Comstock Cross Fire

by Gary Franklin

  “Best way is to have an outrider who knows how to look for Indians and their signs. That’s why we need to hire Johnny Redman. He can ride out in front and give us some advance warning. Otherwise, we’re just riding into a Paiute death trap. It ain’t a matter of if . . . it’s a matter of when and where.”

  “So you say,” Holt told him. “Yet this is mighty big country with damn little feed or water. What makes you so sure that the Paiute will even see us as we pass through their desert?”

  “Well,” Joe reasoned, “if you were a white-man-hatin’ Indian, wouldn’t you just naturally stick around the only road through this desert and be on the watch for anyone following the Humboldt River?”

  Holt grudgingly nodded his head with understanding. “Yes,” he said, “if I were a Paiute wanting to kill or rob whites, then I would watch this road and the river trail.”

  “So there you have it,” Joe told the man. “The Paiute won’t let anyone pass without givin’ them a good once-over. And when they see a lone wagon and just a few men, they’ll decide it’s easy pickin’s. And I’ll tell you one more thing that you don’t want to hear.”

  “Let’s have it all.”

  “The Paiutes won’t just hit us once and if that don’t work give up the fight. To live in this hard desert country, you have to be willin’ to keep trying to do a thing over and over. So the Paiutes will just keep comin’ at us until either we kill off their whole hunting party, or they kill all of us off.”

  “Shit,” Holt swore. “You’ve got me worried.”

  “You should be damned worried,” Joe told the man. “And that’s why you can’t afford not to hire Johnny Redman, and even let me fight beside you if things get really bad and we’re startin’ to get overrun in a battle.”

  “Sure! You’d love that!” Holt crowed. “I can see it happening now. I unchain and give you a rifle and when all the Paiutes are shot to hell, then you turn the rifle on me!”

  “At least you’d probably die fast,” Joe said, not denying that was exactly what he would do given half a chance. “But I’m goin’ to kill Eli slow and scalp him while he’s still alive.”

  Holt drove the creaking buckboard for a while without speaking. Finally, he looked at Joe and said, “I am going to hire the half-breed if he shows up this evening. And I’ll pay him his due same as I will Eli.”

  “Sure,” Joe said with a chuckle. “And their due will be the same that you’re expecting to see me and my wife get paid on the Comstock Lode.”

  “Aw, just shut the hell up, Joe,” Holt growled as they drove on through the dust and the salt flats north of the Great Salt Lake.

  13

  THAT EVENING, JOHNNY Redman slipped into their camp just as quiet as a breeze. The half-breed wasn’t there one moment, but he was there the next with his gun in one hand and a rock clenched in the other.

  Joe was chained beside Fiona on a wagon wheel facing their campfire. When he saw the half-breed appear, Joe was impressed, for he knew that very few whites other than a few of the old mountain men and Indian scouts could move so stealthily.

  “Evenin’,” Joe said to the breed. “I’d get up and fix you a plate of beans, pork, and bread, but as you can see I’m chained to this wagon wheel, so I’ll just ask Eli to do it for me.”

  “Gawddamn you, Moss,” Eli hissed. “You need to keep your big mouth shut!”

  “Stow it!” Holt snapped, looking at the tall young half-breed who was dressed in white man’s clothes except for a beaded buckskin belt and his moccasins. “You can holster that gun and drop that rock, Johnny. By the way, why the rock?”

  “I can hit a running jackrabbit with a rock,” Redman answered. “It saves wastin’ bullets, and I can throw this rock hard enough to break a man’s skull without a sound.”

  “And you’ve killed a man with a rock before?” Holt asked.

  “Not yet. But I would have tonight if either you or that other man made a bad move.”

  “Take it easy,” Holt said, managing a smile. “Come have some food. You look as hungry as a winter-starved wolf.”

