The Dangerous Ladies Affair

23 Quincannon

Rideout’s struggles grew frenzied as the icy water closed over them. Quincannon nearly lost his grip on the rancher’s slicker, managed to hold on and to kick them both up to the surface and away from the danger behind them. The barge was tilted in the opposite direction; the screams of the horses rose above the storm sounds as it went over, spilling carriage and animals into the slough in a huge foaming gout. The roaring noise this generated had the volume of a thunderclap.

Rideout continued his panicked flailing and sputtering, which left Quincannon no choice in this matter, either. He pulled his right arm free and rapped the man smartly on the chin with a closed fist, a blow that put an abrupt end to the struggle.

The current had them, but it was not half as powerful here as it would be if they were swept into the river. The waterlogged chesterfield was a heavy weight that threatened to drag both of them down; Quincannon ripped the buttons loose, then shucked the right arm out of its sleeve, shifted his grasp on the unconscious Rideout, and worked the left one free.

Quincannon could move more easily then in the churning water, and not a moment too soon. Something bulky and misshapen swirled toward them; he saw it just in time to twist himself and Rideout out of its path. Blasted tree limb torn loose by the storm, a large one sprouting mossy branches. The miss was so close that one of the branches scratched the back of his hand as the limb spun by.

Once it was gone he made an effort to get his bearings. There, over to his left — the faint light at the ferryman’s shack. He took a firmer grip on his burden and struck out in that direction.

The wind and the current battled him at every stroke, bobbing the pair of them like corks. Once an eddy almost ripped Rideout away from him. Quincannon’s right leg threatened to cramp; the cold and exertion numbed his mind as well as his body. The bank, the light, seemed far away... then a little closer... and closer still...

It might have been five minutes or fifteen before his outstretched arm finally touched shore mud. He got his feet down, managed to drag himself and his burden up through the silt. Lay there in the pounding rain waiting for his breath and his strength to return.

A shout penetrated the storm, roused him. He sat up weakly. At his side Rideout lay unmoving. A lone figure came staggering toward them from the direction of the ferryman’s shack — Foster, also fortunate to have reached the shore.

“Mr. Rideout,” he panted as he lurched up to where they were. “My God, he’s not—”

“No. Unconscious. The ferryman?”

Foster shook his head. “Gone. Miracle we weren’t drowned, too.”

While he dropped to one knee beside his employer, Quincannon lifted himself shakily to his feet and felt under his frock coat. Fortunately, the Navy Colt, secure in its holster, had also survived the midnight dunking. Just then there was a new shout and another man, slicker clad, appeared out of the wet darkness. Adam Kennett this time.

“Christ Almighty. You men all right?”

“Lucky to be alive,” Quincannon said grimly.

Foster said, “Mr. Rideout must’ve swallowed a quart or two. I’ll get it out of him.” He rolled the farmer onto his stomach, straddled him, and began pumping water out of his lungs.

“Where’s Granger?” Kennett asked. “Didn’t he make it?”

Quincannon was finger-scraping mud out of his beard. “The ferryman? Evidently not.”

“Poor old cuss. What happened out there?”

“Cable snapped.”

“The hell it did. Granger replaced it just last year. Should have held fast even in a storm like this.”

“Freak accident,” Foster said.

Bah! Quincannon thought. Attempted murder was more like it. Even the strongest cable could not withstand the blade of an ax. Those hollow chunkings he’d heard earlier had been ax blows. Only one man in Kennett’s Crossing was capable of rowing a skiff over to the spit anchor and chopping most of the way through the cable, leaving just enough for the scow to be winched out into midstream before it snapped — Gus Burgade. And there could be just one primary target for such cold-blooded perfidy — John Quincannon.

Foster finished his pumping and got slowly to his feet. “He’ll live if pneumonia doesn’t set in.”

“We’ll take him to the inn,” Kennett said, “get him out of those wet clothes and some whiskey and hot coffee into him. Same for both of you.”

