Well, there might be another way to find out.
At the Western Union office she composed a lengthy wire to Henry Flannery at the detective agency he operated in Sacramento. John considered Flannery reliable enough to have established a quid pro quo agreement with him some years back. She requested any available data on Bart or Bartholomew Morgan alias Jedediah Yost, formerly of Downieville, and included the detailed description and all the information Carson had supplied on Morgan’s background. She marked the wire “Urgent.” Assuming Flannery was not out of town on a case, she would have a preliminary response from him shortly, and another as soon as he had something to report.
12
Quincannon
When he dropped off the Monarch mine wagon on Saturday morning, Quincannon spied Frank McClellan among the gaggle of day-shift men waiting in the shade of the gallows frame. The slab-faced station tender, Joe Simcox, was at his side. McClellan was immediately aware of his presence as well; the assistant foreman said something to Simcox, and both men cast looks in his direction. Did the pair sense that they were under suspicion? Not a bad thing if so. It might render one or both nervous enough to make a mistake that would bring about their undoing.
Quincannon removed his miner’s hat, sleeved road grit from his face. As early as it was, the day promised more Indian summer warmth, with none of the cooling winds that often blew in these Sierra Nevada foothills. Off to his right, the departing wagon raised another column of dust as it started back down the long passage to Patch Creek. Where the creek itself was visible among willows and aspens, the water caught sunlight and dazzled like molten silver.
He moved across the noisy mine yard, took up a position next to Pat Barnes, and pretended to ignore McClellan and Simcox. Soon the whistle blew and the shaft cage began its rattling ascent. As on previous mornings, the hoist engineer played his dangerous little game of bringing the cage to a jolting, squealing halt. More than one of the graveyard-shift crew cursed him on their way out, as some did every morning; the profanity only succeeded in producing a jeering grin.
Quincannon and the other day-shift men crowded into the cage. He contrived to stand next to McClellan as Walrus Ben gave two sharp pulls on the hoist cord, the signal to lower the cage. McClellan glared at him, fidgeted, then turned his back.
The plunge into the bowels of the mine rendered Quincannon deaf as usual. He stamped his feet to ease the pressure, followed the others across the station into the powder room, where he exchanged his hat for an oil-wick cap lamp. Down here on twelve-hundred the temperature was thirty or more degrees cooler than topside, and twice as damp — a cold dampness that got into and lingered in a man’s bones. He hadn’t gotten used to that, either, and likely wouldn’t as long as he worked in the hole.
He started after Barnes and the other timbermen toward the crosscut that was being driven across a new and potentially rich vein. Before he’d cleared the station a hand caught hold of his arm from behind and drew him to a halt. McClellan. The assistant foreman’s breath was redolent of the Perry Davis’ Pain Killer he hoarded in his cabin, and his fox face already ran with sweat. In the smoky light from their cap lamps, his eyes held a sheen of what Quincannon took to be a mix of anger and fear.
When the other men passed out of earshot, McClellan said in a harsh whisper, “Who the hell are you, mister?”
Quincannon shrugged off his hand. “J. F. Quinn, timberman. As if you didn’t know.”
“I know you’ve been eyeballing me up here, following me down in Patch Creek. What I want to know is why.”
“You’ve made a mistake. I’ve no interest in you beyond our time in this treasure hole.”
“You’re not a miner,” McClellan said. “I know miners... You’re too soft, too deep for this work.”
“Too deep, mayhap. Hardly too soft.”
“What are you after?”
“My wages, same as you.”
“I think you’re a damn company spy.”
“Do you now? And what would you have to hide that would bring you to the attention of Mr. O’Hearn?”
McClellan clenched his teeth, stared hard for a few seconds as if at a loss for something more to say. Then he spun on his heel and clumped off into the drift. Quincannon watched him leave his sight with a feeling of satisfaction. This particular fish was well hooked and squirming. It would not be long before McClellan — and soon enough after this, his fellow thieves — was caught in the net.
The morning passed quickly. Quincannon was too busy hauling and shoring lumber to slip away, as he had done previously whenever the opportunity presented itself, for short searches of the maze of tunnels and stopes that might offer some clue to the high-grading method.
McClellan spent part of the morning on twelve-hundred, then disappeared. Gone up to eleven-hundred, or was he up to something down here? He returned toward the end of lunch break, spoke briefly to some of the men, one of them Joe Simcox, while his gaze roamed among the others. When he spied Quincannon, he looked away almost immediately. A short time later he wandered off along the drift, but not without a backward glance to see if he was being observed. Quincannon pretended great interest in the contents of his lunch pail.
The timber crew was working in the same general area that McClellan had gone. Quincannon followed Pat Barnes and two other members of the timber crew along the narrow rail track, walking on ties made slippery by an ooze of water that ran down the walls and trickled across the floor. Some distance beyond the station, the drift ran in a slight upward gradient. A tram car loaded with waste rock rattled toward them, pushed rapidly by an old-timer named Lundgren, and the group parted in a hurry. There was no sign of McClellan in the vicinity.
“Fire in the hole!”
The warning shout came from the direction of the newly driven crosscut and was quickly repeated by a number of other voices. Walrus Ben or another powder man had set a charge of dynamite that was about to be detonated. Quincannon and the others in the drift held still, covering their mouths with handkerchiefs. When the blast came, a relatively small one probably designed to remove a stubborn obstruction, Quincannon felt the rough rock floor quiver slightly beneath his boots. Soon afterward a thin mist of silica dust came rolling into the drift, briefly impairing vision until it settled.
Quincannon seized the opportunity to slip away into a narrow side turning. He would not be immediately missed by Barnes and the others, and when he was, it would be assumed he’d gone after more lumber.
Once around the turning, he was alone in the sultry gloom. He bent to reach inside the top of his right boot for his hideout derringer, slid it into a trouser pocket. It was a serious offense for an employee to bring a pistol into the mine, and he had not cleared his breach of the rules with O’Hearn. But he had a strong feeling that his investigation was coming to a head, and there was no rule made that he wouldn’t breach in the interests of his own safety.
A second turning, some two hundred feet ahead, brought him into another crosscut that opened to the left and was relatively free of rock dust from the recent blast. The cut had been sealed off months ago, when the vein that ran there played out and traces of rock gas made further blasting unsafe. Once before he had seen McClellan head alone in this direction, but by the time he was able to follow, there’d been no sign of the man. Nor was there any sign of him now. He was either in the abandoned crosscut or he’d climbed one of the stopes that led up to eleven-hundred.