Longarm and the Deadly Restitution (9781101618776) (11 page)

Chapter 19

“First time going to visit Virginia City?” their handsome and well-dressed fellow passenger asked Longarm
and Milly as they settled into the stagecoach.

“No,” Longarm said. “I've been there several times, but my companion has never seen it before.”

The man appeared to be in his late twenties, dressed in a well-tailored black suit and wearing a fashionable black derby. He smiled at Milly. “It is rare that I get a chance to ride with such lovely company. My name is Brian Ballard. And I would imagine you and this gentleman are married.”

“Then you'd imagine wrong,” Milly said. “But that might be in store for our futures. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Ballard, I am Miss Milly Ott and this is Marshal Custis Long. We are from Denver.”

“Well, what is a
marshal
from Colorado doing all the way out here in Nevada?”

“Actually I'm
not
here in an official capacity.”

“Odd time of the year to visit the Comstock Lode, given this foul weather.”

“Sometimes,” Longarm replied, not liking to answer personal questions posed by a stranger, “you have to go see places when your schedule permits. And what, sir, is
your
reason for visiting Virginia City?”

“I recently inherited quite a few shares of a mine that was once quite profitable. It's called the Sentinel Mine and it's been closed for several years, after there was a cave-in and some flooding on the lower levels. I've come to see if the mine can be reopened profitably and if its shares are still worth anything close to their former value. If the answers to those questions are positive, I'll report to some of my friends and fellow investors, and we might reopen the Sentinel.”

“As you very well know,” Longarm said, “most of the big pockets of ore below Sun Mountain have been picked clean.”

“Of course, but there is something about a gold mine that fires the imagination and enthusiasm.”

“It's called gold fever,” Longarm said, noting the man's gold jewelry. “And it's been around probably as long as mankind.”

“I'm sure that's true. Stocks rise and fall, but gold has a lasting value anywhere in the world.”

“Well,” Milly said, “I certainly hope that you find the Sentinel to still be of value. Do you know anything about deep rock mining?”

“Not much,” Ballard admitted. “But I've learned to rely on local experts. I'm sure that I'll soon be directed toward people whose opinion on gold mining can be taken seriously.”

Longarm smiled but thought that if he had ever seen a man with money who was ripe for the plucking, Brian Ballard was it.

“Mr. Ballard,” Milly asked, “have you come from a great distance?”

“I'm from Seattle. My father and I own an import business, but he recently had a serious stroke and, sadly, is no longer able to make crucial business decisions.”

“What kind of things do you import?”

“Asian jewelry. Jade, silver, and gold.”

“I noticed that ring you are wearing,” Milly said, pointing at Brian Ballard's hand. “It's really beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Ballard extended his hand so that she could better see the large jade stone, surrounded by diamonds and gold. “This ring has always been one of my favorites, and it dates back to the Ming Dynasty, which makes it very old and quite rare.”

Milly's eyes grew wide with wonder. “I've never seen anything like it! Have you, Custis?”

“Can't say that I have. Mr. Ballard, may I offer you a piece of professional advice?”

“Please call me Brian. And yes, I welcome all well-intended and sound advice.”

“I'd hide the ring. Same for that gold watch and chain that looks like they cost a small fortune.”

“Mind telling me why?”

“Virginia City and the Comstock are undergoing hard times, and there are going to be many pickpockets and thugs in town desperate to find a well-heeled mark.”

Brian Ballard nodded, his expression grave. “I see.”

“Of course,” Longarm added, “I could be mistaken, but I am certain that you would be quickly targeted by thieves, or worse, before you've gotten off this stagecoach and walked a block.”

To Ballard's credit, he removed his ring and pocket watch and dropped them into his pocket. “I appreciate the advice. Any chance that you would . . . um, accompany me for the few days that I'll be on the Comstock? I'd pay you very well.”

“Sorry,” Longarm told the man. “But we have some things that we have come a long way to take care of and they're likely to keep us busy.”

“I understand. Are you and Miss Ott going to be staying on the Comstock Lode for very long?”

“Only,” Longarm told the man, “as long as is necessary and then we will be returning to Denver.”

Ballard looked out the window at the sage and the few remaining stunted piñon and juniper. “I have to say that I'm rather shocked at how desolate this country is in comparison to where I come from. My first impression is that I would rather sell the Sentinel Mine if it has any value and then leave.”

“It's a hard place to make a living,” Longarm said. “But men have been doing it for quite a while up here. In its heyday, the Comstock Lode made a dozen or more men millionaires.”

“So I've heard. Have either of you ever been to Seattle?”

