The Mother Lode

by Gary Franklin

  Joe wasn’t listening to the priest, and his blood froze in his veins. The riders were Peabody brothers and they had a whole lot of company. Joe quickly counted about a dozen horsemen, and every one of them had either a rifle or a pistol in his hand. There would be no talking them out of killing by the good-hearted priest or anyone else. And there would be no trial. All there would be was death for himself and his bride, Mrs. Fiona Moss.

  “Fiona!” he shouted, grabbing her and swinging her up onto the sorrel mare’s back. “Ride!”

  She was pale and shaking, but Joe didn’t have time to argue. Instead, he grabbed the rifle out of his own scabbard, took aim, and fired. The first rider took a slug in the chest and flipped over backward into the brush. Joe heard the priest wailing and praying. He winged a second rider, but they kept coming, and now they were firing back.

  “Ride hard, Fiona! I can’t kill them all!”

  “I won’t have us torn apart again!”

  “I’ll catch up!” he bellowed, knowing that one of them was going to get killed at any moment. “I’ll find you again! I swear it!”

  Joe whacked the fast sorrel mare across the rump, and it took off at a hard run. Father O’Connor ran in front of Joe, shouting at the onrushing horsemen to stop shooting. Then, suddenly, he took a bullet in the thigh and crashed to the earth, writhing in pain with blood spurting from his wound.

  “Damn you boys!” Joe shouted, taking aim on the lead rider. It was a Peabody, and Joe Moss almost smiled when he shot him in the head and watched him somersault off his racing horse.

  Three down, but they were so close now Joe could see their eyes. He fired again and again, killing another Peabody and also one of their hired gunmen. That left one brother, but there wasn’t time enough to pick him out from the others, and Joe knew he was about to die. Then Rip, with a deep rumble in his throat, charged the onrushing men and horses. As much as Joe’s deadly fire, the sight of the huge beast sent their terrified horses swerving away from the wolf-dog. And just as suddenly as it began, the charge ended as Peabody gunmen whipped their frightened horses up the grade and back toward the center of town. The riderless mounts went bucking and kicking into the brush, finally disappearing over the rocky hills.

  “Rip!” Joe called, watching one of his attackers dismount and lay on the ground to take good aim at the dog. “Rip!”

  Oblivious of the bullets coming his way, Rip whirled and came loping back to Joe and the fallen priest.

  “Father, how bad are you hit?” Joe asked, amazed at the amount of blood the priest was rapidly losing.

  “I’m all right,” O’Connor managed to whisper.

  But he wasn’t all right. The bullet must have severed a vein in the man’s leg, and the now priest was bleeding out right before Joe’s eyes. Joe still had that old bandanna around his neck, and now he used it to tie off the wound and staunch the flow of blood.

  “Go on!” the priest begged. “Run for your life and never come back!”

  “If I take the pressure off this leg, you might be dead in minutes.” Joe glanced up the hill toward Virginia City. He could see that his attackers were regrouping, and knew they would soon make another, smarter charge . . . and that this time he wouldn’t be able to survive. “Father, where the hell are all your nuns when you really need ’em?”

  “They’re shopping in Carson City.”

  “Shopping?”

  “Yes,” Father O’Connor gritted out. “The sisters may be angels on earth, but they still get hungry.”

  “Where is my Jessica?”

  “She’s with them. Safe. Safe like she’s always been when she’s been here with us at St. Mary’s.”

  Joe twisted around and stared at the dust trail left by Fiona’s racing mare. She was not to be seen. Thank gawd Fiona was out of danger, at least temporarily!

  “Go!” O’Connor begged, looking faint and weak. “I’m begging you for the love of God!”

  Joe almost ran for his Palouse and let the priest bleed to death. But he just couldn’t do it, and he turned to see that the last of the Peabody brothers was furiously exhorting his gunmen to attack once more. They had formed a line and they were about to charge back down the hill with guns blazing.

  “Inside to the altar,” the priest begged. “They won’t dare kill you in such a sacred place.”

  “Sorry, Father, but you’re wrong about that,” Joe said. “But then again, we can’t make a stand out here in the open.”

  He scooped up Father O’Connor and carried the man into the church, then barricaded the doors.

  “Take me to the altar of Christ,” the priest begged.

  Joe carried him to the altar and kept his tourniquet tight over the leg wound. His efforts seemed to be working, and he thought that Father O’Connor was going to live after all. But he needed to be seen by Dr. Taylor as soon as possible.

  Joe heaved a sigh and guessed he’d never live to see his daughter or Fiona again. “Father, I sure never expected to get trapped and shot to death in a place this beautiful,” he said, admiring the statues of the saints, knowing he wouldn’t be chosen to join them in Heaven. “I never would have guessed it.”

  “You’re not going to die now,” the priest said between his praying. “As God is my witness, you’re not going to die here this day.”

  “That a promise?” Joe asked, not believing it. “Are you gonna pray all the Peabody gunmen away?”

  Rip was resting in the aisle, tongue out but hackles still raised.

  “I don’t allow dogs in my church,” the priest said. “But in this one case, I’ll make an exception.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said.

  “Joe Moss, you could have saved yourself by leaving me outside. That was very brave and I know in my heart that you’re a good, Christian man. I didn’t think that before, but I do now. Have a little faith because Jesus and I are going to save you.”

  “Father, are you talking about my life . . . or my soul?”

  “Both,” O’Connor whispered. “I know a secret place where you and that wolf can hide here and never be found.”

  “Never?”

  “Pick me up and we’ll go there.”

  Joe picked the priest up. Now he heard pounding on the church doors. “I hope this hiding place is real close, Father.”

  “Very close,” the priest whispered, weakly pointing toward a hallway and then finally a little door. “In here, Joe Moss. In here.”

  Joe and Rip rushed into a small library carrying the wounded priest. “Father, where do we go now? There’s no place in here to hide.”

  “That Bible on the shelf. Pick it up, Joe.”

  “Father, I . . . .”

  “Pick it up, Joe Moss!”

  When Joe picked up the Bible, he was amazed, because the bookcase slowly turned to reveal a rock-lined passage, or maybe it was just a hiding hole. Joe couldn’t tell.

  “Put me down in that chair,” O’Connor commanded. “I’ll take a moment to pray and then hobble out to face them.”

  “And they won’t kill you for hiding me?”

  “They wouldn’t dare!”

  Joe and Rip disappeared into the priest’s secret place, and when the bookshelf closed behind, they were plunged into total darkness.

  “Good-bye, Joe Moss and Dog,” the priest whispered. “Please go far away and never return.”

  Joe heard distant voices and then the pounding of boots on tile. He still had his handgun, his bowie knife, and his tomahawk. Beside him in the darkness, Rip growled low, and Joe asked the big dog to be still and quiet. Rip obeyed. Now Joe crouched in the darkness, wondering if he and his dog would be found. And if they were, he hoped that he would be able to sink the blade of his tomahawk into the last Peabody left standing.

  I’ll do ’er if they open that bookcase, he vowed. I’ll kill as many more as I can get before they kill me so they can’t hunt down my Fiona.

  But the running footfalls faded, as did the angry shouting voices after a long time. Rip began to
snore softly. The bookcase never opened and Joe Moss was never found.