Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (10 page)

“Iron pyrite? Don't be inane. Fool's gold settles a rusty red in the tube. I hope you're satisfied?”

Longarm took out another lump and said, “I will be, once you test them all. I gathered hunks from all over.”

Baxter sighed and went back to work. It took him a half hour to satisfy Longarm, but in the end the deputy nodded at MacLeod and said, “I owe you an apology, sir. I'll allow that what you've just loaded must be the real thing.”

MacLeod grinned boyishly and answered, “Oh, I don't know. I could have put a few chunks of pay dirt in with the dross to fool you.”

Longarm said, “I know. That's why I sampled from both cars. To salt the load that rich, you'd have had to put enough aboard to make it worth shipping. So let's see if we can get those cars through to the mill.”

MacLeod said, “We're shipping it in the morning. I suppose you want to come back early to ride herd on it?”

Longarm shook his head and said, “Nope. I'm staying put. I'm going out right now to climb aboard with my Winchester. Then I ain't getting down until the train reaches the Big Valley.”

“Longarm, you'll freeze out there and it's not yet ten o'clock,” MacLeod said.

“I never said I hankered to be comfortable. I just said I aim to watch it from this moment on. We just made sure the gold's aboard, and this time, by thunder, it's
staying
aboard unless somebody shoots me right off the top of it.”

*   *   *

Kevin MacLeod had been right, but Longarm had already learned the hard way how cold the Sierra nights could be. The Mexican crew knocked off before midnight and, at Longarm's suggestion, took the torches with them. He didn't want to sit up on the piled ore like a big-assed bird outlined in torchlight to anyone in the surrounding brush. Vallejo had explained that most of the miners went home to their local farms downslope. The foreman and a couple of men who usually took turns as night watchmen stayed in a shack near the mine entrance on the other side of the tipple. Longarm had told them to stay well clear of his stakeout. He was sitting on the uncomfortable, jagged lumps of ore with his feet braced against the bulkhead of the rear car and the Winchester across his thighs. It would be a hell of a mistake for anyone to wander into range unless they had something serious in mind.

He had a round in the chamber, so he could fire without levering the action. He was dying for a smoke, and knew he'd want it even more before the sun rose, but you could see the lit end of a cheroot for almost a country mile on a moonless night in air as clear as this. The unwinking stars hung above him almost close enough to brush his hat, it seemed, as the planet slowly turned under him. The high country was the place to spend a night if one admired stars. The Milky Way arched overhead from horizon to horizon, and every few minutes there would be another sparkle of movement in the silent sky as another meteor burned itself to nothing.

The crickets serenaded him for the first hour or so, then it got too cold for them and they faded away to wherever crickets go between songs. It became so quiet he could hear his own pulse in his ears, and once he heard a hoot owl that he judged to be about a quarter of a mile away. Longarm shifted his weight, and the crunch of the glassy rock he sat on was almost loud enough to make him jump. Anyone trying to lift so much as a single lump from either car would be heard.

He'd climb up in the loading tipple before the crew left, to make certain it was empty. He'd noticed that the ladder rungs squeaked under his weight at the time, so he figured he could ignore the black mass he could just make out against the stars. There were no trees or bushes close to the track, and the open, dusty ground all around was light enough to outline anyone moving sneakily across it. He couldn't see how anyone could sneak anywhere near him, and since nobody did, his watch became as tedious as hell.

Longarm was an active man, and the dull routine that makes up so large a part of a lawman's life was hard to take. But like a good soldier, a good lawman knows that the secret is in lasting as long as most people can, then lasting just a minute more. The average criminal, like the average human being, lives by an average clock. Few crooks he'd met up with had been men of infinite patience. Men who are used to dull routine seldom take to a life of crime. The whole idea of being a crook is
easy
money.

Longarm knew most night prowlers made their moves between three and four in the morning, when most of the world would be sound asleep. But three o'clock came and went and a million years later it was four, and nothing happened.

Longarm thought about that. The high-graders had to be watching for another shipment. Anyone on a distant ridge could tell just by looking when the ore cars were loaded. But he'd climbed up here with the lights out. If they knew he was staked out, someone had told them.

