Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

  "Like hell you are!" The fat man produced a pistol. Trevallion was startled to see it was an old-fashioned dueling pistol.

  The young man broke and ran, the pistol exploding just as he ducked around the corner. Shouting, the man ran after him, waving the now empty pistol. At the corner of the building he turned and walked back to the girl, grabbing her arm. "You! You git for home! By the Lord, I'll-"

  Fear was gone from her eyes. She braced herself against his grip. "I'll not! You leave go of me!"

  Her eyes turned to Trevallion. "Please, mister! I don't want to go with him!"

  "Is he your father?"

  "He isnot! He married my mother after pa died, an' ever since ma died he's been after me. I ... Ihate him!"

  "Damn you! You come with-"

  "Let her alone."

  Trevallion's tone was low, but there was a quality in it that stopped the man. "If she doesn't wish to go with you, she doesn't have to."

  "You stay out of this!" The man clung to her arm with his left hand, holding the dueling pistol in his right. "This here's none of your business."

  "Mister, in this country we don't abuse women. Take your hand off the lady."

  The man let go but he lifted his gun and pointed it at Trevallion.

  "Don't be a damned fool!" Treyallion said irritably. "Your gun's empty. When you go hunting meat, my friend, you'd better be better armed than that."

  Ignoring him, he glanced at the girl. "Do you want to go with this man?"

  "No, I don't! I want to get away. He, Alfie, he was going to help me."

  "You're well rid of him. Have you any money?"

  "A ... a little."

  Jim Ledbetter spoke up. "Her ride's paid for. So's his. I can sell that ride and give her the money." A little wryly, he added, "It doesn't look like Alfie's going to show up."

  Trevallion glanced back at the girl. "It will be rough up there. Maybe you should try Sacramento?"

  "No. I want to go to Washoe. To Virginia City."

  "Mount up, then."

  The others had started getting into their saddles, some clumsily, others with expert ease. The fat man started forward but Trevallion blocked his way.

  "Damn you! You've no right to interfere!"

  "You've no claim on her. If I had my way they'd run you out of town. Your kind aren't wanted anywhere. When you pointed that gun at me, I could have killed you, and probably should have."

  The man backed off, but his plump cheeks shook with fury. "Damn you! You'll see! I'll get even! I'll get both of you!Both of you!"

  The agent came from the door. "Jim? Here's a packet of mail. Most of it is for Hesketh."

  "Hesketh? Isn't he that bookkeeper for the Solomon?"

  "That's him. He gets more mail than his boss, seems like."

  Ledbetter tucked the letters into a saddlebag, then swung to the saddle and led off, the others following. Trevallion fell in behind the girl. She had a nice straight back and sat her saddle well.

  "I'm Trevallion," he offered.

  She smiled. "I am Melissa Turney." The smile left her face. "His name was Mousel. He's a placer-miner sometimes, sometimes a trapper."

  She offered no comment on Alfie and Trevallion decided it was no time to ask questions.

  The morning was cold and overcast. The wind from off the ranges was chilling, and as they mounted steadily they could catch glimpses of snow under the pines.

  The Spanish mule had an easy gait and, like most mules, a no-nonsense attitude. The mule knew exactly where he was going to step and was not about to be guided by some casual pilgrim who might or might not be trail-wise. He had his own way, and Trevallion let him have his head.

  The trail was badly rutted, and here and there run-off water had cut deep trenches across the way, and the ruts had frozen into a maze of rocklike ridges, making every step a hazard.

  Even at this hour the trail was already crowded with a winding, snakelike procession of men, animals, and occasional wagons. Mule trains forged ahead with that complete indifference to the life and limb of others typical of pack mules the world over. Nobody in his right mind disputed the right-of-way with a pack mule who brushed people aside like so many trailside branches or clumps of brush.

  Jim Ledbetter was as single-minded as any mule. His sole responsibility was to those who paid to ride his mules, and to their packs, and he forged ahead like the others.

  Nobody wished to stop or even pause for fear someone would pass them by in the rush for Washoe. Wrecked wagons were thrust rudely aside, some of them leaning perilously over cliffs, others already toppled into canyons.

