Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (10 page)

“Who are you?”

“You wouldn’t remember. I was only a youngster, Skinner, and I didn’t have a gun. Also I was too scared.”

Skinner let his right hand fall to his thigh, within inches of his gun. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“It was a camp by the river, Skinner. There were two wagons.”

Skinner’s mouth was dry and he felt sick inside. A thief and occasional murderer, he had shied from crimes against women, but that night, with that whiskey they’d been drinking—

“What d’ you want?” His voice was hoarse. He was not worried. He was too good with a gun. Nevertheless, that night had haunted him, and for some reason it had kept him looking over his shoulder for years.

“I killed Rory, Skinner. He was caught cheating but that wasn’t the reason.”

Skinner was poised for it. He was ready. He had chosen his target, right over the belt buckle.

“Where’d the whiskey come from, Skinner?”

The sudden, unexpected question disconcerted him. “Why…! Why, I’m damned if I know,” he said honestly. “All of us were short. We were holding nothing.”

“How much did you get out of it, Skinner?”

Skinner spat angrily. “Not a damn thing! Somebody yelled an’…well, we taken out.”

“I know you did, Skinner. I was there. I saw you run, and I saw a man climb into the wagon. He killed my mother, Skinner, whatever was left to kill. And he got the money-box. I want his name, Skinner.”

So that was how it was? Skinner had suspected as much. They’d been tricked, the lot of them, they’d been used. “If I knew,” he said, “I’d kill the—”

“He fed you whiskey, got you all drunk, got you to do the dirty work, and then he got away with everything.” He paused just a moment. “But you were there, Skinner. You were one of them.”

“Look,” Skinner protested, “I—” He went for his gun.

Trevallion shot him.

Skinner completed the draw, but the strength was suddenly gone from his hand, and the gun slipped from his fingers.

“Damn you!” Skinner said. “I’m goin’! I’ll get—”

“Skinner? I know where I put that bullet. You aren’t going anywhere, Skinner.”

Deliberately, Trevallion rode around him and started up the trail. At the crest of the low hill, he turned in his saddle and looked back.

Skinner was lying face down on the ground, and his horse had walked off a few steps.

Nobody had associated him with the killing of Skinner. The body had been found, he later learned, several days after. It lay on the grass, a drawn pistol lying at hand. Skinner was known. It was decided he had been killed in a gunfight or by some intended victim.

Trevallion had felt no elation. There was no satisfaction, only a dull heaviness within him.

Long ago, as a boy, he had told himself he would kill them all, but now he no longer wanted to.…Yet he was here, and he was here because sooner or later he knew the prospects for loot would bring them to the Comstock. They were among the vultures who followed booms to pray on the unwary, the unguarded, and the innocent.

Darkness had settled over the canyon. Trevallion banked his fire and spread his bed under the cedars.

For a long time he lay looking up at the few stars he could see through the cedars.

That little girl, the one he’d held so tight, stifling her cries so they might not be murdered, too, she lost both her parents that night. It was bad enough for a boy, but much worse for a girl.

Grita, that was her name. Marguerita Redaway, called Grita for stort.

He had said he was going to marry her.

He smiled up into the cedars, thinking of it. What had become of her? Where was she now? Probably dead.…

Anyway, marrying him would have been a poor bargain.

Chapter 10

T
HE MAN IN the gray suit leaned back in his chair and placed the fingertips of his two hands together. “Mademoiselle Redaway, you do not seem to understand. You have nothing, or next to nothing. Your aunt was in debt, very heavily in debt. The chateau must be sold, the horses as well.

“You will have one thousand American dollars, and some worthless mining stock. Of course, you will have whatever personal effects she left. That is all.”

“I shall need no more.”

“You do not seem to understand. No doubt the money seems a great sum to you, but living as you have it will last no time at all, and you will be penniless.

“It could be invested, and you could realize a small sum from it each year, but I think—”

“Uncle André, you worry too much. Please don’t. I shall be all right. I have made my decision.”

“And that is?”

