Comstock Lode

by Louis L'Amour

  “On the contrary, I do. Just don’t mistake loneliness for love.”

  “I’m afraid of this place. It frightens me.” She hesitated. “Mr. Trevallion, I don’t have much money. I don’t have a place to live. I wanted to come but now that I am here—”

  “You will start by sleeping on the ground. We all will, and we all have. As for a place, I will help you build one. As of today, I shall buy into your business. I will help you build, and I’ll buy what you need for the first month. I want twenty percent of the profits.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “As of now, it is nothing.”

  “I have two hundred dollars. My mother saved it and hid it from—from him. There’s a little more than that, actually, but not much more.”

  “You’ve made another mistake. Never tell anybody what you have. Especially the Alfies.”

  “I’ll never see him again.”

  Trevallion smiled. “Want to bet? He knew you had some money, didn’t he? No doubt he believes you have more than you do, so he will be here in a few days with a very smooth story to tell. Later, after you’ve talked a bit, he will tell you of this great chance he’s got, if he only had a little more money. He will need a stake, just for a start.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “I know his kind. I’ll tell you what to do. In the first place, don’t lend him even one dollar, but tell him you need help building your place of business, and you will pay him just what you pay the others.”

  “He will not come. Not now. Anyway, he was nice and he wanted to help.”

  “Forget him. Stay away from the Alfies and you will become a rich woman.”

  “And lonely.”

  “We are all lonely. Be lonely, but plan for security. The winds blow very cold for a poor man. Know all the Alfies you wish, ma’am, but when they ask for money, no matter how little, tell them no. If it does nothing else, it will help to find the ones who really care.”

  “You’re hard, Trevallion.”

  He pointed suddenly. “There! That’s a likely spot! Right beside the road and not too much work to clear the ground…if somebody hasn’t claimed it.”

  The place was fairly level and scattered with rock, with a fair-sized cedar a few yards back from it. Melissa looked around, dismayed. “Isn’t there a better place? It’s so rough, and all those rocks!”

  “Building material. But take a good look around. There isn’t much choice.”

  He glanced up along the narrow strip of trail. Here and there men were working, sinking holes, building their own shelters, or simply talking. “Stay here,” he advised, “and start moving those rocks. Pile them yonder.”

  “Move the rocks?” She dismounted and looked around. “I guess I can, all but those real heavy ones.”

  “I know you can. Just you get started, keep busy, and let me handle the rest of it.”

  He walked his horse along to where three men were sinking a shaft. They were down about five feet. He drew up and watched them work for a minute or two. When one of them straightened up from his work, he asked, “You boys have been here a spell. See that piece up yonder where the lady is working? Has anybody filed on that?”

  “Lady?” As one man they turned to look. Melissa had removed her hat and her blonde hair caught the feeble sun. “No, not that I know of. What’s she doin’? Does she aim to work that claim?”

  “Says she’s going to build a bakery. Of course, it will take awhile, her being all alone like that, but she figures to bake pies, doughnuts, and such.”

  “Can she really bake?”

  “Damned if I know, but Jim Ledbetter, she came up with one of his pack trains, he says she makes the best doughnuts a man ever ate.”

  A slim red-haired man leaned on his shovel. “Makes a man’s mouth water. I ain’t had a doughnut since I left Ohio, an’ that’s three years this comin’ spring.”

  “Lone woman like that,” the speaker was a chunky, solidly built man with a bald spot, “it’ll be too much for her. Her chimney, f’r instance, buildin’ a chimney that will draw well—that’s an art!”

  “I’m no hand at chimneys,” Trevallion said, “but I am sure enough hungry for doughnuts. I figured to help her a little, just to hurry it up.”

  “Hell!” The third man dropped his pick. “Let’s all go! With three or four working, it will take no time at all, an’ this talk of pies, doughnuts an’ such, it fairly makes my mouth water.”

  Red agreed. “Eilley makes a fair dried-apple pie, but doughnuts…?”

  They started down the trail with their tools. Seeing them, a man on the next claim called over, “Hey! What’s goin’ on?”

  “He’p a lady with her house! She figures to open a bakery!”

  The man shouldered his shovel. “Come along, John. If they can help, so can we.”

  “A bakery, is it?” John said. “She’ll be needing ovens then.”

  “Three rooms,” another commented, “one for the baking, one for the selling, and one for sleeping. Three should do it.”

  Trevallion rode on ahead. “Melissa,” he said, “you’ve got help. They will have your house up before sundown. Smile a lot, now, and let them advise you. There’s men in that group who could build anything, and will.”

  The man who knew how to build fireplaces immediately took charge, laying out the foundations and walls. Trevallion helped for some time, then mounted his mule and rode back down the canyon. As he rode he scanned the hills. He should be finding a claim for himself, but he avoided crowds, and the bottom of the canyon was filling rapidly.

  He was riding through the settlement at Gold Hill when he saw a man he remembered from the Frazier. “Tom?” he called.

  The lean, narrow-shouldered man looked up, squinting. “Val? I’ll be damned! Heard you were dead!”

  Trevallion gestured at the hole. “How’s it look?”

