Quincannon

by Bill Pronzini

  “He tried the same ploy on me,” Quincannon said, “when I approached him on behalf of the owner of my fictitious patent medicine company.”

  “Then you see what I mean. Bold as brass. The reason he went to Boise was to sell five hundred shares to a banker there; I got wind of the deal and arranged for a witness to the exchange. And still Mr. Lumley and our clients want more proof to insure a conviction.”

  “Who are your clients?”

  “A group of Paymaster investors. They began to suspect the swindle a few weeks ago.”

  Quincannon nodded, and a momentary silence settled between them. A shaft of sunlight slanting in through the window touched her hair, making it glisten with reddish highlights. He felt the physical desire again, rebuked himself sharply, and looked away from her.

  “May I ask you a personal question, Miss Carpenter?”

  “That depends on the question.”

  “How do you happen to work for Pinkerton?”

  She smiled faintly. “Do you hold a prejudice against women operatives, Mr. Quincannon?”

  “None whatsoever. I met Allan Pinkerton’s first female employee, Kate Warne, on a case in Chicago some years ago and found her highly competent. But I confess to curiosity: detective work is not an ordinary job for a woman.”

  “My husband was an operative for the Denver agency,” she said. “One of its best, I may say.”

  “Was?”

  “He was killed while on a land-fraud case two years ago.” She spoke the words matter-of-factly, but he detected traces of bitterness and lingering grief. “Shot to death during a raid.”

  “So was my father,” Quincannon said. “Several years ago on the Baltimore docks. He was a detective too, a rival of Pinkerton’s.”

  There was a space before she spoke again; her eyes, steady on his now, held a look of what he took to be compassion and a sense of kinship. He felt that he wanted to go to her, touch her, but he was afraid she might misinterpret any such intimacy as another improper advance.

  “Birds of a feather,” she said. “Lonely birds, always on the wing — targets for a hunter’s gun.”

  It was an odd phrase, vaguely haunting, and it invited no reply.

  She asked. “You are lonely, aren’t you, Mr. Quincannon? I sense it in you. Is that why you took to whiskey?”

  “No.”

  “Then why? Is it because of the woman I resemble?”

  The conversation had become too personal; her questions made him feel ill at ease, brought Katherine Bennett back into his consciousness. He said, “I had better leave now. There are things to be done.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  He turned for the stairs, stopped after two paces, and faced her again. “How late do you expect to be here tonight?”

  “Until about six.”

  “I wonder ... if I came back then, would you consider taking supper with me?”

  The faint smile again. “Do you intend to kiss me again afterward?”

  “No,” he said. And then, on impulse, “Does it offend you that I find you an attractive woman?”

  “I should be offended if you didn’t.”

  He laughed and so did she, spontaneously, and his feeling of awkwardness and unease vanished. She had a fine, rich laugh; he thought that it would be good to hear it more often. “At six then, Miss Carpenter?”

  “Very well, Mr. Quincannon — at six.”

  “John, if you will.”

  “Sabina.”

  Downstairs, he switched the sign in the door glass so that it read Open facing outward, then unlocked the door and went out. The meeting with Sabina Carpenter had gone far better than he had anticipated. He felt almost cheerful, almost human again — the first time he had experienced such normal feelings since Virginia City. He neither needed nor wanted a drink, and that too was an odd new feeling.

  On Washington Street he went down across the creek toward Cadmon’s Livery. It was still his intention to rent a horse, but no longer to visit Oliver Truax; he was convinced, after his talk with Sabina, that Truax was much too involved in his own illegal enterprise to be mixed up in the coney game. Quincannon’s aim this time was the Rattling Jack and any sort of flaw in its fortress-like defenses.

  But what he saw when he neared the livery diverted that aim for the present and gave him a different purpose. A yellow Studebaker freight wagon was drawn up in front of the entrance, its deep bed covered with canvas — the same wagon and the same team, he was sure, that Jack Bogardus had brought from Truax two days ago. Its burly driver was up on the high seat, engaged in some sort of argument with the liveryman named Henry. The man’s slablike face was turned so that Quincannon could see it and the thatch of fiery red hair that topped it.

  Both were familiar, unmistakably so. The driver of the Rattling Jack freight wagon was the man who had murdered Quincannon’s informant, Bonniwell, in San Francisco.

  Chapter 16

  It was doubtful the red-haired man had got a good look at him in return that night, shielded as he’d been by the rain and darkness, but Quincannon turned quickly aside and detoured over toward the blacksmith’s shop beyond the livery. He needn’t have worried. The redhead was intent on his argument with Henry and for the moment oblivious to his surroundings. Quincannon stopped under the drooping branches of a willow that fronted the blacksmith’s, directly behind the wagon and close enough to overhear what the two men were arguing about.

  “How the hell you expect me to get this ore down the mountain with a spavined horse and a cracked doubletree?” the redhead was saying. “I wouldn’t make it half way to the Poison Creek station.”

  “Is that my fault?” Henry said. “I told you, Griswold, I ain’t got a doubletree for that kind of rig. Why don’t you try Tully’s place?”

  “I already did on the way in. Can’t you make one?”