  “First we talk,” Redman insisted. “Joe told me last night about the bounty you are getting in some faraway place called Virginia City.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I want a thousand dollars to keep you alive that far,” Redman said bluntly. “No less, no more.”

  “You’ve probably never had more than twenty dollars altogether at one time in your entire life,” Holt told the young Cheyenne.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does,” Holt said. “Money ruins Indians.”

  “I’m half-white, mister.”

  “I still say that a quick thousand dollars would be your ruination.”

  “I’ll be the one to see about that. I’ve named my price. You can pay it or I will leave right now.”

  Holt made a sweeping gesture out toward the huge darkness all around them. “Where would you go out here in this wilderness?”

  “I have places to go.”

  “I’m sure that Perdition would not be one of them,” Holt said. “That was very impressive how you killed the store owner and those two men. I’ve never seen a man move any faster than you did yesterday.”

  “I did not want to kill them. They gave me no choice,” Redman explained.

  “Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. But what impressed me was that you didn’t think on the matter for more than a split second. You’re a natural-born killer, son.”

  “Don’t call me son! Don’t ever call me son, or savage, or anything but my name, mister! You better call me Johnny or Redman.”

  “Take it easy!” Holt said, clearly alarmed by this outburst. “All right. I’ll call you Johnny, and I’ve decided that I should pay you to help us get across this desert.”

  “You made the right decision,” the breed said, relaxing. “And just to know that you are a man of your word, I will have that gold pocket watch that you carry.”

  “What!” Ransom Holt couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

  “As a token of our agreement,” Redman explained, taking a feather from a leather pouch at his side. “And in return, I will give you this sacred eagle feather.”

  “Shit!” Holt exclaimed. “That’s a damn poor exchange for me. My watch is gold and it cost—”

  “I do not care what it cost you, big man. I will return the watch when we get to this place where Man Killer and his woman are to hang. And the value of my eagle feather is great. It cost the lives of two brave Cheyenne warriors.”

  Holt started to tell the breed that he didn’t give a damn if the feather had cost the lives of an entire tribe of Cheyenne. But something in the way Johnny Redman was looking at him and holding the sacred eagle feather gave him second thoughts, and without even understanding why, Holt took the feather while at the same time he handed the young man his expensive timepiece.

  “Good,” Redman declared with a smile, putting the heavy gold watch up to his ear to listen to it tick. “White men value time more than anything except money. So now that we have exchanged valuable gifts, I know that you and I have an understanding.”

  “Yes.”

  “One thousand dollars and I will make sure that you get to this place on the far side of this desert.”

  “That’s it,” Holt said, figuring he would kill the breed at the same time that he killed Eli. And then he would take all the bounty as well as get his damned watch back. “Just don’t lose my watch before we get there.”

  In response to those words, Johnny Redman threw back his head and laughed up at the blanket of brilliant stars.

  That night, Joe was chained close enough to Fiona to speak to her in private while the others slept. “Fiona, don’t get your hopes up too high, but I think that the half-breed will help us.”

  “You mean help us escape?”

  “Maybe,” Joe told her. “I’m not sure yet. But I don’t think that Johnny Redman has any intention of crossing this entire desert.”r />
  “But what about the thousand-dollar reward?” Fiona asked. “That’s an awful lot of money.”

  “Indians don’t care that much about money. And Holt was probably right that so much money would bring Johnny to ruin.”

  “But he’s half-white.”

  “Maybe he is, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Johnny Redman is far more of an Indian than a white man.”

  “So what will we do if he does decide to help us escape?” Fiona asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Joe admitted. “There’s not much that we can do except bide our time and wait for our chance. And anyway, my shoulder is still a long way from being healed, although I’m feelin’ stronger every single day.”

  “Do you think we’ll eventually get hanged in Virginia City?” Fiona asked, moving close to her husband. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I’m sure we won’t,” Joe said, wanting in the worst way to take his wife in his arms and comfort her fears. “We’re just starting this journey across the desert. We ain’t even to the headwaters of the Humboldt River yet.”

