Blood at Bear Lake (8 page)

Loading the magazine of the Spencer the way the clerk showed him, Joe worked the trigger guard—the movement seemed a little awkward to him, but he knew he would get used to it—and cocked the hammer. Aimed and quickly fired. Pushed the trigger guard lever down and yanked it back up. Aimed. Fi—dammit! He had forgotten to cock the hammer. With his Henry, using the lever did that job at the same time. He tried again. Cocked. Fired.

Then he walked forward and critically examined where the bullets struck. The Spencer, he judged, shot just a little bit high and a hair to the left. That was all right. Now that he knew where it shot, he could compensate. And when he got where he was going, he could borrow some tools and correct the sights.

When he got where he was going.

Last night when he went to bed, he'd had no idea where it was that he intended to search for Fiona. Now he did.

His nighttime pondering reminded him that the last place he'd seen Fiona before their recent reunion was outside Fort Laramie. That was where her sonuvabitch father had forced them apart five years ago. In the little time he and Fiona spent together since their reunion and marriage, Joe had often spoken of his friendship with Sol Pennington, a former mountain man who ran a trading post at Fort Laramie. Maybe Fiona would head for Fort Laramie in the expectation of finding her husband there.

He hated the thought of a woman traveling alone on the Salt Lake emigrant route, but he knew Fiona to be courageous. Perhaps more so than was good for her.

If she thought she might find Joe at the other end of that road, Joe knew she would set out on it regardless of the dangers she would face. From Indians. From drought and heat. From renegade whites who thought that the absence of civilized surroundings meant they no longer had to act like civilized men. The dangers were boundless, as Joe knew full well. He also knew that Fiona would be willing to face them.

His hope now was that he could find her before any harm befell his brave and beautiful bride.

Joe reloaded the magazine of the Spencer and shoved it back into the leather, then saddled his Palouse and loaded the mule ready to travel.

Of a sudden, he was anxious to get moving.

He wanted more than ever—more than anything—to find Fiona.

21

JOE SAW THE dust long before he ever saw them, and heard the jangle of their trace chains and the screech and squeal of axles that needed grease long before they ever came near. Not many wagons, he thought, but they were in bad condition. Another ragtag bunch of ignorant emigrants, he figured. Likely half-starved, too. More simple-minded pieces of human shit too stupid to wipe their own asses. Well, they could just go along on the damned trail without his help. Damned if he was going to bother trying to educate the dumb sons of bitches. No, sir.

Grumbling and groaning under his breath, Joe stood from beside his tiny campfire and poured more water into his battered coffeepot—damned if he was going to add fresh grounds for a bunch of pork eaters so ignorant they didn't know enough to grease a wagon wheel—and moved the pot over the flames.

He had been on the road three days now and this would be the third outfit he passed, all of them headed toward California. And away from the war.

The war was bad, they said. It had gone past armies in uniform fighting each other. Now it was neighbor shooting at neighbor. The folks he'd seen thus far were mostly from Missouri and Tennessee and they were more escaping from something than going toward anything. They traveled out of desperation instead of hope. Joe could see that in their eyes.

Not that he was going to be bothered with them. The wagon tracks of those who had gone before were plain enough that a blind man couldn't get lost in this vast expanse of rolling hills and runty cedar scrub. The hell with them one and all.

But they would likely be hungry, damn them for a nuisance. He took out his bowie and eyed the antelope he had knocked down earlier in the afternoon. He would slice off just a little to give to the stupid bastards. A haunch maybe. Or . . . what the hell. He could always get more. Let them take this whole antelope. The meat would just go bad before he could be bothered with drying it anyway. Might as well give it to the fools from back East as see it rot and go to waste.

He added wood to his fire.

Joe was standing with coffee boiling and meat to offer when the wagons rolled ponderously into view.

There were only two of them, drawn by gaunt oxen. Three on one wagon. Only two on the other. He could see from the way the wagon wheels cut into the soil that the wagons were much too heavily loaded. It amazed him that anyone so ignorant could have gotten this far. And by themselves, too, without the support of others.