  At one point a keg of whiskey fell off the back of a wagon and was immediately seized by a passerby who helped himself to the contents. As if by magic, tin cups appeared, and by the time the teamster, whip in hand, came striding back, the situation was too far out of hand to permit interference. With a shrug he accepted the cup of whiskey extended as a peace offering, drank it, and returned to his team.

  Slowly they worked their way up the steep, winding trail bordered by pines. It was a brutal road, horses, mules, and men scrambling over rocks, slipping on ice, plunging and buck-jumping through occasional drifts, turning out to avoid rock falls or small slides. Despite the trail they made good time.

  Occasionally they were passed by pack trains of ore returning from the mines. At the ridge's crest they drew up to let the mules catch their breath and to drink the clear, cold water of a rivulet that fell from the bank in a miniature cascade, and crossed the trail to pitch off into the canyon.

  Ledbetter walked back to Trevallion. "It's like every boom camp in the world, Val. Everybody hopes to strike it rich, many of them believe they have, others are con men just looking for a gullible newcomer to whom they can sell their claim or a piece of one. Everybody has 'feet' to sell, and most of it ain't worth the price of a Digger Injun's breakfast."

  He paused, gesturing toward the east. "There's forty or fifty pieces of good ground up there and several dozen others where a man can dig a living. That's about it. Why, I know of some claims that have been sold time and again without anybody seeing a color."

  Ledbetter bit off a chew and offered the plug. Trevallion declined. Ledbetter glanced sharply at him. "Didn't you an' your pa come this way?"

  "We did."

  "Man, I'll never forget that Forty-Mile Desert ifen I live to be a hundred. Dead animals ever' few feet and busted down wagons scattered all over."

  Later, at a widening of the trail, Melissa rode up beside Ledbetter. "You all right?" he asked her.

  "Yes, sir."

  "You got a pair o' man's pants? Be a sight easier if you rode astride on these steep slopes. I know it ain't what's considered ladylike, but you'll see most womenfolks usin' them on the road."

  "I'll be all right." A few steps further along she asked, "Who is he?"

  "Trevallion? He's a Cousin Jack. That means he's from Cornwall, over in England. They're about the only ones around who know anything about hard-rock mining."

  "I mean ...who is he?"

  "He's a loner, ma'am, a hard, tough, dangerous man. He rides alone, walks alone, lives alone. There's nothing to him that ain't rawhide and iron, but if a body's in any kind of trouble, he's the man you want beside you.

  "If you've got ore, he will get it out. If you lose a lead, he'll find it for you quicker than anybody I know. He knowsground, ma'am, mining ground. He knows how to load his holes so the ground breaks fine, and he's one of the best men with a single-jack I ever did see."

  "What's a single-jack?"

  "It's a small sledgehammer, ma'am. That's about the easiest way to explain it. Used with one hand, for drillin' into rock. A double-jack is used with two hands and is a reg'lar sledgehammer. Mostly one man turns the drill, the other strikes it. Trevallion isgood. The best I ever did see. He's got more power in those shoulders and arms ... well, that's one way to build power, swinging a double-jack.

  "He come over from the old country with his folks. Beyond that nobod
y knows much about him. A few years back when he was only about sixteen he hired out to deliver twenty thousand dollars in gold to a bank in Sacramento. There were outlaws after that gold and Injun trouble too. When he didn't show up folks figured him for dead. Three months later he come down out of the woods lookin' like the wrath of God. He had two festerin' arrow wounds and was wore down to skin an' bone, but he brought in the gold, ever' pinch of it." Ledbetter paused. "Such things get talked about, so he become a known man."

  "How old is he?"

  Ledbetter shrugged. "Who knows? Or really cares? Most men out here are young, even the ones who look old. Country does that to a man, that an' hard work. I know he could have been superintendent of a big mine in Grass Valley, and he wouldn't take it. Somethin's eatin' on him, I reckon."

  The trail narrowed, and Ledbetter rode on ahead, glancing back from time to time at the winding black snake of men, animals, and wagons that followed.

