The Mother Lode (19 page)

“I'm so glad! Poor Jasper has been very lonely back there, and I'm sure that he's delighted to have the company of your nice horses.”

Joe said nothing because Jasper had tried to cow-kick him in the head, and appeared to be a big, mean sonofabitch that wasn't worth feeding. But this woman obviously knew nothing about horses and she loved Jasper. Better just to let her cling to the illusion that he was a nice horse who welcomed the company of his own kind. And it was damn sure better not to tell her that his Palouse horse was gonna kick the hell outa Jasper and get him lined up properly in the pecking order about one minute after they met.

“Joe?”

It was Ellen at the doorway.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. McCarthy is awake and he wants to talk to you
in private.
”

“Humph!”
Joe excused himself, drained his glass, and set it down on the railing before he went into McCarthy's room to confront the old man and learn the truth about Fiona's whereabouts.

“Close the door behind you,” McCarthy ordered from his bed in a weak voice. “We have some serious talking to do.”

“I reckon so,” Joe replied, closing the door. “I come for Fiona and my child.”

“You're too late.”

Joe shut the door and went over to the old Irishman's bedside with his fists clenched at his sides. “It's never too late, Brendan. Now tell me where I can find 'em and don't give me any of your usual bullshit.”

McCarthy's eyes shifted off toward the window, and damned if Joe didn't see that they were wet with fresh tears. He didn't think that the man had enough feelings for tears. McCarthy certainly hadn't shed any when his wife had died on the wagon train that Joe had been leading westward four years earlier.

“Where are they?” Joe asked, his voice softening.

“I don't know where Fiona is now,” McCarthy replied. “Honest to God I don't.”

Joe swallowed his disappointment like it was a rough rock. “What about my child?”

“You have a daughter. Her name is Jessica.”

“Jessica,” he whispered. “That's a real pretty name.”

“Not half as pretty as she is,” McCarthy told him. “She and Fiona are the lights of my sorry life.”

“Where is the girl?”

McCarthy hesitated for so long that Joe almost grabbed him by the neck to shake the truth out of the old man. But then he said, “Joe, you're not going to like this one little bit, but your daughter Jessica is in the care of the Sisters of Charity down at the Catholic church.”

Joe was stunned. “But . . . but
why
?”

“Because Fiona
gave
Jessica to them. They are now her legal guardians.”

“To hell if they are!” Joe roared.

“I told you that you wouldn't like it, but that's the truth. Little Jessica lives at the convent down at St. Mary of the Mountain, and she's being raised in the Catholic faith and expected to take her vows someday and join their order.”

Joe staggered over to an expensive sitting chair and fell into it half-dazed. “You mean become a
nun
!”

“Yep. That's how it's going to be.”

“Over my dead body!” Joe shouted, coming to his feet again.

McCarthy looked up at the stricken expression on Joe's face, and then he cackled with crazy, broken laughter and sobs of despair.

“They won't even let me visit her,” McCarthy finally said. “They run me off and told me never to come back.”

“They won't run me off, by gawd!”

“By gawd they will,” McCarthy countered. “Those nuns mother that girl like hens do their chicks. As far as they are concerned, everyone and everything in little Jessica's past was sent by Satan. They're going to save her soul and shield her from all evil.”

McCarthy took a deep, ragged breath and scrubbed at his wet eyes. “I'm evil and you're evil. And to them, even Fiona is evil.”

“I'll go get her!” Joe vowed. “I'll go get her right now.”

“You can try,” McCarthy told him. “But you won't have any more luck at it than I did.”

“What? You think I can't handle nuns?”

The old man shook his head. “Fiona gave them legal custody of Jessica. She was desperate and on the run. It was what she thought best to do.”

“What do you mean, ‘on the run'?” Joe demanded.

“I mean she was running for her life,” McCarthy said. “Because she killed Mr. Chester J. Peabody.”

“No! Fiona wouldn't kill anybody.”

“I'm sure that she had no choice.” McCarthy sobbed and stiffened with pain. He shuddered and wheezed. “You see, Joe, Fiona had . . . .”

Suddenly, the Irishman's eyes went round with fear and overwhelming pain. He gasped and grabbed at his chest, mouth working silently in a desperate plea for something that Joe could only imagine.

“Doc!” Joe shouted. “Doc!”

Dr. Taylor was at the bedside in a moment. But it was too late. Brendan McCarthy's heart had failed completely and he was already dead.

“
J
OE? JOE!” ELLEN shouted, but Joe was already trotting down the mountainside headed for the tall, white-steepled St. Mary's. He didn't exactly know what he was going to say or do, but he had to see his daughter and no one was going to hold him back from that after all these years.

Joe had long legs and halfway down the mountainside, he realized that he had left all his weapons in his room at the Hamilton mansion. Probably just as well. The last thing he needed to do was to kill a nun or a priest. That, by gawd, would get him hanged and sent to hell for certain.

The church was very impressive, and sat just below the town on a large lot next to a sign that proclaimed in bold letters that this would be the future home of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. Joe could read that sign, but it held no interest for him. He stopped a few hundred feet from the big, brick church and rectory, then took a few deep breaths to calm down.

Joe smoothed out his clothes and wished that he could hide McCarthy's bloodstains from when he'd carried the old drunk over to Dr. Taylor's office. But the bloodstains were dried and set into his shirt, and there was nothing to do for it unless he wanted to hike back up the mountainside and find a mercantile, then buy himself a new shirt.

Maybe I should do that,
he thought, suddenly very unsure of himself because what happened next with the nuns might be the most important meeting of his entire life.

“Joe!”

He turned to see Ellen hurrying after him, and he waited for her because he was suddenly unsure of what to say to the nuns or how to ask for Jessica.

