The Mother Lode (4 page)

“Only about eight miles, maybe ten from here. But do you want some good advice?”

Joe grinned. “Sure, so long as it's free.”

“I'd camp at the head of the road tonight and hit the grade down into Genoa come daybreak. It's a better road than the one down to Carson City, but it's still mighty steep with plenty of sharp switchbacks. You got a good brake on that wagon?”

Joe laid his hand on the brake, not sure how to answer. “It seems to work tolerable.”

“It had better be
more
than tolerable or that wagon, being so heavy with lumber, might get to rollin' too fast and send you and everything else over the side. You'd best take 'er real slow and careful, mister.”

“Thank you for your good advice,” Joe told the man with genuine appreciation. “I certainly will take it to heart.”

Joe continued on until he came to the road leading off the mountain down to Genoa. A posted sign warned that the road was steep and about ten miles long with pullouts where wagons could pass coming up or down. The sign warned freighters never to take the road when it was covered with snow or ice.

“Ain't no snow or ice to worry about now,” Joe said as he drove the team onto a meadow and prepared to camp for the night. “And we'll tackle it first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I'm a'comin', Fiona,” he said that night after failing to kill meat and having to settle for weak cornmeal soup. “I'll be there with you tomorrow night . . . or for sure the next. Just forty-eight hours and you'll finally be in my arms again. Ain't nothin' on earth that can stop me now.”

T
HE MORNING CAME chill and icy along the edges of a nearby stream. Having grazed all night again, Joe's new team looked fresher and a little rounder so that every rib wasn't showing. That was good because he wanted them to look their best when they got to the bottom of this long grade and entered the Mormon settlement.

Joe hitched the team and studied his heavy cargo of planed timber. It was all pine, but still of the highest grade, and he wondered exactly how much it was worth and what it would bring in cash or perhaps trade. Maybe he would have to take his lumber on to Carson City or even up to Virginia City to get a good price. Mormons were fair, but it was Joe's experience that they were exceptionally shrewd bargainers. Joe checked the wagon's brake and took a deep breath. The brake wasn't as strong and sturdy as he'd have liked, but it would have to do until they reached Genoa.

“We'll take it slow,” he said to himself as he tied the little mule to the back of the wagon and climbed up onto the driver's seat.

The team was a bit fractious, which was surprising given how much they had suffered lately. But it just went to show you that man or beast, if treated kindly and fed well, could make an amazing recovery.

The downhill road looked clear and the view was spectacular. Joe halted his heavy wagon at the top of the grade and admired the green swath of the Carson Valley just below, and then his smile faded when he looked farther east toward the barren Pine Nut Mountains of Western Nevada. He had crossed that country once, but he'd never do it again. A drier, more hostile land he'd never seen anywhere in the West. Nevada was mostly rocks and sage, with plenty of snakes and Paiute Indians eager to lift a white man's scalp. No, sir, he would not cross the badlands of Central Nevada again.

He released the wagon's brake and started down the grade, which, at first, didn't seem all that steep. But he judged that the valley was at least two thousand feet below, and that told Joe that there were going to be plenty of switchbacks and steep places where he'd really have to be careful. Maybe he should have cut a big pine log and used it as a drag, but he didn't have an ax or log chains and he was in a hurry.

Down and down they crept, the team walking stiff-legged and afraid and Joe leaning hard on the brake, causing the wagon to sometimes go into a scary skid. But he was handling it. Joe had learned the hard lessons of freighting in Santa Fe, and he knew how to handle a team and overloaded wagon as well as any man. But this was going to be touch-and-go given the fact that his team was too light and his lumber-hauling wagon far too heavy.

“Easy now, boys! Just go easy and we'll stay to the safe side here and make 'er all the all the way down.”

Joe was straining, and so was his team, when they had gone about a half mile down the treacherous and narrow grade only to come upon a big eight-mule team pulling a tall, but empty wagon up the grade.

“Give way, damn you!” the man driving shouted. “Move over to the side!”

“No, sir,” Joe shouted. “I'm loaded heavy and . . . .”

Joe didn't get to finish as the mule skinner cracked his whip and his big animals lunged forward, crowding Joe and his wagon to the very edge and then . . . Joe's heart stopped as he felt the two outside wheels slip over the side.

“Hey!” he shouted, desperately trying to move his team out of danger. But the wagon was tilting and it was too late. With a sickening crunch of a wheel and then a terrible moment of wavering balance, the wagon rolled. Joe watched in horror as the wagon tongue snapped and yet his team was pulled over the side as everything lurched and spun.

He let out a holler, and the last thing Joe saw or remembered was the grinning face of that mule skinner and the sound of his whip cracking like a shot as the lumber wagon went into a sickening tumble pulling the team over the side with the sound of cracking wood and screaming horses.

After that there was a dizzying spin, a stab of pain, and a crushing of his chest before absolute darkness.

He woke up in a bed and stared at logs neatly chinked into a low ceiling. Joe's first response was to get up and move, but when he tried to rise from the bed, he gasped in agony and the darkness closed in around him like a black tunnel just as it had before.

“Mister?” the sweet voice of a woman said a long time later. “I heard you speaking, more like calling to someone named Fiona. Is she your wife? Can you tell me who you are and who she is so that I can get word to her how bad you've been hurt?”

Joe Moss opened his eyes and saw a handsome woman with strong, high cheekbones and long, brown hair wrapped in a neat bun on top of her head. She had an expression of deep concern in her eyes, and wore a man's faded shirt and pants. There were squint lines radiating out from the corners of her chestnut-colored eyes. Her face was tanned and her lips were cracked. Joe knew at once that, when young, she must have been quite a beauty, but time and tough years had changed her so that she was now more strikingly handsome than beautiful.

