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

of ores and how they occurred. He looked up at the small cluster of mountains from which the gold had to come. “Maybe if California doesn’t pan out we will come back here.”
    At that time he had no idea that his father would never live to see California and that, having lost his mother, he was soon to lose his father to the same men.
    Chapter 7
    T REVALLION HUNCHED HIS shoulders against the increasing chill. A slow rain began that turned almost at once to snow, and the icy trail grew more icy still. Men slipped on the steep path, scrambling up only to fall again. The mules, wise in the ways of trails, plodded on, ignoring the cursing of the men around them. At the trail’s end there would be feed, and there would be water to drink, and they walked for that.
    Trevallion tugged his hat brim lower and watched the girl ahead. She was taking it well, with no words of complaint. He had known few women well, but he could read human sign as well as that found on trails, and this girl had iron in her system which, in a few years, would turn to steel. She was strong and would grow stronger, yet he believed he had detected a fatal flaw that he had discovered in women before this.
    There were women with a penchant for picking up stray cats and dogs, which was all very well. There were others who had the same tendency to pick up superficially attractive but empty men. Judging by Alfie, Melissa might be such a one.
    His thoughts reverted to his own situation. The blond man who had passed them, forging on ahead, had recognized him, but who was he?
    Not one of the men he still sought, he was too young, not much older than Trevallion himself.
    Yet they would be coming here. The chances that any of them were still together was slight, but thieves and murderers were attracted to the boom camps, and it was a certainty one or more of them would come to the Comstock.
    Riding along hour after hour, with nothing to think of but the trail, gave a man time to consider, and lately he had been doing a lot of thinking. Possibly it was because he was growing older, and perhaps wiser, but he had detected a slackening of purpose in himself and it angered him.
    For years the horror of what he had seen and heard that night had obsessed him. The murderers had gotten off scot-free and then had killed his father. There had been no convenient law to pursue and punish. Even before his father’s death, his father had become a changed man, from a quiet but easygoing man he had become a sullen, morose shadow of himself.
    As for himself, there had been years when he had awakened, crying out in fear, the horror of his mother’s last hour indelibly imprinted on his mind.
    Trevallion’s thoughts turned to the night he saw a man playing cards, and it was a face he remembered.
    To the bartender he spoke casually. “Who is he? The one in the blue-checked shirt?”
    “Drifter, name of Rory. I’ve seen him around.” The bartender poured the beer Trevallion ordered. “I’d steer clear of him. He’s a bad one…cheats, I think. One of these days somebody will catch him at it.”
    There was no doubt. A little older, a little harder, but a face he remembered. Trevallion finished his beer, then crossed the room, and when there was an opening, sat in the game.
    At Trevallion’s deal Rory pushed the cards toward him and palmed one or more cards in the process. The man beside Trevallion made an involuntary start, so he must also have seen it, but Trevallion said nothing. It would happen again.
    When it was Rory’s deal again, the man swept in the cards and gathered them up, and Trevallion said, “What ever became of Skinner?”
    Carefully, Rory shuffled the cards into a packet and said, “Skinner? I don’t know any Skinner.”
    “Thought you might have,” Trevallion said, “back in Missouri.”
    Rory said nothing. He put down the cards and got out a cigar. “Everybody’s been in Missouri,” he said finally.
    “You’re right. Some of them come west in