It happened during a game of five-card stud in which Yost was one of five players; the others were day-shift miners, Simcox but not McClellan among them. A small group had formed to watch the action and Quincannon joined them, keeping in the background.
The stakes were relatively low — one-dollar limit, maximum of two raises — but at that a fair amount of money was being won and lost. Yost had accumulated the largest pile of chips, betting conservatively and no doubt skillfully bluffing when the opportunity presented itself. He held his hole cards close to his chest, studying the cards turned faceup on the table and the faces of his opponents with sharp-eyed concentration.
Conversation was desultory, Yost contributing little to what was said, until one of the other players, a burly and half-drunk French Canadian named DuBois who had been losing steadily, turned sullen and glowering. When his nine-high straight was beaten by Yost’s jacks full, and Yost allowed as how it was his lucky night as he raked in the pot, DuBois slammed a meaty fist down on the table. “By damn,” he grumbled in a whiskey-thick voice, “if I don’t know better I think maybe you make your own luck, m’sieu.”
Yost said mildly, “But you do know better, don’t you, Frenchy.”
“Yah, maybe I don’t. You win every time you deal the cards.”
“Are you calling me a cheat?”
DuBois’s lip curled. He said angrily, “J’en ai plein le cul!”
“You want to cuss me,” Yost said, laying his hands flat on the table, “by God do it in English.”
“Bah! I am sick of losing to you, that’s what I say.”
“Then quit playing and walk away.”
“What if I don’t want to quit, eh?”
“Then shut up and take your losses like a man.”
Beet-red anger suffused DuBois’s jowly face. He bounced to his feet, kicking his chair over backward. “No one tells DuBois to shut up!” He stabbed a horny finger at Yost and took two steps around the table toward him. Two steps only. Then he stopped dead still, because he was looking down the muzzle of a hammerless .32-caliber pocket pistol.
The weapon seemed to appear in Yost’s hand as if by a conjuring trick; Quincannon had never seen a faster, smoother draw. The other poker players and the onlookers sucked in their breaths.
“Take one more step,” Yost said, “and you’ll be a cripple for the rest of your life.”
DuBois didn’t move. No one else moved either. The sudden tension was palpable; even the piano player ceased his discordant music-making. Yost meant what he’d said. Though his expression remained as bland as ever, his purpose was plain in the way he stood, the rigid extension of the gun, his unblinking gaze. The pupils of his eyes were so dark they looked black in the lamplight, as hard and shiny as anthracite.
He let several seconds pass before he said, “I won’t stand for verbal threats or physical assault, Frenchy. You understand that now, don’t you.” The last sentence was not a question.
DuBois’s anger had deserted him. He looked confused, chastened. “Yah, I understand.”
“All right, then. You have two choices. Sit down and play cards, or cash in and walk out. Which is it to be?”
It took the French Canadian less than five seconds to make a decision. He pocketed his few remaining chips, saved as much face as he could by glaring at Yost, and stomped out. Only when DuBois was gone did Yost relax and repocket his pistol in a motion almost as swift and deft as his draw.
“Okay, gents,” he said to the other players, his voice mild again, “we’ll continue with our friendly game. Whose deal is it?”
Oh, yes, Quincannon thought, a dangerous and violent man. And an adversary not to be underestimated.
8
Quincannon
Like it or not, the time had come to report to James O’Hearn. The mine superintendent had demanded an early progress report, and Quincannon could not keep putting it off. After his shift ended on Friday, he contrived to remain in the mine yard after the other crewmen had departed by helping the night-shift topmen unload a shipment of board lumber and stack it in one of the long timber ricks. When he was sure all the night-shift miners had gone into the hole, he made his way to the mine office, where O’Hearn, by his own admission, could be found well into the evening.
Not this evening, however. A clerk informed him that Mr. O’Hearn had gone down to the stamp mill. The mill suited Quincannon’s purpose well enough, or would as long as O’Hearn was available for a private conversation in or near its confines.
A dynamite explosion deep inside the mine made the ground tremble as he descended a steep flight of stairs to the mill. When he entered he had no difficulty locating O’Hearn; together with an ox of a man, probably the mill foreman, he was inspecting one of the eccentrics that raised the stamps, shut down now and locked into place. Quincannon stayed where he was near the entrance, unconsciously fingering his mutilated ear and watching the machinery and the millhands at their work.
The iron-shod stamps, loosely held vertically in framed sets of five, were lifted by cams on a horizontal rotating shaft. As the cam moved from under the stamp, it dropped into the ore below and crushed the rock; the lifting process was then repeated at the next pass of the cam. Smaller pieces of ore that came tumbling down the chute went through a three-inch grizzly, or grating, into feed bins; anything larger was shunted into a jaw crusher. The dressed ore was fed automatically to the stamps.
Quincannon waited ten minutes in the lantern-lit enclosure, keeping out of the way of the sweating millhands, before O’Hearn and the foreman finished their inspection and the superintendent turned toward the entrance. His bearded face remained impassive when he spied Quincannon. He gestured that they go outside, where they could make themselves heard above the thunder of the stamps at work.
Once there and certain they were alone, he said through a glower, “Why haven’t you reported to me before this, Quincannon?”
“Nothing definite to report. And the only feasible place to meet is your office or elsewhere in the compound, a tricky proposition.”
“I suppose you’ve made no progress at all, then.”
“An incorrect supposition. I have made progress.”
“You know who’s doing the high-grading?”
“I have an idea who some of them are.”
“Well? Who?”
“I’d rather not say just yet.”
O’Hearn’s glower deepened. “Why the devil not?”
“I never make accusations until I have proof. I thought I made that clear to you and Mr. Hoxley.”
“Dammit, man, I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
“You won’t be for long, I promise you that.”
“What about that union agitator, Yost? Is he involved?”
“I’ll tell you this much,” Quincannon said. “Yost is no more a union recruiter than I am.”
“The hell you say. Are you sure of that?”
“Sure enough.”
“What is he, then?”
“That remains to be learned.”
“But he is mixed up in the high-grading?”
“That also remains to be learned.”
O’Hearn emitted one of his grizzly growls. “Trying to get straight answers out of you is like trying to eat soup with a fork. You had better not be giving me a runaround, Quincannon.”
“I’m not. Why would I?”
“For all I know you’ve sold out and thrown in with the gang—”
Quincannon’s hackles rose at that. “Bah! You’ll never meet a more honest man, or a better detective.”