Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

  The man was trembling, and for a moment Trevallion thought he would draw, then the resolution left him and he lowered his hands helplessly. Before he could speak, Trevallion said quietly, "Seems to me you've got two ways to die, and one to live."

  "What's that mean?"

  "You can write that paper and then get on your horse and ride out of here for Salt Lake."

  Hope brightened his eyes. "You'd let me do that?"

  "I wouldn't waste around about writing that note. I ain't hung a man this week," Tapley said.

  The man wrote, and when he had finished, Trevallion glanced at it. "You've got ten minutes," he said.

  Chapter XVIII

  A harsh winter blended almost unrealized into an even harsher spring. The booming Washoe zephyrs swept down the mountain, flattening shacks, tent-huts, and saloons. Scarce fuel had become even scarcer, and most of the squatters were cooking with sagebrush for fuel.

  Snow sifted in through the cracks in the poorly built cabins, melting on the scarcely warm stoves and sifting in a shadowy white blanket over the sleeping men.

  The spring of 1860 came, and the cold withdrew into the higher peaks. Only the wind remained, blowing rocks rather than sand, battering at walls, rattling against the few intact windows, but by March a few daring men were already pushing through the snow-drifted passes.

  Trevallion came down the hill in the morning. John Moore had arrived with a stock of liquor and goods, and was already setting up a makeshift saloon while men hung around waiting. The winter's supply of whiskey had run short, the nearest thing to a disaster that the new camp had experienced.

  Jim Ledbetter was at the bakery before him, helping Melissa prepare breakfast.

  "My cook skipped," she explained. "He bought an outfit and went prospecting."

  "He'd do better right here," Will Crockett spoke from the door, closing it behind him.

  Trevallion poured a cup for himself and one for Crockett. "Ready to look over the Solomon?"

  Trevallion shrugged. "Are you ready with the money? Fifty dollars for a walk through and a working interest if I work there."

  "You're a hard man."

  Trevallion sat down, sipping his coffee. "I've got a claim of my own. It looks good."

  "Bah! I've seen that MacNeale claim! Only a showing of ore! Not worth bothering with!"

  "It might be we don't see the same things when we look," Trevallion replied. "I've been looking at ore and at rock formations all my life. You were a merchant or something of the kind, weren't you?"

  "A man can learn," Crockett said.

  "Thank God for that." Ledbetter came over and joined them. "Jim, when you go out, I've got a dozen mule loads of ore I want to send."

  "All right!" Crockett said irritably. "Fifty dollars! I hope you're worth it."

  Trevallion nodded. "In the morning then."

  Melissa added, "Whatever he tells you, Will, keep it to yourself."

  Irritated, he glanced at her. "Look, have I ever asked you-"

  "No, Will, you haven't, but do you ever show your poker hand to the other players?"

  "Of course not. This isn't the same. How can he operate the mine if he doesn't know the facts?"

  "All I ask is that you not show your cards. Not all of them, anyway."

  After she had gone into the kitchen, Crockett said, "Melissa's a fine girl, but sometimes she seems to think I'm a child."

  Ledbetter shook his head. "Not so, Will. Melissa hears a lot of talk. Miners, businessmen, they all sit here and talk over their coffee. You're a good man, Will, but a trusting one, too trusting."

  "The trouble is," Trevallion suggested, "that when a man gets a very capable assistant, he tends to leave more and more of his work to that assistant, until soon he's really running the show."

  "Not my show," Crockett said. He got up. "See you in the morning, Trevallion."

  After he had gone, Trevallion asked, "Who is this Hesketh, anyhow? I hear his name mentioned but never see him around."

  "He doesn't come around," Melissa replied. "I don't know him, and he is probably a perfectly trustworthy man. I just don't believe in trusting anyone too far."

  "Good thing to know," Trevallion commented.

  Melissa flushed, then she went on. "He keeps very much to himself when he's here. He's got a cabin up the hill a ways, and he spends his time either there or with his books down at the office."

  "Minds his own affairs," Ledbetter said, "doesn't drink, doesn't chew tobacco, and he seems to have no interest except in that mine."

