by Jake Logan
“What do we do now? How do we find this scarred miscreant?”
“That’s a question I have yet to answer,” Slocum said. “I need to know more about how a counterfeiter works.” He took her arm and steered her away from the train depot toward a café. After their prior night’s vigorous activities and the effort needed to lug the heavy bags of lead coins to the train station, he had built up quite an appetite.
“I’ll tell you what I can.” She pursed her lips, then began. “First, the materials required for the planchet are assembled.”
“Lead?”
“This is not too difficult to find since so little is necessary, actually. A pound of lead would provide fifteen or twenty coins. The weight is similar enough that most people cannot tell the difference, although pure gold is softer than lead.”
“The planchet is more than lead. It has milling.”
“Yes, after the lead is poured, the edges are scored to look like a real coin, but it still looks all gray and inert.”
“How is that done?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know, but if a long semihard cylinder of lead is rolled along a scored sheet, this will place the milling on the edges. Then the metal is hardened and the planchets made by sawing off slugs of the proper thickness.”
He and Elena ordered breakfast. Slocum sipped at a cup of coffee but didn’t taste the bitter brew because his mind was on the process of counterfeiting. He set down his cup with a click in the saucer.
“What if this operation isn’t about just a few coins?”
“A few! Why, John, you almost broke your back carrying the bogus coins this morning. That is not ‘a few.’ If anything, this is the largest counterfeiting operation to come along in years.”
“They are only testing their techniques,” Slocum said. “This is a way for them to see if they need to change any part of their scheme.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Twenty thousand dollars is only the start,” Slocum said. “Pretending to rob the train but actually swapping the counterfeit coins for the real ones is how they intend to operate. Passing coins one at a time, such as the Eakin kid tried with me, is too slow.”
“Then why did the Eakins get involved?”
“The ring needed operating money, and that was how they did it. Think of blasting in a mine. You see the huge explosion, but it all started with a match being applied to the end of a fuse.”
“So they have to build up their capital to . . . what?”
“A huge counterfeiting operation,” Slocum said.
“But this is huge!”
“You’re thinking small. Whoever is the leader of this gang thinks big. Bigger than big. He is going for millions of dollars in counterfeit coins.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It was only luck that I was there to see the outlaws escape after the train robbery with the actual double eagles. Otherwise, the fakes would have been stored in the bank vault and used as payroll, with none the wiser.”
“Somebody would have noticed eventually.”
“Eventually,” Slocum said, “but not all that soon.”
“You’ve got an idea, John. What is it?” Elena leaned forward, almost upsetting her coffee cup. Her eyes bored into him, but he felt a reluctance to let her know what bothered him. “Tell me.”
“For a big operation that can substitute thousands of coins, they need to counterfeit thousands of coins. That would require a lot of lead.”
“They could buy it,” she said.
“You can ask around town, but I suspect they aren’t paying for a wagon load. They’re smarter than that since people might ask questions.”
“They can get the lead anywhere. It doesn’t have to be here, even if the town’s name is Leadville. More than lead comes out of these mines. Lots more.”
“All the more reason to make the bogus coins here. So much money flows in and out of this town that substituting some of it will finance their operation for months. And they don’t have to pass the coins here. They can make them, ship them back to Denver, and spread out through the West.”
Elena sat a little straighter.
“Or ship them back East, where people aren’t as suspicious about counterfeits. Whoever in their right mind would bite down on a gold coin in New York or Chicago to see if it was a fake?”
“Might be folks are more suspicious out here.” What Elena said cemented his notion that the counterfeiters had done all they could to prove that the scheme worked. Train robberies that were “thwarted” could cover the substitution of the coins made here in Leadville—or nearby.
“Where do we start?” Elena asked.
Slocum leaned back as the waiter delivered their food. He inhaled deeply, and his belly rumbled. It had been a spell since he had eaten.
“We start with the eggs,” he said.
“I haven’t found any purchase of lead that is unusual,” Elena said, dejected.
“The town smithy—the marshal called him Leon—is the only place I haven’t checked,” Slocum said. “You been asking about gold?”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “The counterfeiters can get the gold anywhere, even melt down a couple real coins since all they need is a very thin sheet. A single gold coin can be flattened into a sheet a couple yards square. Put the thin sheet over the planchet, heat it a mite, and the fake is completed.”
“So it’s the lead we look for.” He laughed without humor. There were dozens of abandoned mines all around the mountains surrounding Leadville. All the counterfeiters needed was one played-out mine, but with enough left in a vein for their purposes, to get what they needed.
“The stamping equipment might be another possible source of information.”
“You mean to see if the station agent remembers it being brought in from Denver?”
“Can’t hurt,” she said. She looked around, didn’t see anyone looking in their direction, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “That didn’t hurt either.”
She went off, making sure to sway her behind to give him a hint of what waited for him that night when they had finished a long day of asking questions and not getting answers. Only Slocum wanted there to be a tad of victory to their night. A celebration if he found out where the counterfeiters were holed up would be more fun than a consolation roll in the hay.
