Comstock Cross Fire

by Gary Franklin

  “Yes,” Joe said. “My guess is that the half-breed Cheyenne wasn’t lying when he said he could use a rock to knock out a man. Unless I’m mistaken, he’s already broken out of the ring surrounding us and is running through the brush like a bobcat staying low and moving fast.”

  “You better be gettin’ to your feet,” the voice from the brush shouted. “You won’t go anywhere without water and we shot one of your horses, though it was an accident. But it won’t be no accident when we shoot you and that half-breed! I’ll give you one more minute to stand up and surrender.”

  “The half-breed is gone!” Holt shouted. “He just jumped up and ran off. It’s just me and my hired man and our two prisoners that are here now.”

  “Stand up and reach for the sky or we’ll kill you for certain!”

  Holt raged. “Gawddammit!”

  “What are we gonna do?” Eli demanded. “We’re surrounded.”

  “The breed got away,” Holt shot back. “Eli, maybe you should try and do the same.”

  “No, sir! I didn’t steal from these people and it’s not me that they have a bone to pick with. It’s you, Mr. Holt. And I think you’d best stand up and then see what you can do to make ’em settle down and stop shootin’.”

  “Shit!” Holt swore, pounding his big fist over and over against the earth.

  “What’s it to be, thief? You surrendering? Or do you want to end your life and that of your friends right here and now?”

  “Surrender!” Eli pleaded. “Dammit, boss, you can talk your way out of this mess!”

  Holt unleashed a string of profanities, but knowing he was beaten, he finally shouted, “All right! I’m going to stand up and I don’t want anyone to shoot me down.”

  “Stand up, then, with your hands over your head.”

  “Get up, Eli!”

  “You first, boss.”

  “You chickenshit sonofabitch!” Holt swore, kicking Eli in the side as he gained his footing.

  Eli grunted in pain, but he stayed tight to the ground.

  “Now the other one!” the voice called. “Hands up like the big thief.”

  Eli released the Sharps rifle and stood up slowly, hands up over his head. “I ain’t got anything to do with what happened back in Perdition,” he screamed into the brush. “So you boys just don’t get trigger-happy because I ain’t done you no wrong!”

  “Joe, what about us?” Fiona asked in a nervous whisper.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Joe said, his wrists and ankles wet with fresh blood from his struggling to get free of his manacles and chains. “Our fate is in the hands of these rough Jack Mormons.”

  “Will they hurt or hang us?”

  “Depends.”

  “Depends on what, Joe?”

  “Depends on what I say and what Holt says and who they finally come to believe.” Joe shifted his weight off his wife and leaned back against the wagon wheel.

  The Jack Mormons began to stand up all around the camp. One by one, they appeared, armed with rifles and looking grim and prepared to fight to the death to reclaim what had been stolen from their community general store.

  “I count fifteen,” Joe said. “And I’m sure that there are more on the other side of the wagon that we can’t even see yet.”

  “Holt and Eli wouldn’t have stood a chance against so many.”

  “No,” Joe agreed. “If there had been an all-out fight, most likely we’d also have been killed.”

  The leader of the Jack Mormons was a very tall, very thin man with a long black beard and a blue shirt and a floppy gray hat. He was almost as tall as Ransom Holt, but Joe judged the leader weighed only half as much.

  Holt was already talking. “Listen, surely we’ve got a misunderstanding here, boys. Whatever some old woman said is just plain wrong, or else she’s lyin’.”

  “She’s my ma,” the leader said, eyes narrowing as he raised his rifle to point at Ransom Holt’s broad chest. “You callin’ my ma a liar?”

  “No!” Holt cried, realizing what might have been his fatal blunder. “Of course not. I’m just saying that she must not have seen me pay the store owner for the supplies.”

  “Well, then, she must have stolen the money you paid because it ain’t in the cash register or nowhere else in the store.” The tall man and his fellow townsmen pressed in closer. “So are you callin’ Ma a thief?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, then, if she heard you and saw you and there ain’t no money to be found . . . well, how kin you explain it, thief?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Ransom Holt didn’t have the chance to try to create some explanation for the missing money because the leader slammed upward with the butt of his rifle and it caught Holt on the jaw. The blow was so hard that it knocked Holt a step back into the side of the buckboard.

