The Mother Lode (2 page)

“They used to do that,” the liveryman admitted. “Maybe not every day, but at least every week. Then the gold panned out and they raced over these mountains to the Comstock Lode. Ain't no rivers over there in Nevada, so I heard. Ain't much of any good water in Nevada . . . just lots of snakes, alkali flats, gold, and even some silver.”

“How come you didn't go with 'em when the gold panned out on this side of the Sierras?” Joe asked.

The man scratched his crotch, then poked a finger in one of his big bat ears and screwed it around some before he said, “ 'Cause I'm an old fart and I like the green of the pines and the wildflowers in the meadows. They say that there ain't a blade of grass or a wildflower up on the Comstock Lode. Don't sound like the Promised Land to me, stranger. Don't sound like anything but Hell.”

“That may be true, but I still got to go there,” Joe said, as much to himself as to the liveryman. “I got to get there just as fast as I can do 'er.”

“I could tell that by the looks of that mule. You'll kill him if you don't let him rest here a few days. Not that he's worth much in savin'.”

Joe thought about that and about what he had done to the poor Appaloosa that had tried so valiantly to deliver him to California only a few weeks earlier when he'd run it west over these very same mountains. “Mister,” he said, “the truth is that I kill most things that I'm around. And one of these days I'll probably kill myself and do the whole damned world a favor.”

The liveryman laughed outright. He had a big, booming laugh and it showed that he was missing most of his front teeth. To be right truthful, he had a powerful rank smell on himself and also needed a dunkin' and a bar of soap. But Joe didn't see no point in mentioning that fact.

“You're mighty hard on yourself, stranger. Mighty hard. And unless I judge it wrong, you've been a trapper and Indian trader.”

“You judge me good.”

The liveryman stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “You're wearing tanned buckskins and we don't see that much anymore. And a bowie knife, which isn't all that unusual. But I ain't seen a man carry a damned tomahawk like that for many a moon.”

“Took it off an Indian who didn't want to let 'er go. Want to see my scalps?”

The liveryman's eyes widened in the gloom. “You got real human scalps?”

“I don't scalp no critters for showin' off,” Joe said. “And hey, listen, I'll trade you two of my best scalps for the night's food and bedding for me and my mule.”

The man scratched his round and unshaven face and his eyes could not hide his excitement. “They be the
real
thing?”

“They be,” Joe assured him. “You can have what once belonged to a white man, Mexican, or Indian. Don't matter to me. Every one of 'em came off a man that made the mistake of tryin' to rob or kill me. I never back-shot no man nor killed one that didn't desperately need killin'.”

“Well, I believe I surely would like to see some real people scalps. That ain't somethin' you get to see or touch every day.”

“Reckon not.”

“Did you . . .” The liveryman's question trailed off into silence.

“Did I what?”

“Take 'em
all
by yourself, mister? I mean, every last one of 'em?”

“I did. I take no pride, but also no shame, in that true fact.”

“Which weapon did you use?” The liveryman gestured toward Joe's weapons. “Knife, gun, or that big sumbitchin' tomahawk?”

“All three,” Joe told him.

“You're a mountain man true enough,” the liveryman said with a touch of awe and fear mixed in his voice. “And I will treat you and your mule fairly.”

“Best that you do.”

Joe leaned his Henry rifle against the barn and went over to his mule to open his pack. He quickly found the leather bag of scalps and began pulling them out one by one.

“Holy shit!” the liveryman said. “Holy hogshit! They
are
real!”

From the man's reaction, Joe Moss could see that he could have easily made a trade with only one of the scalps instead of the promised two. But a deal was a deal and he always stood by his word, it being a matter of personal honor.

“I'll take this one and this,” the liveryman told him, hands reaching out with fingers shaking from excitement.

“This long, greasy one belonged to a brave Sioux warrior and I shot him off his pony. This lighter one was a white man that I killed while I was leading my wagon train out of old St. Joe.”

