Quincannon Read Free Page A

that had been the center of a boom in the 1870s and was still a major producer of that precious metal. The closest rail service was at Nampa, just north of Boise, forty miles away; from there an overland trip via stage or horseback was required. Police jurisdiction in the area, Quincannon thought, would be thin and divided, thereby making it a favorite haunt of outlaws from four different states.
    He took down the government survey pamphlet on Idaho and read what it contained about Silver City and the Owyhee region. Then, from his wallet, he removed the slip of paper he had found last night in Bonniwell’s hand and studied that again. He was still studying it when Boggs came in.
    Boggs was in his mid-fifties, a round, graying man with a bulbous nose; one of his friends had once likened him to a keg of whiskey with the nose as its bung. He favored butternut suits, fashionable square-crown hats, and gold-headed walking sticks in a variety of designs. The stick he carried this morning bore the head of a lion.
    His surprise at seeing Quincannon at his desk so early was evident. He said, “Well, this establishes a happy precedent,” and immediately went to the open window and banged it shut. Then he lit one of his Havana panatellas. He liked the office warm, even stuffy, and redolent of cigar smoke.
    Quincannon said, “Bonniwell was murdered last night. Bludgeoned to death in his rooming house and the body dropped into the alley below to make it seem an accident.”
    Boggs gave him a narrow, glowering look. “How do you know it was murder?”
    “I saw the man responsible. He pushed the body through the window just as I was approaching.”
    “And?”
    “He escaped. I almost caught him.”
    “Almost,” Boggs said heavily. “Were you drunk?”
    “No. The rain and the muddy ground were to blame, not liquor.”
    “Did you have a good look at him?”
    “Red-thatched, big, face mindful of a slab of marble. I’ve never seen him before. But I’ll know him if I see him again.”
    “Was there anything in Bonniwell’s room?”
    “Nothing. The redhead saw to that. But I did find something in Bonniwell’s hand.”
    “And that was?”
    Quincannon stood and brought the piece of butcher’s paper to Boggs, who squinted at it through the smoke from his cigar.
    “Whistling Dixon,” Boggs said. “Someone’s name?”
    “No doubt. It means nothing to me.”
    “Nor to me.”
    Boggs went to his desk, sat down, and lifted out the file on the present case from the bottom drawer. Quincannon stood watching him shuffle through reports from a variety of sources both here in the West and in Washington; samples of the silver eagles and half eagles that had first begun to appear in Oregon, Washington state, and northern California close to a year ago; samples of the ten- and twenty-dollar notes that were now flooding the entire coast, as well as Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Utah, and had been for better than three months; lists of known counterfeiters, coney brokers, and boodle carriers. But it was a slim file, for all of that. Scattered bits of positive information, a welter of speculation and possibilities.
    Neither the coins nor the greenbacks bore the style of any known counterfeiter. The ink and the silk-fiber paper that were being used to make the notes were of good quality and therefore would not have come cheap, but their source or sources remained a mystery. None of the counterfeit seemed to have been transported or distributed in a traceable fashion, through known carriers or brokers. The only definite link between the coins and greenbacks had come from a field operative in Seattle, who had managed to trace a man who had shoved $10,000 worth of queer on a local brokerage house. When the operative and the local authorities broke into the man’s rented flat they found a small cache of both eagles and bills. The man himself had not turned up until two days later — floating in Puget Sound with his face shot away. All efforts to