The Mother Lode (26 page)

“And if she doesn't, what will you do?”

Joe just shook his head. “I can't say. But I have to find out. It's what you don't know that works on your insides.”

“Then rest for two days, clean up, and go find that girl,” Beth told him. “And when you both return to claim your daughter, then take her and get off the Comstock Lode before the Peabody men have a chance to even know that you were back in town.”

“That sounds like mighty good advice,” Joe agreed. “But I'd miss you plenty.”

“And I'd miss you, Joe Moss. You know, if it hadn't been that you have a daughter and sweetheart, I might have tried to win your heart.”

Joe blushed. “The plain truth of it is, Beth, that without even tryin' you halfway did,” he confessed, draining his glass, then leaving her to take a much-needed bath.

T
WO DAYS LATER, Joe rode his horse back down Geiger Grade and up to Lake's Crossing. The town had for years been the emigrants' crossing point over the Truckee River, and had boomed when the hordes of Forty-Niners had resupplied there before making a final assault on the Sierra Nevada Mountains in order to reach the California gold fields. And now, since the discovery of the Comstock Lode, Lake's Crossing was again a major supply point through which most of the heavy machinery and provisions passed.

Unlike Virginia City, Lake's Crossing was a beautiful site located beside the wide and free-flowing Truckee River, which surged down a deep canyon from Lake Tahoe. The south end of Virginia Street bustled with commerce, and Joe had to keep reining his horse off to the side to accommodate the huge freight wagons bound for the Comstock Lode. Not more than twenty feet behind, Rip trotted along with his great head swaying back and forth and his eyes missing nothing.

“Fiona is here,” Joe said to his wolf-dog and Palouse horse. “I can feel that Fiona is here and, by gawd, this time I'm gonna find her.”

Joe had given the matter of Fiona's disappearance and hiding a great deal of thought. He knew that, by finding her, he was putting her in mortal danger. He also knew that the Peabody men would not rest until she was either hanged or shot. And, in truth, they would do the same to him once they realized he'd blown up their mining company and had killed their bounty hunter, Ike Grady.

“We aren't gonna have much time to get that child at St. Mary's and leave this Nevada Territory,” Joe said aloud. “They're gonna be after us and they got enough money to stay after us until we're either dead or I have to kill all of those Peabody men.”

Lake's Crossing wasn't nearly as big as Virginia City, but it was sizable and Joe's mind was racing as he rode across the bridge that spanned the Truckee River and tied his horse to a hitching rail.

“Rip, you can stay here with my horse or tag along.” Joe's saddlebags held about five pounds of pork and now he fed half of it to the beast. “Just don't be bitin' anybody or chewin' up anybody's dog or cat. I've got my hands full tryin' to find Fiona without havin' to fuss with any extra trouble you might cause.”

Rip wolfed down the pork and followed Joe up the street until they came to a gunsmith's shop. Joe stepped inside and said, “Howdy. I'm lookin' for a photographer by the name of Faxon Roderus. I hear he's pretty good.”

“You want him to take a picture of you?” the man behind the counter asked, noting Joe's battered but rugged face.

“What if I do?”

The gunsmith glanced down at the beast near Joe and then back at its owner. He forced a wide smile and said, “No offense, sir. You and that dog are . . . are real handsome. And as for Mr. Roderus, he works in his house. That's his studio and darkroom.” The man turned and pointed to a framed picture on his wall. “That's me and my wife, Emily. Mr. Roderus took that picture last month. He sure did a fine job.”

“That he did,” Joe agreed. “Where can I find his house and studio?”

“Just up the street two blocks and turn over one block. He's got a sign out and you can't miss his house.”

“Thank you,” Joe said, his heart starting to hammer in his chest. “Thank you very much.”

“Mister, it's smart to have Faxon take a picture of you and that dog,” the man said as Joe was going out the door. “I've never seen anything like him.”

“He's different,” Joe agreed.

He had no trouble finding the Roderus studio. Faxon had a big sign outside on his lawn advertising his business. It was a nice little wooden house with a picket fence around it and everything was painted yellow. There were flowers in a garden, and it was the kind of a place Fiona would enjoy.

