Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

  The logical answer now would be to fish for the charge with a wooden or copper spoon to strike no sparks, or to drill another hole close by and let the second charge explode the first. He chose the second method.

  In fact, the holes were already drilled. He loaded several, enough to break the ground properly, then spit the fuses.

  Some time would be necessary to let the powder smoke clear out before he could go down again, but he had no wish to show himself around town and let them know their attempt had failed. At least, not yet.

  He returned to the cabin, prepared a light lunch, and sat down to think it out.

  Somebody had tried to kill him. It could not have been Hesketh striking back, because at that time he had made no move against Hesketh, and had Hesketh known what he was about, he could have brought men to stop him.

  Who?

  It had been months since that last shot had been fired at him, yet this might be the same man. Yet why wait so long? He had been out of town, somewhere.

  Waggoner?

  Trevallion resolved to drop all actual mining until he had blasted another way out. One attempt had been made in the mine, and he was vulnerable there, so another attempt would surely be made. He had planned another opening to insure a proper circulation of air, and he must let everything wait until that was done.

  There was no way anyone could reach the mine now without going right past the MacNeale cabin, where he lived. Their only chance was at night.

  Dane Clyde came in an hour later. He hung up his hat and coat and turned sharply around. "Well, it's happened! I've got a job!"

  "You're lucky. What will you be doing?"

  "Acting! What else? Their advance man is in town today, from San Francisco. Jeffs an old friend of mine from New Orleans. We've worked together before, and he knew I'd worked with Grita, so-"

  "With whom?"

  "Grita, Grita Redaway. It's her company. She's just arrived in San Francisco, and she will be playing there for two weeks, then she will come here."

  He got out his carpetbag. "I haven't much of a wardrobe, but I'll get along. Somehow..."

  "What will you need? You can always pay me back."

  "A hundred dollars. I can make it work with that much until I get paid."

  "All right." He let five gold eagles trickle from his fingers to the table-top. "I'll be shipping some ore by the weekend. Enough for a stake."

  Clyde busied himself with packing and a continuous stream of chatter. Trevallion scarcely listened.

  Grita, coming here! Of course, it might not be the same one. In fact, it was unlikely. Names were common enough. Everyone's name was duplicated somewhere.

  Still, it was a long time ago. A long, long time, almost another world than this.

  Chapter XXIV

  It had been the end of an idyll. From their arrival in Gunwalloe to that other night in Missouri, it had been a bright saga of adventure. His father, usually quiet and untalkative, had spent hours talking of his work in the mines, of sailing ships, of the rocky coast of Cornwall. Trevallion had never guessed his father knew so many stories. Some were stories he told to Grita, later.

  That had been the night he lost his father, not that day a long time later when he had died, gun in hand.

  He had lost his father when he lost his mother, for when she died something had gone out of him, like a candle snuffed by the wind. He had been there, during those later months, but only the shell of him. Her love was gone, her spirit was gone, and it left only a hard and bitter man, eaten by loneliness, reaching out time and again to touch hearts with his son, and never quite reaching. Both of them wanted a closeness they could not find. And then, in the bloody fierceness of that terrible, unequal gun battle, he lost his father forever.

  Well, two of the murderers were dead, and his father had taken two with him:

  Five left ... he must not think of that. Anyway, the day-to-day attrition of life in the mining camps might have eliminated some of them.

  Yet one of them must be here. One or more. He had been stalked, shot at, and now somebody had tried to get him to drill into a loaded hole. Somebody who planned carefully.

  "I'm going," Clyde said, "and I can't thank you enough."

  Trevallion waved a hand. "Forget it."

  "I'll pay you."

  "If you can, when you can."

  "Is there anything I can do for you? Any message for anyone in Frisco?"

  He thought for a minute, then shook his head. He thought of Grita with a kind of wistful longing, then shook his head again. "No, there is nothing."

