“All right,” the mine crew foreman said at last when the water had all but disappeared down the shaft. “Let’s see if we can get back to work. It looks like that pocket of water wasn’t a big one.”
Joe was still clinging to the cable for his life. He couldn’t kick out far enough to get his feet on the cavern floor, but no one seemed to notice until the foreman said something about sending Barton up for emergency medical attention.
Then he saw Joe. “Moss, you’re hanging on that cable. Don’t you know that it might start up at any minute and drag you into a hoisting wheel? It would slice off your hands clean as a lump of lard, it would.”
“Dammit, help me get my feet back onto the ground!” Joe bellowed, fearing the dark, seemingly bottomless hole below.
The foreman and another brave miner learned far out over the shaft, and managed to grab and haul Joe back to solid footing.
“You should have jumped on the ore cart like the rest of us,” the foreman said.
“I would have, but it looked sort of crowded,” Joe answered. “And I wasn’t sure how much of that scalding water was going to come rushing into this work station.”
“So,” the man said, with a wry half smile. “Were you gonna start shimmying eight hundred feet up that cable like a damned monkey?”
“I would have if that was my only choice.”
The foreman laughed until he happened to turn and put his candle light on Barton, whose face and chest were blood-red. He knelt beside the suffering Englishman and said, “You got burned real bad. I’m afraid that your skin is going to slough off and you’ll carry the scars of this day for the rest of your life.”
“But will I live?” Barton sobbed, obviously in severe pain.
“I don’t know,” the foreman said honestly. “But we’ll get you up on top and see what can be done. Good luck.”
The cage was finally raised to their eight-hundred-foot level. Several other miners from deeper levels who were already scalded by the cascade of boiling water managed to get Barton squeezed in among them.
“Will he make it?” Joe asked, wanting the truth.
The foreman shook his head. “Usually, when they are burned this bad, their skin sloughs off and they get terrible infections and soon die. And my guess is that the first time that Barton looks in the mirror, he’ll pray to die.”
Joe understood. And he also understood that he wasn’t coming back down into this mine or any other Comstock mine. He’d gotten a taste of it, and it was every bit as hot and hellish as he’d expected.
It was time to go back to the sky and the clean air. And once on top again, that was where he would remain until the day of his death.
25
ON A CLOUDLESS and bright Sunday morning, Joe rested in the rocking chair and vividly recounted to Beth, Dan DeQuille, Dr. Taylor, and Ellen his harrowing experiences and the hardships of working on the eight-hundred-foot level of the Belcher Mine. A short while later, Dr. Taylor surprised Joe by taking Ellen Johnson on a carriage ride down to Lake’s Crossing for shopping. There was room enough for all of them in the doctor’s two-horse carriage, but the newspaperman and Beth said they’d rather stay and relax on the veranda.
“I’m going to saddle up Jasper and take him for a ride,” Joe announced mainly to Beth. “All of our horses are needing some exercise, but your Jasper seems the most rambunctious.”
“He hasn’t been ridden for nearly two years,” Beth said, looking a little worried. “I’m sure he’d love to get out and gallop.”
Joe doubted that, but he was curious about the big bay gelding, and so he headed off to get the animal saddled and bridled. DeQuille and Beth, meanwhile, had remained talking on the porch, and Joe wondered if they were going to become a pair. They were well matched in interests, education, and intellect and could chatter for hours about books and poets. Dan DeQuille was a handsome and articulate man, but Joe guessed they didn’t pay much money at the newspapers because, although DeQuille tried to keep up appearances, his clothes were shiny with wear and his heels were worn down to nothing. He also was in real need of a barbershop shave and haircut.
And what about Dr. Taylor and Ellen? Joe couldn’t help but feel a little jealous about how they were getting on so well. This told him that he was emotionally attached to the ex-Mormon farm woman more than he’d realized. But he also was happy for Ellen because she deserved an educated and professional man, not some rough-and-ready fella like Joe Moss who barely had enough manners to sit at the table in good company. Besides, the doctor was a fine man who had never married, yet seemed interested in trying to become a good husband and father.
So that Sunday morning as the two pairs enjoyed each other’s company, Joe thought he might saddle up that jug-headed Jasper and ride the big old horse down to St. Mary of the Mountain Church and perhaps be rewarded by the sight of Jessica. He hungered just for a quick look at his beautiful daughter.