  “Too soon to tell. But the canyon looks good. I think this is the big one, Val. I really do.” He looked up at Trevallion. “We’re all used to hunting gold. We’ve seen strikes come an’ go, but it was gold we hunted. Most of us never knew anything else.

  “All the time we were panning for gold or working the sluices, that damn blue stuff kept clogging things up. I must’ve mucked out fifty tons of the stuff, an’ maybe more. Then somebody got smart and took some over to Grass Valley.

  “Atwood—d’ you remember him? He ran the assay. Silver! Pure-dee silver! That was when the boom started.”

  He gestured toward a canvas-roofed shed nearby that had a bar running its full length and men standing three and four deep in front of it. “There they are! The workers and the talkers! You just go over an’ listen. You never heard so much damn’ nonsense in your life! Men bragging about their mines! Talking about ore, leads, offshoots, shafts, and winzes and most of them never held a muckstick in their hands, let alone a single-jack or a drill. To hear them tell it you’d think the camp was full of mining engineers!”

  Tom took a plug of tobacco from his pocket, offered it to Trevallion, who refused, then bit off a corner and returned the plug to his pocket. “By the way, there’s been a man asking for you. A couple of days back.”

  “Asking for me?”

  “Wanted to know if you’d come into camp yet. When I asked if he was a friend of yours he said not exactly, but he’d heard of you. Big man. I found out later his name was Waggoner.”

  The name was unfamiliar.

  “Staked a claim yet?” Tom asked.

  “Not yet.” Trevallion gestured back the way he had come. “Young lady back yonder plans to open a bakery. Some of us have been helping her build a place.”

  “We could use one. Eilley’s all right, but she’s so busy she doesn’t know which end is up.”

  “Tom? That young lady, she’s a good girl. Her name is Melissa Turney. Jim Ledbetter
and me, we’re sort of keeping an eye on her. You could do the same when you’re up that way.”

  “Sure as shootin’. Got a girl of my own back east, and I hope to bring her out soon’s I have a stake. Sure, I’ll go up there now and again, just to pass the time of day.”

  Waggoner? Trevallion considered the name. He knew no one of that name, and his memory for names was usually good. Nor was he a man apt to be asked for. Trevallion was a loner and known to be such. He traveled alone, worked alone, and so he had no old chums or partners who might be looking for him.

  Tom Lasho he had known for years. Tom had been on Rich Bar, he had worked in Grass Valley, and he had done his first mining at Rough an’ Ready. Lasho had done well on Rich Bar, but then he had gone back to the States and spent it all.

  Trevallion was in no hurry. He took several days to scout around, talking little, listening a lot, but most of the time he simply spent studying the country. The best ground had been taken and old “Pancake” Comstock claimed everything in sight, bullying, threatening, or arguing what he called his “rights.”

  On the fourth day, at Spafford Hall’s Station, he encountered a square-set, bearded man with a quick smile. “You’re Trevallion?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Will Crockett. I own the Solomon.” He paused. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No. Just tell me what you want.”

  “They say you’re a first-class miner, a hard-rock miner. I’ve a job for you, a good job.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Working for someone else?”

  “For myself, when I locate a claim.”

  “The good stuff is taken. I’ll pay top wages and start you at shift boss.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “I need a good man, a man who knows ground and who knows how to sink a shaft and get the ore out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You won’t even talk about it? Damn it, man, I’ve a good claim! One of the best! But I’m no miner. I’m working ten men over there, and we’re getting out some ore, but it isn’t paying off like it should. I need a mining man.”

  “Sorry.” Then, liking the man, he said, “I may not even stay. I’m a drifter, Crockett. If I do stay I’d rather have a place of my own that I can work when I wish.” He permitted himself a slight smile. “You see, Crockett, I am probably the only man on the lode who doesn’t want to get rich.”

  “Then what are you here for? No man lives in this godforsaken place unless he wants to be rich!”

  * * *

  —

  When Crockett had gone Trevallion stood outside Spafford’s, trying to remember where he had heard of the Solomon. Then it came to him. That batch of mail Ledbetter had brought over from Placerville was for the Solomon, most of it for Hesketh, the bookkeeper.

  He watched the line of wagons, horseback riders, and walkers heading up Gold Canyon. Occasionally one would come over to Spafford Hall’s, but Trevallion avoided them, and avoided their questions. He was restless and irritable, and he knew he should locate a claim and get to work, for instinctively he felt that was what he needed.

  He needed hard work, yet it was more than that. He was changing.

  Crockett’s question irritated him. What had he come for? Why was he here?

  The answer was plain. He had come to find a man…or men. He had come to kill.

  Four of the men who had killed his father and mother were dead. The others still lived, unpunished for their crimes, but they would come here, lured to the honeypot of gold and silver. They were not miners, they were wolves, and they would flock to this place.

  And he would be waiting.

  The trouble was, he no longer wanted to kill.

  CHAPTER 9

  In the gray light of a windy morning Trevallion rode up Gold Canyon to Melissa’s bakeshop. Leaving his mule in the lee of the stone building, he went inside to complete the shelves he had begun.