  Who was he? Nobody. Because a small boy held a small, frightened girl in his arms once, a long time ago, that didn't mean anything. No doubt she had forgotten. Better for her if she had. Anyway, he had no claim on her, nor on her thoughts.

  It was just that she was there, in the last moments of a life that was gone.

  Somebody said to him once, some woman back down the line whom he met casually, somebody's wife who was a friend, she had said, "Trev, I think you were born old."

  Maybe, maybe that was it.

  Dane Clyde went to the door. "When we play here, Mr. Trevallion, I'd like you to come and see us. I am a pretty good actor, you know, and, well, I haven't looked like much around here."

  "None of us have," Trevallion said, "although it's our own fault." He gestured toward the street. "It's all happening right down there, Clyde, men are making fortunes, but what is more they aredoing something. They aren't sitting around griping about how things hould be better. They are making it better. From here on, that's what I'm going to do."

  Dane Clyde left, and walked down the hill to the Virginia House where he would catch the stage they had running to Frisco now.

  Trevallion got up and checked his gun. He was going to need it. He walked down the hill to the bakery.

  Melissa was there. A smooth, polished young man, handsomely dressed, sat with her. Melissa's face changed. She looked like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "Trevallion? You remember Alfie?"

  Trevallion did not smile. "Well, I didn't see much of him. I guess I do remember him."

  Alfie smiled. "What's a man going to do when he's caught without a gun?"

  Trevallion glanced at him, remembering the derringer. "Not much, I guess." He chose another table and sat down alone.

  Almost immediately a man was standing over him. A man in a tailored brown suit. "Mr. Trevallion? I understand you have filed on a claim that belongs to the Solomon."

  Trevallion merely glanced at him, then took up the coffeepot Melissa had put on the table. He filled his cup.

  "Mr. Trevallion! I don't believe you heard what I said!"

  "I heard you talking." He did not look up. "What you said wasn't worth answering."

  "Mr. Trevallion," the man was growing angry. "My name is Peter Metesky. I am a lawyer, and I represent the owners of the Solomon."

  "All right. It is nice to know you are not unemployed."

  "You are evidently unaware that the land on which you have filed belongs to the Solomon."

  Trevallion sipped his coffee.

  "Mr. Trevallion, I understand you are associated with William Crockett?"

  Trevallion looked up into the hard blue eyes of the lawyer. Trevallion smiled. "I have filed on the claim you mention. Tomorrow morning I shall begin assessment work on the claim. My filing is legal. It has been recorded." He pointed across the room. "You have a table over there. I would suggest you go sit at it or get out. I did not invite you here."

  "Young man, I am afraid you simply do not know the law-"

  "If it is law you wish to talk about," Trevallion said, "I suggest you talk to Bill Stewart. He will represent me."

  Metesky winced at the name. Stewart was not only one of the two or three best on the lode, but he was the toughest.

  "I know Mr. Stewart," he said, "but it is you to whom I wish to talk!"

  Trevallion stood up. He was an inch shorter than the lawyer and thirty pounds lighter.
"Mr. Metesky, I don't believe there are any witnesses in this room." As he spoke, every man and woman in the room turned their backs. "So what happens between us is just between us. Now your table is over there. On the other hand, if you don't feel like sitting down, I will enjoy walking you to the edge of town and, if necessary, to California."

  For a moment Metesky hesitated, then he turned on his heel and walked out. At the door he paused and looked back. "Go to hell!" he said savagely.

  "Sorry," Trevallion said, "I can't go anywhere with you."

  Trevallion sat down. "Your coffee's cold," Melissa said. "Let me get you some more."

  It was late when he walked outside. For a moment he hesitated. Now the streets were lined with buildings, and there were lighted windows everywhere. From a dozen places he heard the sound of pianos or banjos. Further along, at the Virginia House, a man in evening clothes was helping a fashionably dressed woman into a carriage. Walking past him were two miners in wet digging clothes, lunch-buckets in their hands. A cowhand, spurs jingling, rode by on a paint cow pony, and the boardwalks were thronged with gamblers, drifters, speculators, and men and women of all sorts and kinds, all with an eye for the main chance.