“Joe,” she said, badly out of breath, “what are you doing?”

“My daughter is in there with 'em, Ellen, and they're fixin' to make her one of their kind. Take the vows and everything.”

“But your daughter is only four years old.”

“They start 'em young. When I was in Santa Fe, I saw those priests and nuns and they had those little Mexican kids bowin' and makin' the sign of the cross almost before they were off the teat.”

Ellen took his hand. “Listen to me carefully. I'm your friend and you trust my judgment, don't you?”

“Sure, but . . . .”

“Then I'm telling you that this isn't the way to handle the situation.”

“But . . . .”

“We'll go back up to the mansion and talk about this. Come up with a plan of action. That way, when we meet these good Catholic nuns, we've got everything in mind that we need to say and know. We've thought it out, Joe.”

“Don't you understand that I've waited four years for this moment?” Joe said with exasperation.

“Then you can wait a few hours more so that we don't make this harder than it should be. Most likely, the nuns will understand that you are Jessica's father and have a right to reclaim her.”

“But what if they don't?”

“Well, Joe, you can't use your fists, knife, gun, or tomahawk on them. You understand that, don't you?”

“I reckon,” he said with a heavy heart.

“If they won't let Jessica go, then we can hire a lawyer to help us.”

“I don't put much faith in 'em, Ellen.”

“Perhaps not, but that's our best option. We can ask Mrs. Hamilton and that newspaperman, Dan DeQuille, who is the best lawyer in Virginia City. But maybe it won't come to that. It probably won't. Let's just calm down and go back to the mansion and think this out so that we make a good first impression on the priest and his nuns.”

Joe knew that Ellen was right. “I need to buy a new shirt and coat. Maybe take another bath and get a shave, too.”

“Now you're talking,” Ellen said, linking her arm with his and slowly turning Joe around. “What did Mr. McCarthy say about Fiona before he died of heart failure?”

Joe stopped and took a deep breath. “He said that Fiona
killed a man.
”

Ellen's hand tightened her grip. “That's what he said?”

“Yes. A man named Chester J. Peabody. He sounded like an important fella 'cause he put
Mister
in front of the name.”

“That doesn't make sense to me,” Ellen said. “If Fiona did that, then surely Mr. DeQuille, Dr. Taylor, or Mrs. Hamilton would have heard about it.”

“I don't know what to tell you,” Joe said, shaking his head in confusion. “But I have to believe that old man McCarthy was telling me the truth. Besides, I know Fiona, and she wouldn't have abandoned our daughter unless something terrible had gone wrong.”

Ellen thought about it a moment, then said, “There are only two explanations. One is that Mr. DeQuille, Beth Hamilton, and the doctor didn't make the connection because Fiona was using your last name, Moss, instead of McCarthy. And the other is that no one knows for sure who killed Mr. Peabody.”

“Somebody knows,” Joe said. “Otherwise, Fiona wouldn't have had to run for her life.”

“That's right. That's exactly right. So we need to find out who knows about this death and what this all means for Fiona and your daughter.”

Joe removed his hat and sleeved his sweating brow. For some reason he felt drawn to the cemetery. “Maybe Peabody is lyin' in his grave right over there. Maybe it would tell us something.”

“Headstones don't usually state the cause of death, but we can hike over there and take a look,” Ellen suggested. “We have time to do that before sundown.”

Joe stared hard at the church, almost as if his eyes could penetrate those red brick walls and see his little girl at last. But they couldn't, of course, so he shrugged and said, “Let's go ahead and try that. The walk to the cemetery will help clear my troubled mind.”

Ellen took his hand and they headed off, but neither one of them was optimistic that the cemetery would hold the answer to this tragic mystery that had just turned all of their worlds upside down.

I
T WAS AN even bigger cemetery than Joe had thought after viewing it from a long distance. There were, of course, separate sections for the Catholics and the Protestants, and a third section off in the back that was on the steepest, rockiest ground where Indians, Mexicans, and the Chinese were buried.

“We'll start in the Protestant section,” Ellen said as they stepped through the wrought-iron gate and entered the cemetery. “If we don't find a Peabody there, we'll go to the Catholic section.”

Joe thought that sounded like a reasonable plan. He didn't feel comfortable hanging around in a cemetery no matter what the former faith of the people it held. But as they moved around in the Protestant section, he began to appreciate how dangerous and unhealthy it was to be a deep-rock miner on the Comstock Lode.

“Almost all of these graves are only two and three years old,” Ellen observed. “And most of them are as humble as apple pie. Look, Joe, many of the tombstones tell the story of where these poor people came from, and a few even tell
why
they died.”

“William McCord,”
Joe read from a headstone.
“Born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1838. Died of a mine cave-in. Bill was a friend to all.”
Joe shook his head. “Poor Bill Mc-Cord was just twenty-four years old when he died.”

“Most of these men were only in their twenties,” Ellen said, her expression sad. “Mine cave-ins, mine floods, poisonous gas, and pneumonia.”

“And some died from drinkin' like McCarthy,” Joe said.

“Quite a few, in fact.”

“And look,” Ellen said, “how many are from England and Wales.”

“Here's a young woman named Nora,” Joe said. “And she's buried beside her baby, Andrew Parks. Looks like she was just a girl herself and her poor child wasn't but a day old.”

“Nora Parks died in childbirth, Joe. It happens all the time because the unborn baby is turned the wrong way or there's bleeding that can't be stopped. Maybe other things that I don't care to explain.”

“At least Fiona didn't die havin' Jessica,” Joe said, trying to boost his low spirits. “And I sure wish that I'd have been there at her side.”

“Women don't want men at their side in childbirth unless they have no choice.”