Blood at Bear Lake (2 page)

Gunfire would draw attention back here, but steel is silent. And just as deadly.

With the remembered cadence of a Lakota war chant going through his mind, Joe slipped his bowie from its sheath and held it loosely in his left hand. In his right was his deadly tomahawk.

He was not sure how many armed men were in the priest's office with Father O'Connor. At least two. But why worry about details?

He rose into a crouch, finished the Lakota prayer, and pushed the bookcase open.

The heavy set of shelving moved ponderously forward, squealing a little as seldom-used hinges grated metal on metal.

“What the—?”

The thug who stood over Father O'Connor never had time to finish his sentence. Joe took two long steps forward, and his wicked tomahawk split the man's skull wide open. He went down, spilling blood and brains onto the stone floor.

There were two others in the small room. They clawed for their pistols.

Joe quickly retrieved his tomahawk and threw it at the one who was standing off to the side of the room. The 'hawk spun end over end and landed blade-first in the middle of the fellow's breastbone. The man looked down at the 'hawk protruding from his chest. He went pale and began to sag to his knees, no longer interested in his or anyone else's firearms.

The man who had been holding Father O'Connor's arms behind him blanched and tried to use the priest as a human shield.

Joe was able, if just barely, to suppress an impulse to shout a triumphant war cry as he leaped the short distance between him and Father O'Connor's assailant. Joe's bowie flashed and the man fell back, his throat open and blood spurting half-a-dozen feet across the room.

“Bastards!”

Joe retrieved his tomahawk and returned it to his sash, then quickly began relieving the dead men of their scalps. One of them had red hair. His scalp would make a fine addition to Joe's collection. It needed replenishment badly after his friend, the widow Ellen Johnson, had discarded all of his old scalps some months earlier.

“No. You can't . . . you mustn't do that!” O'Connor protested.

“Hell, there ain't no harm of it.”

“No, really, I can't allow it. This is sacred ground.”

“T' you maybe. Wasn't to them. An' if the truth be known, it ain't sacred to me neither.” Joe ripped the scalp from the head of the first man he had killed there.

The priest looked like he was going to be sick. The man stood there with his clerical robes in disarray, his spindly legs on display. He seemed not to notice that, however. “Stop this, Moss, or I will never consent to let Jessica go back to her mother.”

Joe grunted and finished scalping the second man, then moved to the last, the one who had caught the tomahawk in his chest. He was still alive, although barely. Joe picked his head up and began cutting.

“Do you hear me, Moss? You will never so much as see that little girl again.”

“You promised t' return her to her mother. You gave your word. You never gave me nothing but grief, Priest. Now quit your prattling an' tell me how I can get out o' here. Are there others of Peabody's men out there?”

O'Connor nodded. “Yes. I think so, yes.”

“How many?”

“I don't know that. A dozen. Possibly more.”

“Do you know where they're waiting?”

“No, I do not.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

Father O'Connor drew himself to his full height and with dignity said, “I would not bring harm down upon you, Joe Moss, any more than I would bring harm to your wife. Or to your daughter either, for that matter. I will pray for the deliverance of your soul. If I could do anything to help deliver your body from evil, I would do that, too.”

Joe looked the priest up and down, thinking. Then he grunted. “You got any more of those robe things, Padre?”

“My cassock, you mean? Yes, why do you ask?”

“ 'Cause I want to borrow one. And one o' those funny-looking hats you guys wear.”

“I have a biretta, of course, but I only use it . . .”

“Where is it?” Joe interrupted. “I'm in a bit of a hurry here, Padre. If you don't mind.”

“My cassock and biretta are in that wardrobe over there, but I cannot allow . . .”

“Thanks.” Joe snatched the wardrobe door open and pulled out the cassock. He slipped it on over his clothing and stuffed his Stetson hat beneath the voluminous robe, then perched the biretta on top of his head.

Already six feet two, with black hair and weathered flesh, with the biretta he probably looked as big as a grizzly. But as harmless as a kitten.

He hoped.

“Is there a side door, Padre?”

The priest pointed. “There is a covered corridor that leads to the convent, but you are not permitted to . . .” By then he was speaking to an empty room. Joe Moss was already on his way out of Father O'Connor's office and headed toward the convent. The convent where Jessica was.

3

THE FIRST THING Joe did when he reached the corridor that connected the church to the convent was to open the priest's robes and take a leak into the bushes that were struggling to survive in this stony, arid soil.

While he stood there watering the plants, he could see one pair of armed men standing guard at the front of the church. Another two patrolled back and forth along the road that ran past it.

He had slept longer than he realized when he was in that hole in the ground. It was well past sundown now. Joe welcomed the shadows. They would help him get away without endangering the nuns or—more important—little Jessica.

But if he could see her, even speak to her before he left . . .

Joe scowled. He did not dare try to push his luck that far. If Peabody's men discovered his attachment to the child, they could well take her hostage. He would not put it past them, and the last thing in the world Joe would ever do would be to place his daughter in harm's way.

He had no more than gotten a glimpse of her, but already he loved her more than life itself, and as soon as he could find Fiona they would take Jessica back and be a family.

As soon as he could find Fiona.

Joe's scowl deepened and turned into a sigh. He rearranged the robes and hurried along the corridor, letting himself into the convent at the other end.

“Father, I . . . who are you? I haven't seen you here before. Are you passing through? Is there anything you need?” The nun looked mildly confused but not alarmed. “Is Father O'Connor with you? Is he all right?” She shuddered. “There was shooting earlier today. Very close to the church, it was.”

Joe wanted to tell her to shut the hell up, but that was probably not the best idea. He let her prattle on for a moment, then asked, “Do you have a horse I can use?”

“We? A horse? No, of course not. Whatever use would we have for a horse?”

