Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (6 page)

Later, at a widening of the trail, Melissa rode up beside Ledbetter. “You all right?” he asked her.

“Yes, sir.”

“You got a pair o’ man’s pants? Be a sight easier if you rode astride on these steep slopes. I know it ain’t what’s considered ladylike, but you’ll see most womenfolks usin’ them on the road.”

“I’ll be all right.” A few steps further along she asked, “Who is he?”

“Trevallion? He’s a Cousin Jack. That means he’s from Cornwall, over in England. They’re about the only ones around who know anything about hard-rock mining.”

“I mean…
who
is he?”

“He’s a loner, ma’am, a hard, tough, dangerous man. He rides alone, walks alone, lives alone. There’s nothing to him that ain’t rawhide and iron, but if a body’s in any kind of trouble, he’s the man you want beside you.

“If you’ve got ore, he will get it out. If you lose a lead, he’ll find it for you quicker than anybody I know. He knows
ground,
ma’am, mining ground. He knows how to load his holes so the ground breaks fine, and he’s one of the best men with a single-jack I ever did see.”

“What’s a single-jack?”

“It’s a small sledgehammer, ma’am. That’s about the easiest way to explain it. Used with one hand, for drillin’ into rock. A double-jack is used with two hands and is a reg’lar sledgehammer. Mostly one man turns the drill, the other strikes it. Trevallion is
good
. The best I ever did see. He’s got more power in those shoulders and arms…well, that’s one way to build power, swinging a double-jack.

“He come over from the old country with his folks. Beyond that nobody knows much about him. A few years back when he was only about sixteen he hired out to deliver twenty thousand dollars in gold to a bank in Sacramento. There were outlaws after that gold and Injun trouble, too. When he didn’t show up folks figured him for dead. Three months later he come down out of the woods lookin’ like the wrath of God. He had two festerin’ arrow wounds and was wore down to skin an’ bone, but he brought in the gold, ever’ pinch of it.” Ledbetter paused. “Such things get talked about, so he become a known man.”

“How old is he?”

Ledbetter shrugged. “Who knows? Or really cares? Most men out here are young, even the ones who look old. Country does that to a man, that an’ hard work. I know he could have been superintendent of a big mine in Grass Valley, and he wouldn’t take it. Somethin’s eatin’ on him, I reckon.”

The trail narrowed, and Ledbetter rode on ahead, glancing back from time to time at the winding black snake of men, animals, and wagons that followed.

Melissa shivered at the cold wind off the mountain. What would she do in Virginia City? Her whole thought was to escape, to get away, by whatever means. How she would exist after that was something to which she had given no thought aside from supposing she would be married. She flushed with shame, remembering the way Alfie had fled.

There would be something, there had to be something! Her mother had hoarded a little money Mousel had never known she possessed. She had married him when left alone and desperate, with a young daughter to bring up. He had proved a cruel, parsimonious man, vindictive and petty.

Alfie—she did not want to think about Alfie. She had half persuaded herself she was in love with him, but when she warned him of Mousel, he had laughed, skeptical of her fears. She saw him now for the shoddy, third-rate sort of man he was. She had been in a fair way to make as serious a mistake as her mother, marrying to escape.

Later, she asked Trevallion, “Why do they call Cornishmen ‘Cousin Jacks’?”

“They say if you hire one Cornishman he will immediately tell you about his Cousin Jack, who is a good miner and hunting a job, and soon the Cousin Jacks have all the jobs.”

“They must be good miners.”

“Generally speaking they don’t know much else. When I was six, I was working in a tin mine picking waste rock out of the ore. Then pa took me out, and I worked with fishermen until I was eleven, then back to the mines.”

Melissa glanced at him slyly. “My grandfather used to say the people of Cornwall were wreckers. That they used to display lights to lure ships on the rocks so they could loot the ships.”

“It might have happened,” Trevallion said, “long, long ago. Usually they just claimed what was washed ashore. In fact, there’s a story in the family that that was how my great-grandfather got his wife. He helped her ashore from a wreck and claimed her for his own.”

“And she stayed with him?”

“By all accounts they were a happy pair. He was a fine, upstanding young man, considered very handsome. When I was a child, there were still things in the house that had been hers, things saved from the wreck.”