  “Couldn’t Tully?”

  “Said it’d take him all afternoon.”

  “Well, it would me too.”

  “I tell you, I got to get this load to Boise,” the redhead, Griswold, said. “Listen, how about repairing the doubletree. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “I suppose I could,” Henry said grudgingly. “Piece of scrap iron might do it. But I couldn’t give you any guarantee she’d hold up.”

  “I ain’t asking for any guarantee.”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I got other work to do. ...”

  Griswold said, “I’ll pay you an extra twenty if you get me on the road by two o’clock.”

  “Twenty dollars, you say?”

  “A brand new greenback. Well?”

  “All right, then. Pull the wagon inside and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Henry stepped back and the red-haired man brought the team around, drove the Studebaker up the ramp and into the shadowed interior of the livery. When Henry had gone in after it, Quincannon left the shade of the willow. He wanted a look at the “ore” in the wagon, but he was not about to get it with both Griswold and Henry in there. What he had to do was find a way to get them out of the building for a time.

  He moved along the south wall, around to the rear. There was a back entrance, he saw, a single door that he surmised would lead in among the horse stalls. He stood for a moment, scanning the area. Out here were a good-sized manure pile, some patches of dry sage and grass, the skeletons of two abandoned wagons, and more sagebrush climbing the slope beyond. There was nobody around. And once he had taken half a dozen steps toward the manure pile, the entrance to the blacksmith’s, from which he could smell the sharp odors of burning coal and hot metal, was no longer visible.

  The droppings around the edge of the pile were dry; quickly, using the side of his boot, he scraped some of them into a separate mound in a big patch of dead grass, twenty feet or so from the back wall of the livery. Then he pulled up handfuls of sage and grass and added them to the mound. The wind was gusty, blowing down from the higher elevations; he put his back to it, so as to shield his hands, and scraped a match alight. W
ithin seconds the dry grass and sage began to blaze. And when the droppings caught, the smoke that poured up from the fire thickened and was wind-driven against the livery.

  Quincannon went to the rear door, pounded on it urgently, and yelled, “Firel Firel”

  Inside, voices and running steps responded. He ducked around the north corner, ran as fast as his bruised ribs would allow to the front entrance. From there he could see the Studebaker wagon and the floor space around it: there was no sign of Henry or the redhead. The rear door must be open — he could smell smoke from the fire, see trailing wisps of it in the lamplit interior. At a distance, someone — it sounded like Henry — was cursing inventively.

  Quincannon ran up the ramp, across to the tailgate of the Studebaker, and loosened one of the ropes that secured the canvas covering the bed. Under the canvas, he saw when he lifted the corner flap, were a dozen or so wood-slat crates. He tugged at the top of the nearest crate, found that it had been nailed down. But there was finger space between two of the slats; he got a grip on one and wrenched once, twice, three times before a nail pulled loose and part of the slat splintered off with a loud snapping noise.

  He jerked his head up to look toward the rear. But the sound had been lost among several others. The horses back there had smelled the fire and were making nervous snorts and thumpings in their stalls; the drays harnessed to the Studebaker were likewise being noisily skittish. Outside Henry was still yelling. It was plain that he and Griswold were still occupied in trying to put out the fire.

  Quincannon shoved his hand down through the broken section of the box lid, felt straw packing, and burrowed through it. His fingers touched something — paper, a small bundle — and then caught hold of it and dragged it out into the light. The bundle was of brand new greenbacks, twenties judging from the top one, tied with thin twine. He pushed it into his coat pocket, dropped the canvas and retied the rope, and hurriedly backed away from the wagon.

  No one saw him leave the livery except a group of three men who had been drawn by the smoke and were on their way around back; none of them paid any attention to him. A short distance away, he paused to check the bundle of greenbacks more closely; they were definitely counterfeit. Then he continued uphill at a rapid pace, but after a block, pain from his ribs and shortness of breath forced him into a walk. He was sweating and dry-mouthed by the time he reached the Wells Fargo building.

  At the Western Union counter he composed a lengthy wire to Boggs. Added to the proof he had already assembled, the bogus notes in his pocket and his positive identification of Griswold as Bonniwell’s killer gave him all the justification he needed to take direct action. There was no doubt now that Bogardus was the leader of the koniakers, and that the Rattling Jack was where the queer was being manufactured. Even Boggs, once he had all the data in hand, would be satisfied of that.

  He requested that federal arrest and search-and-seizure warrants be obtained, and the immediate dispatching to Silver City of as many federal officers as could be spared. He also requested that a watch be put on the wagon road between Silver and Boise and when the Studebaker wagon arrived, Griswold be placed under arrest and the shipment of counterfeit confiscated. If Boggs wasted no time when the telegram arrived — and he wouldn’t, knowing Boggs — the necessary men and papers should all be here within three days. A raid on the Rattling Jack could be mounted sometime on Sunday, then, preferably with the assistance of Marshal McClew and as many special deputies as he could provide.

  Quincannon waited until the message was sent, then found his way to Silver’s other livery stable, Tully’s, where he rented both a spyglass and a claybank horse with a placid disposition. For his mission to the Rattling Jack, he wanted an animal that wouldn’t fuss when it was left alone in unfamiliar territory and thereby call attention to itself and to him.