“Well,” he said to himself and his new dog, “here we go. If she's here, my heart might just give out on me after so many years.”

Joe opened the picket gate and walked up to the door. His knees were knocking and he felt a little weightless even though he was no longer a young man. He knocked on the door, and a voice answered that left no doubt in his mind that it belonged to the love of his life.

“Fiona!”

Joe couldn't contain himself a moment longer. Couldn't wait for his beloved to come to the door and see him after four long years of waiting and wanting. “Fiona!”

He almost tore the door off its hinges as he bounded inside with Rip on his heels. Fiona was coming up the dim hallway. When she saw Joe and the giant dog, she staggered, then fainted dead away.

“Holy shit!” Joe cried. “Maybe her heart gave out from the joy!”

He ran to Fiona's side and gathered her up in his arms. She felt some heavier than he'd remembered . . . or maybe he was some weaker. Didn't matter, really.

“Hey!” a man yelled from the back of the house. “What the . . . what are you doin'!”

Joe was momentarily at a loss for words. “I . . . I . . .”

“Put that woman down!”

“Where?”

Faxon Roderus charged up the hallway. “Give her to me!”

“Not on your life, Mr. Roderus. Get a doctor!”

“Bring her in here,” the man said, rushing off with Joe on his heels. “Lay her on that couch. What did you do to her!”

Before Joe could answer, another young woman came running in through the back door and kitchen. Her hands were covered with dirt and Joe knew she had been working in her garden. “What have you done to Fiona!” the young woman screeched.

“Dammit,” Joe cried, “I just . . . just showed up to claim her! I think she's just fainted away.”

Now both of them spied Rip, who had worked his way down the hall to see what all the commotion was about. The woman's hand flew to her mouth and she screamed. Faxon Roderus jumped for a weapon. Rip growled at his display of aggression as the ruff went up on his back. Roderus found a broom not fit to whip a good-sized cat, but Joe knocked it out of the man's hands.

“Are you folks crazy? I'm Joe Moss! I'm the man that fathered a child with Fiona and has come to marry her and reclaim our daughter Jessica up in Virginia City. Would you folks calm yourselves down a mite and help me see to her?”

“You're Joe Moss,” the woman said, staring.

“In the flesh. Now help me with Fiona.”

After that, they all spent several frantic minutes trying to revive Fiona. Rip sat down on a rug and glared at the scene as if he blamed Joe for getting him into this excitable mess.

Joe and Fiona were together at last and both still deeply in love. Joe held the only woman he'd ever really loved in his strong arms and nearly cried, telling Fiona about all the troubles he'd had trying to find her, but vowing that it had been well worth it.

Fiona said, “My father forced me to marry that man in California, Joe, thinking he'd get rich off my new husband's claim. But it had been worked out and . . . do you mind if I just don't talk about it now?”

“Nope,” Joe said, deciding not to ruin this long-overdue time of joy to tell her that her father was dead. “Fiona, what is done is done. All that counts now is that we're together and we ain't ever going to be parted again. And we're going to go up to Virginia City and get Jessica from the Catholics. But why'd you go and do that to our little Jessica?”

“I was being hunted like a murderess,” Fiona confessed. “I had to leave that night that Mr. Peabody was killed or I'd have been lynched. And I knew that I couldn't take our daughter on the run, so I left her at St. Mary's because I was sure that they'd take loving care of her. Joe, I'm sorry!”

He held her close and let her cry it out. “We've both got a lot of talking to do and explaining,” Joe said. “I guess we've made some bad mistakes these past four years, and the worst one I ever made was leaving the wagon train without you.”

“I
had
to stay,” she whispered. “As you well know, I'd given my word to my mother on her deathbed. I just never thought it would be
four years
until I'd see and hold you again.”

“I've been hurt pretty bad a few times.”

She studied his face. “I can see that, Joe. I can see that you've been hurt very badly. But is your heart still good? Getting hurt didn't turn you mean inside, did it?”

“No,” he told her. “But the last beating I got was from the Peabody brothers, and I took revenge on 'em not long ago and blew up their Shamrock Mine with dynamite.”