Ledbetter turned in his saddle. “We’ll stop at Dirty Mike’s. We’ve made good time, and Mike serves the best grub. Only trouble is the people come and go so fast he never takes time to wash the dishes. Complain about them and you’ll go hungry.”

A rider on a fine bay horse was overtaking them. He was a tall, strikingly handsome man with a blonde mustache, and as he came abreast he glanced sharply at Trevallion, then looked a second time, frowning a little. He spoke to his horse then, and rode rapidly away.

“That man knew you,” Melissa said.

“Aye,” Trevallion agreed. “I believe he did.”

Chapter 6

D
IRTY MIKE’S WAS a ramshackle place of stained canvas and poles. The few tables with benches were already crowded, and men were scattered over the grass, eating from tin plates, dishes of chipped enamel, or heavy crockery.

“Must be three or four hundred,” Ledbetter said, “about average for this time of day, and this season.”

He pointed. “Look at ’em.” His disgust was evident. “Ain’t one in ten knows what he’s after or would know a color if they saw it. They’ll spend all they bring with them, and here or there a few will make a little. Most of them will jump at the chance to move on to any other boom camp, always ready to believe the pot of gold is right over yonder, but they want to stumble over it, not work for it. Most of them are looking for something easy, something to find or steal, or what’s offered on a platter.”

“There’s good men among them,” Trevallion said.

“Aye. That there is.”

“And there are some women over there,” Melissa said.

“They aren’t your kind,” Trevallion replied. “Fight shy of them. If you’re seen with them, you’re likely to be taken for one of them. Just stay away from them.”

“Do you think that’s fair?”

“We’re not talking about what’s fair or unfair. We’re talking realities. Some of those women would lend you their last dollar or nurse you if you were sick, but there’s others would steal the fillings from your teeth or give you a knife in the ribs for what’s in your pockets.”

The area was incredibly dirty. Horses and mules were tied to brush or trees, others were picketed. Here and there a wagon was drawn up and all the spaces between were crowded with men in every possible costume. Coonskin caps, Mexican sombreros, old Army hats or caps, silk hats, beaver hats, and battered woolen hats…men in frock coats, sailor’s jackets, fringed buckskin, and homespun.

There were men from all the world, sailors who had deserted their ships, adventurers, drifters, ne’er-do-wells, and mining men. Men who had worked the Mother Lode or were rebounding from the disaster on the Frazier River.

A crude bar, a plank laid across barrel-tops, was lined three deep with men practicing for the saloons of Washoe. Several monte games were going, and at one of them somebody asked, “What’s Washoe?”

“It’s a place, a place where the mines are. It’s a lake, too, named for a tribe of Indians.”

“Indians? You mean there’s real
Indians?
”

“Aplenty. Take your hair, too, given a chance.”

“Naw,” somebody interrupted. “Rob you, maybe. Even kill you, but these Injuns don’t take hair.”

A burly man with unshaven cheeks and a ragged beard as well as foodstains on his checkered vest pushed up to Trevallion. “Mister, I’ve got a claim I can let you have for the right price.” With a glance to left and right he leaned closer, his breath smelling of whiskey. “This here’s a steal for the right man. I won’t sell to just anybody, but you look the right sort.” He coughed effectively. “I’m a sick man. Located the best claim on the lode but can’t stand the weather. Got to get back to the coast. Like leavin’ my own private mint, it is. I’ve been lookin’ for just the right man—”

“Keep looking,” Trevallion said, brushing by.

The man swore bitterly, then reached for Melissa. “Ma’am, I tell you this here—”

“Leave her alone,” Trevallion said.

The man’s eyes turned mean. “Listen, mister—”

“The lady is with me,” Trevallion said.

“‘Lady’!” The man sneered. “Why, she ain’t no more a—”

Trevallion knocked him down. It was a backhanded blow, almost casual, but the man’s heels flew up and he landed on his back in the mud, lips broken and bloody.

He started to get up but someone hissed, “Stay down, you fool! That’s
Trevallion!
”

Trevallion took Melissa’s elbow and guided her through the crowd. “There’s always somebody who hasn’t learned how to behave.”

He took her to the counter and men, seeing a woman, crowded back and made a place for her.

“Mike?”

The rough-looking man standing over the fire with a long spoon in his hand turned impatiently. When he saw Trevallion he smiled. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Trevallion.” He glanced at Melissa. “What can I do for you?”

“Some grub. Whatever you’ve got. And Mike? Two clean plates.”

