Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (14 page)

“No reason why she should,” Trevallion replied. “Her business affairs are confidential. They are her own business and hers alone.

“As of this moment, if she sold out she would have almost nothing. If she stays on here she can become very well off. It is a business she has built by hard work and her skill at baking. Furthermore, I am afraid that Jim Ledbetter and I did not have any plans for taking on a manager. If you two get married, that is your affair and none of ours. How the business is conducted is another thing.”

“I see.” He got up. “I am afraid I did not understand.”

“Vern, please! There’s no need to be angry.”

“You could have told me before I made a fool of myself.”

“Mr. Kelby,” Trevallion said, “in the course of a week there are several hundred men come in here. All of them are friendly. I venture to say that Melissa has had at least fifty proposals since she has been in town. Naturally, she could not tell her business affairs to every one of them.

“Melissa has done all the hard work. The business is moving, growing, but it is the future that holds promise. She has handled her business very, very well. I would suggest to you, sir, that Melissa is an uncommonly practical young lady, with a good business sense.”

“The winters here are cruel,” he protested. “She’s not strong enough. I simply do not want her to have to go through all that.”

Trevallion smiled. “Mr. Kelby, you are right. The winters are tough, but I think you underestimate Melissa. When spring comes she will be here, and all the stronger for it. I know very little about women, but I have observed that there’s often a lot of steel in some of those fragile-seeming girls.”

Kelby glanced at her. “I doubt if I shall stay. I want to be where there are lights and music and some sunshine.”

Kelby left, and Trevallion turned to Melissa. “Have you heard from Jim?”

“No, I haven’t. The weather has been bad over the mountains, and I guess he’s waiting for a break.”

Trevallion finished his coffee and went up the street to Lyman Jones’s saloon. There was a sheet-iron stove inside, and men were clustered about it, almost as many as were at the bar.

Trevallion ordered a beer and listened, for this was the surest way to pick up the news. Jones himself brought him his beer, and Trevallion asked, “Seen Jim Ledbetter around?”

Jones shook his head. “No, can’t say I have.”

Tapley came in and he beckoned to the Arkansawyer. “Seen Jim?”

“No, I ain’t, and that there is a worrisome thing. Knowin’ Jim, I’d say he’d push to get at least one more trip in before the passes closed. He’s got good stock, and if anybody could make it, he could. Besides, he’d have plenty of folks to take back with him.”

A big man in a red blanket coat turned around, asking, “You fellers stayin’?”

“I reckon,” Tapley replied.

“Got me a good claim I’d sell cheap,” Trevallion noticed the callouses on the man’s hands, “and this here’s no pipe dream.”

“Why don’t you work it your own self, then?” Tapley asked.

“Wife’s sick. Got to get her outside to a doctor. I been minin’ ten year, and this here’s the best I’ve seen. Silver, with a showin’ of gold. It ain’t showin’ much right now, but she’s there, I know it is.”

“Where’s it lie?” Trevallion asked.

“Up the hill a way. If you’re interested, I’ll show you.” He gestured around. “This bunch is on their uppers as much as I am. I’ll need cash on the barrelhead, no deals.”

“Let’s have a look,” Trevallion suggested.

As they went out into the cold, the man said, “My name’s MacNeale. You’re Trevallion, aren’t you? Seen you over to Rough an’ Ready a time or two, and on the Yuba.

“Remember John Mackay? Quiet sort, an Irishman with a mite of a stutter? He’s here, he and O’Brien have a place on the mountain above the Ophir.”

“I remember him. A good, steady man.”

The claim was at the top of Union Street, and the location did not look too good. MacNeale had put a shaft down fifteen feet and started a drift following a lead that looked promising.

MacNeale showed him several samples from a sack near the shaft. Samples were, of course, usually carefully chosen from the best ore.

“Look,” MacNeale said, “I’m in a bind. This here’s all I’ve got, and all the men with cash money have gone out to California. I’ve got to get my wife out of here right now, and I don’t have more’n twenty bucks to my name. You name it and I’ll take it.”