  “Where is that?”

  “The waters start in the Ruby Mountains. They used to be good trappers’ country, but no more.”

  “How much farther to those Ruby Mountains?”

  “Three or four days, I reckon. This next stretch we have to cross is real bad. Damn little water, lots of dust storms, and plenty of murderin’ Paiutes. Fiona, you might as well understand right now that it’ll be a tough crossing to the Ruby Mountains and a lot of terrible things can happen.”

  “Do you have friends among the Paiutes?” Fiona asked hopefully. “Paiute friends that would help us get away from Holt and Eli?”

  “I have known some Paiutes, and a few of ’em I even trusted. But I can’t say that any were my friends. You see, they don’t live in big groups or have powerful chiefs like the Plains Indians or some of the other Indians. The Paiutes are really a bunch of small clans that work independent of one another. That’s why they’re so hard to deal with or for the army to whip. One clan might tell you that you can cross their land if you give ’em something they value . . . but the next clan only fifteen or twenty miles away might have a whole different opinion on the matter and try to put arrows in your horses and your back.”

  Joe gazed up at the glittering stars. “Fiona, I sure wish that I had my big wolf dog back.”

  “What wolf dog?” Fiona asked.

  “I guess he was only about half wolf,” Joe told her. “I picked him up north of Reno when I killed a bounty man while I was hunting for you. Rip became attached to me and stayed by my side when I came back to get you in Virginia City.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “When all hell broke lose by the church and I threw you on that sorrel mare, tellin’ you to run for your life, bullets were flying. I killed them two other Peabody brothers and ran into the church, where the priest hid me and Rip in this little cave back behind his altar. The last Peabody brother and what men I hadn’t shot and killed searched the church high and low but never found me. But it was dark in that little cave and I didn’t realize that Rip had been shot. That big dog died without a whimper by my side and I miss him still.”

  “He sounds as if he was your very devoted and good friend,” Fiona told Joe. “Maybe someday when we are away from all this, you can find another dog like Rip.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said, “but I’m not countin’ on it. A dog like that only comes along once or twice in a man’s lifetime.”

  They sat still together gazing up at the stars. “Have you been praying for us, Joe?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  Joe shifted on his butt, feeling uncomfortable. “Fiona, you know I’m not a religious man.”

  “But praying can’t hurt.”

  “No,” Joe had to agree, “it can’t. It’s just that I’ve never known it to help. So why waste the time prayin’ when you should be thinkin’ about how to get yourself out of a bad fix like we’re in right now?”

  “You do the thinking, Joe. I’ll do the praying, and maybe between the two of us we can come out of this and get our daughter back.”

  “It’ll happen,” Joe vowed. “I’m sure of it. And—”

  Joe stiffened.

  “What?” Fiona asked with alarm.

  “There’s men out there in the brush and they’re movin’ in closer with every intention of killin’ us all.”

  “Joe . . .”

  Johnny Redman was awake and on his feet. He kicked Holt and Eli into wakefulness, and then he whispered, “Move back away from the firelight where they can’t see you!”

  “Indians?” Holt asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Holt was only half awake. “Who the hell else would it be other than Indians?”

  “Shhhh! It could be the men from Perdition. Matter of fact, that’s probably who is out there.”

  “What—”

  “They want me and they want everything back that you took from them at the store,” Johnny explained. “They’re professional trackers and killers.”

  “How many do you think would be out there?”

  “At least five or six,” Johnny said after a minute. “Maybe as many as a dozen.”

  “Holt, unchain me and my wife from this wagon wheel so we can hide in the dark!” Joe pleaded. “We’re easy targets all lit up by the firelight!”

  “I can’t do that,” Holt said. “Not until we find out how many we’re up against.”

  “Johnny!” Joe hissed. “At least put out that damned fire or my wife and I will be easy first targets!”

