The Mother Lode (23 page)

“Fine idea,” Joe agreed. “But I'll miss having you around during the day.”

“What are
you
going to do, Joe? You're riding our horses down to skin and bones.”

Joe had been thinking about it on those long rides all over these barren hills, and thought he had a sensible answer to her question. “I'm going to track down the Peabody family and tell them that Fiona couldn't have murdered Mr. Peabody.”

“I don't think they'll believe you since you weren't even on the Comstock Lode when Chester Peabody was stabbed to death that night.”

“That may be true,” Joe replied. “But I want to hear their account of the killing, and then maybe I can decide what I need to do to find Fiona.”

Ellen didn't seem to think that was a good idea, but she knew Joe well enough not to argue the point with him, so she just started talking about how good it would be to work for a real doctor and how much she could learn and how it would be nice to have some income.

Joe nodded his head, but he really wasn't listening. It was obvious that Ellen was going to work mostly so she could be near Dr. Taylor. Even a blind man could see that the pair were in love and would eventually get married. That was good for them, and Joe was happy for the couple because they were fine people who deserved some real happiness.

As for himself, he would never be happy until he found Fiona and was able to reclaim his daughter. And given that, he need to track down the Peabody men and see if they had retribution in mind for his Fiona.

Because if they did . . . well, maybe he'd have to kill and scalp one or two of them.

D
AN DEQUILLE HAD already informed Joe all about the Peabody family. They owned and operated one of the richest mines on the Comstock Lode located just over The Divide that separated the rival towns of Gold Hill from Virginia City. It was called the Shamrock Mine, even though the Peabody family was proud to be known as Englishmen.

“They got very lucky early,” DeQuille had explained. “And their mine is one of the few where the mother lode rises almost to the surface, so their costs of extraction are much lower than the deep mines we have working far below Virginia City. The Peabody family is very clannish, very prominent, arrogant, and overbearing as Englishmen often tend to be.”

“How many men left in that family?” Joe asked.

“Chester J. Peabody was the patriarch, their leader. But he is survived by three brothers who have large families. The Shamrock Mine makes no bones about the fact that they prefer to hire English, Scottish, and Welsh men . . . no Irish need apply. They are a tough bunch, Joe. Tough, rich, and said to be ruthless despite their well-cultivated air of being generous benefactors to local charities.”

Joe had taken all that family background in, and now he was riding his Palouse horse over The Divide and down toward the Shamrock Mine just a little ways above Gold Hill. When he arrived at the mine property, the very first thing he noticed was that there weren't the usual monstrous tin buildings that housed hoisting works. Instead, there were five or six smaller tin buildings and an immense mound of mine tailings. Ore wagons were being loaded by a dozen or so workmen, who stood on a high abutment and shoveled ore down into the waiting wagons from both sides.

The entire mining operation was circled by a ten-strand barbed-wire fence, and there were NO TRESPASSING signs posted every five or six feet. All in all, Joe had the feeling that this was not a very hospitable place and it didn't like strangers.

An armed guard stopped Joe at the only gate in and out of the rich claim, and demanded to know what business Joe had at the Shamrock Mine.

“I've come to see the Peabody men,” Joe informed him, rankled because the guard pointed his rifle in Joe's direction.

“They ain't hirin',” the guard said, looking happy about the fact. “So you might as well turn that spotted horse around and ride back to wherever it is that you started from today.”

Joe could see that this man was about the same sort of hostile sonofabitch that the fella at Devil's Gate had been. Unfriendly and downright insulting.

“Well,” Joe said, stepping down from his horse and leading it up close to the guard, “I wasn't exactly lookin' for work.”

“Then what do you want here?”

Joe smiled and used his thumb to tip his hat back so the sun was full on his rugged face. “Actually, what I want most of all right now is to slap that sneer off your pug-ugly face.”

“Huh?”

