Crockett & Trevallion!
He replaced the notice and walked back to the hoisthouse. For a moment he stood there, fighting the fury that gripped him. Crockett would never in the world have gall enough to pull something like this. It had to be Trevallion. That damned—
He stood very still. His eyes widened a little, and he touched his tongue to too-dry lips.
Trevallion!
He must be careful, very, very careful. For this he would want an attorney. Trevallion was dangerous. He had heard that more than once, and Trevallion was no fool. He was no longer fighting just that blundering idiot of a Crockett but a shrewd, tough fighting man. He must be very, very careful! At the same time, he must have that corner. The richest ore might lie, should lie, right there under that cairn, or under the whole area they had staked.
He turned and walked back down the street to the Virginia House. Now he must think. Do nothing without thinking, nothing without careful planning.
Do nothing at all now. Within a matter of hours everybody in camp would know and most of them, a lot of sentimental fools, would sympathize with Crockett. So let them sympathize, let them have their day, and then, when some other sensation was holding their attention, he could move.
They had made a fool of him and they would pay, he would make them pay.
He returned to his room and ordered a pot of tea. He hated the stuff, but to him there was something cool and elegant about it. When the story was told, it would sound very good. “ ‘What did Mr. Hesketh do? He simply returned to his rooms and ordered a pot of tea. You know how he is. Nothing disturbs Mr. Hesketh.’ ”
That was what they’d say, or something like it. He must be calm. He must wait. He must think.
Late last night was when it had been done. Probably after midnight.
Trevallion. So far as he knew he had never seen the man, although there were stories enough about him. He had faced Sam Brown. Maybe—
No. To do that he must approach Brown or somebody close to him, and that would not do. Besides, he wanted nothing to do with the man.
He must think, plan. Above all, he must keep cool. He must be in control.
* * *
—
When Trevallion awoke, Dane Clyde was already gone. Coffee was made, and there was some bacon at one side of the stove, keeping warm.
Today he would finish those holes he had started, load and shoot them. He had done too little work, and he was going to have to send some ore to the smelter.
Trevallion walked along the tunnel, pausing briefly at the niche where he kept his black powder. He remembered he had been running short when he fired his last round. He paused, hefting the can.
Light, very light. Well, he’d get a couple of holes drilled, anyhow. He wanted to be around this day to see what steps Hesketh would take.
He walked up to the face. Several pieces of drill steel of successive lengths were propped against the wall, waiting for the changes he would make. One drill lay on the ground on an angle away from the face. He took up his single-jack, placed it near his foot, and reached for the drill.
He stopped, bent over, arms hanging; he looked at the drill steel again. Slowly, he straightened up. Now what the hell?
That was wrong, all wrong! Trevallion was a man of habit. When working alone, as he usually was, if he left a hole incomplete, he always left the proper length of steel in front of the hole as a reminder there was more to be done. It was one of those little habits men pick up, and it had been his way for years.
Always, he left the drill steel on a direct line with the hole, no matter where it was on the face of the drift, and this drill was lying diagonal to the face.
Could it have rolled? Unlikely. Then how— It was then he remembered the powder can. It had been light, too light.
He took up his candle and looked all around, very carefully. Nothing was disturbed, nothing out of place but that drill and the powder can that had been lighter than expected.
Taking up his tamping stick he thrust it into the hole, very gently. Not over eighteen inches, and if memory served him, he had that hole in nearly two and a half feet. He withdrew the stick, and squatting on his heels, he contemplated the situation.
Somebody had slipped in here during the night, or when both Clyde and he were gone, and had loaded that hole with a considerable amount of black powder. Without a doubt there was a cap there also, and the intent was obvious.
He had been expected to put a drill down that hole and hit it a crack with the single-jack, exploding the powder and killing him. The natural conclusion would have been that he had drilled into a missed hole, one that had failed to fire.
It was a not uncommon happening in hard-rock mining and would have called for no more than a shrug and a funeral.
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. Jeff’s 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 tabletop. “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 24
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 are doing something. They aren’t sitting around griping about how things should 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 t
he 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.
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