“I shall be an actress.”

André dropped his hands to the arms of his chair and sat forward. “An actress! But that is impossible. You have no training. And it isn’t quite the life I should choose—”

She laughed. “But you are not choosing, Uncle André. I am!”

“Need I remind you that you are under age?”

The smile left her face. “You know that, I know that, but need anyone else? You are not my guardian. You are not a blood relative. You were and have been a very good friend. I had hoped you would help me.”

“I? I know few people in the theater, mademoiselle.”

“But you do know some? Rachel, for instance, Rachel Felix?”

He flushed, and she was amused. “Ah, then you
did
know her!”

“Slightly, mademoiselle, and that was years ago. Many years ago.”

“But if you went to see her? She would know your name?”

He hesitated. “Well, we were both very young.…It was a long time ago.”

He gave a gesture of dismissal. “It does not matter. You are not an actress. Do you think a professional company, performing every night, could afford some inexperienced girl?”

She sat down opposite him. “Uncle André, it is confession time. When my aunt married the count it was her second marriage. He knew this, but no one else did. Not on this side of the Atlantic.”

“So?”

“My aunt was for many years an actress. She toured on the American stage, and I with her.”

“You?”

“My parents were killed when I was eight. I went to live with another aunt, then when I was ten I went to live with Claire and began to appear here and there, always in plays with her. I played children’s parts, both boys and girls, and then maids, and finally some quite good roles.

“When Claire married the count he insisted I drop all that and return to school. It was very easy for me, that school was, so I studied music and the dance as well. Rachel is soon to do a play I know very well, and there is a part, a very small part, that I could do easily.”

“She does not cast her plays, I am sure.”

“She does not—officially. Unofficially I am quite sure she has very much to say.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.” He looked around at her as she moved across the room. “Mademoiselle? Did you know Rachel is considering an American tour?”

“I did.”

“You would go?”

“Of course. After all, I was born there. And you say I have all that mining stock. Perhaps I should see to my investments.”

“They are nothing, nothing! Most of the mines are unknown, unheard of! Your aunt bought foolishly, just as she loaned money. Why, among those papers there must be fifty notes! Long overdue and uncollectable now.”

“No matter. If I ever get out west again I shall collect them, or try.”

He stood up. “Mademoiselle? There is another thing. You are very young, very fresh. You are also beautiful. I have heard it said that older actresses do not always like to have younger, more beautiful actresses in their plays.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I have heard Rachel Felix is a very shrewd woman, a good businesswoman. I do not think she will mind if the play is successful.”

When she was home, she took the faded carpetbag he had brought and opened it. Packets of papers! Old letters, notes of money loaned and never repaid, old lists of mining shares for mines no doubt long forgotten, some of them her aunt’s possessions, some her own that had been left with her aunt when she went off to school.

Suddenly among the papers she saw a familiar corner, and spreading the packet of envelopes she extracted it. The date was 1850, almost ten years ago.

Dear Grita,

I am in Sacramento, working. It is not very good work but all I could find. My father, too, is killed. Killed by the same men, although he shot two of them before dying.

When I sold the wagon and the things from it I found a packet of letters belonging to your father and mother. Some were from a man your father had helped start in business. He is doing very well now. When he found I knew you he asked what he should do with the money and I said to invest it. He said if I would accept part of the responsibility he would do so. This has been done.

I remain your obed. svt.,

Trevallion

Had that been his name? She remembered him only as a boy named Val, who was very strong and very kind and how she had been terribly frightened and he had held her.

As to the money, she knew nothing of that, and it could not have been much.

Trevallion—odd, that. No other name, simply Trevallion.

Had she replied? She could not remember, yet oddly enough she could remember him. He had been a very serious boy, and for his age, very strong. He had helped her father load some things into the wagon, and her father had commented upon it.

Later, when she was in the company and they were working, she asked an actress who was applying her makeup at the same table, “Aren’t you the one who has been to America?”

“I have been. They are hungry for theater there.”

“Do you know a town called Sacramento? I believe it is in California.”

