Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

  To left and right were other wagons. A few yards away Dottie Parkins stood in the water, her dress sopping, clinging to her figure in every shocking detail. Amazed, he stared at her, and seeing him, she laughed, smoothing the dress over her breasts. Val turned his head quickly away and she laughed again. Dottie Parkins was sixteen, and he was three, almost four years younger. She had always seemed serene, quiet, and very much the prim young lady. He got up from the water, and, rescuing his ox-goad from the wagon, he went around to the lead team to get them out of the water. His father was nowhere around. He heard a sharp gasp from Dottie Parkins and looked around to see a rider had pulled up on the bank of the river and was staring at her. "Got quite a figger there, missy," the rider said.

  "It's none of your business!" she flared.

  Val reached into the back of his wagon and handed her a blanket which she hastily wrapped around herself.

  The man looked from her to Val, and Val felt a queer, sharp pang of recognition.

  Heknew him! One of the men who attacked and killed his mother!

  Turning, Val lunged at the wagon and grabbed for the shotgun. It came free of the wagon and he turned with it in his hands. Seeing it, the man touched a spur to his horse and was gone.

  Dottie stared at him, her eyes wide. "Why! Why, you were going to fight for me!" she said. "Well, I never! Val Trevallion, I never thought-Why, you werewonderful! Justwonderful!"

  Embarrassed, he put the shotgun back into the wagon, unwilling to spoil her appreciation by telling her who the man was and why he acted as he had.

  Parkins came splashing around his wagon and looked at them. Dottie splashed over to him and began telling what had happened.

  Val's father suddenly loomed on the riverbank. "I'll be damned!" Parkins shouted. "You've got a spunky lad there, Tom! A spunky lad! He'd have fought for my daughter."

  Later when they were alone, Val said, "Pa, she took it wrong. I went for the shotgun because that man was one of those who killed mother."

  "What? What kind of horse was he riding? What did he look like?"

  "A medium-tall man, dark, thin, straggly beard. He was riding a chestnut with three white stockings and a blaze face."

  They got the wagon out of the water and turned the cattle loose on a meadow near the stream. Other cattle and some horses were there.

  "Son, you keep an eye on the wagon and the stock. There's a trading post over there. I shall ride over."

  "Pa? Don't tell her about him, that man, I mean. Don't tell Parkins or Dottie. She thinks I done ... did it for her."

  His father nodded, then walked his horse away.

  Hours later he returned, undressed, and went to bathe in the river. When he came back Val asked, "Did you find him?"

  "No. He rode out before I got there, but they know him. His name is Skinner. The man at the trading post says he is a hard character."

  Tom Trevallion went about fixing a meal, and Hiram Ward joined them, bringing a chunk of fresh meat. "Mind company?"

  "No."

  After a bit Ward asked, "That feller you run off? Did you know him?"

  "I know his face. I remembered him. He was one of those who killed my mother."

  Ward looked across the fire at Tom. "They told me over at Spafford's that you were askin' after him. You be careful, Tom, that's a mighty mean man and he runs with a bad outfit. If he gets an idea you're hunting him, he'll kill you."

  "He will have to shoot first, then."

  "Tom, you don't understand. Skinner will guess it was the boy who told you, so he'll kill the boy, too. And I believe he knows who you are. He was down at the post asking folks from the train who you were, if you were married. Somebody told him your wife had been murdered back in Missouri."

  "So he knows, then?"

  "He knows."

  Chapter IV

  Tom Trevallion moved his wagon higher up the river and away from Spafford's. Hiram Ward came to him on the last day. "You stayin', Tom?"

  "I am."

  "You're wiser than them, but I'm the guide, and I have to take them through, somehow." He paused, lighting his pipe. "Keep an eye out, you and the boy. That's a bad outfit."

  "All right."

  "Ever kill a man, Tom?"

  "No."

  "With their kind, you kill. Don't talk, don't tell them what you think of them, just kill. They understand nothing else. They're worse than wolves, Tom. You can bet time is holding a rope noosed just for them. Don't go hunting them, Tom."