  “I’m glad you stopped.” Her face was flushed from the heat of the stove and her hands covered with flour. “Today I am baking for the first time in this house, and I have made a pie, just for you!”

  “Thanks.” He dropped into a chair made from a barrel. “Is everything all right?”

  “All right? Yes, of course, only I’m scared. I have never baked for anybody but homefolks and maybe a few picnics before we came west. I guess I can do it.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Have you filed on a claim?”

  He glanced out the window. Wherever he looked somebody was digging or building. “No,” he said, at last, “I haven’t. There’s one away up the canyon I want to look at. Long ago I wandered up there with my father, and he fancied one piece of ground. Said it wasn’t much but would make a man a good living.”

  “You don’t want to be rich?”

  “You know? I’ve thought about that and I really don’t know. Once I thought I did. Now I am not sure.”

  Suddenly curious, she asked, “What do you want, Mr. Trevallion?”

  He accepted the coffee she poured for him. For a moment he was silent, shying away from the question. After all, what did he want?

  Once he could have said he wanted to find and kill the men who killed his parents. Now he was no longer sure, and his good sense told him that was a negative goal. What did he want? Did he want anything? Had he become an empty man, drifting just to find and kill when he no longer wished it?

  “An awfully nice man came by yesterday. He had coffee with me. His name was Will Crockett.”

  “I know him. He offered me a job.”

  “He seemed nice. What does he do?”

  “Owns a mine, a pretty good one, from what I hear. He has the reputation of being an honest man.”

  “He told me if I wanted a partner he had capital to invest, but I told him I already had a partner.”

  The room was warm with the smell of freshly made coffee and baking. Looking out the window he could see a half-dozen buildings going up, some of stone like the bakery, some frame. “If the boom holds,” he said, “there will be ten thousand people here in another year.”

  “So many?”

  “Aye. Just look at them. You’ve only to keep baking and you’ll be rich.” He glanced around. “Keep your eyes open for an older man or woman, a strong one. You’re going to need help.”

  “That reminds me. I met a woman I like. She runs a boarding house.”

  “Eilley Orrum?”

  “Yes. She’s a Scot, isn’t she?”

  “Highland, and proud of it. She’s been married a time or two—Mormons, I understand—and she’s ambitious.”

  “Have you seen her ‘peep-stone’ as she calls it? It’s a crystal ball.”

  “I’ve heard of it.” He finished his coffee and got up. “I’ll be back for the pie.”

  He rode up the canyon and staked his claim.

  Trevallion had first come to the place with his father. A trickle of water ran in the streambed, and they tried a few pans and found color. Then they sat down and shared some biscuits and jerky.

  “There’s mineral,” his father said, “if we don’t find what we want in California, we may come back here.”

  Now Trevallion was back, alone. Ten years later and a thousand years older, or so it seemed.

  On the site where he and his father had first tried the stream, he made camp. Several gnarled and ancient cedars had grouped to offer shelter behind their thick trunks and twisted branches. The mountain lifted steeply behind him and there was no way he could be taken from the rear.

  He built his fire back under the edge of the trees and set up a large, flat rock for a reflector. After he started his coffee, he got out the gold pan he bought at Spafford Hall’s, his own having been lost swimming the Yuba.

  As it was a new pan, he heated it over the fire u
ntil it took on a dull red glow to give it a proper burn. Then he dunked it into the creek. This removed the oily film but also gave the pan a dark blue shade that enabled the gold particles to show up much better.

  When the coffee was ready, he sat back under the trees, chewed on some jerked meat, and listened to the sound of the creek and the stirring of wind in the cedars. He had never been much of a camp cook, rarely taking time to prepare a meal. When he had finished eating he left the coffeepot on a rock amid the coals and went back to the stream.

  Filling the pan nearly full of gravel, he held it just beneath the surface of the water, and holding the pan with one hand, he broke up the few lumps of clay with the other, meanwhile throwing out the larger rocks.

  Then, holding the pan just beneath the surface he proceeded to swirl the water about, first in one direction, then in the other, to settle the larger pieces. Lifting the pan clear of the water, he tipped it slightly to allow the sand and dirt that was in suspension to trickle over the edge of the pan. A few sharp blows on the edge of the pan helped to settle the gold particles.

  By repeating the process he soon had left only the heavy sands and gold. With tweezers he picked out the more obvious fragments, then put the material aside to dry and started again.

  He worked the afternoon through, and in four hours of hard work, handling six to seven pans an hour, he netted approximately four dollars, which was good for the time and the place.

  At Spafford Hall’s he had bought a half sack of barley, and he fed a little to the mule, frying some bacon for himself. Adding water, he heated up the coffee.

  With his cup of coffee in his hand, he left the fire and walked out to study the rock formations and drift along the stream. That stream, he surmised, would run only part of the year, and possibly only until the snow melted off. He walked back to his fire, convinced he had best use it while he could.

  He went back to the fire and poked sticks into the flames. Suddenly irritated, he put down his cup. What was he doing here, anyway? He could pan out a living on this creek, but was that what he wanted? Why not take the job Crockett offered? That was a living, too, and if prospects looked good, he might ask for a piece of the operation for his services would be in demand.