Continental Op Stories · Corkscrew (2/9)

III

Three steps from the door, a stooped, white-mustached man in a collarless stiff-bosomed shirt swooped down on me, as if he had been lying in wait.

“My name’s Adderly,” he introduced himself, holding out one hand toward me while flicking the other at Adderly’s Emporium. “Got a minute or two to spare? I’d like to make you acquainted with some of the folks.”

The Circle H.A.R. men were walking slowly toward one of the machines in the street.

“Can you wait a couple of minutes?” I called after them.

Milk River looked back over his shoulder.

“Yes. We got to gas and water the flivver. Take yor time.”

Adderly led me toward his store, talking as he walked.

“Some of the better element is at my house⁠—danged near all the better element. The folks who’ll back you up if you’ll put the fear of God in Corkscrew. We’re tired and sick of this perpetual hell-raising.”

We went through his store, across a yard, and into his house. There were a dozen or more people in his living-room.

The Reverend Dierks⁠—a gangling, emaciated man with a tight mouth in a long, thin face⁠—made a speech at me. He called me brother, he told me what a wicked place Corkscrew was, and he told me he and his friends were prepared to swear out warrants for the arrest of various men who had committed sixty-some crimes during the past two years.

He had a list of them, with names, dates, and hours, which he read to me. Everybody I had met that day⁠—except those here⁠—was on that list at least once, along with a lot of names I didn’t know. The crimes ranged from murder to intoxication and the use of profane language.

“If you’ll let me have that list, I’ll study it,” I promised.

He gave it to me, but he wasn’t to be put off with promises.

“To refrain even for an hour from punishing wickedness is to be a partner to that wickedness, brother. You have been inside that house of sin operated by Bardell. You have heard the Sabbath desecrated with the sound of pool-balls. You have smelled the foul odor of illegal rum on men’s breaths!

“Strike now, brother! Let it not be said that you condoned evil from your first day in Corkscrew! You have seen men whose garments did not conceal the deadly weapons under them! In that list is the black record of many months’ unatoned sinfulness. Strike now, brother, for the Lord and righteousness! Go into those hells and do your duty as an officer of the law and a Christian!”

This was a minister; I didn’t like to laugh.

I looked at the others. They were sitting⁠—men and women⁠—on the edges of their chairs. On their faces were the same expressions you see around a prize ring just before the gong rings.

Mrs. Echlin, the livery man’s wife, an angular-faced, angular-bodied woman, caught my gaze with her pebble-hard eyes.

“And that brazen scarlet woman who calls herself Señora Gaia⁠—and the three hussies who pretend they’re her daughters! You ain’t much of a deputy sheriff if you leave ’em in that house of theirs one night longer⁠—to poison the manhood of Orilla County!”

The others nodded vigorously. Echlin’s eyes had lit up at his wife’s words, and he licked his lips as he nodded.

Miss Janey, school teacher, false-toothed, sour-faced, put in her part:

“And even worse than those⁠—those creatures, is that Clio Landes! Worse, because at least those⁠—those hussies”⁠—she looked down, managed a blush, looked out of the corners of her eyes at the minister⁠—“those hussies are at least openly what they are. While she⁠—who knows how bad she really is?”

“I don’t know about her,” Adderly began, but his wife shut him up.

“I do!” she snapped. She was a large, mustached woman whose corsets made knobs and points in her shiny black dress. “Miss Janey is perfectly right. That woman is worse than the rest!”

“Is this Clio Landes person on your list?” I asked, not remembering it.

“No, brother, she is not,” the Reverend Dierks said regretfully. “But only because she is more subtle than the others. Corkscrew would indeed be better without her⁠—a woman of obviously low moral standards, with no visible means of support, associating with our worst element.”

“I’m glad to have met you folks,” I said as I folded the list and put it in my pocket. “And I’m glad to know you’ll back me up.”

I edged toward the door, hoping to get away without much more talk. Not a chance. The Reverend Dierks followed me up.

“You will strike now, brother? You will carry God’s war immediately into blind tiger and brothel and gambling hell?”

The others were on their feet now, closing in.

“I’ll have to look things over first,” I stalled.

“Brother, are you evading your duty? Are you procrastinating in the face of Satan? If you are the man I hope you are, you will march now, with the decent citizens of Corkscrew at your heels, to wipe from the face of our town the sin that blackens it!”

So that was it. I was to lead one of these vice-crusading mobs. I wondered how many of these crusaders would be standing behind me if one of the devil’s representatives took a shot at me. The minister maybe⁠—his thin face was grimly pugnacious. But I couldn’t imagine what good he’d be in a row. The others would scatter at the first sign of trouble.

I stopped playing politics and said my say.