Sylvia and her brother had left hours ago, of course. The MacLeods hadn't stirred from their cabin at all, and there were no wires running from the mine to anywhere else. Only the foreman and the few workers sleeping on the site knew he'd planned to guard the shipment. He'd asked Vallejo not to gossip about it much. On the other hand, every man who had been there that night knew he was law and might have figured out what he was up to. There were just too many suspects to work with right now. He could see that he was going to have to start whittling them down one at a time, and that meant more dull routine that could take weeks. He estimated that there were at least a dozen men in the Mexican crew. His job would be a lot easier if the high-graders just came out of the woods for a good old-fashioned fight.

Another million years dragged slowly by. The ice age came and went, and mankind had invented fire and built the pyramids by the time the sky grew lighter in the east. By the time Columbus discovered America, the birds were sassing him from the treeline and he started making out colors as well as the forms of daybreak. Off in the distance he heard a train whistle, and a few minutes later Vallejo came down from the bunkhouse with a pot of coffee and a tin cup. He handed them up to Longarm and asked if anything had happened. Longarm poured himself some coffee and said, “Nope. I didn't even see the ghost of Joaquin Murietta.”

Vallejo laughed and said, “You have heard of him, eh? I was only a child when he held up the stage over near Angel's Camp. At least, they say he held up that stage. Joaquin was very mysterious, even when he was alive. There are a dozen versions of who he was and what he did. Our people's stories have him all over the state at the same moment. There are even those who say he never existed.”

Longarm sipped some coffee and said, “Well, they shot somebody they said was him, down in Kern County. Was that whistle I just heard what I hope it was?”

Vallejo nodded and said, “Yes. It will be here any minute.”

Kevin MacLeod came down from the cabin with a Henry rifle cradled in an elbow and wearing a worried smile. As he joined them, Longarm said, “No, they didn't shoot me and steal this ore I'm sitting on.”

MacLeod looked relieved and said, “Thank God, I'm riding down the line with you this morning. If this shipment doesn't get through, I'm going to be in a real fix.”

He climbed up beside Longarm and explained, “I've barely got enough money left to meet my next payroll. I don't want to sell out to that damned Baxter, but he's got me by the short hairs and he knows it.”

Longarm nodded, and asked, “Is he the only one who's made an offer?”

“For the mine? Yes. I've had a few ridiculous offers for the property, of course. I've filed on a full section of land, and apparently some of the local rancheros feel I'm sitting on enough grass to matter.”

Longarm swept a thoughtful eye over the surrounding country. The mining claim was in rolling parkland. Most of the bigger trees had been cut long ago for pit props and lumber. The grazing looked like tolerable grass, but nothing to get excited about. He asked, “Do you pump your water, or is there a running spring on the spread?”

MacLeod said, “I thought of the water rights. I doubt if anyone's that serious about the brook cutting across one corner of the place, over beyond our cabin. These hills are well watered all around. Besides, the only serious offer was from Baxter's syndicate.”

Before they could go into it at length, the narrow-gauge locomotive backed into view, the fireman waving to them from the cab. Longarm watched with interest as the little engine eased into the ore cars with a bump and they coupled up. The engineer called back, “Are you boys riding shotgun?” When Longarm nodded, he said, “Let's get cracking, then. I got a timetable to think about.” He tooted his whistle and they started up with a jerk as Vallejo and another Mexican who'd just come down from the quarters waved goodbye.

Longarm saw MacLeod's wife waving at them from the cabin door and put a finger to his hat brim as her husband waved back. And then the ore train was in the trees around the bend and picking up speed.

The trip down the line was uneventful. The narrow-gauge tracks wound down the slopes in a series of hairpin curves. The train ducked through a few cuts and over a dozen bridges. Longarm and MacLeod sat back to back, rifles at the ready. But nothing seemed interested in them this morning. Longarm watched for an unmapped rail siding. He couldn't spot any. They crossed wagon traces where a Conestoga could move off with maybe a ton or so of ore, but there was no traffic on the dusty roads at this hour. They passed farms where kids ran over to the fence line to wave at them, and they chuffed through a couple of sleepy mountain towns where nobody paid any attention at all. Had he been asked to drive the train, Longarm would not have held the throttle as wide as the engineer did. But while the speed around a few drop-off curves was a bit hair-raising, it eliminated some possibilities from his mind. If they didn't get through this time, he was going to have to consider Joaquin Murietta's ghost as a suspect.