  They watched the wagons go. Val felt a pang as of something lost. He knew few of them well, but for months now they had been together. The wagons slowly rumbled past, and only a few waved. Their eyes were on the trail, their hearts and heads were in the magic land across the mountains.

  "It will be cold this winter," his father said, "and we must gather wood. There's a deserted cabin here where we can stay the winter through, and when the snows melt, we will cross over."

  They cleaned out the old cabin, and his father repaired the roof. Val gathered wood along the slope; there were many fallen trees and branches, great slabs of bark, enough wood for many winters, just lying about. He stacked it against the house to help keep out the cold and where it would be close to hand when needed.

  "No need to worry about snakes," Ward had told him. "Not in this cold weather. First sign of frost they hole up for the winter in caves and the like. But there's bears ... keep an eye out."

  He saw no bears, but he did see tracks. His father killed a deer the second day they were there, an easy shot, not thirty yards away.

  Val was up on the slope when the men came. His father was near the wagon and heard them coming and he reached in the back for the shotgun.

  The mountain air was clear and Val could hear it all.

  "Is that the wagon?"

  "Same one, painted just that shade of blue. It's them, all right."

  "But how could heknow? He wasn't there!"

  "He knows; it was that kid told him. We didn't see the kid, but he must have been there."

  They rounded the rocks and trees within sight of his father.

  One of them was carrying a rifle, another had drawn a six-shooter, and Tom Trevallion lifted his shotgun and blew a man out of the saddle. His second shot killed the man with the pistol, and he dropped the shotgun and reached for the six-shooter, and Val saw his father's body jerk with the impact of the bullets. He went to his knees, got the pistol out and fired again and again, some of the shots going wild as he was himself hit.

  As suddenly as the shooting began it was over, and in the silence they heard the rattle of approaching hoofs. Somebody swore, and another said, "Let's get out of here!"

  They wheeled their horses, and Val got up from where he had been hiding. Rushing down he grabbed up his father's pistol and fired just as they vanished into the brush.

  From the direction of the Carson, a party of horsemen came rushing up. A lean, bearded man swung his horse around and looked at Val, then at his father.

  "Who did it, boy?"

  Val told them, then ran to his father. Dropping to his knees beside him, he stared down, shocked and sick. His father's skull and shirt were bloody. "Val ...Val, I ..." Then, more softly, he whispered, "Be a good boy, your mother-" His voice trailed away, and he was gone.

  The bearded man put a hand on his shoulder. "Your pa was a good man, son. He died game."

  They buried his father there, on a low knoll under the trees, and Val carved the marker himself, a slab of sandstone on which he laboriously chipped out the words with a hammer and chisel.

  He lived on in the cabin all that winter. Spafford let him clean up around the store for twenty-five cents a week. With only one mouth to feed, there was enough food to last, and they had already cut most of the wood needed. He had warm blankets, a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. Later, walking up the trail the murderers had taken when they fled, he found a second pistol. The name A.X. Elder was carved on the butt; evidently the pistol had been dropped in flight, perhap
s by a wounded man.

  During the winter he went through what his parents had left, their clothing, their small chest of keepsakes, some old letters. Among his mother's things he found five gold coins, hidden away against some emergency. He hid them again, and when spring came, he yoked up the oxen and took the wagon over the mountains to California with the first wagon train that went through. He was thirteen then, already man-grown and strong for his years.

  In Sacramento he sold the oxen and the wagon but kept the mare, and the firearms. The pistol with the name on the butt he packed away. He now knew two names, Skinner and A.X. Elder.

  That summer he tended cattle, helped dig an irrigation ditch, and built a flume. In the fall he helped construct a log barn and cut and squared timber for a cabin.

  A stoop-shouldered, lantern-jawed man from Missouri squared timbers with a broadax right beside him. He was a talker, a loose-tongued man who talked sunup to last light, with many a frontier story of hunting, fighting, rafting on the rivers.

