Continental Op Stories · Corkscrew (4/9)

VIII

There were only eight or ten diners in the dining-room. None of Peery’s men was there. Milk River and I sat at a table back in one corner of the room. Our meal was about half eaten when the dark-eyed girl I had seen the previous day came in.

She came straight to our table. I stood up to learn her name was Clio Landes. She was the girl the better element wanted floated. She gave me a flashing smile, a strong, thin hand, and sat down.

“I hear you’ve lost your job again, you big bum,” she laughed at Milk River.

I had known she didn’t belong to Arizona. Her voice was New York.

“If that’s all you heard, I’m still ’way ahead of you,” Milk River grinned back at her. “I gone and got me another job⁠—riding herd on law and order.”

Something that could have been worry flashed into her dark eyes, and out again.

“You might just as well start looking for another hired man right away,” she advised me. “He never kept a job longer than a few days in his life.”

From the distance came the sound of a shot.

I went on eating.

Clio Landes said:

“Don’t you coppers get excited over things like that?”

“The first rule,” I told her, “is never to let anything interfere with your meals, if you can help it.”

An overalled man came in from the street.

“Nisbet’s been killed down in Bardell’s!” he yelled.

To Bardell’s Border Palace Milk River and I went, half the diners running ahead of us, with half the town.

We found Nisbet in the back room, stretched out on the floor, dead. A hole that a .45 could have made was in his chest, which the men around him had bared.

Bardell’s fingers gripped my arm.

“Never give him a chance, the dogs!” he cried thickly. “Cold murder!”

“He say anything before he died?”

“No. He was dead when we got to him.”

“Who shot him?”

“One of the Circle H.A.R., you can bet your neck on that!”

“Didn’t anybody see it?”

“Nobody here admits they saw it.”

“How did it happen?”

“Mark was out front. Me and Chick and five or six of these men were there. Mark came back here. Just as he stepped through the door⁠—bang!”

Bardell shook his fist at the open window.

I crossed to the window and looked out. A five-foot strip of rocky ground lay between the building and the sharp edge of the Tirabuzon Canyon. A close-twisted rope was tight around a small knob of rock at the canyon’s edge.

I pointed at the rope. Bardell swore savagely.

“If I’d of seen that we’d of got him! We didn’t think anybody could get down there, and didn’t look very close. We ran up and down the ledge, looking between buildings.”

We went outside, where I lay on my belly and looked down into the canyon. The rope⁠—one end fastened to the knob⁠—ran straight down the rock wall for twenty feet, and disappeared among the trees and bushes of a narrow shelf that ran along the wall there. Once on that shelf, a man could find ample cover to shield his retreat.

“What do you think?” I asked Milk River, who lay beside me.

“A clean getaway.”

I stood up, pulling up the rope. A rope such as any one of a hundred cowhands might have owned, in no way distinguishable from any other to my eyes. I handed it to Milk River.

“It don’t mean nothing to me. Might be anybody’s,” he said.

“The ground tell you anything?”

He shook his head again.

“You go down into the canyon and see what you can pick up,” I told him. “I’ll ride out to the Circle H.A.R. If you don’t find anything, ride out that way.”

I went back indoors, for further questioning. Of the seven men who had been in Bardell’s place at the time of the shooting, three seemed to be fairly trustworthy. The testimony of those three agreed with Bardell’s in every detail.

“Didn’t you say you were going out to see Peery?” Bardell asked.

“Yes.”

“Chick, get horses! Me and you’ll ride out there with the deputy, and as many of you other men as want to go. He’ll need guns behind him!”

“Nothing doing!” I stopped Chick. “I’m going by myself. This posse stuff is out of my line.”

Bardell scowled, but he nodded his head in agreement.

“You’re running it,” he said. “I’d like to go out there with you, but if you want to play it different, I’m gambling you’re right.”

IX

In the livery stable, where we had put our horses, I found Milk River saddling them, and we rode out of town together.

