Quincannon jq-1

by Bill Pronzini

  Wheeler said, “Work to be done. Hope you get what you’re after, son.”

  “So do I.”

  Quincannon watched the old waddy climb back inside the corral and cross to the sagebrush fire. Then he moved off to where the new hands were dismounting near the barn. None of them could tell him any more than Sudden Wheeler had, except that Dixon’s shirttail cousin, Conrad, was good with a handgun and “a mean little son of a bitch drunk or sober.”

  It was past noon when Quincannon rode out of Ox-Yoke. His hangover had faded some at the ranch, but after half an hour in the saddle, under the full glare of the sun, it began to plague him again. The morning’s whiskey and the growling emptiness in his belly made him dizzy. He cursed himself for not buying some beefsteak and sourdough biscuits from the Ox-Yoke cook.

  When he reached DeLamar he stopped at the first cafe he saw and forced down a plate of beans and bacon. Afterward he went to a nearby saloon and drank two pints of Gretes’ beer, the home brew, to slake his thirst. He felt better then. Well enough, at least, to face the steady, up-canyon climb to Silver City.

  A mile below Ruby City he had to stop and wait while two wagons maneuvered around each other on a ledge where the road narrowed and there was a sheer dropoff on one side. On impulse he asked one of the drivers, who had paused after the passage to check a wheel hub, if he knew where the Rattling Jack mine was located. The man said he did and gave directions. The route would take Quincannon south away from Silver, toward the Ruby Mountains, but the distance was not great. It would mean another half hour of riding, no more. He had enough whiskey left for that.

  Between Ruby and Silver, a narrow and badly rutted wagon road cut away to the south and he turned along there. It snaked through a network of hollows and swells, forked twice — he took the left fork each time, as per the wagon driver’s instructions — and finally climbed along a bare shoulder on the south side of War Eagle Mountain. The sun was westering now and the high-plateau wind had picked up; it blew cool against his face, bent the sage and bunchgrass on the slope and made whistling noises among the rocks.

  He heard the dull thud of the Rattling Jack’s small stamp mill before he saw any sign of the mine. He put the roan into a slow walk as they started around a sharp turning in the road. Then the mine’s surface works appeared, sitting forward on the slope beyond the ravine he had been skirting, and he drew rein. Black-painted words on the side of the largest of the mine buildings spelled out the words:

  RATTLING JACK MINING CO.

  Two things about the place struck him immediately as odd. One was the fence that enclosed the compound — a tall, horseshoe-shaped stockade fence, the kind that might have been erected in the days when roving bands of Bannacks and Piutes attacked isolated diggings; now it seemed an excessive precaution, unless Bogardus were hiding something behind it. The second thing was the tailings. The biggest drift of them looked old, evidence of what had once been a large-scale operation here. There was a newer dump, below a tramway that extended out over the stockade fence, but it was small — too small for a mine where a rich new vein had been found and worked for some months. Truax had said Bogardus claimed to be producing ore that assayed at a hundred dollars a ton, which was impossible with a dump that size.

  Quincannon dismounted, led the roan back around the turning, ground-reined it, and then made his way up along the side of the slope to its highest vantage point, where he could just see over the top of the fence. But the distance was considerable; he wished he had rented a spyglass along with the horse. He studied as much of the compound as he could see. Its fourth side was a steep, almost vertical bluff. Scaleable? He would have to go up on its rim to determine that. Smoke and steam came from the roof stacks of the main shaft house and the mill at the foot of the grade, and the stamps continued their rhythmic pounding. If there was any above-ground activity, he couldn’t see any of it from here. But no one trundled an ore cart out along the tram, to dump waste rock from its end — not once in the fifteen minutes Quincannon sat watching.

  Nothing else happened during those fifteen minutes. Finally he stood and went back downslope to his horse. Mounting, he headed back toward the main road and Silver City.

  Something curious was going on at the Rattling Jack; he was convinced of that now. But it was premature to assume that Bogardus and his men were the koniakers. More information was needed before he could make that assumption and take action on it.

