Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (12 page)

“Val,” he said seriously, “quit the mining and come in with me. I need help, and we can be rich—rich, I tell you! The money in these camps is in supplying what they need.

“No matter whether they find silver, they still have to eat, they have to wear clothes, they have to sleep! Eilley’s getting rich just washing clothes! She rinses them out really good and pans out the dirt and she’s doing better than some of the placer miners are.”

Trevallion computed the small stake he was holding. He was a careful man, never a gambler. Uneasily, he shifted in his chair, looking out the window at the crowded street. It was his first time in Gold Hill or Virginia in over a month.

He’d had the feeling he was being stalked, hunted. As a result he had simply pulled out, had left his claim in the canyon, and had wandered over east and staked another claim in a canyon above Pipe Spring. On the certain theory that a man who makes no tracks leaves no tracks, he stayed where he was, killing an occasional deer, living sparsely and working hard.

He found gold, accumulated a little dust and a few nuggets until finally the longing for a good cup of coffee and some decent food drew him down from the mountains. He took a roundabout route and suddenly appeared at the bakery just as Ledbetter was also arriving.

“In the spring,” Ledbetter said, “this place is going to bust wide open. The Ophir has ten men working and so does the Central. Plato’s got a few over at his mine, and they’re getting out ore.

“Come in with me now, and we can be ready to move men and goods by spring.”

On the trail, fully exposed, handling regularly scheduled mule caravans, he would be an easy target for anyone out there who wanted his scalp.

“I can’t do it, Jim,” he said, finally, “but I’ve a little put by. What are mules going for?”

Ledbetter hesitated. “Val, I’ve just got in touch with a Mexican who packed into Sacramento and wants to sell out and stay. I can get his mules, twenty of them for one hundred dollars each, and they’re worth it. Big, strong mules and horses are going for god-awful prices, the demand is terrific! I’ve agreed to take them, but every dime I have is tied up.”

Two thousand dollars, and they would need pack-saddles, halters.

He thought of the dust he carried and of the cache up in the canyon. He’d left another cache back near Pipe Spring. “I’ll buy in,” he said, “but I can’t work the trail.”

“All right. How much?”

“Twenty-five hundred.” He took a poke of dust from his pocket. “There’s about two hundred there, and here,” he took five gold coins from his pocket, “is a hundred more.” He put the gold on the table and pushed it toward Ledbetter. “I’ll have the rest for you tomorrow.”

“This is the best buy you ever made, Val.” Ledbetter picked up the gold, glancing up as a man went past him out the door, a man with fringed knee-high leggings and a ragged coat. “Here tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow.” Trevallion got to his feet and looked along the line of buildings. Unbelievable, but there it was, a town.

Melissa came toward him. “Mr. Trevallion! We haven’t had time for even a word!”

“I’ll be back.”

“Wait, I’ve somebody I want you to meet.”

She gestured to a man seated at her table near the back of the bakery. The man got up and strolled over. He was a few years older than Trevallion, a slim, Spanish-looking man, who was not Spanish, with neatly polished boots into which his gray pants were tucked, and a black frock coat. A gold chain, heavy with nuggets, crossed the front of a checkered vest.

He flashed a smile, revealing even white teeth.

“Vern Kelby,” he said, holding out a hand.

Trevallion took it, and the man gave a quick, hearty squeeze with just a shade too much strength in it, like a man trying for effect.

“How do you do?” The man wore a gun seated for a cross-draw. Both gun and holster looked very new. So did the boots.

“I’m a mining man,” he explained, “but I’ve been helping Melissa a bit.”

“Helping her?” Trevallion’s tone was mild. “Well, that’s very nice. I wasn’t aware she needed help. She seems to be doing very well all by herself.”

Kelby smiled. “Of course. But a man, well, a man can do some things better than a woman.”

“That’s right,” Trevallion agreed, “there must be a lot of lifting around here you could do, and Jake’s a bit old for it.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking of that,” Kelby replied.

“He’s been helping me set up the books,” Melissa interposed, “so I can keep track of expenditures better and know where I stand at all times.”