Fiona's eyes widened. “Oh, my heavens! Now they'll want to kill you, too.”

“I reckon so,” Joe replied, deciding it served no purpose to tell Fiona about the bounty hunter that had been paid to hunt her down for three hundred dollars. “But like I said, what is past is past. Now, we've got to get our daughter and leave this part of the country and go where the Peabody men will never find us.”

“Is there such a place, Joe?” she asked, hugging him tightly. “I'm afraid that we'll never rest easy because they won't ever give up.”

“There are wild, but safe, hiding places in Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Colorado where we won't be found. Places where the Indians know and respect me and would not let white bounty hunters track and kill us. So, yes, darlin', I know places where we can go and never even have to worry about our past.”

She kissed him on the mouth, and tears were streaming down her pretty cheeks. “Joe, let's go get our daughter and leave Nevada forever.”

“That's what we're going to do,” Joe promised. “But before we go up there and face that priest and those nuns, I . . . I want us to be married legal.”

Fiona cried out with delight. “Oh, Joe, that is what I want too! Let me ask Faxon if he will send for a preacher. We could be married right here in this house within the hour, couldn't we?
Couldn't we?
And Faxon and Milly will stand up for us, Joe!”

“You bet that we could. Have they got a nice bedroom for us to . . . well, you know.”

Fiona giggled just like the girl he remembered falling in love with on that wagon train from St. Louis long ago. “Joe, darling, my bedroom has a double bed and it'll serve us well.”

They were both blushing when they went out hand in hand to see if Mr. and Mrs. Faxon Roderus would send for a preacher and allow their wedding to be held in their sweet little house and studio.

J
OE BOUGHT FIONA a pretty bay mare and saddle in Lake's Crossing. The sorrel mare was as tall as his Palouse horse and probably faster; he'd paid more for her than he'd ever spent on any two horses.

“You need a fast, strong horse,” Joe told her as they rode back up steep Geiger Grade toward Virginia City. “And you also have need of this gun and rifle.”

He gave her his own weapons, and kept those that he'd gotten from Ike Grady. “Can you shoot?”

Fiona nodded. “I'm a fair shot with a rifle, not too good with a pistol. But, Joe, I don't want to have to shoot and kill the Peabody men or anyone else.”

Joe was itching to ask her about the death of Mr. Chester J. Peabody, but decided that she would explain how her butcher knife had ended up in the prominent man's back when the time to tell was to her liking. Or maybe she'd never be able to talk about it, which was all right with Joe, who had killed dozens of men in his days when they'd needed killing.

“Fiona,” he said, “we're hopin' not to have to shoot anybody up on the Comstock Lode, but you have to be ready for whatever trouble comes. Those weapons are loaded and they shoot straight.”

Fiona wrapped the gun belt loosely around her waist and pushed Joe's rifle into her scabbard. “I'm so happy now that we're married and together at last that I'm frightened half to death something is about to go terribly wrong.”

“I've got the same worry,” Joe confessed. “All my life I've never felt that I've had much to lose, but now that I do, it's makin' me jumpy.”

Joe had told Fiona all about Ellen Johnson, Dr. Taylor, and Mrs. Hamilton and her fine Virginia City mansion. “There are a lot of nice folks up on the Comstock Lode. I especially like Dr. Taylor and Dan DeQuille. And . . . well, you won't believe this . . . but I learned to read, Fiona. Now I can read and write.”

She laughed. “Joe, that's wonderful! I thought I'd be the one to finally teach you, but that's fine.” She winked at him and it made his heart flutter. “We'll have all kinds of other nice things to do, won't we.”

Joe gulped and thought about their wedding night so fresh in his mind. He could think of plenty of things they could do that were nice and not so nice. What a night they had had together! Compared to the hurried times they'd made love while traveling with the wagon train, last night at the Roderus house was absolutely the best ever and they'd not been able to get enough of each other. In fact, they'd made love standing up and giggling right in the middle of packing to leave this morning. And it had probably shown because Faxon and his wife had been blushing as bad as themselves when they'd said good-bye.