“I haven’t much, myself,” Trevallion said, “and there’s a long winter ahead. I’ll give you two hundred in gold.”

“I’ll take it.”

MacNeale held out his hand and they shook hands. Trevallion stood for a moment, looking around him, studying the lay of the land. The ore bodies on the Ophir, Central, and Mexican claims had been exposed for some three hundred odd feet and the indications were good. Something in excess of thirty tons had just been shipped to the coast for refining.

Descending into the shaft again, he walked along the drift. He held his lamp so the light could shine to the best effect, and he studied the vein. It was very thin but seemed to widen toward the tunnel’s face.

What lay beyond? It was anybody’s guess, but he had a good feeling about it.

“Come on, we’ll weigh out the gold.” He paused for a moment and said, “MacNeale, I think you’re right. I think the claim is a good one, and I’m not one to take advantage. I’m paying you the two hundred, but I’m going to give you five percent on top of that.”

MacNeale flushed. “Now that’s mighty straight, but I—”

“It was your discovery. You get five percent of whatever we get, which may be nothing at all.”

When he had paid out the gold, his sack was somewhat lighter. He hefted it thoughtfully. He might have enough for another buy, and now was the time. In the spring the Californians would be coming in with money and know-how, and they would start things moving. He tucked away the bill of sale in his pocket and said, “Now, Tap, we’ll go see what happened to Jim.”

“I’ll be goin’ west m’self,” MacNeale said, “and I’ll have a look about.”

“We will go now,” Trevallion said, “you will have no time for looking about, and you with a sick wife.”

“Nonetheless, I’ll have my eyes open,” MacNeale said, “but you’d better look alive yourselves. There’s those about who would kill a man for a two-bit piece.”

They rode down the trail in the evening with a gray sky overhead and a wind behind them. They rode down to the trading post first, but they saw no mules nor had they word of a pack train.

“Woodford’s,” Tapley said. “Might be he stopped there, with the wind and all.”

The hoofs of their mules clattered on the frozen road. There was a sifting of snow in the air.

“If he’s caught in the passes—”

“He’s a canny man, Jim is. He knows that trail better than either of us, and he knows places to hole up that we do not.”

“There will be tracks then,” Tapley said.

They pushed on into the growing storm, with snow falling thick about them.

Darkness came and the thick snow falling. “Tap,” Trevallion said, “we’d best camp or there’ll be somebody out looking for us. We’ll find nothing in this.”

“Aye,” Tapley drew up, peering about.

Trevallion started to turn from the trail, but the mule would have none of it. He tugged at the bit, wanting to go on.

“Tap,” Trevallion loosened the rein, “the mule knows something. I’m going to let him have his head.”

“First time I ever heard of a mule wanting to go on,” Tapley grumbled, “but he may. They’re uncanny smart, mules are.”

The black mule broke into a trot, plunging ahead into the thick snow. For several minutes he forged ahead. Finally Tapley called out, “Trev, I think that mule’s crazy! We’re getting nowhere, nowhere at all!”

Suddenly the mules drew up, hee-hawing into the storm. From somewhere ahead and off in the woods, there came an answering call.

“I’ll be damned!” Tapley said.

The wind whipped snow in their faces, catching their breath. The mule pushed on, buck-jumping through drifts, and suddenly they came upon the body of a mule, beyond it a dozen others huddled together.

“Jim?” Trevallion called.

“Over here,” the voice was faint. “For God’s sake, hurry!”

Chapter 15

H
E WAS LYING in the snow behind a log, half-sheltered by brush, his face twisted by pain.

“Bust a leg?” Tapley asked.

“Like hell! I was shot! Shot, damn it, by a bunch of murdering scum! Get me out of here, will you?”

Trevallion wasted no time. He made a hasty bed of boughs and covered it with Jim’s slicker. Then he helped Tapley lift the injured man over the log to the makeshift bed.

