Crime at Christmas (20 page)

On a table
near the bed he spied a well-worn family Bible. Impulse took him to it; he
opened it at the front, where such vital statistics as marriages, births, and
deaths were customarily recorded. Two names were written there in a fine
woman's hand: Martha and Adam Keene. And a wedding date: July 17, 1893. That
was all.

Well, now
he knew the identity of the missing occupants. But what had happened to them?
He hadn't seen them in the barn. And the other, smaller cabin—guest accommodations,
he judged—had also been in darkness upon his arrival. It made no sense that a
man and his wife would suddenly quit the warmth of their home in the middle of
a Christmas Eve supper, to lurk about in a darkened out-building. It also made
no sense that they would voluntarily decide to rush off into a snowstorm on
foot or on horseback. Forced out of here, then? By Slick Henry Garber or
someone else? If so,
why?

Quincannon
returned to the parlour. He had no desire to go out again into the wind and
swirling snow, but he was not the sort of man who could allow a confounding
mystery to go un-investigated—particularly a mystery that might involve a
criminal with a handsome price on his head. So, grumbling a little, his un-mittened
hands deep in the pockets of his coat, he bent his body into what was swiftly
becoming a full-scale blizzard.

He fought
his way to the barn First, because it was closer and to satisfy himself that it
really
was
occupied only by horses. The wind
had blown out the lantern when he'd left earlier; he relighted it, but not
until he had First drawn his revolver. One of the animals—not the rented
roan—moved restlessly in its stall as he walked toward the far end. There were
good-sized piles of hay in each of the empty stalls as well, he noticed. He
leaned into those stalls with the lantern. If anyone were hiding in a haypile
it would have to be close to the surface to avoid the risk of suffocation; he
poked at each pile in turn with the Navy's barrel. Hay and nothing but hay.

In one
corner of the back wall was an enclosure that he took to be a harness room.
Carefully he opened the door with his gun hand. Buckles and bit chains gleamed
in the narrow space within; he saw the shapes of saddles, bridles, hackamores.
Something made a scurrying noise among the floor shadows and he lowered the
lantern in time to see the tail end of a packrat disappear behind a loose
board. Dust was the only other thing on the floor.

He went
back toward the front, stopped again when he was abreast of the loft ladder. He
climbed it with the lantern lifted above his head. But the loft contained
nothing more than several tightly stacked bales of hay and a thin scattering of
straw that wouldn't have concealed a packrat, much less a man or a woman.

No one in
the main cabin, no one in the barn. That left only the guest cabin. And if
that, too, was deserted? Well then, he thought irascibly, he would sit down in
the main cabin and gorge himself on venison stew while he waited for
somebody—the Keenes, Slick Henry, the Ghost of Christmas Past—to put in an
appearance. He was cold and tired and hungry, and mystery or no mystery he was
not about to wander around in a blizzard hunting for clues.

Out once
more into the white fury. By the time he worked his way through what were now
thigh-deep drifts to the door of the guest cabin, his legs and arms were stiff
and his beard was caked with frozen snow. He wasted no time getting the door
open, but he didn't enter right away. Instead he let the wind hurl the door
inward, so that it cracked audibly against the wall, while he hung back and to
one side with his revolver drawn.

Nothing
happened inside.

He waited
another few seconds, but already the icebound night was beginning to numb his
bare hand; another minute or two of exposure and the skin would freeze to the
gunmetal. He entered the cabin in a sideways crouch, caught hold of the door
and crowded it shut until it latched. Chill, clotted black encased him now, so
thick that he was virtually blind. Should he risk lighting a match? Well, if he
wanted to see who or what this cabin might contain, he would have to risk it.
Floundering around in the dark would no doubt mean a broken limb, his luck
being what it was these days.

He fumbled
in his pocket for another lucifer, struck it on his left thumbnail, clucked
down and away from the flare of light. Still nothing happened. But the light
revealed that this cabin was divided into two sparsely furnished bedrooms with
an open door in the dividing wall; and it also revealed some sort of huddled
mass on the floor of the rear bedroom.

In slow
strides, holding the match up and away from his body, he moved toward the
doorway. The flame died just as he reached it—just as he recognized the huddled
mass as the motionless body of a man. He thumbed another match alight, went
through the doorway, leaned down for a closer look. The man lay drawn up on his
back, and on one temple blood from a bullet furrow glistened blackly in the wavering
flame. Young man, sandy-haired, wearing an old vicuna cloth suit and a clean
white shirt now spotted with blood. A man Quincannon had never seen before. . .

Something
moved behind him.

Something
else slashed the air, grazed the side of Quincannon's head as he started to
turn and dodge, drove him sideways to the floor.

The lucifer
went out as he was struck; he lost his grip on the Navy and it went clattering
away into blackness as thick as the inside of Old Scratch's fundament. The
blow had been sharp enough to set up a ringing in his ears, but the thick
rabbit-fur cap had cushioned it enough so that he wasn't stunned. He pulled
around on to his knees, lunged back toward the doorway with both hands
reaching. Above him he heard again that slashing of the air, only this time the
swung object missed him entirely. Which threw the man who had swung
off-balance, at the same instant that Quincannon's right hand found a grip on
sheepskin material not unlike that of his own coat. He yanked hard, heard a grunt,
and then the heavy weight of his assailant came squirming and cursing down on
top of him.

The floor
of an unfamiliar, black-dark room was the last place Quincannon would have
chosen for hand-to-hand combat. But he was a veteran of any number of skirmishes,
and had learned ways to do grievous damage to an opponent that would have
shocked the Marquis of Queensbury. (Sabina, too, no doubt. Or maybe not.)
Besides which, this particular opponent, whoever he was, was labouring under
the same disadvantages as he was.

