Everything was here, all the keys that would unlock the gateway to celestial dreams — keys that no opium addict would willingly leave behind. Wherever Elder had gone, circumstances must have forced him to leave in a great hurry, from some location other than this shack. Either that, or someone else had been responsible for his disappearance.
Quincannon examined the contents of the flat-topped trunk. Shirts, a pair of trousers, galluses, stockings, underdrawers, a pair of crumbling books on the printing trade in general and various type faces in particular, and an empty carpetbag — most if not all of Elder’s personal possessions. None of it contained any clues to his present whereabouts, to his connection with Whistling Dixon or Helen Truax or Sabina Carpenter. Nor was there anything that even hinted that Elder might be involved with the koniakers.
The remainder of the room likewise revealed nothing of interest. If any other unusual item aside from the stock certificate had once been kept here, Sabina Carpenter — or another party; Will Coffin, for one, had also been to the shack — had made off with it.
Quincannon went outside, back to Owyhee Street and then down Jordan. The first saloon he came to drew him inside and held him for ten minutes, the time it took to drink two whiskeys to ease his mind and eat a sandwich and two pickled eggs to ease the hunger pangs in his stomach. Then, following directions he had obtained from the bartender, he found his way to the house where the Truaxes lived, east across Jordan Creek on a hummock that overlooked most of the town and descending valley beyond.
The house differed considerably in style from most of the buildings in Silver City — a bastardized Italianate with a single jutting cupola and an ornate front veranda bordered by lilac bushes. No doubt the fanciest home in Silver, Quincannon judged; he would have been surprised, having met both Oliver Truax and his wife, if it had been otherwise. He climbed to the veranda, pulled the ring for the bell.
No one responded to the summons. Helen Truax was out somewhere, perhaps shopping; he would have to wait until later to talk to her.
From the Truax house he went to the Wells Fargo office, where he wrote out another Western Union telegram to be sent to Boggs in care of the “Caldwell Associates” mail-drop in San Francisco. This one read:
PRINCIPLE ACCOUNT BANKRUPT NO EXPLANATION YET STOP HAVE SEVERAL OTHER POSSIBILITIES TO INDICATE THIS IS FRUITFUL TERRITORY STOP WILL COFFIN FROM KANSAS CITY OWNER LOCAL NEWSPAPER HAS BEEN MOST HELPFUL SO HAVE OLIVER TRUAX OWNER PAYMASTER MINE AND WIFE HELEN STOP REMEMBER SABINA CARPENTER FROM DENVER QMK SHE IS HERE AND VERY ACTIVE
All of which would tell Boggs that Whistling Dixon had been killed, that his death might be connected with the counterfeiting operation, and that Quincannon required information on Will Coffin, the Truaxes, and especially Sabina Carpenter.
He remained at the Western Union counter until the brass pounder had sent the message. Leaving then, he located Cad-mon’s Livery near the stage barn. The hostler turned out to be the bespectacled man named Henry who had found Whistling Dixon’s corpse; Quincannon mentioned the murder and then asked, with apparent casual curiosity, if Marshal McClew had found anything in Slaughterhouse Gulch that might identify the killers.
Henry said that he hadn’t. “And he likely never will, either,” he added. “Outlaws done it. Damned few of those sons of bitches ever get caught. They don’t hang around Silver long enough for that, once they rob or kill somebody.”
Quincannon rented a horse — a blaze-faced roan with four white stockings — and then asked Henry how to get to the Paymaster mine. He rode out of town on a rutted wagon road that led up the face of War Eagle Mountain. Ore wagons rolled past him, on their way to and from the mines; the thud and boom of the stamps and powder blasts seemed to grow louder, hollower as he climbed toward the tiered buildings above. The high country wind blew cool against his face, made him feel almost chilly.
So did the nagging mental image of Sabina Carpenter, unwanted, vexing, like a splinter that had worked its way deep into his flesh and would not come out.
Chapter 8
The buildings of the Paymaster mine were arranged on tiers down the mountainside, so that they resembled a single multilevel structure. Their sheet-metal roofs glistened under the afternoon sun. So did the fan of tailings below the stamp mill, spread out from the foot of the cantilevered tramway that extended down to the mill from the main tunnel above.
Quincannon rode into the mine yard. Three men were harnessing a team of dray horses to a big, yellow-painted Studebaker freight wagon; the only other men in sight were up on the tram, pushing ore carts from the tunnel to the chute that fed the mill, back again for another load. Quincannon. dismounted, tied the roan to one of the yard stanchions, and approached the men at the Studebaker wagon to ask the location of the mine office.
One of the men pointed to a small building upslope. “But if you’re looking for Mr. Truax,” he said, “he ain’t there.”
“Where would I find him?”
“Down in the mill. Stairs over yonder.”
A dynamite explosion deep inside the mine made the ground tremble as Quincannon descended a steep flight of stairs to the stamp mill. When he entered he had no trouble locating Truax; together with a burly man in miner’s garb, probably the mill foreman, he was inspecting one of the eccentrics that raised the stamps, shut down now and locked into place. Rather than interrupt them, Quincannon stayed where he was near the entrance and watched the machinery and the millhands at their work.
He had visited a stamp mill once before, in the Comstock Lode; he knew how they worked. The smaller pieces of ore that came tumbling down the chute went through a three-inch grizzly or grating into the feed bins; anything larger was shunted into a jaw crusher. The dressed ore was fed automatically to the stamps, where it was wet-stamped with a mixture of mercury, water, and patio reagents; the mercury drew the raw silver out of the slimes. At the end of a long process that included mulling, separating, and drainage, slugs of amalgam emerged and were delivered to retort furnaces that distilled off the quicksilver. The sponge matte was then melted and cast into bars in the adjacent melting room.
Quincannon waited ten minutes in the lanternlit enclosure, keeping out of the way of the sweating millhands, before Truax and his foreman finished their inspection and the fat mine owner turned toward the entrance. Truax recognized Quincannon with no outward show of surprise. He gestured that they go outside, where they could make themselves heard above the thunder of the iron-shod stamps.
“Well, Mr. Lyons, what brings you here?”
“A private matter,” Quincannon said. “I wonder if we might talk in your office?”
“I’m a busy man, you know. If it concerns salts or whatever it is you’re selling…”
“Not at all. It concerns buying, not selling.”
“Ah? Buying what?”
“Shares in the Paymaster Mining Company, perhaps, if they’re available.”
Truax’s expression changed; an avid sort of interest shone in his eyes. “Well, then, I’m sure I can spare you a few minutes. Yes, I’m sure I can. Come along, Mr. Lyons.”
He led the way up the stairs. The workers who had been harnessing the drays to the Studebaker wagon were gone now, but two other men had taken their place. One was dressed in standard miner’s clothing; the other, swarthy and half a head taller, wore a frock coat over gray twill trousers, and a Montana peaked hat. When the tall one spied Truax he came quickly away from the wagon.