The Mother Lode (10 page)

Joe was grinning, but now his face turned hard and ugly and his hand fell to the tomahawk. “Mister, you must think that I'm either stupid or out of my . . . hiccup . . . mind drunk to pay ten dollars!”

“The room I had in mind comes with something special,” the bartender said, backing up fast.

“Ain't nothin' so special in a room worth ten damn dollars!”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Moss. Five dollars?”

“Three is more'n fair after all the drinks I just bought.” Joe peeled off three dollars and shoved his bankroll back deep down in his pocket.

“Three is fine, Mr. Moss.” The bartender turned to a man in a white shirt and tie. “Charley, would you please help Mr. Moss up to Room Fourteen?”

“Sure thing.” Charley was big and beefy. He grabbed Joe by the arm and started to steer him away, but Joe didn't like anyone grabbing him so he threw off Charley's grip. “Just point the way,” he growled.

“There are the stairs,” Charley said. “Think you can make it up them?”

“Watch me,” Joe said, placing one new boot in front of the next, only to discover that he was listing badly.

Everyone that had been drinking Joe's expensive John Bull laughed, and that made him mad so he whirled around and grabbed a card table for support, fumbling for his tomahawk. When he finally got the damned thing out of his belt, the men stopped laughing and grew silent.

“You people . . . hiccup . . . drink a man's whiskey and then you make fun of him? Is that how it's done in these parts?”

Nobody said a word and nobody was smiling anymore as Joe waved his tomahawk around, and then let out a wild Indian whoop and began to dance a bit on the barroom floor. Suddenly, he was remembering a time up along the Green River when he was this drunk and about to get into a fight with a mountain man named Crazy John. They'd both had tomahawks and Joe thought they were just funnin' around and having a good time. But then Crazy John had taken a swing and struck Joe on the forearm, cracking the bone. It hadn't hurt too badly then, but it had made Joe mad and he'd whacked Crazy John in the shoulder, opening up a gusher of blood and shocking even the riotous rendezvous crowd. For a moment, it could have gone in either direction, one man killing the other. But he and Crazy John had started laughing and then shaken hands. They'd been good friends right up until the day that the Blackfoot had captured and scalped Crazy John.

The Lucky Lady Saloon suddenly began to roll under his feet, causing him to fall on the floor. He tossed his beef stew and liquor into the sawdust, and then wiped his mouth with his sleeve, soiling his new shirt.

“Mister, why don't you put that tomahawk back in your belt and let Charley help you upstairs?” the bartender asked.

“Maybe I will,” Joe said, grabbing a chair and climbing to his feet. “And maybe I'll have me another bath tonight.”

“Might be a good idea before you meet that woman.”

Joe puked a little more and smoothed his fouled shirt. “Enjoyed the company,” he said, lurching for the stairs. With Charley's reluctant assistance, he finally made it to his room and collapsed on the bed.

“You puke all over this room and it'll cost you another dollar,” Charley warned. “If you're gonna puke some more, then I'll help you down to the end of the hall or have a Chinaman bring up a slop bucket.”

“I'm done now,” Joe said, sitting up and closing one eye so that Charley wasn't a pair of Charlies.

“You sure can drink and tell windies,” Charley said just before leaving. “I'd guess that you were a real heller in your younger days.”

“I'm
still
a heller,” Joe slurred.

“I'll bet your guts are shot,” Charley told him. “A man that can drink like you has been doin' it for a while and has to have rotten guts.”

Joe grabbed his tomahawk and was ready to see if he could nail Charley between the eyes, but the man ducked out of the room and ran down the hall.

After that, Joe lay on the bed and fell asleep. Soon, he dreamed of his mountain man days and those unbelievable rendezvous when all of his trapper and Indian friends would get together and trade, drink, and fornicate like wild weasels. They'd run footraces, wrestled, fought, and gambled for stakes that had taken the best part of a year to earn. And they'd swapped Indian girls, told outrageous lies about strangling grizzly bears and running down elk on foot and then riding them bareback over the high mountain peaks. Oh, what a time that had been!

