The Dangerous Ladies Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “I told you he won’t want to be disturbed tonight. Your business with him can wait until tomorrow.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  Foster glared at him. “If you’re looking for trouble, mister, you’ll find more than you can handle with me.”

  “I doubt that,” Quincannon said. “What I have to say to Mr. Rideout may save him a considerable sum of money—”

  He broke off at the sound of the first shrill blast of a packet’s whistle. This was followed by two more, which announced her intention to put in at Kennett’s Crossing. He stepped back onto the landing, in time to make out the steamer’s three tiers of blurred lights downriver. In that moment a lull between gusts brought a new sound to his ears. It was faint and far-off, an odd hollow chunking. Almost immediately it came again … and again. It seemed to be coming from on or across the slough, but he couldn’t be certain of exactly where. He waited to hear it one more time—and heard only the wind, the harsh slap-and-gurgle of the river water as it punished the landing’s pilings and the flanking banks.

  Foster was tending to the somewhat skittish horses; he seemed content now to wait for his employer’s arrival before saying anything more. The night boat was now making her turn toward Kennett’s Crossing. She was within a few hundred yards of the landing, her buckets churning, when a slicker-clad figure came hurrying down the levee road, tacking unsteadily through the mud and rain. He lurched past the buggy onto the landing—the old man with the glass eye, Dana. He was almost upon Quincannon before spying him; he started so violently he came close to losing his balance and toppling into the river.

  “Hellfire!” he shouted when he recovered. He leaned close to peer into Quincannon’s face, breathing whiskey fumes at him. “That you, you damn Johnny Reb? What you lurking here for?”

  “I’m not lurking; I’m waiting for the night boat.”

  “Frisco bound, eh?”

  “No. Meeting someone.”

  “Another Copperhead, I’ll wager.” The old man followed this with a lusty belch. “Say, you got relatives fought with the Confederates at Antietam?”

  “No. Every member of my family was faithful to the Union.”

  “Damn lie.” Foster had come up onto the landing and Dana appealed to him, “Reb that shot my eye out looked just like this fella here.”

  Foster said nothing. Quincannon said irritably, “I was eight years old in 1862.”

  “Phooey.” Dana belched again, then moved over to the far end of the shelter to watch the packet’s approach.

  The steamer’s captain was experienced at landing in the midst of a squall. He brought the stern-wheeler in straight to the landing, her whistle shrieking fitfully, and held her there with her buckets lashing the river while a team of deckhands slung out a gangplank. As soon as the plank was down, a man wearing a yellow slicker and rain hat and toting a carpetbag hurried off. After which Dana, with a one-eyed glower at Quincannon and a muttered, “Goddamn all Johnny Rebs,” staggered on board. The deckhands immediately hauled in the plank and the steamer swung out toward mid-channel again. The entire operation had taken no more than a minute.

  The arriving passenger was Noah Rideout; he went straight to the Concord buggy, where Foster now stood. Quincannon joined them as Foster opened the door and slung the carpetbag inside.

  “My name is John Quincannon, Mr. Rideout. Of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, San Francisco.”

  “Detective?” Rideout peered up at him; he was half a head shorter and stood with his feet widespread, in a way that was both belligerent and challenging. He reminded Quincannon of a fighting cock.

  Foster said, “He came out to the ranch this afternoon looking for you, sir. Wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Not true,” Quincannon said. “I told him why—Pauline Dupree.”

  Rideout stiffened visibly. He said nothing for nine or ten seconds while the wind wailed and one of the horses let loose with a mournful whicker. Then, warily, “What about Pauline Dupree?”

  “It’s a long story. One that may well be advantageous to you, financially and otherwise.”

  “It’s late,” Foster said, “and Mr. Rideout is in need of rest. You can tell him your tale tomorrow—”

  Rideout said, “Shut up, Caleb,” without looking at him. Then, to Quincannon, “Advantageous to me, you said?”

  “If your business in Stockton included a meeting with Gus Burgade.”

  “Who?”

  “A barrel of a man wearing a buffalo coat. An emissary of Miss Dupree’s.”

  “Emissary? The hell you say!”

  “Then you did have such a meeting. At which you turned over a large amount of cash to him. Correct?”

  “By Christ! What are you trying to sell me?”