He and Foster lifted Rideout and carried him up the bank. Quincannon trailed them on legs that were more unsteady than he cared to admit. They slogged along the levee road toward the inn, but as they passed the lane that led to the wharf he veered off onto it. The other two seemed not to notice.

The Island Star was as completely lightless as before, her gangplank still lowered and chained to the wharf. He paused to draw his Navy and check the loads. It would be too waterlogged to fire after the soaking in the slough, but if needs be it would serve well enough as a bluff, a bludgeon, or both. Holding it inside his coat, he moved ahead to the gangplank.

No audible sounds came from the old steamer as he boarded her. The hatch leading to the cargo hold and store had been battened down. He went forward, past the now canvas-covered calliope, and climbed to the second deck where the pilothouse and quarters were located. A faint strip of lamplight, undetectable from the shore below, showed from beneath the door to the first cabin. He pressed his ear to the panel, heard nothing from within. The latch yielded to careful pressure; he withdrew the Navy, eased the door open, stepped inside.

Few things surprised Quincannon after all his years as a detective, but the sight that confronted him here was unexpected enough to have that effect. The light came from a lantern fixed to one of the bulkheads, its wick turned down low. In its pallid glow, the two dead men sprawled on the deckboards were like wax figures in a grisly museum display.

One, the kanaka deckhand, lay facedown just to the right of the door, evidently ventilated just after entering. Gus Burgade was the other, propped in a sideways lean against the bulkhead opposite. Both men had been shot, Burgade more than once; blood glistened blackly on his throat and down the front of his linsey-woolsey shirt. There was a Remington double-action revolver in one thick-knuckled hand, drawn too late to save his life. Quincannon holstered his Navy, went to where the body lay, and bent for a closer look at the blood; it was just starting to coagulate. He lifted the revolver, sniffed the muzzle. No powder smell. The only shots that had been fired in here were those that had done for the victims.

A brief visual search of the cabin satisfied him that neither struggle nor search had taken place. His mouth set in grim lines, his freebooter’s whiskers bristling, he hurried out and closed the door behind him.

The rain was easing some, a fact he barely noticed as he descended the gangplank. He hurried uphill to the inn. His entrance into the common room, accompanied by a gust of wind and rain, was abrupt enough to startle Adam Kennett and a second person standing before the pulsing heat of the cast-iron woodstove.

The second person was a nun wearing a black habit, scapular, cowl, and veil.

The veil had been raised, revealing a white, middle-aged countenance; she lowered it as Quincannon crossed the room, shaking himself doglike on the way. He stopped near the stove. The nun moved away a few paces to give him her place.

“Well,” he said to the innkeeper, “so now I know why you’ve made this a temporary temperance house. Why didn’t you tell me you had a nun staying here?”

“Sister Mary asked me to respect her privacy.”

“I did, yes,” the nun said. Her voice was a thin, middle-aged contralto. “I wished to spend the day in my room in meditation and prayer.”

“You’ve not been outside since the storm began, Sister?”

“No. Nor before.”

“How long have you been a guest of Mr. Kennett’s?”

“Just today and tonight. I shall be leaving for San Francisco in the morning.”

“You won’t take offense if I say I’m surprised to find a nun in surroundings such as these.”

“Not at all. My brother in Walnut Grove is gravely ill, you see. Though no more gravely ill than the poor half-drowned man in the kitchen. I offered a prayer asking God to spare his life.”

“Warmer in the kitchen than it is out here,” Kennett said. “Foster’s watching over him.”

“Rideout still unconscious, is he?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the good Samaritan who rescued him after the ferry accident?” the nun asked.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Quincannon said.

Kennett’s eyebrows bent upward. “What do you mean, it wasn’t an accident?”

“Just that. Attempted murder is what it was, of both myself and, I suspect, Noah Rideout.”

“But... who would do such a thing?”

“Gus Burgade.”