They got through. The train reached the flats of the Big Valley and tore out across it at thirty miles an hour. In what seemed no time at all they pulled into the yards behind a string of big wooden buildings. Even before the wheels stopped clicking under him, Longarm could feel the pulsing of the earth being pounded by the machinery of the stamping mills. They'd stopped near a tall chimney belching black smoke into the blue sky, and the sounds made by tortured rock set his teeth on edge.

A man came out on the platform with a sheaf of papers and waved up at them, shouting, “You from Lost Chinaman?”

When MacLeod nodded, the mill supervisor yelled, “Got to assay you before you unload. The boss is sore as hell about the worthless stuff you've been gumming up our machinery with!”

As he and Longarm climbed down, MacLeod explained that they'd come through with real ore this time. But the mill operator took random samples anyway and they followed him inside.

The noise wasn't quite as bad in there, but they still had to shout at one another to be heard, and Longarm wondered how the workers here could stand it day after day. Another man took the ore samples to a workbench and fed them into what looked like a big coffee grinder, operated by a leather belt feeding through the wall. The little crusher started chewing gritty quartz with a noise that made the boards tingle under their feet. The lab worker didn't seem to mind. He slid a tray filled with fine powder out from under the assay mill and put some in a glass jar. He poured aqua regia in as Longarm and the others watched. He seemed to follow the same routine Baxter had, but on a bigger scale.

After a time he shook his head and shouted above the general din, “Nothing! Not a sign of color! What the hell are you digging up there, MacLeod, a well?”

Kevin MacLeod paled and gasped, “Oh, shit! Not again!” He whirled on Longarm and added, “God damn you! You were supposed to be watching!”

At the assayer's words, Longarm had nearly bitten through the cheroot he was smoking. “I
was
watching!” he told MacLeod. “The stuff never left my sight!”

“But God damn it, it was gold ore when we loaded it!”

Longarm said, “I know. I saw the color myself.” He scratched the back of his neck vigorously, then headed for the door. MacLeod followed him outside, bleating, “Where are you going? We have to figure this out!”

Longarm crossed the platform, picked out a few random samples of ore, and put them in his pocket, saying, “I've got to get on into town. I figure it's a half hour's walk if I don't shilly-shally.”

“Can I come with you? Where are you going?”

“U.S. assay office. It's near the state house about two miles from here. You can come if you've a mind to.”

“What about my ore?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Longarm asked rhetorically. “If I were you I'd sit tight right here and make sure it's all there when I come back.”

“But they just told us it's worthless rock!” MacLeod protested.

“I know. I heard them. I'm aiming to get an opinion from somebody else.”

MacLeod opened his mouth to ask something, then blinked and lowered his voice to say, “Jesus! I never thought of that! I've delivered these people fourteen loads and never gotten paid for one of them!”

Longarm nodded grimly and said, “That's as good a reason as I can think of for asking Uncle Sam, personal, who's been lying. Because someone has been lying like a rug!”

*   *   *

It proved to be a long, dusty walk to a dead end. The men at the government assay office tested the samples Longarm brought them and came up with the same results. The federal assayer held his test tube up to the light and said, “It's the Mother Lode formation all right, but there's not enough gold in it to matter.”

Longarm asked, “Is there any gold at all?” and the lab worker explained, “There's
some
gold in seawater. Probably in you and me. But you don't get rich processing anything but ore. It's simple economics. You have to spend less getting gold out of something than the gold is worth. Every few weeks some idiot comes running in here with a rock he's found somewhere and I have to go over it all again. There's still plenty of gold in the Mother Lode, but it's spread out between hell and breakfast. A pebble with a speck of color in it doesn't mean you have a strike. The metal has to be in one place before you can spend it. If you spend a thousand dollars refining a hundred dollars worth of gold, you're going to wind up busted. Folks keep finding that out the hard way, all over the West. Go down to skid row and you'll find a hundred old prospectors mumbling in their beards about a claim they have out in some neck of the woods, if only someone would grubstake them. The samples they'll show you have real color, too. A dollar's worth of color in a fist-sized rock makes a pretty paperweight.”