Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

"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'stwo 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.

  Tapley'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."r />
  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 XVI

  "Take 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."

  "What's that mean?"

  "My name is Trevallion, and there are some thieves around who don't like me. They might come hunting for me."

  Dane Clyde shrugged. "Wake me up when the shooting starts," he said cheerfully. "I'm so tired it would take a war to wake me up once I hit the mattress."

  Trevallion barred the door and shielded the light, then hung his coat on a peg. "Had anything to eat?"

  "Not much, lately."

  Trevallion made coffee and hunted through the cupboard. It was very neat, as he would have expected, for until she became too ill, MacNeale had lived here with his wife. He found a slab of bacon from which some slices had been cut and in the breadbox some baking-powder biscuits that were several days old.

  "It isn't much," he said, "but we'll get along." Then, turning to look at Clyde, he said, "What's an actor doing in Virginia City?"

  "I heard there was a boom, or about to be one. I figured the town could do with some entertainment."

  "You could be right. What can you do?"

  "Act, sing, impersonations, play almost anything there is in the way of an instrument." He removed his tie and collar, carefully placing the collar button on the table where it could be immediately found. "Actually, it's the only thing I wish to do. My father insisted on an education. He was a scholar of the old school."

  "Where you from?"

  "Dublin, Ireland. My people were transplanted English, and like many of them, we became more Irish than the Irish themselves."

  Trevallion put a twenty dollar gold piece on the table. "That's a loan. You can sleep here."

  "Say, that's decent of you! I am obliged."

  "Forget it, and pay me when you can. You say you can sing? Tell Lyman Jones, you might sing down there and let them put money in the pot. There's not much entertainment here, as you guessed."

  "There will be in the spring. I know of two or three companies who are thinking of coming up here to play. Is there a theater?"

  "No, they'll have to play in a corral or an inn-yard, like Shakespeare did."

  Clyde glanced at him. "You know about that, do you?"

  Trevallion was sitting over coffee in the bakery the following morning when Will Crockett came in.

  "When are you going to work for me, Trevallion?"

  "I'm not. When are we going to be partners, Crockett?"

  Crockett laughed. "I don't need a partner. There's scarcely enough for one."

  "Maybe that's why you need a partner."

  "What? What's that mean?" Crockett's good humor was gone. "I am doing all right."

  "No doubt, but is 'all right' good enough? I've seen some of your ore, and it's just what you said. It is all right. Who manages your operation, Crockett?"

  "I do, why?"

  "How many tons are you getting out? Right now, for example?"

  "Now? We're closed down. Al He
sketh had to go to the coast on business, and as some of our miners pulled out, we decided to close down for the winter."

  "If you've got the capital to pay miners, you should be working, piling up ore to ship when spring opens the trail. At least, that's my feeling."

  Will Crockett stared out of the window, obviously irritated, less by what Trevallion had said than by thoughts developed from it.

  "I need a mining man over there. Al's against it, says we are doing well enough and he has plans, but he doesn't know much more about mining than I do, although he's a top businessman. Knows exactly what he's doing all the time."

  "Maybe you should listen to him."

  "Why don't you come over and have a look? Tell me what you think?"

  "I will do that, but it will cost you fifty dollars."

  "Fifty dol-" Crockett's face flushed. "You want fifty dollars just for walking through a mine? Take you no more than thirty minutes?"

  Trevallion finished his coffee. He got up. "See you later, Melissa."

  When he was gone, Crockett slammed down his cup. "Confound the man! Fifty dollars? That's preposterous!"

  "You asked him, Will. He did not come to you. He never comes to anyone ... at least not to ask for anything. He will go out of his way to help someone. He helped me get started here, and when Jim Ledbetter did not come in on time, he went looking for him."

  "Damn it, the man's a miner! I've had a dozen people tell me that Trevallion knows more about mining and about getting the ore out than anybody they know. I need him."

  Melissa smiled. "Will, if you need him, you'd better make up your mind to pay him. One thing you have to understand, Trevallion doesn't seem towant anything. If he really cares for anything or anybody, I don't know what it is."

  Crockett sat quietly for a few minutes. "Melissa, you're a good woman. You're also a calming influence. Whenever I come here, I feel better when I leave."

  She smiled. "It's the coffee, Will. I make a good cup of coffee."

  They were silent for a few minutes, and then she said, "Will? If you do have Trevallion look at your mine, don't tell Al Hesketh."

  He stared at her. "Don't tell Al? Why not? Why, I never make a move without Al! He's my right hand!"

  "Did you ever suggest having Trevallion look at the mine?"