Comstock Cross Fire

by Gary Franklin

  “I don’t rightly know yet,” Joe admitted. “Holt has my description, sure as anything, just like I know what he looks like. But he’s never laid eyes on me and that’s the advantage.”

  “What if he brings men with him? What if he’s got men to help him?”

  “Then I’ll kill them, too,” Joe vowed. “I’ll just kill all them dirty sonsabitches.”

  “You’re that sure you can do it?”

  “I am,” Joe Moss vowed. “As God is my witness and you are my love and my life, I will kill whoever comes—right to the very last man.”

  Fiona shivered as a breeze touched her thin, bruised body. She looked over at the two unconscious bounty hunters that Joe had laid low, and then she said, “All right, Joe. Kill those two now and then we’ll kill Ransom Holt and anyone else who comes for my head.”

  Joe drew out his tomahawk and spotted a rusty tin water bucket. He grabbed the bucket and filled it from the trough, saying, “Fiona, maybe you ought t’ go inside that dugout for a few minutes and get whatever is worth takin’. I’ll do what needs doin’ out here.”

  “Are you going to wake them up and kill them slow?”

  “Yep. That’s ’xactly what I have in mind.”

  “Then I need to watch.”

  Joe was a hard man and not surprised by much of anything, but when his sweet Fiona uttered those words, he was shaken to the marrow of his bones. “You want t’ watch them die screaming and being scalped? It’ll be a slow, bloody thing.”

  “They did slow, bloody things to me in that dugout,” Fiona said, her eyes hard and fierce. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, sayeth the Lord.”

  “And so it will be,” Joe replied as he drew his tomahawk, threw back his head, and sang out to the sky a terrible, primal scream.

  The Indians called him Man Killer, and today he would add fresh scalps to his belt as God and Fiona would witness.

  2

  “WHAT’S THIS SONOFABITCH’S name?” Joe asked, ready to dump the pail of water on the bounty hunter’s bleeding head.

  “That’s the one in charge,” Fiona said, pointing a shaky finger at the unconscious man. “His name is Jedediah Charles. The other one is named Ike. I never heard his last name.”

  Joe raised the bucket and emptied its cold contents on Jedediah Charles. Both of the unconscious bounty hunters had taken hard whacks across the skull from the flat of Joe’s tomahawk, but he’d hit Jedediah the hardest. Now Joe was wondering if this one could be revived or if his skull had been fatally crushed.

  Jedediah stirred and moaned. “He’s alive,” Joe announced, going for another pail of water. “But he’s in bad shape.”

  “Maybe you should just let him die,” Fiona hedged, suddenly feeling a twinge of guilt despite the terrible outrages that had been committed against her body by the pair.

  “Too easy,” Joe said, bringing back the second pail and sloshing it in the man’s face, bringing him to full wakefulness.

  Jedediah coughed and sat up, his eyes still dazed. He blinked and sputtered; then his eyes regained their focus and he stared at Joe Moss, who was drawing his tomahawk from his belt sash. At the sight of Joe and the bloodstained tomahawk, Jedediah became fully alert. He tried to scoot backward in the mud, but Joe jumped forward, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and then used his tomahawk to slice off one of the struggling man’s ears.

  Jedediah screamed and clapped his hands against the side of his head, trying to staunch all the blood pouring through his fingers. Joe had a remedy for that. He dropped his tomahawk, drew his bowie knife, and cut off all the man’s fingers on both hands, leaving only his quivering thumbs.

  “Ahhh!” the man screamed at the top of his lungs. “Oh, my gawd, you’re killin’ me!”

  “How’s it feeling?” Joe asked as the bounty hunter howled. “You liked rapin’ and starvin’ my poor wife, did you?”

  “No!” Jedediah bawled. “I’m sorry! Honest to God I’m sorry! Don’t do this to me!”

  “You’re sorry?” Joe asked, his voice as dry and brittle as broken glass. “Why, Jedediah, you haven’t began t’ learn what sorry really is.”

  Joe grabbed the man’s long, greasy hair, and with practiced ease he cut a plate-sized piece of scalp. Jedediah howled even louder when Joe dangled the man’s scalp before his bulging eyes. “How’s it look to ya now, Jed? Take a good, long, and last look, you sorry, stinking piece of dog shit!”