Quickly he crumpled bark in his fists, gathered twigs and, in a matter of minutes, had a small fire going. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“Been lyin’ there two days,” Ledbetter grumbled. “They was lyin’ in wait when I come around the bend just below here, and they shot me out of the saddle, killed my mule.

“Fallin’, I grabbed my rifle and got off a couple of shots. One of them started for the mules, and I dusted his scalp. You’ll find his hat lying yonder, unless they sneaked back to get it.

“After a bit they gave up on me and drove off six or seven of my mules. I’d hunkered down behind this log because they might come back, and sure enough, they did.

“They knew they had lead into me and figured I’d be dead, but I taught ’em otherwise. I put one of them down—gut-shot him—and they pulled out again.”

“Know who they were?”

“I caught a glimpse of one of them. Take a look for that hat, might tell us something.”

Tapley had rounded up the mules and got their packs off. Moving out at that hour was beyond question, so they banked snow around to keep out the wind and visibility for any interlopers.

Trevallion cut away the pant-leg and examined the leg. It was broken below the knee, and there was a bad gash where the bullet had torn through the flesh. Evidently a ricochet from the nature of the wound.

“Killed a good mule,” Ledbetter grumbled. “Lucky I wasn’t riding Emma. She’s my best. She was feeling poorly, so I left her behind this trip.”

“How many were there?”

“Six, maybe seven. That one I gut-shot, he just isn’t going to make it. I’d bet on it. I scratched another one or two.”

“What did they get?”

“Flour, sugar, coffee, some canned goods, and two mule-loads of blankets. I’ll have to take a look to make sure. Most of the mules just stood. They know my voice, and also they don’t stampede worth a damn. Those men yelled and threw rocks, but it was no use. The mules they got were some of the newer ones.”

Trevallion bathed the wound with hot water, finding no evidence of infection, probably due to the cold. How the man had survived was a miracle, but he had seen too many such things to be surprised.

When he had bound the wound as best he could, he covered Ledbetter warmly and built up the fire.

“I’ll get some sleep, Tap,” he said. “You take first watch.”

“Think they’ll try it again?”

“Likely. This load of stuff is worth thousands of dollars in any mining camp in the country. In Virginia or Gold Hill this winter, it will be worth its weight in gold, and they know it.”

“Well, I hope they come. I got me a good eye for skunks.”

Trevallion made a bed for himself and stretched out. “If there’s enough of ’em to make it interesting, wake me up.”

Tapley grinned. “I cut loose with the old piece here, you’ll wake up, believe me! She speaks loud, real loud.”

Wind moaned in the pines and a little snow skittered along the ground. The hungry mules, pawing at the snow to get at the little browse, made occasional sounds. Trevallion closed his eyes, slowly relaxing. It was cold, but slowly his body warmed the blankets and he slept. He slept and the dreams returned, the dreams—and the faces. The real faces? Or only faces concocted from crowding memories of other days and other places?

Tapley shook him awake an hour after midnight. “Fear I’m gettin’ sleepy. Can you handle the watch for a couple of hours?”

Trevallion sat up, shook out his boots from long habit, even though in this cold nothing would be crawling about. “Quiet?” he asked.

“Mules been a mite restless in this last half hour. Maybe just my imagination, or theirs.”

“Mules don’t have much imagination,” Trevallion replied. “How’s Ledbetter?”

“Sleepin’. Do him more good than all the medicines. He’s got him a little fever, I think, but no more than a body could expect, him gun-shot and all.”

Trevallion rolled his bed and tied it securely. He went to the black mule and stood beside it, stroking it gently while he whispered a few words. The black mule turned his head toward him, then suddenly swung his head back and up.

Trevallion dropped to a knee and moved away, listening. Something was out there. At this time of night and in this weather it might be a wolf but was more likely to be a man.

Did they know he and Tapley were there? It was unlikely they had kept that close a watch. Probably they were huddling around a warm fire somewhere, waiting for Ledbetter to die.

Thieves were not much given to patience. Not highwaymen, at least, or the kind these were. They would want to get the loot and get out, and they had lingered too long in the cold already.