  He moved deeper into the shadow, a part of it all yet apart from it. Something moved in the shadows up the street, and he turned and started to go around the bakery. Abruptly, he halted; he had done that too many times. He walked up the street, pausing for a few minutes by the Bucket of Blood Saloon.

  Trevallion felt curiously isolated from all about him. He was a part of this yet not a part. What had been a barren mountainside was now a thriving mining town with the unceasing pound of stamp-mills and compressors, morning, noon, and night.

  Months had faded into months, and the town continued to grow, to build. Suddenly a man stood beside him, a man with a bandage across his face covering what was obviously a broken nose. "Are you Trevallion?"

  Trevallion glanced at him, not liking what he saw. "And if I am?"

  "Somebody told me you'd like to know. Waggoner's back."

  "Thank you."

  The man with the broken nose faded into the crowd. Somebody with a grudge, no doubt, but if Waggoner was back, that might account for the loaded drill-hole in his tunnel.

  He would have to kill him or be killed.

  The fact was there, and he could see no alternative, nor would the town recognize any other. Yet he shrank from it. He was tired of killing, tired of fighting. He wanted to work his claims, he wanted--

  That would come. That would be for later.

  He turned again and went back to his claim. From outside the cabin he looked down the slope toward the lights and excitement of the town.

  He should be more like that town. At least it knew where it was going. Its mission was simple: get out the ore, turn a profit, build something with what was realized. Already Virginia City was changing the destiny of San Francisco. The town was becoming, realizing, changing. No matter that it might not last forever, for nothing did. It was what was accomplished along the way that mattered. Fortunes were coming into being down there, the world's mining methods were being revolutionized, men were building, creating, driving forward ... who knew to what eventual destiny?

  And what of him? He stood in the middle, torn between the urge to be down there doing, using his knowledge and using himself, torn between that and an old hatred, the rankling memory of evil unpunished, of evil that would continue to do evil until destroyed.

  He got out his map of the town and studied it again. He had several claims now, some of them strategically located. Aside from his claims he had small investments with the bakery and with Jim Ledbetter.

  The next step was assessment work on the claim near the Solomon. Once he had done some serious work there, his claim was established. If the claim turned out to be rich, as he believed it would, he would have struck a blow for Will Crockett, and for fair play.

  At daybreak he was out in his digging clothes. He stepped out the door and Christian Tapley was sitting there, his rifle across his lap.

  "Howdy! Reckoned y' all might use a hand! Sort of stand aroun' while you do the hard work."

  "Welcome," Trevallion said. "How about your work?"

  Tapley smiled. "I told my boss what I aimed to do, and he turned out to be a friend of Will's. He said I should bring his best wishes, and if you need any help, he'll send a crew up from the mine to do the work."

  "We won't need 'em."

  "Something else," Tapley said. "I was walkin' by when the stage was loading. I seen Hesketh getting aboard. Going to San Francisco."

  Hesketh to San Francisco? Trevallion was puzzled. Unless something was to happen to Trevallion and he wanted to be out of town. But that made no sense. Not a half dozen people in town realized there was any antagonism, if you could call it that.

  Actually, he knew nothing about him except that he had taken advantage of his position to cut the ground from under his employer, who was a decent man.

  Nevertheless, he was worried. Hesketh did nothing without reason, and he was, apparently, a man who knew just what he was about, all the time. So why to San Francisco just when an important addition to his property had been lost?

  It made no sense. Only, it did make sense to Albert Hesketh. If he was leaving town at such a time, he had a reason, a very adequate reason.

  The guard at the Solomon merely glanced at them, then turned his back and ignored them. Trevallion had no idea of exploring at any depth or of opening any ore body. Unless he was quite mistaken, such an effort would entail many man-hours of hard labor and much equipment. He wished to do only enough to establish ownership of the claim. The rich ore, if any, would lie several hundred feet down unless all his knowledge went for nothing. The ore on the Solomon, as with several other mines, had gotten consistently richer as it went deeper, one of the few western mining areas where he knew this to be true.