  Still, what better place for the manufacture of bogus coins and notes than an isolated silver mine?

  Chapter 11

  The hands on Quincannon’s stemwinder showed a quarter of five when he rode into downtown Silver. He tied up in front of the Wells Fargo office and went in to ask the Western Union telegrapher if a wire had come for him. None had; Boggs was taking longer than he had hoped to reply to his requests for information, doubtless because that information was not easy to come by.

  He rode down to Cadmon’s Livery, turned over the roan to the day hostler, Henry, and walked to the War Eagle Hotel. There, he found a message waiting — from Sabina Carpenter, asking him to call on her either at her millinery shop or at Mrs. Farnsworth’s rooming house on Morning Star Street. He was not surprised. Nor was he reluctant to see her; the prospect gave him an odd sense of anticipation.

  Upstairs in his room, he washed the trail dust out of his beard and off his skin and brushed it from his clothing. He held his hands up when he was done, watched them for a moment. Steady. But he took a drink anyway, a large one, before he went downstairs again.

  It was not yet six o’clock, so he went first to Avalanche Avenue. The street door to Sabina’s Millinery was unlocked. He entered and climbed a flight of stairs that delivered him into a spacious single room with draperies drawn across the rear third of it to create a private compartment. There was no one in the public two thirds of the room.

  He paused for a moment to take stock of the place. A display table with four finished hats — two for men, two for women — arranged on little stands. Another, much larger table on which were a bolt of cloth, scissors, and a tape measure. Shelves containing more bolts of cloth in a variety of colors and patterns. Other shelves stacked with artificial flowers, grosgrain and velvet ribbons, black and white veil netting, boxes of hatpins, different kinds of bows and doodads. The shop struck him, unlike the Rattling Jack mine, as a legitimate business operation. He wondered if Sabina Carpenter had purchased the existing stock from a former owner or if she had brought it all with her from Denver or wherever she’d come.

  “Miss Carpenter?”

  The draperies parted and she appeared. Today she wore a dark blue shirtwaist and a striped serge skirt; her dark hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a lacquered comb — a style that gave her a vaguely Oriental appearance and made almost nonexistent her resemblance to Katherine Bennett. She did not smile as she came toward him, nor did she offer her hand. The look in her eyes was unreadable.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said in a flat voice.

  “Not at all. My pleasure.”

  “Is it? I thought you might be unwilling to face me.”

  “Why should I be unwilling?”

  “Because of the lies you have been telling about me.”

  He feigned surprise. “Lies? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Another lie, Mr. Lyons. If that is your name.”

  “Do you think it might not be?”

  “I have my suspicions. About your profession, too.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Patent medicine drummers don’t usually spread falsehoods about people they scarcely know,” she said. “Nor do they ask the sort of questions you have been asking around town.”

  “How could you know what sort of questions I’ve been asking?”

  “I have ears,” she said. “I’ve heard them repeated.”

  “Indeed? You seem to have considerable interest in me. I don’t suppose it’s personal?”

  “Not in the sense yo
u mean.”

  “Then why should a simple milliner find me so intriguing?”

  “Do you think I’m not a simple milliner?”

  “I, too, have my suspicions.”

  They looked at each other in silence for several seconds. Quincannon felt a stirring that was undeniably sexual — the first such carnal desire he had had since that day in Nevada last summer. It repelled him, because of her resemblance to Katherine Bennett, and yet the more he fought it in his mind, the stronger it became.

  Sabina Carpenter seemed somehow to sense the direction of his thoughts. A faint flush colored her cheeks; abruptly she turned away, went to the Argand lamp on one wall. Twilight was approaching and shadows had begun to lengthen in the room. She lit the lamp, turned up the wick to crowd the shadows back into the corners.

  When she turned to face him again she remained standing where she was. She said, “Why did you lie to Helen Traux last night? Why did you say I’d told you about finding her shares of Paymaster stock?”