  Not waiting for Ransom Holt to object, the half-breed kicked dirt into the fire, smothering it into smoke. Suddenly, the night was very dark except for a little moonlight, and there wasn’t a sound.

  “Are you sure that someone is out there?” Holt whispered after listening for ten minutes while holding a six-gun in each of his big fists.

  “Yes,” Johnny Redman said. “But now they know that we know they’re here, and they’re trying to decide what to do next.”

  “Maybe we should go after them.”

  “If you go out there in the sagebrush,” the breed said, “you will never come back to this camp alive.”

  Holt had taken cover behind the buckboard and Eli had done the same.

  “So what the hell do we do now?” Eli asked, his whispered voice high-pitched and strained.

  “We just hunker down and wait,” Joe answered. “If someone has to make the first move, let it be them. And I sure could help you right now if you’d take these shackles off and give me a gun.”

  “When Hell freezes over!” Holt swore softly. “Now everyone shut up and be ready.”

  Joe struggled against his shackles and when he realized it was useless, he tried to move closer to shield Fiona from any incoming bullets.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait and see if they were being surrounded by Indians or Jack Mormons. And then to learn what the odds were of them surviving this fight that was most certain to start shortly after dawn.

  14

  JUST AFTER DAWN, a rifle’s bullet struck one of their water barrels, and then bullets struck another and another.

  “Gawddammit!” Holt shouted into the dawn. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “We’re from Perdition and we want what you stole as well as that breed for hangin’!”

  “I didn’t steal anything!” Holt shouted.

  “Yeah, you did! You didn’t see that old woman rockin’ while she knitted in the back of the store, did you, big man? But she saw you. And she heard everything and she says you never paid nothin’ for them three big sacks of supplies.”

  “The old woman is crazy!” Holt bellowed. “I paid for those supplies!”

  “Liar! You left our general store while all that commotion was goin’ on outside and you stole us blind! That there was a community store, big man! That means you stole from each and every one of us in Pe
rdition, and that’s a bad, bad offense.”

  “You’re wrong,” Holt shouted, his voice no longer sounding blustery or confident.

  “Suit your damn self, you thief! But we’re not leavin’ here until we have you locked up in chains and that breed the same. Then we’re takin’ you all back to Perdition where you’ll be judged!”

  “No!” Holt bellowed. “I’m not going anyplace with you outlaw Mormon people.”

  “Suit yourself, thief!”

  Suddenly, it was as if they were caught in the middle of a Civil War battlefield surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Bullets screamed in from every direction so fast that they couldn’t even be counted.

  “Joe, we’re gonna die!” Fiona exclaimed.

  Joe Moss swore and surged at his manacles and chains, tearing flesh but otherwise having no effect. “Fiona, scoot behind me as best you can!”

  Fiona did that, and Joe had her pretty well covered by his body as the onslaught continued from all around them. He could hear the slugs striking their precious water barrels and water began to run down the bed of the buckboard, spilling on Joe and his wife, then seeping quickly into the bone-dry and dusty earth.

  “We can’t go far without water!” Joe yelled at Holt, who was hugging the ground near Eli. Both men were trying to spot targets, but failing that, they were shooting blind.

  Johnny Redman had scooped out enough dirt so that he was pretty well protected. But the half-breed wasn’t firing yet.

  “Hold your fire!” Ransom Holt shouted as one of their horses was hit and dropped kicking and squealing in pain. “Gawddammit, stop shooting!”

  “Are you gonna surrender yourself and that half-breed?” the same voice as before yelled as the shooting stopped.

  Holt sighed deeply, then said, “Yes!”

  “You might surrender, but not me!” Johnny Redman hissed, jumping to his feet and diving into the thick brush.

  Moments later, Joe heard a startled shout and then a cry of pain. No shots. Just a dull thumping sound and that cry, followed by the sound of a body falling heavily.

  “Did the half-breed get away?” Fiona asked.