Comstock Lode (1981)

by L'amour, Louis

  "Not that way." He nodded his head to indicate where he had been working. "I broke through last night. There's just a small gap and another pile of rock. If we get through that, there will be another."

  He stooped and took a pick from the floor. "I found this, though. Some miner had left it standing at the wall, God bless him."

  She stared at him, not comprehending.

  "Grita, do you remember that cross-section of the crosscut we looked at up in the office? Did you reallylook at it?"

  "I think so."

  "Look," he said, "this cross-cut is like a bar across the top of a Y, or almost the top. How wide was the top of the Y, do you remember?"

  "I don't know. I just glanced at it. I think-maybe it was fifty feet. In fact, I am sure it was."

  She turned away, then grabbed his arm. "Oh! Val!Look!"

  From under the planks that sheathed the walls on the right, clay was oozing, a long roll of it like the body of a snake that thickened and visibly grew as they watched.

  "Aye," it was an expression his father used, "given time it will fill the place where we stand. It seems to come from nowhere, but it's in many of the mines on the Comstock. It's been lying there thousands, maybe millions of years, imprisoned between layers of rock, then somebody opens a space and it finds some place to go. Maybe it's been building behind the planks, or maybe that last explosion gave it just the start it needed. There are mines where men are assigned to doing nothing else but cutting that stuff away with their shovels and mucking it into cars to be hauled out."

  He took up the pick. In the low blue light of the candle, her eyes were dark hollows in the pallor of her face.

  "You believe that chart we looked at showed this cross-cut was to be fifty feet when finished. Well, I stepped it off, and I've sized it up a good many times since we've been in here. It's forty feet or more from the other end of the cross-cut to the face, here. I think it is more than forty feet. That means the other tunnel may be no more than seven to ten feet from the face."

  "But it's rock, Val! It's solid rock!"

  "There's many kinds of rock. This is like most of the Comstock, it's decomposed feldspar and clay. Sometimes whole sections of the roof will fall in. It's pretty flaky stuff.

  "Sit back a ways, and pray. Some boys in one of the other mines near here drilled into a boiling hot spring and shot boiling water and steam for thirty feet. Believe me, they got out in a hurry."

  "There are hot springs here?"

  "Uh-huh. There's places where the rocks are so hot you can't touch them. Several miners have already died from the heat."

  He chose his spot and took a tentative swing at the wall. Just an opening, just a hole of some kind, to let the air in. Trevallion did not know if Grita realized what that blue flame meant. The candle was burning lower, the flame bluer, which meant the air was worsening.

  He swunk the pick, tearing loose a chunk of rock. With a double-jack it was about fifty blows to the minute. He wouldn't do that well with a pick, in this air.

  He worked steadily, not thinking. The dim light shone on the wall, picking up stars from bits of mica. When he stopped working there was dead silence except for their breathing. No sound could reach this place, and no air. If anybody realized they were missing, they could not know, and in this mine might be the last place they would think to look.

  He struck the pick into the rock and pulled away a good-sized slab. "I've got to be careful," he spoke half aloud and to himself, "or I'll break this pick-handle."

  His body dripped with sweat, water he could ill afford to lose. With a cold, desperate fury, he attacked the rock wall. Pieces broke off and fell at his feet, some of them gleaming with silver. His body shone with sweat, his pants were dark with it. The heavy thuds of the pick and the gasps of his breathing were loud in the small space.

  For an hour or more he worked without a letup. Then suddenly he backed off and sat down, his breath coming in great, wrenching gasps.

  "Val?" Her voice was a whisper. "Are you all right?"

  "All right," he did not look around at her, "had to rest."

  He tried not to look at the face. He had made some progress, but pitifully little. The trouble was he had to open a fair-sized hole to allow use of the pick.

  Grita got up. "Let me try."

  He shook his head in protest, but yielded the pick. She swung it awkwardly, then began to get the way of it. Yet after a few minutes she backed up and sat down. "Give me a minute. I'll have to rest."

  He took up the pick.

