IT WAS DAWN on the first Sunday in December, about ten days after Benway’s fatal tumble from the upper window of the legislature building. I was once again in Cheeya’s stall at Smith’ s Livery Stable. I was “on the lookout” in case Violetta should decide to scout out toll roads, when—sure enough—I heard her voice. She was asking the stable boy to put a sidesaddle on his best horse.

She said, “Is Johnson’s Cutoff open?”

He said, “Yup. The first snow has not yet come this year. The trail is clear all the way to Placerville.”

She said, “I am only going as far as Pray Mill.”

“Pray Mill is at Walton’s Landing,” he said. “You go south on Carson, then right on King Street. Keep heading west till you come to Lake Bigler.”

She said, “I know. I have been there before. I just wanted to know if the trail was passable.”

“It is for now,” he said, “but I reckon the first snows ain’t far off. ”

I judged she was scouting out a possible toll road as Jace had told me. I quickly saddled Cheeya and swung onto his back.

Carson Street was wide & empty in the dawn’s early light. A mule brayed in the Plaza and a bird tweeted from a telegraph wire.

I was just in time to see Violetta turn right on King Street. She was riding a gray mare sidesaddle. I am always impressed by ladies who ride all asymmetrical like that.

If you keep going west on King Street it becomes Johnson’s Cutoff, which is one of my favorite rides because it goes up King’s Canyon into the Carson Range mountains. It is still a trail and not yet a toll road. A man named Will Wagner had mapped it all out a year before and several groups had got Legislators to put their names forward for franchises. In one of my reports to Jace I told him it was one of the best.

It was the sort of cold, bright Sunday morning that is perfect for an aimless and meandering ride.

Violetta was not aimless nor meandering; she was on her way to Pray Mill on the shore of Lake Bigler. Knowing her destination, I hung back & kept out of sight most of the time, so she would not spot me following if she chanced to look over her shoulder. On certain straight stretches of the road I could see her far up ahead in her maroon riding habit trimmed with black fur and a matching ostrich-feathered riding hat with ear rosettes.

I followed her up that trail between scattered farms & ranches & half-built way stations & golden-brown hills speckled with sagebrush. Once a herd of deer lifted their heads to look at me and Cheeya. The trail was not fit for wagons and there were no other riders out, so it was real peaceful. As the trail got higher, the sagebrush gave way to juniper & fir trees & the path was felted with rusty-colored pine needles.

After a little more than two hours I reached a pretty little lake. Its smooth blue waters mirrored a bristling row of dark-green pine trees along the crest behind it. I had never been this far up before and I assumed it was Lake Bigler but Violetta kept on riding.

Another half hour’s ride through dark pinewoods took me to the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

Even if I were to live a hundred more years (rather than a hundred more minutes) I do not think I will ever forget my first glimpse of Lake Bigler. You go over the ridge and come down through those lofty pine trees and suddenly there is a meadow as green & smooth as a billiard table, and beyond it a lake as blue as Heaven and beyond that mountains rising up all snow-topped and jagged and gleaming in the cold winter sun.

I had to rein up Cheeya so that I could take it in.

Some folk call it Lake Bigler and others Tahoe, which is a version of the Washoe name Da-ow-a-ga.

Sitting there on my pony, I had to blink and swallow hard because that view was so fine. I offered up a whispered psalm of praise and Cheeya kind of snorted, as if to say “Amen.”

In the middle of the billiard-table-green meadow ran a brook and beside it stood a house and beyond that was a heavily wooded promontory with piles of freshly sawed lumber by a pier. An arrow sign pointing to these things said WALTON’S LANDING and below it PRAY SAWMILL.

I did not see any sign of smoke coming from the house nor any movement of any kind. That place was as peaceful as the trail leading up to it. I heeled Cheeya forward & we went down a path between the meadow and the pines to a sandy beach beside the lake.

I dismounted, and Cheeya & I both drank our fill of water so cold it made our teeth ache. The winter sun had come out and its rays made the water all jewel colors like emerald & sapphire & such. Farther out, the lake was the same dark blue as Opal Blossom’s spittoon. I reckon if I lived there I would become a Poet.

But I am not a Poet. I am a Detective. So I started to scan the area for Violetta. I could not see her, but my sharp eyes saw a flash of white just inside the pine forest on the south point of the cove over to my left across the meadow. It was Violetta’s gray mare.

I led Cheeya back up to the meadow & left him to graze on some of that lush grass. Then I ran at a crouch towards the forest. My buckskin leggings & blue woolen coat & slouch hat are not the best clothes for speeding across a flat expanse of billiard-table green, but my moccasins helped me leap the brook in one bound and I felt less conspicuous once I reached the shelter of the pines. Had Violetta spotted me? I hoped not. Jace had told me not to let her see me.

When I found Violetta’s mount I got a shock. Her horse was conversing with a big bay gelding.

She had not come up here just to scout out a Toll Road.

She had come up here to meet someone. Was it a surveyor? Or maybe a legislator who had already bid for the franchise? I recalled that several groups of people were interested in this trail.

As I followed her track through the forest, I could hear birds tweeting & a woodpecker tapping & the rush of water somewhere, though I could not see it.

It was very peaceful. Too peaceful. I stopped in my tracks and pondered.

The Comstock was desperate for lumber; it was almost as precious as silver.

Why was nobody up here cutting wood?

Then I realized that this must be the sawmill of Augustus “Sabbath” Pray, the Council’s sternest advocate of Keeping Sunday Holy. I reckon if he found anybody at work he would have them bullwhipped all the way back to Carson. Is that why Violetta had come up here on a Sunday? To avoid being seen?

I am usually as silent as a panther, but town life had made me clumsy. As I resumed following her trail, my foot snapped a twig & it went off like the report of a pistol. A bird flew off, crying in alarm. The unseen water sounded like a thousand schoolmarms shushing me from Heaven.

From Heaven?

I looked up & there on my left was the source of the water sound! It was a stream in the treetops overhead. The water was being carried towards the lake in a kind of wooden trough on high stilts: a flume! As I moved forward, I heard splashing & a kind of rhythmic grinding. I emerged into a sunlit clearing, where the flume ended above a wooden waterwheel beside a raw plank building I took to be a sawmill.

The water was falling & the wheel was turning & the winter sun shining on the spray made a kind of rainbow.

I guess nobody had told the water or the wheel that today was the Sabbath.

My tracking skills showed me that Violetta and her companion had gone inside the Mill House. I crept up to the window & slowly rose up & cautiously looked in. I could see planks & levers & belts & two different types of saw.

One big saw was round like a saucer standing on its edge.

The other saw stood up like a Bowie knife with a serrated edge.

Then I saw Violetta with a stocky man in black.

They were kissing.

Yes, kissing on the Sabbath!

By and by, Violetta pulled away.

My stomach rolled over when I saw the man sparking Violetta.

It was my mortal enemy from Virginia City, the Deputy-Marshal-turned-Desperado called Jack Williams.