by Noel Loomis
The girl’s gaze came back to Quist, writing at his desk, taking in his breadth of shoulder and shock of thick tawny hair. She couldn’t see his face, but judged he was clean-shaven. This, in a country where most men grew mustaches and many wore full beards. His coat hung on a chair. A vest covered his denim shirt, open at the throat. A flat-topped fawn-colored sombrero lay on the bed, and on one bedpost hung a six-shooter in an underarm holster.
Quist stirred at his desk, put down his pen with a sigh of relief. “How I do hate writing letters,” he observed, then cast a glance over his shoulder. His eyes opened wider at the girl standing just within the doorway, then, cat-like, he came to his feet, saying, “Well!” and again, “Well!” followed by, “Good Lord, why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t like writing letters either,” the girl said directly. “And when a person has a disagreeable task to get through, he shouldn’t be interrupted.” Her voice had a sort of husky quality.
They stood, taking stock of each other for an instant. Quist noted she was nearly as tall as he was, with dark brown eyes in a well-tanned face with good features—no, the features were more than good. A fine straight nose, nice lips and chin, unbelievably long black eyelashes. And, good Lord, such hair. Unaccountably, the thought of some Viking goddess entered his mind. The girl too was liking what she saw: the good space between the eyes. Unusual eyes they were, a sort of yellow. No, topaz. Topaz was the word. Or perhaps amber. They went well with the thick tawny hair, wide, thin-lipped mouth and rather bony features.
She put out her hand suddenly and as Quist took it he felt the firmness of bone and muscular fingers. Nothing weak about that hand, and yet it was feminine too. She said directly, “Mr. Quist, I’m Kate Porter. We—that is, my father and brother and I—own the Rocking-T outfit, in Clarin County, near Clarion City. I’ve come to ask you to help me.”
Quist moved away from her then, seeking to place a chair for her near his desk and reaching for his coat. The girl stopped him: “Don’t put it on, on my account. Leave it off, and I’ll take mine off. I’ve found El Paso is rather warm this time of year.” Even as she was speaking she removed the three-quarter length coat she wore, saying something in a rather disgusted tone of voice about traveling costumes, and hung it over the chair near the desk. The shirtwaist she wore looked spotlessly new, as did the rest of her attire, as though it had been just purchased for this trip.
Quist seated himself. “Well, Miss Porter—”
“It’s Mrs. Porter,” the girl said. “My father is Wyatt Thornton. My husband—”
“Of course,” Quist broke in. “I’ve heard of the Thornton cow holdings. Right big spread.” Unconsciously, he reached for his unfinished glass of beer, then stopped, smiling a trifle sheepishly. “Sorry, I haven’t any refreshments for a lady up here. I could send down to the bar for a glass of sarsaparilla or a lemonade—”
The girl’s short laugh interrupted. She said in her husky voice, “There’s a deal of dust flying between here and Clarion City. My throat caught its full share. I happen to think there’s nothing like beer to cut dust. So if you would please…”
Quist nodded, still hesitated. “This beer isn’t iced—” he commenced.
“So much the better,” the girl replied. Quist’s eyes widened in appreciation. The girl went on, “And if you’re worrying about my reputation, forget it. I’ve been talked about before.” Something arrogant, defiant in her manner. “Right, now, your hotel clerk downstairs is considering me no lady for coming to a man’s room. Well, the way my life has been running, I’ve not had much time to live like a lady…” Then in softer tones, “Please, Mr. Quist, may I have some of your beer?” She was in that moment, Quist considered, like a small child wistfully eyeing a stick of peppermint candy.
“Of course, Mrs. Porter.” Quist rose, seeking a clean glass.
The girl’s dark eyes followed his quick easy movements across the room and back again. Prying the cup-like stopper from a bottle, he poured a foaming glass of the amber fluid and handed it to the girl. She drank deeply; a long sigh welled from her breast. “That’s better.” She smiled. Now he was remembering it was the first time he’d seen her smile. Reaching across to set the glass on the edge of his desk, a strand of yellow hair fell across her forehead. Impatiently she raised one hand to brush it aside and in doing so knocked the small bonnet with violets askew. Still more impatiently she whipped off the hat. “Blasted silly little thing,” she said tersely, tossing it atop Quist’s roll-top desk. “The things women have to put up with when they go traveling.” An irritable jerk of her head shook her blond hair free. Hairpins showered to the floor behind her chair, as the shining loosened strands fell to shoulder length. “Now,” she stated, “we’ll talk.”
