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.
The boodle game had been Bogardus’ brainchild, in league with Elder, Conrad, and one other man, James Darby, who was now in custody. When the last silver-bearing vein at the Rattling Jack began to peter out, Bogardus and Darby had schemed up the bogus coin idea; Darby had worked as a diemaker and was responsible for the counterfeit eagle and half-eagle molds. Bogardus, meanwhile, had made arrangements through old criminal contacts in Portland and Seattle for the passage of the finished coins.
Bogardus had also, by this time, rekindled his affair with Helen Truax, who had turned up in Silver City as the wife of Oliver Truax. She was bored with Truax, if not with his money, and more than willing to take up with her former lover. She claimed that she hadn’t known of his counterfeiting activities until just recently, but Quincannon suspected Bogardus had confided in her almost at once.