The Mother Lode Read Online Free PDF Page A

for your good advice,” Joe told the man with genuine appreciation. “I certainly will take it to heart.”
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Joe continued on until he came to the road leading off the mountain down to Genoa. A posted sign warned that the road was steep and about ten miles long with pullouts where wagons could pass coming up or down. The sign warned freighters never to take the road when it was covered with snow or ice.
    â€œAin’t no snow or ice to worry about now,” Joe said as he drove the team onto a meadow and prepared to camp for the night. “And we’ll tackle it first thing tomorrow morning.”
    â€œI’m a’comin’, Fiona,” he said that night after failing to kill meat and having to settle for weak cornmeal soup. “I’ll be there with you tomorrow night . . . or for sure the next. Just forty-eight hours and you’ll finally be in my arms again. Ain’t nothin’ on earth that can stop me now.”

4
    T HE MORNING CAME chill and icy along the edges of a nearby stream. Having grazed all night again, Joe’s new team looked fresher and a little rounder so that every rib wasn’t showing. That was good because he wanted them to look their best when they got to the bottom of this long grade and entered the Mormon settlement.
    Joe hitched the team and studied his heavy cargo of planed timber. It was all pine, but still of the highest grade, and he wondered exactly how much it was worth and what it would bring in cash or perhaps trade. Maybe he would have to take his lumber on to Carson City or even up to Virginia City to get a good price. Mormons were fair, but it was Joe’s experience that they were exceptionally shrewd bargainers. Joe checked the wagon’s brake and took a deep breath. The brake wasn’t as strong and sturdy as he’d have liked, but it would have to do until they reached Genoa.
    â€œWe’ll take it slow,” he said to himself as he tied the little mule to the back of the wagon and climbed up onto the driver’s seat.
    The team was a bit fractious, which was surprising given how much they had suffered lately. But it just went to show you that man or beast, if treated kindly and fed well, could make an amazing recovery.
    The downhill road looked clear and the view was spectacular. Joe halted his heavy wagon at the top of the grade and admired the green swath of the Carson Valley just below, and then his smile faded when he looked farther east toward the barren Pine Nut Mountains of Western Nevada. He had crossed that country once, but he’d never do it again. A drier, more hostile land he’d never seen anywhere in the West. Nevada was mostly rocks and sage, with plenty of snakes and Paiute Indians eager to lift a white man’s scalp. No, sir, he would not cross the badlands of Central Nevada again.
    He released the wagon’s brake and started down the grade, which, at first, didn’t seem all that steep. But he judged that the valley was at least two thousand feet below, and that told Joe that there were going to be plenty of switchbacks and steep places where he’d really have to be careful. Maybe he should have cut a big pine log and used it as a drag, but he didn’t have an ax or log chains and he was in a hurry.
    Down and down they crept, the team walking stiff-legged and afraid and Joe leaning hard on the brake, causing the wagon to sometimes go into a scary skid. But he was handling it. Joe had learned the hard lessons of freighting in Santa Fe, and he knew how to handle a team and overloaded wagon as well as any man. But this was going to be touch-and-go given the fact that his team was too light and his lumber-hauling wagon far too heavy.
    â€œEasy now, boys! Just go easy and we’ll stay to the safe side here and make ’er all the all the way down.”
    Joe was straining, and so was his team, when they had gone about a half mile down the treacherous and narrow grade only to