“It will be a pleasure,” Quist said quietly, amusement showing in his topaz eyes.
Kate Porter came directly to the point. “Mr. Quist, my husband disappeared a month ago. I want you to find him, bring him back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Quist said. “Is your husband connected with the T.N. & A.S.?”
“If, Mr. Quist,”—and again a certain bitterness entered her tones—“you can prove that Lloyd Porter was ever connected with anything definitely, I’d be glad to hear it.”
Quist frowned. Now he was deciding he wanted nothing to do with this business. Probably, the same old story. Husband and wife had a spat. Husband takes off. What was it they always said? Oh, yes, he took his hat and his departure. Apparently, at present at least, there was no love lost between Kate Porter and her spouse. No, Quist thought, I want no part of this deal, even if I were free to engage in such work.
He said, “Look here, Mrs. Porter, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong man. Why don’t you try the Pinkerton outfit. You see, I’m a railroad operative—detective, if you like—and I work only on matters connected with the company. So—”
“That may be true, usually,” Kate Porter put in. “Perhaps I can convince you—look here, we, my father and I—own quite a block of T.N. & A.S. stock. I think we’re entitled—”
“The answer is still no, Mrs. Porter.”
The girl bridled. “I’d expect to pay you well.”
“I’m already paid well, by the company. My contract states I don’t have to take on a job unless I want to. Big stockholders have tried to bring pressure before this to get my aid in their difficulties. It hasn’t worked.” He raised one hand to halt the girl’s interruption, saying earnestly, “Actually, I can’t believe your trouble is very serious. You’ve had some sort of love spat with your husband and he decided to clear out for a while until things blow over—”
“Who said anything about love?” Kate Porter asked scornfully.
“Perhaps I assumed too much,” Quist said mildly. “But that’s neither here nor there. If I left on a hunt for your husband, some serious railroad trouble might arise where I’d be needed in a hurry. I’m sorry to have to say no—”
“Suppose,” the girl asked, color rising, “I told you there’d been talk around Clarion that I had something to do with my husband’s disappearance—?”
“You mean that you’d—?”
“Killed him,” the girl said bluntly.
Quist smiled thinly. “And did you?”
“No, but I could of,” the girl snapped.
Quist shrugged his broad shoulders. “I imagine most wives feel like killing their husbands now and then.” He smiled. “Can’t say I blame ’em either. Now, Mrs. Porter, I think this will all blow over. Pay no attention to people’s talk. Some people are always ready to talk, even when there’s no facts to support their gossip—”
“Look here, Mr. Quist, Jay Fletcher gave us to understand you’d help me.” Quist asked a question. The girl replied, “Oh, yes, Jay Fletcher is an old friend of the family. When this trouble came up I wrote him. His reply suggested perhaps you could do something. I rode into Clarion City yesterday, intending to write him again from there. I said a while back I disliked wri
ting letters. On the spur of the moment I bought such traveling clothes as were necessary and caught a night train to El Paso. Mr. Fletcher wasn’t in, when I called at the railroad offices. I asked for you. I was directed here.”
“You do things on the impulse of the moment, don’t you?” Quist chuckled.
“When I want action, I want action,” the girl said tartly.
“That I can appreciate,” Quist nodded. “We’ve that much in common. But even now I can’t say I’m agreeable to Jay Fletcher’s idea. He knows how I feel about business outside the company. And I don’t always do what Jay wants either. Sure, he’s the best division superintendent on the line—could be on the board of directors, if he liked. That’s just how much weight he carries, and his word goes a long way toward forming company policy. Within my contract, however, I form my own policy.”
“So you refuse to help me?” the girl demanded hotly.