“No,” Milly said. “But I hear it is beautiful.”

“That it is.” Ballard looked out the window as the stage began to roll. “I'm not used to this really cold weather. In Seattle it almost never snows.”

“No,” Longarm commented, “but it's foggy with a climate that chills right to the marrow of the bone.”

Ballard shrugged, clearly not in agreement. “I think we're all partial to our own environments. The Silver Dollar Hotel and Saloon was recommended to me by someone who had been here several years ago. Perhaps you'll end up staying there as well and we could have dinner together . . . my treat . . . of course.”

“That would be very nice,” Milly said quickly. “Wouldn't that be splendid, Custis?”

“Sure,” he replied without enthusiasm because, in Longarm's experience, it was better if he did not encourage friendships when he was working. The less people knew about his business the better.

“Good!” Ballard said, as they began to roll by mine tailings and abandoned mining operations, shacks, and rusty and abandoned old mining equipment.

Longarm turned his attention to the passing scenery as Milly and Brian Ballard chatted about this and that. Ballard was, Longarm decided, honest and telling the truth about his Seattle import business. Ballard enthralled Milly with stories about his past travels, to Japan and China and other exotic places in Asia.

When they rolled up Virginia City's famous C Street, Longarm saw that a few of the town's former businesses had been closed and shuttered. Still, the street was jammed with heavy ore wagons heading for the stamping mills, and right in the center of the town, all the big saloons that he remembered were open and looked to be busy. The coach stopped near the V&T Railroad depot, and they disembarked.

Brian Ballard was handed his baggage and stood looking as if he were trying to make a big decision.

“Something wrong?” Longarm asked.

“No, it's just that we passed Silver Dollar Hotel, and I have to say that it wasn't at all what I had expected.”

“A saloon and a hotel are usually a bad match,” Longarm said. “The upstairs rooms are primarily used for the girls to service customers. I think you might want to consider tagging along with us to the Oxford Hotel. I've stayed there in the past and it's clean and safe. They don't have a restaurant, but there are several nearby.”

Ballard looked all around and noted several men loitering and drinking in the vicinity. He was not a big man, and Longarm would have bet he had never worked one hard day in his entire life. And even though he had taken Longarm's advice and removed his expensive jewelry, it was still obvious from his clothing and handsome luggage that he was a man of means.

“I . . . I would be happy to go along with you,” Ballard said, nodding with gratitude.

“Good then,” Longarm said. “Let's set off up the hill and find that hotel. I don't know about you two, but it's dinnertime and I'm ready for a drink and something good to eat.”

“Remember,” Ballard said, “tonight is on me.”

“Oh, we'll remember,” Milly said with a laugh. “Don't worry about that.”

Three rough-looking men who had been lounging near the depot suddenly cut them off at the bottom of the short hill they had to climb.

“Excuse me,” one of the men said, eyeing Milly up and down and then turning to Brian Ballard. “Me and my friends here have had a little hard luck lately, and we were wondering if you nice gentlemen could spare us a few dollars. We'd pay you back, of course.”

Ballard managed a thin smile and started to reach for his wallet, but Longarm stepped in front of the man. “We're tired and in a hurry. Step aside.”

The man was big enough and tough enough to bluster. “Well, I think that you are completely lacking in manners, sir. And besides, I was particularly addressing this other gentleman.”

“Move aside,” Longarm ordered in a hard voice.

The man glanced at his two companions, and something seemed to pass between them, because all three armed themselves with knives in addition to brass knuckles.

“Now,” the man said, “I think you had better be the one to move aside.”

Longarm's left fist shot out like the head of a snake and his knuckles smashed into the man's nose, breaking it and sending the man reeling backward. When the other two jumped forward, Longarm's right hand crossed his belt buckle and snapped his Colt from its holster on his left hip. The gun came up and the two men dropped their knives in the dirt and fled.

The man whose nose Longarm had smashed in was cupping it with both hands, blood dripping between his fingers.

“Damn you!” the injured man cried. “We only wanted a couple of lousy dollars!”

“Tell you what,” Longarm said, “I'll give you something that will last longer than a few dollars.”

“What . . .”

Longarm smashed the barrel of his heavy Colt across the man's forehead, knocking him out cold.

“My god!” Brian Ballard whispered. “Don't you think that you might have hurt him badly?”

“Oh, I did that all right,” Longarm agreed as he watched the other pair stop and turn to see if they were going to be shot or chased. “But the thing is, Brian, you have to kind of set up the ground rules when you come to a boom town as rough as this one. Even as we speak, the news of what I did to this one will have begun being passed up and down all the streets, and guess what?”

