The chill wind dried his sweat, raised gooseflesh on his arms and back as he moved along the shaft house wall. From the far corner his view of both bunkhouses and the stockade gates was obstructed by a pair of ore wagons and the rick of mine timbers. He ran across to the stack, went around the near side. Then he could see the gates; Helen Truax’s buggy was no longer there and he spied it nowhere else in this vicinity. Nor was there any sign yet of a watchman.
He edged forward until he could look past the downhill side of the rick, toward the bunkhouses. The bigger of the two, the one in which he judged the counterfeiting was being done, showed strong light in its single front window. The one farther downhill was also lighted and a man stood in front of it, smoking; the tip of his cigarette making a winking orange hole in the darkness.
Quincannon waited until the man finished his smoke, flicked the butt away, and went back inside. He was torn between two needs: to find out where Sabina was being held and determine if she was all right; and to unlock the gates in preparation for the arrival of McClew and his posse. His concern for Sabina’s welfare was paramount. He hastened back around the uphill side of the stack, paused at its opposite end to reconnoiter the bunkhouses. There was movement behind the window in the near one, then it became a blank yellow eye again. No one was outside that he could see.
The moon came out from behind the scudding clouds, bathed the yard in its brilliance for a few moments. When it vanished again he left the timbers, moving in a crouch, and ran over behind a jumble of discarded machinery, from there into the shadows cast by the stockade fence. That put him behind the nearest bunkhouse, at an angle to its uphill rear corner. He worked his way over there, up on the balls of his feet. At the side wall he flattened his back against the boards and stood listening.
Murmurs from inside, imperceptible. Ten feet ahead, the radiance from within spilled through a side window. Quincannon inched toward it, stopped just before he reached its frame. The murmurs were louder here, but of what was being said he could make out no more than one word in ten. He crouched, moved closer to the window, then raised up until he had a sidewise view through the grime-streaked glass.
The first thing he saw was the printing press. No wonder their counterfeit was of high quality; the press was not one of the old-fashioned single-plate, hand-roller variety, but rather a steam-powered Milligan press that would perform the printing, inking, and wiping simultaneously through the continuous movement of four plates around a square frame. Along with its accessories — bundles of paper, tins of ink, a long workbench laden with tools and chemicals — the press took up most of the forward half of the single room.
Quincannon. dropped low again, duck-walked under the sill, and stretched up on the window’s far side so he could see into the back half of the building. The illumination came from back there, a powerful Rochester lamp hanging above a large round table. The light clearly defined the faces of the two people seated at the table and the two men standing alongside it. One of the standing men was Bogardus. And it was Sabina he was talking to, punctuating his words with sharp, angry gestures.
She was pale but composed; whatever fear she might be feeling was contained inside her. It did not look as if she had been abused, at least not physically; her face and upper body bore no marks of violence. She kept shaking her head to whatever Bogardus was saying to her. Quincannon could hear the mutter of his voice, pick out a word here and there, but the sense of his browbeating was unclear.
The other two men in the room were strangers, although Quincannon judged that the mean-looking, fox-faced runt standing next to Bogardus was Conrad. Looking at that one, he felt the pain in his ribs and a sharp cut of hatred along with it. The third man, seated opposite Sabina, was cleaning his fingernails with a skinning knife; Sabina’s eyes kept flicking to the blade and away. He was bald and bull-necked, with half a yard of jaw, and the expression on his face said that he was enjoying himself.
Quincannon. had to fight down an impulse to rush in there, throw down on the three men now, while Sabina was still unhurt. It would be a foolish move, perhaps a deadly one. The time for action was after McClew and his posse arrived — and that time couldn’t be far off. The stockade gates were his first priority at the moment, if both he and Sabina hoped to get out of the compound alive.
She would be all right until he got back here, he told himself grimly. Bogardus was taking his time; nothing would happen to her in the next ten minutes.
