Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (12 page)

He took them to a table and started reading. Every time he looked up, the librarian was staring at him. Immediately, she'd duck her head and pretend she hadn't been looking.
The womenfolk in Calaveras County sure are friendly
, Longarm thought.

He skimmed through local history without finding out much except that there had never been a frog-jumping contest in the county before Mark Twain made that story up. Some of Bret Harte's tales of the forty-niners, however, turned out to be true. Calaveras had really been a humdinger in the gold rush days. Now it was withering on the vine as the mines played out. People here were raising cows and cutting timber for a living, for the most part, and it was hard-scrabble living at that. The country was pretty enough, but you can't feed scenery to cows and what timber was left was mostly second growth or tough old twisted oaks that had been passed over in the first place. Canyon oak burned well, but it didn't mill worth a damn.

He looked for someone opening a new mine more recently than the Lost Chinaman. He couldn't find one, so there went one good idea. He'd thought some tricky cuss might have thought to sell the stolen high-grade as his own, using a dummy mine as a front. But it didn't pan out. The nearby mine being operated by George Hearst shipped ore of the wrong composition. He intended to stop off at Sheep Ranch on the way back to Manzanita, but it was likely to prove a waste of time.

He cracked open a high school chemistry book and boned up on aqua regia. The book, like everyone else, said it was nasty stuff to spill on your pants and that it dissolved gold. He already knew alkali neutralized acid, so it was easy to see how the test worked. The acid picked up the invisible molecules of gold and they floated around in it until you poured in alkali, which turned the acid to some sort of brine that wouldn't hold the gold in solution any more. So it formed heavy crystals of pure gold and sank to the bottom along with other sludge it wouldn't mix with. Being heavier than lead, the gold settled faster than any other crystals. That accounted for the color he'd seen—the color that hadn't been there when the ore reached Sacramento. The damned book didn't make any mention of the part where the gold disappears without a trace. Once again, the possibilities flitted through his mind. Could he have dozed off? Could he have been knocked out somehow for a spell without his knowing?

It's impossible
, he thought.
But so is stealing a carload of ore out from under a man with a Winchester, damn it!

He walked back over to the desk and asked the librarian if she had any books on magic tricks.

She had a couple, and this time when she climbed the ladder he got to see even more of her legs. He wondered if she was doing that on purpose, and decided not to find out.

He sat down and started reading about false bottoms, mirrors, black silk strings, and such. He found out how to make a rabbit come out of his hat, but not a clue to the shell game the high-graders had played with at least four ore cars, with him watching.

He was about to give up when he stopped to go back over a paragraph he'd skimmed: “Misdirection is the basis of most good stage magic. It is hard to perform before children because they allow their eyes to wander. Adults can be counted on to keep their eyes fixed where the skilled magician directs them. If one is certain everyone is watching one part of the stage, many things can be done with impunity in full view of the audience. Those watching know they are being tricked, therefore they are so intent on watching the magician's more
obvious
moves that they are oblivious to less subtle happenings, often in plain view.”

Longarm nodded and muttered, “That's for damn sure.”

The librarian smiled over at him and called, “Did you want something else, sir?”

He shook his head and thanked her. She looked disappointed. As he carried the books up to her counter, she asked, “Are you coming to the dance tonight, Marshal?”

He said, “I'd have asked you to save a dance for me if I was, ma'am. But I've got other chores.”

She blushed from her hairline to her lace collar, but grinned like the Cheshire cat. He hoped he had made her day a bit brighter. He thanked her and went out into the bright sunlight.

As he walked out to his gelding, a hard-eyed, thoughtful-looking fellow leaned away from the awning post he'd been holding up with his shoulder and asked, “Are you Longarm?”

“I've been called worse. What's your pleasure, pilgrim?”

“The sheriff wants to see you. Over by the courthouse.”

Longarm nodded and said, “I've been meaning to see him, too. Just lead the way.”

The stranger pointed down the street with his chin, his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, and said, “His office is just past that church steeple yonder. You can't miss it.”

Longarm decided to walk, since it was less than a city block and there was no sense fooling with the gelding's reins twice more than he had to. He nodded and started toward the steeple. Then he remembered he'd ridden in from the other direction, and remembered what he'd seen down the other way. He crabbed sideways, going for his gun as a bullet buzzed through the air he'd just been walking through!

Longarm reversed his direction with a firmly dug-in heel and whirled about, gun in hand, as the man who had tried to set him up fired a second time. The misdirected slug went through the space the gunman had thought Longarm was headed for. Then the deputy fired.

