Flames of silver, p.19
Flames of Silver, page 19
“A ton? Oh, you’re joshing me. There’s no way a ton of dynamite’ll be needed for the last blast or two.” The man pushed past Mason and pointed downhill. “There’s Henry and a couple others. If you want help, ask him.”
“Thanks,” Mason said, stepping around and starting downhill. He felt the man’s eyes on him, but when he looked back, the man had gone into the mine. If he found Emma Longview and Slick and mentioned someone sent for more explosive, the game would be over. Mason had to hope that Slick was taking his time. That’d hold questions at bay.
Halfway to the camp, Mason stepped away from the road and cut across the barren mountainside. He tried to figure out where he was by finding stars, but a thick layer of clouds had moved in, obscuring the Big Dipper and Pole star. He walked until his knees turned wobbly, then he made a right and slipped and slid downhill to the trail. He wasn’t sure where he had left Victoria. Finding the mare took another ten minutes. Every passing second made him more nervous.
Slick or Emma or something he had said or done would betray him if he lingered too long. Whatever they were up to wasn’t legal. The sooner he hightailed it, the more likely he was to see the warm sun of a new day.
Victoria’s whinny led him to his horse. He patted the mare’s neck, then mounted quickly and turned away from the mine, backtracking to a place where the winding road over the hill guided him to Virginia City.
He turned over everything he had seen and heard at the mine, but the memory of Emma and her beau kept intruding. No matter how he tried to concentrate on what the gang accomplished digging such a shaft into the hill, the two lovers’ more titillating goings-on derailed his thoughts. What bothered him most was how he had fallen for the lovely brunette. He had thought she was interested in him. She had even approached him before he became a fireman.
“Using me, that’s all. She wanted to know how to best blow the granite reef.”
He looked up suddenly and went cold all over.
Four riders blocked the path.
“What’s this about blowing something up?” The question cut through the cold, still night and straight into Mason’s heart. He had run into more of Emma’s gang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Run. Fight. Morgan Mason had been faced with the same decision repeatedly. He went with what had worked for him before. Rather than slapping leather or running, he walked his horse forward and touched the brim of his bowler.
“Evening, gents. Or should I say good morning?” He guided Victoria off the trail for the men to pass. They didn’t budge.
“What’re you doing out here?”
“I’m heading into town,” he said slowly. It took all his courage to keep the quaver from his words. His mouth felt like the inside of a bale of cotton, and if he hadn’t gripped the saddle horn so tightly, his hand would have shook like he had the palsy.
“Who are you?” demanded another of the riders.
“I was just delivering a report.”
“Who’d you give it to?” Two of the men reached for their sidearms. The other two sat ramrod straight. The one doing all the speaking sounded like their boss.
“You’re mighty curious. I don’t know any of you. Does Slick know you?” Dropping the hawk-nosed man’s name caused them to exchange looks.
“You take this supposed report to him? To Slick?”
“Of course not. Emma wanted it. Work in the mine was at a standstill until she saw it.” Mason waited. The men were wavering now. He put as much exasperation in his voice as he could muster. “They hit a granite reef with high tensile strength. The assay report gave the mechanical strength she needed to know how best to blast through it.”
“If you gave her the report, why are you heading into town?”
Mason reached for his pocket. Three of the men whipped out their smoke wagons, ready to shoot. The leader held up his hand to keep them from filling Mason full of lead.
“Here,” Mason said, holding up a handful of rocky debris he had taken from the mine. “This’ll be the last time Emma needs a report. The last time until . . .” He let his words trail off, hoping the leader finished the sentence for him.
His luck was running high, but not that high.
“Be sure to get back real quick. We’ll need every hand we can drum up.”
Mason grunted, not trusting himself to make a coherent reply. He tapped Victoria’s flanks and rode past the riders. He imagined eyes boring into him, but when the trail took a small dogleg, he glanced back in their direction. They had ridden on to the mine. Mason let out a breath and enjoyed the feel of fresh air gusting back when he sucked in a deep breath. His luck was still good. Only he began to think of it as something else. He had bluffed his way past the gunmen who’d kill him if they thought for an instant he wasn’t one of them. Only Emma recruiting so many men who didn’t know one another had saved him.
