Blood at Bear Lake Read online

  “I assume you don’t intend to stake out a kitten to make this happen.”

  “No, sir, what I have in mind is for you t’ use a drunk for bait. A passed-out drunk.”

  Wilcox scowled. “What in the world good would that do?”

  Joe’s grin flashed bright. He sat back in his chair and took a swallow of Christine’s good coffee before he answered.

  “It depends on who the drunk is. And does word get around town that he can identify the killers. Which he will surely do, quick as he sobers up from the toot he’s on to celebrate getting out o’ that jail.”

  “The drunk would be you, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir. An’ I think it would be a nice touch if I was t’ do my passing out over in Sam Farnsworth’s stable. I figure to wait until the streets are busy, then carry a bottle in my hand an’ stagger over there to that barn. Me and my Colt’s revolving pistol.”

  “I could give you time to get over there, then make my rounds. I could grumble about you getting drunk before I had time to get that identification from you,” Wilcox mused.

  Joe slapped the table so hard a dish bounced and the cutlery rattled. “Exactly!”

  Wilcox smiled. “I like it.”

  “I don’t happen to have a whiskey bottle with me, so you might wanta go over to a saloon right after breakfast and fetch one. You can start complaining then about your new deputy going on a all-night drinking bender. Won’t nobody know the difference. The word can start getting around right away.”

  “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

  “No. Just plant the bait for me. Then come over to the livery once the shooting is over so’s you can collect the bodies.”

  “Joe. If you can arrest the killers without any further bloodshed, it is your obligation to do that. You must try, do you understand me?”

  Joe nodded. And smiled. Take them alive. Sure he understood that. Sure he did.

  16

  IT WASN’T ALL that much different from waiting beside a game trail. Either way, you picked your spot and kept still.

  Joe sprinkled a little whiskey on himself, dribbling it onto his shirt and rubbing it over his face and in his hair. He just hoped the smell stayed with him long enough to attract the quarry he was after today. Human quarry, but that didn’t matter. It was not the first time.

  He decided it would be best to wait inside one of the stalls. The walls were tall enough to pretty much guarantee that any would-be assassin would come at him by way of the stall door. He wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming at him from the back.

  Before he set his trap, he climbed into the loft where he had been sleeping when this whole thing got started. He kicked a goodly amount of straw through the ladder opening, then climbed down again and used a pitchfork—the same pitchfork Sam Farnsworth tried to defend himself with—to transfer the straw into the stall he’d chosen. After all, there was no need to be uncomfortable while he waited, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some straw to burrow into.

  He mounded the straw in a far corner and moved a pair of mules out of the stall across the aisle, putting them into the corral in back. Once the shooting started, he did not want to have to worry about a stray bullet harming one of the mules.

  “There y’ go, boys,” he said as he turned them loose inside the enclosure. “Just don’t tell on me if anybody comes along, eh?”

  Chuckling, Joe returned to the livery barn and took his position in the pile of straw.

  He wiggled this way and that for a few minutes to get comfortable, then drew his revolver and shoved it under the straw close to his hand. In that hand he very loosely held the cherrywood haft of his tomahawk. The big bowie was close to hand in his sash.

  He laid the whiskey bottle he had very publicly carried over here on its side close to his hip. On the way over, he had staggered and made a show of being drunk.

  The new deputy, newly acquitted on a charge of murder, was going on a toot. Joe smiled to himself. Yeah, word about that ought to get around mighty quick.

  “You boys can come along any ol’ time now,” Joe mumbled softly in the silence of the big barn.

  He lay back against the wall, pillowed there by the straw pile.

  There was silence all around him, but in the theater of his mind he could again see Fiona. Lovely Fiona coming naked out of that nameless creek back in Nebraska Territory, moonlight reflecting on the water that streamed from her. Then the feel of her skin, cold from the creek water, goose bumps cobbling the flesh of her breasts. But not cold, not at all cold lower down.