  "Is he a miner?"

  "Not so's you'd notice. First I heard of him was six or eight years ago over in Sacramento. He was buying ore from miners, mostly from those who needed money quick, so he bought cheap."

  Trevallion came down the hill in the morning and walked over to the Solomon.

  He already knew most of the basic facts. Will Crockett had claimed 150 feet along the Comstock Lode, and had sunk a shaft that was now sixty feet deep. From that they had run a drift at right angles to the shaft with a fair showing of ore. At that point work was stopped, and another drift was started at right angles to the first. In this second drift there was a fair showing of ore, and the width of the vein increased as they went deeper.

  The showings were good, and they had shipped several pack trains of ore for milling. All that was commonly known about town, where miners talked freely and there were few, if any, secrets.

  Crockett was waiting at the collar of the shaft. There was no talk. They lighted their lamps and descended into the mine. Trevallion was no geologist and made no pretense at so being. He was simply a man with practical mining experience who automatically studied every rock formation he encountered.

  What they were beginning to call the Comstock Lode lay along a fault where there were also a number of lesser faults, or which seemed to be so, trending toward the northeast or northwest. Trevallion knew little about the ground, but surmised much, which might or might not prove to be true. The richest ores he had seen thus far were in quartz mixed with calcite, galena, and pyrite. In all of this, there was gold and argentite.

  The major thrust of the Comstock seemed to be northeast from the Solomon. He walked along the drift, studying the rock formations. The timber work, such as it was, seemed well done, and the mining seemed thoroughly professional.

  In Number Two drift the ore was low-grade quartz with some galena, a little argentite, and a good deal more of sphalerite. No silver was visible, although the ore had a fair showing of it when milled.

  He started back. "I'll check Number One next," he suggested.

  "Scarcely worth the bother," Crockett assured him, "but I want it all studied."

  The Number One drift, where work had been abandoned, showed nothing of interest until right at the face of the drift. At the face he stood for a moment or two, puzzled. There was no rocky debris, chipped or broken rock lying at the foot of the face. Still more puzzled, he walked back a few feet and studied the wall again, while Will Crockett waited with some impatience.

  After a bit he walked back down the drift and began to examine the scattered rock with care.

  Several times he squatted to pick up small fragments of ore or rock, and some he discarded, others he pocketed. Finally he stood up and walked back to the face.

  "Why did you stop work here?"

  "It wasn't showing any paydirt. We decided to pull out and try drifting another direction." He flashed his light around. "You can see for yourself. There's nothing in sight."

  Trevallion turned around. "Let's go on top," he said. "I've seen enough."

  When they were back in the air, the afternoon was cool. Noon had just passed, and a wind was blowing down the slopes of Sun Mountain.

  "Let's go have a cup of coffee," Trevallion suggested, "we've got some talking to do."

  "Seems to me all you do is drink coffee," Will complained, "or is it Melissa?"

  "It isn't Melissa. She's a fine girl, and I've helped her get started, as did Jim Ledb
etter, but we're only friends."

  Seated inside the bakery, Trevallion sipped a taste of coffee and then said, "Crockett, there's somebody in that mine who has plans of his own."

  "What's that mean?"

  "You're drifting the wrong way, and there's somebody who is working there who knows it. Maybe there's more than one."

  "You got that bee in your bonnet, too?" Will said impatiently. "You trying to tell me Al Hesketh is a crook? Well, I'm not buying it. Not one bit."

  "I mentioned no names, and I do not know your Mr. Hesketh. I only know that you were touted into drifting in the wrong direction by somebody who knew better."

  From his pocket he took some of the ore fragments he had selected from the floor of the drift. "Look, and look closely."

  Crockett took the fragments, glanced at them impatiently, and then looked again. "I don't know what you're after, mister, but these didn't come from my mine!"

  "I took them off the floor right before your eyes. You were watching."

  "You must have switched them. Why, I've no ore anywhere near this good!"