“Why'd you kill someone on your wagon train?”

Joe didn't want to speak of it, but knew he must now that he'd made his admission. “The white man raped a girl on my train; then the fool up and stole my damned horse. Even worse, he told everyone that I was layin' down with the unmarried girl I loved and love still. The bastard shamed her, and that caused me to scalp him just before I put a noose around his neck and hauled him off the ground.”

The man's fingers touched the scalp, then quickly retracted as if they'd been burned by the deed. “You
strangled
that fella to death instead of givin' him a good drop so that you'd break his neck?” the liveryman asked, now unable to take his eyes off the pale scalp.

“Yep,” Joe cheerfully admitted. “The sonofabitch's name was George Tarlton. Wasn't much more than a boy, but old enough to know better and pay for his misdeed.”

The old man's liver-spotted hand stretched out a second time to touch Tarlton's long hair. “Why, mister, it's still crusted with his . . . his
blood
!”

“Why, a'course it is! Scalpin' is a bloody business. And I reckon our business is done if you can get me that bar of soap and maybe some gunnysacks to dry with.”

“Hell, yes, I will!” the older man said, snatching the two scalps and backing away as if Joe Moss were a dying leper. “Just . . . just tie the mule up and give me a minute. I got some beans on the stove in the back. You hungry?”

“Do bears shit in these tall pines?”

“Yes, they do!” the man cried, hurrying off with both scalps dangling from his dirty hands. “And I'll feed you beans till you fart like a fat goat!”

Joe grinned and began to unsaddle the little mule. He noted that it had fresh cinch sores that were bleeding. Blood on scalps, blood on the mule, and blood on his soul.

It might be better for Fiona if I just went away like the cold north wind,
he thought.

“Joe Moss,” he said with a sad shake of his head, “if you were a good man, you'd put a bullet in your brain this very minute. Be a mercy to mankind . . . and maybe to Fiona and your child should it still be alive.”

He stood beside his mule with his head down feeling low and ugly and evil because he had hurt most everything he'd ever loved or touched that was good. Was it too late to change and make up for past mistakes and wrongs?

“Here's soap and a towel, mister. You okay?”

Joe snapped out of his dark reverie. “Yep.”

“Then hurry 'cause it's getttin' dark. You can use that old horse watering trough out back so no man or woman will see you.”

“If they see me, it's on their eyes and it won't matter,” Joe said. “But I ain't any more to look at than this poor mule. And I got a sight more scars.”

“From Indians?”

“Some of 'em.”

The liveryman reached way out to hand Joe the lye soap and two grain sacks that were anything but clean. “Mister, I see hard men comin' and goin' every day. Seen 'em all my damned life. But I think you might be the hardest man I ever did lay eyes upon.”

Joe nodded in complete agreement. “I expect that may be so,” he said. “I should have been killed long ago, but for some reason it's me that does all the killin'.”

The liveryman opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and backed away with respect. “I'll get you a plate of beans when you're done with the horse water.”

“Thank ye.”

“And I won't tell anyone who traded me those scalps. I wouldn't want it to come down against you.”

“Do as you think best, but it wouldn't be a trouble.”

“Meaning that you'd kill anyone who came at you about those scalps? That be your
true
meaning. Right, mister?”

Instead of answering, Joe just stared at the liveryman with his piercing blue eyes and greasy long black hair until the liveryman gulped and backed away fast.

J
OE AWOKE BEFORE dawn as was his habit, and because he slept in his buckskins, it didn't take much time for him to grope his way outside the barn and then find his mule waiting in the corral. “Did that fella grain you well?” he asked, opening a small sack of oats and allowing the mule to have some extra feed to start his day off right.

The mule inhaled the oats, and then allowed itself to be tied up while Joe refilled the sack so he'd have feed for the animal at the end of another hard day should they be camping out along the Truckee River tonight. After that, Joe crapped in the corral and washed himself in the trough, then saddled and mounted the mule.