A proper train should consist of half a hundred outfits or more. For protection, of course, but even more for the diversity of skills that could be found in a large train. Out away from the towns and the farms back East, a good many of these movers were as helpless as babes. They needed one another's abilities to make a functioning whole.

But a small outfit like this . . . Joe shook his head and waited for them to reach him.

Of the five oxen, two looked ready to drop right then. And he doubted that more than the one pale red near wheeler on the first wagon would make it all the way across the Sierras. These people needed to find themselves a nice place to hole up until their animals could recover some strength after the ordeal of the desert.

“Howdy.”

“Howdy yer own self.” The man who seemed to be the leader of this tiny band came forward and stuck his hand out. “Name's Howard Wickersham.”

“Joe Moss.” He took the offered handshake.

“These is my brothers, Tom and Benjamin. We's from Missoura. Would you be Yankee or Secesh?”

“Neither one,” Joe said. “Not that it's any nevermind o' yours, Mr. Wickersham.”

“Everybody says that, y' know. Nobody ever means it. Now us Wickershams, we's for the Union.” Wickersham, a man almost as gaunt as his oxen, cocked his head and peered at Joe expectantly, obviously waiting for some sort of response to that admission.

Joe had none to give. He did not know what that war was about, and didn't give a shit anyway. Instead, he said, “There's coffee in the pot and meat laid out over there. Help yourselves to 'em.”

“Now that's real neighborly of you, Mr. Moss. Thankee kindly.” Howard motioned to his brothers, and they hurriedly grabbed cups from inside the driving boxes of their wagons and stepped nice and lively to the coffeepot.

Howard looked to be the oldest of the brothers, perhaps as old as Joe, while Tom and Benjamin would be in their late twenties or early thirties. All were dressed in flannel and homespun and were barefoot. They were lean and shaggy, with unkempt hair and dark, uncut beards. They seemed to be unarmed save for the large knives on their belts.

If they had no rifle to hunt with, that could explain the way they pounced on the antelope carcass, each man carving away a huge chunk of meat to roast. If they kept at it that way, Joe thought, it would all be gone before daybreak.

Not that he gave a damn. He had given it all. They were welcome to use it when and how they pleased.

Joe turned away from the grunting and gasping as the three men gorged themselves, barely taking time to sear the outside of the slab of meat before they gulped it down, blood running into their beards.

He turned away, intending to step a few paces off and drop his britches to crap, but stopped short when he saw movement inside the second wagon.

The end canvas fluttered, then was drawn back a few inches and an eye appeared, peeping out from behind the filthy canvas.

“Who're you?” Joe asked.

“Don't be paying her no mind,” a voice behind him said. There was an edge of challenge in the tone, Joe thought. A cold edge of warning.

Joe grunted. Like he himself said a few moments earlier, none of this was any of his nevermind.

But he changed direction and walked farther from the wagons before he squatted.

22

JOE SAT CROSS-LEGGED just outside the circle of firelight, smoking his pipe and listening to the belches, farts, and occasional words that came from the Wickersham brothers. They had gorged themselves on antelope meat and now were sharing a jug back and forth among themselves. Whiskey no doubt. They did not offer to share any with Joe.

He noticed that they had not taken any food to the woman in the wagon. Or women. There could be more than one in there for all he knew. He got the impression, though, that however many there were, they would have to scavenge the leavings of the men if they wanted food.

Joe was tempted to carry something to the wagon. A slab of meat or a few twists of stick bread. But the brothers were sure to resent that and rightfully so. It was not his place to mix into their family matters regardless of what that might entail.

By the time the brothers were done eating, it was fully dark, the night cool and the canopy of stars burning bright. One of them said something and the other two laughed. Howard raised his voice and called, “Woman. Come out here.”

Which suggested there was only one woman inside the wagon. It was about time they let her eat, Joe thought.