Half a mile out, we split. He turned to the left, down a trail that led into the canyon, calling over his shoulder to me:

“If you get through out there sooner than you think, you can maybe pick me up by following the draw the ranch-house is in down to the canyon. Don’t be too hard on the boys!”

I turned into the draw that led toward the Circle H.A.R., the long-legged, long-bodied horse Milk River had sold me carrying me along easily and swiftly. It was too soon after midday for riding to be pleasant. Heat waves boiled out of the draw-bottom, the sun hurt my eyes, dust caked my throat. That same dust rose behind me in a cloud that advertised me to half the state, notwithstanding that I was riding below the landscape.

Crossing from this draw into the larger one the Circle H.A.R. occupied, I found Peery waiting for me.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t move a hand. He just sat his horse and watched me approach. Two .45s were holstered on his legs.

I came alongside and held out the lariat I had taken from the rear of the Border Palace. As I held it out I noticed that no rope decorated his saddle.

“Know anything about this?” I asked.

He looked at the rope, but made no move to take it.

“Looks like one of those things hombres use to drag steers around with.”

“Can’t fool you, can I?” I grunted. “Ever see this particular one before?”

He took a minute or more to think up an answer to that.

“Yeah,” finally. “Fact is, I lost that same rope somewheres between here and town this morning.”

“Know where I found it?”

“Don’t hardly make no difference.” He reached for it. “The main thing is you found it.”

“It might make a difference,” I said, moving the rope out of his reach. “I found it strung down the canyon wall, behind Bardell’s, where you could slide down it after you potted Nisbet.”

His hands went to his guns. I turned so he could see the shape of one of the pocketed automatics I was holding.

“Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for,” I advised him.

“Shall I gun this la‑ad now?” Dunne’s brogue rolled from behind me, “or will we wa‑ait a bit?”

I looked around to see him standing behind a boulder, a .30‒30 rifle held on me. Above other rocks, other heads and other weapons showed.

I took my hand out of my pocket and put it on my saddle horn.

Peery spoke past me to the others.

“He tells me Nisbet’s been shot.”

“Now ain’t that provokin’?” Buck Small grieved. “I hope it didn’t hurt him none.”

“Dead,” I supplied.

“Whoever could ’a’ done th’ like o’ that?” Dunne wanted to know.

“It wasn’t Santa Claus,” I gave my opinion.

“Got anything else to tell me?” Peery demanded.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Yeah. Now if I was you, I’d ride right back to Corkscrew and go to bed.”

“You mean you don’t want to go back with me?”

“Not any. If you want to try and take me, now⁠—”

I didn’t want to try, and I said so.

“Then there’s nothing keeping you here,” he pointed out.

I grinned at him and his friends, pulled the sorrel around, and started back the way I had come.

A few miles down, I swung off to the south again, found the lower end of the Circle H.A.R. draw, and followed it down into the Tirabuzon Canyon. Then I started to work up toward the point where the rope had been let down.

The canyon deserved its name⁠—a rough and stony, tree and bush-choked, winding gutter across the face of Arizona. But it was nicely green and cool compared to most of the rest of the State.

I hadn’t gone far when I ran into Milk River, leading his horse toward me. He shook his head.

“Not a damned thing! I can cut sign with the rest of ’em, but there’s too many rocky ridges here.”

I dismounted. We sat under a tree and smoked some tobacco.

“How’d you come out?” he wanted to know.

“So-so. The rope is Peery’s, but he didn’t want to come along with me. I figure we can find him when we want him, so I didn’t insist. It would have been kind of uncomfortable.”

He looked at me out of the end of his pale eyes.

“A hombre might guess,” he said slowly, “that you was playing the Circle H.A.R. against Bardell’s crew, encouraging each side to eat up the other, and save you the trouble.”

“You could be either right or wrong. Do you think that’d be a dumb play?”

“I don’t know. I reckon not⁠—if you’re making it, and if you’re sure you’re strong enough to take hold when you have to.”