McClellan’s jaw tightened. He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of what he’d been about to say and snapped it shut again. He turned on his heel and stalked off.
A man to watch, Quincannon thought. The wariness and nervous suspicion might be due to a concern that excessive drinking would cost him his job, but it might also be apprehension if he were one of the high-graders. An assistant foreman had full knowledge of the workings of a gold mine and a free run of its gold-bearing innards.
Quincannon returned to the gallows frame just as the whistle blew to announce the end of the graveyard shift. One of the waiting hardrock men pointed out Walrus Ben Tremayne to him. A squat, beetle-browed gent of some fifty years, the day-shift boss sported thick, flowing, nicotine-stained mustaches — no doubt the source of his moniker.
Tremayne looked him up and down, grunted, and said in a wheezy baritone, “Timberman, eh?”
“That’s right. Pat Barnes asked that I be put on his shorthanded crew.”
“So he told me. New hires usually start with the mucking crew on the graveyard shift.”
Quincannon had no desire for that kind of work. Mucking meant cleaning up debris in the galleries and crosscuts after blasting — the miners’ equivalent of a stablehand’s backbreaking job. He said, “I came here for timber work.”
“And you think you’re good at it, do you?”
“I know I am. Never had a complaint yet.”
“Last worked the Empire in Grass Valley?”
“For two years. A string of other mines in Sonora and Jamestown before that — all timber jobs.”
Walrus Ben grunted again. “All right, then. I’ll give you a chance to prove yourself down on twelve-hundred today. Tell Barnes I said so.”
Quincannon sought out Pat Barnes, who showed his broad grin again and followed it with a friendly thump on the shoulder. He hoped the jovial Irishman would not turn out to be one of the high-graders. It irked him when a favorable first impression of a person proved to be false.
Inside the gallows frame the shaft cage rattled, then shot into view at a jolting, close-to-unsafe speed before squealing brakes gripped the cable. This was evidently a regular and dangerous little game played by the hoist tender, judging from the ominous grumblings among the night-shift men as they filed out, caked with dust and sweat and smelling like mine mules, and from a sharp reprimand from Walrus Ben as he led the day-shift miners onto the swaying cage.
The rebuke had little enough impact on the tender; the drop into darkness was fast and jerky, the square of light above vanishing almost immediately, for the shaft was crooked from the pressure of the earth against it. The cage bounced to a stop at the eleven-hundred-foot level, where a dozen men alighted, then dropped to the gallery station at twelve-hundred. By then Quincannon’s ears were clogged and he was deaf from the change in air pressure. It was a phenomenon he hadn’t gotten used to in the Eastern mine where he worked in his youth, and likely wouldn’t here, either. He stamped his feet as he stepped out, as did the others, until the pressure eased and hearing returned.
In the powder room across the station they hung up coats, stowed lunch pails (Quincannon’s had been prepared for him by the cook at the lodging house), gathered tools, and lit oil-wick cap lamps and tin hand lanterns. When they emerged, Pat Barnes introduced Quincannon to the other members of his timber crew.
The graveyard-shift powder man had blasted loose tons of rock to widen and lengthen a new crosscut, and the damp, humid air was thick with silica dust and the stench of burnt powder. The job hadn’t been done to Walrus Ben’s satisfaction, however. Tremayne had evidently been a powder man himself prior to his promotion to shift boss; he had his own ideas on the finer points of loading, capping, and detonating sticks of dynamite, and still worked at the task, as a length of Bickford fuse visible in his coat pocket attested. He bellowed orders and gave the muckers, trammers, and timbermen not a moment’s rest after they set to work.
And long, arduous work it was. It had been a while since Quincannon had engaged in heavy physical labor; it didn’t take long for the carrying and setting of lumber for shoring the walls of the crosscut — and those of a new stope, a vertical shaft above the cut that would connect twelve-hundred with eleven-hundred — to blister his hands inside heavy gloves, strain every muscle, cake his freebooter’s beard with dust and sweat. He was by no means soft, but mining labor put even the hardiest of men to the test, the more so one who had not in many years worked an eight-hour shift in the dangerous bowels of the earth. Down here, cave-ins, premature detonations, fires, floods, rock gas, runaway cages and tramcars were potentially greater threats to his longevity than the actions of a gang of gold thieves.
He learned nothing about the high-grading during the long shift, either by observation or listening to conversations among his fellow laborers, but he hadn’t expected to his first day on the job. Or down here in the hole for that matter, at least initially. Considerably more time was needed to learn who was involved and how the gold was being smuggled out, and he had the feeling that some of the answers were to be found in Patch Creek.
4
Sabina
The day John departed for Patch Creek she arranged to have lunch with Callie, to tell her the wedding date would have to be postponed. The restaurant she chose was a favorite of her cousin’s, the Sun Dial on Geary Street — a calculated and probably futile effort to provide a convivial atmosphere for the telling. Sabina was not looking forward to the task.
When she left Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, she stopped at the nearby Western Union office to send a wire, at John’s request. It was to the headquarters of the Far West Mine Workers Union in Sacramento, asking for general background information on FWMWU representative Jedediah Yost; the reason she gave for the request was a routine insurance matter. The day being Friday, neither she nor John expected a reply until Monday.
Callie was already seated in the Sun Dial’s bright, airy main dining room when Sabina arrived. Sunlight slanting through one of the large skylights laid a golden sheen on her cousin’s intricately braided and coiled blond hair. On the chair beside her was one of the many lavishly fashionable hats she owned, a creation decorated with bunches of dark red currants that matched the color of her outfit and trimmed with a tall peacock feather.
In her youth Callie had been a vivacious beauty, and despite the addition of several pounds — she had an inordinate fondness for sweets — she was still regally attractive in her mid-forties. Like Sabina, she had been born in Chicago, but her family had moved to California when she was five, before Sabina was born. They had resided in Oakland for a time, settling in San Francisco when her father was promoted to the regional headquarters of the Miners Bank. Her marriage to Hugh French, a protégé of her father’s who eventually became the bank’s president, had firmly entrenched her among the city’s social elite.
She had been delighted when Sabina moved to San Francisco from Denver, and even more delighted when she learned of John’s marriage proposal and Sabina’s acceptance. But today, as expected, she was anything but delighted at the news of the delay and the reason for it.
“Oh, Sabina,” she said, “how could you let John take on such a lengthy assignment now?”
“I couldn’t very well stop him.”
“But virtually at the last minute...”
“Three weeks is not the last minute, Callie. There’s still plenty of time to reschedule.” Sabina paused. “You haven’t already sent out the invitations, have you?”