  “Tell, not sell. I am neither a blackmailer nor an extortionist, though I can’t say the same for Miss Dupree.”

  There was another short pause. “I don’t believe it,” Rideout said then, but his voice lacked conviction.

  “I believe I can prove it to you. Shall we step in out of the rain, sir?”

  The rancher turned abruptly to the buggy, shook off Foster’s attempt to help him, and drew himself inside. Quincannon followed. Though it was a relief to be shed of the storm, his clothing was saturated and he felt the night’s chill deep in his bones. The rain pelting down on the calash hood was loud enough to make conversation almost as difficult as it had been outside.

  Rideout noted it, too. “It’s too noisy to converse here,” he said loudly. “Suppose you come along with me to my farm. I can damn well use a drink while I listen to what you have to say.”

  “If it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

  “Imposition, hell. You were hoping I would invite you, to save spending the night in that rathole of Adam Kennett’s, else you wouldn’t have brought your valise along.”

  Quincannon didn’t deny it.

  The coach rocked as Foster climbed up into the driver’s seat. Rideout shouted up to him, “Move out, Caleb!”

  “Now, Mr. Rideout?”

  “Now. And don’t spare the horses.”

  The Concord jerked into motion, wheeling away from the landing and onto the muddy levee road. When they reached the ferryman’s shack, the muscular tender emerged with his bug-eye lantern. The black scowl he wore testified to his displeasure at having to make two dangerous crossings of Dead Man’s Slough on such a night as this. As did his grumbling remark that “the wind is a she-devil tonight, the current flood fast”—the most words Quincannon had heard him speak at once.

  Rideout put an end to his protestations with a gold coin that flashed in the light from the bug-eye lantern. The ferryman had the apron down and was making ready with the windlass when Foster drove the Concord buggy down the embankment.

  The horses were even more skittish now; Foster had some difficulty coaxing them onto the rocking barge. He set the brake and then swung down to hold the animals’ harnesses while the ferryman hooked the guard chain, cast off the mooring ropes, and bent to his windlass.

  Impulse prodded Quincannon out of the carriage, to stand braced against the off-rear wheel. He disliked being closed inside a conveyance in such situations as this, preferring to be in a position to observe the proceedings and to offer assistance if needed. And he couldn’t get any wetter than he already was. He scanned as much of both shores as could be made out through the deluge. He thought he saw someone moving on the road near the town wharf, a dark shape like a huge winged vulture, but he couldn’t be sure; very little was distinct in the rain-soaked night.

  Progress was slow, the barge rolling and pitching on the turbulent water. They were less than halfway across when Quincannon heard a singing moan in the storm’s racket—wind vibrating the ferry cable, he thought, or the strain on the scow produced by the load and the strong current. Suddenly, then, the barge lurched, made a dancing little sideslip that almost tore loose his grip on the buggy’s wheel.

  The ferryman shouted a warning that
the wind shredded away. In the next instant there was a loud snapping noise and something came hurtling through the wet blackness, cracking like a whip. One of the cables, broken free of its anchor on the north bank spit.

  Swirling water bit into the scow, drenched Quincannon to the knees as it sluiced across the deck. The ferryman was thrown backward from the windlass; the drum spun free, ratcheting. He shouted again. So did Foster, something unintelligible. The barge, floating loose now and caught by the current, heaved and bucked toward the slough’s confluence with the dark sweep of the river.

  The terror-stricken horses reared, and one’s hoof must have struck Foster; he screamed in pain, staggered, lost his balance, and was gone into the roiling slough. Quincannon felt the deck canting over, the buggy beginning to tip and slide away from him. Rideout had the door open now and was trying to struggle out; Quincannon caught hold of his arm, yanked him free. In another few seconds the carriage would roll and the weight of it and the horses tumbling would capsize the scow. There was nothing to be done but go into the water themselves, attempt to swim clear while they were still in the slough.

  The ferryman knew it, too. He yelled a third time—“Jump, jump!”—and dove over the guard chain.

  But Rideout fought against going overboard. Clawed desperately to free himself from Quincannon’s grasp, to cling to the side rail, all the while shouting, “I can’t swim! I can’t swim!”

  Quincannon was bigger, stronger, younger, and there was no time left for such concerns. He wrenched the farmer around, locked an arm about his waist, and hurled both of them off the tilting deck.

  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.