Murder in Dogleg City Read Online Free PDF

haven’t talked to anyone at the Wolf’s
Den, but I assume that he stopped in there, too. He took his meals
at Isabella’s restaurant. Everybody has seen him but nobody knows
him. Except whoever he was working for, of course.”
    “ You believe he was
working for someone?” Sam asked.
    “ When I asked Asa Pepper
who he thought the fella was, he said that he thinks he might work
for Ira Breedlove. Asa said that he owes Breedlove some money, and
maybe Breedlove sent the guy to pressure him.”
    Sam raised his eyebrows, “That could
be so. I believe that Ira Breedlove is almost as grubbing as Dab
Henry, when it comes to money.”
    “ I think it goes a little
deeper than that,” Quint replied. “Asa said he didn’t know of, or
have anything to do with, the shooting—and I believe him. And it
wouldn’t make any sense for Breedlove to kill off his own man, if
that’s what Laird was. So I figure it was maybe a random killing,
perhaps a mistaken identity, or else someone sending a message to
Ira Breedlove.”
    “ You say you haven’t been
to the Wolf’s Den?” Sam asked.
    “ No, you said you were
going there,” Quint said.
    “ I did, but Ira wasn’t
there. I did go to The Lucky Break, but that was before you went
there, too.” Sam sounded annoyed.
    “ I thought it was
important to talk to Rob Parker, to see if he remembered the man,”
Quint said quietly.
    Sam nodded, “Dab Henry showed up here
to complain about your questioning. Dab can be scornful at times—it
might be best if I handle him and Ira Breedlove.”
    Quint was happy to let him. The deputy
intended to go to his room at Rose Cotton’s boarding house and hit
the mattress. The only good thing about staying up this long past
his bedtime was that he would be too tired to dream he was still
making his rounds in Dogleg City.

 
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Samuel Jones sat at his usual table in
the Lucky Break. It damn well better be his table, because he paid
Dab Henry a thousand a month for the right to deal his cards there.
Not yet noon, and Samuel dealt himself a hand of solitaire.
Sometimes he couldn’t even beat himself, but he never cheated. Lots
of gentlemen did. Three-card monte players did. Faro dealers did.
But Samuel Jones didn’t, and everyone in Dogleg City knew it. He
started lining up the cards.
    A teamster pushed his way into the
Lucky Break and hollered. “Hey Mister Henry. Yer mirror’s
here.”
    Dab burst from the back room—he had
only been back from his visit at the marshal’s office for a few
minutes. “You all be careful with that glass,” he hollered back.
“Cost a pretty piece, but it’ll put the Lucky Break up a notch or
two. People’re gonna flock right in here to look at themselves in
that big ol’ thing.”
    The mirror sat tied to an A-frame on a
wagon. Little bags stuffed with raw cotton cushioned it against
bumps in the road. Four teamsters lifted it from the frame as if it
were pure crystal and would shatter if they breathed on it
wrong.
    Samuel Jones grinned at the antics and
dealt himself another card. Karl Shultz, the cabinet maker from
Joseph Nash’s carpentry shop, squeezed in as the teamsters
manhandled the mirror in. He rubbed his hands together in glee.
“I’ve already made the upper framework,” he said to the teamsters.
“Just slide the top of the mirror into the groove up there. Careful
now. Don’t push too hard. Okay. Slide the bottom of the mirror into
place. Yes. Exactly right. Now, let me fix it in there with these
wedges.” He showed a handful of oak wedges about two inches wide
and only as thick as a fingernail at one edge and nearly a quarter
of an inch at the other end. Slipping a wedge between the cabinet
and the mirror’s bottom edge every foot or so, he used a little
rawhide mallet to tap the wedges home, and the mirror stood
straight and firm at back of the Lucky Break bar. Karl affixed a
carved molding at the bottom to conceal the wedges and make the
mirror look