  Melissa shivered at the cold wind off the mountain. What would she do in Virginia City? Her whole thought was to escape, to get away, by whatever means. How she would exist after that was something to which she had given no thought aside from supposing she would be married. She flushed with shame, remembering the way Alfie had fled.

  There would be something, there had to be something! Her mother had hoarded a little money Mousel had never known she possessed. She had married him when left alone and desperate, with a young daughter to bring up. He had proved a cruel, parsimonious man, vindictive and petty.

  Alfie-she did not want to think about Alfie. She had half persuaded herself she was in love with him, but when she warned him of Mousel, he had laughed, skeptical of her fears. She saw him now for the shoddy, third-rate sort of man he was. She had been in a fair way to make as serious a mistake as her mother, marrying to escape.

  Later, she asked Trevallion, "Why do they call Cornishmen 'Cousin Jacks'?"

  "They say if you hire one Cornishman he will immediately tell you about his Cousin Jack, who is a good miner and hunting a job, and soon the Cousin Jacks have all the jobs."

  "They must be good miners."

  "Generally speaking they don't know much else. When I was six, I was working in a tin mine picking waste rock out of the ore. Then pa took me out, and I worked with fishermen until I was eleven, then back to the mines."

  Melissa glanced at him slyly. "My grandfather used to say the people of Cornwall were wreckers. That they used to display lights to lure ships on the rocks so they could loot the ships."

  "It might have happened," Trevallion said, "long, long ago. Usually they just claimed what was washed ashore. In fact, there's a story in the family that that was how my great-grandfather got his wife. He helped her ashore from a wreck and claimed her for his own."

  "And she stayed with him?"

  "By all accounts they were a happy pair. He was a fine, upstanding young man, considered very handsome. When I was a child, there were still things in the house that had been hers, things saved from the wreck."

  Ledbetter turned in his saddle. "We'll stop at Dirty Mike's. We've made good time, and Mike serves the best grub. Only trouble is the people come and go so fast he never takes time to wash the dishes. Complain about them and you'll go hungry."

  A rider on a fine bay horse was overtaking them. He was a tall, strikingly handsome man with a blonde mustache, and as he came abreast he glanced sharply at Trevallion, then looked a second time, frowning a little. He spoke to his horse then, and rode rapidly away.

  "That man knew you," Melissa said.

  "Aye," Trevallion agreed. "I believe he did."

  Chapter VI

  Dirty Mike's was a ramshackle place of stained canvas and poles. The few tables with benches were already crowded, and men were scattered over the grass, eating from tin plates, dishes of chipped enamel, or heavy crockery.

  "Must be three or four hundred," Ledbetter said, "about average for this time of day, and this season."

  He pointed. "Look at 'em." His disgust was evident. "Ain't one in ten knows what he's after or would know a color if they saw it. They'll spend all they bring with them, and here or there a few will make a little. Most of them will jump at the chance to move on to any other boom camp, always ready to believe the pot of gold is right over yonder, but they want to stumble over it, not work for it. Most of them are looking for something easy, something to find or steal, or what's offered on a platter."

  "There's good men among them," Trevallion said.

  "Aye. That there is."

  "And there are some women over there," Melissa said.

  "They aren't your kind," Trevallion replied. "Fight shy of them. If you're seen with them, you're likely to be taken for one of them. Just stay away from them."

  "Do you think that's fair?"

  "We're not talking about what's fair or unfair. We're talking realities. Some of those women would lend you their last dollar or nurse you if you were sick, but there's others would steal the fillings from your teeth or give you a knife in the ribs for what's in your pockets."

  The area was incredibly dirty. Horses and mules were tied to brush or trees, others were picketed. Here and there a wagon was drawn up and all the spaces between were crowded with men in every possible costume. Coonskin caps, Mexican sombreros, old Army hats or caps, silk hats, beaver hats, and battered woolen hats ... men in frock coats, sailor's jackets, fringed buckskin, and homespun.

  There were men from all the world, sailors who had deserted their ships, adventurers, drifters, ne'er-do-wells, and mining men. Men who had worked the Mother Lode or were rebounding from the disaster on the Frazier River.

  A crude bar, a plank laid across barrel-tops, was lined three deep with men practicing for the saloons of Washoe. Several monte games were going, and at one of them somebody asked, "What's Washoe?"