Joe Moss backhanded the guard so hard that the man staggered and then tripped and landed against the barbed-wire fence. He let out a scream as the barbs tore his flesh. Joe stepped forward and hit him with a thundering upper-cut to the jaw that knocked him completely over the top strand of wire and out cold on the ground.

“I don't know what it is about you fellas that are guards in this neck of the woods,” Joe said, leading his horse through the gate and collecting the guard's weapons, “but you all seem to be stamped out of the same disagreeable mold.”

Joe remounted his horse and rode onto the mine property. He expected that he had already made a mighty poor impression, but he was operating on a short tether and would brook no sass or disrespect today. Not even from the Peabody men, who thought themselves to be the cocks of the walk.

He dismounted by a shack after slowly reading the words: SHAMROCK MINE HEADQUARTERS . . . ONLY THOSE INVITED CAN ENTER.

“Well,” he said to his horse as he tied the animal up in front of the headquarters, “let's see if we can get along a little better with management.”

When he entered the office, he saw a lot of desks, most of which had more ore samples than papers on them, and at least six or seven busy men. They all turned to stare at Joe, and finally one of them detached from the rest and came over to confront Joe. This man, with a white shirt, coat, and black tie, was about five feet eleven and two hundred pounds, and he bore the look of what Joe would have expected of an aristocratic Englishman.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

Joe stuck out his hand, but it was ignored, so he dropped it to his side and replied, “My name is Joe Moss. I have some business to discuss with the Peabody men about my wife, Fiona Moss.”

Joe's words were loud and clear, and it stopped the activity in the office like a clock that suddenly came unwound. The man in front of Joe stepped back a pace, and visibly stiffened like an English bulldog meeting another fighting dog. Two other large men came hurrying across the office to stand beside him.

“You must be the three survivin' Peabody brothers,” Joe said, hands not far from his gun on one hip and tomahawk on the other. “First off, I came to introduce myself. Fiona and I never got formally hitched, but we are married in the way that Indians marry, and that is in the union of body and
spirit
. And second off, that is my daughter that the priest and the nuns are carin' for at St. Mary of the Mountain and I aim to get her back one way or another.”

“Joe Moss, what the hell are you here for?” the biggest of the brothers hissed. “Are you just plain too ignorant to know that your woman murdered our oldest brother?”

The rest of the men in the office building were now marching over to stand behind the Peabody brothers, and there wasn't a single friendly face among them. Joe was starting to feel crowded and cornered.

He gave the Peabody brothers one more chance to see the light. “I'm here to tell you that Fiona
couldn't
have murdered your oldest brother.”

“You were
there,
Joe Moss?”

“No, sir, I was not. But—”

“Gawdamn! You must be dumber than dirt,” one of the brothers hissed. “'Cause that's the only explanation why you'd tell us this bullshit when you weren't even present when that bloody bitch stabbed our older brother to death. Stabbed him in the back six times, the doctor said, when they laid poor Chester out on the slab!”

Joe's hands knotted into fists and he felt a raging fire starting to burn way down in his gut. “Out of respect for your loss I am goin' to forgive what you just called my Fiona,” Joe breathed, words coming very hard and slow. “But the thing I want to tell you is that Fiona wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“You're dead wrong, Moss,” one of them growled. “And when our bounty hunter, Ike Grady, hunts her down and drags what's left of her carcass back to Virginia City to be tried for murder and hanged, you'll see how wrong you are about that
bitch
!”

Joe had forgiven the slur word one time, but he damn sure wasn't of a mind to forgive it a second time. Without word or warning, he hit that lying Peabody right between the eyes with every ounce of his coiled fury and muscle. Peabody went down like a felled pine, and Joe would have kicked him in the head, except the other two brothers along with everybody else in the room came down on him like a rock slide. Next thing he knew he was buried and being beaten worse than the orneriest mule.

Joe fought with his teeth, his hands, and his feet, but he had no chance at all. They seemed to take special delight in kicking him in the crotch and trying to pound his nose through the back of his head. He lost consciousness and when he awoke, he was tied across the Palouse horse and it was galloping over The Divide and then heading for its barn.