There were
a few seconds of scrambling and bumping about, some close-quarters pummelling
on both sides, a blow that split Quincannon's lip and made his Scot's blood
boil even more furiously, a brief and violent struggle for possession of what
felt like a long-barrelled revolver, and then, finally, an opportunity for
Quincannon to use a mean and scurrilous trick he had learned in a free-for-all
on the Baltimore docks. His assailant screamed, quit fighting, began to twitch
instead; and to groan and wail and curse feebly. This vocal combination made
Quincannon's head hurt all the more, and led him, since he now had possession
of the long-barrelled revolver, to thump the man on top of the head with the
weapon. The groaning and wailing and cursing ceased abruptly. So did the
twitching.

Quincannon
got to his feet, stood shakily wiping blood from his torn lip. He made the
mistake then of taking a blind step and almost fell over one or other of the
two men now lying motionless on the floor. He produced another lucifer from
his dwindling supply. In its flare he spied a lamp, and managed to get to it in
time to light the wick before the flame died. He located his Navy, holstered
it, then carried the lamp to where the men lay and peered at the face of the
one who had tried to brain him.

'Well,
well,' he said aloud, with considerable relish. 'A serendipitous turnabout
after all. Just what I wanted for Christmas—Slick Henry Garber.'

Slick Henry
Garber said nothing, nor would he be able to for a good while.

The young,
sandy-haired lad—Adam Keene, no doubt—was also unconscious. The bullet wound on
his head didn't seem to be serious, but he would need attention.
He
wouldn't be saying anything,
either, for a good while. Quincannon would just have to wait for the full story
of what had happened here before his arrival. Unless, of course, he got it from
Adam Keene's wife. . .

Where
was
Adam Keene's wife?

Carrying
the lamp, he searched the two bedrooms. No sign of Martha Keene. He did find
Slick Henry's leather satchel, in a corner of the rear room; it contained
several thousand shares of bogus mining stock and nine thousand dollars in
greenbacks. He also found evidence of a struggle, and not one but two bullet
holes in the back wall.

These
things, plus a few others, plus a belated application of imagination and logic,
allowed him to make a reasonably accurate guess as to tonight's sequence of
events. Slick Henry had arrived just before the snowstorm and just as the
Keenes were sitting down to supper. He had either put his horse in the barn
himself or Adam Keene had done it; that explained why there had been
three
saddle horses present when only
two
people lived at Traveller's Rest.
Most likely Slick Henry had then thrown down on the Keenes: he must have been
aware that Quincannon was still close behind him, even if Quincannon hadn't
known it, and must have realized that with the impending storm it was a good bet
his pursuer would also stop at Traveller's Rest. And what better place for an
ambush than one of these three buildings? Perhaps he'd chosen the guest cabin
on the theory that Quincannon would be less on his guard there than at the
other two. To ensure that, Slick Henry had taken Adam Keene with him at
gunpoint, leaving Mrs Keene in the main cabin with instructions to tell
Quincannon that no other travellers had appeared today, and to then send him to
the guest cabin.

But while
the two men were in that cabin Adam Keene had heroically attempted to disarm
Slick Henry, there had been a struggle, and Keene had unheroically received a
bullet wound for his efforts. Martha Keene must have heard at least one of the
shots, and fearing the worst she had left the main cabin through the bedroom
window and hidden herself somewhere. Had Slick Henry found her? Not likely. But
it seemed reasonable to suppose he had been out hunting for her when Quincannon
came. The violence of the storm had kept him from springing his trap at that
point; he had decided instead to return to the guest cabin as per his original
plan. And this was where he had been ever since, waiting in the dark for his
nemesis to walk in like a damned fool—which was just what Quincannon had done.

This day's
business, Quincannon thought ruefully, had been one long, grim comedy of errors
on all sides. Slick Henry's actions were at least half-doltish and so were his
own. Especially his own—blundering in half a dozen different ways, including
not even once considering the possibility of a planned ambush. Relentless
manhunter, intrepid detective. Hah. It was a wonder he hadn't been shot dead.
Sabina would chide him mercilessly if he told her the entire story of his
capture of Slick Henry Garber. Which, of course, he had no intention of doing.

Well, he
could redeem himself somewhat by finding Martha Keene. Almost certainly she had
to be in one of the three buildings. She wouldn't have remained in the open,
exposed, in a raging mountain storm. She would not have come anywhere near the
guest cabin because of Slick Henry. And she hadn't stayed in the main cabin;
the open bedroom window proved that. Ergo, she was in the barn. But he had
searched the barn, even gone up into the hayloft. No place to hide up there, or
in the harness enclosure, or in one of the stalls, or. . .

The lamp
base on the bedroom floor, he thought.

No room at
the inn, he thought.

'Well, of
course, you blasted rattlepate,' he said aloud. 'It's the only place she
can
be.'

Out once
more into the whipping snow and freezing wind (after first taking the
precaution of binding Slick Henry's hands with the man's own belt). Slog, slog,
slog, and finally into the darkened barn. He lighted the lantern, took it to
the approximate middle of the building, and then called out, 'Mrs Keene! My
name is John Quincannon, I am a detective from San Francisco, and I have just
cracked the skull of the man who terrorized you and your husband tonight. You
have nothing more to fear.'

No
response.

'I know
you're here, and approximately where. Won't you save both of us the embarrassment
of my poking around with a pitchfork?'