“I suggest you try someone else. The Pinkerton Agency—”
Kate Porter flashed abruptly up from her chair, seized her coat. Long strides carried her toward the door. “Thanks for the beer,” she flung furiously over her shoulder, as she seized the knob.
“Por nada,” Quist answered, rising. “For nothing. I—”
The door opened, closed with a bang. Swift footsteps hurried along the corridor, vanished. Quist raised his voice, “Hey, you forgot your bonnet—” then stopped himself. “Hair like that should never be covered anyway,” he added quietly. He sank back in his chair, reaching for a bottle of beer and chuckled. “Impulsive. Hot-tempered as hell” The smile faded from his face. “A combination like that could lead to a killing.”
CHAPTER 3
MURDER!
The girl hadn’t been gone five minutes when footsteps again sounded in the hall, and there was another knock on the door. Quist half expected to see Kate Porter again, when the door opened on his invitation, disclosing instead a thin gray-haired man in a dark suit of wrinkled town clothing, with tired eyes behind rimless spectacles.
“Jay! I’m glad to see you.” The two men shook hands, and Jay Fletcher, a division superintendent on the T.N. & A.S. Railroad, sank wearily into a chair. Quist offered a bottle of beer, but Fletcher shook his head, in a sort of worried, harassed way. Quist said, “You act like you had something on your mind, Jay.”
“There’s no doubt about that.” Fletcher cleared his throat. “Greg, that was a nice bit of work you did up in Utah.” Quist said thanks, adding something to the effect that freight thieving was rarely hard to stop. Fletcher said he wasn’t too sure about that—not all freight thieving at least. Quist asked a question.
Fletcher said, “I’ve got another job for you, Greg. Right in your line too. Over near Clarion City. You know the town?”
“I’ve been through there a couple of times. Not recently though. That reminds me, a friend of yours visited me a short spell back.”
“Who was he?”
“It was a she—a Mrs. Porter.”
Fletcher’s jaw dropped. “Good God, I’d forgotten her letter.”
“What letter?”
Fletcher explained. “Kate Thornton—that is, Porter—wrote me a week or so back. Something about her husband having disappeared. I’ve known her family for years. She’d heard of your work and as we both worked for the same company, she had an idea you could help her out. I answered immediately, writing for her to let me know if Porter hadn’t yet returned, and that I’d talk to you when you returned from Utah. Then I forgot the matter. Other business came up. You see, her husband seems to have dropped off the face of the earth—”
“Save your breath, Jay, she told me about it I suggested she go see the Pinkerton Agency. You see, she was about to write you, then on the spur of the moment decided to come direct to El Paso, see us both and get things rolling. But I didn’t want anything to do with—”
“That’s Kate, all right. Spur-of-the-moment. Very impulsive woman. Used to getting her own way, too. I don’t think you should have turned her down, Greg. I’m asking that you reconsider—”
Quist said quietly, “You know how I feel about such cases, Jay. We’ve been through this sort of thing before. Haven’t lost any arguments yet, have I?”
“Wait until you hear what I have to say. Maybe you’ll change your mind, Greg. No, wait, let me talk. I know exactly what you’re going to say about pressure being brought by big stockholders when they get into difficulties. This job I’ve got in mind will carry you over to the Devil’s Drum country—Clarin County and Clarion City. While you’re there, should anything arise that pertains to Lloyd Porter, you’d not be averse to helping Kate, would you?”
“No,” Quist instantly replied. “But company business comes first. What is this job, anyway?”
“That’s for you to figure out,” Fletcher said tiredly. “You were up in Utah. All our other operatives were busy on cases. I’ve been riding the cars like a madman—even made a few caboose bounces—trying to learn exactly what took place. I’ve had other men working, asking questions and so on, too, but no regular operatives, and we require skilled minds for this puzzle—”
“Get to it, Jay. Something happened while I was up in Utah? I’m waiting to hear.”
“A month ago there was a heavy rainfall over in the Clarin County section. Number Twenty-four, eastbound freight, was stalled by a landslide at Shoulder Bluff, about thirteen or fourteen miles out of Clarion City. There was the usual confusion, of course—more than usual this time—getting trains rerouted over the Rock Buttes line, and so on. Right at first, no one thought too much about the business, figuring the rain had caused the landslide, which we now think took place just a minute or so before Number Twenty-four reached that point—”
“And so freight thieves looted the freight,” Quist put in.
