Quincannon (7 page)

“It would be a pleasure. Will you be staying long?”

“Not as long as I had expected.” Quincannon assumed a solemn expression. “The old friend I had hoped to see, Whistling Dixon, was killed last night.”

Truax’s reaction was nil, beyond a look of sympathy as feigned as Quincannon’s grief. If anything, he seemed disinterested — but that may have been feigned too. “What happened to the poor fellow?”

“No one knows exactly. He was shot sometime last night, in Slaughterhouse Gulch.”

“Shot?”

“Murdered.”

“Bandits,” Truax said immediately. “These mountains are acrawl with them.”

“Yes, so I’ve been told.” Quincannon shook his head. “It seems to be a day for unpleasant news,” he said. “I spoke to Will Coffin this morning; he told me the newspaper office was broken into again during his absence.”

Truax showed no particular interest in that either. “Was there much damage?”

“Little enough.”

“Those damned heathen Chinamen ought to be run clear out of the Owyhees.”

“So you said yesterday,” Quincannon reminded him blandly. “Poor Mr. Coffin. To compound his problems, his part-time printer, Jason Elder, has disappeared.”

“Elder? Oh yes, the opium addict.”

“You don’t know the man personally?”

“Of course not. I don’t keep company with dope fiends.”

Perhaps not, Quincannon thought, but your wife surely does. He said, “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Truax. Thank you for seeing me, and for your excellent whiskey.”

“Not at all. My pleasure. Ah, you will be sending a wire to Mr. Caldwell right away, won’t you?”

“This very evening.”

“Will you let me know if you have a reply from him?”

“Right away.”

Truax beamed at him. He even stood up as Quincannon took his leave of the office.

Riding out of the mine yard, Quincannon fired his pipe and reflected sourly that he was accumulating a great deal of curious information but that none of it seemed to fit together into a useful pattern. Nor did any of it seem directly related to the gang of koniakers, with the probable exception of Whistling Dixon’s murder and the possible exception of Jason Elder’s disappearance. And now he needed the answers to several puzzling and related questions before he could even begin to piece things together.

Why had Helen Truax signed over all of her two hundred and fifty shares in the Paymaster Mining Company to Elder — shares worth better than twelve thousand dollars?

Why had Sabina Carpenter taken those shares from Elder’s shack and what did she intend to do with them?

Why was Truax so eager to sell Paymaster stock?

What, exactly, was Helen Traux’s relationship with Jack Bogardus?

And if Bogardus was as dishonest as Truax claimed, did that dishonesty extend to counterfeiting and murder?

When he arrived back in town Quincannon went directly to the Western Union desk at the Wells Fargo office. It was too early to expect answers to his wires, but there was always the chance that Boggs had news of his own to impart. He found nothing for him when he arrived, however. He sent Boggs another wire care of Caldwell Associates, this one requesting information on Jack Bogardus, and then returned his rented horse to the livery and walked back up to the War Eagle Hotel.

In his room he lay on the bed and cudgeled his brain for an hour, without much consequence. Restlessness and hunger drove him out again. He ate a small meal at a cafe nearby, and when he was done it was early evening and the saloons were beginning to fill up with cowhands, miners, and townsmen. He did as he had done the previous night: drifted from saloon to saloon, taking a drink in each, engaging this man and that in apparently idle conversation.

The murder of Whistling Dixon was a favorite topic, but Quincannon picked up no new information or useful speculation on the shooting. He did learn that although Dixon had no real friends among the Ox-Yoke cowboys, he had most often partnered with a waddy named Sudden Wheeler; and that if anyone had known Dixon and his private ways, it was Wheeler. Quincannon had already planned to ride out to the Ox-Yoke tomorrow. Now that he had Wheeler’s name, it might simplify his inquiries.

Information was meager on other fronts as well. As far as any of the miners who worked at the Paymaster knew, the mine was still producing high-grade ore on the same steady basis as in previous years. The payload vein wouldn’t last forever, as one miner said, and it wasn’t as rich as it had been in the seventies, but he wasn’t worrying about his job. That being the case, it was unlikely that Truax’s eagerness to sell Paymaster stock stemmed from an urgent need for money — at least as far as the mine itself went. Any other motives he might have were well hidden.

Jack Bogardus was generally disliked in Silver, though not with the vehemence Truax had exhibited. The consensus seemed to be that he had obtained the Rattling Jack mine through dishonest methods, as Truax had claimed. He had been an abrasive sort to deal with personally and professionally up until his discovery of the rich new vein; since then he had mended his ways somewhat, lost his public contentiousness and modified his penchant for petty conniving. Now he was tolerated, especially in saloon circles; when he was in town for reasons other than Helen Truax, which wasn’t often, he stood drinks for the house.

He was secretive about the Rattling Jack’s new vein; he had built a stockade around the mine compound and allowed no one inside except the dozen or so men who worked for him. Quincannon found this secrecy of potential interest. Perhaps the man was only being overly protective of his holdings; but a fence might also mean that he had something to hide. It was a fact to be looked into more closely.

Questions about Jason Elder netted him nothing more than he already knew. Questions about the Chinese population in general and Yum Wing in particular were likewise unproductive. Aside from the usual prejudice against the Chinese, there was little animosity such as Truax and Coffin had demonstrated. The yellow men were tolerated in much the same way Bogardus was tolerated, and that included Yum Wing and his opium peddling. A few of the men Quincannon spoke to even seemed surprised that Will Coffin was being harassed. “Hell,” one man said, “them Chinamen is a peaceable bunch. Seems to me it’d take a lot more than a couple of editorials to stir ’em up to busting into Coffin’s house and the newspaper office.”