  Toward sundown one day he said, "Pirates! Boy, they was on the river them days! Steal the hat off your head! Mostly they laid in wait for rafters or boaters, come aboard in the night, murder folks and steal what all they had!

  "My ma, she was a God-fearing woman. Raised us right. She was a Methodist. Swore by that there John Wesley, and never a Sunday but we'd go to the preaching. I never paid much mind, but it was a time to see the gals whose folks brought them to the preaching. We'd make eyes at one another, and one time I got to hold hands with that Sawyer girl, right in church, too!

  "Had me a fight over her, knuckle-an'-skull with another boy, but then Obie come along, an'-"

  "Who?"

  "Obie, Obie Skinner. Him who lived over nigh Bald Knob. He-"

  "Tell me about him."

  "Obie? He was no-account. Year or two younger than me, but mean as all get-out right then. I mean he was a knowed boy, stealin' an' all that. I was winnin' that fight, but Obie he come along and hit that other boy with a club. It wa'n't fair. I'd of whupped him anyway, but Obie he come from my fork of the crick, and he just fetched that boy a clout.

  "Laid that boy out stone cold. I rizz up and cussed Obie, told him I would handle my own fightin', but he just laughed at me.

  "That was the year he taken out an' joined up with river pirates. He stole a mule and got ketched with it, and then he wormed his way out of jail somehow and taken to the river."

  "You tell me about Obie Skinner," Val said. "Who did he run with?"

  PART TWO

  Chapter V

  Eighteen fifty-nine. Ten years gone ... ten years during which Val Trevallion was a driven man. Filled with hatred for the men who had killed his mother and father, he had worked from job to job, saving a little money, doing the jobs given him with a single-minded purpose.

  He had helped around a trading post, clerked in the store, had worked for a printer who had a small newspaper, had been a packer with a mule train, prospected, fought Indians, worked as a deckhand on a Sacramento riverboat, and had covered the country from Sonora to the upper Frazier River country in British Columbia. He had worked in mines, been a shift-boss when he was eighteen, superintendent of a mine at twenty.

  Trevallion came to be known as a man who could get things done. He could handle men and he knew ore. Several times he had taken over mines that were failing, had turned them into producers and then left, nor would any amount of money get him to stay on.

  For ten years Trevallion had lived with no other thought than to find and kill the murderers of his father and mother, to see them punished for what they had done. His father had killed two, Trevallion had been able to find and kill two more, and he was still determined to search out the others. Which led him now, ten hard years later, on his way back over the mountains.

  It was hot and stuffy in the small shack where they awaited the horses and mules that would take them over the Sierras. Glancing around at the others he felt a sharp impatience ... fools, wild-eyed with dreams of gold. He had seen their kind before, men and women hungry for wealth and most of them totally unwilling to do the work it required.

  He went to the door and stepped out into the bitter cold. There was snow upon the mountains, but in town the earth was bare and frozen. Humping his shoulders against the wind, he walked to the end of the freight platform and was turning back when his eyes caught a flicker of movement.

  Pausing, Trevallion fumbled in his pockets as if searching for something and, without turning his head, saw from the corner of his eye a man in a heavy overcoat come out of the trees on the hill opposite. Hesitating only an instant, the man started down the slope in a stumbling run.

  At that hour it was unlikely the man would be headed for any place but here, for day had just broken and the sky was scarcely gray.

  Nine people waited inside for the mules that would carry them over the mountains to Washoe, but the only one who had seemed apprehensive was the frail blonde girl with the flashy young man.

  Whatever it was she feared had drawn only scoffing replies from him, and Trevallion had turned away mildly irritated at the two. Young love-he had seen it all before.

  Why did all these youngsters believe they had discovered something new? Why did so many repeat the same mistakes and blunders? Maybe life wanted it that way.

  Trevallion had been over too many rough trails with too many men not to recognize the young man for what he was. He had the flashy good looks that appealed to some women and a shallow mind tied to a glib tongue, but he was strictly lightweight and would quit when the going got rough.

