With a hidden grin, Joe speculated that it would be some good burgher out east in Fountain or maybe Colorado City who would lose his horse. No matter. He needed a horse. He needed it now. And if some pork-eating son of a bitch had to lose his horse so Joe could buy one, so be it.
“Yes,” Joe finally signed. “Two kegs. I will leave them there.” He pointed. “Under those trees will I leave them.”
“And the tobacco, Man Killer?”
“There. Same with the whiskey. I will leave seven twists.”
“Ten. Leave ten.”
“We agreed on seven. Are you not a man whose word is good?”
There was a stir of unease among the rest of the band, but Running Calf seemed unfazed. “Seven, yes,” Running Calf affirmed.
Joe grunted and bobbed his head, then brought out tobacco and offered it all around before filling his pipe. Running Calf pushed a twig into the fire, then held it for Joe to ignite the tobacco.
The horse looked like a good one. Joe figured to use it hard.
He would be riding Indian style, with just a blanket instead of a saddle. No stirrups. No bridle, just a single rein tied around the gaudy paint’s jaw. And no more gear than he could carry draped on his own person.
“I will get the whiskey and the tobacco, then collect my horse,” he signed.
“Let it be so.”
Joe’s knees popped like Chinese firecrackers when he stood after squatting so long. He turned and headed back toward Manitou.
59
RIDING BAREBACK SAVE for a blanket folded and thrown over the animal’s back, and with his Henry rifle balanced across his lap, Joe put the paint horse into a lope and held it at that gait up the twisting, tortuous climb toward vast South Park, the Bayou Salado.
He passed magnificent rock formations, stands of dark timber where majestic elk lurked, and expanses of grass that was belly deep. He pushed the horse hard as miles and miles fell behind.
At the top of the pass, he urged the paint even harder. He was killing it. He knew that he was. But Fiona . . . Fiona. He would gladly slaughter this and a thousand horses more to save one drop of her precious blood.
Joe pressed the horse hard, barely allowing it rest, throughout the day and into the night.
At night at that elevation, the cold was bitter and he had brought no coat or blanket to fend it off, but Joe acted like he did not even notice. He continued to push for every bit of speed he could get from the flagging animal.
As dawn was breaking behind him, Joe stopped to let the paint horse roll and briefly rest.
He himself found a spot out of the brisk wind that almost constantly blew up here. He stretched out in the warmth of the sunshine and caught a nap. He would need all the strength and stamina he could muster before this ride was done. Somewhere out on the plains far to the east, Ransom Holt was in a coach speeding to deliver Peabody’s blood money.
Joe had to reach her first. He had to.
When he woke, he walked to the rim of the near vertical scarp that marked the eastern edge of South Park. He stood with eyes shaded, watching the shift of dark cloud shadow across the pale, rolling miles of grass that flourished on the floor of the vast bowl that was South Park. After a few minutes, he grunted softly to himself and nodded.
“There,” he said aloud.
The paint’s ears swiveled toward him and it raised its head, sprigs of sun-yellowed grass hanging out of its mouth.
“Good news for you, hoss,” Joe said as he leaped again onto the paint’s back. “There’s a bunch o’ mountain Utes over yonder. Might be I won’t have to ride you t’ death after all. Now come help me find my way down off this high rock. I know it can be done. I’ve done it before. So let’s find the path and git along, shall we?”
60
“GREETINGS, BROTHER,” JOE signed as he approached the Ute camp. He rode into the middle of the camp and dismounted without waiting for an invitation. “Spotted Wolf, is that you? You are growing old and gray. Fat, too.” Spotted Wolf was as lean as his namesake.
The tall Indian grinned. “Old with wisdom, Man Killer.” He stepped forward and clasped Joe’s hand. “Welcome, my brother. Are you hungry? Do you thirst?”
It hadn’t actually occurred to Joe, but . . . yes. Now that he thought of it, he was famished. “I could eat a buffalo, I think, and then I would ask when do we begin the meal.”
Spotted Wolf and the other men of the band laughed, and then he took Joe into his lodge, where the old warrior’s two young wives waited on them.
“Where is your old woman?” Joe asked. “The last time I saw you . . .”
“Dead,” Spotted Wolf said with a shrug. “These two”— the smile returned—“they are not dead, eh?” The gray-haired Ute cupped his crotch and chuckled.
“I am glad it is well with you, old friend.” Joe started eating the rich stew served by Spotted Wolf’s wives.
“And with you, Man Killer?”
Joe briefly explained the mission he was on.