He didn't see Ellen and Beth or hear them screaming when the horse trotted along in front of the veranda carrying what looked more like a side of butchered beef than a human being.

And maybe that was just as well because Joe didn't want to come back to the Comstock Lode and its meanness for a good long while.

I
T TOOK NEARLY two months for Joe to recover from his terrible beating, and even then he wasn't feeling in the best of health when he saddled the Palouse and headed off one evening to visit the Shamrock Mine. Because the Shamrock was a surface dig where the ore came out of a huge hole in the ground, it did not operate a twenty-four-hour shift, but was shut down between six o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the morning.

Joe arrived at eight o'clock when the sun was down and before the stars came out. He tied his horse out behind a mountainous tailing where it could not be seen or struck by flying debris. From his saddlebags, he removed three sticks of dynamite that he'd bought from a mining supply company, then ignored the heavy gate and cut the barbed-wire fence. He limped over to the silent headquarters office. It was locked up tight.

“Only those invited can enter, huh?” Joe said, again reading the big, unfriendly sign. “Well, that's fine and dandy 'cause I do not
need
to enter.”

Joe found a rock, wrapped it in a bandanna, and smashed the front office window. Humming a tune, he casually lit the first stick of dynamite . . . the one with a very, very long fuse. He tossed the stick into the headquarters office, then limped over to another big building and did the same with a slightly shorter fuse. Finally, he came to a giant workshop where at least five big ore wagons were in various stages of repair. Joe pitched the third stick of dynamite in among those wagons, then limped back to his horse.

He had time to untie the animal and climb into the saddle before the first stick of dynamite shook every structure in Gold Hill and rattled windows for a mile in all directions. The spotted horse took off running, and Joe just let the animal race over the hills as the second and third sticks of dynamite obliterated the entire Shamrock Mining operation. A cloud of rock and dust sprouted like a giant mushroom and rose hundreds of feet into the night sky.

High up on Mount Davidson, or Sun Mountain as many preferred to call it, Joe rested his horse and gazed down at the inferno that was already feeding up into the swirling dust storm. He could faintly hear shouting, and knew that the Gold Hill Voluntary Fire Department would be way too little and way too late.

“Peabody men . . . I reckon this will keep your minds off doing harm to my Fiona at least for the next few months,” he said to himself. “Plenty long enough for me to track down your hired bounty hunter and give that pilgrim a whole new outlook on life . . . or send him along to the Promised Land.”

Joe smiled with satisfaction, then rode down the western slope of the mountain into the green Washoe Valley, where there was a lake fed by a stream from the Sierras that was a sight for his sore eyes. It was about one o'clock in the morning and he was tired, so he hobbled his horse, spread a bedroll, and slept until the sun came up and made the snowcapped peaks to the west shine like diamonds. There were fish jumping in the shallow lake and, Lord, but he'd have enjoyed skinnin' a stick and trying to rig a hook and line. He hadn't had fresh trout in way too long.

“I'm goin' back to the high mountains where the cold water flows when this is all done,” he promised himself as he admired the Sierras, then rolled his blankets and prepared to move along.

While convalescing, Joe Moss had learned a thing or two about the bounty hunter named Ike Grady. Learned that the man had once been a United States marshal and then a Pinkerton Agency detective. Learned that Grady was corrupt and had been fired from both positions, but also that he was a crack shot and fearless.

Joe wasn't worried because he was as good with a rifle as he was with a knife and his tomahawk. His weakness, he knew, was with a six-gun. He'd just never liked them much, and his hands and fingers were too big and stiff after years of working with animals and trapping beaver in icy streams.

“I probably should have bought me a double-barreled shotgun,” he said to himself as he watched the Palouse greedily feed on grass, something that it had not enjoyed since it had arrived on the Comstock Lode and been put on a steady diet of cured hay.