The stranger was apparently not experienced enough to take on an old hand like Longarm. He stood in one place as he pumped lead. Longarm's first round took him just under the belt buckle and folded him up neatly as it knocked him down. Longarm saw that he'd dropped his weapon, so he held his fire and walked slowly back, covering the man he'd shot and keeping wary on all sides. The librarian came out, saw the man lying almost at her feet, and screamed. Other people boiled out of other doorways, ran halfway over, then stopped uncertainly as Longarm stood over the groaning gunslick.

Longarm kicked the man in the ribs to gain his undivided attention and asked, “All right, old son. Who are you working for?”

The gutshot gunman groaned and said, “Fuck you.”

A man wearing a tin star and a worried look came down the center of the dirt street with a shotgun. He saw that Longarm was keeping his six-gun trained in a neighborly fashion at the dirt, so he called out, “What's going on?”

Longarm said, “Don't know. I'm a deputy U.S. marshal and this jasper just tried to shoot me in the back.”

The man came closer, staring down at the wounded gunslick, and said, “He's a stranger to me, too. I'm Sheriff Marvin. My office is just up the street.”

“I know. He told me you wanted to see me, but he pointed the wrong way. I don't know if it was ignorance or a better field of fire for him. Lucky for me I passed your sign riding in and remembered in time to ponder his words.”

The sheriff frowned and said, “I never sent for anybody. Hell, I don't even know you!”

“I figured as much. I'm Custis Long.”

“The one who shot the Calico Kid and his gang? Jesus, I want to buy you a drink, son!”

“I'll buy you one too, as soon as we figure out why this son of a bitch was gunning for me.”

He kicked the downed man again as the sheriff walked over and picked up the revolver the man had dropped in the dust. He said, “Sonny, if you ain't aiming to die, you'd best tell me the facts of life and I'll see about a doctor.”

The gunslick groaned and said, “Stuff it up your ass, lawman.”

Longarm said, “Suit yourself, but it's going to smart like hell when the first shock wears off.”

A man wearing a white apron had been watching and listening from the crowd. He came forward and said, “I served him in my saloon one night. He said he was with the Calico Kid.”

Sheriff Marvin grinned and said, “There you go, Marshal. He was one of the gang you missed before, but now it looks like you've made a clean sweep of the rascals!”

Longarm swore softly and said, “Damn! I was hoping he was somebody important. I ain't got time to trifle with saddle tramps.”

The sheriff said, “Just the same, you did the county a favor and the drinks are on me.” Marvin pointed to a pair of town loafers and called out, “Luke, you and old Bill drag this skunk over to the jailhouse and send for Doc Cunningham. Mind you don't put him on a bunk. I don't want blood on my furniture.”

Then the sheriff slapped Longarm on the back and, together with the bartender, they crossed over to the saloon, where half the town seemed bent on getting Longarm drunk.

As they bellied up to the bar, Longarm told the sheriff of his misadventures. Marvin knew about the high-grading over in Manzanita, but had no suggestions. The only thing Longarm learned was that he might owe other local lawmen an apology or two. Both the sheriff's department and the California marshals had gone over much the same ground before abandoning the case as embarrassing as well as impossible to crack. His notion of guarding the train from loading to delivery had been tried before, with the same results.

Longarm said, “We've missed something. I was just reading about the way magicians trick folks. The high-graders are doing something we just ain't thought of.”

Marvin said, “Hell, tell me something I don't know! You know what they did to me? It was purely spooky. I had a man watching every likely suspect—and I had a long list, too. I put two deputies aboard the cars; I staked out every Mex who works at the mine; I threw a cordon around the whole durned spread, then sat on MacLeod's porch with my own gun handy till the train pulled out with a load of ore. None of us saw even a pack rat near that ore. But it got stole just the same. Ain't that a bitch?”

Longarm nodded, his lips twisted in a wry smile. “Yep. I know the feeling. How come you gave up, though?”

“Hell, Marshal, it's an election year, and it gets tedious looking like an idiot. Besides, I only have so many men and it's a big county. While we were wasting time watching the Lost Chinaman, some rascals ran off thirty head of cattle up by Murphy. When they told me the government was sending in a man, I just thanked the Lord and handed it back to you folks.”

Longarm regarded the sheriff for a moment, then downed his shot of Maryland rye in one throw. “I see,” he said. “Well, I've only got one man. Me. Old Lovejoy over in Manzanita is a crook, and—”

Marvin cut in, “He's not a crook. Just dumb. I heard about the set-to you had with him. The way I hear tell, the marshals in Sacramento were a mite peeved at the government for not trusting them.”

As the bartender poured him another shot, Longarm asked, “What can you tell me about George Hearst, over at Sheep Ranch?”

