He asked where they were headed, and Sylvia said the Lost Chinaman. Longarm smiled and said, “We’ll ride together, then. I met MacLeod and his woman earlier. I hope they don’t keep early hours.”

  Ralph Baxter said, “My sister and I were invited to join them this evening. Do you make a habit of these rather informal social visits?”

  Longarm clucked his mount out from under the tree and got them all started again before he said, “I don’t pay too many what you’d call social visits, Mr. Baxter. I’ll just let you folks sip tea with the MacLeods while I have a look around the diggings.”

  Before Ralph could think of a suitable snotty retort, Sylvia cut between them. “We heard about the attack on the stage, and I was so worried about your poor hurt head.”

  Ralph added, “Sylvia told me how she nursed you back from the grave. My sister has always had this sensitivity for those born less fortunate than she.”

  Longarm growled, “Let’s back off a mite, Baxter. You can say what you like about me, but you’re carrying this close enough to my kinfolks to rate my saving a dance for you, and I ain’t talking about the waltz.”

  Ralph laughed and said, “You’re really not good at veiled threats, Deputy.”

  “Hell, old son, there’s nothing veiled about it. You keep sniping at me and we’re headed straight to Fist City! What’s wrong with you, anyway? We’ve never laid eyes on one another, and you’re acting like I ran off with your silverware.”

  “My silverware isn’t what I’m concerned about at the moment.”

  Longarm didn’t answer. If he knew, he knew, and there was nothing he could say right now that wouldn’t get them to rolling on the ground, if not shooting at one another. What was wrong with women, anyway? To hear them let on, you’d think they’d slash their wrists in front of stampeding buffalo to hide what they called their shame. Yet it seemed that half the times he’d had a little fun with a gal, she managed to let the whole blamed world know about it!

  As if she knew what he was thinking, Sylvia tried to smooth things over. “Don’t mind my brother, Custis. He’s miffed because he’s been stuck out here for months trying to close a deal, and the boys in town have been teasing him.”

  That seemed reasonable enough. Longarm said, “I don’t tease folks much. MacLeod told me you’d been sent out here to buy his mine, Ralph.”

  “Would you mind calling me Mr. Baxter?”

  “I’ll call you the Prince of Wales if you’ll tell me a mite about the Lost Chinaman.”

  Baxter said, “You’ll see it soon enough. It’s only a hole in the ground. The idiot seems to think he’s found El Dorado.”

  “And you don’t agree?”

  “Oh, it’s not a bad little strike, given a bit more science and some capital to put it on a paying basis. He’s trying to run it with a crew of shiftless, unskilled Mexicans, digging the hard way, with hand tools.”

  “It doesn’t take all that much digging, if it’s high-grade ore, does it?”

  Warming to the subject, Baxter said, “It’s not high-grade. I’d say it assays at less than a thousand dollars a ton.”

  “Then you’ve been down the shaft and seen the gold?”

  “Of course not. You don’t see gold in medium-grade ore. The grains are microscopic.”

  “Then how do you know there’s any gold at all?”

  Baxter snorted and asked, “What do you take me for, an idiot? The man has an assay office report, and besides that, I’ve tested it for color myself.”

  “Do tell? How do you test for gold you can’t see?”

  “With aqua regia, of course. The acid dissolves any gold in the rock and leaves a deposit in your test tube.” Baxter frowned. “What are you suggesting, a salted mine?”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind,” Longarm admitted. “I can’t think of any way on earth they could be switching so much ore in bulk on the fly. But if they were loading barren rock on the train in the first place, there’d be no mystery at all.”

  To his credit, Ralph Baxter thought for a moment before he shook his head and said, “That wouldn’t make sense. MacLeod is losing money every time he loses a shipment, and he’s been supervising the whole operation. How in blue blazes could it profit the man to rob himself? It’s his gold in the first place!”

  “Maybe. I’ll take your word that he’s got a real gold mine, for now. But I’d be obliged if you showed me how you test for gold, before they send another load down.”

  Sylvia said, “Of course he will. But just what are you planning to look for, Custis?”

  Longarm said, “Gold, of course. I’m making it my business to ride down the mountain aboard the next trainload of ore. Before I do, I aim to make sure that what they put aboard is real ore. Then I’m going to be interested as all get-out to see if anyone tries to switch it with me sitting smack-dab on the pile!”

  They could see lights through the trees ahead, now. Ralph Baxter’s tone was almost friendly as he asked, “Just what did you mean about a salted mine, Deputy? I’ll confess you’ve made me thoughtful. My company just authorized me to offer more than we’ve been bidding up till now.”

  Longarm said, “I figured they might. I don’t know about microscopic grains, but many a mining claim has been sold to unsuspecting folks by a smart jasper firing gold birdshot into a rock face with a shotgun. I’ll go along with you that MacLeod seems like a tolerable cuss, but we live and learn. If I was you, I’d hold off till we test the next shipment and see if it gets through.”

