Comstock Cross Fire

by Gary Franklin

“Fine,” Dalton said. “I can wait for them Paiute women . . . or, I guess, even the whores up in Virginia City if it comes to that.”

  “Wise decision,” Holt said, folding his massive arms across his chest. “You boys are gonna be pretty rich after Peabody pays us all off. You’ll be able to buy the best whores money can buy . . . even the expensive ones in San Francisco.”

  “Yeah,” Dalton said, not able to hide his great disappointment.

  “All right, then,” Holt told them. “As for Fiona, from the look of her right now, you’d have to pay me to fuck her.”

  It was meant as a joke and it went over well. Dalton and Eli guffawed and poked each other in the ribs, they were laughing so damned hard. Fiona just stared down at Joe and tried not to look even more ashamed than she felt. But deep inside, she knew that Ransom Holt had just eliminated one of her worst nightmares. She doubted that Joe could have endured being shackled and helpless while she was being raped all the way across Utah and Nevada.

  “Now,” Holt said, “let’s talk about what we need in the way of provisions so we can get moving toward a big pay-day. First, we’ll need a buckboard and a team of at least four good horses or mules. Also, I want a mattress for Joe Moss to lie on while—”

  “A gawddamn mattress?” Eli cried in protest. “What the hell are we gonna let him ride on a mattress for!”

  “So a long, rough trail in a buckboard doesn’t open up those big holes in the front and back of his shoulder causing him to bleed to death,” Holt explained.

  Dalton and Eli both swore, but they could see the rationale for having a mattress under the badly wounded prisoner.

  “The other things we need are food and supplies,” Holt was telling them. “Lots of salt pork and beans, coffee, more ammunition in case we do have a problem with the Paiutes, and any other damn thing you can think of, including a few bottles of decent whiskey.”

  “I like that,” Dalton said, licking his lips. “You frontin’ the money for all this, boss?”

  “Well, I know that you boys sure don’t have any money, so I guess I’m stuck for it,” Holt told them. “But you’d better be sharp about buying, and don’t spend my money on liquor or women.”

  “Wouldn’t think of that, now would we, Dalton?”

  Dalton cackled. “Hell, no! We wouldn’t dare waste any of the boss’s money.”

  “See that you don’t,” Holt warned. “Because if you do, I’ll take it out of your hides.”

  The brothers stopped their cackling and Eli asked, “How far do you reckon it is to Virginia City on the Comstock?”

  Holt had a ready answer. “It’s almost six hundred miles between where we’re standing now and where Peabody is waiting to pay us all that gold. We’ll be real lucky to make twenty or twenty-five miles a day with a buckboard, so that means the very best we can do is three weeks, but it’s more likely it’ll take a month of hard traveling.”

  Dalton and Eli considered those numbers, and reluctantly nodded their heads in agreement. “Sounds about right,” the brothers both said.

  “That’s a mighty long ways,” Dalton said. “We’re gonna need a heap of supplies.”

  Holt dragged out a wallet and started counting green-backs. He finished and handed Eli two hundred dollars. “And I’ll want a written receipt for every damn dollar you spend.”

  “How about lettin’ us have a little fun before we come back?” Dalton pleaded. “A few shots of whiskey. A woman for each of us.”

  “No,” Holt said, eyes hard on the brothers. “Not one drop of whiskey and not one poke in a whore either. I want you to ride north to a little town called Placerville. I’ve been there before and the man at the general store is named Wakefield. Bert Wakefield.”

  “He your friend?”

  Holt shook his head. “Let’s just say that Bert knows better than to overcharge or cheat me. And I’m going to write out a list of supplies, and you’d better not add nor subtract anything from it.”

  “How many bottles of hooch?”

  “Four,” Holt said.

  “Four?” the brothers cried. Dalton said, “Why, that pitiful amount of whiskey won’t keep our gullets wet even past the Great Salt Lake!”

  “All right,” Holt said, already having decided that he would let them beat him up to six bottles. “Buy a half dozen.”

  “What about tobacco?”

  “Buy a pound of it for yourselves,” Holt said.