Marvin frowned. “Nothing. Hearst just owns that mine and a lot of others. He's a big hoorah down in Frisco and over in Virginia City circles. He don't dig his gold personally.”

“What about the folks working for him, then?”

Marvin sipped his beer and said, “Eye-talians. A whole colony of Eye-talians who come over the mountains together from some town in Italy. They talk funny, but they never give us no trouble. I know what you might suspicion, but it won't wash. There's only one mule track between Sheep Ranch and Manzanita, and we been over it again and again looking for sign. No freight wagons could make it, even empty. Besides, the Sheep Ranch ore is another kind of rock.”

Longarm shrugged and said, “I'll have a look-see anyway. Was that mining engineer, Ralph Baxter, one of the folks you had staked out when it was your turn to look foolish?”

Marvin shook his head and said, “He hadn't come up here yet. He wasn't in the county, as far as I know, when the robberies first started.”

Longarm grunted, “He's here now, and he's offered a million for Lost Chinaman.”

The sheriff's mouth fell open. “Jesus, I'd take it if I was MacLeod. He ain't making anything on the mine now, the way they've been robbing him. It's a wonder anybody wants to buy it at any price. There's no way to show a profit till we find out who's high-grading it, and make the rascals stop!”

Longarm nodded and said, “Yeah. Makes you wonder if Baxter thinks he can stop it any time he wants to, doesn't it?”

“Hot damn! You reckon that prissy dude is behind all this?”

“It's sure starting to look that way. On the other hand, some slick son of a bitch might just be wanting it to look that way. I'll know better when I catch him.” Longarm tossed back his drink, thanked the sheriff for his hospitality, and strode out through the batwings into the brightness of the street.

Chapter 6

Longarm never found out why they'd named the little town Sheep Ranch. Nobody there knew. There was a billy goat grazing atop the town dump as he rode in, but not a sign of a sheep. Of course, he hadn't seen any disoriented Orientals over at the Lost Chinaman and he doubted that Angel's Camp had been built by celestial beings.

Sheep Ranch had a big frame hotel with a built-in taproom. The miners lived in less imposing accommodations—shacks that lined the single street, which was only a wider stretch of county road. The mine works were surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The fence was posted against trespassers with the additional warning that survivors would be prosecuted. So he went to the hotel bar and told the bartender he wanted to meet up with someone who could answer questions about mining.

The bartender said, “That'd be Herc Romero. He'll be here in a little while. They're about to change shifts.”

Longarm said, “Romero, huh?” and the bartender snapped, “Do you know who the last man who saw Custer alive was?”

“Some Indian scout, wasn't it?” the deputy guessed.

“No. Custer sent his bugler, Trooper Martin, with a message for Terry, just before the Sioux wiped out the Seventh Cav.”

Longarm was puzzled. “That's interesting as hell, but what's the point of your yarn?” he asked.

“Trooper Martin's real name was Martini. He came from Palermo, damn it!”

Longarm blinked, surprised at the intensity of the bartender's response.

“Well, don't get your balls in an uproar. Everybody has to come from some damn place.”

“Palermo is in Sicily. Martini was an Italian. Herc Romero is an Italian. And I, God damn it, am Italian!”

“I don't aim to dispute your words, old son. I just don't savvy what you're getting at,” Longarm said, pushing his hat back from his forehead.

Slightly mollified, the bartender said, “My folks came across the prairies and deserts in a covered wagon. Everybody seems to think that's funny as hell. You Irishmen weren't the only people who won the West, you know.”

“That's for damn sure,” Longarm agreed, “but I ain't Irish. Ain't an Indian, either, and they were here before damn near anybody else.”

The bartender nodded and said, “Just wanted to set the record straight. They buried a Yankee over in Dorado for calling somebody a dago last year. Folks in this part of the county are just as Western and mean as anybody else.”

Two men came through the swinging doors and the bartender called out, “Hey, Herc. Lawman here wants to talk with you. He sounds like he's all right.”

Herc Romero was a bearish man of about forty with a red bandanna around his neck and rock flour in his hair. He came over to Longarm and offered his hand. He said, “I'll drink with you, but I'm wore out answering questions about the Lost Chinaman. I've never seen the damned mine.”

The deputy smiled amicably. “I'll take your word for it. But Kevin MacLeod over there said someone working for the same boss as you rode over for a look-see a while back. MacLeod said he took the Hearst man through his diggings. Do you have any idea who it might have been?”

Romero shook his head and said, “Nobody working under me. The way I hear it, our ore is higher grade, and even that's not anything to get excited about. The Mother Lode is playing out. We'll be shutting down here in just a few more years.”