  “Now wait a—”

  The man stepped forward fast and struck Holt a second time, and he collapsed in a heap, wet and muddy from the runoff of the riddled water barrels.

  “You might have killed him, Ferris.”

  “I didn’t,” Ferris said, looking down at Holt. “But him sayin’ my ma is a thief and a liar just angered me so bad I had to break his lyin’ face.”

  “He’s knocked out cold.”

  “Tie him up hand and foot, then throw him in the wagon, boys.”

  “Hey!” a voice called. “Come help us! Caleb is hurt!”

  “Go help ’em,” the leader ordered three of his men. “And start trackin’ that half-breed. When you spot him, shoot him down like you would a rabid dog.”

  “Don’t you want the town to see him hanged for killin’ three of our people?”

  Ferris considered the question and then shook his head. “The half-breed is gonna be hard to track and harder to kill. So if you get a shot, put him down like a dog, then drag his carcass into Perdition. We’ll string up whatever is left of him and that’ll satisfy the town.”

  The three men nodded in agreement, and prepared to get their gear and horses to ride after Johnny Redman. To Joe Moss’s way of thinking, if they somehow did track and corner the fleeing half-breed, those three were as good as dead men although they didn’t yet realize the fact.

  “What about me!” Eli cried, bringing everyone’s attention back to himself. “Mister, I didn’t steal anything or call your sweet old ma a liar or a thief.”

  “You climb up into that buckboard and keep your yap shut. When we get back to Perdition, we’ll decide what punishment you should suffer.”

  “But I didn’t . . .” Eli closed his mouth as the leader raised his rifle to bash him in the head. “I’ll get in the wagon! Don’t have to use that on me, mister. I didn’t do any of you Mormons wrong.”

  It took four men to tie the massive Ransom Holt up and lift him into the buckboard. One of the Jack Mormons put the wounded horse out of its misery, and then they all turned to look down at Joe Moss and Fiona.

  “What did you two do to deserve this treatment?” Ferris demanded.

  “We didn’t do anything to deserve it,” Joe said through his clenched teeth.

  “Don’t lie to me, mister!” Ferris hissed, backhanding Joe hard enough to rock his head back on his shoulders. “I already heard all the damned lies I can stand for this month.”

  “Don’t hit him!” Fiona cried, pushing between them. “He’s my husband and he hasn’t done anything except to try to save my life and get our daughter back from some Catholic nuns in Virginia City.”

  “You a Catholic?” Ferris asked, his eyes narrowing as he turned them away from Joe to Fiona. “We don’t have much likin’ for Pope lovers.”

  “No!” Fiona insisted. “But when I was wrongly accused of murdering a man in Virginia City, I had no choice but to give our little girl to the nuns for safekeeping.”

  “Of your own free will you gave your little girl over to the damned mackerel eaters?”

  “Only for a while. We were trying to get her back when that big man and his friend
caught us and put us in chains and manacles.”

  “What did you do to him and the other one to deserve such ill treatment?”

  “Nothing!” Fiona exclaimed. “They’re bounty hunters. They were paid to hunt us down and bring us back to Virginia City for hanging.”

  Ferris leaned close. “You ain’t makin’ this all up, are you, woman? ’Cause if you are, I’ll give you and your husband the same punishments as I’ll give the big man who stole from us.”

  “I swear to you that I’m not making anything up.”

  Ferris studied Fiona, and then he studied Joe and said, “Boys, get those chains off these two and put ’em in the wagon so all four of ’em are together and easy for us to watch over on the road back to Perdition.”

  “The keys to our manacles are in the big man’s pockets,” Joe told the thin and unforgiving Mormon men. “And I thank you for your kindness to me and my wife.”

  “You’d better hold your thanks, mister. Because we ain’t even begun to decide your fates.”

  “We are innocent,” Joe declared, looking at all their faces. “And we have been unfairly chained and mistreated.”

