Quincannon paid that no heed, either. “Open the cage,” he said to the hoist tender.
“Graveyard shift’s still working.”
“I’ve no intention of bothering any of them. Open the cage, if you value your job.”
“Goddamn company mole,” Simcox said, and spat juicily at Quincannon’s feet.
Quincannon neither moved nor commented, matching Simcox’s glare with one of his own. It had been many years since he had lost a staredown, and he didn’t lose this one. Simcox muttered an obscenity, spat again, and turned his attention elsewhere.
The hoist tender likewise thought better of any further argument. He went ahead and opened the cage. Quincannon barely had time to lower the safety bar before the brakes were released, and the descent was no less than what he’d expected — a fast downward hurtle and a jarring stop that rattled his teeth and popped his ears. As he stepped out into the station on twelve-hundred, he saw no one in the immediate vicinity. He stomped his feet to bring back his hearing, then went to fetch and light a cap lamp.
The ring of steel against rock, shouts, and other noises told him that most of the graveyard crew was working in the new crosscut, getting ready to “tally and shoot the face” — mining parlance for the loading of drill holes with dynamite for end-of-shift blasting. He moved off quickly along the rails in the opposite direction, encountered no one on the long trek to the abandoned crosscut. As he neared it, he slowed his pace and transferred the Defender from his boot to his trouser pocket.
The loose boards had been nailed securely into place across the entrance, but it took only a brief effort with a toll pick to gain access. He went ahead to the unfinished stope, stepped inside by a pace, then squatted to wash his light over the floor. It took him less than a minute to locate what he was looking for. As he’d surmised, there had been no good reason for McClellan’s murderer to have removed the object. He left it where it lay. Flimsy evidence because of its commonness in these confines, but coupled with McClellan’s boot it confirmed his suspicion as to how the frame against him had been arranged. One more piece of proof was all he needed.
Distant “Fire in the hole!” warning shouts came as he emerged from the drift. He had enough time to replace the boards before the first of the end-of-shift dynamite blasts set up echoes and vibrations. He waited there until the other powder shots had been fired in sequence, then made his way back. When the whistle sounded, he was waiting behind a pile of timber for the night crew to file into the station and the cage to take them topside.
Walrus Ben Tremayne and the rest of the day shift found him in the powder room a few minutes later, readying for work. As expected, there were ominous grumblings from the men, followed by a direct verbal assault from the shift boss.
“You must be daft, Quinn, coming down here again after what you did yesterday.”
“Spy for the owners,” one of the other miners muttered. “Paid to get away with murder.”
“Aye, and not welcome among us,” Pat Barnes said, “no matter what Mr. O’Hearn says.”
“I’m neither a spy nor a murderer,” Quincannon said. “Innocent until proved guilty, as the superintendent believes, and here to do a day’s work for a day’s pay same as you.”
He had banked on the fact that hardrock men valued their jobs more than they disliked and distrusted interlopers, and he was right. If the murder victim had been one of their rank and file, instead of a crew boss, they might have given him a roughing-up in spite of O’Hearn’s orders. As it was, there were no further challenges and the men moved away to their various duties — all except Walrus Ben, who blocked Quincannon’s way as he started to join Barnes and the other timbermen.
“You’ll not do shoring in the new crosscut, Quinn,” the shift boss said.
“No? Why not?”
“Because I say so. You’ll work where I tell you.”
“And where would that be?”
“We’ll be hoisting ore on the skip this afternoon. The night-shift boss tells me there’s a jam in number-four trap. You’ll pull the chute.”
“Dangerous job for a new man unfamiliar with the trap.”
“If you don’t follow orders, I have the authority to fire you for insubordination. Whether Mr. O’Hearn likes it or not.”
“I didn’t say I refused. There’s no job I’m not up to.”
“Then get to it!”
Reluctantly Quincannon made his way to the main chute, which ran at a forty-five-degree angle under the drift to two trapdoor exits in the shaft, twenty feet below the station. Smaller chutes fed the main one from above, and the muckers on the graveyard shift had shoveled into them vast amounts of ore blasted loose at the end of the night shift. Jams were common. “Pulling the chute” meant climbing down into the shaft, opening the blocked trapdoor, and by means of a long, heavy iron bar, freeing the obstruction so ore could flow freely into the skip, a coffin-shaped steel box that held six tons.
It was hot, dirty, hazardous work that required careful attention and dexterity of movement. Quincannon, standing on a plank two feet wide, poked and prodded the bar up into the chute’s innards in an effort to break the jam piecemeal. If it broke all at once, and he was not quick enough to dance clear, one or more of the rocks might knock him off his perch. Just last year, he’d heard, a chute-puller on one of the upper levels had been pulverized at the bottom of the shaft.
The job went disagreeably slow. He was a novice at this kind of labor; the narrow plank was slippery and strewn with spilled ore that had accumulated and banked up. Water dripped steadily down the shaft’s walls, onto his neck and down his back. The smoky flame of his lamp gave too little light. The trap seemed about to free, jammed again, freed a bit, jammed. His arms and back ached from the strain of prying, poking, pounding.
He had begun the task on his guard, but frustration and fatigue took their toll. He began to curse, even more inventively than usual, and his voice echoed loudly in the chute. So he didn’t hear the man ease into the shaft on the ladder above him. If the weapon the man carried hadn’t accidentally scraped against the rock wall, the last sound Quincannon ever heard would have been his own voice blistering the stale air.
The ringing noise jerked his head around and up, just in time to avoid a savage downward jab with an iron bar identical to the one he held. The assailant was the slab-faced station tender. Teeth bared, Simcox swung the bar again. Quincannon screwed his body sideways, again in the nick of time; the iron swished air past his head, clanged against rock. For an instant he lost his balance, teetered on the edge of the plank. He managed to brace himself by jamming the bar against the wall, and shoved back out of the way as Simcox’s bar slashed at him a third time.
It was the station tender who was off balance then. Before Simcox could set himself for another thrust, Quincannon reached up left-handed and caught a tight grip on the end of the other’s weapon. He yanked downward, hard. His intent was to pull Simcox off the ladder, send him crashing into the chute, but Simcox released his grip. When Quincannon did the same, it was the bar that dropped clattering into the jammed ore.
For an instant the two men glared at each other in the smoky light. Then Simcox’s nerve broke. He twisted around, clambered out of the chute. Quincannon hauled himself up the ladder and gave chase, still clutching his bar.
When he burst through into the drift he saw Simcox fifty yards away, casting a look over his shoulder as he fled into the station. A knot of other miners stopped what they were doing to stare. Quincannon yelled, “Stop him! Stop that man!” but none of the men moved to obey.
From beyond a curve in the drift there came a rumbling that signified an oncoming tram car. Simcox didn’t seem to hear it; he ran across the turning sheet, a massive plate of boiler iron where cars and skips were shunted and rotated, and onto the ties between the same set of tracks. A few seconds later the loaded car rattled into view, the old-timer, Lundgren, pushing it with his usual speed down the slight grade.