And when he got back here — then what? At the first inkling of trouble, Bogardus was liable to kill her or try to use her as a hostage. Even if he stormed the place, took them by surprise, there was a chance she would be hurt, a chance he might hurt her himself, as he had hurt Katherine Bennett, with a stray bullet — a chance he might not be able to take.
How was he going to get her out of there unharmed?
Chapter 19
Quincannon moved to the rear of the building, waited there while the moon made a brief reappearance and then vanished again. From inside the barn nearby, a steady rattling sound gave him further pause; but then he recognized it — a bridled horse nervously tongue-rolling the cricket in its bit. Either one of the men had neglected to remove the tack from his animal or it was being kept ready for a ride later on. The disposal of another body, maybe, Quincannon thought with banked rage. Sabina’s, this time.
He ran silently across to the stockade fence. The shadows that bulked along it hid him as he made his way downhill past the second bunkhouse, around to the gates. They were built of slab-wood and held shut by a thick wooden bar set between a pair of iron brackets. Also attached to each half was a vertical iron rod around which a heavy chain could be looped and then padlocked. If the chain and padlock had been fastened, he would have been faced with a difficult decision; as it was, whoever had opened the gate to let Helen Truax and her rig out had not bothered to reset the chain, and it hung loose from one of the rods.
The bar was heavy but he had no trouble lifting it free. He set it aside, slid one of the gate halves open, and stepped out to peer down along the wagon road. The night was empty, hushed. McClew and his men still hadn’t shown up; if they had been out there now it would be close by, so they could keep watch on the gate, and they would already have signaled him.
He slipped back inside, pulled the gate half almost but not quite shut — open just enough to alert McClew. A thought came to him as he was about to start back the way he had come, along the east side of the fence. Instead he went the other way, around the stamp mill and under the framework of the overhead tram. In the tram’s shadow he continued uphill until he reached the stonewalled powder magazine he had noticed that afternoon.
The moon was out again, and when he opened the powder house door, enough of its shine penetrated to give him an idea of how the interior was laid out. He moved inside. Working by feel, he found an open box of dynamite sticks, another of Bickford fuses, a third of small copper detonators. He put two of the sticks and some of the fuses and blasting caps into his coat pocket. Then he backed out of the shed, shut the door, and turned toward the stack of timbers in the middle of the yard.
Downhill, not far away, somebody yelled, “Heyl Hey, you son of a bitch!”
Quincannon wheeled around. The dark shape of a man was running toward him, pawing a revolver off his hip — a skinny little runt, Conrad, drawn outside again by restlessness or on some damned errand. Everything changed in that instant; all of Quincannon’s previous intentions died, all his caution and his advantage of surprise came to an end. A rush of fear seized him, not for himself but for Sabina. His senses all sharpened at once, and he was down on one knee without even thinking about it, his own revolver coming up in his hand.
Conrad’s first shot slashed the air harmlessly, made a rocketing explosion in the stillness. Instinct kept Quincannon kneeling instead of throwing himself out flat; the blasting caps in his pocket were volatile and any sudden jarring might set them off. Another bullet whined off rock to his !eft — and th
at was all Conrad had coming to him. Quincannon shot him on the run, heard the man yell, saw him pitch sideways and then fall. By then he was up and running himself, at a downhill slant toward the bunkhouse where Sabina was.
There was a crashing noise from inside the building and the light suddenly went out. A man’s voice bellowed an obscenity. Quincannon didn’t understand at first what had happened, but the momentary confusion didn’t slow him down. Men were just starting to come out of the second bunkhouse, more confused than he was, armed but not knowing what to shoot at. Quincannon was too far away in the darkness for them to see who he was; he might have been one of their own.
In the next second the door of the first bunkhouse burst open. A figure came stumbling out — a figure with flaring skirts bunched high in both hands. Sabina.