“No, of course not. I tell you what, Sister, whyn't you guide me over to the other side of this place.”

She gave him a questioning look, but did not voice her reaction to what must have seemed a very odd request. “Of course, Father.”

Father. No one had ever called Joe “Father” before. Under the circumstances, with Jessica somewhere within these walls, it seemed strange to him. And kind of nice, too. “Thank you.”

“Will you be hearing confessions, Father? Or assisting Father O'Connor with Mass?”

Joe ignored her, and after a minute or so it got through to the nun that he was not feeling chatty. She hushed up and led the way.

He followed as the nun silently led him through a maze of handsomely appointed rooms to the far side of the convent. Joe kept looking anxiously to either side, hoping he might see Jessica, but the only thing he saw were a few black-robed nuns going about the humdrum chores of institutional living.

The convent was dimly lighted—thank goodness—and eerily silent. Not that he minded that. Silent beat the hell out of the fusillade of gunfire that would erupt if he were seen and recognized.

“This is the other side, the side toward Virginia City,” the nun said, stopping abruptly when they reached a long hallway that was lined with a series of small rooms on one side and corresponding small stained-glass windows on the other. “Is the diocese planning an expansion, Father? Is that why you are here?”

Instead of answering, Joe asked, “Do those windows open?”

“Oh, I shouldn't think so. We've never had any reason to open them. We get quite enough fresh air without that.” She tilted her head. “Why would you ask a thing like that?”

“'Cause I'm gonna open one of them,” Joe said.

“Why would you . . . ? ”

Joe ignored her. He stepped closer and took a look at the window frame. It was permanently fixed in place and not intended to be opened.

What the hell!

He removed his biretta and handed it to the puzzled nun, then shrugged out of the cassock, too, and let it fall off his shoulders and slide to the stone floor.

Joe put his Stetson back onto his head and winked. “Thanks, Sister. I owe you one.”

He pulled his Colt's revolving pistol from his holster— he thought the nun was going to faint dead away when he did so—and used the butt to carefully break the nearest stained-glass window.

Then he proceeded to climb through the vacant window frame and lower himself to the ground outside while the nun watched in stunned silence the behavior of this very strange new priest.

4

DAMN NUNS SHOULD have put some effort into landscaping, Joe silently grumbled when he hit the ground outside the convent, because he sure could have used some bushes to get behind. Crouched there against the bare stone of the convent walls, he felt like there must have been a thousand eyes pointing in his direction.

A glance toward the road where Peabody's gunmen were patrolling back and forth showed that at least at this moment the coast was clear. Joe turned and went in the opposite direction, staying in his crouch, revolver in one hand and tomahawk in the other.

If anyone tried to stop him, he would use the tomahawk if he could, the revolver if he had to.

But he would much prefer to make this getaway in silence and without bloodletting. Since he could not kill them all, that is. Had he been able to lay waste to Peabody and every one of his men, Joe would gladly have done that in order to protect Fiona and little Jessica. Short of that, however, what he wanted right now was to get the hell away from there and find Fiona.

He needed her if he hoped ever to set things right. At this point, he did not even know how it was that Chester Peabody, the eldest of the brothers, came to wind up dead in Fiona's home with a butcher knife in his back. In the magic of reuniting and quickly marrying, Joe had not had a chance to talk with Fiona about that. Did she kill Peabody? If she did, what reason or reasons did she have?

Joe had no idea what her answers to those questions would be, and in truth he really did not much care. What he knew was that he still loved her. Deeply. And Fiona was now his wife in name as well as in deed. Whatever she did or did not do in the past, he would stand with her against all care or torment.

Anything that threatened her, threatened him as well, and he would fight tooth and claw to protect her. And Jessica. Lordy, what a beautiful child Jessica was. It melted his heart just to think about her. Just knowing that Jessica existed made him want to be a better man, made him want to be worthy of the child when finally he and Fiona could reclaim her from the convent and become a family.

All of that, though, would depend on him first getting away from Peabody's men so he could follow Fiona, find her, and somehow return to recover Jessica from Father O'Connor and the nuns.

Joe ran swift and silent through the night. His Henry rifle was lost, somewhere behind where he had dropped it once it ran empty. The Henry repeater would make a fine trophy for whichever of Peabody's men found it, but no matter. He could buy another. The important thing was to keep his scalp. And equally important to him was that he find Fiona.

The Palouse horse was gone, too. He had abandoned it outside the church when he had to cover Fiona's escape on her leggy sorrel mare. He hoped, though, that once loose, the Palouse might have drifted back to the last “home” it had known, to the barn behind Beth Hamilton's mansion.

The house there had been destroyed, burned to the ground by the Peabodys, but the barn and tack shed had been intact when Joe and Fiona went there that morning.

Joe stood upright and extended his stride, muttering under his breath the cadences of a Crow war chant.

Because he was indeed intent upon a long and bloody war with those Peabody sons of bitches who threatened his wife and his daughter.

Joe knew exactly the order of things that he intended. First, find Fiona. Second, kill Peabody and any of his men who stood with the son of a bitch. Finally, reclaim Jessica from the nunnery.

But first he needed to get away from Virginia City and find Fiona.

Wherever she had run to, however far, he would follow and he would find her. He
would
!

5

THE PALOUSE WAS there, standing outside the pen that served as a corral behind the ruins of the Hamilton mansion. Beth's tall gelding was inside the enclosure along with a horse Joe did not recognize. The Palouse had a broken rein, but seemed unharmed.

Joe stripped his bridle off, but left the horse where it was while he crawled inside the pen. “Easy, boys. You know me. Easy now,” he said in a soft, soothing voice.

Beth's gelding nickered at the scent of this man with whom it was already familiar. The other horse turned its butt toward him and stamped its forefeet a few times, but did not offer to kick.