Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (36 page)

“I reckon I’ll have to,” Waggoner said, “although I’m sure lookin’ forward to seein’ more of her. Business comes first, doesn’t it, ma’am?” He smiled insolently. He turned the big horse and for a moment he looked right at Trevallion, who said, “We have some business together, Mr. Waggoner, and I believe you owe me about five hundred dollars. Would you mind getting it ready for me?”

Waggoner rode on by, then for a moment an almost blinding rage swept over him.
Why not now?
Why not—

He pulled up his horse and started to turn, but Trevallion had a rifle in his hands now, almost casually pointed in his direction. Waggoner rode on.

Not against a rifle, not now. There would be other chances. Right in the street if necessary. But it had to be done soon, not only for himself, but his unseen employer had sent him two impatient notes.

Grita and Trevallion sat quietly, listening to the diminishing sound of his horse’s hoofs.

Then their eyes turned back and they looked at each other. For a long moment, neither spoke, then she said, “I am glad you came when you did. He is not a pleasant man.”

“I’ve seen him around.”

She was beautiful, but more than that there was something about her that he liked, instantly. Suddenly he remembered what he had said, so long ago, that he wanted to marry her. He flushed at the memory.

“You came for me?” she asked.

“Dane Clyde said you had ridden this way and would I suggest that you come back. It has something to do with the theater. I was riding this way.”

He was embarrassed, not knowing what to say. Did she remember him? He turned his mule and she rode up beside him. Together they started back down the canyon.

He felt unreasonably awkward and tongue-tied, and they rode in silence until they had almost come to the hotel. Then he said, “I have some business, your investments. We must talk about that.”

“Is that all?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe—”

Dane Clyde came up to them.

Chapter 41

A
LBERT HESKETH HAD made up his mind. Too much depended upon what happened in the next few weeks. He must move swiftly, resolve all his problems within that time, and be prepared to go forward in the way he had planned.

He had tried and failed to locate Will Crockett. Many believed Crockett dead, but Hesketh did not. Yet, if he could be found and killed, no one would even wonder. It was a case of out of sight out of mind. Crockett was rarely even mentioned any more. Business was moving forward, new mines were opened, the older ones developed, new discoveries were being made.

The War, Sutro’s projected tunnel to drain the water from the lower levels—these were the subjects of conversation.

Crockett’s estate—who would inherit? Had he not some relative in California? Hesketh had been through everything in the files at the mine and could recall nothing. So, if he died, Hesketh might himself lay claim to whatever Crockett held. Still, he should have something, he should have a note, a will, a letter, something giving substance to a claim. Uncontested it would fall into his lap like a ripe plum.

Like most men with a criminal turn of mind, Albert Hesketh planned for success, not failure. He did not even consider the idea that anyone might see through him or be aware of what he was doing.

What was to be done must be done, at once. He had control of the Solomon and must move to be certain he continued in control. Within the next few days they would move into bonanza. The ore was there, and he had samples of it, and once the Solomon began shipping that ore, the stock would skyrocket. His holdings would overnight triple or quadruple in value.

Margrita Redaway worried him. If she did hold the stock as he believed, why had she not come forward? What was in her mind? To Albert Hesketh nothing happened by accident or whim, all was planned, and the planning was directed at him. He saw plots on all sides. When people conversed in low tones in his presence, they were talking about
him
.

Inconsistently, he believed all of those of whom he expected to take advantage to be fools, and for them he felt nothing but contempt. At the same time he avoided any contact with George Hearst, John Mackay, Fair, Sharon, or the bigger men on the Comstock. He wanted to be considered one of them but felt uneasy under the cool, direct attention of John Mackay.

Give him time, he told himself. They would come later, and for the present, he had his plans.

He had bought several small mines, considered worthless. These he would salt with ore from the Solomon or elsewhere, and when the shipments started, their stock booming, he would sell. After a while he would let the shipments fall off in quality, the value of the stock would drop, and he would buy it back again and do the same thing. There were always dupes in a hurry to get rich quick.

Yet Margrita Redaway disturbed him. He had never been interested in any particular woman and cared for nothing but money and the power it represented. He found it difficult to think clearly in her presence. His mind, usually clear and incisive, became blurred and confused when she was around. At the same time he was irritated by the feeling that nothing about him really reached her. Ordinarily he would not have cared, but somehow he did care, and that irritated him, too.

If she had the stock, she could offer it for sale. It would be worth a great deal of money, and it was his experience that everybody wanted money. What was she thinking of? What was she planning? He refused to admit that any woman had intelligence, but at the same time he was confused, trying to decide what was in her mind.

Then he had seen her with Trevallion. He had seen them ride into town together and was alarmed. How had they gotten together? She had ridden out alone, he had seen that, but she had returned with him.

Trevallion was his enemy. He felt this instinctively, yet Trevallion had never spoken against him nor acted against him, except in the one matter of filing on the claim adjoining the Solomon. Trevallion might
know
.

The thought came to him, and then he hastily averted his mind. He must not think of that. He would not think of it. Too many years had passed, and even if Trevallion knew, he could prove nothing. But would Trevallion want proof?

The fact remained that Trevallion could destroy him. Now, at last, Albert Hesketh—for he now thought of himself by that name—had become someone. He was a mining man, a mine owner. He was a wealthy man, well, almost, who could become wealthier. People looked at him with envy. He walked into the dining room at night and took his seat like royalty. He dined in solitary dignity, aloof from the crowd, envied and admired. It was thus he saw himself.

He did not guess that nobody really cared. That they accepted him as one more odd character in a camp filled with even odder or more flamboyant ones. He was a very dim page alongside the likes of Sandy Bowers, Pancake Comstock, Ol’ Virginny, Langford Peel, Tom Paisley, Bill Stewart, and Judge Terry, to name a half-dozen from a camp where oddity was a rule rather than an exception.