“I suspect that’s something we all should know,” he agreed. “I’m sure Alfie can—oh, pardon me! Sorry, Mr. Kelby, I was thinking of somebody else.”

“Well,” Melissa said sharply, “you needn’t!”

Ledbetter finished his coffee and got up. His face was expressionless. “See you tomorrow, Val.”

Trevallion went to the door, glanced around, and went around the building to his mule. He mounted up and rode out. There was at least five hundred in dust in the cache up the canyon where he had first filed his claim.

He took a trail east out of Gold Hill, rode about a half mile and turned north, then wound around through the prospect holes and shacks into the rough country again and reached Six Mile Canyon. Several times he checked his back trail, and he was not followed. At Six Mile he turned east and rode up the canyon at a rapid trot and did not slow his pace until he was nearing his claim.

The late afternoon sun was dipping down beyond the far mountains and there were shadows in the canyons but no darkness as yet. He tied his mule with a slipknot as usual and went to the cedars where he usually made camp.

He was jumpy and uneasy. Yet the camp showed no sign that anyone had been there since he had gone. He broke sticks as if for a fire, laid the sticks in order and then, rising, went to where his cache was. He was squatting to dig out his cache when he saw the round white rock from the stream placed atop the rock near his cache. Right below it, barely visible in the vague light except for the sharp whiteness of the scar, a deep scratch as if made by a glancing bullet.

He threw himself to the right, heard the vicious whip of the bullet and the snapping sound as it clicked off the rock, and then he was firing from his drawn Colt. Firing at the flash of a rifle, and then he was up and running. There was another shot, a hasty shot fired by an angry man who had missed a perfect setup, and then he was among the rocks.

For a few minutes he waited but heard no sound at all, and he expected none.

This was a careful man, a most careful man. He had located Trevallion’s cache, had set the rock up as an easily seen target, and had checked the distance and range with at least one shot. And then he had waited.

That man with the fringed leggings, the one who left the bakery. He would have been the one who went to the hunter to report what he had heard. Trevallion was buying mules, he would need money, he would go to his cache.

For an hour, Trevallion waited. By then it was totally dark, and he went down to his cache and dug into the sand, into the hollow under the rock.

His gold was gone.

Five hundred dollars—much hard work, and all for nothing.

Moreover, there was simply no way in which he could get to Pipe Spring and back in time for the meeting tomorrow. He rode up the canyon and away from town then circled back to Spafford’s.

The station was open and Spafford was sweeping out when he rode up. Hall glanced at him and then at his mule. “Put some grain in the bin after you rub him down,” he said, “you’ve had a hard ride.”

“Spaff,” Trevallion said, “I need five hundred dollars.”

Hall stopped sweeping. “If you need it, you need it,” he said. “I always liked your father. He was a good man.”

“I’m buying a piece of Ledbetter’s business,” Trevallion explained. “He needs it by noon today, and I can’t make it in time. With what I’ve given him he can swing the deal and I’ll pay him, and you, the next time he comes over the trail.”

“All right.” Hall went back inside and Trevallion led the mule around to the stable, where he rubbed him down and fed him grain. At the stable door he paused and glanced up and down the road, then went into the store by the back door.

Hall had the money ready. “You’re making a good buy,” he commented. “Ledbetter’s coining money.”

“Aye.” Trevallion took the money and pocketed it. “If anybody asks for me, you haven’t seen me.”

“Trouble?”

“That old trouble.”

“You saw it, didn’t you? When they killed your ma?”

“I did.”

“Somebody’s scared, Trevallion, and that’s odd. A bunch of renegades like that. They’d probably killed a lot of people, one time or another.”

He struck a match and lit his pipe. “Looks to me like somebody has something to lose. Ever think of that?”

“I’ve thought of it. I’ve never talked of this, Spaff, but I’ve always believed one man engineered that affair. That man knew my father and his friend Redaway had money. He wanted the money. He had probably spied on them and saw the two men go into town and knew the women were there alone.

“Somehow that bunch got some whiskey—they didn’t have any money, but the whiskey came from somewhere. I’ve done a lot of nosing around these past years and have picked up with a few men who knew Skinner.”

“He was one of them?”