Surprise and nascent relief put an end to Quincannon’s downhill charge. He shouted at her, “Over here, it’s Quincannon!” and saw her break stride, then veer his way. If he had had time to think about what he did next, the ghost of Katherine Bennett might have kept him from doing it. But he acted automatically, the result of years of training: he fired past the running figure of Sabina, emptied his Remington at the cluster of men by the bunkhouse and drove them back inside or to cover outside.
There were two answering shots, both wild. He saw one man, Bogardus, and then another come barreling free of the darkness inside the first bunkhouse; then Sabina was beside him, and he caught hold of her arm and dragged her back to the long row of timbers. They got around past the end of the rick just as a volley of shots started up from below.
Sabina said breathlessly, “My God, John! I thought ... I thought I was dead even after I got away from Bogardus. Where did you come from?”
“Never mind that now.” He was digging fresh cartridges out of his spares case, jamming them into the cylinders of the Remington. “You can shoot, can’t you?”
“I can and I damned well will.”
He shoved the reloaded weapon into her hand. “Get down low, back at the corner where you can see, and keep them at a distance.”
She didn’t ask questions, just did as she was told. Quincannon still had the sticks of dynamite, detonators, and Bickford fuses in his coat pocket; he hauled out one of the fat paper candles, thrust a fuse into one of the little copper tubes. Then he crimped its neck with his teeth and insert d the detonator into the hole punched in the side of the dynamite stick.
Sabina fired at something below; there were half a dozen answering shots.
Quincannon found a lucifer in his pocket, scraped it alight with his back to the wind, and lit the fuse. Immediately he stepped out and hurled the stick toward the bunkhouses, ducking back again as one of the counterfeiters pumped a shot at him.
Somebody shouted, “Dynamite! Look out!”
And the stick blew with a thunderous concussion, filling the night with the stench of its powder fumes. Dirt and pieces of rock showered down out of the haze of smoke. As the echoes rolled away, Quincannon heard one man screaming, another cursing in a steady, mindless litany. He took out the second stick, loaded it while the wind blew the smoke away.
The first blast had torn up earth and rock twenty yards from and midway between the two bunkhouses. One of the koniakers was down on all fours near there, crawling around in circles; he was the one who was screaming. The rest of them had all gone to cover. It was a standoff for the moment, while they regrouped, but it wouldn’t be long before they thought to fan out through the compound, try to catch Sabina and him in a crossfire.
Quincannon had another match in his hand, waiting. It was a minute or so before he saw movement again below — men starting to come out of hiding, to slip up to the stable or around to the stamp mill, while others opened fire to cover them. He lit the fuse on the second stick, hurled the dynamite without showing himself. This time the explosion was closer to the main bunkhouse, shattering the glass in its windows, throwing at least one of the counterfeiters off his feet. Quincannon was already moving by then, away from the rick, using the fresh confusion as cover for a run to the powder magazine for more dynamite and caps.
But he stopped midway, behind one of the ore wagons, because the smoke was clearing and a shout had gone up, followed by a fusillade of shots. Neither he nor Sabina were the targets now, however; the attention of the koniakers had been focused elsewhere.
McClew and his posse had finally arrived.
Crouched low, running back to rejoin Sabina, Quincannon saw the townsmen come boiling through the stockade gates — a dozen or more, spreading left and right, returning the counterfeiters’ fire. The lower section of the compound was like a battleground: men rushing this way and that, men falling, muzzle flashes, powdersmoke, the crack of two-score handguns, mingled shouts and curses and cries from the wounded.
Quincannon took his Remington from Sabina, stood watching tensely. She straightened and clutched his arm. “What is it, John? What’s happening?”
“McClew,” he said. “He should have had his deputies here sooner, but I’m glad now he was late.”
The battle raged for another few minutes. Quincannon could have gone down and joined it, but there was no sense in that. It would have meant leaving Sabina alone.
He said against her ear, “How did you get away from Bogardus and the other one?”