Now dreaming and snoring like a resting steam locomotive at the station, Joe felt like those fine times had happened a whole 'nother lifetime ago . . . and he guessed that they surely had.

Hiccup.

J
OE MOSS AWOKE deep in the night to feel someone tugging at his pants. Instantly, he knew that they were trying to get at his roll of bills, which was half of all the money he possessed.

“Hurry up!” a voice urgently whispered. “Get it and let's get out of here.”

“I'm tryin', dammit! Man, he sure stinks!”

“Shut up and get that money!”

Joe was just sober enough to realize that he had to act fast or he was going to be robbed or maybe even murdered. His bowie knife was still in his belt and so was his tomahawk, so Joe grabbed the thief's wrist in his left hand and his bowie knife with his right. He stabbed the thief just below his rib cage and then twisted his blade upward.

The man let out a horrible scream and Joe felt his warm, spurting blood. The second thief jumped on them both because he was still determined to get Joe's bankroll. Joe couldn't get the first man off himself and was trapped by the weight. Suddenly, the bed slats broke under the three of them and in the confusion and blood, Joe rolled sideways and then was rolling on the floor.

The light was poor, but Joe recognized the second man to be Charley. A muzzle flash exploded between them and Joe felt a bullet graze his neck. He'd lost his bowie, which was slick with blood, but he still had the tomahawk, so he pulled it free and slashed at the dim outline of Charley's face just as the man fired a second shot that went wide.

Joe's tomahawk glanced off Charley's head, shearing off an ear. Charley yelled and Joe rolled onto the man, slamming a fist into his face and then grabbing Charley by the hair and bashing his head up and down on the wooden floor. Charley tried to gouge out Joe's eyes, but that stopped when Joe began hacking the man's scalp from his skull.

“You sonsabitches drank my whiskey and then tried to rob and kill me!” Joe raged. “I'll have
both
your scalps!”

Charley was hysterical as Joe chopped off his scalp and then buried the blade of his tomahawk in the man's forehead, splitting it open like a ripe melon.

Joe crawled over to the first man. It was the bartender. “You bastard!” he shouted, pulling his knife from the man's body and then scalping him while he quivered and his heels tattooed the floor. The bartender wouldn't stop screaming until Joe cut his throat, and even after that he continued to make the most awful sucking sounds.

By now, everyone in the upstairs rooms of the Lucky Lady was pouring out into the hallway and then filling Joe's doorway. Someone had a lantern and when they saw Joe waving two bloody scalps, one of the men began to puke out his guts even harder than Joe had done earlier.

“Jaysus Kee-rist!” a man whispered, his eyes wide with pure horror. “I've never seen anything the likes of him!”

“That's Charley and Willard's scalps that he's waving!” another gasped, before choking and turning away to be sick.

“Get him!” someone growled.

Joe was still drunk and quite proud of himself for the fight he'd won when the mob in the doorway came down on him like a mountainside.

“Where the hell am I?” Joe groaned, feeling as if his head was about to explode.

“You're in the Carson City Jail.”

Joe tried to focus, but his head was pounding and one of his eyes was swollen completely shut. When he tried to cradle his aching head, he realized that his wrists and arms were shackled. Suddenly enraged, he shouted, “What is going on here!”

“Moss, there are witnesses that will swear you slaughtered and then
scalped
two of our citizens and
you're
asking the questions?”

Joe took several deep breaths, and then he managed to see a blocky man wearing a badge standing in front of him with other men crowded behind. He glanced down at his pants and saw at once that the roll of bills was missing. “I've been robbed!”

“You are being held for murder.”

Joe couldn't believe what he was hearing. He struggled in vain against his shackles, then got control of his temper. “Sheriff,” he said, looking up at the hard-faced official, “as God is my witness, I was sleeping it off in my room when those two men started beating and trying to rob me. I just fought back and killed 'em, that's all. And now my roll of money is
gone
! Take these shackles off and let me find out who took my money! When I find 'em, I'll kill you a third thief, by cracky!”

