Quincannon (8 page)

He was sitting up in bed, soaked in sweat, staring blindly into the darkness. It was a minute or more before Katherine Bennett’s screams faded and he could hear the silence of the room, the distant rhythm of the stamps on War Eagle and Florida mountains.

But he could still see those eyes, accusing him; still see her life’s blood and that of her unborn child pouring out between her clasped fingers. He groped the whiskey bottle off the nightstand, drank from it without bothering with a glass.

Murderer.

Murderer ...

Shortly past dawn, Quincannon roused the night hostler at Cadmon’s Livery out of his bed. The liveryman rented him the same blaze-faced roan he had ridden to the Paymaster mine, and provided directions to Cow Creek and the Ox-Yoke ranch. Quincannon rode out of town to the west, on the heavily rutted wagon road to DeLamar and the Oregon border.

He sat stiff in the saddle, every now and then taking a drink from the flask in his coat pocket. The whiskey did nothing for the hangover pain in his temples and behind his eyes, but it eased the queasiness in his stomach, kept his hands steady and his thoughts dulled. The fresh bottle had cost him five dollars from the night clerk at the hotel; he would have paid fifty. He had emptied the one in his room sometime during the night.

The road followed Jordan Creek down-canyon, through Ruby City a mile below Silver and then Booneville — semiabandoned camps whose crumbling buildings appeared to be inhabited mostly by prospectors still scouring the old, once profitable claims nearby. At Quincannon’s back the sun rose and took the chill out of the early morning air. He barely noticed; the whiskey had long since made him impervious to the cold.

A mile above DeLamar he passed a pair of jerkline freighters on their way to Silver, cussing their mules the way ’skinners always did; otherwise there was no traffic on the road. DeLamar turned out to be a thriving little settlement, nestled in a cluster of little hills, its buildings strung along the sides of the canyon wherever a level place had been found to build on. Steep stairways climbed the hillsides and connected the houses, so that the whole place had the look of a white man’s version of an Indian cliff-dwelling pueblo.

West of DeLamar Quincannon climbed to a ridge, and from there he could see the grass- and sage-covered sweep of the interior basin — one of the sections of rich cattle graze — and beyond that, the Oregon desert and the Parsnip Mountains. The road continued to drop, coming out of the bleak ridges and valleys of the Owyhees; the scent of sage replaced the spicy odor of juniper trees. When he reached the basin he encountered a fork: left to South Mountain, the hostler back in Silver had told him, right to Cow Creek. He swung right, into one of the little creek valleys where two or three hundred head of Herefords and Texas Longhorns fattened themselves on bunchgrass. Not as many as there would have been before the disastrous winter of 1888-89, perhaps, but more than enough to sustain the ranches in the area.

Ox-Yoke was the biggest of them, he’d been told, and one of the largest in Owyhee County; he had no trouble finding it. The ranchyard contained a dozen buildings, including two bunkhouses and a separate cookshack, and a pair of corrals. Horses moved skittishly in one of the corrals; in an extension of the other, several cowhands were branding calves. The calves, separated from their mothers, were frightened and bawling, and as a result the cows penned nearby were in the same state. The commotion was what was making the horses skittish.

Quincannon dismounted near the horse corral, tied the roan, and crossed to where a big-bellied man whose stained apron identified him as the cook stood watching the branding operation. When Quincannon asked him where he might find Sudden Wheeler, the fat man jerked a thumb at the corral. “In there,” he said. “You want him, you’ll have to wait a spell.”

“I’ll wait, then. Which one is he?”

“Beanpole with the white whiskers.”

The ground inside the corral had been beaten down to a fine powdery dust; through a haze of it Quincannon picked out a tall, thin old waddy with a yellow-white beard and a shock of yellow-white hair, coated now with dust, poking out from under his laloo hat. He was standing next to a sagebrush fire, sharpening a knifelike tool on a whetstone. His gray shirt and Texas leg chaps were smeared with blood.

Quincannon leaned against one of the fence rails and watched another waddy on a fast little cow pony throw a lasso loop around a calf’s hind legs, jerk the animal off its feet, and then drag it to where the other hands waited. Four men fell on it, held it down and steady; a fifth, Sudden Wheeler, rapidly cut off the tip of one ear, slit and notched the dewlap under the neck, removed the horn buds on its head, and then applied a tar mixture to the wounds to prevent infection. The calf was a male; Wheeler castrated it, applied alcohol and more tar. Then the hot branding iron was lifted out of the fire and rolled against the animal’s flank. A cloud of gray smoke puffed up, mingling with the powdery dust to deepen the haze inside the corral.

The dust had got into Quincannon’s throat and it started him coughing. The stench of sweat, manure, burning sage, and scorched hide and hair aggravated his hangover, made his stomach churn again. He turned away from the fence, went back to where he had tied his horse, and took another drink from the flask.

He had to wait half an hour before the last of the calves had been branded and the foreman allowed the hands a rest before the next batch was shunted in. He used the time to question the fat cook and three other men who wandered into the area, but none of them could tell him much about Whistling Dixon. Wheeler was the man he wanted.

Most of the cowboys trooped to the water bucket; two others treated cuts and scratches with a milky solution made of alcohol and oil. Sudden Wheeler’s left arm bore a long, bleeding scratch, but he didn’t bother treating it. He drank a dipper of water, took off his laloo hat and poured a second dipper over his head to cool himself off. Away from his duties in the corral, he moved with a kind of determined slowness, as if he needed to conserve his energy; he was not a man, Quincannon thought, who would ever make a sudden move. Given the nature of cowboy humor, his nickname was inevitable.