  “And some licorice?”

  “Hell, no!” Holt roared. “Dammit, I won’t be bled to death buyin’ you sorry sonofabitches candy!”

  “All right!” Eli said. “No candy. No women. No whiskey in Placerville. Anything else we shouldn’t do?”

  “Don’t take your time,” Holt told them. “I want you boys back here with the supplies loaded in a good buckboard with a mattress and four strong horses in three days or less.”

  “Don’t think two hundred will buy all you’re askin’ for,” Eli told him.

  “It will,” Holt said. “Make sure of it.”

  The brothers nodded and turned away to get their horses.

  “What happens here during the next three days?” Fiona asked.

  Holt looked at her. “Nothing except you get your man ready for traveling.”

  “I don’t even have any medicines or clean bandages.”

  “Boil some rags and find some grease or fat. I don’t care. Just get Joe Moss ready to go.”

  Fiona nodded. “It’s a long, dangerous road to Virginia City. Lots of desert and Paiute Indians and not much water.”

  “So why are you telling me what I already know?” the big man asked.

  “I just wanted to warn you,” Fiona said. “There’s a good chance that we could be killed by the Indians or die of thirst.”

  “Let me be the one to worry about that,” Holt told her. “You just get Joe Moss healthy enough to ride in a buckboard for six hundred miles.”

  Fiona turned back to her man and smoothed his brow as Holt went off to write his supply list. “Joe, Joe,” she crooned softly. “I know you can’t hear me right now, but we’re in a terrible fix.”

  One of Joe’s eyelids popped open and he even managed a weak smile before he whispered. “Don’t you worry, little darlin’. We’re gonna kill Holt and be ready for them other two bastards when they come back with a wagon and supplies.”

  Fiona was astonished! She could hardly believe that her husband was awake and aware. Suddenly, she felt as if a terrible weight had been lifted from her thin shoulders.

  “Yes,” she whispered, squeezing Joe’s pale hand for all she was worth. “We’ll kill him and then we’ll kill the other two!”

  “They’re as good as dead right now,” Joe softly told her, closing his eye and drifting back to sleep.

  5

  AFTER THE BROTHERS had left for Placerville, Fiona tried to appear busy and defeated. She knew that her Joe was drifting in and out of sleep and that he was in no condition to try to kill Ransom Holt just yet. But if he had three days before the brothers returned with a wagon and supplies, well, maybe Joe could sit up and use a gun or even his knife to catch Holt by surprise and kill him quick.

  And I can help Joe do that, she told herself. I can help him kill that big man, and then we’ll deal with the brothers when they ride up on the wagon. Afterward, we’ll use all those supplies and horses to take us to Virginia City to collect our daughter, Jessica.

  “So how is Joe doing?” Holt asked her the second day. “Any sign that your husband is coming around?”

  “Not yet,” Fiona lied. “Joe lost so much blood, he might stay unconscious for another day or two.”

  “That doesn’t sound right to me,” Holt said with a frown. “I’ve shot and killed plenty of men and they either die . . . or they wake up screamin’ and moanin’. Are you sure Joe is still out cold?”

  Fiona tried to look him in the eye when she said, “Of course I am!”

  “We’ll see,” Holt said, drawing his pistol and starting tow
ard Joe Moss.

  “What are you going to do!” Fiona cried, running around in front of the giant, trying to block his path. “What are you going to do to Joe!”

  “I’m gonna wake him up,” Moss spat. “Now stand aside, woman.”

  “No, please!”

  Holt backhanded her hard enough to send Fiona sprawling. Then he marched up to Joe Moss and cocked his gun. “Open your eyes, you sonofabitch, or I’ll shoot your balls off right now!”

  Joe didn’t move or open his eyes.

  “Okay,” Holt said, cocking back the hammer of his gun. “I’m gonna castrate you with bullets!”

  Holt fired, and the bullet struck the dirt right under Joe’s crotch. Joe jumped and tried to kick out with a leg and trip the big man, but he was so weak that he failed, and then he tried to get up and fight, but couldn’t.