Mike chuckled. “Wouldn’t do it for anybody but you, Mr. Trevallion. Why, I’ve fed five, maybe six hundred so far today, and if the pack train doesn’t get here, folks are goin’ hungry tomorrow.”

Taking two plates he sloshed them around in what appeared to be relatively clean water, then polished them with a dry cloth he took from under the counter.

“Beef an’ beans, and there’s some dried apples left.” He glanced at Trevallion. “You two travelin’ alone?”

“We’re with Jim Ledbetter.”

“One o’ the best, Jim is.” Mike heaped the plates. “You prospectin’ or hirin’ out?”

“There’s a place up there I want to look at again, if somebody hasn’t beaten me to it. I thought I’d placer awhile until I can look the situation over.”

Mike glanced around, then in a lower tone. “You be careful. There’s been a man or two askin’ after you. I didn’t much like their looks.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

Mike glanced at Melissa. “Not much up there for a decent woman, nor any place to live.” He filled two mugs with coffee and took them to a table inside his cooking tent. “Sit here,” he said. He looked at Melissa again. “Ma’am? Can you bake? Pies, doughnuts an’ such?”

“I can.”

“That’s it, then. These men can’t get enough of such truck. I’d hire you on m’self but you’d do better on the Washoe. You bake pies an’ you can get whatever you ask for ’em. They’re hungry for home cookin’, sweets, an’ such.”

“All right.”

“You’ll be rich, ma’am. You’ll make more money than if you had some feet in the richest claim on the Comstock.”

“The Comstock?”

“That’s what they call the lode. Named for Ol’ Pancake Comstock who was one of the first on the ground, and a four-flusher if I ever seen one. Claims ever’ thing in sight, but he’s a bluffer an’ a liar to boot.

“The man who knows most about that place and the leads is Ol’ Virginny—when he’s sober. He knows more about minin’ in a minute than all the rest in a year.”

“The Grosch brothers gone?” Trevallion asked.

“You knew them? Well, they’re gone, all right. Dead. One of them drove a pick into his foot, and when blood pizenin’ set in, he wouldn’t let them take it off. He died, and his brother stayed too long nursin’ him and got caught in the Sierra snows. He made it over but was in such bad shape he failed. He died, too.”

“They were good men.”

“That they were. When they were gone, ol’ Comstock busted into their cabin. Claimed they left him in charge and maybe they done so.

“Anyway, he found maps and such, and he crawled all over Gold Canyon an’ Sun Mountain tryin’ to figure out what they meant.

“Trouble was, he didn’t understand any of it. He didn’t know what they’d found or what to do with the maps he had and was scared to take anybody in with him.

“He never did find anything, but any time a newcomer found something, the ol’ buzzard would swoop in an’ lay claim to part of it. I don’t know whether the Grosch brothers found anything or not, but they sure thought they had.”

As Trevallion ate his eyes scanned the crowd. The faces were mostly strange but like faces in all the gold camps. Most of them were the type who crowded in with the first rush, and for a few days they were in all the saloons and brothels, and then somehow they just melted away, disappearing so gradually nobody realized they were gone.

Rumpled and mud-stained, most of them armed, they gulped down their food and headed back for the trail.

“You’ve been here before?” Melissa asked.

“A couple of times. Boom camps are all much the same. The first time I was just a youngster, and after the deserts the Carson River looked like paradise.”

He emptied his cup, glanced at it, and Mike walked over with the pot and filled both their cups. “Ain’t many I’d do that for,” he told Melissa, “but if you’re ever in trouble, Trevallion’s your man.”

He walked away, boots sucking at the mud. Melissa glanced at Trevallion. “He likes you.”

“Known him awhile. Pulled a man off him, once. Another time I staked him when he was on his uppers.”

“I think you’re nice.”

He shook his head. “No, I am not. I think I’m a fair man, but not many take to me, and I’m a loner. I’d seen Mike around, always working, always trying, so when I heard he was broke, I staked him. Mike’s not very smart, and he has no education to speak of, and he’s failed a dozen times, but he always comes up trying. One of these days he’ll make it.”

His eyes strayed to the mules. Ledbetter was tightening cinches, talking to a lean, hard-bitten Arkansawyer, a man dressed far too lightly for the country, but who carried a rifle like it was an extension of himself. He was one of their party.