  "Crockett? Did you see me examine the face of the drift? I'll tell you what happened. This ore is very spotty, all of it. Comes in great hunks, sometimes running to tons and tons of ore, then breaks off into nothing, then more bonanza stuff.

  "Whoever was working down there put in a round of shots that shot down some very good stuff. Then he stopped work, cleaned up very carefully, and pulled out. What he failed to recall is that when the holes blow, fragments of rock are sometimes thirty or forty feet down the tunnel. That's what happened here. He, or they, cleaned up close along the face but forgot what might have been blown back down the drift."

  "Nonsense! If there was any good ore there, there'd be signs of it on the face!"

  "Usually, yes, but the way the pay dirt has been showing in some of the mines here, it could happen. Somebody had several tons of ore or rock moved out of the mine and hidden somewhere."

  "Wouldn't be enough in it to pay," Crockett protested.

  "In the few tons of ore they got, there wouldn't be, but what if they were playing for higher stakes? Your mine, for example?"

  "What are you getting at?"

  "Simply this. It looks to me as if someone discovered a small pocket of good ore, which made him suspect there might be more of it; so he removed the ore, stopped work on the drift, and started somewhere else."

  "The vein's wider in the other tunnel. We gave up down there in Number One because we didn't find anything."

  "Have you had any offers for the mine?"

  "Of course not."

  "The Solomon is a stock operation, is it not?"

  "Of course it is! I had to sell stock to get the money to carry on. Nearly every mine on the Comstock operates that way.

  "We need capital, so we incorporate and sell stock. We've done well, too."

  "Who controls the stock? I mean, who has a controlling interest?"

  "I do, of course. I own forty-two percent of the stock, and Hesketh owns ten percent. That leaves us in control."

  Trevallion glanced out the window. A dust devil skipped along the narrow street, and two miners walked by with their lunch-pails. Work was starting again in some of the mines that had been closed down.

  "Crockett," he said quietly, "you paid me to check your mine. I did just that. My advice is to start now, today. Put some miners in there and get out some ore.

  "I would also send a man you can trust to California to buy up any loose stock that's lying around. My guess is that you're not more than thirty feet from something very good."

  "Yourguess?"

  "That's what it is. No man knows what lies beyond that face, so it has to be a guess. I think what blew down in that last round of shots was an outcropping of what lies beyond, and I think that ore was fair-to-middling stuff, not rich enough for anyone to high-grade, but an indication."

  "You think I should start mining now?"

  "I do, and I don't see why you ever stopped. I've worked off and on all winter and got out quite a bit of ore in what's a piddling operation compared to yours. You could have had tons of ore waiting for shipment."

  "Well, I wondered about that, but Al said-"

  "Of course, if the mine wasn't being worked, nobody could accidentally come onto a discovery that might change things."

  The door opened and George Hearst came in. "How's the coffee? Oh, hello, Will! Trevallion, how about a refill?"

  "George, Trevallion here has been telling me I should send somebody out to the coast and buy up all my stock. He thinks we're on the verge of-"

  "You'd be too late, Will." There was sympathy in Hearst's eyes. "Every bit of Solomon stock has been snapped up. It went for two to three dollars a share."

  "Are you serious?" He stared blankly. "Well, what do you know about that?

  "Well," he added after a minute, "we still have control, Al and I."

  "Will?" Hearst spoke gently. "Will, it was Al who bought the stock. Every dollar of it!"

  Chapter XIX

  Will Crockett had gotten up, now he sank back into his chair. He fumbled for the handle of his cup, glancing at Hearst. "George? Are you sure?"

  "When I first reached San Francisco, there was talk of an assessment on Solomon stock to finance further exploration.

  "Then I was shown several pieces of Solomon ore, all pretty poor stuff. Naturally, with all that talk going around the price of stock fell.

  "Two different people asked me if it was true that Hesketh was pulling out, planning on some mining venture of his own.

  "By then the passes were all snowed in and nobody was coming through, but you know how rumors are. People began coming forward with Solomon stock for sale, and I heard one loudmouth, a big man I've seen around here, scoffing at Solomon stock." Hearst paused. "He was saying they should save the stock to paper their walls. That was all it was good for."