  He shrugged. “I merely stretched the truth a little. Mrs. Truax seemed eager for the stock certificate to be returned to her.”

  She made no response.

  Quincannon said, “Ah,” and smiled faintly.

  “That stock certificate is none of your concern.”

  “Perhaps not. Unless it pertains to the death of my old friend Whistling Dixon.”

  She was not prepared for that. The statement seemed to puzzle and confuse her for a moment. Finally she said, “I fail to understand how the murder of a cowboy could be connected to Helen Truax and the Paymaster Mining Company.”

  “You found the certificate in Jason Elder’s shack, with her shares signed over to him. And Elder was acquainted with Whistling Dixon — well enough acquainted so that Dixon was carrying Elder’s watch when he was shot.”

  Confusion showed in her face again. She seemed about to speak, then held her tongue.

  “Mrs. Truax denies having signed the stock over to anyone,” he said. “Now why do you suppose she lied?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea.”

  “Nor any idea why she should give what amounts to twelve thousand dollars to a tramp printer addicted to opium?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to Jason Elder, Miss Carpenter?”

  “Happened to him? What makes you think something happened to him?”

  “It’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right,” Quincannon said. “You scarcely knew the man; you were only making a new hat for him… a fancy new hat for a man who lived in a shack and preferred to spend his money on opium.”

  The corners of her mouth tightened into white ridges; she was angry now. It was plain that she did not like to be put on the defensive. “I find your insinuations objectionable and irritating,” she said. “Particularly so since you are a liar and no doubt worse — for all I know, a common criminal, even a murderer.”

  Murderer, he thought, and Katherine Bennett began thrashing in his mind again, the blood pumping out between her clasped hands, the accusing eyes boring into his. He heard her screams again and he watched her die again.

  Sabina Carpenter said, “Why are you so interested in Whistling Dixon’s death and Jason Elder’s disappearance?”

  “I told you why. Dixon was like a second father to me when I was a boy.”

  “I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe you’re interested in the Truaxes and the Paymaster Mining Company because of Dixon’s death, either. Just who are you, Mr. Lyons?”

  “A salesman for a brand of salts,” Quincannon said. “Just as you are a maker of hats for ladies and gentlemen and tramp printers.”

  She hesitated, then moved to within two paces of him. Flushed with her anger, her face had a radiant quality in the lampglow and the fading daylight; he stared hard at it, to keep from staring at the face inside his mind. Her eyes were a dark brown, he saw, almost black in this light. Her mouth was full, the lips soft-looking. There was a sprinkling of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  She said, “Answer me this, then. What do you intend to do next?”

  “When I leave here, you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. About Helen Truax, for one. Do you intend to see her again?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “To discuss her relationship with Jason Elder?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you intend to tell her husband about Elder? About the stock certificate?”

  “Would you rather I didn’t?”

  “It wouldn’t be prudent or scrupulous.”

  “Neither was your keeping the certificate after you found it. Or did you turn it over to Marshal McClew after all?”

  She was silent.

  Quincannon said, “Oliver Truax does have a right to know about his wife’s indiscretions, whatever they may be. With Elder, and with Jack Bogardus too.”

  “Bogardus? What do you know about Mrs. Truax’s relationship with him?”

  “I might ask you the same thing. What do you know about their relationship?”

  No answer.

  “Well then,” he said, “what do you know about the Rattling Jack mine?”

  She frowned, showing puzzlement again. “The Rattling Jack has nothing to do with Mrs. Truax.”

  “Perhaps not. But she is involved with Bogardus, isn’t she?”

  “I have no intention of trading gossip with you, Mr. Lyons. Helen Truax’s personal life is her own concern; her privacy ought to be respected. Passing on rumors and idle speculation to her husband can do no one any good.”

  “Including you?”

  “And what does that imply?”

  “You’re familiar with the word blackmail, aren’t you, Miss Carpenter?”

  She glared at him. “How dare you,” she said.