“Whoa, Jasper!” Joe yelled, trying to force the bit between the animal’s long yellow teeth. “Cooperate, you ugly beast!”
In response, Jasper tossed his muzzle high into the air, so high that even Joe couldn’t stand on his toes and get the bit set. Angry now, Joe reared back and kicked Jasper hard in his bulging hay belly. Now that got the animal’s full attention! In fact, Jasper tried to bite Joe on the arm, and instead ripped the sleeve off one of his new shirts. They went around and around fighting each other’s will until Joe finally eared the brute and bitted it fair. Then he cinched down his saddle and swung on board.
Jasper charged out of the little corral, splintering two rails and a cedar post. He shot around the mansion and went flying down the hill into town with Joe holding onto the saddle horn for dear life. He heard the doctor and Beth shouting at him, but Joe was moving so fast that he couldn’t hear their words. Down the mountainside they barreled straight through an intersection past C Street and on down the hill at full bore.
Several people were almost trampled, and Joe was hauling back on the reins for all he was worth, yet Jasper had the bit firmly between his teeth and his great thick neck defied all of Joe’s considerable strength.
They sailed past the Catholic church, and Joe caught a momentary glimpse of little Jessica playing, yet hardly had time to wave. Jasper hit the bottom of a rocky ravine, lost his footing, and tumbled, throwing Joe hard into the brush. Momentarily stunned, Joe staggered erect to see that Jasper was tangled in the brush and his reins.
“You miserable jug-head!” Joe shouted, kicking the animal in the rump and then hopping back into the saddle as the priest and nuns watched in shock and amazement.
Jasper was breathing hard, yet still game to run. After all, he had been penned for two years and sensed sweet freedom at last. The slope was still steeply tilted downward when they skidded into the poor people’s cemetery, where there were no monuments or even headstones. Jasper trampled over a dozen or more graves and knocked wooden crosses flying, then flattened a rickety wooden fence and kept on running.
“Whoo-ha!” Joe hollered, yanking off his Stetson and batting the old bay across the butt again and again. “Whoo-ha!”
Jasper finally ran out of steam about four miles out into the barren hills. He staggered to a halt and stood with his head held low to the sage and his nostrils distended as he tried to find his wind. But Joe didn’t let him rest more than a minute, and then he forced the old fella back into a disjointed gallop. They circled the town, and when they came trotting down from the high side of Mount Davidson, Jasper was moving as smooth and easy as a sore-footed milking cow.
“Joe!” Beth cried from the veranda. “What on earth happened to you and my Jasper!”
Joe Moss tossed his Stetson right up on the porch, and it landed in his favorite rocking chair. “Why, Miss Beth, we’re just enjoyin’ a nice Sunday morning horseback ride. And I even got to briefly pay my respects to the Catholics and little Jessica! I had a fine time. Most fun I’ve had in a long while.”
“But look at poor Jasper!” s
he cried, hands flying to her mouth.
“Why, what’s wrong with him?” Joe asked, trying to look innocent.
“He’s all covered with white foam and stickers and dirt. Did he fall, Joe?”
“He just got tired for a minute and laid down kinda sudden to rest,” Joe explained. “Nothing to worry about, Beth. Nothing at all!”
Joe started riding Jasper every other day and their other horses in between. He rode everywhere hard and for long hours. He rode back down to Devil’s Gate just hoping that fella that had forced him and everyone else to pay a steep toll was alone without his rifleman to back up his play, but he was disappointed to see nothing had changed. No matter, the time would come for a reckoning.
Joe also rode his Palouse down Geiger Grade toward Lake’s Crossing and then all the way back. It was a long, steep ride, but he talked to a lot of freighters and had a pretty good time. What he needed and wanted was his Fiona and his daughter, but at least he was out again in the fresh air under the bright, blue Nevada sky, and just doing that made him think that somehow everything was going to work out for the best.
“Joe,” Ellen said late one afternoon, “Dr. Taylor has asked me to go work in his office. He needs help and as you know, I am good nursing the sick and injured. I think that I’ll take him up on his offer.”
“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.
26
DAN 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 a
nd 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.
The Mother Lode Page 17