  Fiona, shy as a virgin on their wedding night, her beautiful body hidden from his adoring gaze. Hidden at first, that is. The shyness had gone. And so had the sleeping dress.

  Oh, he could remember . . .

  Outside the barn, the slow commerce of an ordinary day clip-clopped past.

  “Come on in,” Joe whispered softly in the dusty silence of the barn. “Come t’ me, boys,” he said, too softly to be heard by any other ear. “Come kill me if you can.”

  17

  THE DUMB SONS of bitches probably thought they were being quiet. They should have taken some lessons.

  Joe had been stalked by Shoshones, Snakes, Cheyenne, and grizzly bears. He had been charged, ambushed, and more than once called out for one-on-one hand-to-hand combat. He had been fought with rifle, arrow, knife, and claw. He still had his hair.

  No, if these boys wanted to take a scalp, they should have started with something easier. Like a toddler in short pants.

  He heard them whispering before they even reached the back doors, which he had left open for their convenience. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, and wouldn’t have cared to listen to their bullshit and bravado even if he could hear.

  That was all the talking was: bullshit and bravado. They were working themselves up to murder. The murder of a man they thought was drunk and defenseless, yet still they had to work themselves up to it.

  Pathetic assholes, Joe thought with contempt. They were not worthy of his abilities. It would be too easy to kill them.

  Not that he would hesitate when the moment came. Even a newborn rattlesnake has venom.

  Joe waited patiently, eyes half closed so that he was looking past lowered lids, fingers wrapped lightly around the haft of his trusty old tomahawk.

  In years of meat hunting and mortal combat, Joe had had misfires of both rifles and pistols, but the tomahawk and the bowie knife never misfired.

  He could hear the scrape of shoe soles on the hard-packed floor of the stable and the soft back and forth flow of whispers and exhortations.

  These were not deliberate killers and they were frightened, he realized. He could practically smell the stink of their fear as they entered the alleyway between the rows of stalls and came near.

  “. . . you do . . .”

  “. . . old ma . . .”

  “I’ll take . . . you . . . then we . . .”

  They were moving even slower now. They had no idea which stall he was in, or for that matter whether he had entered any of the stalls. Idiots! He had left the damn stall door ajar so they could figure it out without pissing themselves. But they crept along, whispering, peeking over stall walls, probably trembling with mingled fear and excitement.

  “There. The old bastard’s in this’un here. He’s passed clean out. Take a look.”

  There was a moment of silence and some bumps and scrapes, enough to wake any warrior Joe had ever known and any mountain man, too. Or anyway, all who survived. Anyone who could sleep though this much warning was dead certain to lose his hair to Injuns.

  “We’ll go in an’ I’ll count to three. We’ll both of us fire on the count o’ three.”

  Joe appreciated the information. They had guns. Why the simpletons would not stand where they were and try to put lead into him, he did not pretend to understand. Hell, wasn’t the whole idea of a gun to let its user take down a target from a distance? These assholes were so unsure of themselves that they wante
d to be standing over their victim so they could fire at point-blank range.

  That knowledge swept away any sense of regret Joe might have had about taking their lives.

  He had been tempted to begin with. A little bit. After all, they likely hadn’t meant to murder Sam Farnsworth. They’d only wanted to rob Sam. And when they did kill him, it was by beating him to death. That was something that was not apt to’ve been planned ahead of time. It was something that simply happened in the heat of the moment.

  But this time they had acquired guns—bought with the money they took from Sam’s still-warm body perhaps— and brought them with the deliberate intent to kill the man they believed could identify them.

  Fine. Come closer, boys. Come closer, Joe thought.

  The hinges of the stall door creaked, and after a few moments the door swung open.

  The murderers came forward, moving on tiptoe just as quietly as they knew how.

  Joe was surprised. He’d expected a couple of shabby layabouts. Drifters or grifters or ne’er-do-wells.

  These boys were nicely dressed in suits and boiled shirts. They wore derby hats and smelled lightly of bay rum, suggesting it had not been long since they were shaved.