  “Joe, I can’t stand this!” Fiona cried in protest. “Just put him out of his misery.”

  “He’ll have to do that for his own damn self,” Joe said, his own blood hot with revenge as he went to get another pail of water and rouse the second bounty hunter for slaughter.

  About a mile to the south and behind a rocky bluff, Ransom Holt reined in his horse and raised a hand for silence. “Someone is dying,” he said, more to himself than to the two hired killers who rode at his side. “Dying hard, too.”

  “Do you think that Jedediah Charles is killin’ the Moss woman right now?” one of the men asked.

  “No,” Holt decided. “I’ve heard women screaming in childbirth and none ever sounded like that. It’s a man that’s dyin’.”

  “Maybe one of them is killing the other over the Moss woman.”

  “Maybe,” Holt conceded. “It could also be Indians having their blood sport. But I’m thinking that Joe Moss somehow found the dugout and his wife. If that happened, then I believe that he is taking his bloody revenge on Jedediah and his partner.”

  The two hired killers exchanged glances, and the one named Dalton said, “If that’s the case, we can kill Moss and get two rewards from Mr. Peabody. One for Joe and one for his wife.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the one named Eli. “Didn’t Mr. Peabody change his mind and say he wanted them both brought back alive so that they could be hanged in Virginia City?”

  “That’s right,” Holt agreed, dragging out his six-gun and making sure it was ready. “Mr. Peabody has a hangman and two nooses waiting, the choking kind of nooses. He wants to see Moss and his woman strangle to death on a tree limb. So, boys, this could be our lucky day because those two are worth more to Peabody alive than dead.”

  One of the hired killers pulled a double-barreled shotgun out of its scabbard, saying, “Moss won’t be captured without a hard fight. Everything we’ve heard about the man is bad, and the Indians we talked to don’t call him Man Killer for nothin’.”

  Ransom Holt snorted with derision. “Moss is just an old trapper well past his prime. He’s dangerous, sure. But he’s no match for the three of us. Now, is he?”

  “Hell, no!” the brothers replied in unison.

  Holt studied the men. “Glad to hear you boys say that. If we can take Moss and his woman alive, you’ll be paid double what you were already promised.”

  “In Comstock gold,” Dalton said, patting the butt of a buffalo rifle that he could use to shoot down a man with deadly accuracy from a half mile’s distance.

  “Yeah,” Holt agreed. “In Comstock gold.”

  Eli and Dalton were brothers known for their random and constant viciousness. They were of average size physically, but there was a deadly aura about both men that gave even Ransom Holt cause for concern. If Eli and Dalton even suspected that they could deliver Moss and his wife to Peabody and collect all the bounty money, Holt knew he was likely to be back-shot between the Utah Territory and Nevada.

  Holt sat a moment longer, listening to the horrible screams of someone who was obviously being tortured to death by an expert. Ransom Holt was a very, very big and powerful man. He knew that Joe Moss was also said to stand tall . . . a couple inches over six feet . . . but Holt was six feet five and he was younger, heavier, and stronger than Joe Moss. He had almost been hoping to kill Moss with his bare hands, but after hearing of all the dead men that Moss had scalped, Holt decided that it would be foolish to take a chance.

  Let Eli and Dalton earn their pay here and now. Let them take Moss down, and then let them hel
p me get the two captives up to the base of the Comstock Lode, before I kill the brothers and take Peabody’s money all for myself. And yes, it would all be in Comstock gold.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Dalton asked, wiping his face with the back of his dirty sleeve.

  Holt gave the question some serious thought before he answered. “I’ve been dogging Joe Moss and his whore a long, long time. He’s murdered enough of my informants to have gotten my description. He’ll recognize me by my size the second he lays eyes on me from any distance. So here’s what we’ll do, boys.”

  Ransom Holt quickly outlined a simple, but what he believed would be an effective, plan to take Moss alive.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Eli and I will circle around behind that dugout. Give us an hour, Dalton. Then you ride straight in like you were ignorant and prove to us how accurate you really are with that buffalo gun. Shoot Moss, but don’t you dare kill the man, because we’ve already agreed that would cost us a lot of gold.”

