He stopped at the nearest eating house, filled the hole in his stomach with overcooked eggs, biscuits, and lumpy gravy, and then found his way to the Golden Dollar Saloon. This, according to O’Hearn, was one of the Monarch Mine crew’s favorite watering holes and thus where the alleged union representative, Jedediah Yost, could most often be found.
It was a noisy, smoke-filled, lantern-lit place without frills of any kind. A thick layer of sawdust littered with cigarette and cigar butts coated the floor. The long bar consisted of heavy planks laid atop a row of beer kegs; the mirror behind it was cracked and pitted in several places. Faro, chuck-a-luck, and poker layouts stretched along one wall, all of them drawing heavy play.
Quincannon insinuated himself among the crowd of men lining the bar. Miners tended to be clannish, and a newcomer to their ranks not quickly accepted. They were also a hard-drinking lot when off-shift, and as such leery of one who would not wrap himself around so much as a single glass of beer. Quincannon had no intention of compromising his long-held sobriety, so in order to explain his abstemiousness he manufactured a gastric ulcer in a grumbling, profane complaint that he voiced to the Golden Dollar bartender and others within earshot. This, coupled with a friendly, easygoing manner and a recitation of one of his favorite bawdy stories, stood him in good stead with the group he infiltrated. One hardrock man, a grizzled Irishman with a powder-burned chin, even expressed sympathy.
“I had a bad stomach a while back myself,” he said in a mild brogue. “Couldn’t drink whiskey nor even beer for a year. Worst year of me life.”
“Worst three and a half of mine,” Quincannon said.
“Well, now. You’ve already been hired at the Monarch, have ye?”
“Not yet, but I was told there’s a need for hardrock men and I’d have no trouble signing on with a word put in on my behalf.”
“Like as not ye won’t. Who put the word in for ye, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Quincannon and O’Hearn had prepared a plausible explanation at their Olympic Club meeting. “One of the bosses where I worked in Grass Valley who knows the superintendent here,” he said. “His brother’s a friend of mine and got him to do it as a favor.”
“Which outfit in Grass Valley?”
“The Empire.”
“A big operation, that. Why’d ye leave?”
“I was there two years and ready for a change. And my friend said the wages are better at the Monarch.”
“Aye, the wages are good if a man carries his weight.”
“I’ll carry mine well enough. Always have.”
“What was your job at the Empire?”
“Timberman.”
The Irishman’s seamed face split into a broad grin. “Well, hallelujah. So happens I’m head of a timber crew and we’re among the shorthanded. Barnes is my name, Pat Barnes.”
“J. F. Quinn,” Quincannon said. “I was told the Monarch works three rotating shifts. Which is yours?”
“Day shift, at present. Eight to four. That suit you?”
“It does.” The day shift was the one he’d requested of O’Hearn.
“Report to the paymaster’s office no later than seven-thirty on the morrow,” Barnes said, “and tell him I asked for ye on my crew. Meantime I’ll have a talk with Walrus Ben, get his approval.”
“Walrus Ben?”
“Ben Tremayne, the shift boss. You’ll see why the Walrus moniker when you meet him.”
“I’m grateful to you, Mr. Barnes.”
“Call me Pat. You go by J. F.?”
“John to my friends and fellows.”
“Give me a good day’s work, John, and I expect we’ll get along fine. Even if ye are a poor lad who can’t be taking a drop of the creature along with the rest of us.”
Jedediah Yost was not in attendance on this night. Quincannon stayed long enough to learn that, O’Hearn having given him a description of the man. Just as well. He wanted as much background information on Yost as could be obtained before devoting time and energy to investigating the man’s presence in Patch Creek. Sabina would gather it as quickly as possible from the Far West Mine Workers Union and other sources, and supply it to him by coded wire.
He asked no questions of Pat Barnes or anyone else about the union man, nor did he make mention of the high-grading rumors; there was nothing that would arouse suspicion more quickly among hardrock men than a stranger showing too keen an interest in local matters. Time enough for probing once he was established at the Monarch. Now it behooved him to gain acceptance among the miners, which he’d already made inroads in doing at the Golden Dollar, and to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut except when asked about his work history and indulging in the usual miners’ badinage.
It was after eleven when he returned to the lodging house for a few hours’ rest of his own.
The buildings of the Monarch Mine were step-laddered down the steep hillside below the main shaft, so that from a distance they resembled a single multilevel structure inside a wire-fenced and guarded compound. Their sheet metal roofs glistened under the early morning sunlight. So did the fan of tailings below the stamp mill, spread out from the foot of a cantilevered tramway that extended to the mill from the tunnel above. Jets of smoke and steam spewed out through the mill’s roof stacks, fouling the air and laying a gray haze over the clear blue sky.
Quincannon rode up to the compound in one of the wagons that carried mine workers to and from Patch Creek. As early as it was, the mine yard was a noisy hive of activity. Powder blasts deep inside the mine added rumbling echoes to the din; so did a tramway skip clanging out of the main shaft and dumping its load of ore into bins set beneath the gallows frame. Three burly freight-haulers were profanely unloading materiel from a big, yellow-painted Studebaker wagon drawn by a team of dray horses. Topmen and mules maneuvered planks and heavy shoring timbers for lowering to the eleven-hundred- and twelve-hundred-foot levels currently being mined. Rope-men and track-laying steelmen were also at their tasks. Day-shift miners stood talking and laughing in little groups near the gallows frame, waiting to take the place of the graveyard-shift crew.
He made his way to the paymaster’s office, as per instructions. When he gave the J. F. Quinn name, the paymaster made the damnfool mistake of saying, “Oh, right, Mr. O’Hearn said you’d be signing on.” To forestall any mention of already being marked for assignment to the day shift, he quickly related Pat Barnes’s request that he be put on the Irishman’s timber crew. The paymaster told him to report to Walrus Ben Tremayne for approval.
Another man in the office, this one in miner’s garb, had overheard the mention of O’Hearn’s name. He fixed Quincannon with a long speculative look, then followed him outside.
“Just a minute, Quinn. How do you happen to know Mr. O’Hearn?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Frank McClellan. Assistant foreman.”
Quincannon sized him up. Thirtyish, curly-haired, thin-lipped, eyes closely set; a small jagged scar narrowed the outer corner of the left eye. A steady imbiber of John Barleycorn, if the odor of whiskey on his breath this early in the day was any indication. His manner was aggressively self-important — assistant foreman was a cushy job, mostly that of inspection of completed work — yet also wary and a little nervous.
“Well? Answer my question.”
“I wouldn’t know Mr. O’Hearn from Adam’s off ox.”
“Then why’d he tell the paymaster you’d be signing on?”
“Ask him.”
“I’m asking you.”
Quincannon shrugged. “A friend in Grass Valley put in a word for me here, not that it matters. I’m no damn company informer, if that’s what’s bothering you.”