Comstock Cross Fire by Gary Franklin

“We’ll get a buckboard and a team of horses at the livery, and then drive ’em back to that log cabin and get whatever supplies we have to have before we head out into the desert.”
    â€œWhat about us?” Joe said. “Are we supposed to sit on our horses in the sun chained together like slaves?”
    Holt swiveled around in his saddle and studied the town and its hard-eyed inhabitants. “That’s the way it’ll have to be, Joe,” he finally decided. “I’m thinking that a man as bad as you might just have some good friends in Perdition. If that is the case, I want them to see that you are my prisoner and that I’m not a man to be crossed.”
    â€œI can handle anything you can dish out,” Joe said, “but Fiona is a woman and it’s too hard on her to sit her horse for hours in chains right out in this damned hot sun.”
    Holt gave that a moment’s thought. “All right. Eli, you lead our prisoners and their horses over to that big tree and unchain their feet. Let them dismount and rest in the shade.”
    â€œThat’s the best that you’re going to do for us here?” Fiona asked, voice filled with anger. “We haven’t eaten since yesterday and I need to do my business in private.”
    â€œLift your dirty skirt and do your business behind that big tree,” Holt ordered before riding off to the livery to buy a wagon and horses.
    When Holt rode up to the livery, sure enough an old, one-legged man came out of his barn with straw stuck to his breeches. The liveryman was small, thin, and not a bit friendly. He asked, “What do you need, big man?”
    â€œI need a buckboard and a team of horses. Five or six hundred pounds of grain, a few extra ropes, and harness.”
    â€œI can provide what you need, big man, providing you got the money to pay.”
    â€œLet me see what you have to sell me,” Holt said. “And then perhaps we’ll talk price.”
    â€œYou’ll like my horses. They’re all sound and in good flesh. My name is Micah. I only deal in cash or gold.”
    â€œI have federal cash.”
    â€œThat will do,” Micah said. “Come look at the horses and then I’ll show you what wagons and harness I have to sell. How about saddles?”
    â€œDon’t need any saddles.”
    â€œToo bad,” Micah told him. “I’ve got about a dozen and I’d sell the lot of them cheap. Got some Indian ponies, too. But they ain’t strong enough to pull a wagon. They’re just small, runty mustangs.”
    â€œNo mustangs,” Holt said. “I want big, strong horses or mules.”
    â€œWhat about oxen?”
    â€œToo slow,” Holt said.
    â€œSlow but steadier, and they do real well on that sagebrush and salt grass you’re gonna see so much of on the way west.”
    â€œMaybe,” Holt said, “but I don’t like oxen, so just show me mules and horses.”
    Â 
    Two hours later, Holt drove a buckboard and a team of four good Missouri mules out of the livery and his wallet was $130 lighter. The cost was much higher than it should have been, or would have been in Laramie or even Denver or St. Louis, but Holt understood that he was not in a strong bargaining position, and so he paid without whining. He was going to be short of money for supplies, and that meant that they’d have to do without much whiskey and food, but he’d buy all the extra ammunition that they would require for the desert trek.
    Ignoring Joe, Fiona, and Eli, who were resting in the shade of the tree, Ransom Holt drove over to the log cabin that served as a general store. He was about to climb down from the buckboard when two men were knocked backpedaling through the log cabin’s open doorway. Their faces were covered with blood and they staggered off the porch, then spilled to the ground.
    Holt froze on his wagon seat as a tall young man, a half-breed