“You would find this man and kill him?” Spotted Wolf said.
“He took what was mine,” Joe said. “I will kill him or he will kill me. We shall see.”
Spotted Wolf grunted his approval of Joe’s intentions.
While his second bowl of stew was being prepared, Joe said, “My horse is a good one but he is tired and I have far to go. I would buy horses from you, friend.”
“Buying horses, that is a serious thing. It needs much thought.”
Dammit, Joe thought. Spotted Wolf had him over a barrel and intended to take advantage of him.
“I have no time, my brother, but I have much money to pay.”
“Bah! Money. Why would I need money, Man Killer?” He held his hand palm up and indicated the earth around the place where they sat. “Will money buy this? No? Here is all a man could need.”
“You see what I carry,” Joe said. “No packs of goods this trip. Only money.”
Spotted Wolf began loading tobacco into his pipe, suggesting they were about to begin serious negotiations. His eyes, Joe noticed, kept coming back to the Henry rifle that lay on the robes beside the place where Joe was sitting.
Probably there was not an Indian in these mountains who owned a repeating rifle. To have a Henry would give a man much prestige among his peers.
An hour later, Joe was the owner of a string of five tough little Indian ponies. He could have gotten more for the Henry if he had been willing to haggle longer, but time was more important to him than any number of horses would have been.
“It is well,” Joe said once they had shaken hands on the swap. “I will go now, brother.”
“You will not stay? We would speak of the good times when we were young,” Spotted Wolf said.
“I must go now. Catch this man who took what was mine. Perhaps I will come back by and by. We will sit by the fire, we two old warriors. Drink a little. Tell some lies. It will be good. Come now. I would choose my horses from your herd so that I can go and do what must be done.” He stood and headed for the lodge entrance.
61
JOE RODE THROUGH the night, through the burning heat of the following day, and far into the chill of night again.
Riding one horse and leading the others, he pushed each animal to exhaustion, then paused only long enough to change the jaw rein to another horse and race on again.
By the time he approached Bear Lake, it was nearing dawn and he was down to two horses, the others having been worn out and abandoned to fend for themselves.
Joe was not sure where he might find Fiona, but he knew where he could start looking. He headed for the trading post run by an old friend.
Heedless of the hour, he slipped down off the delicate gray he was on at the moment. His legs felt wobbly beneath him after so long on horseback, but he forced them to carry him to the door of the shack where Ezra did business.
Pounding on the door with his fist, Joe shouted, “Open up in there, old man. You got company.”
About the thi
rd or fourth time he pounded for entry, he heard a drowsy voice respond, “Open it yourself, y’ damn fool. It ain’t locked.”
Feeling completely chagrined, he tried pulling the latch string. Sure as hell, the door opened easily.
When he stepped inside, he was immediately struck by the scent of tobacco, whale oil, and cinnamon. A small lamp with the wick trimmed low burned atop a counter. Behind the counter Joe could see two things, one being the bushy eyebrows and big nose of Ezra White, and the other being the muzzle of Ezra’s old flintlock rifle.
“Ez, put that thing down before it blows up in your face an’ makes you even uglier ’n you already are.”
“Joe? Izzat you, Joe Moss? Well, I’ll be a sonuvabitch.” The rifle muzzle was quickly withdrawn behind the counter.
“Oh, hell, Ez, you already are that.” Joe entered the crowded store, and Ezra turned his lamp up.
The old trapper was bedded down on a pallet behind his store counter. He had company, but Joe could not tell what tribe the young girl was from. She was naked. So, for that matter, was Ezra, but Joe had seen him bare-assed before.
“What’re you here for, Joseph?”
“I’m lookin’ for a man, Ez. I’m thinking you should know him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Charles.”
“That his first name or his last?” Ezra glanced down at the naked teenager curled up at his side. He cuffed her on one ear and said, “Where’s your manners? Git up an’ brew us some coffee, woman.”
The girl grabbed up her dress—Shoshone, Joe thought after getting a look at the sparse beadwork on her antelope-skin dress—and scurried off about her chores.
“Charles is all I was told,” Joe said. “Could be either.”
“There’s a man . . . Jedediah Charles . . . has a shack a couple miles from here. If you don’t mind me askin’, Joseph, does this here have anything to do with the heap o’ cash money Jedediah says he’s expectin’ to get any day now?”
Joe nodded, his expression grim. “It do.”
Ez cocked an eye at Joe for a moment, then asked, “Mind telling me are you here to deliver that money?”
