Quincannon

Chapter 17

He ran out of the barbershop, across the rutted avenue toward Jordan Street. A keg-laden wagon from the local brewery almost ran him down; the driver reined his team aside just in time, hurled a string of curses at Quincannon’s back. He barely noticed. His head was full of the words Bogardus and Helen Truax had spoken this morning, words that fairly screamed their significance to him now.

I don’t like it, Jack. Hasn’t there been enough of that already?

Yes. Too much. But it can’t be helped.

Why do I have to be the one?

We’ve already discussed that.

It has to be tonight?

The sooner the better.

I don’t have to stay at the mine, do I?

Why not You might enjoy the game…

Another disappearance, Jack?

Never mind that. One matter at a time. But we can’t afford to let anyone stand in our way now, this close to the finish. Not anyone, you understand?

They hadn’t been discussing him; it had to be Sabina. His fault. He’d told Helen Truax about Sabina finding the stock certificate and then hiding the fact; he’d made her realize Sabina knew about her connection with Jason Elder, made her suspicious of Sabina’s motives. Naturally they wanted to know what her game was. And when they found out — or even if they didn’t — Sabina would die. His fault. If he’d kept his Goddamned mouth shut, if the whiskey he’d consumed that night hadn’t loosened his tongue, her life would not be in danger now.

The whiskey. It was the whiskey, too, that had kept him from realizing the sense of what he’d overheard at the Truax house. Damn the stuff, befuddling his mind and his judgment…

A steady consumption of liquor distorts a man’s judgment, slows his reflexes, makes him prone to mistakes.

I won’t make any mistakes.

Different voices echoing in his memory, Boggs and his own in San Francisco last week.

I won’t make any mistakes…

The irony of it was bitter, appalling. He had taken to drink to drown the horror of what he had done to Katherine Bennett, an innocent woman; and now the drink in turn had caused him to place the life of another innocent woman in jeopardy. He couldn’t allow it to happen again, he could not bear the awful burden of responsibility for a second woman’s death — a woman, in spite of her resemblance to Katherine Bennett, he found himself caring more about than any he had known except his mother. He would rather die himself, here tonight. If anything happened to Sabina he would die tonight — at the hands of Bogardus and his men, or if he survived them, by his own hand later on.

He crossed Jordan Street, cut through an alley to Washington. There was little doubt where Sabina had been taken: the Rattling Jack. Once Helen Truax, the Judas, had driven her out of town, Bogardus or some of his men would have been waiting to accompany them to the mine; there would be no escape for Sabina either from them or from the compound. A half hour to forty-five minutes ago. They would just about be arriving now. And it would not take long for one man, or several, to torture a defenseless woman, to do even worse to her.

I don’t have to stay at the mine, do I?

Why not? You might enjoy the game…

Quincannon’s emotions urged him to run straight to the nearest livery for a horse and then to ride hell-bent for the Rattling Jack. But his intellect demanded otherwise. The chances were good that he could get inside the compound without being seen, down the bluff at the rear; but what then? How could he free Sabina and then get both of them safely out and back to town? One man pitted against a dozen or so was suicidal. No, he had to have men to back him up, men to tilt the odds in his and Sabina’s favor. He couldn’t wait for federal officers and the proper legal papers to arrive; he had to have a raiding party now, tonight, within two hours.

Prepared for it or not, he had to put his faith in Marshal Wendell McClew.

Darkness was fast approaching; he could see the lighted basement window of the marshal’s office half a block away. Pain from his battered ribs had him gasping for breath when he finally reached the door. He threw it open, half-stumbled down the stairs.

McClew had been tacking a wanted dodger onto a wall filled with them, using the butt of his Colt sixgun for a hammer. He swung around and said in surprise, “What the bloody be-damned! You look all het up, Mr. Lyons.”

“My name isn’t Lyons.” The words came out in sharp little exhalations, like puffs of steam from an overworked engine. “It’s Quincannon — John Quincannon. I’m an operative for the United States Secret Service.”

“The United… what?”

“Secret Service. Listen to me, now, don’t interrupt.”

Quickly, trying to catch his breath between sentences, Quincannon explained what he was doing in Silver City and what he had learned; who Sabina Carpenter was and what she was doing here; the urgency of matters as they now stood. McClew’s eyes grew wider and wider; his amazement seemed genuine. So did his skepticism.

“That’s quite a yarn,” he said when Quincannon was finished. “You have any proof to back it up?”

Quincannon was still carrying the bundle of bogus greenbacks he had lifted from the Studebaker wagon; he hadn’t wanted to leave it in his hotel room earlier. He also had Boggs’ wires and his Service badge. He put these items on McClew’s desk and waited impatiently while the marshal examined the badge, read over the wires, then squinted at the queer twenties.

“Counterfeit, all right,” McClew said, holding up one of the notes to the wall lamp. “Seen a few in my time; these here is good but not quite good enough.” He put the bill down, tapped the badge with one of his blunt forefingers. “This looks genuine, though. I reckon I got to believe you’re who you say you are.”

“Can I count on your help, then?”

McClew nodded, spat tobacco juice in the general direction of the cuspidor alongside his desk. “But I sure as hell wish you’d come to me right off. Makes my job a whole lot easier when folks trust me and tell me the truth.”

“I had to be certain of your honesty first,” Quincannon said.

McClew wasn’t offended. “Suppose you did,” he said and spat again. “Bogardus, huh? Well, I never did like that son of a bitch. Nor Ollie Truax and that tramp he married. Give me pleasure to haul the lot of’em in.”

Quincannon asked, “How many special deputies can you gather on short notice?”

“Dozen or more, I expect. Maybe six or eight’ll be experienced; others’re liable to stoke up on Dutch courage. But I can keep ’em in line.”

“How soon can you have a posse ready to ride?”

“Hour, hour and a half.”

“As fast as you can, then. I’ll go ahead; I’m fairly certain I can get inside the compound without being seen — by rope down the bluff at the rear.”

McClew looked dubious. “What can you do in there alone?”

“Find out where they’re holding Miss Carpenter,” Quincannon told him, “and keep her from harm if I can. And I’ll open the stockade gates for you and your men.”

“Makes sense,” McClew admitted. “I ain’t going to argue; no time for it and I see your mind’s made up. All right. Me and my men get to the Rattling Jack, then what?”

“How well do you know the terrain out there?”

“Better’n you ever will, son.”

Quincannon nodded. “Leave your horses in the draw and come on foot to the fence. If the gates are unlocked, go ahead inside — quiet if you can, shooting if you have to.”

“And if the gates ain’t unlocked?”

“Don’t wait more than half an hour. If the gates aren’t open by then I won’t be alive to open them.”

“Good a plan as any. You got a horse handy?”

“No.”

“Take mine, then. Big grulla, tied out back of the courthouse; he won’t give you no trouble. Loop of good saddle rope on him too. I’ll get me another horse at Cadmon’s.”

Neither man wasted any more words or time. They went outside together, parted there in silence, and Quincannon ran around behind the courthouse to where the marshal’s grulla was picketed. He mounted and kicked the horse into a run, west out of Silver into the wind-swept darkness beyond.