Blood at Bear Lake (11 page)

The ox stumbled and went to its knees, nailing the wagon in place, with no possibility that Mrs. Coyle might be able to run away from the ambush.

Joe was not so encumbered. He was riding his horse, the mule being tethered to the tailgate of the wagon.

He was free to run, which under normal circumstances would have been the sensible thing to do.

But, dammit, he could not throw the spurs to the Palouse and leave a defenseless woman behind for the Diggers to rape and murder, sensible or not.

He snatched the head of the Palouse around and raced back to the wagon, pulling the Spencer carbine from its saddle boot as he did so.

28

JOE HEARD THE Palouse grunt. A moment later, it went to its knees from a full run, spilling him over its head. He hit the ground rolling and came up onto hands and knees, somehow still clinging to the Spencer that was locked in his grip.

Scuttling like a crab—like one damned quick-moving crab—he scrambled the remaining distance to the heavy wagon.

“Fall back, Brenda. Throw yourself over the seat into the wagon bed and hunker down out of the way of them arrows,” he shouted, rising into a crouch beneath the wagon box.

Another flight of arrows fluttered toward the halted wagon, half of them burying themselves in the flesh of the terrified oxen, which were bawling and kicking and trying to escape the madness and the copper stink of fresh blood.

Joe had no target to aim at, but he was no tenderfoot. He had fought Indians more than a few times in the past, and he was not about to waste his ammunition cutting brush or raising dust.

A high-arcing arrow hit the iron rim of the wheel Joe knelt beside and skittered off it. It wound up standing upright in the ground by his right foot.

“You sons o' bitches are gonna piss me off if you keep this up,” he snarled aloud to no one in particular.

“Did you say something, Mr. Moss?”

He looked up to see Brenda Coyle leaning over the side of the wagon. “Not to you, I didn't. Now get back inside there outa the way,” he snapped, motioning her down.

She withdrew, and Joe returned his attention to the Diggers.

He saw a flicker of movement, and the Spencer carbine came swiftly to his shoulder. He took aim and pressed the trigger and . . . and nothing happened. He had forgotten that unlike his Henry, the Spencer had to be cocked in a separate motion after the cartridge was fed into place by the lever.

“Dammit!”

He thumbed the heavy hammer back, but by then he was much too late to try a shot at the spot where he had seen the movement.

More arrows rose lazily upward, rising slowly, then taking a downward turn and falling with increasing velocity until they landed like huge raindrops onto the wagon and the dying, screaming oxen.

The wagon jerked forward, rocked back, jerked again as the oxen struggled to tear themselves free from their torment.

Joe pitied the big, stolid brutes, but there was nothing he could do to help or to protect them. They already looked like pincushions, with arrow shafts protruding at crazy angles from the doomed beasts' backs and hips and sides.

They slung their heads from side to side, sending ropes of bloody foam and snot through the air.

And one by one they went to their knees, rolled onto their sides, and were gone.

The Diggers whooped and danced. Victorious and jubilant now.

Now Joe could see the Indians clearly. They were scrawny, wizened little sons of bitches who probably never had their bellies full in their entire lives, and now they could see several tons of fresh meat lying there in front of them, ready to carve and to cook.

Joe smiled grimly and held his fire.

He had seven cartridges in the Spencer and six balls in his Colt revolving pistol.

And when those were gone, he would still have his bowie knife and his faithful tomahawk.

There were—he tried to count—something like seven Diggers dancing around out there.

In a few minutes, they would grow bold and swarm in to claim their booty and to turn the oxen into meat. After all, the last they had seen of him was when the Palouse went down and he was thrown over its head.

Joe remained hunkered down beside the wagon wheel. Waiting patiently.

When all of the Diggers were in plain sight—three of them coming toward the wagon while four others stayed back covering them with their bows—when Joe was fairly sure he had them exactly where he wanted them, he stood up and carefully, methodically, one target at a time, began slaughtering them.