Longarm frowned, wondering who in thunder
had
visited MacLeod. But he knew Romero couldn't—or wouldn't—tell him. So he asked, “If I was to ask you, would you ride over there with me right now?”

The foreman considered this briefly, then said, “Maybe. If you can give me two good reasons.”

“One reason is that you ain't on duty,” the lawman offered.

“My wife's expecting me for supper.”

“The second is that you'll be helping the U.S. government. I want a man I can trust to have a look at a few things over there for me.”

Romero smiled and asked, “How do you know you can trust me? You never met me before.”

Longarm chuckled. “Sure I have. You've been married up with the same gal for nigh twenty years, you were cited for bravery in the Battle of Cold Harbor, and you've never been sued or arrested since you stole those watermelons when you were twelve.”

Romero and his friend looked startled, and the mine foreman asked, “How in hell did you find out so much in the short time you've been here?”

Longarm said, “I didn't find it out here. I've been over to the county seat. I've read your whole record.”

“Damn it, I don't have no record!” Romero protested.

“Sure you do,” Longarm said. “Everybody does. Every time a man gets hitched, serves his country, or gets dragged before a judge for any reason whatsoever, there's a record kept. Since you've lived in this county most of your life, except for five years in the War, I know all I need to about you. I need an honest man to back my next play, too. Will you do it?”

The bartender said, “I'll be damned, you never told us you got a medal in the War, Herc.”

The foreman shrugged and said, “It wasn't much. What do you want me to do over at the Lost Chinaman, Deputy?”

“Answer questions as I think them up. I'm going through the diggings from top to bottom and I need a hard-rock mining man I can trust as a guide.”

Romero nodded and said, “You got one. Just let me tell my woman. Do you suppose I'm going to need a gun?”

Longarm said, “Don't know. If you've got one, you'd best bring it along. The folks we're after are pretty slick, and they might start playing rough if we get near pay dirt.”

*   *   *

Kevin MacLeod's wife said her husband had gone down to Sacramento to see about another bank loan. But Tico Vallejo said he'd show Longarm and Romero through the mine.

As they moved down the gentle slope inside the entrance, walking between the tracks with Vallejo holding a lantern, Longarm held back and let the two other men talk. He knew Romero was likely to ask more sensible questions about the operation than he was. So he just listened.

Vallejo seemed friendly and at ease with the burly Italian. Romero was friendly too, but he'd been filled in during the ride over, and was asking more questions than the usual guided tour might call for.

Romero rapped a pit prop with a knuckle and asked, “How come you have live oak instead of cedar, Tico? Didn't you know oak gives all at once, without warning?”

“I think some of these tunnels were dug before my time. The hills hereabouts are thick with oak. Isn't oak stronger than cedar?”

“Sure it is, but cedar groans like a sick cat for at least a few minutes before it gives. If this mountain ever decides to sit down on you boys over here, it'll happen with no warning.”

Vallejo looked morosely up at the hanging wall and said, “Well, we're solid rock, and it's lasted this long.”

Romero grunted, “It always lasts
this
long. By the time you can say it lasted
that
long, it's too late. You folks are operating on a shoestring over here!”

Vallejo nodded and said, “There's no argument about that, Herc. Señor MacLeod says if the bank turns down his application for another loan he's going to have to close or sell out.”

A workman was leading a burro hitched to a little ore car up the slope toward them, and the three men squeezed back against the wall to let it pass. Longarm reached out and snagged a lump of rock from the cart, but Vallejo laughed and said, “Save yourself the trouble. It's overburden.”

Romero started to explain, “You have to dig ten tons of nothing much to get at a ton of high-grade ore,” but Longarm cut him short, saying, “I've been in a few mines before.”

Vallejo led them farther down the slope to a point where the main shaft ended in a lopsided T. As they turned to the left, Romero ran a finger along the standing wall and said, “Metamorphic quartz, sure enough. I can see where they followed the vein as she pinched out.”

Vallejo said, “It opens up again a bit farther, on. We're almost there.”

He held his lantern high as they approached a wet dead end of glittering rock. Though hardly a geologist, Longarm could see how the pinkish, glassy quartz ran in wavy bands through darker, duller rock. He asked, “What are the middlings—quartzite?”

Vallejo sighed, “Yes, it's tough as a bitch to shatter. Takes twice as much dynamite to shave the face as it ought to.”

Longarm could see the shallow craters from the last blast running in neat rows across the mine face like the stars in the American flag. Romero bent to pick up a loose lump of quartz and put it in his pocket.