  “You don’t look innocent to me,” Ferris told him. “You look like a man who is anything but innocent.”

  “Punish me if you must,” Joe said, “but don’t punish my wife.”

  Ferris must have liked what Joe told him, because he dipped his pointy chin and then walked away. Moments later, Joe and Fiona were unchained and their hated shackles removed.

  “You’re both gonna have some bad scars,” a younger man told them as he inspected their ankle and wrist wounds. “Scars you’ll carry the rest of your days.”

  “We’ll live with that,” Joe replied, helping his wife to her feet and then up into the buckboard beside Eli and the still-unconscious Ransom Holt.

  “Don’t think because we took those chains off that you’re out of the woods as to being innocent in our minds,” one of the Jack Mormons warned. “We’re just holdin’ judgment and punishments until we get you back to Perdition and get the truth.”

  “The truth is that we don’t deserve what was done to us by Ransom Holt and Eli,” Joe said. “And if it’s the truth that you’re seekin’, then you’ve just heard it plain.”

  “Maybe so. There will be a hangin’, though. That half-breed has our blood on his hands and he’s gonna hang even if they bring him in dead.”

  Joe didn’t have anything to say about that. He would never tell this man that no matter how good the three Jack Mormons sent after Johnny Redman were, they wouldn’t be good enough.

  “Ma’am,” another one of their captors said to Fiona. “You sure are thin and hurt. There are women back in Perdition that can you get to feelin’ good and strong again.”

  Tears welled up in Fiona’s eyes, and she nodded with appreciation as the buckboard was being hitched and their lives seemed to have just taken a dramatic turn for the better.

  15

  EIGHT MILES TO the north of the Great Salt Lake and just two hours after Joe and Fiona were placed in the buckboard for a return trip to Perdition and judgment, Johnny Redman found the spot that he had been searching for while on the run.

  “It’ll do,” he said to himself as he entered the deep, fifty-yard-wide arroyo. “It’ll do just fine.”

  The arroyo was an ancient dry riverbed, and it probably had not been flooded in centuries. It was choked with sage and brush and tumbleweeds, and it was as crooked as a sidewinder.

  Johnny made sure to leave tracks as he walked into the arroyo and then started hiking north up its course. He had not been able to steal a horse back at the camp when it had come under fire, so he was at a small disadvantage compared to those that were tracking him and were now less than a mile behind. Also, he had not had time to find a rifle, and the Jack Mormons out to get him would surely have rifles that were far better than the two pistols he carried in his holster and waistband.

  Out in this desolate, inhospitable country, only a Paiute might survive on foot, and Johnny Redman was no desert Paiute. He didn’t know the country and he didn’t know the places where scarce, drinkable water could be found. So he needed to get these men off his trail and he needed at least one horse and preferably all of them.

  The hunted half-breed would set a trap. If his pursuers left him no choice, maybe a death trap.

  Johnny moved quickly up the debris-clogged arroyo for about five hundred yards. When it doglegged hard to the right, the half-breed nimbly jumped out of the arroyo and onto a large slab of sandstone, which he then used to carry him up to the rim.

  For a moment, he hunkered down and surveyed his path below, noting that he had left tracks, but none so obvious that those who followed him might suspect that they were being purposely led into a trap.

  Satisfied, Johnny Redman checked his guns and trotted back along the rim until he came to a big rock near where the arroyo opened to the south. Here he would wait for the men who came to capture or kill him. And once they were inside the arroyo, he would follow them . . . and if they were not too many in number, he would give them the choice—their lives—or their guns and their horses.

  The three Jack Mormons were moving at a steady but mile-eating trot and when they came to the arroyo, they paused and one of them dismounted. Johnny was hiding only fifty yards away and he heard one of the men say to the others, “Could be a trap in there.”

  “Could be,” another said, “but we have to be real close to the breed now, and I don’t think he’s well armed.”

  “He could be armed,” another said, “but he won’t have time to think about any trap. He’s a runner and he’ll keep runnin’ until we overtake him. If we dillydally around here, then he’s only going to increase his lead on us and we don’t want that.”