29

JOE DECIDED HE must be getting old. Well, maybe starting to get old. He had a slight twinge low in his back after bending down and taking the scalps from the first five of his seven victims.

He tucked away this last hank of black, greasy hair with the bit of bloody skin attached and stood, bending backward just a little to help ease the muscles in his back.

Joe did not need the scalps of his vanquished foes as trophies, but he continued the practice he had followed for years after first learning it from Indians. According to their belief, at least the way he was given to understand it, a spirit could not join his dead tribesmen in the afterworld if his scalp was taken in this world. A man became truly dead if he gave up his scalp to an enemy. Joe did not know how true any of that was, but he did not intend to take any chances.

He took a moment to rest his back, then stepped over the body of the scalpless Digger Indian and walked over to the next. This one, an emaciated youngster who could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, was still breathing.

The boy had a hole high in the chest. Bloody froth bubbled on the surface, suggesting he was shot through the lung. It was possible, just barely possible, that someone could recover from a wound like that. Joe had seen it happen.

But not this time.

Joe leaned down and took a grip on the kid's hair to lift his upper body off the ground, then made two quick swipes with the bowie. The first slashed the boy's throat completely through to the bone. The second added another scalp to Joe's collection.

Bastards thought they were going to kill him, did they? Well, he had another thought for them.

Joe finished collecting the last scalp and walked back to the wagon to retrieve his Spencer carbine. He pulled the magazine tube out and dropped in seven fresh cartridges, then set the Spencer aside, reminding himself to get more from his pack. The pack and mule seemed to have survived the attack without harm at the back of the wagon. All the arrows had been directed forward, where the people and oxen were.

“Miz Coyle. You can come out now. It's safe. All the Injuns is accounted for.”

Sighing, he walked over to the fallen Palouse horse. That animal had been the best horse he ever owned. Oh, he tended to think that about any good horse that he got hold of, but this time he really meant it. The Palouse had been getting a little long in the tooth, but—dammit—he liked that horse. And it had been his. He could feel the bile rising in the back of his throat as anger overtook him at the sight of the dead horse.

If there had been any of those Diggers still alive, he would have killed them all over again. Bastards!

There was nothing he could do to change it, though. He could only accept what was and forget about what might have been.

Joe bent down again and unfastened his cinches, then struggled to pull his saddle free of the carcass.

The Diggers' arrows had killed all the livestock, but he was close enough to the little Mormon settlement that Joe figured he could walk over there to buy a horse and haze some oxen or mules back to drag the wagon the rest of the way in. He had to get the saddle off now, though, before the dead horse began to bloat and it became impossible to remove it without cutting the cinches.

“Mrs. Coyle,” he called again. “Everything is all right. You can climb down here, Miz Coyle. Be a good idea for you t' do that. I have t' walk over to that town to get fresh animals, and I wouldn't want t' leave you alone out here. There might be some more Injuns nearby. I wouldn't want t' leave you undefended while I go for the animals.”

He waited a moment, but heard nothing from inside the wagon.

Joe set the saddle down and quickly stripped the bridle from the horse. Damn shame, though. That had been a mighty fine animal.

“Miz Coyle. Are you all right, ma'am?”

Joe stepped onto a wheel spoke and from that into the driving box. As he did so, he was thinking what a hell of a time he would have trying to wrestle the yokes and riggings from those dead oxen. Possibly, he should bring someone from town to help him with that.

Mrs. Coyle was crouched on the floor of her wagon, wedged in between some crates and boxes.

“Mrs. Coyle? Ma'am?”

Joe crawled over the back of the seat and slipped beneath the canvas wagon sheet. It took a moment for his vision to adjust to the dim light beneath the canvas.

“Aw . . . shit!”

An arrow, one of the many fired high in the air, had plunged downward, piercing the flimsy wagon cover and by horrible chance striking Mrs. Coyle in the back of the neck.