  Dalton nodded with understanding, yet he had a question. “But won’t Moss figure I heard the screams and came to interfere?”

  “That’s why we’ll wait an hour before we close in behind Moss . . . or whoever else is doing the killing and torturing.”

  Dalton licked his lips because he was getting more and more nervous. “I don’t like to be separated from my brother, Mr. Holt. Maybe—”

  “Maybe,” Holt spat, “you should just do what I’ve ordered! Or else maybe you and Eli should turn those horses around and ride out with your damned empty pockets and I’ll take all that reward money from Peabody!”

  The two brothers exchanged glances, and they could read each other’s minds.

  “All right,” Eli, who was the older and the leader of the brothers, finally decided out loud. “We’ll do it exactly as you say, Mr. Holt. But I want to have Moss in my gun sights before my brother rides up to that dugout. If it’s really Joe Moss that’s doin’ the torturin’, he’s a crack shot and he’d not hesitate to shoot my brother right out of his saddle.”

  “Fair enough,” Holt agreed.

  The brothers nodded to each other in mutual acceptance.

  “Then let’s get to it,” Holt said, feeling his heart begin to pound. He’d been searching for Joe Moss and his woman for long, hard months, and now he was just about to have them both.

  “Gawd, that’s a different one screaming now,” Eli said, cocking an ear to the north. “Screaming even louder than the first did.”

  “My money says that we’re about to meet Joe Moss at last,” Holt replied, picking up his reins. “I just hope that his woman is still alive so that we can take them both back to Virginia City.”

  “If she ain’t, we can still take her head back, can’t we?”

  “Sure,” Holt said. “Peabody wouldn’t be satisfied without her head. Just hope that the pickling doesn’t wrinkle her face up so much that she is beyond recognition by the time we reach the Comstock Lode.”

  “Or bleach out her red hair,” Eli mused with morbid curiosity. “I’ve a notion that could happen to red hair.”

  Holt frowned because he hadn’t taken that into consideration. “Maybe if the woman is dead, we can cut off her head and pack it in salt. Might hold up better in the heat across the desert.”

  “Might,” Dalton said. “Salt would crust up the blood and hair, but it might not change the red color.”

  “Might not at that,” Eli agreed with an eager smile.

  “Let’s ride,” Holt ordered. “Dalton, you got a watch so you’ll know when the hour is up?”

  “Yeah,” the man said, pulling out a cheap pocket watch and consulting its face. “Stole it off a drunk whose throat I cut when he was passed out in Laramie.”

  “It’s now two-ten? Right?” Holt asked, consulting his fine gold pocket watch.

  “Close enough,” Dalton said, grinning. “Eli, you better have him in your sights by ten minutes after three.”

  “Oh, I will,” Eli promised as he rode away following Ransom Holt.

  3

  “ARE THEY BOTH dead, Joe?”

  “Yeah, well, almost.” Joe held up their bloody scalps. “These will go with the others I’ve taken.”

  Fiona had come out of the dugout carrying a feed sack filled with salt pork and a few other things of little value. She had also found what a poor Indian woman might consider to be a dress. Now she stopped and stared at the two bodies. “Joe, Ike is still breathing.”

  “He’s knockin’ on Hell’s gates,” Joe said. “But he just don’t have the strength left to knock very loud.”

  Fiona forced herself to look at the two still figures. “You can’t just leave them here like that!”

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll bury the likes of ’em,” Joe vowed.

  “But . . .”

  Joe’s voice hardened. “After what they did to you, why should you care?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I don’t want to just leave them out here to rot or be eaten by animals. And . . .”

  She couldn’t finish.

  “And what?” Joe asked.

  “And I can’t abide you carrying their scalps.”

  Joe frowned. “Fiona, I carry all the scalps of them that did me wrong and I kilt to settle the score.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Just . . . just leave them here. Leave all your scalps here.”

  Joe’s pride was offended, but when he looked at his poor wife and realized how much suffering and torment she’d endured, he could not refuse her simple request.