  The sullen hours retreated behind them, the opening seemed pitifully small. Slowly, heavily, he swung the pick. His lungs sucked at the air. He could swing but once or twice, then he would have to rest. Again and again Grita tried. Her hands became blistered, the blisters broke, blood stained the pick handle. He did not remark upon it, and she scarcely noticed the hurt.

  The candle flame was bluer now, and smaller. He swung the pick and pulled off a good-sized slab. Once he would have been excited by it, only hours ago. Now he scarcely noticed.

  They no longer talked, they no longer wished for freedom from the darkness, they scarcely even thought of air, they justwere.

  He swung the pick because he knew no other way. All his life there had been a battle, and all his life he had worked. He would go down working, go down fighting, go out trying as he had always done. Had he known how, he would have quit, but life had taught him everything but that. Savagely yet sullenly, like a dumb brute, he attacked the mountain. Bits of it splattered into his face, and sometimes it was wet.

  The muscles, into which the swinging of double- and single-jacks had built power, ached desperately now. His hands were like claws, shaped only for the handle of the pick. Sometimes after a blow he fell against the wall and rested there a moment, feeling the hard face of his enemy.

  Manfred pushed through the door, bumping the man who stood with his back to it. Not until he was in the room did he see the shotgun in Ledbetter's hand.

  "Another time, Mr. Ledbetter," Elder said, and went out the door behind Manfred.

  "Thank God," Melissa gasped. "You stopped a shooting," she said to Manfred.

  "Maybe," Ledbetter said. "I don't think he would buck a shotgun." Then he saw the expression on Manfred's face. "What's the matter?"

  "They're gone," he said. "Grita and Trevallion are gone, and I think Hesketh knows where they are."

  "You mean they'redead?" Melissa demanded.

  "I don't know, but I knowhim. I know that cat-that-swallowed-the-canary expression on his face. If they are not dead they are in extreme danger."

  Melissa sat down slowly. "Jim? Where could they be?"

  "How long since anybody saw them?" Manfred asked.

  "It's been hours."

  "What about Tapley? Has anybody seen Tap?"

  "I'm here." He came into the doorway. "I was looking for Trevallion."

  "So are we all."

  "He was goin' to the feo-tel. He was meetin' that actress-woman, Miss Redaway."

  "They might have gone up to the Solomon," Jim suggested.

  "No reason for her to go up there," Tapley said. "What's a woman goin' to do at a mine?"

  "She might be curious," Melissa said, "after all, she owns a good piece of it."

  "Even so," Tapley argued, "why would they stay? There's nothing up there to keep them. Santley ain't there. I seen him down to the store and he was headed for his place down in the valley."

  "Teale would know. He was at the hotel with them," Melissa said. "He always knew where she was."

  "But Teale got himself shot," Tapley said. "How would he know?"

  "He mightn't have been shot until after," Ledbetter said. "Maybe that was the idea. With him dead nobody would know."

  "It's the mine," Melissa said. "It's got to be the mine. You boys better go have a look before it gets dark."

  Manfred turned. "Dane Clyde is supposed to meet me here. Ask him to wait, will you? We won't be long."

  "Be careful," Meli
ssa warned.

  Ledbetter started to put the shotgun back on the counter. Harry shook his head. "You keep it. You need it more than we do."

  They started up the street together. Farmer Peel stepped out of a gambling hall and shaded his eyes after them.

  "Cash me in," he said over his shoulder, "I've business to attend to."

  He turned back to the street. "Jim!" he called. "What's the trouble?"

  "Trevallion's missing. So's Margrita Redaway. We think they're trapped in the Solomon!"

  "Hold on! I'm coming!"

  Two miners, carrying lunch-buckets and still dripping from the heat of the mine, turned and followed. Along the street word passed from man to man, place to place.

  Two more broke off from a crowd and followed, then another one, then three, one of them a gambler in his shirtsleeves.

  From this place and that they came, gamblers, bartenders, teamsters, miners, and superintendents of mines.

  "He's always been game," one man said.

  "I was there when he brought the gold back from the Modoc country," another added. "He was always there when anybody else was in trouble," somebody else said.

  Waggoner saw the line. He stepped to the door of his cabin and shaded his eyes.What the hell was going on?

