandage her man up so he don't bleed out on us.”

Dalton went into the dugout and returned dragging Fiona by one arm. “You struck her pretty hard with the butt of your pistol, Mr. Holt. Maybe scrambled her brains.”

“That doesn't matter,” Ransom Holt snapped. “Mr. Peabody doesn't care if she's addled or not. All he said was that he wanted her back alive so that he could hang her in Virginia City along with Joe Moss.”

“Moss might not make it either.”

“He'll make it,” Holt vowed. “He's the toughest sonofabitch I've ever heard of and he just won't die.”

“My Sharps put a hole right through his shoulder and maybe his lung.”

“If he's lung-shot, then I guess he will die,” Holt said. “And it'll cost you plenty.”

The rifleman's face flushed with anger. “He was runnin' when I brought him down. I had to shoot him on the run, Mr. Holt! And I had to make sure I didn't miss or he'd have kilt you and my brother both!”

Ransom Holt knew this was probably true. “I guess you're right, but we got to try and stop that bleeding and keep Moss alive until we can deliver him to Peabody.”

“Maybe the woman can figure a way to save her man,” Dalton offered.

Holt swore in frustration. “Enough of this damned jabbering! Get that pail and fill it with water. Wake her up and we'll see if that little redheaded slut is any good at doctoring.”

Moments later, Fiona burst into awareness fighting for air and feeling as if she were being drowned. When she tried to climb to her feet, strong hands grabbed her by the arms, pulled her erect, and then one of the biggest men she had ever seen in her life snarled in her face, “Your husband was shot high in the back by a Sharps rifle. He's bleeding bad. You'd better stop that bleeding or he's going to die. Live or die, it's up to you, Mrs. Moss.”

Fiona knew that this was Ransom Holt who had her by the arms. She looked into his black eyes and also knew that he was a man without pity or even a soul. He was only half human, if that much.

Then she tore her eyes away from Holt's cruel face and saw Joe lying facedown in the dirt with a large wound in the upper part of his left shoulder. Fiona tore free from Holt and collapsed at her husband's side.

“Joe! Joe!”

“He's unconscious, you stupid whore!” Dalton growled. “You better plug up that bullet hole on both sides or he's a goner.”

Though nearly out of her mind with fear, Fiona understood that the man who had shot her husband was correct. Joe was bleeding to death and no one except herself was going to raise a hand to save him.

All three men stood around her staring downward at Joe. Finally, Ransom Holt hissed, “Get her some rags to plug up that shoulder. Get her whatever she needs to save that scalpin' sonofabitch's life. Remember, if Joe Moss lives, we all have extra bounty gold in our pockets. Peabody wants them both to hang side by side kickin' and gaggin' in Virginia City.”

Holt chuckled, then added, “And Peabody is even gonna charge admission to watch these two hang. Gonna charge five dollars a head and he expects there to be
thousands
of Comstock Lode miners cheerin' and hollerin' as Moss and his woman dance and strangle.”

The two brothers hurried toward the dugout, and Fiona realized what Holt had just said and she stored this valuable piece of information away. Ransom Holt and these men had been ordered to bring her and Joe back to Virginia City alive.

That being the case, there was now just the faintest glimmer of hope. If she and Joe had to be taken all the way to the Comstock Lode, there would be time for Joe to heal. Time for them to figure out some way to escape . . . or even to kill these three rabid animals.

But then Fiona also realized that there would also be plenty of time and opportunity for these men to use her like a bitch in heat. And when she thought of that possibility, after all the humiliation she had already suffered at the hands of the scalped pair, Fiona nearly lost what was left of her mind.