Quincannon paused at the boarded-up entrance to the cut. No light showed between the chinks and no sounds came from within. He examined the boards — and a small smile curved his mouth when he discovered that two had been pried loose of their fastenings and then propped back into place. By McClellan, no doubt. And there could be only one reason for the assistant foreman to venture inside an unused tunnel such as this.
Extra light was called for, Quincannon decided. He lit one of the candles he’d appropriated from the storeroom, pulled the loose boards aside and then back into place behind him as he stepped through. The air within was stale, dank, but carried no hint of gas. His cap lamp and the candlelight threw flickering shadows over walls of rock thinly veined with quartz. The cut had progressed no more than forty rods. Halfway along was the roomlike opening to an abandoned stope. He went inside, held the candle high. The stope hadn’t been cut all the way through; it ended in solid rock some fifteen feet above his head.
He inspected the support timers and other possible hiding places without finding anything, then continued his examination along the walls of the cut. Thin trickles of water wet them, dripping down to collect in little puddles here and there along the base. It was in a rotting pile of scrap lumber near the unbroken face of the end wall that he found what he’d been hunting for — the method by which the high-graders were refining chunks of gold-bearing ore, and a cache of pure gold dust produced by the process.
The dust was in a small drawstring sack similar to the one he’d found in McClellan’s cabin. Some twenty troy ounces, judging by its weight — several hundred dollars’ worth.
The method was a small but well-constructed tube mill — a short length of capped iron pipe with a bolt for a pestle. When a piece of rich ore was dropped into the tube, a few strokes of the grinding pestle would pulverize it. The residue would then be washed out with water in a battered tin cup and the gold transferred to the sack. How the dust was being smuggled out past the shift inspectors remained to be determined.
Doubtless there were more homemade grinders hidden elsewhere on this level and eleven-hundred above. How many depended on the exact number of miners in the gang and just how much dust they were milling from pockets with a substantial accumulation of native gold. Every half spoonful of looted gold, according to O’Hearn, represented the loss of ten dollars clear profit to Hoxley and Associates.
Quincannon considered returning the sack to where he’d found it, decided confiscating it was the better course of action, and slipped it into his pocket. The tube mill was too large to fit there without detection; he returned it to its hiding place. In McClellan’s present jittery state, confronting him with knowledge of it and the cache of dust might crack him open like a bad egg. Not down here in the hole, however. Topside, in a private place such as McClellan’s cabin, where he could use intimidation and guile — and if necessary, force — to bring about a confession.
He made his way back to the entrance, extinguished both his oil-wick lamp and the candle before he moved the loose boards and stepped out. Thick darkness awaited him, and he heard nothing except the distant ring of sledgehammers on steel, the thump and rattle of ore carts on the tram tracks. He struck a lucifer to relight his lamp.
No sooner had the match flared than his ears picked up a faint scraping noise behind him, the unmistakable sound of a boot sole on stone. He hunched his shoulders, started to duck down and away — too late. Something solid fetched him a savage blow alongside the temple, bringing a spurt of blinding pain.
Quincannon and the match went out at the same time.
He was just lifting onto all fours, conscious again but dull-witted, when he heard the sound of the pistol shot. It jerked him upright onto his knees, set up a fierce pounding in his head. His vision was cloudy with double images; it seemed a long while before he was able to bring his eyes into focus. And when he did, he could not immediately credit what he saw in the dancing light from a kerosene lamp that had been spiked into a nearby support beam.
He had been carried or dragged back inside the abandoned crosscut to within a few feet of the unfinished stope. In front of him the body of a man lay on its back, legs inside the little room, torso and arms stretched outward. McClellan. Blood gleamed across the front of the assistant foreman’s heavy-weave shirt; wide-open eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. On the wet floor alongside him was the Remington hideout gun.
Wincing, holding his head with one cupped hand, Quincannon used the rough wall as a fulcrum to lift himself unsteadily to his feet. He leaned there to look around, breath rattling and whistling in his throat. Except for the dead man, he was alone in the cut.
But not for long.
Noises came from the closed-off entrance — boards being yanked aside, men crowding through. A dark mass of them separated into four as they hurried forward, their cap lights throwing distorted shadows along the walls. Pat Barnes, two other timbermen, and Walrus Ben Tremayne. They drew up short when they saw what lay on the rock floor.
“Lord Almighty!” Barnes said. “It’s Mr. McClellan. Dead?”
Walrus Ben hunkered beside the body. “He’ll never be deader. Shot clean through the heart.”
One of the timbermen said in awed tones, “Never thought I’d see the day when something like this happened down here.”
“What did happen, Quinn?” Walrus Ben demanded.
“I’ve no answer for that yet.”
“So? What were you and him doing in here?”
Quincannon said nothing this time. He wiped sweat from his forehead, trickling blood from the wound above his temple, then lowered his hand to feel his pants pocket. It was empty now, the sacked gold dust gone. He had no need to look for the tube mill to know that it had been taken, too, and either rehidden or disposed of. Hell and damn! Anger flared hot in him, driving away the last of his confusion.
Walrus Ben scooped up the derringer, peered at it in the flickering light. “And whose bloody damn weapon is this?”
There was no denying ownership. The letter Q was carved into the handle. “Mine.”
“Brought down to kill poor McClellan, eh?”
“I’ve killed no one.”
“Why were you armed, then?”
“I had good reason.”
“There’s no good reason for bringing a pistol into the hole. What do you claim happened here, if not cold-blooded murder? Hard words over something, a fight?”
“I didn’t kill him, I tell you,” Quincannon said. “I was slugged from behind, and only just regaining my wits when I heard the shot.”
“Aye, we heard it too,” Barnes said. “Missed ye in the drift and come looking.”
Walrus Ben said, “If you didn’t fire the pistol, Quinn, who did?”
“The same man who pounded my head. But I didn’t get a look at him either time.”
“A bloody thin story, that. You admit ownership of the weapon. And there’s no one here but you and McClellan, him dead as a doornail.”
“Whoever did it must have gotten out of this cut before you arrived and escaped into a stope.”
“No likelihood of that,” Barnes said. “We were in sight of the entrance when the shot sounded.”
“Then he’s hiding somewhere nearby.”
But he wasn’t. Walrus Ben ordered the timbermen to examine the rest of the cut and the unfinished stope.
“There’s but one way in and out of here,” the shift boss said then, “and nobody alive before we came except you, Quinn. You’re the slayer, no other. Confess and have done with it.”
Confess and be damned for a crime I didn’t commit? Quincannon thought bitterly. Faugh! But there was no gainsaying that the circumstantial evidence against him appeared conclusive — as pretty a frame as ever had been set around an innocent man. By whom? And how had the bloody deed been accomplished?