“Mister,” the man said, “I'm the sheriff of this town and I'm the one that's going to ask the questions.”

Joe had a foul taste in his mouth and asked for a drink of whiskey. But the sheriff shook his head. “Water, if you behave yourself. That's all you're getting until we decide what to do with you, Moss. We've seen what happens when you get drunk.”

Joe glared up at the man. “When I get drunk I
stay
drunk until I'm ready for sleep. And I was sleeping when those two men came in to rob and murder me. Hell, I was in my own room when it happened . . . wasn't I?”

“Yeah, you were. And I'm not sayin' that Charley and Willard weren't there to rob and harm you. But the way Charley's woman tells it, you invited them both up to Room Fourteen to play poker.”

“Poker!” Joe roared. “I was so drunk I couldn't even have held my cards! Charley's woman is lyin'!”

“I think that's for our circuit judge to decide,” the sheriff said, folding his arms over his broad chest and glaring down at Joe as if he were a crazed killer. “Until he comes to town, you're gonna stay chained and locked up, and you'd better behave yourself or you won't get anything to eat or drink.”

Joe cussed a blue streak.

“Moss,” the sheriff warned, “I'm a Christian and I don't much like to hear that kind of profanity. You keep it up and it'll go hard for you. Judge Paxton is a Christian himself, and he sure won't look favorably on your case if I tell him about your foul gutter mouth.”

Joe squinted up at the man and his voice was thick with fury. “Sheriff, in case you're forgettin' the facts,
I
was robbed and nearly killed in my own hotel room bed. I fought 'em off in self-defense. I deserve to be given a medal for permanently riddin' this town of such thieves and murderers. Instead, you got me chained up and my money is gone. That means someone came in
after
I killed those two and stole my bankroll. So what the hell kind of justice do you folks serve around here?”

“You scalped them!” one of the men behind the sheriff cried in a voice choked with anger. “I was there and you scalped 'em when they were both
still alive
!”

“Well,” Joe said between gritted teeth, “if they were still alive when I lifted their hair, then they damned sure deserved it. If I'd have had a little more time, I'd also have cut off their balls!”

“He's an animal! Worse than a heathen Indian!” someone standing behind the sheriff yelled. “We ought to just hang that inhuman sonofabitch right now! String him up and let him dance and choke his way into Hell!”

Some of the others behind the sheriff let him know they were all for that idea. Joe glared at the bunch of them wishing his hands were free and filled again with his knife and tomahawk. If that were the case, by gawd, he'd take some more scalps in one helluva hurry.

“Judge Paxton ought to be comin' through in about four days and—”

“Four days!” Joe bellowed. “Do you mean I'm supposed to be chained up like an animal for four days?”

“You
are
an animal, Moss. And until the judge comes, you'll be treated like one.”

Then the sheriff turned and had to shove an angry crowd out of the jail. He slammed the door and left Joe spitting and cursing. All in all, Joe knew he'd gotten himself in one bad, bad fix. The only thing he had in his favor was that he'd buried half of his money, at least three thousand dollars, in the same stall where his Palouse horse was being boarded.

But neither that money nor his fast horse was of any help to him now. And if his luck turned as sour as the taste in his mouth, he might even get hanged.

E
LLEN JOHNSON WAS in Bergman's Mercantile Store buying some yardage when she overheard three women talking excitedly about a gruesome murder the night before and how a lot of the men in town were working themselves up to a “necktie party.”

One of the women was saying that the jailed murderer was probably going to be hanged. He was described as being a tall stranger who wore a tomahawk on one hip and a bowie knife on the other.

At that moment, Ellen's heart stopped and she nearly fainted.

“Is anything wrong, ma'am?” the clerk asked from behind his counter.

Ellen took a few deep breaths and squared her shoulders as the three women went outside still talking excitedly about the “necktie party.” They were giggling and carrying on as if there was a church revival or circus in town.