  Well dressed or not, they were already murderers, and they intended to murder again.

  That was one thing. But Joe Moss was the man they proposed to murder.

  Joe let out an ear-shattering and, more importantly, unnerving roar as he rose to a sitting position, his right arm already moving and the never-fail tomahawk flashing.

  As soon as the tomahawk left his hand, he was reaching for the big bowie at his waist.

  The ’hawk had time to make only a half turn before it buried itself in the breastbone of the nearer attacker. It entered his chest just to the left of a black onyx shirt stud, and the white shirt was quickly flooded with scarlet.

  Joe leaped to his feet, the bowie flashing in his hand. Chopping once and then slashing.

  The second would-be killer screamed. Joe’s first chop with the heavy bowie severed his hand at the wrist so that it dangled from the stump by only a thin strip of flesh. Blood pumped out where the hand used to be, and from his belly— opened up by Joe’s slash with the razor-sharp knife—coils of gray gut spilled out onto the floor.

  The kid shrieked again and collapsed beside his companion, who was already on the floor, either dead or soon would be.

  The second one sat on the ground trying to gather his guts and push them back inside his belly, using one hand and the stump where the other had been.

  If Joe had been a merciful sort of man, he likely would have done that one the favor of relieving him of his agony by way of a bullet in the back of the brain or a quick swipe of the bowie across his jugular.

  But Joe was in no mood for mercy with these two. They’d murdered one man and would cheerfully have stood by while Joe hung for their crime—he remembered seeing them in the crowd that assembled calling for his head—and today they’d wanted to murder him when they thought he was drunk and defenseless.

  Mercy? Maybe from God if they asked for it. But not from Joe Moss.

  He picked up the fallen pistol from the floor beside the gutted son of a bitch—there was no sense letting him get hold of it so he could put a bullet in his own brain—and tossed it aside.

  “Now count to three, you asshole,” he snarled at the boy who now just sat there, cradling a pile of gut in his one good hand.

  Then Joe turned and went to find Marshal Wilcox. There likely would be paperwork and such to take care of after a civilized killing. Wilcox would know more about that shit than Joe ever wanted to.

  18

  “JESUS CHRIST, JOE, you shouldn’t ought to have done that.”

  “They were coming to kill me, Tolbert. I was just defending myself. A man’s got a right t’ do that.”

  “I don’t mean about you killing them, Joe. Everybody knows you had no choice about that. I mean about . . . about you scalping them after. Especially since the murderers were these boys—with such powerful fathers. Merle Esrig is an important man in this town, and the idea of him standing there . . . watching . . . while you lifted his own son’s hair . . . Jesus, Joe!”

  “I waited till they was dead, Tolbert. I thought that was more’n considerate enough.”

  “Well, I can tell you this, Joe. You are not a popular man in this town right now, and the way those boys’ fathers feel, I can’t be responsible for what they might do.”

  “They might hire somebody t’ come after me, you mean,” Joe said. It was not really a question.

  Wilcox shrugged, but did not directly answer.

  “You want me t’ get out o’ town, is that it?”

  “Yes, Joe, I’m afraid so.”

  “What happened t’ me being your deputy for the next little while?”

  “Merle is on the town council. There is no way in this world he would allow you to draw pay from the town. Besides, Sam’s murder has been cleared up. You did that. We will . . . I’ll pay you something out of my own pocket, Joe. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Oh, hell, Tolbert, it ain’t money that I’m thinking of. I got enough money. Reckon I can earn me some more comes the time I need it. It’s just that I got a reason why I want to hang around here a spell longer.”

  Fiona. She might yet be headed here, expecting to hide out with the photographer Faxon Roderus and his wife. She had hidden there before Joe found and married her. If she returned now, Joe wanted to be here to meet her.

  On the other hand, it was equally true that she could be going almost anywhere so long as it was not Virginia City, where Peabody had placed a price on her lovely head.

