Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (16 page)

“That’s the way he is.”

“I could stand the murdering brute if he’d just take a bath sometimes. He’s about the foulest thing I’ve ever seen on two feet.”

Clyde sipped his coffee. “I’ve seen Hauser with Brown, and I’ve seen him with several others.”

“With a man named Waggoner?” Trevallion described him.

“No, there’s no such man around now. If he was here, he must have gone out with the crowd for California.”

For a while they were silent, sipping their coffee. Clyde glanced at the books on the makeshift shelf. “Yours?”

“They came with the house. He picked them up, here and there, in abandoned camps. Some of them he found in the Forty-Mile Desert, thrown out to lighten the load.”

“Read much?”

“Now and again. A man alone gets hungry for some kind of communication, even if he’s not a reader. I knew one who was snowed in one year, and when he came out with the spring thaw, he’d come so close to memorizing the Bible that he became a preacher.”

Trevallion got up. “If you want to you can wait here, but I’d guess the bakery would be a better place.”

Clyde looked up, startled. “You aren’t going over there
alone
?”

“I think that’s the best way. I can come in the back way. I won’t ride through town. With any luck I’ll find what I’m looking for and get back here before they know what happened.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Thanks, but no.” He glanced at Clyde. “Have you ever used a gun?”

“No, no, I haven’t. I guess I could if it came to that.”

“Better leave them alone, although it might pay you to learn how to handle one. This is rough country, and a gun is handy in many ways.”

He needed help to do what he wished to do, and the first man who came to mind was Tapley. Clyde, despite his willingness, was not the man for what he had in mind.

He found Tapley in his dug-out, nursing a cup of coffee. “You sure picked a night,” he commented. “What’s up?”

Trevallion explained, then concluded, “We’ll need about four pack mules, I guess, and a lot of luck.”

“None of that outfit likely to be out tonight,” Tapley said. “Hauser was down to Lyman’s, and he was about half-drunk.”

Icy wind slammed into their faces and bodies as they rode out, the mules fighting to return to the reasonably warm barns. Trevallion led off, the wind sucking the breath from his throat as he tried to hide his chin behind his coat collar.

There were many lights visible from the town, and farther along, from Gold Hill and Silver City, but they could see no movement.

The cabin was where Clyde had said it would be, and Trevallion was in no mood for waiting about. He rode right up to it, half expecting the door to burst open and a man with a gun to appear. Yet when he reached the door it was closed with a hasp and a lock.

It was a solid door, but the hasp itself did not look strong. On the third kick the hasp tore free, and the door opened.

It was all there, everything but the mules. There were bales of blankets, sacks of flour, sugar, and coffee. Wasting no time they loaded the mules, overloaded them, actually. Some of the supplies listed as stolen were already gone, either used by the thieves themselves or peddled here and there. Even so it needed two trips to empty the cabin, and it was almost daylight when the job was completed. All the goods were stored in Ledbetter’s own storeroom.

Over coffee back in his cabin he looked over at Tapley. “The mules, we’ve got to find those mules.”

“They’ll be down along the river, more’n likely. Has to be a place where they can be hidden and where there is water and feed—feed means hay or else browse.”

“First, I move we catch some sleep,” Trevallion said, “and then we hunt mules.”

“You reckon that stuff will be safe?”

“It’s right in the middle of town. Cash money is scarce. I’ll find two or three tough miners to keep an eye on it.”

Tapley rode beside him into the quiet morning, this the third morning of their search and no mules yet. The blown snow was gone, except for threads of white in the shadow of boulders or places where long dead streams had cut banks and then abandoned them to wind and sun.

“You need a woman,” Tapley said again, “it’s no life for a man alone.”

“You’re alone.”

“I have my daughter. It’s a comfort to think of her and plan for her. Maybe the plans will come to nothing, but it is something to think on, and she’s someone to love.”

“Maybe, someday.”

“You’re young. When you’re young there’s always a tomorrow, or so the young believe. There isn’t, of course. As many of the young die as the old. In this land it is an accomplishment to grow old, and mighty few will ever make it.”

“Man back at the store said he saw some tracks up here, paid them no mind.”

“We’ll find them.”

They rode a winding trail westward along the canyon of the Carson. Trevallion looked up at the canyon wall, haggard with years, its hard shoulders worn by the sandblowing wind. “Good place for a man to get himself killed,” he commented.