“What?”

“We won't be bothered anymore,” Longarm said, holstering his pistol and starting up the hill into town.

“Custis!” Milly said, hurrying to catch up with him. “That man will need stitches in his scalp, and his nose is really a mess!”

“You think I was too rough on him, do you?”

Milly glanced back over her shoulder at the man, who was kneeling in the dirt, sobbing and holding his ruined face. “Well . . . well I just think that you didn't need to beat him with your pistol
in addition
to breaking his nose.”

Longarm didn't even break stride to answer. “Milly, I told you that you wouldn't be prepared for what faced us up here. We haven't even come face-to-face with the worst of it yet and already you're starting to tell me what to do and what not to do.”

“I don't mean to do that, Custis, but you really hurt that man!”

“And what do you think they intended to do with those knives they pulled? Clip our fingernails?”

Milly didn't have a reply, and as Longarm hiked up the hill with the woman and the gentleman from Seattle struggling along behind, he was sure wishing that he had not been seduced into dragging along Milly Ott and perhaps now another person he was going to have to worry about protecting.

Chapter 20

It was early when Longarm awoke the next morning, and Milly was still asleep, so he quietly dressed and left the hotel. Virginia City and Gold Hill were separated by the Summit, which was actually the crest of a hill. Freight coming from Carson City had to make the long pull up the canyon and over the Summit to enter Virginia City. Freight coming from Reno to Gold Hill had to descend the steep quarter-mile descent, and many an accident had occurred where conditions were especi
ally treacherous during snowy and icy winters.

Longarm had a good heavy coat and woolen gloves, and he'd bought some boots that would offer him excellent footing. Even so, in the cold not long after dawn, each step he took toward the Summit was a challenge. He knew the temperature was still well below the freezing point.

“Hey!”

Longarm turned around, collar up and hat tugged down low. He saw a man driving a pair of horses pulling a buckboard. The man came to a stop next to him. “Need a ride down to Carson City?”

Longarm looked up to see a scarf covering the lower half of the man's face and a wool stocking cap covering the top half. Only the driver's eyes and nose were visible. “I'm only going down to Gold Hill, but I'd appreciate a ride even that far.”

“Hop aboard! Once over the Summit the road is steep and pretty damned icy; you'd be sure to take a few falls before you got down into Gold Canyon.”

“Much obliged,” Longarm said, climbing up onto the seat and noting that the buckboard was filled with lumber. “How are you going to keep this buckboard from going into a slide and running over your team?”

“Ain't easy, but I do it once a day all winter. Got a good pair of brakes and the horses have ice shoes with little spikes for grabbers. Don't worry, mister, we won't go sledding down the hill out of control.”

“Nice to hear you say that,” Longarm said.

“If you don't mind my askin', what kind of business in Gold Hill brings you out at such an early hour?”

“I'm looking for a couple of men.”

“Friends?”

“Not exactly. They're brothers and mule skinners.”

“I know a pair of men that
look
like brothers and are mule skinners. Probably ain't the same ones you're lookin' for.”

“Might be they changed their names,” Longarm offered. “What do they look like?”

“They're big, dark, and ugly. I had one almost drive me over the side of this road a week or so ago. I was pulling toward the top of the Summit, and he came roarin' over the crest with four mules and a heavy load of ore. His mules were havin' a hell of a time and the ore wagon was slidin' all over the road. I shouted at the man and told him to slow down and show some good sense.”

“What did he do?”

“He said something to me that is not worth repeating. But everyone knows that Dirk is an asshole.”

Longarm felt a jolt of excitement shoot through his half-frozen body. “That would be Dirk Pierce?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I know of him. And is the one that looks like him named Harold York?”

“We call him Harry. It's a fitting name because he's as hairy as a gorilla. Not that I'm ever goin' to see a real gorilla, but I seen pictures of them and he's that hairy.”

“I need to find them.”

The buckboard driver didn't speak for several minutes as he carefully drove his horses down the steepest part of the winding road toward Gold Hill. Finally, when the grade flattenedd a bit, he said, “They worked for the Catamount Mining Company.”

“‘Worked'?”

“Yeah. They got fired a few days ago.”

“Any idea where they might have gone?” Longarm asked, feeling the excitement die.

“As a matter of fact I do. Dirk and Harry got hired on by the V and T Railroad down in Carson City. They are hauling timber out of the Sierra foothills south of town. Railroad needs timber to make railroad ties and build bridges. They pay pretty good; the work is hard but steady, and I've been thinking of trying to get on with them.”

“Well,” Longarm said, “I guess that I will be going all the way to Carson City with you.”