There was movement behind the canvas, and almost immediately a dark form dropped over the tailgate of the wagon and came slowly toward the fire.

“Don't you dawdle, damn you, or you'll get y'self another whuppin',” Howard snapped.

The woman increased her pace. A little. It was obvious that she was reluctant to come, although she surely would be hungry at this hour. Unless she had food in the wagon. She could have been in there nibbling hardtack all day and be stuffed as full as a Christmas goose for all he knew.

When she reached the light and he got a look at her, he was surprised. She was young. Probably no more than twenty if she was that old. And she was pretty. She was small, not standing much more than five feet tall. She had dark hair worn in a tidy bun. She was barefoot, but must have been accustomed to going without shoes because she did not hop or grimace or complain when she walked across the sharp stones and gravel of the soil here.

Did not grimace. Did not, in fact, show any expression that Joe could perceive. She was as solemn and stony-faced as a riverboat gambler. She walked near to the fire and stopped, head down, making no move toward a chunk of meat that lay on a slab of rock beside the fire nor toward the coffeepot that sat close to it.

“The boys and me is thirsty,” Howard told her.

The girl looked not at the brothers but at Joe. For the first time, she exhibited a facial expression. She closed her eyes and began to cry, tears welling up under her lashes and rolling down her cheeks. The tears caught the firelight and looked like bright jewels that reached the corners of her mouth and disappeared there.

“Don't just stand there, damn you. Open up.”

Still crying, still with her eyes tight shut, the woman reached with trembling fingers to reluctantly unfasten the row of buttons at her throat and down the front of her dress.

She spread the dress open, exposing pale, meaty breasts with huge, engorged nipples.

Tom Wickersham snorted and yelled, “Me first, Howard. You promised. Me first.”

“Well, go ahead, boy. Don't keep us'uns waiting.”

Tom stood before the woman and fondled her left breast for a moment. Then he bent down, took her nipple into his mouth, and began to suckle, snorting and slurping like a pig suckling its dam.

Joe's first thought was that Tom's beard must have tickled, but if it did she did not show it. She did not show much of anything, but a flush of embarrassment darkened her face and throat as she stood there being humiliated in front of a complete stranger.

While Thomas was bent over sucking milk from the woman, Benjamin stood with a grin and approached her, crouching down to position himself for a drink from the other side.

“Hold it,” Howard snapped before Benjamin had a chance to suck on the woman's other tit. “I want me some milk for my coffee.” He cackled loudly, grabbed a coffee cup, and stepped across the fire to reach the others.

Howard grasped the woman's tit while Thomas continued to root and snort at the other one. He squeezed hard enough to turn the flesh around his fingers white. The woman rose onto tiptoes and winced at the pain, but she did not cry out nor did she try to pull away from the pain. Howard held his cup beneath her nipple and caught a stream of white fluid squirting out of her body. After a moment, Howard turned away and nodded to Benjamin. “All right, boy. You c'n take what's left.”

“How 'bout him?” Benjamin asked, glancing toward Joe.

“What d'ya mean? What about him?”

“Do you want t' offer him a drink o' milk, too, Howard? Old Tessa might like the look o' him, eh? She might like havin' somebody else pull at her dugs.”

“I don't give a shit what she'd like,” Howard snarled. Then he grinned. “But y' know, it mightn't be such a bad notion after all. Teach her a thing or two, eh?” He laughed and turned toward Joe. “Hey, you, whatever your damn name is. You want t' have you a drink when the boys is done with her? Seems the least we'uns can do after you give us this meat an' coffee an' them fine horses an' all.”

“I'm not thirsty, thanks. And I don't recall giving you any horses,” Joe said.

“You don't?” Howard acted surprised. Then he chuckled and snapped his fingers. “By damn, that's right. You didn't. But you's going to, ain't you?” He reached around behind him and motioned to the others with a wave of his hand.

Benjamin pushed the woman away and stood upright. He and Thomas both turned to face Joe. The brothers spread a few paces apart, the two younger ones flanking Howard.