Comstock Lode by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Mining, Mines and mineral resources, Western stories, Mines and mineral resources - Nevada - History, Westerns, Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9780553013078
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1981-07-22T20:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

XXXVI

Sun Mountain had caught the first light of dawn when Trevallion came down the slope to the bakery. Ledbetter and Tapley were already seated with their coffee, awaiting breakfast. Melissa was nowhere around at this hour.

"Hear that Alf something-or-other is sparkin' her," Tapley commented. "She's doing well and honey draws flies."

"Ask Ledbetter about him," Trevallion suggested, "she's too good for him."

"Hesketh is back," Ledbetter said. "Came in on the stage last night with those show folks. The way he was dressed you'd of thought he was a miner. That Dane Clyde come back with them, too."

"I heard that Redaway woman is a looker," Tapley said. "I talked to a man saw them gettin' down from the stage."

"Odd," Trevallion said, "Hesketh dressed that way. He was never a miner, and never dressed like one."

"They had trouble," Tapley said. "Old Pot Joe tried to stand them up an' that Redaway girl backed him down."

"She what?"

"Seems she was armed, and so were several of those inside and when they presented their side of the argument Joe got the point and stepped back. There was another shooting after, somebody else seemed to have the same idea Joe did, but Jacob Teale was riding the top and he cut loose. That took care of that."

"Jacob Teale?"

Tapley shrugged. "Seems that show woman hired him on the trail. She just taken one look and put him on the payroll."

"Teale?" Ledbetter shook his head. "Well, I'll be damned."

"What's she want with a man like him?" Trevallion asked.

"There's but one reason for hiring Jacob Teale. You've got trouble and lots of it. But how did she know about him?"

Tapley spat. "She didn't. No way she could have. She just seen him and hired him, it's simple as that."

Ledbetter glanced over at Trevallion. "You know him, Trev?"

"I know him."

The coffee tasted good. He tasted it again and returned the cup to the saucer. Grita Redaway—unusual name, and could be the same girl. Waggoner had been out of town but would be back, by the looks of his cabin. Would he know who she was? Unlikely. But would she recognize Waggoner? That was unlikely, too, but he had been around the wagons a few times, and she could have seen him.

Anyway, she wouldn't need any help. A girl with the sense to hire Teale would do all right. He frowned. Why had she done it? Right quick like that? How could an actress, a city woman, have the sense to hire him? Had it been an accident, that she chose Teale? And why did she think he was needed?

Jacob Teale was odd. He was a peculiar man by anybody's standards, a solitary hunter, a killer as cold and remorseless as any he had ever known, but a religious, church-going man with a code right out of the Old Testament. He rarely took a drink, chewed tobacco occasionally and was never known to curse, at least not aloud.

Once up in the Modoc country they had been in an Indian fight together.

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