  Several dance-hall girls, the madame from a popular parlor house. Soon there were fifty, then a hundred, and a hundred and fifty.

  Somebody ran past. "Hey!" Waggoner called. "What's going on?"

  "Trevallion's trapped in the Solomon! We're goin' to get him out!"

  Waggoner started to speak, glanced at the long and growing line, then he stepped back inside and closed the door.

  For a long moment he stood inside the door without moving. Somewhere a little warning bell was ringing.Get out! Get out fast!

  He shook his head, irritably. Why? He had left nothing to indicate his presence, nothing at all. Everything he had taken into the mine had been left there, and none of it belonged to him. How could he be connected with it? And what was all the fuss about, anyway? Who was Trevallion? And who was she, that actress? That kid from back in Missouri grown up?

  He had left his horse down at the stable to be shod. If he went after his horse now everybody would wonder why he was leaving town at this hour.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was being foolish. The thing needed now was calmness. If the falling rock had not buried them, they would have suffocated by now. They were dead. Nobody would ever know.

  Yet, any mining man would know somebody had placed those shots, and not for any mining purpose. Questions would be asked, of everyone. He thought nobody had seen him go up there, but how did heknow? There was always somebody throwing slops from a door, shaving close to a window-who knew?

  He passed a hand over his brow and brought it away dripping. What was the matter with him? What was he afraid of? Yet he knew what it was. The last time he had seen a bunch of men together like that it was a lynch mob, but before they reached his place he was gone.

  He was all right. Nobody knew anything, except the man who sent him here.

  Nobody but him.

  But why was the Clean-Cutter in town? Waggoner had never liked the Ax. Too cocky and too sure of himself. He never saw the day he could stand up to Waggoner. At least, so Waggoner told himself.

  But why was hehere? There had to be money in it or he would not have come. Whose money? For what job? And who would have known how to reach the Ax?

  Probably a number of people, but one man certainly. The same man who had reached Waggoner. But why the Ax? What could the Ax do that he, Waggoner, could not?

  There was one thing. And Waggoner was not a trusting man.

  LVII

  The guard stepped into the path as Ledbetter, Tapley, Manfred, and Langford Peel reached him.

  "Sorry, boys. Nobody visits the Solomon."

  "How long have you been on guard?" Ledbetter asked.

  "Yesterday afternoon sometime. I been relieved once, then I come back."

  "Anybody go up there?"

  "Nobody. Orders were to let nobody go by unless with an order from Miss Redaway."

  "You haven't seen her? Or Trevallion?"

  "Nope. Nobody." He paused. "Well, come to think of it I thought I saw somebody over on the back side, but when I walked around there was nobody there. On a job like this you get to seein' shadows."

  "We've reason to believe Miss Redaway and Trevallion may be trapped up there. We're going up."

  "Now, see here!" The guard was sweating. "You just can't-"

  "You want to stop me, Tom?" Peel asked mildly. "Or," he turned and gestured, "all those?"

  Tom shook his head. "No, and if Trevallion's down in that hole, I want to help."

  "We don't know he's there," Tapley said, "although I don't know where else they'd be."

  Ledbetter turned to Manfred. "You've worked with her. Would she go down in a mine?"

  "She'd go any place she chose to go," Manfred replied. "That's a woman knows her mind."

  Ledbetter tried the door of the office. "This is open. Somebody's been here."

  "They wouldn't walk off and leave the office open. Not even with guards about."

  Ledbetter pushed open the door and went in. Manfred followed as Tapley walked toward the hoisting-engine house.

  Suddenly Peel called out. "Boys? He's here all right. Here's his coat!"

  Ledbetter started for the door but Manfred's voice arrested him. "Jim? Look at this!"

  Manfred had the cross-section of the cross-cut before him. "This drawer was open and this had been taken out. At least, it was on the table. And see here-" He pushed Hesketh's message to Santley toward him.

  "Forty-Nine. He says don't go near Forty-Nine and here's the chart, the layout, as if somebody had been studying it."

  "All right, it's something. Let's go."

  Outside Ledbetter recognized the coat. "That's surely his."

