Comstock Cross Fire (19 page)

“They're still thirsty, but they'll get by for a day, so now we give 'em grain,” Holt said, filling buckets of it for his precious livestock.

“Can't we just make camp here for tonight?” Eli asked. “I'm not sure I can go on.”

“I'd like nothing better than to make camp right here,” Holt replied. “But I wouldn't be surprised if those men from Perdition were spying on us. I don't want them to know where we're heading, so we'll wait until dark and then get under way. With luck, we should be at the outskirts of Salt Lake City by tomorrow morning at daybreak.”

“What'll we do then?”

“I don't know yet,” Holt answered. “We'll just find a prosperous little Mormon farm on the outskirts of Salt Lake and take it over for a few days.”

Eli frowned, trying to understand what the big man was saying to him. “You mean . . .”

“I mean we're desperate men and we'll do what we have to do.”

“Sure,” Eli said, not sounding sure at all. “But we don't have to hurt Mormon farm people. We'll just pay 'em to stay at their place and get to feeling better for a spell.”

“That's the idea, all right.”

“No killin' 'em, Mr. Holt.”

The big man looked at Eli with cold eyes. “Are you suddenly going soft on me?”

“No, sir! I think we were lucky to get out of Perdition without getting our necks stretched, and I don't want to get back into that situation again with these Mormons. Not ever again.”

“Relax,” Holt assured the frightened man. “We'll pay for our board and keep and for that of my animals. No trouble. These farmers are always short of cash, and it'll be easy to find a place to rest up and get to feeling better. We'll get some good home cookin' from a Mormon woman. How's that sound?”

“It sounds mighty good, Mr. Holt. Mighty good!”

“I think so, too,” Holt said, thinking about whether he was going to pay a Mormon family of hardworking farmers in cash . . . or in bullets.

19

RANSOM HOLT AND Eli Brown did manage to find an isolated Mormon farm, and the young couple who owned it was desperate for cash. For thirty dollars, the Kendricks agreed to keep Holt and Eli until they were strong enough to travel. So they, along with their mules and horses, were put up in a hay barn and all were fed well, until Ransom Holt decided that they had spent enough time recovering.

“We need to leave here tomorrow and head west for the Ruby Mountains,” he told Eli. “The only way to cross the desert is to reach the headwaters of the Humboldt River and follow it west across Nevada.”

“And that's where you reckon that we'll find Joe Moss and his wife?” Eli asked, highly skeptical of the plan and really not feeling fit yet for a hard, dangerous desert journey.

“Yes,” Holt said. “I'm going to offer Farmer Kendrick our buckboard in return for fresh food supplies and our keep while we've rested here in their hay barn.”

“What about those four good Missouri mules?”

“We'll trade the mules later for more supplies and ride our two saddle horses.”

“But I thought that Mr. Kendrick and you made a deal for thirty dollars.”

“We did,” Holt admitted, “but I decided I want to keep our cash and get rid of the buckboard, so that's what I'll tell him that he's going to have to accept in payment.”

“What if he doesn't want to take the buckboard and demands the cash you promised him and his wife?”

Holt folded his massive arms across his chest and said, “Then, unfortunately, I'll have to deal harshly with Farmer Kendrick.”

Eli shook his head. “Now wait just a minute, Mr. Holt. You promised me that no harm would come to any Mormons hereabouts. We barely got off with our lives in Perdition. We probably wouldn't be so lucky to do the same here.”

“Eli, you worry way too damned much. This is my business and I'll handle things my way.”

“But—”

“No more!”

Highly troubled and somewhat confused, Eli walked out of the barn and out into the farmer's corn and hay fields. This was good farming country, and in the distance he could see an endless sea of green patches where the industrious Mormon families had carved out hundreds of prosperous farms along the western foothills of the Wasatch Range. In just the week that he'd been recovering in the barn and eating good home cooking, Eli had come to see that being a Mormon farmer wasn't such a bad life as he might have imagined.

