Quincannon decided he’d had enough of bartending for tonight if not for the rest of his life. He hung up his apron, donned his long coat and derby, helped himself to a cheroot from a vase on the bar, and went to pay Lily a visit of his own.
She was shuffling and cutting a full deck of cards for placement in her tiger-decorated faro box; the cards made angry snapping sounds in her slim fingers. She, too, was a complete opposite of Lady One-Eye. She had flaming red hair, a temper to match, and the hot sparking eyes of a gypsy. Fire to the Lady’s ice.
“Trouble with Her Majesty?” Quincannon asked with mock sympathy.
“Her Majesty. Hah! I’ll tell you what that female is.” Which Lily proceeded to do in language that delighted some and shocked others among the miners seated at her table.
“A cold and jealous woman, all right,” he agreed.
“Threaten me, will she? I’ll fix her first. I’ll rip out her other eye and turn her into Lady Blind.”
“Why did she threaten you?”
“Never mind about that.”
Quincannon bent toward her and said in a lowered voice, “I wonder how long she and Jack O’Diamonds have been together. They seem a mismatched pair.”
“Too long. And ‘mismatched’ is putting it mildly. God knows what he ever saw in her even before she lost her eye.”
“Poker winnings are more attractive to some than a pretty face.”
“Well, that’s why he stayed with her as long as he has. But maybe not for much longer.”
“Oh? He wouldn’t be planning to leave her, would he?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Is it any of yours, Lily?”
“Miss Dumont to you. My business is mine, no one else’s.”
“Not even Glen Bonnifield’s?”
“Leave the lady be, mister,” one of the miners snapped. “Be gone with ye so she can deal her cards.”
And take your hard-earned money, Quincannon thought. But he only shrugged and turned away.
As he made his way through the crowd toward the front entrance, he spied Amos McFinn hurrying to intercept him. He pretended not to see the nervous little client; he had no interest in answering another “Anything suspicious?” or similar question yet again. He managed to make good his escape before McFinn got close enough to ask it.
It was some past midnight now, and even though thick July heat blanketed the town during the day, snow still mantled the Sierras’ higher peaks and the mountain air held a faint chill after nightfall. The continual beat of stamps at the massive Empire Mine southeast of town all but drowned out the throb of piano and banjo music from inside the Gold Nugget and other gaming halls and saloons nearby.
At this hour there was but a small amount of foot and vehicle traffic on the steep slope of East Main Street, its expanse more brightly lit now that electric lamps had replaced the old gas ones. A far cry from the boom years of Grass Valley and Nevada City following the 1851 discovery of gold in quartz ledges buried beneath the earth, when thousands of gold seekers, camp followers, and Cornish and Irish hardrock miners had clogged the streets day and night. Now the Empire was the only major mine still in operation, with shafts sunk as deep as seven thousand feet below the surface.
On Quincannon’s first visit here, some eight years ago, the town had still retained some of its wide-open Gold Rush flavor. Now nearly all the rough edges had been buffed down and rounded off. This was fine if you were a law-abiding, church-going citizen with a family to raise and support. But tame places were not for John Frederick Quincannon. He would rather walk the mean streets of a hell-roaring gold camp or those of the Barbary Coast.
He paused on the boardwalk to light the cheroot he had appropriated. He seldom smoked cigars, preferring shag-cut loaded into his stubby briar pipe, but free tobacco, if it was of decent quality, had a greater satisfaction than the paid-for kind. Then, instead of heading to his lodging place, the Holbrooke Hotel, he walked down to the town’s other main thoroughfare, Mill Street. The only lit building along there was the Empire Livery Stable. He saw the night hostler working inside as he passed — and no one else after he turned uphill on Neal Street.
A building boom had taken place in Grass Valley since his last visit. Formerly the town had consisted of simple wood-frame structures common to boom camps, those used for commercial purposes bearing false fronts. Now there were two-story Italianate and Queen Anne — style homes and not a few front-gable cottages with facing verandas.
One of the Palace’s bouncers had told him that Lily Dumont lived in a cottage on Pleasant Street, just off Neal. He found the address with no difficulty. The cottage was not one of the larger front-gable variety, but a small frame building of no more than three rooms, tucked well back from the street in the shade of a pair of live oaks. The neighborhood was a good one, and by the light of stars and a rind of moon he could tell that the cottage and its gardens were well set up. Much too well set up, he thought, for a woman who operated a faro bank to afford on her own. He wondered if Glen Bonnifield had an investment in the property as well as in the fair Lily.
The cottage’s curtained windows were dark; so were those in the two nearest houses. He shed the remains of his cheroot and walked softly around to the rear. The back door was not locked. He entered, struck a match to orient himself and to show him the way into the front parlor.
An oil lamp with a red silk shade sat atop a writing desk. He lit the wick, turning the flame low, and by this light he searched the desk. There was one bottle of ink, but it was blue, not green. Nothing else in the desk held any interest for him.
He carried the lamp into Lily’s bedroom, where he found further evidence of financial aid: satin dresses, a white fox capote, an expensive ostrich-feather chapeau. But that was all he found. If Lily had written the threatening note, she had either done it elsewhere or gotten rid of the bottle of ink she’d used.
Quincannon returned the lamp to the writing desk, snuffed the wick, then followed the flicker of another match to the rear door. He let himself out, shutting the door quietly behind him.
He was just turning onto the path toward the front when the first bullet sang close past his right ear.
He threw himself to the ground, an immediate reflex action that saved his life: the second bullet slashed air where his head had been, thudded into something behind him. The booming echo of the shots filled his ears. He reached under his coat for his Navy Colt, then remembered he hadn’t worn it because of his bartending duties; instead he’d armed himself with the same type of double-barreled Remington derringer Sabina carried, an effective weapon at close quarters in a crowded room but with a range of no more than twenty feet. He rolled sideways, clawing the derringer free of his pocket, half expecting to feel the shock of a bullet.
But there were no more rounds fired. The thick branches of an oleander shrub ended his roll; cursing under his breath, he shoved away from the evergreen and then lay flat and still, the derringer held up in front of him. He peered through the darkness, listening.
A brief, faint sound that might have been retreating footsteps. Then silence.
He pushed onto his knees. Lamplight suddenly brightened one of the windows in the house next door; its outspill showed him that the yard and the street in front were now deserted. He got quickly to his feet, careful to keep his head turned aside from the light. A face peered out through the lamplit window and a voice hollered, “What in tarnation’s going on out there?” Quincannon didn’t answer. Staying in the shadows, he ran ahead and looked both ways along Pleasant Street.
His assailant had vanished.