“That ain’t what I’m wanting of him, Ez. He has something that’s mine. I figure to take it back.”
Ezra grunted, then asked, “Need any help?”
“No, but I thank you for askin’.”
Ezra grunted again, louder this time, then stood and reached for his britches. “Come over here. I’ll show you how to find him.”
Joe felt a tightening in his throat as he hurried to Ezra’s counter. Close. He was so very close to Fiona now.
62
THE PLACE WAS a dugout, a man-made cave dug into a hillside and roofed over with aspen poles and sod. Logs had been laid up to form the front wall, then chinked with mud.
A pole corral nearby held three horses and a pair of burros. One of those horses Joe knew well. It was Fiona’s swift and leggy little sorrel mare, the horse she had been riding the last time he saw her.
The horse had not been swift enough to keep her from harm this time, though. If he had only been with her . . .
Joe forced all unproductive fantasy out of mind. Now was what counted, not what might have been.
He rode up to the corral, slipped to the ground, and tied his horses to the top rail. “Hello the house,” he called loud and firm. “Is Jedediah Charles here?”
The elk hide that served as a door was pushed aside and a large, bearded man stepped out.
“You’re Charles?”
“I am. Now who would you be?”
“I’m the man as come to inspect Ransom Holt’s merchandise. I believe you have some for him.”
“What? He don’t trust us?”
“Us,” Charles had said. That implied he had a partner, probably inside where he could get to Fiona and harm her if things went wrong. Joe needed everyone to be out here where he could see them.
He asked the question he most dreaded to have answered. “Is the woman alive?”
“Holt said we could do what we wanted with her,” Charles whined. “I got to tell you, though, she ain’t all that good a fuck. Won’t wiggle an’ give a man his satisfaction like a Injun girl will.” He smiled. “But you can tell Mr. Holt we done what he said. Got a nice little cask over there just the right size to put her head in an’ the pickling salts to go in with it. Everything just like he wanted.”
Salts and a keg. Jesus God!
But Joe was careful to keep the loathing that he felt out of his face. “Bring her out so I can get a look at her an’ make sure you got the right one. Mr. Holt won’t pay for just any woman, you know.”
“Oh, we got the right one, all right.” Charles snorted. “Bitch keeps telling us her man Joe Moss is gonna skin us alive an’ nail our hides to that wall to dry. It’s her, all right.”
Joe nodded and made a vow that he intended to keep over the coming hours. If Fiona wanted these two skinned alive, then so be it. That was a job that would give Joe no grief. And it occurred to him that a keg intended for Fiona’s dear head could just as easily hold Ransom Holt’s pickled head. Pack it and ship it to Peabody. Freight collect! That ought to get the bastard’s attention.
“Drag her out here then so’s I can see,” Joe said.
Charles raised his voice. “Vincent. Bring her out so the gentleman can get a look at her.” To Joe, he said, “Will you know her when you see her?”
Joe’s hands were trembling and his breath was short and shallow. He hoped Charles could not see that. “I’ll know if it’s her,” he said.
The elk hide was pulled back, and Joe could hear chains rattle. A moment more, and a filthy, naked human form was dragged into the open by the seller’s partner. Joe had eyes only for the captive.
She was skinny, wasted away to skin and bone. But that shock of flaming red hair was undimmed and so was her spirit.
Believing the man had come who would behead her, she refused to give him the satisfaction of so much as glancing in his direction or in any way acknowledging his existence.
Joe’s heart skipped a beat. Probably several.
Fiona. His own Fiona.
She was chained hand and foot. Joe scowled and said, “You got the keys to those padlocks?”
“Right here.” Charles held a key ring aloft.
Joe grunted, then took his tomahawk out of his sash.
He very carefully and judiciously smashed Jedediah Charles over the head with it, then laid into the man’s partner as well. These two he wanted to take down alive. He wanted them alive and screaming when he and Fiona commenced flaying them. Exactly like she said would be done. Skin the bastards and nail their hides up to dry. It would give him and Fiona something to do while they waited for Holt to arrive with Charles’s stinking blood money.
Ah, but Ransom Holt. Joe turned his head and spat. That son of a bitch belonged to Joe. And Joe wanted Holt alive when Joe took first his scalp and then his head.
For now, though . . .
Joe lifted Fiona into his arms and began the slow but satisfying process of kissing away the terrors she had undergone since he last saw her.
Now if they could only find and reclaim their sweet daughter, Jessica, all would soon be well.
Blood at Bear Lake Page 17