West of Washoe by Tim Champlin Page A

in The Gold Hill Clarion , he was beginning to suspect he owned a third of a worthless hole in the ground.
    Avery Tuttle, Ben Holladay, and he were meeting at Tuttle’s home in broad daylight—not a wise thing to do, in Fossett’s opinion. Rumors were already rampant that he and Tuttle and Holladay were joining forces in some kind of business deal. With any luck, no one suspected their deal involved robbery, fraud, and possible murder. Perhaps it was his conscience that caused him to see suspicious eyes everywhere he looked. But those editorials in The Territorial Enterprise had accused himof skullduggery like salting mines and of trying to burn down the Enterprise office. The wound in his left arm gave even further weight to the latter accusation. By some mischance, a bystander on the street had winged him before he could get away. It was doubtful the man had also recognized him. But Fossett couldn’t be sure. He’d avoided going to his own office at the Clarion for a couple of days, telling his associate editor he’d had too much to drink and taken a fall from his horse, injuring his left arm. The associate probably thought otherwise, but said nothing.
    Fossett knew he’d have to do something about that damned Martin Scrivener, or McNulty, or whatever his real name was. His face grew warm just thinking about the man. If he allowed the Enterprise to continue railing at him in print without denying everything, people would begin to believe Scrivener was uttering truth. He didn’t mind being accused of adultery. But salting mines? That was too close to the facts, and might lead to revelation of the bigger scheme afoot. Tuttle’s voice interrupted his reverie.
    “What’ll you have to drink, Frank?”
    “ Uh …sherry, if you have it.”
    “Sherry? I thought you were a whiskey drinker.”
    “Well, it’s a little early in the day.” Actually, Fossett thought, he wanted to keep his wits about him while dealing with these two sharks.
    Tuttle disappeared into the next room and returned with a wine glass half full of amber liquid and handed it to Fossett.
    Tuttle employed a cook, housemaid, and butler, but he gave them all the day off when the three met in his new mansion. He’d complained to Holladay that they should meet somewhere else because it cost him money every time he paid his staff for a day they didn’t work.
    Holladay had dismissed his complaint as cheap carping, and pointed out they had more important and high-priced concerns to occupy their attention.
    Fossett sipped the heavy, sweet wine and eyed Tuttle pouring himself a whiskey from a cut-glass decanter on the massive sideboard. The pear-shaped, baby-faced mine owner dressed like a dandy. The fawn-colored breeches, the silk vest and starched white shirt and cravat, the polished boots—his entire manner of dressing and acting seemed to fit with the house and its furnishings. In fact, the man himself was appropriate to the clothes and the décor. Only a scant trace of shaved facial hair was visible on the rosy cheeks and chin, mid-section going to pudge, but belted firmly into place. With thinning blond hair and blue eyes, he looked more like a middle-aged cherub than the devious, ruthless man Fossett knew him to be. Fossett smiled to himself behind the wine glass. With a pair of floppy cuffs, silken knee breeches, white stockings, and buckle shoes, the man would have fit perfectly into the court of Louis XVI, eighty years ago.
    No one knew much about Tuttle’s private life. He’d shown up on the Comstock early in 1861 with no wife, but apparently enough money to invest in mining properties. Either with money he’d brought, or money acquired, he’d built this elegant mansion, furnished it, and hired servants. The liquors and wines he kept in the house seemed more for entertaining guests than for his own consumption. He made a show of drinking, but a single shot glass of bourbon would last him for hours, and Fossett knew no one who’d ever seen the