  For the girl Trevallion had only compassion. Young she certainly was, and quite pretty, but there was a shading of character there, too. Time and trial had not yet demanded that character to surface, but surface it surely would.

  He was turning back to the door when the scuff of boots on the frozen road turned him around.

  It was the man he had seen on the hill opposite, a duly, unshaved man, inclining toward fat. Despite the intense cold his coat hung open. No doubt to permit access to a gun.

  Brushing by him without a glance, the man went to the window and peered in. His fingers fumbled under the coat again.

  Trevallion had known too much of trouble not to recognize the signs. Any minute now the mules would be brought around for mounting, and the people would be emerging. Trevallion did not like the man peering in the window, nor did he want anything to interfere with their leaving. A shooting might do just that.

  His tone was casual. "Remember what they used to call this place?"

  His concentration broken, the man looked around, seeming to notice Trevallion for the first time. "Wha-? What did you say? You speakin' to me?"

  "Just wondering if you knew what they used to call this town?"

  Irritated by the interruption, and impatient, the man straightened up. He had round, flabby cheeks and small eyes. He peered at Trevallion. "Ol' Dry Diggin's, wasn't it? Now it's called Placerville. What's it matter?"

  "There was a time it was calledHangtowm. Folks around here had a short way with murderers. They never discussed it, they just hanged them."

  "What's that got to do with me? Who're you, anyway?"

  Trevallion smiled. It was a good question. It was a very good question. Just whowas he?

  Hoofs rattled on the frozen mud and stones as a man on muleback rounded the corner, leading a string of saddled mules and pack animals. Trevallion recognized the rider, Jim Ledbetter.

  "How are you, Jim?"

  The rider in the buffalo coat pulled up sharply, peered, then spat. "Val? Well, I'll be damned! Last I heard the Modocs had killed you somewhere over back of Shasta."

  "It was close. They got some lead into me and one arrow. Seemed like a good time to leave out of there so I did."

  "Heard they found blood all over the rocks, so the boys figured you'd been scalped and your body dropped into a hole in the lava beds."

  "They had it in mind."

  Ledbetter swung down. "You h
eaded for Washoe?"

  "Isn't everybody?" Trevallion indicated a black Spanish mule. "How about that one for me?"

  "He's yours. Be good to have you along."

  "Expecting trouble?"

  "No more'n usual. The trail's god-awful. Mud's knee-deep when it ain't froze. There's a solid line of travel both ways so the road is all chewed up. Most of them are pilgrims who don't know which end is up. Wouldn't know a color if they saw one."

  "How's things in Washoe?"

  "Virginia town, they're callin' it now. At least some do. Nothin' but scattered shacks an' dugouts, with here and there a rock-house. God knows there's rock enough to build a city, just lyin' there."

  "Are they finding any ore?"

  "Aplenty." Ledbetter hitched his pants and spat. "You could go to work tomorrow, Val. The Washoe started as placer, and there's still a good bit of it being done, but the big thing is going to be quartz-mining and there's nobody around knows how to work in hard rock. Nobody but a few of you Cousin Jacks."

  "Jim, I left Cornwall when I was a youngster. All I know about mining is what I learned here." He paused. "Of course, my pa tried to teach me something. He grew up in tin and copper mines. I did work in them a little, but only as a youngster."

  "You forgot more than most of them will ever know, Val. Once they find out you're a Cousin Jack you will have a job ... if you want it."

  The door opened suddenly behind him and Trevallion heard the people coming to mount their mules. He thought suddenly of the fat man to whom he had spoken. Trevallion caught Jim's eye and jerked his head to indicate the man. "Watch it, Jim. This is trouble."

  The blonde girl and her flashy young man were the first to emerge.

  "You, there!" The fat man drew back his coat.

  The two stopped in midstride. The girl's eyes went wide with fright. Her mouth opened but no sound came.

  Suddenly all the young man's flash and style were gone. He tried to bluster. "You got no say over her! We're agonna be married!"