The Stolen Gold Affair

3 Quincannon

The settlement of Patch Creek, in the northeastern Mother Lode, was not an easy place to get to. It took nearly twelve hours — passage by ferry to Oakland, one train to Sacramento and another to Marysville, then an hour-and-a-half stage ride into the foothills in an old coach with squeaky axles and butt-sprung seat cushions. It was seven o’clock when Quincannon finally reached Patch Creek, stiff and sore and in no mood to be trifled with. The fact that he was wearing rough miner’s clothing, one of three such outfits purchased yesterday in San Francisco (for the cost of which Everett Hoxley would reimburse him), added to his discomfort and his crusty disposition.

He had spent considerable time in various mining settlements over the years, including recent visits to Grass Valley, Nevada City, Jamestown, and Tuttletown. If Patch Creek were the last to draw him for a long while he would count himself fortunate. There was little difference among them other than location and size. All were rowdy, noisy, often violent places, peopled by rough-and-tumble hardrock miners and those individuals who made legal and illegal livings off of them and their needs and vices.

At first sight by starlight and lantern glow, Patch Creek was no exception. Relatively small, about the size of Tuttletown in the southern Mother Lode where he’d recovered a large sum of gold bullion stolen from an allegedly burglarproof safe belonging to the Sierra Railway. The settlement had been built on the upper flank of a canyon, in two sections connected by a bridge spanning the wide stream that gave it its name. Shacks and lodging houses were scattered along the hill on the near side, most of them the high, narrow type common to mining camps — weather-beaten, constructed in close packs, lamplight glowing palely in many of the windows. The business district stretched at a short upward angle on the far side.

The Monarch Mine and its outbuildings stood farther uphill to the south; a sky-stain of lights, both electric and lantern, marked their location. So did the steady throb and pound of the stamp mill where the gold-bearing ore was crushed and separated, the faintly luminous mounds of white tailings, the whistle of a hoisting engine. The Monarch, like most large and profitable mines, operated around the clock.

The stage rattled across the railed bridge and onto the crowded business street — Canyon Street, according to a somewhat lopsided signpost nailed to one of the bridge supports. It took up four blocks of Canyon and most of the streets immediately parallel to it on either side, a jumble of stores, eating places, and the usual assortment of saloons, eateries, Chinese laundries, and parlor houses. More noise hammered at Quincannon as the stage climbed uphill — the tinny beat of music from the garishly lighted saloons, the rumble of wagons, the cries of animals, and the raucous shouts of men. Horses, ore and dray wagons, and private rigs rattled along the street; the boardwalks were crowded with off-shift miners and other pedestrians.

The driver finally brought the rattletrap conveyance to a halt in the creekside yard of a stage and freighting depot. Quincannon alighted with the other two passengers, both mining men and fortunately uncommunicative on the long ride. He stretched the kinks out of cramped muscles, then claimed his war bag.

The stage driver directed him to Miners Lodging House #4. It was on the far side of the bridge, naturally, but only a short distance uphill — a fairly new structure that contained a dozen or more sparsely furnished rooms, each not much larger than a cell. O’Hearn had arranged one for him; he claimed it, but only long enough to stow his war bag under the bunk bed. He was as hungry as he was tired, and he felt the need to get the lay of the town at close quarters.

He was on his own here, with no one other than O’Hearn privy to his true identity and purpose. The mine superintendent had suggested apprising Patch Creek’s sheriff, Micah Calder, but Quincannon had refused. For one thing, experience had taught him that small-town lawmen were not always either as honest or as closemouthed as they appeared to be. For another, O’Hearn had admitted under questioning that Calder, while trustworthy, was only a step or two removed from being dimwitted. Undercover work of this sort was a tricky business; the fewer people who knew about it, the safer and more effective he would be.

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.”

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.