He urged Victoria to greater speed, though it was dangerous in the dark. Putting as much distance as possible between him and the mine mattered now if the men compared encounters and someone asked who he was. If they described him, would Emma recognize him and send Slick back to Virginia City to kill him?
Mason looked down and realized he wore the suspenders and Fire Brigade No. 1 brass buckle. None of the men at the mine had noticed. Or if they had, they hadn’t commented. It went a ways toward identifying him. There weren’t that many firemen in town. All they needed to do was loiter around the fire stations until he was identified.
He laughed aloud. They wouldn’t do that, and it had nothing to do with luck. Whatever their scheme, it was coming to a climax. That meant it had something to do with the silver shipment. This was Thursday, and the wagon train was leaving as soon on Monday as the bars from the bank vault could be loaded. He didn’t know when the time lock opened, but it was probably not more than a half hour before the usual bank hours.
Victoria found the road leading over the hill back to Virginia City before he spotted it. Mason rubbed his eyes. He was half-asleep now. He gave the mare her head and tried not to fall out of the saddle as he dozed. When they reached the ridge overlooking Virginia City, he snapped awake.
He rubbed his eyes some more. The blur faded. He fixed on a small fire burning at the base of the town. He thought he heard faint fire bells ringing out their alarm, but the distance was too great to be sure. As he worked his way down the road, the fire disappeared. The Fire Drake Brigade had responded; it was close to their station. He sent good wishes outward that Jasper Jessup wasn’t injured. Even the smallest of fires was dangerous—deadly.
Mason rode to the marshal’s office. The door stood ajar, letting him peek inside. Marshal Benteen slept at his desk, head on crossed arms. A deputy Mason didn’t recognize cleaned his six-shooter. He considered waking the lawman since the deputy wasn’t inclined to listen to his tall tale, then he rode on.
What was there to tell the marshal? Some miners had eaten loco weed and worked to drive a shaft into a mountain without a hint of silver? That they were a gang of road agents fixing to hijack one of the silver wagons? Or maybe there was a bigger ambition. The shaft was long enough to hide all the wagons. If the gang ambushed the guards, and some of the guards were in cahoots, all the wagons could be driven into the mine.
Mason frowned as his tired brain worked on that. Something was wrong with the idea. Then he remembered the size of the mine wasn’t enough to drive wagons in. He wasn’t the tallest man in the world, and the ceiling had brushed the top of his hat in places. Even lifting the wagon bed from the wheels, there wasn’t clearance enough to hide stolen wains.
He needed sleep, but the sun was poking up in the distance. Letting Captain Delahunt chew him out for missing his fire watch seemed less attractive than telling Blue Dirt Duggan that the silver had been turned over to Mr. Bronfeld and giving the miner the receipt.
Mason’s hand flew to the pocket. Again he had been luckier than he deserved. If the bogus miners had caught him, they’d have found the receipt. With it they might have been able to withdraw Duggan’s silver from the vault. The miner would have been robbed, and it would have been Mason’s fault.
He rode faster. Even if Delahunt was mad at him for shirking his volunteer duty, there was no reason to add the telegrapher to that list. He wanted to keep that job, even if repairing wires wasn’t something he looked forward to doing when winter came whistling down from the higher slopes. Freezing to death on a telegraph pole wasn’t too appealing.
Victoria kept a steady pace all the way out into Calabasas Creek and to the Mira Nell Mine. He hoped Duggan wasn’t inclined to take a potshot at him. The way he felt, he might return fire.
“Duggan!” He dismounted, secured his horse and started the climb to the cabin. “I’ve got your receipt. You in there?” Mason rattled the rickety door. When he heard nothing but rats scurrying around, he shoved the door open just enough to peek in. Then he put his shoulder to the balky door and almost tumbled to the ground when it gave way unexpectedly. “Where have you got off to?”