“Nice to have the company on such a cold, dreary day,” the man said. “My name is Wade Talbert.”

“Custis Long.”

“I take it you're not a freighter,” Talbert said.

“What makes you think I'm not?”

“Well, you asked me right away if we were going to slide off the road up near the Summit. A driver would know that anyone pulling up or down that grade would have to have his horses shoed with cleats and ice spikes.”

“I guess a driver would.”

They were passing through Gold Hill, which looked about half the size that it had the last time Longarm had visited. Still, there were three saloons, and every one of them was open even at this early hour in the morning. The Red Ass Café was open, and through its dirty front window Longarm saw that it was doing a good breakfast business. Two men bundled up against the cold were standing outside the door waiting for a table, and when they saw Talbert, they waved and called out a greeting.

Talbert waved back but didn't slow.

“Are there many mines still producing in Gold Hill and Virginia City?”

“A few,” Talbert answered. “Mostly just the deepest ones with the most money to keep digging. Last I heard the Ophir was down to eight hundred and fifty feet.”

“That's mighty deep,” Longarm said. “I imagine it's hotter than hell down that far.”

“It is,” Talbert agreed. “The Comstock Lode Miner's Union has it in their contract that every miner on every shift working deeper than five hundred feet gets to be given a big bucket of ice or snow. But at temperatures well over a hundred and ten degrees, they say that the ice and snow is gone in twenty or thirty minutes.”

“I don't know how men can stand working down there at those temperatures.”

“They're desperate people and they need jobs. Me, I've always been a freighter and I'll die one. It's a job that you can do right up to the end unless the company you work for expects you to load and unload your own wagon.“Yours doesn't?”

“Nope. I told them that they'd better not expect it, either. I've had too many friends who caved in to loading and unloading every wagon they drove, and they all ended up with real bad backs that wouldn't take the jolting of a wagon. They either have to find some lesser job or they'll starve. But not me.”

Longarm and Wade Talbert carried on a pleasant conversation all the way off Sun Mountain and down into the high desert. By noon, they were pulling into Carson City.

“You been here before?” Talbert asked.

“Yeah, but not for a few years.”

“It hasn't changed much,” the driver said. “Carson City is still a real nice town. My wife and I live back up in Gold Hill, but the water tastes terrible and the ground is so rocky you can't raise so much as a tomato all summer. Too much alkali in the water and earth. That water will make you sick if you drink more than a few cups of it. We have all our drinking water brought up from Carson City. The water down here is good and comes from wells dug along the Carson River. My wife can't wait to move down here, soon as I get another job.”

“Where is the V and T Railroad headquarters?”

“Right over there.” Talbert pointed to a big stone building near a roundhouse. “Want me to drive you right up to their door?”

“Not necessary,” Longarm told the friendly driver. “It's warmed up enough that the ice is melting and I'll be just fine walking.”

“Well, hope you don't get into too much trouble,” the driver said. “Dirk and Harry have bad reputations, and I hear that they're mean and deadly fighters. That's why I didn't get off this wagon when Dirk started cussin' me out at the Summit, even though he was clearly in the wrong. No sense in gettin' your ass carved up or stomped in the snow over nothin' that important, is there?”

“Nope,” Longarm said, “no sense at all.”

“I ain't afraid of any man, but I got a wife to take care of and we're expecting our first child this spring. That's why I let that man cuss me out so bad.”

“You did the right thing, Talbert. A man has to walk away from a fight sometimes when others depend on his health for their livelihood.”

“Well I'm glad to hear you say that 'cause I've been chafin' some at lettin' another man insult me and do at me so bad.”

“Maybe I can set things right for you,” Longarm said. “I'm all alone and don't have a wife and a baby coming to worry about.”

“Well, don't do nothin' stupid on my account,” Talbert offered. “I feel bad enough about backin' down, and I'd feel even worse if I thought what I told you got you killed or hurt real bad.”

“I'll be fine.”

“I hope so. Just . . . just be careful if you try to collect money from either of 'em or have a bone to pick,” Talbert warned. “You're big and strong . . . but so are they.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Longarm climbed down from the buckboard and headed toward the railroad's headquarters. He unbuttoned the buttons on his overcoat and removed his gloves, folded them, and stuffed them into his coat pocket. If he suddenly came upon the Raney brothers, he would draw his weapon and arrest them on the spot. If they resisted and wanted a fight, he'd not hesitate to put them in the ground six feet under the ice, mud, and snow.

If he did that, Wade Talbert sure wouldn't have to worry about them if he got a better job hauling timbers for the V&T Railroad.