Quincannon by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page A

rushing out. The driver was saying, “Found him out in Slaughterhouse Gulch, Marshal. What a sight for a man to come on before breakfast!”
    “Shot, you say?”
    “See for yourself.”
    The bespectacled man moved to untie the ropes. Quincannon stepped closer, along with half a dozen others who had been attracted by the brief commotion. The ropes came loose; a stained flap of the canvas was thrown back.
    The body inside was that of a man dressed in rough trail garb — a gray-haired, grizzled man of about sixty. His lower jaw had been shot away, but evidently there was still enough of his face intact for identification purposes.
    “Well, hell and damn,” the plug-hatted man said. “Now who would want to shoot a harmless old waddy like Whistling Dixon?”

Chapter 5
    Quincannon moved a step closer to the wagon. The crowd of onlookers had grown; an excited buzzing ran among the men, like the sound of disturbed bees.
    The wagon driver said, “Maybe it was robbery. Outlaws all over these mountains, you know that.”
    Marshal McClew made a snorting noise. “Whistling Dixon never carried more than a dollar in his life, and that’s a fact.”
    “Outlaws don’t know it.”
    “Were you an outlaw, Henry, would you pick him as a target?” McClew ran a thoughtful finger over each of his mustaches. “Found him in Slaughterhouse Gulch, you said. Whereabouts?”
    “By that stand of willows where the creek branch runs through. I wouldn’t have seen him, back under the trees, except the crows was at him.”
    “Didn’t get his eyes, at least. Sign of his horse?”
    “No.”
    “Anybody else around?”
    “Didn’t see anybody.”
    McClew lifted the dead man’s arm, let it fall again limply. “Rigor mortis has come and gone,” he said. “Been dead a while. Since early last night sometime.”
    “Bushwhacked, probably. Has to be outlaws, Marshal.”
    “Maybe,” McClew said. “Maybe.”
    “Well, what you want done with the body?”
    “Take it up to Turnbuckle’s. I’ll go with you. Then we’ll notify Doc Petersen, and you can run me out to Slaughterhouse Gulch.”
    “Me? Hell, I’m already late for work at the livery ...”
    “Can’t be helped. I need you to show me just where you found him.”
    The driver, Henry, climbed grumbling to the wagon seat. McClew started around to the other side, seemed to notice the gathering crowd for the first time, and stopped. “You men — go on about your business. This ain’t a public meetingplace. Disperse. Move along!”
    Whether he was liked or not, his words carried weight in Silver City: the crowd immediately began to break up. McClew took his place next to Henry, who snapped the reins and brought his team around and out onto Washington Street. As the wagon rattled away uphill, Quincannon asked one of the men walking near him, “Would Turnbuckle’s be an undertaking parlor?”
    “It would. Opposite the brewery, two blocks up.”
    Quincannon walked half a block in that direction, until he came to a saloon. Inside at the plank bar he spent five minutes with a shot of whiskey, timing it by the gold stemwinder his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday. Then he went out again and climbed toward the barnlike building that housed Silver’s own brewery, marked by a blackened brick chimney belching smoke.
    Opposite the brewery was a squat building with a facade of white-painted fretwork and a sign that read: N.R. TURNBUCKLE, UNDERTAKER AND CASKET MAKER. The street in front was empty; so was the rutted and weed-choked alleyway that ran alongside. There was no sign of Henry’s light spring wagon.
    Quincannon ran hard across the street to the undertaking parlor, a ploy to quicken his breathing, and opened the front door to the melody of a little bell. Inside was a hallway and, to one side, a large room with rows of benches and a bier at one end — the place where funeral services were held. A door at the rear of the hall opened momentarily and a small, dapper,