Somebody shouted, “Look out!”
Simcox heard the cry or the noise of the car or both, realized his danger in time to jump clear. But he lost his footing on the slippery floor, fell, rolled against the wall. In that same moment the car hit the switch to the turning sheet — too fast, causing the switch to malfunction. The car rocked, tilted, and then slipped sideways off the track, spilling most of its load at the point where Simcox had gone down.
The station tender’s scream was choked off in the tumbling roar, and he disappeared under the crushing weight of steel and waste rock.
Lundgren and the other miners swarmed around the wreckage. Quincannon joined in the frantic scramble to unpile the rocks and lift the car, but there was no hope of rescue. Simcox’s own mother would not have recognized him when what was left of him was finally uncovered.
After the remains had been shrouded, the men stood in a silent, grim-faced cluster. One gestured angrily, and when he said, “Quinn here was chasing Joe across the station just before the accident,” every eye fixed on Quincannon.
Walrus Ben Tremayne stepped forward, his nicotine-stained mustaches bristling. “Two men dead in two days. Damn you, Quinn, you’re a murdering menace.”
“Bah. Simcox paid for his own sins. He slipped into the chute while I was breaking up the jam and tried to kill me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He was ordered to.”
“The hell you say. By who?”
“By you, Tremayne.”
Surprised mutterings came from the miners. Walrus Ben growled, “That’s a bloody lie! Why would I give such an order?”
“Simcox was a high-grader,” Quincannon said. “So was McClellan. And so are you — and a cold-blooded assassin to boot.”
The muttering voices grew louder, ominous now. Miners had no tolerance for high-graders among their numbers, and the accusation that their shift boss was both a thief and a murderer heightened their natural enmity; as were most taskmasters, Tremayne was generally disliked. Sharpened gazes shifted from Quincannon to Walrus Ben and back again.
Someone said, “Can you prove what you claim, Quinn?”
“Quincannon’s the name — John Quincannon, neither a miner nor a company spy but a San Francisco detective hired to investigate the high-grading. I was close to unmasking the thieves, and Walrus Ben knew it. That’s why I was marked for death today, that and his attempt to lay the blame for his murder of McClellan on me.”
Tremayne snapped, “My murder of McClellan? Another damn lie! The derringer he was shot with belongs to you, and you were alone with him in the crosscut. Nobody but you could have murdered him.”
“Nobody but you is more like it. You shot McClellan because you knew he would crack under pressure and implicate you, and then you knocked me on the head afterward.”
“How in hell could I have done that from out in the drift, in the company of three timbermen?”
Quincannon picked Pat Barnes out of the crowd and addressed him. “You were one of those with him, Pat. Why were the four of you on your way to the abandoned cut?”
Barnes said, scowling, “Ben told us there was thought of reopening it and he wanted us to inspect the support beams.”
“Did you notice I wasn’t with the timber crew or did he call your attention to it?”
“He did. The rest of us were too busy shoring.”
“Where were you working at the time?”
“Number-four stope.”
“Which direction did Tremayne come from?”
“Why... the direction of the abandoned cut.”
Quincannon nodded. “Where he’d just finished shooting McClellan and knocking me on the head.”
Angry exclamations from the miners now, a trio of obscenities from Walrus Ben.
One of the men demanded of Quincannon, “What were you doing back at the cut?”
Briefly he explained the reason and told of his discovery of the tube mill and cache of gold dust. “Either Tremayne had a prearranged meeting there with McClellan, or he went to pick up the dust. He’s the one who has been smuggling it out at regular intervals. A shift boss doesn’t have to submit to routine inspections like the rest of you.”
“That’s right, he doesn’t,” Barnes muttered. “Be easy as pie for him.”
“After knocking me senseless, he found the tube mill, sack of dust, and derringer in my pockets. If McClellan hadn’t come along just then, the gun might well have been used on me. Tremayne used it on his cohort instead, after they carried me back into the cut. McClellan knew I was on to him, he was losing his nerve, and like as not he wanted no part of murder. It was the perfect opportunity for Tremayne to eliminate both threats at once, by shooting McClellan and framing me for the deed.”
“How? How could he have done it? He was with us when the shot was fired...”
“No he wasn’t. The killing was done several minutes earlier, before he sought you out. What you heard was what he brought you along to hear — the explosion of a blasting cap.”
“By God! Now I think of it, the report did sound too loud for that of a derringer.”
“Tremayne is a powder man,” Quincannon said, “and I’ve heard miners say that a good blaster can blow a man’s nose for him without mussing his hair. He carries those little copper detonators in his pocket; you’ve all seen him take one out now and then, I’ll wager, just as I have. He also carries lengths of Bickford fuse. Simple enough to cut a piece of just the length needed to give him enough time to gather witnesses, then crimp the fuse into one of the detonators and light it.”
Quincannon’s words had had the desired effect on the group of miners. They had shifted position so that now they had closed ranks around the shift boss, their cap lamps shining on his seamed, sweat-slick face.
“He made the mistake,” Quincannon went on, “of laying the fuse in such a way that a portion of it burned black along the side and sole of McClellan’s left boot. I discovered that yesterday afternoon, and this morning I found the exploded cap in the abandoned stope. That’s all the evidence needed for proof of his guilt.”
Walrus Ben maintained a dark and sullen silence.
Quincannon did not need to draw the sixty-eight-cent Sears, Roebuck Defender in order to take Tremayne out of the mine and deliver him to O’Hearn. The miners not only made no effort to prevent it, but an apologetic Pat Barnes and one of the other timbermen accompanied them as guards. Walrus Ben, wisely, gave no resistance.
17
Quincannon
James O’Hearn was by turns shocked, incredulous, outraged. When Quincannon finished repeating the charges against Walrus Ben, the mine superintendent went to loom above the chair in which the shift boss sat stone-faced and spine-stiffened.
“Why, damn you, Tremayne?” he demanded. “After a dozen years as a loyal company man, why?”
Walrus Ben raised his beetle-browed head. He said with dull defiance, “Loyal company man! What did that get me, working down in the goddamn hole six days a week all those years?”
“It got you promoted to shift boss.”
“Sure, for a few dollars more a month. It also got me weak lungs from the rock gas explosion down on eight-hundred five years ago. What the hell did I have to look forward to? Nothing but another couple of years until I couldn’t do the job anymore and a disabled old age on the dole.”