Quincannon introduced himself as Andrew Lyons and spun the same story he had used in Silver City to explain his interest in Whistling Dixon. Wheeler seemed wary at first, but Quincannon put that down to a natural reluctance to deal with strangers in general and noncattlemen in particular. He seemed to have nothing to hide and he was not unwilling to talk once his pump had been primed.

“Sure,” he said, “I knowed Whistling some. Hard man to know at all. Didn’t talk much to nobody. Used to josh him about his vocal chords rusting up for lack of use. No sense of humor, though; never even cracked a smile.”

“When did you last see him, Mr. Wheeler?”

“My pa was Mr. Wheeler and he’s been dead forty years. Call me Sudden like everybody else. Four-five weeks ago, I’d say it was. Day he quit Ox-Yoke.”

“He hadn’t been working here in over a month?”

“What I said.”

“Why did he quit?”

Wheeler shrugged. “Close-mouthed booger, like I told you.”

“Do you know where he went when he left here?”

“Up in the mountains somewheres, I reckon,” Wheeler said. He had the makings out now and was rolling himself a cigarette. “Prospecting, way we all figured it. Wasn’t the first time he quit to go off hunting gold. First time he done it when he was needed, though.”

“Where did he do his prospecting?”

“Never talked about where. But he had him a section staked out, where he figured to make a strike. Them with the fever always do.”

“It must have been somewhere near Silver City. He was seen there during the past month.”

“Couple of the boys seen him too. Don’t get to Silver much myself. Don’t like towns.”

“Did he have any friends there that you know of?”

“Didn’t have no friends anywheres that I know of.”

“Did he ever mention a man named Jason Elder?”

“Elder? Who’s he?”

“Tramp printer who worked for Will Coffin at the Owyhee
Volunteer.
He disappeared a few days ago.”

“Hell. Man like Whistling wouldn’t have no truck with a tramp printer.”

“He knew him, though. I have proof of that.”

Wheeler scratched a lucifer on his bootsole and fired his quirly. He made no comment.

Quincannon said, “People in Silver think it was outlaws who shot him. That what you think, too?”

“Must’ve been. Who else’d want to kill him?”

“I thought you might have some idea.”

“Not me, son. Whistling was a crusty old fart, and maybe a tiny bit crooked, but he didn’t have no real enemies. Never talked to nobody long enough to make hisself an enemy.”

“How was he a tiny bit crooked?”

“Played cards with him once. Never caught him at nothing but I wouldn’t play with him again. Nobody else would, neither, that knowed him. He was allus cleaning out some young snot figured he was born to lie down with lady luck.”

“Maybe he was a lot more dishonest than you thought,” Quincannon said musingly.

Wheeler said nothing. That sort of speculation was something he seemed disinclined to engage in.

Quincannon asked, “Did Dixon ever mention Oliver Truax?”

“Who? Oh, fancy-pants owns the Paymaster mine. Nope. Why should he?”

“No particular reason. How about a Chinese merchant named Yum Wing?”

“Now what in holy hell would Whistling be talking about a Chinaman for? You got some funny ideas, mister. Yes you have.”

“Jack Bogardus, then. Owner of the Rattling Jack mine.”

“Well, now, there you got something,” Wheeler said. “I recollect Whistling did mention Bogardus a time or two.”

“In what way?”

“He knowed somebody works for Bogardus.”

“Who?”

“Shirttail cousin of his’n, name of Conrad. Mean little booger with bad teeth and breath that’d knock a man over at twenty rods. Worked here a couple of months during the spring gather.”

“When did he quit?”

“Didn’t quit. Boss caught him butchering one of our steers to sell to the homesteaders and threw him off Ox-Yoke land. Told him he’d be shot on sight if he ever showed his ugly face around here again.”

“How did Dixon take to that?”

“Never said nothing or did nothing to tell us how he felt. Said later on Conrad went to work for Bogardus, but that’s all.”

“Did he say what kind of work?”

“Nope.”

“What was his opinion of Bogardus? Dixon’s, I mean.”

“Didn’t seem to have one.”

“What’s your opinion of him? Or don’t you know him?”

“Know of him. Don’t much like what I know.”

“Crooked?”

“Like a dog’s hind leg, some say.”

“How so? Anything specific?”

“None I heard about.”

“Any of the other hands who might have an idea?”

“Doubtful. I’d of heard the idea if there was.” Wheeler took a last drag on his cigarette and pitched the butt away. But his bright old eyes remained fixed on Quincannon’s face. “You ask a heap of questions for a drummer, Mr. Lyons,” he said at length.

“A natural inquisitiveness,” Quincannon said.

“You figure maybe Whistling wasn’t killed by outlaws? That maybe Bogardus done it?”

“I don’t know, Sudden. That’s why I’m asking questions.”

“Marshal’s job, ain’t it?”

“He’s only one man. A lawman in country like this can always use help.”

“No argument there,” Wheeler said. He shrugged. “None of my business anyways, I reckon. My business is cows.”

He turned as he spoke: another group of hands had arrived with more wet stock and was driving the cows and calves into the pens. The foreman began calling for the branding team, raising his voice to a shout to make himself heard above the terrified bawling of the animals.

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.