  “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll drag these dyin’ bastards into that dugout and toss in their scalps along with the others I got. Then we’ll fire it all up and send ’em on their merry way to Hell.”

  “Thank you,” Fiona said with obvious relief. “We’re going to get our daughter back from the nuns. Our darling little Jessica. We can’t have her ever knowing what took place here. Do you understand me, Joe?”

  “You mean you don’t want her to know about this pair and how I kilt, then scalped ’em?”

  “That and what they did to me. It’s our secret cross to bear.”

  “I ain’t bearin’ no cross of no kind,” Joe argued. “I kilt these two and I wish I could have kilt ’em over and over ’cause of what they done to you, Fiona. I can’t change the way I feel about that.”

  “I know. But this is something I want to put behind us.”

  “Sure,” he said with some confusion. “We’ll . . .” Joe’s words froze in his throat. “Man on horseback comin’ this way.”

  Fiona shrank back toward the dugout. “Oh, Joe, don’t let them get me again! Please.”

  Joe reached for his Henry rifle and levered a shell. “Ain’t nobody ever going to hurt you again,” he promised, watching the horseman trot steadily toward them and noting that the horseman carried a big rifle in his hands.

  “Is it Ransom Holt?” Fiona cried, her lips trembling. “Is it Ransom Holt comin’ to chop off my head?”

  “It ain’t Holt,” Joe assured her. “I been told Holt is a big, big man. This ’un is average-sized. It ain’t Holt and he ain’t goin’ to hurt either one of us. If anyone else is gonna die this day, it’ll be this man a-comin’.”

  “Joe, he’s dismounting!”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed and he watched the man tie his horse to a tree next to a fallen log. To Joe’s amazement the stranger actually waved, and then sat down behind the tree and laid his big rifle across the log.

  “Fiona, get inside the dugout!” Joe shouted, grabbing and shoving her toward the hole in the hillside.

  Fiona threw herself at the dugout’s entrance, and disappeared just as the big buffalo rifle boomed.

  A second later, Joe heard a faint whistle, then the sound of the heavy-caliber slug as it struck the side of the dugout, missing him by less than a foot. He saw the lone rifleman begin to reload what Joe knew from its bark was a .52-caliber breech-loading Sharps. Joe knew that the man was good and t
hat he wouldn’t miss a second time, but he also knew that the killer would have to reload the Sharps and that would take him about twenty precious seconds.

  “Goddamn you!” Joe bellowed, bursting into a hard run toward the man behind the log. If he was fast enough, he might be able to get to the rifleman before he could reload. There really wasn’t much cover between him and the man with the buffalo rifle, but Joe was slender and fast. He’d get him or he’d shoot him dead at close range.

  Either way, the stranger was as good as scalped.

  Joe was halfway to the rifleman and had his own Henry rifle up and ready to fire when he heard a shrill scream from behind. His head whipped around and he saw Ransom Holt and another man with a shotgun burst out into the open. Fiona was nowhere in sight. Holt jumped into the dugout and the man with the shotgun stood guard outside.

  Joe skidded to a halt and turned to shoot the man with the shotgun even as Fiona’s screams reached his ears from inside the dugout.

  “Fiona!” he shouted. “I’m comin’!”

  In his panic, Joe fired on the run, which was dumb, and he missed. He grabbed the revolver at his side and raised it, but then something like the kick of a mule hit him in the back and he went down. The last thing he heard was Fiona’s final scream and then he lost consciousness, shot in the back by the buffalo rifle.

  “Is he alive?” a gravelly voice asked.

  “Yeah. He’s hit bad, but I shot to wound, not kill, ’cause I remembered you sayin’ Mr. Peabody would pay us more if they was alive.”

  “Good damn thing that you remembered, Dalton. Get the woman to bandage her man up so he don’t bleed out on us.”

  Dalton went into the dugout and returned dragging Fiona by one arm. “You struck her pretty hard with the butt of your pistol, Mr. Holt. Maybe scrambled her brains.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ransom Holt snapped. “Mr. Peabody doesn’t care if she’s addled or not. All he said was that he wanted her back alive so that he could hang her in Virginia City along with Joe Moss.”