He set out for the blacksmith’s shop at the edge of town. The smell of burning iron wrinkled his nose before he got close enough to hear the rhythmic clang of the hammer hitting hot metal. Through the open door, Leon lifted his hammer and smashed it expertly into a horseshoe bent over his anvil. He was stripped to the waist and sweating from the heat boiling out of his forge. Slocum knew at a glance he didn’t want to tangle with the man, at least not with bare knuckles. Leon was powerful enough to rip the leg off a horse if it struck him as something worth doing.
The smith looked up as Slocum stood in the doorway.
“Help you, mister?” The blacksmith didn’t pause in his work.
“I need to buy a couple pounds of lead. Can you help me out?”
“Couple pounds? You lookin’ to start a war?”
“Don’t want it for bullets,” Slocum said.
“Then what? Heard tell a lead sinker on a fishin’ line works wonders, but I prefer to use a trout fly.” A loud hiss like a steam engine venting from its pistons sounded as he thrust his horseshoe into a quenching tub of water. Leon held up his work, eyed it critically, then tossed it into a box filled with sand.
“If you can’t sell me enough, who could?”
“Mister, there are a dozen mines around in these here mountains. Any of them would be happy to hand you the ore and let you pick it out with your teeth.”
“Who needs the money the most?”
Leon laughed as he began pumping the bellows to renew the coals. In a few seconds they glowed with an eye-dazzling orange. He kept at it until they were the proper color, and then he shoved an iron bar among them.
&n
bsp; “Who doesn’t? Ain’t a single rock monkey out there what don’t need money.”
“I want to be helpful. You got a friend in such a position?”
Leon looked up and squinted.
“I seen you before? You look familiar.”
“I’ve been around town for a while. Came in from Denver.” Slocum wondered if Leon was shortsighted from the way he squinted. If so, it made it less likely he’d identify Slocum as the man with Marshal Atkinson inquiring after the use of his forge and equipment a few nights earlier.
“Don’t get out much. The missus keeps me roped up and near the kennel, if you know what I mean.”
“Friends?”
“Well, there’s a miner down on his luck at the Sorry Times Mine. His name for that pit says it all. Name’s Sookie Clark.”
Slocum stood a little straighter. This was the man Leon had blamed for ruining the temper of his hammer.
“Where might I find him?”
“In his mine, if he’s got any sense. He owes me money for bustin’ up my—” Leon stopped and squinted harder at Slocum. “I seen you before?”
“Thanks,” Slocum said, hastily leaving. He wasn’t sure how nearsighted Leon might be, but it wouldn’t do if he got a bee in his bonnet and asked questions Slocum wasn’t inclined to answer.
Slocum went to the livery and dickered with the owner over the bill owed for stabling his mare. They finally came to an agreement and Slocum asked, “Where might I find the Sorry Times?”
“Five miles along the road leadin’ south outta town,” the stableman said. “If you got business with that Sookie Clark, you tell him he still owes me eight dollars for takin’ care of his swayback mule whilst he was in Denver gallivantin’ about.”
“I’ll do that,” Slocum said, saddling and leading his horse from the stables. He stepped up and rode out of Leadville at a brisk trot. Why would a down-on-his-luck miner like Sookie Clark need to go to Denver, even for a day or two? And if he did, why come back to a worthless mine? Unless he had new business partners.
The spring day turned chilly with the promise of rain hanging in the air, but Slocum pushed on. He might have to spend the night on the trail but thought Elena would understand, especially if he located the counterfeiters’ source of lead.
Alert as he was, he almost missed the road to the Sorry Times. A signpost had once held crosspieces with a dozen names on it but had fallen into a ditch, where water and wind had rotted the wood and faded the names into oblivion. Only by using his imagination did Slocum make out the name SORRY TIMES MINE on the bottommost sign. The road was overgrown with weeds, and nothing heavier than a buggy could have gone up the winding road into the hills within the past few weeks. Even considering the heavy rain would wash away the tracks, the road was virtually untrammeled. The vegetation alongside the trail and the way the weeds popped up told him that much.
But a hint here and there of a horse recently going uphill but not returning showed plain enough to his expert eye.
Slocum rode almost a mile into a canyon. Deserted mines vomited out their tailings from their mouths to dribble down the steep slopes. Nowhere did he see men occupied in the mines or hear the telltale clank of machines working any of the claims. The entire canyon had petered out sometime back.
From what Leon and the stableman had told him, Sookie Clark was like any of those mines—all petered out.
The sound of a braying mule alerted him he was getting close. Slocum led his mare into a ravine, studied the sky to guess how long before a storm might fill it bank to bank with water, then decided he had plenty of time. He patted the horse’s neck, looped the reins around a juniper branch, and began climbing.
He went straight up the side of the canyon until he reached a road blasted into the rock. It led to a mine with a whitewashed sign proclaiming it to be the LUCKY BASTARD MINE. Part of the name might have been accurate. Slocum kicked through the dross at the mine’s mouth and saw nothing that looked like blue dirt or anything of value. A man had wasted his time here before moving on.
Slocum hiked around to the side of the mine and saw the mule making all the noise not thirty yards distant. To reach the animal, he would have to climb down the hillside he was on, then claw his way up a steep incline of twenty feet or so. In the shadows he made out a dark opening into that hill.