  Melissa filled Will's cup. "The Solomon isn't the only mine, Will," she said gently, "and you still own a large piece of it."

  "He had control, Will," Hearst said quietly, "he told me so. He told me he had forty-eight percent of the stock."

  "I-I can't believe it," Crockett muttered. "Why, the Solomon is mine! I discovered it. I opened it up, dug the first shaft with my own hands, started a drift ... I took out some good ore, too. I never would have sold any stock, but I needed a grub-stake, and Hesketh had some cash. He had gold.

  "I sold him some shares, then he advised me to sell more to get working capital. Him and me, we had control, and with the extra cash we could..."

  He stopped talking, rubbing a hand over his face. His hand trembled. He looked around suddenly. "Well, what the hell? Wait until Al gets back. He will have some explanation. He just saw a chance to pick up that stock for us and did it. A mighty smart move, I'd say."

  Trevallion got to his feet. "It's a long day tomorrow, Will. I think I'll say good-night."

  He went out and walked back up the hill to the MacNeale claim.

  There was a cold wind from off Sun Mountain, and the streets were empty. Trevallion stood in the darkness near the door and listened, studying the shadows. He had cut right across Sam Brown's trail, and the man was vicious.

  He took a roundabout route up the mountain, circling some mine dumps and crawling over others.

  Dane Clyde was reading a San Francisco paper when he came in. He pointed to the paper. "Half the items are about the Comstock," he said. "If a man wants to be rich, this is the place."

  "If he can stay alive."

  "Are you talking about Brown?"

  Trevallion was bathing his hands in the basin. He shook the water from them, then dried them on the hand-towel. "Brown is only part of it. They've got to find a new way of timbering the mines. Scares me to death to see what they're doing down there.

  "We need water, decent drinking water, as well as water to work the mines. We need a local government, and we need some representation in Washington."

  "Do you thin
k there will be a war?"

  "I do. Some of it may be right here in camp. Terry is a blood-in-the-eye Southerner. Tom Paisley and his firelighters are strong Union men. So is Bill Stewart. The South seems to be having things all their own way at the moment, but that won't last."

  The town was booming. Silver was being extracted from the mines at an unbelievable rate. Trading in mining stocks on the San Francisco market had become a form of madness that rarely had any connection with true values. Trevallion worked on his claim, keeping out of sight, working with the simplest tools.

  Frame hotels were going up, and there were plans for a large brick hotel with an elegant dining room. A theater was being built, and there were plans to bring in some traveling stock companies. Of a sudden, Virginia City was no longer a squalid cluster of stone huts and dug-outs but a city.

  There came the night when Trevallion walked into Lyman Jones's place with Ledbetter. "Look out," Ledbetter said softly, "there's Brown."

  "I see him. If it is to happen, the sooner the better."

  Trevallion's eyes met Brown's across the heads of two dozen gambling, drinking men. Trevallion walked to the bar. The bartender glanced up, saw who it was, and his face went a shade whiter.

  "You heeled?" Ledbetter asked.

  "Always," Trevallion said.

  Brown glanced at him again. He was a big, shaggy man with small, mean eyes. Yet he was also a cautious man.

  Kip Hauser's eyes followed Brown's. "Don't do it, Sam," he whispered.

  "Why not?"

  "Just take my advice. Leave him alone. He's good with fists or gun and he won't back up, not even a little. He won't be bluffed and he won't scare. If you brace him, you've got to be ready to go all the way."

  "He's that good?"

  "The best. Langford Peel isn't in the same class, take it from me."

  Suddenly there was a stirring in the crowd near him. He looked around and Trevallion was there. "Hello, Sam." Trevallion looked into the cold little eyes and smiled. "Want a drink, Sam?"

  "Don't mind if I do."

  Trevallion leaned one elbow on the bar. Was Trevallion right- or left-handed? Sam couldn't remember. When they had their drinks, Trevallion said, "I heard there was trouble between us, Sam. I can't think of anything, can you?"