“Aye, that’s an easy thing to do, anyway. You thought of what Sam Brown will do when he finds that shack?”

“I don’t like him,” Trevallion replied. “I don’t care what he does.”

“Somebody will be guarding the mules,” Tapley said. “Come spring, they’ll be worth a fortune. Jim’s brand can be changed. That JED brand of his, saw a man in a bar the other night with a pencil. He was showing Hauser how it could be changed to three 8s or a 3 and two 8s.”

“Ledbetter knows those mules like a man knows his own youngsters.”

“Aye,” Tapley agreed, “but can he prove it? We’ve got lawyers in town now.”

“That’s the beginning of trouble.”

Ancient cedars reached for them with twisted, gnarled arms. Trevallion broke off some cedar leaves and rubbed them in his fingers. “I like the smell,” he commented.

“You better shuck your rifle,” Tapley said, “look at your mule’s ears.”

The ears were pricked forward, and the black mule was about to bray. Trevallion kicked it lightly in the ribs to distract its attention and took out his rifle.

They came around a slight bend in the canyon and saw there at the junction of Carson and Brunswick Canyon a small meadow with some brown grass struggling to become green.

The mules were there, all of them, and a fire was burning in front of a tent.

At that moment a man backed out of the tent with a frying pan in his hand. He put it down on a flat rock and began slicing bacon into it. When he had finished, he turned and walked to the fire.

Something must have caught the tail of his eye, for he suddenly looked sharply around and saw them sitting quiet on their mules. “Wha—Who the devil are you?”

He was wearing a gun, and there was a rifle standing against a rock near the tent door.

Neither of them spoke. Slowly, very carefully, he put the bacon and the frying pan down on the flat rock. Then he wiped his hands on his pants, and it was in his mind to reach for his gun, but both rifles covered him. Neither man had made a move, each had his rifle across his saddle, each muzzle was pointed at him, but there was no threat, no gesture.

“You fellers lookin’ for something?”

“We found it,” Trevallion said.

The man’s tongue fumbled at his lips. He dearly wished to draw, but the rifle muzzles were there, right on him.

“I was fixin’ bacon,” the man said.

Neither responded, they just looked at him. Tapley rolled his chewing tobacco in his jaws and spat.

Trevallion said, “That cedar yonder?”

“Ain’t hardly tall enough. Got to be six foot, anyway, maybe eight. Eight’s better,” Tapley added. “Got to have clearance.” He gestured at a coil of rope on the man’s saddle. “Brung his own rope.”

“Now see here!” The man’s hands were still on his thighs where he had started to dry them. “Who are you fellers? What d’ you want?”

“Did we say we wanted anything?” Trevallion said. “We just found Ledbetter’s mules. That’s what we came for.”

“You’re huntin’ trouble. These here mules—”

“Were stolen. And we find you in possession. How far’s the nearest court, Tap?”

“Placerville, I expect. Maybe Salt Lake, as this here’s Utah Territory.”

“Too far. We take him there for trial we got to stay there to testify. We’d be tied up half the summer. No sense to that. And when we got through they’d just hang him.”

“Don’t make sense,” Tapley said, “takin’ him all that way for such a little job. We got us a tree, an’ he’s got a rope.”

“He’s also got a gun,” Trevallion said. “Shall we just shoot him a little first?”

“Look, you fellers! Now, see here. I didn’t know these mules was stole! I swear I didn’t!”

“Who put you to watchin’ them?”

“Some fellers offered to grub-stake me if I’d see to them. I hadn’t no idea—”

“I’ve seen him with Hauser up to Gold Hill,” Tapley said, “an’ that feller with the dirty beard, Sam Brown.”

“Can you write?” Trevallion asked.

“What kind of a question is that?” the man demanded indignantly. “Of course, I can!”

“Good!” With his left hand Trevallion reached into his coat pocket and took out a notebook such as miners used for claim notices or to tally loads taken out. “You just write on that top page,
Sam Brown, Kip Hauser, and some others stole these mules and shot Jim Ledbetter
.”

“Are you crazy? I couldn’t do that! They’d kill me!”

“And we’ll hang you.”

