Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF

of yourselves. I think you can make it out here, and we need good men.” He stood up, swallowed the last of his coffee and placed the cup on the ground near them. “We’ll lose some more before we see the Carson. Folks are in bad shape. Some of the womenfolks are ailin’ and there’s Thorsby. He’s coiled his rope too tight. One of these days she’s goin’ to come unwound, sudden-like.”
    They slept the night, at least Val slept part of it. His father seemed to be wide awake whenever Val opened his eyes, staring up at the underside of the wagon.
    The day dawned hot and still. Not a breath stirred. At noon they led the oxen to the wagon and hooked up. The horse they tied behind the wagon.
    Slowly, without fanfare or confusion, the wagons moved out. Puffs of alkali dust arose from the rolling wheels and the hoofs of the animals. Nobody talked, and there was little yelling at the animals. The oxen, heads low, plodded steadily in an almost hypnotic trance. As the day wore on, the sun grew hotter. Val longed for a drink but dared not ask for one, nor take it.
    He glimpsed the rib cage of a mule, half-buried in sand, and a little further along the ruins of a broken wagon, gray and splintery from long exposure. He plodded on, walking beside the lead team. The wagons rumbled along, and they mounted a low rise to look over the land ahead, and there…a miracle of miracles, a shimmering blue lake!
    “Pa!
Look!
”
    Others had stopped, staring. “Water! My God, it’s water and they told us—”
    “Mirage,” Ward said. “It just looks like water.”
    One man turned hotly. “Are you trying to tell me that isn’t a lake yonder?”
    “You’ll be seein’ that every day. It’s only mirage. Caused by heat waves or such. Can’t say I understand it myself, but it’s a reg’lar thing out here. Wonder you ain’t seen it before.”
    Several of the men gathered together, staring at it. Finally Tom Trevallion turned away. “Maybe it is a lake,” he said, “but it’s off the trail.”
    He took up his ox goad and started his team. Reluctantly the others turned back to their teams, and one by one they started.
    Suddenly, one of them shouted, “The hell you say!” Deliberately he turned his team and started out toward the shimmering blue water. Ward shouted at him, shouted again, then rode after him, but the man would not listen. “I don’t know what reason you got for lyin’,” he shouted, “but that there’s
water!
”
    Hiram Ward swore bitterly. “He wouldn’t listen. He just wouldn’t listen at all! And he’s got a wife and two youngsters with him!”
    “Maybe he’s right,” one man muttered. “Maybe we’re the fools.”
    “He’s not right,” Ward said. “There’s a mirage out here somewhere most of the time when the sun’s high. He’ll kill himself. Worst of all, he’ll kill those youngsters.”
    “If he’s wrong,” a man said, “he can always come back to the trail and follow on.”
    Ward shot him an angry glance. “Did you look at his oxen? When they get into that basin they’ll never have strength enough to come out. His only chance will be to leave the wagon and mount his wife and youngsters on the oxen and try to get back. Not one chance in a hundred he’ll have sense enough to try it.”
    Slowly they moved on, the heavy wagons rocking and swaying over the desert. After sundown Ward signaled a stop, and they pulled up right where they were, unyoked the oxen and carried to each one a small bundle of hay. It was not enough by far, but it was something. When they had finished, each one was given a hatful of water to drink.
    “We’ll rest two hours,” Ward told them. “Then we’ll move on until after midnight. We’ll pull ahead for a few hours after a rest and take another rest just before daybreak or right after.”
    “And then?”
    “The Carson River by noon, if we’re lucky. Then we’ll rest.”
    Val lay down in the wagon, desperately weary. He heard his father fumbling about