  They were within sight of the mining property now, so Longarm dropped the conversation. He could see the MacLeods’ cabin, off to one side of the diggings. The operation itself was a lunar landscape of torn-up earth. A high loading tipple built of logs hung over a narrow-gauge railroad siding. The whole area was illuminated by torches, and Longarm saw cotton-clad workmen loading a couple of small, tubby ore cars. A dog started to bark and Kevin MacLeod appeared at the cabin door as they rode in. He waved amicably, even though he hadn’t expected Longarm.

  As the three of them dismounted, Longarm said to MacLeod, “You folks just visit away. I came up here for a look-see. You got anybody who could show me through the diggings?”

  MacLeod called out, “Vallejo?” and one of the Mexicans came over to join them. Before he reached earshot, Longarm asked quietly, “Is this fellow related to that gal on the stage, MacLeod?”

  The mine owner laughed and said, “You know, I never made the connection? Half the Mexicans in this county seem to be named Vallejo. The rest are named Garcia or Castro.”

  The foreman was too close to discuss it further, so MacLeod introduced them and told Vallejo to show Longarm anything he wanted to see.

  The foreman was a man of about thirty, with a friendly, open smile. He was either innocent of guile or a damned good poker player. As Longarm walked away from the cabin with him, he asked, “Are you any kin to Felicidad Vallejo?”

  The Mexican answered, “We are distant cousins, unfortunately. She is muy linda, no?”

  “I’ll go along with that. I’m unfortunate, too. She doesn’t like gringos much.”

  Vallejo laughed and said, “That side of the family was very rich before you people came. I come from a less fortunate branch of the family, so I’ve made out all right. Señor MacLeod is muy simpatico.”

  “Have you been working for him long?”

  “Since he and his wife bought the mine. The last owners refused to hire greasers. What was it you wished to see?”

  “Well, I was thinking of going down the shaft, but I hear it’s a waste of time for a man without a degree in chemistry. When do you aim to ship those cars you’re loading?”

  “The engine is coming for them in the morning. That is why we are working overtime. If you don’t wish to go down in the shaft, what can I show you?”

  Longarm walked over to the siding. Grabbing a hand iron, he pulled himself up to the lip of an ore car, saying, “I ain’t stealing. I’ll put it all back in a while.”

  Then he reached in at random and selected three lumps of the salmon-colored quartz they’d been loading. He got down, went to the rear car, and did the same. Then he put the ore samples in his coat pocket and asked Vallejo, “Do you have a guard posted over this siding at night?”

  The Mexican nodded and said, “Of course. We are not at all pleased by what has been happening.”

  Longarm thanked him and walked quickly back to the cabin. He went in without knocking, found Sylvia and her brother seated in front of a fireplace sipping tea with the MacLeods, and said, “Baxter, I’d like you to aqua-whatever these rocks.”

  Baxter said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” But MacLeod smiled a bit thinly, and said, “We’ve been talking about your suspicions, Longarm. It’s all right with me, Ralph.”

  Baxter shrugged and said, “Well, I do have my kit in my saddlebags, but I assure you, all this is none of my doing!”

  MacLeod said, “I insist. I think I see what he’s getting at, and frankly, I haven’t been assaying the ore, once it’s out of the mine!”

  Muttering to himself, Baxter got up and went out to his tethered horse as Longarm followed. Sylvia followed too, and as she and Longarm waited on the porch she nudged him and asked, “Where are you staying tonight, darling?”

  He answered, “Right here. If that’s really gold ore in those cars, I ain’t letting it out of my sight this side of Sacramento!”

  “Damn it, Custis, I want you so badly I can taste it!”

  Longarm nodded. “I know the feeling, but I wish you wouldn’t call me Custis. Now hush or he’ll hear us, and he’s suspicious already.”

  Baxter came up the steps with an oilcloth bag. He said, “I have to have some light.”

  From the doorway, MacLeod called out, “You can use our kitchen table, Ralph.”

  Longarm wondered if MacLeod had heard Sylvia’s somewhat forward statement, but he didn’t know how to find out.

  They all went inside. MacLeod led them back to a lean-to kitchen, and Baxter set up his testing gear on the redwood table as Longarm watched. Baxter asked for a sample and Longarm handed him a hunk of ore. Baxter said, “It’s supposed to be crushed first, you moron,” but he took out a pocketknife and, using the back of the blade, scraped a few grains off the surface. Longarm strolled over to a nearby window and folded his arms. He could see both the table and the men working outside from this vantage point.

  Ralph Baxter put the sandy dust in a test tube and poured something from a little brown bottle into it, saying, “Aqua regia is a mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. It’s the only acid that dissolves noble metals.”

  He waited a few minutes and poured a few drops of something else in the tube, holding it up to the light. The test tube started smoking like a lit cigar, and Longarm asked why. Baxter said, “I’m neutralizing the acid to precipitate any metal it’s dissolved. Don’t you know anything about basic chemistry?”

  “Not much,” Longarm said, “but, I’m willing to learn. What does it look like?”

  Ralph held the test tube out to him and said, “See for yourself. But be careful. Even with bicarb in the tube, it’s been known to burn skin away. This is hardly a chemical lab and my field methods are a bit roughshod.”

  Longarm took the test tube and held it up to the light, squinting at the muddy contents. He nodded and said, “Yeah, I can see the specks of gold in it. Are you sure it ain’t fool’s gold?”

  “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.”