  They were all gathering now. Ledbetter looked around. "Anybody here who ever worked in the Solomon?"

  "I did." A big red-haired miner in damp digging clothes pushed to the front.

  "What's wrong with Forty-Nine?" Ledbetter asked.

  Red shrugged. "Nothing more than anywhere else. There's a lot of dangerous ground on the Comstock. Everybody knows that, but it's no worse than a lot else."

  "Let's have a look." Ledbetter paused. "Better only six of us go down so we don't clutter everything up." He looked around at the assembled faces. "Please stand by. We may need you.

  "Peel? Will you stay up here and keep an eye on things? I don't want anybody in that office. You, too, Manfred.

  "Red, I'll take you and Tap, and Red, you pick out three good miners to come with us."

  "Build a fire," somebody suggested. "If they find them they'll be cold when they hit the night air. Comin' out of one of those hot mines is an invitation to pneumonia."

  "I'll get some blankets," somebody said, and turning, ran off into the night.

  With lighted candles the six disappeared into the opening. Sticks were broken, a fire started.

  Red led the way into the mine. "Been a few months," he spoke over his shoulder. "I quit. Didn't like the way they operated."

  "Did you know Hesketh?" Ledbetter asked.

  "Never saw him but once or twice. He stayed in that office of his. But he sure knew the mine. Used to come down and prowl around after the last shift went home. Sometimes him or somebody did some work around, cleanin' up, usually. I never knew why, but we'd see the signs when we come on shift at the change."

  He gestured with a hand. "Forty-Nine's up this way." For several minutes they walked in silence, then suddenly the tunnel was closed by a slanting wall of muck.

  Red held his candle high. "Well, I'll be damned! Whole damn roof fell in!"

  "It didn't fall, Red. It was blasted. Look here," he held up a slab of rock, putting his finger on a small half-moon of a hole, "drilled, an' see? That band of quartz ran right over the top." He turned it. "Some good values
in it, too."

  "Maybe," Red agreed reluctantly, "just maybe. But what would a man do that for?"

  They looked at each other. Finally Red said, "They had trouble with this area. She was always flakin' off. I was pushin' a car in here one time, and a slab that must've weighed three hundred pounds fell. Hit the front end of the car. I was all bent over pushin'. If I'd of been one step further, it would have wiped me out."

  "If they're back there," another miner said, "they've had it."

  "How far from here to that cross-cut? To Forty-Nine?" Ledbetter asked.

  "Hundred and fifty feet. Maybe more. Been awhile since I worked in here."

  "This is fresh," Red said. "I can still smell powder smoke." He gestured with his candle. "Let's go back to the other branch. We got to try it."

  "No need, Red." The miner speaking was a stocky, deep-chested man they called Blaine. "That cross-cut opened up this drift, and they hadn't broken through on the other end yet. This is the only way into Forty-Nine and nobody has gone this way."

  "Unless this was done after they went in," Ledbetter said. "Somebody has tried several times to kill Trevallion. Took some shots at him."

  "If they are back of that," Blaine gestured back toward the cave-in that stopped them, "they aren't going to get out in a hurry. I know that roof, and if any of it went, fifty or sixty feet went. When we start to muck it out, more is going to come down. It's bad ground, believe me."

  At the main tunnel Ledbetter paused, turning to shine the light of his candle up the other side of the Y. "You don't think we should look up this way?"

  "No use," Blaine said. "That cross-cut hadn't come through. We'd do a damned sight better to start getting muck out and gettin' some timber ready. That tunnel will have to be shored up."

  Red hesitated, then said, "What the hell, Jim? Come on."

  Two of the miners stopped. "You have a look. We'll go topside and start things rollin'. We're in for a lot of digging."

  Red led the way, commenting, "Be hell if we dug all the way back there and he showed up all hale an' hearty."

  "He won't," Ledbetter said, "I know him. He never left anything hanging out, and never left a door unlocked. He's a careful man."

  Their boots splashed in the pools of water between the ties. This tunnel was wetter than the other, and water dripped from the roof. It was dark and wet and very hot. Jim Ledbetter thanked all his gods that he had never taken up mining. How they stood it he could not guess.