The arrow had hit her spine, Joe saw, so the young widow's death must have been instantaneous. He hoped it was also painless for her.

“Well, shit,” he said again, then climbed back out of the wagon and down to the ground.

There was no need now to bring help and fresh livestock from the settlement. As far as he was concerned, the people there were welcome to scavenge anything they wanted out of the wagon. He had no interest in any of it.

He would keep the money the Wickershams had been carrying. His intent had been to give that poke to Brenda Coyle when he got her to safety, but that was off the boards now, of course. He had no interest in anything else at this wagon of death, however.

Joe inspected the mule thoroughly, checking it for wounds, but it had not suffered so much as a nick.

He untied it from the tailgate and led it, skittish and unhappy from the smell of so much blood, around to the front so he could set his saddle and bridle on top of the mule's pack. It would ride there well enough until he could walk to town and buy a horse to ride.

Then, the Spencer balanced in one hand and the mule's lead rope in the other, Joe Moss set out for the Mormon settlement south of the vast salt desert.

30

BY THE TIME he reached the settlement, Joe's feet hurt and his mood was black. He kept thinking that if he had done something different, had done things better, somehow Brenda Coyle would still be alive. Never mind that it was simple bad luck that the arrow had found her. Joe felt responsible for the young woman's death.

Mrs. Coyle, he thought, had had a thoroughly shitty life. Perhaps in death, she would be reunited with her husband and baby.

Joe did not know much about that sort of thing, but it was what the padres claimed, wasn't it? Hell, maybe it was true. He hoped so because if it was, she would likely think her whole awful experience worthwhile. He knew he would do anything, suffer any amount, go through . . . whatever . . . if it meant he could be with Fiona and Jessica again. Likely, Mrs. Coyle would feel the same way about it.

He paused at the edge of the little Mormon town and took a look.

“Town” was too grand a word to describe the place. Bunch of chicken coops was closer to the truth.

Out so far from live timber, wood seemed to be in short supply. Buildings were crude shacks made not from lumber but from immature saplings that were planted close together in trenches like tall fences, then roofed with heavy canvas. Most of the canvas looked suspiciously like old wagon covers put to new use.

There were only a handful of buildings, two of which were large enough to suggest they were business establishments of some sort. The others looked like people's homes. None of the buildings had signs posted to indicate what they were.

The structures were all ranged on either side of a single long “block” with privies, pens, and livestock corrals behind.

Since there were no hitch rails provided for passers-through, Joe tied his mule's lead rope to the horn of his saddle and dropped the saddle in the dirt to act as a hitching anchor, then entered the largest of the buildings. The shade indoors felt good after the sun's heat outside.

The place was indeed a store, a general mercantile judging by the wide range of goods that were stacked here, there, and elsewhere around the dirt floor. He did not see any clerks.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” he called out. No one came, so he tried again, louder this time.

“I heard you the first time,” a woman's voice responded from behind a linen curtain that more or less closed off a doorway. “Just hold your horses. I'll be with you in a minute.”

Joe grunted, then turned and began inspecting the merchandise. Not that he needed anything at the moment. He had more than enough to get him to Sol's store at Fort Laramie, especially after he'd taken everything that looked useful out of the Wickersham and Coyle wagons. Joe figured to resupply from Sol if he needed anything more.

Or if Fiona needed or wanted anything. Anything she wanted, Joe wanted her to have.
Anything!

“Who is . . . oh! A stranger.” Joe caught only a glimpse of the woman who was tending the store. She was plump and middle-aged, with her hair straggling out of the bun she wore. She might have been fairly nice-looking if she hadn't also looked like she needed a shave; she had quite a nice mustache, or anyway would have if she took the time to wax it. She also had one side of her dress hiked up, caught underneath the cord that tied her apron in place.

Judging by the woman's bright red complexion, her rapid breathing, and most of all, the sound of heavy boots moving around in the back of the place, Joe kind of thought he had interrupted her at a most inopportune time.