  It was his turn not to respond. A silence settled between them, heavy and tense; they stood with their gazes locked. Her eyes had little flecks of light in them, like mica particles reflecting the sun. The tip of her tongue made a wet line between her pursed lips. He could hear the faint rasp of her breathing. He could smell the delicate scent of her lilac perfume.

  He kissed her.

  It was the most impetuous thing he had ever done in his life. It surprised him even more than it surprised her, because he had had no thought of doing it; it was just something he found himself doing, and afterward could not explain even to himself.

  She didn’t fight him, but neither did she respond. She endured the moment, and when he released her and stepped back, she slapped him. A ringing slap, with enough strength behind it to rock him and leave his cheek burning under its mat of beard.

  “When I want to be kissed,” she said in a low, wintry voice, “I offer an invitation. And I prefer to invite a man who doesn’t reek of whiskey.”

  Self-disgust moved through him. He felt suddenly bewildered, wretched, a wriggling thing that had crawled out from under a rock and assaulted her.

  Murderer. Murderer.

  Not meeting her gaze now, he said, “I apologize, Miss Carpenter. Vulgar and inexcusable of me.” The words had an abject sound in his ears, almost sniveling.

  “I think you should leave,” she said.

  “Yes. I… yes.”

  He went to the stairs, hurried down them without looking back at her. Outside, he stood for a moment in the cold sweep of the wind, letting it take the heat out of his face. Goddamn fool, he thought. Kissing her that way — unprofessional, because it gives her the upper hand. Never get anything out of her now. Childish. Grotesque. She looks enough like Katherine Bennett to be a relative.

  He walked to Jordan Street, hunched against the night’s chill. He needed a drink — several drinks. And quickly.

  Chapter 12

  He went south on Jordan, into Silver’s red light district near Long Gulch Creek, and found his way into a deadfall called Mother Mack’s. The place was bedlam — two pianos competing with each other,
hurdy-gurdy girls dancing with burly miners and leaned-down cowpunchers, roulette and faro and chuck-a-luck games receiving heavy play, and a noisy poker match in progress in one corner. Quincannon found elbow room at the bar and drank two double whiskeys in rapid succession. This was the place for him tonight, the kind of low dive he belonged in. The haunt of whores, sure-thing men, bunco steerers, thieves — and other murderers. They were fitting company for the likes of him.

  He ordered a third whiskey, and would have drunk it straightaway, to obliterate Katherine Bennett and Sabina Carpenter from his thoughts, if the man next to him hadn’t departed just then and left a copy of the Owyhee Volunteer on the bar.

  It was the most recent edition, the one that had come out this day, and Quincannon saw that it carried a front-page editorial under the heading ANOTHER CHINESE OUTRAGE. He drew the paper over in front of him. Will Coffin had waxed eloquent and indignant over the second illegal entry of the newspaper office, accusing “unsavory elements of the Chinese population, among them the scurvy merchant Yum Wing” as the culprits and claiming that the crimes were “in retaliation for public condemnation, in this newspaper, of the vicious practices of selling opium and encouraging opium addiction in our fair city.” He went on to say that “anyone guilty of such mean acts, whether he be a Chinaman or a white man, would steal the leather hinges off a blind woman’s smokehouse and ought to be dealt with accordingly. The time has come to put an end to such open lawlessness, a fact with which City Marshal Wendell McClew must surely agree.”

  Quincannon pushed the paper aside. Chinaman or white man, he thought.

  He drank his third whiskey, slowly. His mind seemed clear again, empty for the moment of the self-loathing that had brought him here, focused once more on the business at hand. One of the hurdy-gurdy girls began to rub her bosom against his arm, to murmur enticements — half an hour of dancing for fifty cents, more intimate activities for a dollar and up. Her voice and her painted face repelled him; he brushed her away. The deadfall itself repelled him now: he no more belonged in this part of society than he did among the cloistered rich on San Francisco’s Nob Hill. He belonged to no part of society, not anymore. He was a man alone, who answered to no one on this earth, not even the United States Government; who would answer only to God.