Quincannon by Bill Pronzini

Author:Bill Pronzini [Pronzini, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Westerns
ISBN: 9781405682398
Google: sUcHPwAACAAJ
Amazon: B0082OIT90
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks
Published: 1985-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The hands on Quincannon’s stemwinder showed a quarter of five when he rode into downtown Silver. He tied up in front of the Wells Fargo office and went in to ask the Western Union telegrapher if a wire had come for him. None had; Boggs was taking longer than he had hoped to reply to his requests for information, doubtless because that information was not easy to come by.

He rode down to Cadmon’s Livery, turned over the roan to the day hostler, Henry, and walked to the War Eagle Hotel. There, he found a message waiting — from Sabina Carpenter, asking him to call on her either at her millinery shop or at Mrs. Farnsworth’s rooming house on Morning Star Street. He was not surprised. Nor was he reluctant to see her; the prospect gave him an odd sense of anticipation.

Upstairs in his room, he washed the trail dust out of his beard and off his skin and brushed it from his clothing. He held his hands up when he was done, watched them for a moment. Steady. But he took a drink anyway, a large one, before he went downstairs again.

It was not yet six o’clock, so he went first to Avalanche Avenue. The street door to Sabina’s Millinery was unlocked. He entered and climbed a flight of stairs that delivered him into a spacious single room with draperies drawn across the rear third of it to create a private compartment. There was no one in the public two thirds of the room.

He paused for a moment to take stock of the place. A display table with four finished hats — two for men, two for women — arranged on little stands. Another, much larger table on which were a bolt of cloth, scissors, and a tape measure. Shelves containing more bolts of cloth in a variety of colors and patterns. Other shelves stacked with artificial flowers, grosgrain and velvet ribbons, black and white veil netting, boxes of hatpins, different kinds of bows and doodads. The shop struck him, unlike the Rattling Jack mine, as a legitimate business operation. He wondered if Sabina Carpenter had purchased the existing stock from a former owner or if she had brought it all with her from Denver or wherever she’d come.

“Miss Carpenter?”

The draperies parted and she appeared. Today she wore a dark blue shirtwaist and a striped serge skirt; her dark hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a lacquered comb — a style that gave her a vaguely Oriental appearance and made almost nonexistent her resemblance to Katherine Bennett. She did not smile as she came toward him, nor did she offer her hand. The look in her eyes was unreadable.

“Thank you for coming,” she said in a flat voice.

“Not at all. My pleasure.”

“Is it? I thought you might be unwilling to face me.”

“Why should I be unwilling?”

“Because of the lies you have been telling about me.”

He feigned surprise. “Lies? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Another lie, Mr.

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