He was crouching near a dead-fall close to the mules when he heard a hoarse whisper. “Frank? There’s
two
of them! Somebody’s come in!”

“Ssh!” Another movement. Dimly he could see two figures looming through the slowly falling snow.

Trevallion lifted his rifle. “All right,” his voice was low, almost conversational, “you can drop your guns and step forward.”

Of course, they would do nothing of the kind, and he knew it. Both men turned and fired.

Trevallion was ready and he shot first. His first bullet caught the nearest man in the middle of his move. He dropped his gun, staggering back into the second, who snapped off a hurried shot that missed by several feet. It was no more than fifteen feet, and Trevallion had a rifle. The second man fell across the body of the first.

Christian Tapley was up and ready, but as the echo of the shots faded there was no further sound.

“Hard for a man to git any rest around here,” Tapley complained, “what with all that shootin’ and all.”

“There’ll be another night tomorrow,” Trevallion said. “Let’s load up for an early start. I’m getting a little tired of this place.”

With a toe he rolled the top man off the other, and the man on the snow groaned. “Well, don’t that beat all!” Tapley commented. “He’s still alive.”

“Help me,” the man pleaded.

“The way you helped Ledbetter?” Trevallion reached over and threw the wounded man’s coat back, taking a gun from his belt. The man was hit bad, and no amount of help would be of any use.

Trevallion had no sympathy for the man. When one man takes a gun and sets out to rob another, maybe to kill in the process, he should expect no sympathy.

“Who’s he?” he gestured toward the dead man.

“Got no idea.”

“And the others? The one we got last night? I mean that Ledbetter got?”

“No idea.”

He was a strongly built man with sandy hair and a few freckles, his face very pale now. Due to the shock and the cold, the pain had not yet reached him. That would come soon.

“You goin’ to let me lie here?”

“Tough, isn’t it? We’ve got to get Jim Ledbetter, the man you shot from ambush, to some help. Maybe if we get him cared for we can come back.”

“Hell, that’s liable to be a week!”

“Maybe. And maybe you can’t last that long.”

The man stared at him. “You’re a hard man, Trevallion.”

“Ledbetter’s my friend. My very good friend. He is also my partner.”

Trevallion had been working, brushing snow off the backs of the mules, hoisting the packs into place and tying them on. “Where’s the rest of our goods?”

Whatever his answer might have been it did not come. Instead, he doubled up with a shuddering groan, eyes wild with agony.

“Damn you, Treval—” His voice broke off in mid-sentence and slowly, carefully, he stretched out. The last action was purely reflex. He was dead.

Tapley called. “Can you help me with Jim?”

Together they lifted him into the saddle, a crude splint protecting the broken leg.

“Can you make it, Jim?”

Ledbetter’s eyes were bright with fever and pain, but he nodded. “Just try me,” he whispered. “Try me.”

He was still sitting in the saddle when they rode up to the bakery.

T
APLEY’S DUG-OUT CABIN was only a few hundred yards away, and after a few days they carried Jim to Tapley’s place on a makeshift stretcher.

It was a snug two-room cabin, with the bedroom built back into the side of the mountain, actually carved from rock, one side showing a substantial lacing of silver ore.

“Started to mine,” Tapley said, “and then decided I needed shelter for the winter more than ore, so I just smoothed out the walls and floor of this one and built on the front room.” He indicated a door in the back wall. “There’s sixty feet of tunnel back of that with a vein about an inch wide, silver sulphurets. That ain’t much, but I think she’ll widen as she goes deeper.”

Ledbetter looked over at Trevallion. “Hate to ask it, Trev, but can you find somebody to care for my stock? All I’ve got is tied up in those mules, and you’ve a stake in them, too.”

“We’ll manage. What about those in California?”

“We’ve got a good man yonder. No need to worry. I figured to have these back there to winter on good grass.”

“Spafford sold out awhile back,” Trevallion said, “even though he’s stayed around. He’s got two stacks of good hay back there, and I think we can make a deal. He’s also got some fenced pasture along the Carson and an old corral.”