  On his way out of town he rode by Cadmon’s Livery, venturing close enough to determine that the red-haired man and the Studebaker wagon were still there. It was already two o’clock; because of the fire, Griswold would be even later starting down the Poison Creek road on his way to Boise. All the more time for federal officers to establish watchpoints on the roads leading into the state capital.

  Near Ruby City Quincannon took the narrow wagon road that led around to the south slope of War Eagle Mountain. Wind lashed at him as he passed through the hollows and over the swells toward the Rattling Jack. The jouncing gait of the horse aggravated the pain along his rib cage; twice he had to stop for short periods to ease it and to catch his breath. When he neared the turning beyond where the mine buildings clung to the hillside he left the road and found a way down through the ravine below. The terrain soon roughened and became so rocky that he had to step down and lead the claybank, upslope in one place around an old prospect hole.

  It took half an hour for him to work his way to within a hundred yards of the stockade fence. There he ground-reined the horse and went on foot to the fence, along it stealthily for a short distance in two directions. As he had suspected, there were no openings large enough for a man to pass through; and climbing it would be a damned difficult proposition, for the posts were made of juniper stakes sharpened to points at the top. The only feasible way in, aside from storming the gates, was from the bluff at the rear — if the bluff face could be scaled.

  He returned to the claybank, mounted, and swung back along the ravine until he found a place where he could climb out on the east side, beyond the mine. Then he headed back to the south, up onto the bluff. At a point where the Rattling Jack was still hidden, he again ground-reined the horse, took the rented spyglass, and went on foot to the scattered rocks along the edge. He settled himself behind an outcrop, from where he had a clear overall view of the compound below.

  Through the glass he studied the surface works. The building nearest the bluff was also the largest in the compound: the main shaft house. Below it to the west was a stone-walled powder magazine, the tramway, and at the foot of the slope, the stamp mill. On the east side were a stable, a pair of frame structures that were probably living quarters, and the mine office. The rest of the yard was cluttered with wagons, tools, a lean-to used for storage, a long rick of mine timbers.

  Although the stamps were pounding away inside the mill, sending up jets of smoke and steam through the roof stacks, the tram was deserted again today. There was no watchman on the gates; evidently Bogardus felt the fence was sufficient security. Men moved here and there in the yard at irregular intervals, and the building that drew and disgorged most of them was the largest and furthest uphill of the two bunkhouses.

  Was that where the counterfeit notes were being made? It seemed a good bet. They would need plenty of room for the printing press, the bundles of paper and the different types of ink, the containers of acid and powdered resin, all the other items an operation of this size and production required. And none of the other buildings in the compound seemed suitable. The manufacturing point of the silver eagles and half eagles on the other hand, was probably the stamp mill, where they would have ready access to the silver that came out of the stamps.

  At length Quincannon lowered the glass and looked down the face of the bluff. The drop-off was almost vertical, and at the bottom were buildups of talus and loose dirt; but it could be scaled by an agile man using a strong rope under the cover of darkness. A night raid, then — it would have to be. One man to get in this way, when the koniakers were asleep, and then open the gate to let in the rest. With a modicum of luck, the whole operation could be accomplished without a shot being fired.

  Satisfied, he segmented the glass and made his way back to where he had left the claybank. He retraced his route to the ravine and through to the wagon road on the west side of the mine, so that it was as fixed in his mind as the layout of the compound. He would have no trouble leading the raiding party here when the time came.

  It was after five when he arrived back in Silver City. In his room at the hotel, where he went directly after returning the claybank to Tully’
s Livery, he shucked out of his dusty clothes and lay down on the bed to rest. Fatigue was heavy in him; his side ached and there was a dull throbbing in his head. Too much whiskey this morning, too much exertion this afternoon. And too much manhandling last night.

  But his need for rest was exceeded by his desire to see Sabina again. He roused himself after half an hour, washed, combed his hair, and put on fresh clothing from his warbag. His stemwinder gave the time as five past six when he left the hotel. The thought of a drink was in his mind as he walked toward Avalanche Avenue, but he did not want to see her tonight with whiskey on his breath. And he still didn’t seem to need it or its numbing effect. Later, no doubt, but not just now.

  When he reached the millinery shop he saw that no lamp burned behind its window. The sun was gone and twilight was beginning to settle; if she was here waiting for him she should have lighted the lamp by now.

  But she wasn’t here: the door was locked.

  Had she changed her mind about having dinner with him? Or left when he failed to arrive promptly at six? He didn’t believe either possibility. She was not the type of woman who made petty decisions based on emotional whim; she was a Pink Rose. She had said she would wait here for him. She should be here waiting.

  An uneasiness moved through him. He turned toward the lighted barbershop and hurried inside. The barber, a tall man with muttonchop whiskers, was just taking off his apron, getting ready to close for the day. Quincannon asked him if he had seen Sabina Carpenter leave her shop upstairs.

  “Yes, sir, so happens I did,” the barber said. “I was shaving a customer at the time and I noticed her through the window.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Oh, half an hour, forty-five minutes ago.”