Not bad at all. Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick had a fine cabin, a good, weather-tight hay barn, and about two hundred acres of crops ripening in the field. They owned two plow horses, three milk cows, five hogs, and one stupid sheep. Their green hay fields were ready to be cut and stacked in the barn's loft, and Mr. Kendrick was splitting cords of wood for the coming winter weather.

As far as Eli could tell, the small Kendrick family was all about work and prayer. They were young and expecting their first child in only a few months. They were also good, decent, God-fearing folks who earned their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. And more important, Mrs. Kendrick had gone out of her way to help him and Mr. Holt recover from their terrible whippings. Not once had either of the Kendricks asked what he and Holt had done to deserve such severe punishment. Eli was more than a little grateful for their respect and courtesy.

Yes, sir, Eli thought, if he had been fortunate enough to be born into a family like the Kendricks, life might have been a little dull and monotonous, but it would have been safe and satisfying. And that was why Eli didn't want any harm to come to this good family over the promises that had been made between Mr. Kendrick and Mr. Holt.

No, sir! Eli had seen the two big men shake hands on the terms of their stay and recovery, and a deal was a deal.

“Eli?”

He turned. “Huh?”

Holt said, “Pack our saddlebags because we're leaving real soon.”

Holt left then and went to the farmer's log cabin. He wasn't there very long and when he returned, Eli asked, “Did you and Mr. Kendrick come to a fair arrangement?”

“We sure did.”

Eli knew he should let this go, but he just could not. “So Mr. Kendrick accepted your buckboard instead of the money you promised?”

“Uh . . . he didn't want the buckboard so I made other arrangements.”

“What kind of ‘arrangements' are you talking about?”

“Eli, just do as I say and get our horses saddled and the mules hitched to my buckboard. We're leaving right away.”

“But . . . what did you do? Pay him the money?”

Ransom Holt's cheeks flushed with anger and he grew impatient. “I don't owe you any explanations, dammit! I told you that Mr. Kendrick and I worked out a deal,” Holt snapped. “Now, dammit, do as I say! Oh, and toss some hay and about ten sacks of grain into the buckboard. I'll saddle our horses and get our bedrolls together.”

Eli stared at the silent Kendrick house, and then he went to hitch their four good Missouri mules to the buckboard.

 

About fifteen minutes later he had the mules hitched, and all that time he'd been glancing at the cabin, expecting the Kendrick couple to at least see him and Holt off with a good-bye. But there wasn't a sound from the cabin, and Eli began to get a real bad feeling inside.

Finished with the harnessing, he headed to the cabin, for he especially wanted to thank Mrs. Kendrick for her kindness during his recovery and her delicious cooking.

“Hello the cabin? Mr. Kendrick? Mrs. Kendrick?”

“Hey!”

Eli pivoted to see Holt hurrying out of the barn toward him. “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to say good-bye to those good folks.”

“To hell with those farmers!” Holt ordered. “Climb up on that buckboard and let's go!”

Eli Brown was suddenly wishing for his Sharps rifle, which the Perdition Mormons had kept for themselves. Failing that, he was wishing for a loaded pistol on his hip.

“Mr. Holt, what happened in that cabin when you went in to offer the buckboard instead of cash?”

“Nothing you need to know about.”

Eli suddenly understood that Mr. Kendrick had been hurt and maybe killed in that cabin by Holt. And then he realized that Mrs. Kendrick, big with child, might just have suffered the same cruel fate.

Ransom Holt was wearing a Colt on his hip. Eli went to the buckboard and saw a rifle that hadn't belonged to either one of them.

With a pain akin to the lash of a bullwhip, Eli knew with dead certainty that Holt had done the Kendrick husband and wife a terrible, perhaps even deadly, wrong when he'd gone to their cabin.

Eli picked up the rifle, making sure that it was loaded and ready to fire. Then he turned toward Ransom Holt, who was holding the saddle horses and asked, “How did you come by taking their rifle?”

Holt's wide, handsome face froze for an instant, then broke into a wide, innocent smile. “Why, I
bought
that rifle! We're going to need it in Paiute country.”

“You bought it?”