“Aye. A voice called out that somebody was coming and they all took out. Killing a woman was a hanging offense, and they wouldn’t have had a chance. So they ran. Then one man came out of the woods, got the money, killed Redaway and I think my mother, and then left.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“I’m not sure. I think so. I didn’t really see the face of the man, but there was one around town whom I think I’d know.”

“Ten years is a while.”

Trevallion nodded. “That thing last night was set up for killing. When I squatted down to dig out a little cache I had, I saw that small rock placed atop the one that marked the cache. That small rock was no larger than my fist, nice and round and very white.

“I saw that scratch on the rock and instantly knew somebody had shot at it to test the range. So I hit the dirt rolling just as he shot.”

“Close.”

“Too damned close.”

“He’d been watching you then, saw you cache the stuff.”

Neither man talked for awhile and Trevallion watched the road. Finally he said, “Spaff, it’s going to be a big camp. They’ve cut trenches exposing the ore body for a couple of hundred feet through the Ophir and the Mexican. Some of that ore is rich enough to be taken out and sorted by hand. A lot of men are going to get rich here.”

“It’s hell here in the winter,” Hall said. “You staying or riding out?”

“Staying, I think. I’ve seen a lot of hard winters.”

Hall chuckled. “Wait until you see one of those Washoe zephyrs!”

“Nobody on the road yet. Come and have breakfast with me.”

An hour later Trevallion, his Winchester in his hands, started up the Gold Canyon trail.

Chapter 13

T
REVALLION WANTED TROUBLE with no man, but when he rode back up the canyon to Gold Hill it was with mounting irritation. He wished for nothing so much as to settle down to mining, whether on his own or for someone else, and he wanted no trouble. At the same time he was perfectly aware that having missed once was no reason the unknown marksman would quit and go elsewhere. He was not only here but he had taken five hundred hard-earned dollars.

Ledbetter was at the bakery to meet him, and he paid over the borrowed five hundred, adding that on the next trip he would have the rest. He said nothing to Ledbetter about the shot fired at him. He did say his cache had been robbed.

“There’s more of that. There was a man murdered on the trail only last week, struck over the head from behind and then robbed, probably by a man who was traveling with him.”

“There’ll be vigilantes if they keep that up,” another man suggested.

“Any idea who got your gold?” Ledbetter asked.

“An idea. But I couldn’t prove a thing, and I don’t actually know.”

Ledbetter put the money away and said, “Do you know Sam Brown?”

“No.”

“Be careful of him. He’s a big, uncombed man, a brute, and utterly vicious. He’s killed several men and doesn’t care how he does it. I heard that he has beaten one man to death with a club, and I know he has stabbed several. You’re in less danger than most, but you can’t be sure, not even you.”

“Why not ‘even’ me?”

“You’ve a reputation, Val, whether you know it or not. You’ve been in a few Indian fights, you brought back that gold when you were given up for dead, and you killed Rory. Somebody asked Farmer Peel who was the most dangerous man around, and he did not even hesitate. He named you.”

“That’s nonsense. I mind my own affairs, that’s all. And I fight my own battles.”

The street was crowded, and a dozen new buildings were going up. The double row of structures facing each other across the street was now a quarter of a mile long and growing with each day. The gambling houses were open all night long.

There was talk of trouble with the Indians.

“There needn’t be trouble,” Trevallion said. “Talk to old Chief Winnemucca. He’s a reasonable man.”

George Hearst came into town and made an offer for McLaughlin’s one-sixth, taking an option on it when McLaughlin agreed. He rode out of town for Nevada City to borrow the money.

McLaughlin chuckled. “Those damn’ Californians don’t know nothin’! I sold Hearst a hole in the ground for three thousand dollars!”

“What are you going to say when it turns out to be a rich one?”

McLaughlin shrugged and filled his glass. “I’ll say fine! Good for him! Look, I’ve taken a couple of thousand out of that hole and worked awful hard to do it. From here on the work will get harder, not easier. If anybody’s going to make money there, he’d better have money to spend, that’s all I’ve got to say!”

“Wait until spring,” Kelby suggested. “When the snow goes off the ground in the spring the pigeons will come aflying! They’ll come in here with all that fresh California money, just what we want!”