“Let me do the talking, Greg. It has taken a month for us to hear testimony and get things partially straightened out as to what happened. We know now what happened, to some extent, but we can’t figure why. In the first place, rain didn’t cause the landslide. That landslide was man-made. Dynamite was used. The conductor of Twenty-four sent one of his brakemen to carry the word to Clarion City and ask for a work train. It wasn’t long after the brakeman left that two mule-drawn wagons showed up with orders from Tyrus Wolcott, stating a work train was on the way, and certain freight consigned to Chicago was to be turned over to the teamsters for delivery in Clarion City.”
“And of course,” Quist said disgustedly, “nobody dares to violate old Tyrant Wolcott’s orders. Jay, I don’t think there’s a meaner old bustard on any line in the country. He bullies everyone who’ll let him and he’s got the crews scared of their lives as well as their jobs. So, I suppose the conductor turned some valuable freight over to the teamster.”
“You’re right, except that it wasn’t valuable. It was a shipment of fruit preserves, strawberry jam and so on.”
Quist said caustically, “So old Tyrant Wolcott wouldn’t be deprived of his breakfast jam, I suppose. That old—”
“Don’t blame Tyrus Wolcott. He had nothing to do with the order, we found out later. The message to the station master at Clarion City was supposedly relayed through San Julio Station, from Junctionville. You know San Julio, maybe—pretty lonely spot. Just a small shack with a bunk, chair and telegraph table. And a water tank. The San Julio operator never sent the message. Somebody had entered his station, hit him on the head and taken over the key. The poor fellow didn’t even catch a glimpse of his assailant. He was in mighty bad shape for a couple of days. The company doctors had him in the hospital. But of course, the station master at Clarion City never suspected there was anything wrong. He thought the message signed Wolcott was genuine and nearly broke his neck hiring those teamsters and getting them started for Shoulder Bluff. It wasn’t until San Julio Station failed to reply to messages that a train was sent from Junctionville to check into things. The crew found the operator, bound and unconscious, several yards from his shack.”
“All that took pretty good timing.” Quist’s eyes narrowed. “Shoulder Bluff gets dynamited, causing a landslide. But to get those teamsters there, so promptly after the slide, meant that the message from San Julio had to be sent two to three hours previous to the slide. So there’s at least two men to look for—”
“How do you mean?”
“Two, at least, I said. One man, some fifty miles away at San Julio, while the other was at Shoulder Bluff to start the slide. They must have had some misinformation regarding that shipment—heard it was gold bound to the Denver mint maybe. What have the teamsters got to offer on the subject?”
“Nobody’s questioned them?”
“Why in hell not?” Quist snapped.
“They’re dead. Their bodies were found nearly three weeks ago, only a few miles from Shoulder Bluff. Shot to death.”
“A case of highjacking, eh?”
“We don’t know what to think, Greg,” Fletcher said wearily. “One of the teams and wagon reached Clarion City the morning after the landslide. The mules wandered home on their own. We’ve never found the other team.”
“What about the freight?”
“Not far from where the bodies of the teamsters were found, a lot of the canned preserves was recovered. Some of the boxes as well, but I guess every box had been opened. There were wood splinters all around, they tell me. Greg, you’ve got to do something. The road will get a bad name if people get to thinking we can be detained and freight stolen in such fashion.”
“Not to mention,” Quist said dryly, “a couple of lives were lost. The road might have trouble hiring teamsters from now on too. And that key man at San Julio might have died.” He stopped short, struck by a fresh idea. Fletcher asked a question. Quist explained in slow tones, “I just happened to think of something. That landslide happened one month ago. Kate Porter’s husband disappeared one month ago. Do you suppose he could have stumbled onto something, or even been mixed up in the business?”
“I doubt it,” Fletcher said impatiently, then he too paused, frowning. “I suppose I’d better see Kate and tell her—”
