Bill Pronzini - Quincannon

He waited until Will Coffin had claimed a bulky grip, then took up his own warbag. The newspaperman seemed preoccupied now and had evidently forgotten his earlier interest in Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Salts. Quincannon saw no reason to press him. Coffin tipped his hat to Sabina Carpenter and disappeared into the crowds.

The woman came to Quincannon’s side. “My shop is on Avalanche Avenue, between Jordan and Washington,” she said. “If you should happen to be interested in a hat during your stay in Silver.”

“I doubt that I will be,” he said. “I already have a good hat.”

“Mine are quite reasonably priced.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“Well, in any event,” she said, “perhaps we’ll see each other again before you leave.”

“Perhaps. Though I expect most of my time will be occupied.”

“In selling salts?”

“That is my job, Miss Carpenter.”

“Yes, of course. And I have no doubt that you’re adept at it. Good evening, Mr. Lyons.”

“Good evening.”

He walked downhill toward a sign that said War Eagle Hotel. Sabina Carpenter remained in his thoughts. What was the nature of her apparent interest in him? He was a man not unattractive to women; perhaps her boldness stemmed from that. And yet, he felt it was something else, something less personal. It could have nothing to do with his purpose in Silver City — or could it? Depending on where the man named Whistling Dixon led him, he might have to change his mind and visit her millinery shop after all.

At the hotel he registered and dropped off his bag in his room, then went out to the nearest saloon. He drank two whiskeys quickly, nursed a third. The place was jammed with cowpunchers, millhands, mine workers, and their mood was boisterous and friendly; he managed to engage three different men in conversation, confirming from them that Whistling Dixon was, as Coffin had told him, an old Owyhee cowhand some sixty years old. Dixon, whose nickname stemmed from a penchant for constant, tuneless whistling, was neither liked nor disliked; the attitude toward him seemed to be neutral, for the most part because the man kept to himself. He had no family and no friends to speak of, spending his free time either at the Ox-Yoke ranch on Cow Creek, where he worked, or hunting and prospecting in the back country. He came to town no more than once a month, on the average.

There was nothing in any of that to suggest how Dixon might be tied in with a gang of counterfeiters. A false lead after all? Quincannon needed much more information before making a judgment either way.

As for coney coins and greenbacks, a subject he broached carefully, none seemed to have been passed in Silver City. Which added a further point in favor of the boodle game being centered in this area. No smart gang of koniakers would try to shove queer in their own bailiwick; and there was no question that this gang was smart.

Quincannon stopped at two other saloons, this time engaging a variety of townsmen in conversation. Little was known about Sabina Carpenter. She had arrived in Silver City from Denver three weeks ago, opened her millinery shop, and taken up residence at the only boarding house in town that catered to women. Although she mingled well and often in local society, she spoke little of personal matters. The consensus seemed to be that she was either a recent widow or a woman retrenching after a bad marriage or an unhappy love affair.

Oliver Truax was one of Silver’s wealthy paragons. He had been a Boise merchant when his brother Amos, who had founded the Paymaster mine, died of congestive heart failure and willed the mine to him. That had been five years ago. Truax ran the Paymaster himself, and within the past year had become dissatisfied with its ore yield and its profits; thus he had formed the Paymaster Mining Company, retained its controlling stock, and opened up the balance of shares to public investors. Apparently most of the money realized from that venture had been put back into the mine, in the form of better equipment and more men to step up production.

Truax often made business trips to Boise, Portland, and Seattle — all cities where large amounts of queer had been shoved, Quincannon noted — and from one such trip to Oregon some ten months ago he had returned with his new young wife. Her background, like Sabina Carpenter’s, was murky. And she was not well thought of in town; there were broad hints that she had been unfaithful to her husband with a man named Jack Bogardus, the owner of another, smaller silver mine on the south side of War Eagle Mountain, the Rattling Jack. Truax, though he was not actively disliked, was not a popular figure in town — nor among his employees, from whom he demanded hard work and long hours for mediocre wages. Most considered him avaricious, pompous, and a poor blind fool for having married “Helen Roundheels,” as one man called her.

Will Coffin had been in Silver three years, having bought the Volunteer from its retiring founder in the summer of 1890. Coffin came from Kansas and had a background as a tramp printer and newspaperman. The fact that Coffin himself was a skilled printer interested Quincannon; but he could find out nothing more on that aspect of the man’s life.

As for Jason Elder, the Volunteer ’s part-time compositor, Quincannon also learned little. Elder had worked for Coffin for more than a year, but only sporadically in the past few months as a result of his opium addiction. No one knew where he obtained the money to support his habit. He was a reticent man, one who was regarded with suspicion for that reason, because of his addiction, and because he regularly kept company with Silver City’s Chinese population. He lived in a shack at the end of Owyhee Street, on the edge of the Chinese quarter.

There were two schools of opinion as to the competency of Marshal Wendell McClew. The one to which Oliver Truax belonged considered him lazy, slow-witted, and unable or unwilling to cope with Silver’s various criminal and communal problems. The other school painted him as a quiet, shrewd lawman who was tough when he had to be and who accomplished as much in his low-key way as any flamboyant peace officer ever could. Both sides seemed to consider him reasonably honest, though the more vehement among his detractors allowed as how they “had reservations” along those lines. The inconclusiveness as to McClew’s true nature convinced Quincannon that it would be unwise to reveal his identity and purpose to the marshal, at least at this early stage of his investigation. For all he knew, McClew could be a member of the counterfeiting gang, bought and paid for to provide safety and security in this jurisdiction. No, he would have to play a lone hand for a while, until he gathered more information on a variety of fronts.

It was nearly nine o’clock when he returned to his hotel. He still had no appetite, but the whiskey he had consumed on his rounds had made him woozy and he had no desire for another hangover tomorrow. He forced himself to eat supper in the hotel dining room before retiring. And forbore his usual nightcap when he got into bed.

But for the second night in a row, sleep eluded him — this time because of the dull hammering pulse of the round-the-clock stamp mills, a noise that would take some getting used to. And when he finally did sleep, a long time later, he was plagued by confused dream images of Katherine Bennett that kept mingling with those of Sabina Carpenter, only to be joined by others of his mother. He awoke once, trembling and cold, to the shrill barking of a dog somewhere nearby. In his dream it had sounded like a woman screaming.

An hour past sunup, warmed by his first two drinks of the day, Quincannon left the hotel carrying his sample case. This promised to be a busy day. A talk with Whistling Dixon was indicated, of course, but not just yet. Will Coffin was another he intended to see, as was the Volunteer ’s opium-eating printer, Jason Elder. He also needed to establish his cover identity as a traveling agent for nerve and brain salts, which meant visits to the drugstores in town — a task he would dispose of before giving his attention to the job at hand.