  “I agree. Let’s go ahead and be real careful. Tom, you watch the rim on the right. Avery, you keep your eyes on the left rim. I’ll be lookin’ straight ahead. Remember what Ferris said. If we get a shot on the breed, take it and make it count!”

  “I’d rather bring him back alive so we can all watch him dance on the end of a rope in Perdition.”

  “Me, too, but dead is dead and this one needs to be dead.”

  Johnny overheard this conversation, and now he knew that there were three men who would shoot him on sight and if he was wounded, they would still take him back to be hanged.

  The three Mormons rode side by side with their rifles at the ready. Once they were into the arroyo, Johnny Redman slipped out from behind his yellow sandstone rock and crept down behind them.

  “Tracks stop here!” one of the men said, dismounting and squatting in the sandy river bottom.

  “Are you sure?” Avery asked, also climbing down from his horse along with the third tracker. “The half-breed couldn’t have just sprung wings and flown out of this arroyo.”

  Johnny had moved up fast, and now he was right behind the three. “I didn’t. Hands up or I’ll shoot all of you in the back!”

  The one named Tom spun and tried to bring his rifle to bear on the half-breed, but he took a bullet in the leg for his foolishness. The other two Jack Mormons wisely dropped their weapons into the sandy river bottom and threw up their hands.

  “Slow and easy, with your left hands, get your sidearms out of your holsters and toss ’em in my direction.”

  They did, and then Johnny Redman said, “Tend to your friend because he’s bleeding pretty bad.”

  The two men had obviously been in gunfights before because they didn’t waste time or words, but instead put a tourniquet on Tom’s leg and then a bandage, which they tied in place with a sweat-soaked bandanna.

  Tom was in a lot of pain, but all of them knew he was not going to die . . . unless the young half-breed decided that was what ought to happen next.

  “You gonna kill us?” Avery asked.

  “You’d have killed me.”

  “No, we wouldn’t have!” Avery lied. “We were just going to—”

  “Shut up!�
�� Johnny ordered, cocking back the hammer of his gun and noting how their frightened horses were trotting back toward the mouth of the arroyo. “Now back away from Tom and turn around to face the wall.”

  “He’s gonna shoot us in the back!” Avery cried, turning pale.

  “No, I’m not,” Johnny told the man. “But I have cause to do that, which you would have done to me.”

  “Then what are you going to do with us?”

  Johnny twisted around and saw that the horses had slowed to a walk and were now nibbling at what little grass there was to be found. They weren’t that far away, and he knew that he could easily catch them. “I’m going to let you find your own way out of this hellish country,” he decided aloud. “While I ride off with your guns and your horses.”

  “What!” Avery turned despite the orders and cried, “Good gawd, man! We’re miles and miles from Perdition. Without horses or guns, we’re as good as dead men. Paiutes will find and kill us if we don’t die of thirst!”

  Johnny Redman wanted to tell Avery that, with a lot of luck and pluck, they just might make it out of this desert to safety, but to do so they might have to leave the wounded tracker named Tom.

  Instead, he told the three Jack Mormons, “All right. You were going to shoot me down without a second thought, but I’m going to give you a fighting chance to live. I’ll leave a horse, your rifles, and canteens about a mile south of here.”

  “Just one horse?” Avery asked. “But—”

  “One horse for your stupid friend Tom. And canteens and all your rifles for the Paiute, if they find you before you get back to your settlement and families.”

  Avery blew out a deep breath of relief. “If you’re really gonna do that, then maybe you ain’t as terrible as you acted when you gunned those three down in Perdition.”

  “They had it coming,” Johnny said. “But you’d never believe that since they were your own kind and I’m a half-breed.”

  “Half-breed or not, you’re treatin’ us white,” Avery replied. “I just wish you’d leave us with all three of our horses.”

  “Well, I won’t leave you but one for Tom to ride and you two fellas to lead,” Johnny told them. “And if you make it to Perdition, tell the others that those killings I did were all in self-defense. It was me or them and no man is gonna allow himself to be killed without trying to kill first.”