The Mother Lode Read Online Free PDF

come upon a big eight-mule team pulling a tall, but empty wagon up the grade.
    â€œGive way, damn you!” the man driving shouted. “Move over to the side!”
    â€œNo, sir,” Joe shouted. “I’m loaded heavy and . . . .”
    Joe didn’t get to finish as the mule skinner cracked his whip and his big animals lunged forward, crowding Joe and his wagon to the very edge and then . . . Joe’s heart stopped as he felt the two outside wheels slip over the side.
    â€œHey!” he shouted, desperately trying to move his team out of danger. But the wagon was tilting and it was too late. With a sickening crunch of a wheel and then a terrible moment of wavering balance, the wagon rolled. Joe watched in horror as the wagon tongue snapped and yet his team was pulled over the side as everything lurched and spun.
    He let out a holler, and the last thing Joe saw or remembered was the grinning face of that mule skinner and the sound of his whip cracking like a shot as the lumber wagon went into a sickening tumble pulling the team over the side with the sound of cracking wood and screaming horses.
    After that there was a dizzying spin, a stab of pain, and a crushing of his chest before absolute darkness.
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He woke up in a bed and stared at logs neatly chinked into a low ceiling. Joe’s first response was to get up and move, but when he tried to rise from the bed, he gasped in agony and the darkness closed in around him like a black tunnel just as it had before.
    â€œMister?” the sweet voice of a woman said a long time later. “I heard you speaking, more like calling to someone named Fiona. Is she your wife? Can you tell me who you are and who she is so that I can get word to her how bad you’ve been hurt?”
    Joe Moss opened his eyes and saw a handsome woman with strong, high cheekbones and long, brown hair wrapped in a neat bun on top of her head. She had an expression of deep concern in her eyes, and wore a man’s faded shirt and pants. There were squint lines radiating out from the corners of her chestnut-colored eyes. Her face was tanned and her lips were cracked. Joe knew at once that, when young, she must have been quite a beauty, but time and tough years had changed her so that she was now more strikingly handsome than beautiful.
    Joe tried to speak and found it difficult. He heard himself croak and his hands fluttered helplessly at his sides. He hurt all over and felt like a weakling.
    â€œHere,” she said, raising a glass of water. “I’m going to lift your head just enough that you can swallow. Don’t worry about spilling any. You’ve been doing that for weeks. I didn’t think that you’d live when I found your wreck down in the canyon, but you have and that’s a miracle of God’s making.”
    Joe tried to smile, but failed. He let the woman cup his head in her hand and then pour water into his mouth. The water was sweet and cool like her comforting manner.
    â€œWhere am I?” he wheezed, swallowing hard. “And what . . . what about my team and my wagon?”
    â€œThey’re lost over the mountainside about two miles up the grade,” she told him. “Three of the animals that were hitched lived, but they were injured almost as badly as you.”
    â€œWhich ones lived?”
    â€œThe Appaloosa is hurt least. There’s also a little mule that wore a saddle. We thought he was finished, but he’s come back not much worse for wear. The beast is still lame, but he’ll mend. And there was a gray horse that we got out of the canyon along with you. It’s going to make it but had a lot of deep wounds. The others . . . well, I’m sorry but it was a mercy to put them out of their pain.”
    â€œYou had to shoot them?”
    â€œYes, I’m afraid I did.”
    â€œWhat about the wagon and the lumber?”
    She shook her head. “The wagon rolled many times and is a complete loss. Your