  Joe simply did not know where she was or what she intended. They had not had time, nor had they foreseen the need, to discuss alternate plans before they were attacked by Peabody’s armed thugs back at St. Mary of the Mountain, and once the bullets started flying, there was no choice but for Fiona to make her escape while Joe held off the attackers.

  Now he could only pray that, wherever she was, she was safe from harm.

  “I’m sorry, Joe. I really am,” Wilcox said, bringing Joe back to the here and now.

  “Oh, I ain’t blaming you, Tolbert.”

  “You just can’t . . . This is a civilized town, Joe, filled with folks most of whom have never seen anything more violent than two schoolkids fighting at recess. And for you to take the scalps off two upstanding young men of the community . . .”

  “Upstanding?”

  “Their fathers are anyway.”

  “Don’t let it slip your mind that those ‘upstanding’ young fellas murdered another upstanding member o’ the community, Tolbert.”

  “Believe me, I do remember that. It is the reason you are not in jail right now for killing them. But the fact remains, you will have to leave town. You simply must.”

  “All right, dammit, but can I at least have time t’ go over to the general store an’ resupply? There’s some other shit I want t’ get, too.”

  “Do it in a hurry, Joe. I want you away from here before the sun sets behind that mountain yonder.”

  “An’ if I’m not?”

  “There might well be bloodshed, Joe.”

  “You know as well as I do, Tolbert, that if there’s more blood spilled over this matter, I’ll do my level best t’ see that it ain’t mine. An’ if I do say so, I’m pretty good at killing.”

  “And raising hair afterward. Yes, I know that.”

  “I’ll leave quick as I’m done making my purchases, Tolbert. You have my word on it.”

  “All right, I . . . I’m sorry, Joe. Real sorry.”

  Joe offered his hand, and Marshal Tolbert Wilcox accepted it. “Good-bye, Joe. Good luck.”

  19

  JOE TOOK A step backward and grunted as he surveyed the pile of goods on the store counter. “Add a quarter pound o’ horseshoe nails and that should do me when it comes to supplies, but there’s some more items I’ll be wanting, too. Is that
a Hudson’s Bay blanket I see up there?”

  “Y-yes, sir.” The clerk kept looking at Joe as if he expected the former mountain man to scalp him like he had those young men.

  “I’ll have the blanket, then. And a Henry rifle. I lost the one I used to have and I favor them. Reckon I’d like another.”

  “A Henry? Oh, my. That is one of those newfangled repeaters, isn’t it? I’ve heard about those but never saw one. Sorry, but I don’t have a Henry to sell you. I do have a pair of Spencer carbines you could choose from.” The man shrugged. “Ever since the war back East . . . The army issues a good many of these Spencers, and after a battle people come along and scavenge up all the lost and fallen weapons. The muskets are popular because they hit so hard. On the other hand, there’s lots of them available. You can buy a decent musket for half a dollar. A Spencer in good shape is ten dollars. Lord knows what one of those Henrys would cost.”

  “You got ammunition for the Spencer?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s fairly common.”

  “Let me see what you have.”

  The clerk laid two of the stubby little carbines on the counter, then picked up one of them and held it muzzle-downward. “You see this thing in the butt plate? Well, you turn it . . . like so . . . and pull it out . . . like this. This tube has a spring in it. You just drop the cartridges, up to seven at a time, into here, then push the tube in behind.” He closed the loading gate and upended the Spencer.

  “The cartridges feed from underneath. You work the trigger guard like you would use the lever on a Henry. Down, then up again. And your cartridge is loaded.”

  “What about the hammer? When you moved that lever, nothing happened to cock the hammer.”

  “You have to cock the hammer yourself.”

  “My Henry carried more cartridges.”

  “True.” The man smiled. “But I don’t have a Henry to sell you. I do have these Spencers. And the Spencer cartridge is fifty-six caliber. Your Henry was, what, forty-something?”

  Joe nodded. “Forty-four.”