  Fiona threw herself at Holt, but he slapped her down to the dirt again and looked amused at their failed trickery.

  “My, oh, my!” Holt crowed as he stepped back. “Look at what we got here. A man pretending to be almost dead suddenly wakes up fighting mad!”

  Joe was breathing hard and feeling weaker than a kitten, but even so he made a grab for his bowie knife, only to discover that it was gone.

  “All right,” Holt said. “Pretend time is over. Moss, tell your woman she had better not try to attack me again or I’ll kill her on the spot.”

  Joe’s mouth was so dry and his voice so weak that he didn’t even try to respond to that threat.

  “Fiona, you go get your chains and shackles lyin’ over there in the dirt. The ones you wore when Jedediah and Ike had you all to themselves. Then I want you to chain yourself to your husband.”

  “But . . . but how am I supposed to tend to his wounds if . . .”

  “Figure it out, you skinny slut!”

  Holt turned his gun on her and for just a moment, Fiona was sure that he was going to go berserk and kill her right then and there. “All right! All right,” she cried, scrambling to her feet and running to retrieve the hated chains and shackles she’d been wearing for weeks.

  “Put ’em on tight. Attach your right leg to his left leg. Your right arm to his left arm. That’s it. Nice and tight.”

  When they were shackled together side by side lying in the dirt, all the hope that Fiona had been secretly carrying in her heart bled away and she began to cry.

  Joe cleared his throat and whispered, “This ain’t the end of us, Fiona. Just because we had a little setback here don’t mean we’re whipped. Don’t give up on us.”

  Fiona nodded through her tears, but she was beginning to think that their string of terrible luck just wasn’t ever going to end and they would eventually wind up swinging from a rope in distant Virginia City.

  “Hang on to your senses,” Joe urged, trying to squeeze her hand. “I’ve been in worse fixes than this and come out alive.”

  “But you’ve never been chained to me in such a near-hopeless fix as we’re in right now.”

  “Bein’ chained to you makes it all easier,” he lied. “Makes it more of a challenge maybe, but easier somehow.”

  “I don’t understand that,” she replied.

  “It don’t matter, Fiona. The thing of it is that you just keep believin’ that we’re gonna make it out of this alive and someday have our daughter and live happy all together.”

  “Are you serious, Joe? You sure you’re not just telling me that to make me feel better until we either get killed by Holt or hanged by Peabody?”

  “I’m dead serious,” Joe whispered. “Dead damned serious!”

  Fiona nodded, trying her very best just to believe. She had to believe. Otherwise, she was going to go mad, and then how would Joe ever survive being shackled to a crazy woman?

  That night Ransom Holt built a bonfire and dragged Joe and Fiona closer to the fire. “There’s a chill in the air and you two are worth a whole lot more to me alive than dead,” he explained as he uncorked a bottle of whiskey, pulled up a blanket, and enjoyed his fire.

  Holt tilted the bottle up to the stars and drank deeply. He sighed with contentment and smiled, his meaty face highlighted by the flames. “I have always enjoyed a good, big fire,” he told his two prisoners. “When I was a boy growing up on a farm in Connecticut, I would build bonfires out of the tree stumps that we used to pull out to clear our fields. I’d sneak some kerosene out of my father’s shed and drench those stumps, then pile dead branches and leaves all around them and set ’em afire! Lordy, but they burned high and bright. I’d dance around the flames pretending I was a wild Indian. I’d whoop and holler and have the best old time.”

  Holt took another drink, and it was clear that he wanted to go back in time and to reminisce. “My father was a circus freak,” he admitted. “He was an inch taller than I am now and thicker. He could lift a fully grown horse right off the damned ground, and he did all sorts of lifting feats for suckers who would pay to watch. Sometimes, he’d wrestle three or four men at a time for a purse. He never lost. My father was big, strong, and mean as a snake. He’d whip me just for the hell of it, and he’d whip my mother until she begged him to stop.”

  Fiona looked sideways at Holt. “Why didn’t your mother take you and run away?”

  “Oh,” Ransom Holt said, still gazing deep into the flames. “She tried that once. But only once, because he broke her leg over his knee and then he smashed her kneecap with a hammer, shattering it all to hell so the best that she could do was hobble.”

