Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

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