“Sure did. Mr. Kendrick said he could buy another, and I paid him ten dollars for the rifle.”

“Good deal,” Eli said, mind spinning. “I think I'll go and say good-bye to them.”

Holt's smile slipped away. “Maybe you really, really shouldn't.”

“Maybe I gotta.”

Eli took the rifle and headed toward the cabin. When he reached the door, he knocked.

“Eli? Eli, get back here and get up on that buckboard!”

But Eli wouldn't turn away from the door to the cabin. He knocked hard and then called, “Mrs. Kendrick? Are you all right in there?”

“Eli! Get in the buckboard!”

Eli placed a hand on the doorknob and turned it. He eased the door wide open. “Mr. Kendrick? Mrs. Kendrick?”

The young farming couple was lying side by side on the floor and it was obvious that they had been beaten unconscious. The room was in a shambles, telling Eli that the pair had at least put up a good fight. But Ransom Holt was too big and strong to whip, and so they'd ended up losing a bad, bad fight.

“Holt,” Eli swore, turning in the doorway toward the big man, “you dirty, low-down sonofabitch!”

The first bullet from Holt's revolver hit Eli high in the chest and passed through his right lung. He staggered back into the cabin a step. The second bullet struck him a foot lower, in the gut just over his belt buckle, and would have bought Eli a painful and slow death.

But the first bullet was fatal and Eli Brown was gone even before he struck the cabin's floor.

“Stupid bastard,” Holt said, going into the cabin and prying the rifle out of Eli's twitching fingers. “These Mormon farmers will live. But you damn sure won't.”

Then Holt shot Eli in the back of his head for good measure, and left the Mormon farm driving his buckboard and leading the two good saddle horses along behind.

He was sorry to have had to kill Eli Brown because the man was a crack rifle shot and it was probably insane to go into the desert alone. There would be Paiutes to worry about, but Ransom Holt thought he could trade the four Missouri mules for his safe passage. The thing of it was, he was sure that he would catch up to and capture Joe and Fiona Moss and then get all the Comstock Lode bounty.

Yes, having to kill Eli was unfortunate, but Holt still felt like he was holding a winning hand in this deadly game.

20

IT WAS WITH more than a small measure of reluctance that Joe and Fiona dropped down out of the Wasatch Mountains and started into the hot desert. With Joe walking most of the time and Fiona riding the strawberry roan, they passed a few miles south of the Great Salt Lake, and headed due west across the seemingly endless ocean of alkali and salt flats. Fortunately, they were able to find and buy water from a freighter transporting salt to the Mormons.

“Any more water up ahead for a ways?” Joe asked the friendly mule skinner.

“There is, but you'll have to travel a good twenty miles to get to the first spring. You' ll see my tracks leadin' to 'er.”

“What about after that?”

“I wouldn't know,” the freighter admitted. “I just go out there to that spring, where I dig up salt and pack it into this wagon. It's hard, mean work. Salt and alkali gets into your eyes and every crack in your body and it burns like sulfur. You and that little woman going into Nevada?”

“We may,” Joe answered, not taking the chance that Holt or Eli would come across this man and learn of their destination.

“Well, I wish you luck,” the freighter called as he released the wagon brake and started rolling eastward. “That's a terrible, ugly land out there all the way to the Sierra Nevada Range.”

“Not quite,” Joe said. “There's the Ruby Mountains, which are green with good hunting and water.”

“Yep, there are the Rubys,” the freighter yelled over his shoulder. “If you live to reach 'em!”

Fiona looked at Joe with worry. “You think we can get there?”

“We can and we will, darlin'. And once we get to the Rubys and let your horse eat grass for a day or two and rest ourselves a mite, then we'll push on to the Humboldt River and then follow tracks as wide as those left by a rail line. They'll lead us straight across the desert to Reno.”

“Do you think that we'll have a run-in with Paiutes?”

Joe wanted to tell her that was unlikely so his wife wouldn't fret, but that would be a deception. “I'm afraid that I'd almost bet on it. But maybe we can trade 'em somethin' for safe passage.”