“Burgade!”

“On his own initiative, perhaps, but more likely on orders.”

“Orders? Orders from whom?”

Quincannon moved, ostensibly to stand closer to the stove’s warmth. Instead, he veered suddenly to the nun’s side and in one swift motion reached up and tore off her cowl and veil.

She gasped and pulled away, pale gold tresses spilling down around her theatrically aged and made-up face.

Kennett released an outraged bleat. “How dare you mistreat a holy woman—!”

“Holy woman? Faugh! She is no more a nun than I am. Her name is Pauline Dupree, an accomplished actress and a cold-blooded multiple murderess. She shot one man to death in San Francisco and two more tonight on the Island Star.”

“You son of a bitch!” she cried. Her hand had snaked inside her habit and it reappeared now clutching a small-caliber pistol. Before she could bring it to bear, Quincannon, who had never before struck a woman, nor ever would except in dire circumstances such as these, essayed a swift right-hand jab to Dupree’s jaw. Down she went in a black-and-gold heap, to lie unmoving with her eyes rolled up. He bent to retrieve the pistol, slipped it into his coat pocket.

Kennett’s mouth hung open in disbelief. Foster had come running in from the kitchen and he, too, stood gawping.

After a few seconds the innkeeper managed to ask, “Who... who the devil are you, Flint?”

“His name isn’t Flint,” Foster said. “It’s Quincannon and he’s a fly cop from San Francisco. I heard him tell that to Mr. Rideout.”

“A fly cop.” Kennett shook his head in a dazed fashion. “And you claim this woman murdered two men on the Island Star tonight?”

“Gus Burgade and his deckhand. You’ll find them both in Burgade’s cabin.”

“But... why?”

“It’s a long story,” Quincannon said. “Suffice it to say for now that it boils down to a combination of ruthlessness and greed.”

Foster asked, “How did you know she wasn’t what she pretended to be? Did you recognize her?”

Quincannon had known it from the moment he first saw her, known for several reasons that it was Dupree in another of her theatrical disguises. But this was not the time for lengthy explanations. He said only, “Detective work, gentlemen, of the most accomplished sort.” Then, “Fetch a length or two of rope, Mr. Kennett. If we don’t truss her up before she comes to, I guarantee we’ll have a tigress on our hands.”

Kennett fetched the rope and Quincannon did the tying. His handkerchief served as an effective gag. In a pocket of her habit he found and removed her room key; it was unmarked, but the innkeeper provided the number. He directed Kennett and Foster to put the bound woman into one of the cane-bottom chairs, and while this was being done he hurried down the central corridor and let himself into her lamplit room.

The first thing he spied, hung on a wall hook, was the red-and-gold hooded cape she’d worn on the Captain Weber. The fabric was dripping wet — further proof, if he’d needed any, that she had gone from the inn to the Island Star earlier, no doubt having left unseen by a rear entrance. Her carpetbag lay on the foot on the bed; he opened it, rummaged quickly through the contents without finding what he sought.

In the small wardrobe against one wall? No. Under the bed? Yes.

He dragged out the still damp leather satchel, the same one Burgade had carried into the Yosemite Hotel yesterday, and snapped the catch. Packets of greenbacks filled it to the brim — a larger amount of cash, Quincannon guessed, than the ten thousand dollars Dupree had extorted from Titus Wrixton.

He closed the satchel, took it with him into the common room. Until tomorrow, when the sheriff of Walnut Grove could be summoned, it would remain in Quincannon’s possession.

Pauline Dupree had regained her senses and was squirming mightily, and futilely, in the cane-bottom chair. Her face was congested with fury. She glared pure hate at Quincannon when she saw him and the satchel; a lengthy series of strangled sounds erupted from her, trapped by her gag. Few could give vent to a longer, more colorful burst of invective than John Quincannon, but he would have wagered those strangled sounds represented scorch-ear cussing that would have outclassed his by a considerable margin.