“It is near San Francisco, I think. There are no large cities but they have found gold there. Have you not heard? Everyone is going. It is said if they like what you do or how you look they shower you with gold nuggets.”

“Better than flowers,” another actress commented. “All I ever get is flowers and suggestions.”

“Someday,” Grita said thoughtfully, “I shall go there.”

S
EVERAL TIMES EACH night Trevallion would awaken and listen. It was a habit he had begun to develop on the way west. At daybreak in the canyon, he was up and panning for gold. The water supply he had was mostly from melting snow, and there would soon be an end to that, so whatever he could find to supplement his small stake would have to be found quickly.

On the third day he found a pocket under a boulder where the water spilling over created a natural riffle and he netted sixty-six dollars in four pans. As his supplies had run low, he saddled the mule, leaving most of his gear where it was. He rode down the canyon to its junction at Seven Mile and then down Gold Canyon, going by a roundabout route that brought him into town from the north. He had no desire to advertise the location of his camp or his direction of travel.

At least a dozen new buildings were going up, and he guessed there would be three or four hundred men in the area. Probably more, for Gold Hill and Silver City had become communities.

Melissa met him at the door. “I saw you coming,” she said. “Jim’s here.”

Ledbetter was seated at the table with a cup of coffee and some doughnuts. “Sit down,” he said, “I’ve been wishful of seeing you.”

Trevallion dropped into a chair and accepted the coffee and doughnuts Melissa put before him. He glanced up at her. “How are you doing?”

Ledbetter chuckled. “You should do so well! She can’t bake them fast enough! My guess is she’s staked a better claim than anybody on the lode.” He put down his cup and looked at Trevallion. “How about you?”

“I’ve been washing a little dust.”

“A pan won’t do it. You need a rocker, or better still, a sluice.”

“Maybe. I may not stay long.”

Ledbetter glanced at him thoughtfully but offered no comment. After a moment he said, “Before the summer is over, there will be three or four thousand men here.”

He sipped his coffee, then dunked a doughnut. “Val,” he said, “you be careful.”

Trevallion’s expression did not change. Ledbetter was puzzled by him, having known many men. Trevallion was a slim, dark-featured man with the broad, powerful shoulders common among men who used a double-jack for hours at a time. When he smiled, which was rarely, Trevallion was, he reflected, a remarkably handsome man.

“Somebody’s interested in you,” he commented. “Asking around here and there. Have you got enemies?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“With your savvy you could become a rich man,” Ledbetter commented. “Atwood over to Grass Valley assayed some of that blue stuff they been throwing out. Runs three thousand to the ton, I hear.”

“There’s always rumors. I’ve heard five different stories on how rich it is.”

“Surprised they haven’t tried to hire you over at the Solomon. They’re sinking a shaft.”

“I was asked.”

“If you go over there—Crockett is all right, a solid man. Hesketh, well, I don’t know. He’s a man I’d watch. He’s in touch with some of those high-flyers in San Francisco.”

“A bookkeeper, isn’t he?”

“Aye, a bookkeeper. Knows every ounce of ore that comes from any claim on the Comstock, and he’s bought a few claims himself. Some of them don’t make sense. He’s bought cheap, too.”

Trevallion glanced at Melissa. She was filling out a little, eating better, no doubt. She had two men and a woman working for her now.

“Jim? This man who has been asking for me?”

“Big, slow-moving man. Takes his time, I mean. Handlebar mustache and a bad scar over one eye. He’s no miner, I’ll bank on that. I never heard his name, but he seems to have money enough to live and get around.”

Ledbetter finished his coffee and stood up. “Got to get back over to Mormon Station—Genoa, I mean. I’m meeting a Mexican over there with some mules to sell.”

“Branching out?”

“Uh-huh. But one day I’m going to pack it all in and go back to Kentucky. I’ll buy me a place there and settle down to raise horses.”

He left, and Trevallion refilled his cup. Ledbetter at least had a plan, an idea of what he wanted. He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.