And coming from it was a smallish man with pipe stem arms. He had a rope over his shoulder, bent forward and digging in his toes to pull like a beast of burden. Inch by inch he gained and an ore cart finally came into view. Slocum hunkered down and watched, wondering why Sookie Clark—if this was the man he sought—didn’t hitch the mule to the cart and save himself some effort.
It came to him that the mule might be smarter than the man.
The man he took to be Clark stopped pulling and began rummaging through the rusty ore cart, tossing out rocks as big as his head onto a sheet of canvas. When he’d emptied his load, he began moving them downhill by dragging the canvas. Once the miner was out of sight, Slocum scooted and slipped and slid downhill to where the mule stood patiently. It turned a big brown eye in his direction but didn’t let out any protest at all seeing a newcomer to the claim.
Slocum found climbing the steep hill to the mine a chore, but he came to the brink near the edge of the mine and peered over it. Clark was hard at work loading his ore into a crusher. Beyond, Slocum saw a kiln, but it wasn’t fired up. The man needed a significant load of crushed ore before working to reduce the lead and discard the dross.
Grunting, Slocum pulled himself over the edge and rolled through the dust to crouch behind the ore cart. If Clark would scrape off the rust and oil the wheels, his job would be far easier. Somehow, Slocum doubted that extra bit of work had ever occurred to the miner.
He half rose, considering his chances of learning anything by confronting Clark.
Looking around, he saw a sign that had once been nailed to a wooden mine support lying on the ground. He could barely make out the lettering but got enough of SORRY TIMES to know this was the man he sought. The way he ground up the ore so lackadaisically convinced Slocum that Leon wasn’t wrong. Sookie Clark was the sort who would misuse another’s tools, and never know the reason.
“You got more lead for me?” came the call from downhill. Slocum strained to see who greeted Clark but couldn’t get a good look. He heard the steady clopping of a horse working up a road he had missed.
“Not yet, Mr. Bulwer, not jist yet. Been hard scratchin’ out the ore. Not much left in the old Sorry Times.”
“I’m ready to mill again, and all I have is fifty pounds. I need at least that much more.”
Slocum involuntarily stood and stared. A hundred pounds of fake coins? He quickly ran through the possibilities. This Bulwer was ready to counterfeit another thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of coins!
Slocum reached for his six-shooter, prepared to end the counterfeiting ring here and now. Letting Clark go was easy enough. The man was more of a danger to himself than anyone else, but if Bulwer was the ringleader, then Slocum could count on a huge reward from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. And he knew how he would spend it. A room in the Brown Palace back in Denver, with a soft bed and running bathwater—and Elena Warburton.
“Gosh, Mr. Bulwer, that’s danged near two hundred pounds of lead you’ve already got from me.”
“I’ll take as much as you can mine, but you’re not working fast enough.” The man rode into view. Slocum caught his breath, and lifted his six-gun. The rider—Bulwer—was the man with the scar running across his nose.
He started to shout out for Bulwer to grab some sky when the sound of more horses froze him. Three more men rode up. There wasn’t any way Slocum could take all four of them prisoner.
“Boss, we found a horse down in a ravine.”
“You got more than the mule, Clark?”
“No, sir, I don’t. Can’t hardly afford the mule, what with the medicine I got to give her and—”
“You don’t have a
horse, too?”
“Nope.”
“Fan out. There’s somebody around here snooping on us,” Bulwer said, reaching for his own pistol.
Slocum tucked his six-shooter back into his holster and looked back down the hill. He caught his breath when he saw another of the counterfeiters standing guard over his horse. If he tried to drop down that sheer cliff, he would be seen for sure.
Bulwer’s three gunmen dismounted and started up the hill, coming straight for Slocum.
15
Slocum wasn’t sure if they had spotted him. He hid behind the rusty ore cart for a moment, looked over the brink of the twenty-foot drop to where Clark’s mule stood patiently, thinking its mulish thoughts and not giving a damn about the hubbub around it. Slocum duckwalked into the mine and stood just inside the mouth, heart hammering away as he heard the boot steps crunching on gravel and getting nearer by the second. He drew his six-shooter, but he didn’t have any better chance now of shooting his way out of this predicament than he did before. Less. He was backed into the mine now. He cursed himself for being so stupid. Better to die out in the open than in a ready-made grave.
“I heard something, boss,” shouted one gunman. The footsteps stopped. Slocum imagined the trio pulling their iron and looking around for something to shoot.
He slipped deeper into the mine. Ten steps inside, the mine branched. Each direction along the fork was equally dark. He went right for no good reason. With his luck running the way it had, he was as likely to die in this stope as he was in the other. Slocum turned and waited when the darkness engulfed him completely. The faint glow from outside would silhouette anyone coming down the shaft, giving him the opportunity to eliminate one of his opponents. He doubted Bulwer had brought more than four henchmen with him, but such a guess could leave him dead.
Just like picking the wrong shaft to follow.
“You see anything?” Bulwer shouted.
“Nothing, boss. I got a look down to where Sookie’s staked his mule, but nobody’s movin’ ’tween there and where Johnny’s found the horse.”