“I’ll leave it up to you. We lost some good mules.”

“You haven’t lost them.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Look,” Trevallion said, “those mules are worth more on this side of the Sierras than the other. So’s the stuff they got. Across the mountains, even if they could get over, they’d be a drug on the market. With goods piling up against the spring thaw, they couldn’t get much for them, but over here, where everything is in short supply, they could do well.”

“So?”

“I’m going to pass the word around, and I’m going to go scouting. They’ve got to hold those mules somewhere not too far off, and they’ve got to have a cache for their goods, unless they make a quick sale.

“If they’ve sold them, I’ll find them. If they have not sold them, I’ll find them and the thieves.”

“How many were there, do you think?”

“Six, at least. Maybe seven or more. Three are dead. I’d say we’re talking of four or five men.”

He cleaned his rifle, checked his pistol, and then, leaving the rifle, went out into the cold wind and walked down to Lyman Jones’s.

The place was full. Langford Peel was at the end of the bar, and he pushed through to his side, for there was a good bit of space around him.

“Hello, Trev,” Peel said. “Heard you did some shooting down the trail.”

“Nothing much, Lang. Jim Ledbetter lost some good mules and their packs, though, and I’d take it as a favor if you’d keep your eyes and ears open.”

“I will do that.”

Trevallion bought a drink and then said, “Sam Brown in town?”

“He is.” Peel considered the question and then said, “There are about eight or ten really tough men hanging around with him. Back-shooters, though, and knife-men, so be careful. And Sam will kill anybody he takes a notion to, so don’t turn your back.”

Trevallion finished his drink, drew his coat tight, and stepped outside. For a moment he waited in the lee of the building, sheltered from the icy wind. There was a light in the bakery and he considered going there, then bending into the blast, he started up the hill toward Tapley’s place.

Then he turned abruptly and stepped under the overhang in front of a store, looking up the hill. To reach Tap’s place he would have to pass in front of several lighted windows, and suddenly he did not like the thought. Experience had taught him to play his hunches, and he did so now.

Keeping under the awning, he ran along for twenty feet, then stepped into the deep shadow alongside a cabin. MacNeale had a dug-out shack on the claim Trevallion had bought.

He went up Union Street, keeping as much to the shadows as he could, and when he reached the cabin, he lifted the latch. The door resisted, and just as he started to lunge against it with his shoulder, something clicked in his mind, and he stepped back quickly, drawing his gun. Then he kicked the door, hard.

It swung inward, then hung there, half-open.

“If you’re friendly,” he said, “come out with your hands up. If you’re not, come shooting.”

Chapter 16

T
AKE IT EASY, mister! I was just looking for a place to sleep!”

“Then step out here with your hands up.”

The man stepped out, nobody Trevallion had ever seen before. Of about medium height, well set-up, and wearing a white shirt with sleeve-garters. Trevallion could see little of his face beyond the fact that he wore a mustache and sideburns.

“All right, turn around and face the wall.”

Trevallion gave the man a quick frisk. He was unarmed, smelled faintly of cologne, and his boots had been polished, although dusty now. “Get inside and light a light,” he said, and followed him in.

A match flared and the man lifted the globe on a lantern and lighted it, then let the globe back into place.

The room was bare and simple. Two bunk beds on either side, a table, a sheet-iron stove, a black coat hung over a chair back, and at one side a carpetbag.

Seen in the light the man was clean-cut and not unattractive. No weapons were visible in the room.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“I am Dane Clyde. I am an actor hunting a job, and I’m empty, haven’t a farthing. Down at the saloon I heard somebody say Mr. MacNeale had left town with his wife, so I assumed this place would be empty.”

“I bought it from MacNeale.”

“I am sorry.” He reached for his coat. “I will get out of your way at once.”

“Don’t be a damned fool. Where will you go? You can’t get a bed in this town without putting money on the counter.” He indicated a bunk across the room. “You can sleep there if you aren’t gun-shy.”