Quincannon, from his personal knowledge of the Chinese race, agreed with that assessment. It was something that had been bothering him. Either trouble ran deep and dark between Coffin and the Orientals of Silver City, or somebody else was responsible for the break-ins. The same person or persons who had ransacked Jason Elder’s shack, for instance.

Sabina Carpenter?

Looking for what?

When Quincannon left the sixth saloon he was feeling the effects of the whiskey, starting to lose his clear-headedness. It was dark now and the gas lamps had been lighted along Jordan and along the narrow winding streets that climbed the hillsides to the east and west. The night wind blowing down off War Eagle Mountain was chill; he walked into the teeth of it, to chase away the muzziness from the liquor.

On impulse he turned west on Avalanche Avenue, toward Sabina Carpenter’s millinery shop. He expected to find it dark, but it wasn’t; lamplight illuminated the second-floor window and the words painted on it: SABINA’S MILLINERY • FINE HATS FOR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Quincannon stopped across the street, behind a waiting buggy drawn by a sleek dappled gray, and peered up at the lighted glass. Nothing moved behind it, at least not within the range of his vision.

He stayed where he was for a time, waiting for his head to clear completely, debating with himself. Should he talk to her again? He felt a compulsion to do so, yet he also felt that it would be futile and that it would only arouse her suspicions; he sensed that already she thought him something more than the patent medicine drummer he claimed.

He was sure she was something more than the milliner she claimed.

A single horsemen trotted by, followed by a carriage with its side curtains drawn. When the carriage passed beyond where he stood he saw that the street door to the millinery shop had opened and a woman was coming out. At first he thought it was Sabina Carpenter; but then the woman picked up her skirts and hurried across the rutted street toward the buggy, and he recognized Helen Truax.

He moved out into the spillage of light from a nearby lamp. She stopped abruptly when she saw him; but after he tipped his hat and spoke to her, saying, “Good evening, Mrs. Truax,” she came ahead to where he stood.

“Mr. Lyons, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I hope you don’t mind my speaking to you this way.”

“No, it’s quite all right.”

Quincannon said casually, “Are you a friend of Sabina Carpenter’s?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Well, I noticed that you’ve just come from her shop.”

“We’re acquainted, yes.”

Behind and above her, the second-floor window of Sabina’s Millinery went dark as the lamp was extinguished. Quincannon held his gaze on it for a moment but could detect no movement behind the shadowed glass.

He said, “A new hat, then?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The purpose of your visit tonight.”

“Oh ... yes, a new hat. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Lyons, I must be going. My husband is waiting at home.”

She stepped past him to the buggy, drawing closer the white shawl she wore over her dress. In that same moment the door across the street opened again and Sabina Carpenter emerged. Quincannon still stood in the light from the street lamp; the Carpenter woman looked straight at him and he was sure she recognized him. She hesitated briefly, then pivoted and hurried away toward Washington Street.

Quincannon hesitated too. But this was neither the time nor the place to try getting at the sense of whatever game she was playing: she would not respond well to being accosted on a dark street. And there was the matter at hand of Helen Truax. There was no telling when he might have another opportunity to speak to her alone.

Mrs. Truax was just climbing onto the tufted leather seat of the buggy. He moved over alongside as she settled herself; reached out to stroke the gray’s sleek withers.

“A fine-looking horse,” he said.

“Yes. My husband bought him for me.”

“He must be a generous man. I spoke to him at the Paymaster this afternoon, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen him since breakfast.”

“A business matter,” Quincannon told her. “Concerning shares of stock in the Paymaster Mining Company.”

“What shares of stock?” she asked a little sharply.

“Why, shares that might be for sale.”

“To whom?”

“My employer, Mr. Arthur Caldwell of San Francisco. He is quite wealthy and his avocation is stock speculation. I often act as an unofficial scout for him. And the Paymaster would seem to be a good investment.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I understand you own stock in the company yourself, Mrs. Truax.”

A pause. “Did my husband tell you that?”

“Yes, he did. Sabina Carpenter also remarked on it.”

Another pause, longer this time; he would have liked to see her face more clearly. When she spoke again there was a tense, wary edge to her voice. “How would Miss Carpenter know about my Paymaster stock?”

“Why ... didn’t she tell you abut the certificate?”

“What certificate?”

“Yours, of course — the one she found this morning. She said she intended to return it....”

“Well, she didn’t,” Helen Truax said angrily. “Where did she find it?”

“At Jason Elder’s shack, she said. Perhaps she intends to return it to Mr. Elder.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Well, she told me the stock belongs to him now. That you had signed it over to him.”

“That’s a liel”

“You mean you do still own it?”

“Of course I own it. My husband gave it to me as a wedding present. I ... I lost the certificate not long ago.”

“Ah. I wonder what Jason Elder was doing with it?”

“I have no idea. I don’t even know the man.” She seemed to be making an effort to control herself. Jerkily she took up the reins. “Miss Carpenter is a liar and very likely a thief. Thank you for making me aware of the fact, Mr. Lyons. Good night.” She snapped the reins and the gray broke into a smart trot, forcing Quincannon to step back quickly from the buggy’s front wheel.

He watched until Helen Truax had turned the corner on Jordan Street and passed out of sight. Then he went in the opposite direction, to Washington. There was no sign of Sabina Carpenter; he wondered if she had gone to her rooming house or if she were up to something else this night. He wondered also if the lies he had told Mrs. Truax would lead to anything revealing. A calculated risk: the time had come to stir things up a bit, even if it meant opening a hornet’s nest.

He walked back to the War Eagle Hotel and took Emily Dickinson to bed.