  "It's a place, a place where the mines are. It's a lake, too, named for a tribe of Indians."

  "Indians? You mean there's realIndians ?"

  "Aplenty. Take your hair, too, given a chance."

  "Naw," somebody interrupted. "Rob you, maybe. Even kill you, but these Injuns don't take hair."

  A burly man with unshaven cheeks and a ragged beard as well as foodstains on his checkered vest pushed up to Trevallion. "Mister, I've got a claim I can let you have for the right price." With a glance to left and right he leaned closer, his breath smelling of whiskey. 'This here's a steal for the right man. I won't sell to just anybody, but you look the right sort." He coughed effectively. "I'm a sick man. Located the best claim on the lode but can't stand the weather. Got to get back to the coast. Like leavin' my own private mint, it is. I've been lookin' for just the right man-"

  "Keep looking," Trevallion said, brushing by.

  The man swore bitterly, then reached for Melissa. "Ma'am, I tell you this here-"

  "Leave her alone," Trevallion said.

  The man's eyes turned mean. "Listen, mister-"

  "The lady is with me," Trevallion said.

  "'Lady'!" The man sneered. "Why, she ain't no more-"

  Trevallion knocked him down. It was a backhanded blow, almost casual, but the man's heels flew up and he landed on his back in the mud, lips broken and bloody.

  He started to get up but someone hissed, "Stay down, you fool! That'sTrevallion .'"

  Trevallion took Melissa's elbow and guided her through the crowd. "There's always somebody who hasn't learned how to behave."

  He took her to the counter and men, seeing a woman, crowded back and made a place for her.

  "Mike?"

  The rough-looking man standing over the fire with a long spoon in his hand turned impatiently. When he saw Trevallion he smiled. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Trevallion." He glanced at Melissa. "What can I do for you?"

  "Some grub. Whatever you've got. And Mike? Two clean plates."

  Mike chuckled. "Wouldn't do it for anybody but you, Mr. Trevallion. Why, I've fed five, maybe six hundred so far today, and if the pack train doesn't get here, folks are goin' hungr
y tomorrow."

  Taking two plates he sloshed them around in what appeared to be relatively clean water, then polished them with a dry cloth he took from under the counter.

  "Beef an' beans, and there's some dried apples left." He glanced at Trevallion. "You two travelin' alone?"

  "We're with Jim Ledbetter."

  "One o' the best, Jim is." Mike heaped the plates. "You prospectin' or hirin' out?"

  "There's a place up there I want to look at again, if somebody hasn't beaten me to it. I thought I'd placer awhile until I can look the situation over."

  Mike glanced around, then in a lower tone. "You be careful. There's been a man or two askin' after you. I didn't much like their looks."

  "Thanks, Mike."

  Mike glanced at Melissa. "Not much up there for a decent woman, nor any place to live." He filled two mugs with coffee and took them to a table inside his cooking tent. "Sit here," he said. He looked at Melissa again. "Ma'am? Can you bake? Pies, doughnuts an' such?"

  "I can."

  "That's it, then. These men can't get enough of such truck. I'd hire you on m'self but you'd do better on the Washoe. You bake pies an' you can get whatever you ask for 'em. They're hungry for home cookin', sweets, an' such."

  "All right."

  "You'll be rich, ma'am. You'll make more money than if you had some feet in the richest claim on the Comstock."

  "The Comstock?"

  "That's what they call the lode. Named for Ol' Pancake Comstock who was one of the first on the ground, and a four-flusher if I ever seen one. Claims ever' thing in sight, but he's a bluffer an' a liar to boot.

  "The man who knows most about that place and the leads is Ol' Virginny-when he's sober. He knows more about minin' in a minute than all the rest in a year."

  "The Grosch brothers gone?" Trevallion asked.

  "You knew them? Well, they're gone, all right. Dead. One of them drove a pick into his foot, and when blood pizenin' set in, he wouldn't let them take it off. He died, and his brother stayed too long nursin' him and got caught in the Sierra snows. He made it over but was in such bad shape he failed. He died, too."

  "They were good men."