“Time to get along,” he told the animal as he laid his Henry rifle across his saddle. “Donner Pass is still miles away and I don't much cotton to the idea of spending the night where all those poor unfortunate members of the Donner Party died. I'd like us to get down past Donner Lake on the river.”

Joe had been over Donner Pass before and the area, while incredibly beautiful, always gave him the spooks. It had only been fifteen years earlier that the ill-fated wagon train bound for California had gotten a late start and ended up being trapped in the high pass. Of the eighty-nine emigrants who had set out from Fort Bridger, only forty-five had survived the ordeal, and it was rumored that some of them had resorted to cannibalism. Joe didn't know about that, but he had heard that the survivors, who had been thought to have eaten human flesh in a desperate hope to avoid starvation, had been vilified by the Californians. That seemed wrong to Joe Moss, for he knew with certainty that he would eat the flesh of a dead person if that was all that would keep him alive. And he also knew from reading and from the words of Indians that ancient peoples had been sacrificed and eaten as a means of survival.

“I'd sure rather eat a skinny, worn-out dog or a mule than a fellow human,” Joe told his mount. “But mostly I prefer elk and buffalo meat to all others. Mutton and beef are what I can get most of the time, but wild game is my natural preference.”

As morning light appeared and the sun lifted slowly in the eastern sky, Joe began to meet mule skinners and other travelers coming down from the pass on their way to California.

“Mornin',” he would call to each passing party. “How's the weather in Nevada these days?”

“Fine and dandy!” most would yell back without stopping. “But there's a storm brewin' and it could bring some rain and maybe even snow if we don't get down to the Sacramento Valley soon.”

Joe knew that everyone who crossed over through Donner Pass was keenly aware of the terrible fate of the Donner Party and so they were especially nervous about getting trapped by a late snow. Hell, at this altitude, it could snow as late as June, and when that happened, the big freight wagons would mire down in the red mud so deep they would have to be unloaded before being pulled free.

At noon and less than a thousand feet from the summit, Joe saw a strange-looking freight wagon being pulled by a collection of oxen, mules, and horses, all of which were in terrible shape. There were ten animals and not a one of them looked as if it would last another day. Even worse, the two freighters were cracking their whips and cussing like sailors. As Joe drew nearer, he saw that one of the animals was none other than his old Palouse, the horse that he had nearly killed making a run for California.

“Hold up there!” Joe called, raising his hand as he approached the wagon, which showed no sign that it was going to do anything but run him over if he did not yield and leave the road. “I said hold up!”

The man holding the lines was huge and bearded, thicker than Joe, but probably not any taller. It was the other man that was doing the mean bullwhip work and had the backs of the struggling team bloody, causing Joe to grit his teeth in anger.

“Hold up, damn you!” Joe snapped, not reining off the road, but instead raising his Henry rifle and pointing it directly at the driver.

“Get out of the way, you sonofabitch!” the man with the lines bellowed. “We got heavy lumber on this wagon and we ain't stoppin' for nobody!”

Joe quickly reined up the little mule, now growing very nervous about the onrushing team and wagon. He put the stock of his big rifle to his shoulder and in one smooth motion took aim and fired. The heavy boom of the weapon filled the high corridor of pines along the road, and the driver's hat went flying from his head to reveal that he was completely bald.

“Sonofabitch!” the one with the bloody bullwhip screamed, dropping his whip and reaching for the pistol strapped to his side.

Joe levered in another shell and took aim on the smaller man while shouting, “If you draw iron, mister, then you're as good as dead right
now
!”

The driver hauled up on his reins and applied the wagon's brake. It screeched in protest and smoked, but the wagon came to a stop just a few feet from Joe Moss and his now nervously dancing Mexican mule.

“Are you crazy!” the driver screamed, fumbling around with big fingers atop his head where his hat was supposed to ride. “Are you plumb loco!”