To himself Albert Hesketh was a man of dignity and poise, a commanding figure in the business of mining, a man who someday might decide to run for the Senate. He was special, and therefore Margrita Redaway should have noticed him. She should be paying attention. She had actually met him, been taken to dinner by him.

He shook her from his mind. It did not matter. She did not matter. He had the Solomon and one way or another he would make sure of his hold and of his control.

Trevallion must go. He must locate Will Crockett and eliminate, once and for all, that threat to his future.

Also, he would build a home. He would build the best home, the grandest home of them all.

Ralston, the banker, had the best home now. He had heard of it, wanted to see it. Belmont, it was called, and it was somewhere near San Francisco. The grand balls and parties given there were already legend. He must see it. Then he would know what he had to do.

Trevallion stood in his way. So, and he returned to the idea reluctantly, did Margrita Redaway.

If the shares he wanted had not been found, it must be that she carried them on her person. Therefore she must be killed, and searched.

He shrank from the suggestion. The idea of touching the body of a woman made his flesh crawl. He did not know why he felt as he did, but it was something deeply ingrained in his being. He had touched but one, and it remained a moment of shuddering horror to him. Whenever the memory or the thought returned to him, he turned quickly away from it. He shrank from the memory.

He had never gone in for self-examination. He had never wondered why he was a being virtually without appetites.

Hesketh thought of Trevallion. The man should have been dead. Why was he not? Every day he lived the danger became greater. At first, even when resolved to have him killed, he had not pushed. If it was to be done right, it must be done with care. Yet nothing happened. Not even any rumors of attempts upon him.

Suddenly, his thoughts shifted. Why had that Redaway woman hired Teale? What would an actress need with a killer?

A bodyguard? Well, maybe. There had been attempts to rob her.

Manfred. Hesketh had only seen Manfred once or twice, but something about the actor disturbed him. He did not seem to be an actor, yet he obviously was.

For a moment he thought about trying to hire Teale, then pulled back from the idea. There was something about Teale that disturbed him. The man was a killer, and he had killed for hire, but he himself decided when and if he would kill and by some weird reasoning of his own.

Albert Hesketh returned to his rooms. They were as he had found them, rich with hotel opulence, but without character. The only thing he had changed in the room were the locks. On the door he had two locks placed, each opened by a key that he alone possessed. He let the maid in, and he let her out, remaining there while she did her work. He had an abhorrence of anyone handling his clothing or of investigating his few belongings. He watched while they worked, and when they were finished, he locked the door again.

Once the door was locked and he was alone, he sat down in an armchair to think. Slowly and with care he began to study his situation, thinking out every aspect of it. He knew what must be done and the question was how to do it.

M
ELISSA WAS GONE from the bakery, and Alfie with her. Jim Ledbetter no longer came by, and Trevallion, when he went anywhere but home, went to the International. They no longer had to wait for the Pony. The telegraph was in and they heard the news much sooner than before, although the gossip of the mining camps was still to be heard around the saloons.

They were the clubs of the common man, they were the clearinghouses, the places where information was passed out and deals formulated. There were few secrets on the Comstock. There was always a miner fresh out of the hole to relay news of the latest strike. As soon as he had a few, the story came out.

It was the same with the mill-workers. A man with his ear to the ground heard all he needed to buy stock or sell it. The people in San Francisco, going wild dreaming of fortunes to be made, had no such source of information.

Pack trains were few now, for most of the freight came in huge wagons with jerk-line teams. The old trail had been widened, and gravel had been packed into the clay, until it was as solid as pavement during most of the year.

Trevallion had returned to his cabin and slammed the door. He stood, hands on his hips, looking around his sparsely furnished bachelor quarters. Suddenly he swore, he swore slowly and with exasperation. Then he went to the cubbyhole he had hidden in the rock at the back wall and got out his notes.

He looked over the figures. He did not have much. For months now he had been living from hand to mouth, working a little ore, selling it, placering a little. He had small investments in the bakery and in Ledbetter’s freight operation. He was not a poor man, but he was far from wealthy.

He thought of Ledbetter, who had offered to throw in with him, but he did not want to risk Ledbetter’s money, and he did want to go it alone.

He would have to work. He would have to work as he never had. He took off his coat, hung it on a nail, and then took off his gun belt.

That Waggoner, what was going on there, anyway? Had he not come up when he did—

Waggoner needed killing, and he had it to do. After all, Waggoner had been one of them.

Shocked, he dropped to his bunk. Waggoner—did he know who Margrita was? But how could he? He had not seen her, and anyway, she’d been only a child, a very small child. That was absurd.

He had started out to kill them all. What had happened to him? Waggoner was here, Waggoner had even tried to kill him, yet he had done nothing.

He undressed and fell into bed, but he did not sleep. His thoughts returned to Margrita. Suddenly, from where the idea came he did not know, but probably it had been lying in his mind for some time, he knew she was the only woman for him. And he had nothing for her.

He had known it when he saw her on the stage. He had known it when they rode back to town together. He had known it in that brief moment when he interfered out there in Six Mile Canyon.

She was already a success, and he was nothing. He was a miner, a man who worked with his hands. So they had known each other before, but then they had been mere children, babies. Briefly their lives had been joined by a night of horror and the following sorrow. She had stayed in his mind, and once he had written to her.

He thought then of her papers. He must go over them, and he must get in touch with Will.

Will? Where the hell
was
he?

He stared around the small room. This was one night when he wished he could go down to the bakery and sit there, smelling the bakery and coffee smells, with Melissa nearby and Jim sitting across the table. Not to talk, just to have a presence. Not to be alone.

What the hell was the matter with him? He had been alone half his life!