Read Online Blood at Bear Lake by Gary Franklin - Free Book Online Page A

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that.”
    â€œJust give me the ammunition an’ figure out what I owe you for all this. I got a horse and a mule tied outside to pack it on.”
    â€œYes, sir. Right away, sir.”
    The clerk helped him carry his purchases out onto the sidewalk, then left Joe to the task of building a balanced load out of it all.
    The mule was one he had taken from the corral behind Sam Farnsworth’s livery barn. Joe figured there was no one alive to dispute his right to take the animal. And, dammit, the town owed him something for his deputy work, whether they liked it or not.
    If someone wanted to object, let them. In the meantime, he needed a pack animal. Besides, he had a fondness for mules anyway. They were ugly sons of bitches but tough. Joe liked that about them.
    By the time he got everything sorted out and loaded onto the pack frame—which he’d also appropriated from the livery barn—it was nearing sundown. Not the best time of day to start a journey, but Joe did not want to cause any more problems for Tolbert Wilcox than he already had.
    He snapped a long lead to the mule’s bit ring and climbed onto the Palouse.
    â€œBoys, I got no damned idea where we’re going next. But we need to find Fiona, so let’s get on with it.”
    He touched his heels to the sides of the Palouse and started riding.

20
    IF IT HAD been up to him, Joe would have liked to stay in Lake’s Crossing a few more days. There was still a chance Fiona would head there hoping to stay with the friends she was living with when Joe finally found her after their years of forced separation. But the Fates decreed otherwise when Joe was “invited” to leave town. Well, maybe those Fates had some reason to move him along against his will.
    Sometimes, he thought his whole damned life was taking place beyond his will.
    Then he grinned. Some of it, of course. But not all.
    If there was one thing he could say about himself, it was that he was a free man and had lived a mighty good life. He had traveled far and seen some wonderful things. Drunk some fine whiskey . . . and plenty of bad. Bedded some splendid women . . . and plenty of bad. Had some good fights . . . and some not so good. And managed to keep on wearing his own hair through it all.
    Now he had a beautiful wife and a sweet daughter. Oh, he looked forward to the time when he could get properly acquainted with Jessica, to the time when the three of them would be a family together.
    That would happen just as soon as he could find Fiona again and the two of them could reclaim Jessica from the nuns back in Carson City.
    But . . . where to look? How to find her?
    Joe rode a few miles outside Tolbert Wilcox’s jurisdiction and made camp, making no effort to hide his presence there. If any of those hidebound sons of bitches who threw him out of town wanted to come after him—let them. He wouldn’t mind adding a few scalps to the collection already in his war bag.
    He made some dough and rolled it between his palms to form long strips, then wound them around dingle sticks and baked them over the flames of a small fire, not waiting for the fire to burn down to coals.
    Joe slept with his tomahawk held loose in one hand and the Colt revolver in his belt. Breakfast the next morning was creek water and leftover stick bread. Then he used the tomahawk to make a blaze on the trunk of a large cottonwood.
    He pulled the Spencer carbine out of its scabbard and counted off a hundred paces from the cottonwood tree.
    Loading the magazine of the Spencer the way the clerk showed him, Joe worked the trigger guard—the movement seemed a little awkward to him, but he knew he would get used to it—and cocked the hammer. Aimed and quickly fired. Pushed the trigger guard lever down and yanked it back up. Aimed. Fi—dammit! He had forgotten to cock the hammer. With his Henry, using the lever did that job at the same time.