Duggan wasn’t the greatest housekeeper, but his bed hadn’t been slept in. The blanket was smoothed out as good as possible. There wasn’t a fire laid in the stove. From the amount of ashes, Duggan hadn’t had a fire overnight.
A quick look around convinced him the miner was decked out with all his guns. Mason stepped outside, shielded his eyes against the rising sun and hunted for movement near the mine. He called a couple more times. The only response came from the horses in the shed. Duggan had to be upslope since he hadn’t ridden away.
Since the horses were in their stall and the cabin was more or less neat, it hadn’t been searched and Duggan wasn’t victim of robbers again.
Mason trudged up the hill and slowed when he came to the mine entrance. A single scuffed boot poked out from deeper in the mine.
“Duggan!” He ran to kneel beside the prostrate miner. “What happened?” He rolled him over. With a trembling hand, he pressed his palm into the man’s forehead. “You’re burning up with fever. What’s happened?”
Duggan’s eyelids fluttered, and he peered up. His cracked lips moved. Mason bent lower to hear.
“Too hot. Can’t see good. Eyes ain’t workin’ right. I tried to go to work. Fell.”
Duggan shivered uncontrollably.
“Were you up here all night?” Mason got his arm around razor-thin shoulders and sat Duggan up.
“You deliver my silver? Is it on its way to San Fran?”
“I’ve got the receipt in my pocket. Come on, can you stand?” Mason quickly found out the answer. Duggan tried and collapsed. Wrestling the miner down the hill turned out to be easier than he thought. The once-huge Duggan was so skinny if he turned sideways he’d disappear.
When Mason dropped Duggan onto his bed, the old man heaved a deep shuddery sigh and lay deathly still. Frightened that Duggan had died on him, Mason put his finger under the bulbous nose. A ragged, hot gust came out often enough to let him sit beside the bed and feel some assurance he was still alive. He put his hand on the wrinkled forehead. If anything, Duggan felt hotter than up in the mine.
Mason began taking off the gun belts and bandoliers and laid them aside before covering the frail man with a blanket. He applied a cold compress to his forehead and tried to remember all the things he had heard about reducing fever. If it raged too long, it was like a fire set in a building. The fire went out when the fuel was all burned up. Duggan would die when his body exhausted the last of his reserves.
As Duggan slept, Mason well nigh passed out from all his own exertion. He came awake hours later in the middle of a nightmare. Trapped in a collapsing mine shaft, unseen outlaws shooting at him—and Emma Longview laughing. Her mocking laughter was worse than the threats from cave-ins and bullets. He shook himself awake, reapplied the compress and tucked the blanket around Duggan to keep even the slightest chilling breeze from reaching his body. As he finished patting down the blanket, he stared at the empty spot where the man’s leg had been. The amputation might be the cause of the fever, but he suspected it had more to do with getting his head bashed in. That wound was half-healed, but Mason imagined he saw infection rotting away the forming scar tissue. The only way to be sure was for Dr. Sinclair to examine him.
“Don’t let ’em take the Mira Nell. Don’t. It’s all I got.” Duggan thrashed about weakly. Mason held him down.
“Got the receipt for all your silver. And I’ll keep the claim jumpers away. I promise. Just you rest.”
Duggan’s eyes popped open and fixed on him with a sharpness that belied his condition.
“I’ll make you a partner. That way, if I die, it’ll all be yours.”
“But the Mira Nell is one of the richest mines in the Comstock!” Mason protested. He knew how it’d look if Duggan signed over part interest and then died. Benteen and most everyone else in Virginia City would think he had killed the old man. “Besides, I have a job. Mr. Ammer will be wondering what’s become of me.”
Duggan muttered something about the telegrapher, then louder, “Work the mine and take the silver. As payment for tending me until I’m not feelin’ so puny.”