Longarm followed suit with another sample, holding it up to the flickering light of Vallejo's lantern before putting it in his pocket. If there was gold in it, it couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Romero asked Vallejo for the lantern and held it close to the wet rock face. He ran his free hand over the rock and tasted his fingertips. He grimaced and said, “Metallic, all right. Sulfur, too. Are there any hot springs in the neighborhood, Vallejo?”

The Mexican shook his head and replied, “Not that I know of. Why?”

Romero said, “If the temperature starts rising down here, run like hell. You might be digging your way into a hot spring.”

Vallejo muttered, “
Madre!
” but before they could get into a geology lesson, Longarm asked Romero, “What do you think, Herc?”

Romero said, “Looks like a gold mine. Tastes like a gold mine. I'll know better in a minute.”

He squatted on an empty dynamite box and took a pocket-size kit from his loose wool trousers. He uncorked a small bottle, placed a shallow glass dish on one knee, held his ore sample over it with one hand, and dribbled some acid over the sample from a thin glass tube he had dipped in the bottle. As he corked the little vial of acid and opened another small bottle, Longarm observed, “That's a right cunning little outfit. Do you carry it all the time?”

“Sure,” Romero replied, “when I'm working. It gets tedious digging worthless rock, and all this durned quartz looks the same.”

“They say you have another kind of quartz over at Sheep Ranch,” Longarm said.

Romero shook his head. “A deeper shade, is all. Ours has more iron in it. Gold is gold no matter what the rest looks like.”

Romero dripped alkali into the little basin, put the glass tube away, and swished the dish around like a tiny prospector's pan. He asked Vallejo to hold the light closer. Then he held the dish up, peered at the muddy contents, and nodded. “Medium-high grade. Our stuff at Sheep Ranch is richer, but this rock's well worth digging.”

Vallejo said, “I don't understand what you're trying to prove, Señor Longarm. We have told you from the first we were digging gold ore here.”

Longarm nodded and said, “Just wanted to be sure.”

The Mexican insisted, “Sure of what? Why on earth would we be working so hard if there was nothing down here worth our efforts?”

Longarm held up a cautioning hand. “I never said I doubted anyone's word, Vallejo, but somebody is tricking the shit out of us and I'm eliminating as many angles as I can think of.”

“Damn it,” Vallejo said, “we are digging real gold and loading real gold and shipping real gold. You were the one who was supposed to be guarding it. None of my crew were near you when you let the high-graders steal it!”

Longarm said placatingly, “Now don't get your balls in an uproar. If you weren't so sensitive you'd see we just gave you and your men an alibi.”

Vallejo simmered down and said sheepishly, “Oh.”

Longarm explained. “That's how I aim to find our culprit—by figuring out who
didn't
do it, till I whittle down to the only ones who
could
have,” He ticked off possibilities on the fingers of his large, calloused hand. “So far, I know
I
never stole the gold. I don't think Herc stole it, and it looks like you and your men are home free.”

Vallejo sighed deeply and nodded, “I understand. Forgive my outburst. One becomes a bit sensitive after being called a greaser a few times. Who else have you eliminated from your list of suspects?”

“Nobody. And there's a lot of folks in Calaveras County, too. Let's go topside. Maybe I can start crossing off a few more names.”

Vallejo led the way with the lantern and they followed him back to the main shaft. Romero asked where the other miners were. The Mexican explained that the three of them had come down at the end of the shift. He added, “We are only working one shift a day now. Señor MacLeod is having difficulty raising more working capital.”

Romero said, “I can see you're running a shoestring mine with semiskilled labor, no offense intended. If I was MacLeod, I'd sell out. He sounds like a stubborn cuss.”

Vallejo said, “He is. This mine means much to him. He says he put a lot of time and effort into finding his first decent strike and has no intention of letting others get rich from it.”

They started up the slope. Vallejo was in the lead, with Romero in the middle and Longarm bringing up the rear. Longarm neither heard nor felt anything unusual until Romero suddenly whirled around and pushed him, yelling, “Run! Run like hell, and cut around the corner!”

Wondering why, but willing to learn, Longarm tore after Romero as the burly Italian raced down the pitch-blackness of the shaft. He could hear it now. Something was chasing them!

He reached the end of the entrance shaft in the darkness and ran full-tilt into the hard, wet standing wall. A hand reached out and hauled him into the side tunnel as an ore car, with an explosive, earth-shaking crash, slammed into the space he'd just been occupying. Longarm was hit in the back with a chunk of flying rock. A wooden plank slapped him across the behind like an initiation paddle wielded by a school bully who'd eaten gunpowder for breakfast. Longarm and Romero sprawled together on the sloping, muddy floor as things tinkled and shuddered into dead silence. Then Longarm got off Romero and helped him up, saying, “Thanks. You have damn good ears!”