“The shooting distracted them,” she said, “and they turned their backs on me. I broke the lantern with my arm and managed to knock Bogardus off his feet on my way to the door. Was it you who started the shooting?”
“No, but I shot the one who did — the little mean-faced runt, Conrad. ”
“How did you know I was here at the mine?”
“I knew because it’s my fault you were abducted.”
“Your fault?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said.
Two of the counterfeiters had broken free of the fighting and were on the run toward the powder magazine. He fired at them, drove them back downhill. The possemen shot one; the other threw his weapon away and surrendered.
Not long after that the gunfire grew sporadic, finally stopped altogether. Quincannon spied McClew running back and forth like a military officer, barking orders that included the mounting of a search for Quincannon and Sabina. That made it time for them to show themselves. Quincannon holstered his revolver and stepped out to hail the marshal, let him know that they were both safe.
Half a minute later they had joined McClew near the main bunkhouse. The marshal wore an exhilarated, satisfied look; his mustaches fairly bristled. “Whoo-ee,” he said, “that was some skirmish. Nothing like it around here since the war with the Bannacks in Seventy-eight. You the one exploded that dynamite, Mr. Quincannon?”
“Yes.”
“Heard the first blast just as we was setting up outside. We come busting in right away. Would’ve been here five minutes sooner but we run into Mrs. Truax on the way out from town. Put her in custody and had one of the boys take her back to the jail.”
“Good work all around, Marshal.”
“Two of you look none the worse for all the fireworks,” McClew said. “You are all right, ma’am?”
Sabina nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
“Any casualties among your men?” Quincannon asked.
“Couple of flesh wounds is all,” McClew said. “T’other side didn’t fare half so well. Three dead, four others with holes ventilating their hides.”
Quincannon looked over at what was left of the koniakers, grouped together under the guard of half a dozen men and weapons. “Where’s Bogardus?”
McClew jerked a thumb at the bunkhouse. “In there. Reckon one of those sticks of dynamite done for him.”
The door to the bunkhouse had been blown off its hinges. Someone had found a Betty lamp, lighted it, and set it on top of the Milligan press; as he reached the door, Quincannon could see Bogardus lying sprawled alongside the press, his arms out-flung and his face twisted into a death rictus. The concussion had burst a couple of tins of ink,
so that Bogardus had been splattered with the fluid as he was thrown against the press. Along with the blood from his mortal wounds, it glistened blackly in the pale glow from the lamp.
Fitting, Quincannon thought. Bogardus’ life had ended as he had sought to live it — with the mixing of spilled blood and printer’s ink.
Chapter 20
For the next two days, the main topics of conversation in Silver City were the fight at the Rattling Jack, the unmasking of Bogardus and his crew as koniakers, the arrest of Helen Truax as an accomplice and co-conspirator, and the twin revelations that Quincannon was a Secret Service operative and Sabina Carpenter a Pinkerton detective. The excitment was such that a kind of carnival atmosphere prevailed. Quincannon, Sabina, and Marshal McClew were accorded the mantle of heroes and greeted effusively wherever they went.
Quincannon, however, had little time for socializing. He was kept busy sending wires, questioning prisoners and making arrangements for their transportation to Boise, and coordinating the activities of the other federal officers — among them Samuel Greenspan — who had arrived in Silver. Boggs, who had been both pleased at Quincannon’s success and disgruntled that he hadn’t waited for official sanction before raiding the Rattling Jack, issued telegraphic orders that all the counterfeiting equipment found at the mine be photographed and itemized in detail for Secret Service files. The Milligan printing press also had to be dismantled, and it and the rest of the equipment shipped to Boise for transshipment east to Washington.
The details of the coney operation that Quincannon did not already know or suspect were for the most part supplied by Helen Truax; she was more than willing to cooperate in order to save her own neck. She also filled in the missing pieces concerning Jason Elder and Whistling Dixon.
Quincannon Page 15