Joe tried to speak and found it difficult. He heard himself croak and his hands fluttered helplessly at his sides. He hurt all over and felt like a weakling.

“Here,” she said, raising a glass of water. “I'm going to lift your head just enough that you can swallow. Don't worry about spilling any. You've been doing that for weeks. I didn't think that you'd live when I found your wreck down in the canyon, but you have and that's a miracle of God's making.”

Joe tried to smile, but failed. He let the woman cup his head in her hand and then pour water into his mouth. The water was sweet and cool like her comforting manner.

“Where am I?” he wheezed, swallowing hard. “And what . . . what about my team and my wagon?”

“They're lost over the mountainside about two miles up the grade,” she told him. “Three of the animals that were hitched lived, but they were injured almost as badly as you.”

“Which ones lived?”

“The Appaloosa is hurt least. There's also a little mule that wore a saddle. We thought he was finished, but he's come back not much worse for wear. The beast is still lame, but he'll mend. And there was a gray horse that we got out of the canyon along with you. It's going to make it but had a lot of deep wounds. The others . . . well, I'm sorry but it was a mercy to put them out of their pain.”

“You had to shoot them?”

“Yes, I'm afraid I did.”

“What about the wagon and the lumber?”

She shook her head. “The wagon rolled many times and is a complete loss. Your lumber is scattered all down that steep mountainside. Some of the men in Genoa wanted to try and retrieve it for themselves, but the Mormon elders said that would be thievery unless you gave 'em permission.”

“I won't do that,” Joe said, his head and mind clearing fast. “That lumber is valuable. What about . . .”

“Your money, weapons, and personal belongings?”

“Yes.” Joe braced himself for a big loss. He'd had a lot of cash and that would be a powerful temptation to anyone.

“I have it here hidden under my flooring. I collected it while the men got you and the stock that could climb out off the mountainside. Don't worry, nothing was stolen.”

Joe was almost overcome with gratitude. With his cash he could make a rapid recovery and all was not yet lost. “Ma'am, I am much beholden to you and I'll pay you well for your kindness.”

She smiled without joy. “I did not do this for payment, sir. I did it as a Christian. And I'll take no repayment, except for maybe to replenish what you and your stock have eaten. But that will be a small amount, I promise.”

Joe nodded with appreciation, and then he remembered the mule skinner that had pushed him and his outfit over the edge. “There was a mule skinner that did this to me, ma'am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I was run off the edge of the mountain by a murderin' mule skinner.”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “Surely it must have been an accident.”

“It wasn't, ma'am. And if I ever . . . .”

She gently but firmly placed a forefinger over his lips. “Sir, please do not tell me that you have vengeance in your heart. That is a very dangerous and treacherous road you were coming down and you are not the first person to have gone over the edge . . . although you are the first one to have lived to tell about it. But more to the point, you are alive because of God's miracle. And to swear vengeance against someone after being saved . . . well, it would be a travesty against the Lord. So forgive and forget. You have your money, which is considerable, and some livestock still as well as your life. Surely you must feel a huge debt of gratitude and understand it would be wrong to have revenge in your heart.”

Joe Moss could see that she was upset and completely sincere. She was also about the closest thing he'd ever seen to being a living saint. And because of what she'd done for him, he knew that there was no good purpose to be gained by telling her about that dirty, sonofabitchin' mule skinner who'd done him so wrong. But if the day ever came when he met that man, well, it would be the day that one of them died.

“You are right, ma'am. It
is
a miracle that I'm alive. And I won't speak of that foul act again.”

“Good,” she said with relief. “There is far too much anger and hurt in this world. It poisons the heart and the spirit. Forgive and forget is always the best thing to do.”

“I would like to get up and get dressed,” he told her, not even sure if he could sit up, but determined to make a stab at it. “Where are my clothes?”

She again shook her head. “Sadly, your buckskins were torn from your body and were rendered useless.”

“I got no clothes to wear?” He was crestfallen because it was not an easy thing to replace buckskins in this day and part of the country.

“I appreciate your loss,” she told him. “However, the good news is that you're about the size of my late husband and you can wear his clothes . . . if it suits you. If not, you can pay to have clothing made by a good seamstress in our Genoa. Or I can make you clothing, although I am not as clever with needle and thread as our seamstress.”

Joe wasn't real happy with any of those alternatives, but resigned himself to the idea of wearing a dead man's shirt and britches. “I'll pay you for your late husband's duds, I reckon.”

“They are a gift.”

Joe could see that she would not take his money for her late husband's clothes. “Ma'am, what do you do?” he blurted out. “I mean, besides saving folks that go over the side of that mountain.”

She squared her fine shoulders and lifted her chin. “I am the widow of a very successful farmer.”

“Children?”

Her smile melted into sadness. “Mr. Johnson and I were not so blessed. But he left me with a very nice farm, good house, and excellent livestock so I make do without hardship.”

“Are you . . . are you a Mormon?”

She looked away quickly and tried to hide the pain in her eyes, but Joe saw it shining through. And then she whispered, “I . . . don't know.”

The answer confused Joe and he stammered, “It's none of my business.” He felt ashamed of himself for asking such a personal and obviously painful question.

“Oh, you'll find out sooner or later, and it might as well be from my lips as from those of a gossiper. The truth, mister . . . .”

“Moss. Joe Moss.”

“The truth, Mr. Moss.”

“Joe. Just Joe,” he said.

“All right. But I would prefer that you call me Mrs. Johnson.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“My first name is Ellen, but I think that . . . given the circumstances here, it would be best if you called me Mrs. Johnson.”

She was blushing, though he had no idea why.

“Anyway, you will soon learn that I am an . . . an outcast from the Church.”

“Why would that be?” There he went again, asking a question far too personal.