The man was trembling, and for a moment Trevallion thought he would draw, then the resolution left him and he lowered his hands helplessly. Before he could speak, Trevallion said quietly, “Seems to me you’ve got two ways to die, and one to live.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You can write that paper and then get on your horse and ride out of here for Salt Lake.”

Hope brightened his eyes. “You’d let me do that?”

“I wouldn’t waste around about writing that note. I ain’t hung a man this week,” Tapley said.

The man wrote, and when he had finished, Trevallion glanced at it. “You’ve got ten minutes,” he said.

Chapter 18

A
HARSH WINTER blended almost unrealized into an even harsher spring. The booming Washoe zephyrs swept down the mountain, flattening shacks, tent-huts, and saloons. Scarce fuel had become even scarcer, and most of the squatters were cooking with sagebrush for fuel.

Snow sifted in through the cracks in the poorly built cabins, melting on the scarcely warm stoves and sifting in a shadowy white blanket over the sleeping men.

The spring of 1860 came, and the cold withdrew into the higher peaks. Only the wind remained, blowing rocks rather than sand, battering at walls, rattling against the few intact windows, but by March a few daring men were already pushing through the snow-drifted passes.

Trevallion came down the hill in the morning. John Moore had arrived with a stock of liquor and goods, and was already setting up a makeshift saloon while men hung around waiting. The winter’s supply of whiskey had run short, the nearest thing to a disaster that the new camp had experienced.

Jim Ledbetter was at the bakery before him, helping Melissa prepare breakfast.

“My cook skipped,” she explained. “He bought an outfit and went prospecting.”

“He’d do better right here,” Will Crockett spoke from the door, closing it behind him.

Trevallion poured a cup for himself and one for Crockett. “Ready to look over the Solomon?”

Trevallion shrugged. “Are you ready with the money? Fifty dollars for a walk through and a working interest if I work there.”

“You’re a hard man.”

Trevallion sat down, sipping his coffee. “I’ve got a claim of my own. It looks good.”

“Bah! I’ve seen that MacNeale claim! Only a showing of ore! Not worth bothering with!”

“It might be we don’t see the same things when we look,” Trevallion replied. “I’ve been looking at ore and at rock formations all my life. You were a merchant or something of the kind, weren’t you?”

“A man can learn,” Crockett said.

“Thank God for that.” Ledbetter came over and joined them. “Jim, when you go out, I’ve got a dozen mule loads of ore I want to send.”

“All right!” Crockett said irritably. “Fifty dollars! I hope you’re worth it.”

Trevallion nodded. “In the morning then.”

Melissa added, “Whatever he tells you, Will, keep it to yourself.”

Irritated, he glanced at her. “Look, have I ever asked you—”

“No, Will, you haven’t, but do you ever show your poker hand to the other players?”

“Of course not. This isn’t the same. How can he operate the mine if he doesn’t know the facts?”

“All I ask is that you not show your cards. Not all of them, anyway.”

After she had gone into the kitchen, Crockett said, “Melissa’s a fine girl, but sometimes she seems to think I’m a child.”

Ledbetter shook his head. “Not so, Will. Melissa hears a lot of talk. Miners, businessmen, they all sit here and talk over their coffee. You’re a good man, Will, but a trusting one, too trusting.”

“The trouble is,” Trevallion suggested, “that when a man gets a very capable assistant, he tends to leave more and more of his work to that assistant, until soon he’s really running the show.”

“Not my show,” Crockett said. He got up. “See you in the morning, Trevallion.”

After he had gone, Trevallion asked, “Who is this Hesketh, anyhow? I hear his name mentioned but never see him around.”

“He doesn’t come around,” Melissa replied. “I don’t know him, and he is probably a perfectly trustworthy man. I just don’t believe in trusting anyone too far.”

“Good thing to know,” Trevallion commented.

Melissa flushed, then she went on. “He keeps very much to himself when he’s here. He’s got a cabin up the hill a ways, and he spends his time either there or with his books down at the office.”

“Minds his own affairs,” Ledbetter said, “doesn’t drink, doesn’t chew tobacco, and he seems to have no interest except in that mine.”

“Is he a miner?”

“Not so’s you’d notice. First I heard of him was six or eight years ago over in Sacramento. He was buying ore from miners, mostly from those who needed money quick, so he bought cheap.”