  As he worked he turned over every possible reason for Hesketh's sudden trip to San Francisco, and came up with nothing.

  He talked it over with Tapley, while leaning on his shovel. "You can bet he's got somethin' in mind. He's canny, that Hesketh is."

  "Will Crockett worries me," Trevallion said. "I wish he'd show up. I can't believe he just up and quit."

  "He wouldn't. Not owning the stock he has." Tapley looked up suddenly. "D' you suppose that's it? That he's gone lookin' for more stock? There's some outstanding, they say."

  "Nobody seems to know who's got it," Trevallion said, "although Will should know if anybody does."

  "Some of it was sold back east, or to people who lived there. No telling what became of it."

  A rider was coming up the slope, coming fast. He pulled up sharply as he came abreast of them. "War!" he shouted. "Fort Sumter's been fired on!"

  Trevallion put down his shovel. "Where's Fort Sumter?" he asked.

  "Somewhere's over by Charleston, I reckon." Tapley spat. "Well, when they elected Lincoln, I figured somethin' like this was in the wind."

  Tapley glanced at the hole. "You've got your work started. That'll stand in any Virginia City court. Let's go down an' get the news. The Pony must've come in."

  He looked around. "You know, Trev? Back home I was all het up about all that there, but it seems mighty far off when a body gets out here. Seems like another world."

  "Not to Terry," Trevallion said. "He'll be breathing smoke and fire."

  "Be careful. He's a dead shot and meaner than Langford Peel, some say. He's killed a man or two, so be careful."

  "Why? I'm not in this. I scarcely know what it's about."

  "We're all in it," Tapley replied. "You, too."

  PART THREE

  Chapter XXV

  In the cool elegance of Winn's Branch at the corner of Washington and Montgomery, Grita Redaway was quite the coolest and most elegant. She was also very beautiful, and at the moment, very alert and very curious.

  The man across the table was a stranger, introduced by Tom Maguire, and Tom Maguire was
the power in San Francisco theater.

  "Look, Miss Redaway," Maguire had said, "this man wants to meetyou. Not any actress, butyou. He is a friend of a man who is an occasional investor. Frankly, I don't like the man, and don't trust him, but of his friend, this Hesketh who wants to meet you, I know nothing at all.

  "All I ask is that you meet him, have tea with him, something. Then get rid of him. Anything you like. It would be a favor to me. He's a mining man-"

  "A mining man?"

  "From Virginia City, actually. That's a coming place, you know. We're opening a theater there ourselves."

  "And he asked to meet me?"

  "You, only you. We knew how you felt about such things and suggested some other actresses. At least one of them might have been more, more agreeable, shall we say? The reply was a positive no. It was you he wished to speak to, you, and nobody else."

  "Very well, I shall see him. For tea only, at Winn's Branch."

  "Thank you. I appreciate it." He shrugged. "You've gotten me off the hook very nicely. There's one thing, though. This investor, I mentioned. He occasionally puts a little money in a show, but I've done other business with him. Canvas, rope, backstage gear of all kinds; he can let me have them much cheaper than anywhere else in town. Such things are often the margin of profit, so I do business with him."

  He paused. "Between us, and just between us, I sometimes wonder how he can afford to sell so cheap."

  "Thank you, Mr. Maguire."

  It was a warning, or perhaps just a suggestion, but she appreciated it and intended to be a little wary. Anyway, she would see the man but once.

  She was curious, but more than that she was, for the moment, willing to allow herself to drift with the current. From earliest childhood it had been in her mind to come to San Francisco and now she was here. There was a feeling she had that coming here was somehow important to her.

  She had been thinking lately of a conversation with Rachel, in Paris. "You are very good, you know," Rachel had said. "You are in some ways the best of us, but you don't really want to be an actress. You handle each role so naturally, with such ease, almost without thinking."