Comstock Cross Fire (15 page)

“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.”

Avery nodded. “That big man that you were with, he stole three sacks of supplies from us.”

“That's none of my concern.”

“He's probably gonna hang or at least taste the lash.”

“He deserves both, and so does the one called Eli.”

“What about the mountain man and his woman?”

“They're innocent of everything except they killed some rich brothers who won't stop until they are hanged on the Comstock Lode.”

“Were you gonna help deliver them to the noose?”

“I was,” Johnny admitted. “There was a handsome reward for my gettin' them across this hellish desert.”

“What are you gonna do now?” Avery finally asked.

Johnny Redman chuckled. “I'm not gonna be so dumb as to tell you my plans . . . that's for damn sure!”

“You gonna—”

“Enough talk,” Johnny said, anxious to be on his way. “Don't try to follow me ever again or the next time I'll kill you faster than you can blink.”

“We won't,” Avery promised. “None of us will follow you again.”

“That's what I wanted to hear you say,” Johnny told them. “And if you make it back to Perdition, I want you to tell the big man I haven't quit the job.”

“Meanin'?”

“Meaning that I'll be seeing him later, if you don't decide to string him up by the neck with a stout rope.”

“So you're gonna try and collect that reward money?”

“Yep. I got a big need for a thousand dollars.”

“A thousand!”

“That's right.”

“That rich man in Virginia City must have a powerful lot of hatred in his heart.”

“I would say so,” Johnny agreed. “Now why don't we quit talking and you boys start back for home. It'll be a long walk.”

“We can do 'er,” Avery vowed as he walked over to his friend and said, “Let's get Tom on his feet and start back to Perdition. We'll go slow and easy on the horse this half-breed has promised to leave us. That's what you promised, right?”

But Johnny Redman didn't hear the question. He was already trotting out of the arroyo with a mind to catch up with the Mormon horses. One he would leave behind, along with guns and water. But the other pair—the best two of the three—were now his own to ride in whichever direction he wanted out of this miserable desert.

Trouble was, Redman wasn't exactly sure where he wanted to go anymore, but damned if that thousand-dollar bounty wasn't mighty tempting.

16

TWO DAYS LATER, Joe Moss and Fiona were standing before an old, gray-bearded elder of Perdition named Ira Young who solemnly informed them that he was a distant cousin of their Salt Lake City prophet, Brigham Young. Joe and Fiona had no horses, weapons, or money, so they were pretty much stuck waiting to see what these people would do either to or for them. They had been given a private room, baths, fresh clothes, all the food they could eat, and little else. But now, bathed and free of their chains and shackles, Joe and Fiona felt as if they had died and gone to heaven.

“What we are going to do today,” Ira Young pronounced to most of the population of his small Mormon settlement, “is determine the proper punishment for Mr. Ransom Holt and his friend, Eli Brown.”

Eli, like Ransom Holt, was standing before the old patriarch with his hands bound behind his back and his feet stripped of shoes.

Eli cried, “But sir, I ain't done no wrong to you folks! When I was here, I didn't do anything but watch over our prisoners!”

Ira Young wore spectacles on his long, hooked nose, and now he gazed down at them and snapped, “You will be silent or you will be horsewhipped! Is that understood, Mr. Brown?”

“Yes, sir,” Eli said, swallowing hard and then bowing his head.

Ira Young was seated on a big wooden chair that was placed on an upraised platform in a large schoolroom. Joe reckoned the schoolhouse was large because Mormons tended to have a lot of young'uns. The spacious schoolroom with a big potbellied stove in the center of its floor apparently doubled as Perdition's meeting hall. Now the room was packed and it was stifling hot.

“What do you think Mr. Young will do to Holt and Eli?” Fiona whispered to Joe.

“I don't know and I don't care,” Joe replied. “Just as long as they let us go in peace and give us some travelin' money.”