  Holt’s voice was taking on rage. “My father broke Mother’s leg and kneecap, telling her that he would break her neck and mine the next time she tried to run away with me. And he wasn’t bluffing.”

  Fiona knew she shouldn’t say another word, but something made her blurt, “What eventually happened to your father?”

  “Well,” Holt said, suddenly grinning after taking another long pull on his bottle, “came the day I was sixteen and my father got drunk and brought home a young little whore not much bigger than you. He fucked her right in front of my mother, laughing all the time he did it, and then he told my mother to undress.”

  Fiona swallowed hard. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  “He ordered her to undress because she was old and beat up and not good to look at anymore.” Holt’s lips twisted with hate. “My mother protested, and then Father began to beat her in front of the naked whore. When my mother couldn’t take any more, she started to remove the only old dress she owned, and that’s when something inside me just . . . just snapped. I went crazy.”

  Holt threw down his whiskey and his eyes tightened and his lips formed a thin, white slash across his face. “There was a hatchet resting by our fireplace, and I grabbed it up and started slashing at my father. He was strong, but he wasn’t made of steel, and when I chopped off his hand, he lost his nerve, and that’s when I split his head open from the hairline right down to his filthy mouth.”

  “That’s what I’d have done, too,” Joe Moss said. “Only, I wouldn’t have waited until I was sixteen years old. I’d have killed that old bastard when I was twelve.”

  Holt glanced at Joe and actually smiled. “I’m sure you would have tried. But then you got more guts than anyone I ever knew and you’re about half crazy when it comes to killing. The truth is that you wouldn’t have had a chance against my old man at twelve years old any more than I did. So I waited and got him killed at sixteen.”

  “What about the little woman he had that night?” Fiona asked.

  “I killed that little whore, too.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Joe asked.

  “Because when my mother had to take off her dress, the little whore pointed at Mother’s fat, sagging body and started to giggle. You see, she was making fun of my mother’s body and I just couldn’t abide that.”

  “Did you also hack her to death?” Fiona asked.

  “Naw,” Holt said, taking a drink. “I dragged her out to the barn and fucked her, then I beat her brains out with a single
tree.”

  Fiona shuddered.

  “And then you know what I did?” Holt asked the fire.

  “What?” Joe asked.

  “I killed my mother because she was so miserable. But I killed her quick and easy and she asked me to do it. I didn’t want to at first because I loved her, but she begged me to kill her, so I finally did. I buried Mother, but I lit the barn on fire with my father and the whore inside.”

  “And then?” Fiona asked quietly.

  “Then I ran away and never looked back. I started bare-knuckle fighting for prize money. I’m so big that there were few foolish enough to get into a ring with me, so I’d take on two or three at a time just like my father had done. And I’d always win. Always.”

  Holt took another drink. “I did that until I beat a man to death in the ring in Chicago. They tried to arrest me, and I decided I had better get out of town and keep movin’ or I might get hanged. You see, the young fella that I beat to death was well connected to some dangerous people.”

  Holt laughed to himself and shook his head. “I didn’t even get to collect the purse I’d won that night in Chicago, but it didn’t matter. I have always been able to get work killing someone for money, or else protecting some rich sonofabitch from his enemies.”

  “So you learned to shoot and use a knife?” Joe asked, knowing this information would be very important to him in the future.

  “Oh, yeah,” Holt said, looking at Joe. “I learned how to use a gun, a rifle, a knife, and everything else that kills. However, I never learned how to use a tomahawk to kill and scalp men like you do, Joe.”

  “I could teach you,” Joe offered. “Take off these shackles and we’ll give it a few practice throws right now.”

  Holt laughed without mirth. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you’d like to do that. Yeah, you sure as hell would! And I’d wind up with your tomahawk stuck in my forehead.”

  Holt stopped laughing and took another pull on the bottle. He glanced over at Joe and Fiona and said, “I’ll tell you both a little secret.”

  “Maybe we don’t want to hear it,” Joe told the big man.