“I’m glad to have your support,” I said, “but there isn’t going to be any wholesale raiding⁠—not for a while, anyway. Later, I’ll try to get around to the bootleggers and gamblers and similar small fry, though I’m not foolish enough to think I can put them all out of business. Just now, so long as they don’t cut up too rough, I don’t expect to bother them. I haven’t the time.

“This list you’ve given me⁠—I’ll do what I think ought to be done after I’ve examined it, but I’m not going to worry a lot over a batch of petty misdemeanors that happened a year ago. I’m starting from scratch. What happens from now on is what interests me. See you later.”

And I left.

The cowboys’ car was standing in front of the store when I came out.

“I’ve been meeting the better element,” I explained as I found a place in it between Milk River and Buck Small.

Milk River’s brown face wrinkled around his eyes.

“Then you know what kind of riffraff we are,” he said.

IV

Dunne driving, the car carried us out of Corkscrew at the street’s southern end, and then west along the sandy and rocky bottom of a shallow draw. The sand was deep and the rocks were numerous; we didn’t make very good time. An hour and a half of jolting, sweltering and smothering in this draw, and we climbed up out of it and crossed to a larger and greener draw, where the mesquite grew in small trees and bees zizzed among wild flowers.

Around a bend in this draw the Circle H.A.R. buildings sat. We got out of the automobile under a low shed, where another car already stood. A heavily muscled, heavily boned man came around a whitewashed building toward us. His face was square and dark. His close-clipped mustache and deep-set small eyes were dark.

This, I learned, was Peery, who bossed the ranch for the owner, who lived in the East.

“He wants a nice, mild horse,” Milk River told Peery, “and we thought maybe you might sell him that Rollo horse of yours. That’s the nicest, mildest horse I ever heard tell of.”

Peery tilted his high-crowned sombrero back on his head and rocked on his heels.

“What was you figuring on paying for this here horse?”

“If it suits me,” I said, “I’m willing to pay what it takes to buy him.”

“That ain’t so bad,” he said. “S’pose one of you boys dab a rope on that buckskin and bring him around for the gent to look at.”

Smith and Dunne set out together, pretending they weren’t going eagerly.

“Where’s Red and Slim?” Peery asked.

“Stayin’ in a while,” Small told him. “Slim’s a million ahead in a poker game.”

Presently the two cowhands came back, riding, with the buckskin between them, already saddled and bridled. I noticed each of them had a rope on him. He was a loose-jointed pony of an unripe lemon color, with a sad, drooping, Roman-nosed head.

“There he is,” Peery said. “Try him out and we’ll talk dinero. I warn you, I ain’t so damned anxious to get rid of him that I’ll let him go for nothing. But you try him first⁠—trot him down the draw a little ways and back. He’s downright sweet.”

I chucked away my cigarette and went over to the buckskin. He cocked one mournful eye at me, twitched one ear, and went on looking sadly at the ground. Dunne and Smith took their lines off him, and I got into the saddle.

Rollo stood still under me until the other horses had left his side.

Then he showed me what he had.

He went straight up in the air⁠—and hung there long enough to turn around before he came down. He stood on his front feet and then on his hind ones, and then he got off all of them again.

I didn’t like this, but it wasn’t a surprise. I had known I was a lamb being led to the slaughter. This was the third time it had happened to me. I might as well get it over with. A city man in range country is bound to find himself sitting on a disagreeable bone sooner or later. I’m a city man. I can sit any street car or taxicab in the world, and I can even ride a horse if he’ll cooperate. But when the horse doesn’t want to stay under me⁠—the horse wins.

Rollo was going to win. I wasn’t foolish enough to waste strength fighting him.

So the next time he traded ends, I went away from him, holding myself limp, so the tumble wouldn’t ruin me.

Smith had caught the yellow pony, and was holding its head, when I took my knees off my forehead and stood up.

Peery, squatting on his heels, was frowning at me. Milk River was looking at Rollo with what was supposed to be a look of utter amazement.

“Now whatever did you do to Rollo to make him act thataway?” Peery asked me.

“Maybe he was only fooling,” I suggested. “I’ll try him again.”

Once more Rollo stood still and sad until I was securely up on him. Then he went into convulsions under me⁠—convulsions that lasted until I piled on my neck and one shoulder in a clump of brush.

I stood up, rubbing my left shoulder, which had hit a rock. Smith was holding the buckskin. The faces of all five men were serious and solemn⁠—too serious and solemn.

“Maybe he don’t like you,” Buck Small gave his opinion.

“Might be,” I admitted as I climbed into the saddle for the third time.

The lemon-tinted devil was getting warmed up by now, was beginning to take pride in his work. He let me stay aboard longer than before, so he could slam me off harder.

I was sick when I hit the ground in front of Peery and Milk River. It took me a little while to get up, and I had to stand still for a moment, until I could feel the ground under my feet.

“Hold him a couple of seconds⁠—” I began.