Mason nodded. That made some sense. Getting Duggan into town wasn’t possible until he was stronger. Leaving him was out of the question, and he needed to make some money to keep alive. Virginia City prices were exorbitant, and he thought Ammer would hire someone else this very day when his lone lineman failed to show up for work.
“I can do that. This is a rich mine.”
He did what he could for Duggan, made sure he sipped some water and then slipped out. Duggan snored loudly. Mason took that as a good sign. At least his lungs were strong enough to make the sawmill noise.
His legs threatened to give out by the time he climbed up the steep slope to the mine. How Duggan managed to get to work from his cabin on one leg was a testament to the old man’s staying power.
“When you’re determined enough, anything’s possible,” he told himself. He looked out from the mine down Calabasas Creek toward Virginia City. Tendrils of smoke rose, but that was normal. The smelter, the forge, hundreds of cooking fires, but no huge cloud warning of a new town-devouring fire.
Mason hefted a pickaxe and started into the mine. For a moment, he thought he’d caught the fever. His knees wobbled. He braced himself by pressing his hand into the wall.
The powerful tremor died down quickly. He knew it wasn’t an earthquake now. Emma Longview and her crew had detonated another explosion, and this one was the strongest yet.
Whatever she was up to continued, so he had plenty of time to poke around further to find what she was up to. Later. Later, after Duggan was all healed up. He lit a candle and made his way into the bowels of the Mira Nell Mine to dig out enough silver to pay for looking after Blue Dirt Duggan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mason waited two days for Duggan’s fever to break. The old-timer lay limp as a rag and breathing raggedly, but he was still breathing—and alive. Mason was amazed at the miner’s stamina. How Duggan clung to life and then actually grew stronger was nothing less than a miracle.
The times he left Duggan, he went up to the mine and worked the richest pockets of silver chloride. The silver was almost in nuggets, the ore was so productive. A single ore cart showed enough silver to more than pay him for the time and effort spent tending Duggan. It still rankled that he hadn’t been able to get word to Mr. Ammer that he was taking care of a sick friend or to Captain Delahunt what was going on.
Most of all, letting Marshal Benteen hear what he had found on the far side of Gold Hill seemed most important of all. Telegraph wires could be restrung by anyone, and enough men in Fire Brigade No. 1 walked the fire watch that there was scant chance of a fire getting away from them.
On that point, Mason considered telling the marshal yet again his suspicions about the firebug, but convincing the lawman a gang boring a hole into the side of a worthless hill posed a threat to the silver shipment was as unlikely.
Mason loaded the silver ore into gunnysacks and dragged them down to the cabin. To his surprise, Duggan was sitting up and taking a drink of water from a glass Mason had put on the table. The miner used both hands and looked frail, but his eyes were bright and sharp. He fixed them on Mason.
“You scrabble enough ore from my mine to make it worth your while?”
“There might be as much as twenty ounces in the ore. It’s rich, the richest I ever did see.”
“You fixing on riding into town?” Duggan swung his feet over the edge of the bed and tried to stand. He didn’t make it, even using the table for support. He settled back to the bed.
“As soon as you’re better.”
“Ain’t going to be anytime soon. I hate to say it, but Doc Sinclair’s the one what can do me the most good. I can ride, a little. You see me into town, then you can go about your business. I can see it’s been eating you alive, worrying over something. Is it that girl?”
Mason started to answer, then only nodded numbly. Emma Longview was constantly in his thoughts, but not the way Duggan meant.
“You want to get into town to see the silver wagon train leave,” Mason accused. “You don’t trust me that I turned it over to Wells Fargo for transport.”
Duggan held up the receipt. With it were a few other pages, scorched from a fire.
“Those the sheets that cost you your leg?” Mason started to pluck them from Duggan’s grip, but the man was too quick for him. He twisted and held the papers away from Mason’s grasping fingers.
“They are. I’d have traded both legs to retrieve these.”
Mason tried to read through the pages, but there wasn’t enough light behind Duggan, and the scorched paper made the sheets even more opaque.
“I can’t imagine what a mule-headed man like you’d risk his life for.”