Peery’s big frame stood in front of me.

“That’s enough,” he said. “I ain’t going to have you killed on my hands.”

I shook my head violently, trying to clear it, so I could see him better.

“Get out of my way,” I growled. “I like this. I want more of it.”

“You don’t top my pony no more,” he growled back at me. “He ain’t used to playing so rough. You’re liable to hurt him, falling off carelessly like that.”

I tried to get past him. He barred my way with a thick arm. I drove my right fist at his dark face.

He went back, busy trying to keep his feet under him.

I went over and hoisted myself up on Rollo.

I had the buckskin’s confidence by this time. We were old friends. He didn’t mind showing me his secret stuff. He did things no horse could possibly do. Looking down, I was surprised not to see his kidneys and liver⁠—because I knew damned well he was turning himself inside out.

I landed in the same clump of brush that had got me once before.

I couldn’t see much when I got up⁠—only the yellow of Rollo.

I heard Peery’s bass voice, protesting to somebody:

“No, let the damned fool kill himself if he wants to.”

I heaved myself wearily into the saddle again.

For a while I thought Rollo had had enough. He was a well-behaved animal under me. That was fine. I had ridden him at last.

Nonsense! He was fooling.

He put his nose in the sand. He put it in the sky. And, using his head for a base, he wagged his body as a puppy would wag its tail.

I went away from him⁠—and stayed where I landed.

I didn’t know whether I could have got up again if I had wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I closed my eyes and rested. If I hadn’t done what I had set out to do, I was willing to fail.

Small, Dunne and Milk River carried me indoors and spread me on a bunk.

“I don’t think that horse would be much good to me,” I told them. “Maybe I’d better look at another.”

“You don’t want to get discouraged like that,” Small advised me.

“You better lay still and rest, fella,” Milk River said. “You’re liable to fall apart if you start moving around.”

I took his advice.

V

When I woke up it was morning, and Milk River was prodding me with a finger.

“You figuring on getting up for breakfast, or would you like it brung to you?”

I moved cautiously until I found I was all in one piece.

“I can crawl that far.”

He sat down on a bunk across the room and rolled a cigarette while I put on my shoes⁠—the only things, except my hat, I hadn’t slept in. He had something to say, so I gave him time, lacing my shoes slowly.

Presently he said it:

“I always had the idea that nobody that couldn’t sit a horse some couldn’t amount to nothing much. I ain’t so sure now. You can’t ride any, and never will. You don’t seem to have the least notion what to do after you get in the middle of the animal! But, still and all, a hombre that’ll let a bronc dirty him up three times handrunning and then ties into a gent who tries to keep him from making it permanent, ain’t exactly hay wire.”

He lit his cigarette, and broke the match in half.

“I got a sorrel horse you can have for a hundred dollars. He don’t take no interest in handling cows, but he’s all horse, and he ain’t mean.”

I went into my money-belt⁠—slid five twenties over into his lap.

“Better look at him first,” he objected.

“You’ve seen him,” I yawned, standing up. “Where’s that breakfast you were bragging about?”

Six men were eating in the chuck-shack when we came in. Three of them were hands I hadn’t seen before. Neither Peery, Wheelan, nor Vogel was there. Milk River introduced me to the strangers as the high-diving deputy sheriff, and, between bites of the food the one-eyed Chinese cook put on the table, the meal was devoted almost exclusively to wise cracks about my riding ability.

That suited me. I was sore and stiff, but my bruises weren’t wasted. I had bought myself a place of some sort in this desert community, and maybe even a friend or two. In less than a day I had accomplished what, by milder means, would have taken weeks, or months. These cowhands were kidding me just about as they would have kidded each other.

We were following the smoke of our cigarettes outdoors when running hoofs brought a swirl of dust up the draw.

Red Wheelan slid off his horse and staggered out of the sand-cloud.

“Slim’s dead!” he said thickly.

Half a dozen voices shot questions at him. He stood swaying, trying to answer them. He was drunk as a lord!

“Nisbet shot him. I heard about it when I woke up this mornin’. He was shot early this mornin’⁠—in front of Bardell’s. I left ’em aroun’ midnight last night, an’ went down to Gaia’s. I heard about it this mornin’. I went after Nisbet, but”⁠—he looked down sheepishly at his empty belt⁠—“Bardell took m’ gun away.”

He swayed again. I caught him, steadying him.

“Horses!” Peery bawled over my shoulder. “We’re going to town!”

I let go of Wheelan and turned around.

“We’re going to town,” I repeated, “but no foolishness when we get there. This is my job, and if I want any help I’ll tell you.”

Peery’s eyes met mine.

“Slim belonged to us,” he said.

“And whoever killed Slim belongs to me,” I said.

That was all on the subject, but I didn’t think I had made the point stick.