Continental Op Stories · Corkscrew (6/9)

XI

My patching finished, we went down to the Jew’s for food. Three eaters were sitting at the counter. I had to exchange comments on the battle with them while I ate.

We were interrupted by the running of horses in the street. A dozen or more men went past the door, and we could hear them pulling up sharply, dismounting, in front of Bardell’s.

Milk River leaned sidewise until his mouth was close to my ear.

“Big ’Nacio’s crew from down the canyon. You better hold on tight, chief, or they’ll shake the town from under you.”

We finished our meal and went out to the street.

In the glow from the big lamp over Bardell’s door a Mexican lounged against the wall. A big black-bearded man, his clothes gay with silver buttons, two white-handled guns holstered low on his thighs, the holsters tied down.

“Will you take the horses over to the stable?” I asked Milk River. “I’m going up and lie across the bed and grow strength again.”

He looked at me curiously, and went over to where we had left the ponies.

I stopped in front of the bearded Mexican, and pointed with my cigarette at his guns.

“You’re supposed to take those things off when you come to town,” I said pleasantly. “Matter of fact, you’re not supposed to bring ’em in at all, but I’m not inquisitive enough to look under a man’s coat for them. You can’t wear them out in the open, though.”

Beard and mustache parted to show a smiling curve of yellow teeth.

“Mebbe if el señor jerife no lak t’ese t’ings, he lak try take t’em ’way?”

“No. You put ’em away.”

His smile spread.

“I lak t’em here. I wear t’em here.”

“You do what I tell you,” I said, still pleasantly, and left him, going back to the Jew’s shack.

Leaning over the counter, I picked the sawed-off shotgun out of its nest.

“Can I borrow this? I want to make a believer out of a guy.”

“Yes, sir, sure! You help yourself!”

I cocked both barrels before I stepped outdoors.

The big Mexican wasn’t in sight. I found him inside, telling his friends about it. Some of his friends were Mexican, some American, some God knows what. All wore guns. All had the look of thugs.

The big Mexican turned when his friends gaped past him at me. His hands dropped to his guns as he turned, but he didn’t draw.

“I don’t know what’s in this cannon,” I told the truth, centering the riot gun on the company, “maybe pieces of barbed wire and dynamite shavings. We’ll find out if you birds don’t start piling your guns on the bar right away⁠—because I’ll sure-God splash you with it!”

They piled their weapons on the bar. I didn’t blame them. This thing in my hands would have mangled them plenty!

“After this, when you come to Corkscrew, put your guns out of sight.”

Fat Bardell pushed through them, putting joviality back on his face.

“Will you tuck these guns away until your customers are ready to leave town?” I asked him.

“Yes! Yes! Be glad to!” he exclaimed when he had got over his surprise.

I returned the shotgun to its owner and went up to the Canyon House.

A door just a room or two from mine opened as I walked down the hall. Chick Orr came out, saying:

“Don’t do nothin’ I wouldn’t do,” over his shoulder.

I saw Clio Landes standing inside the door.

Chick turned from the door, saw me, and stopped, scowling at me.

“You can’t fight worth a damn!” he said. “All you know is how to hit!”

“That’s right.”

He rubbed a swollen hand over his belly.

“I never could learn to take ’em down there. That’s what beat me in the profesh.”

I tried to look sympathetic, while he studied my face carefully.

“I messed you up, for a fact.” His scowl curved up in a gold-toothed grin. The grin went away. The scowl came back. “Don’t pick no more fights with me⁠—I might hurt you!”

He poked me in the ribs with a thumb, and went on past me, down the stairs.

The girl’s door was closed when I passed it. In my room, I dug out my fountain pen and paper, and had three words of my report written when a knock sounded on my door.

“Come in,” I called, having left the door unlocked for Milk River.

Clio Landes pushed the door open.

“Busy?”

“No. Come in and make yourself comfortable. Milk River will be along in a few minutes.”

I switched over to the bed, giving her my only chair.

“You’re not foxing Milk River, are you?” she asked point-blank.

“No. I got nothing to hang on him. He’s right so far as I’m concerned. Why?”

“Nothing, only I thought there might be a caper or two you were trying to cop him for. You’re not fooling me, you know! These hicks think you’re a bust, but I know different.”

“Thanks for those few kind words. But don’t be press-agenting my wisdom around. I’ve had enough advertising. What are you doing out here in the sticks?”

“Lunger!” She tapped her chest. “A croaker told me I’d last longer out here. Like a boob, I fell for it. Living out here isn’t any different from dying in the big city.”

“How long have you been away from the noise?”

“Three years⁠—a couple up in Colorado, and then this hole. Seem like three centuries.”

“I was back there on a job in April,” I led her on, “for two or three weeks.”

“You were?”

It was just as if I’d said I had been to heaven. She began to shoot questions at me: was this still so-and-so? Was that still thus?

We had quite a little gabfest, and I found I knew some of her friends. A couple of them were high-class swindlers, one was a bootleg magnate, and the rest were a mixture of bookies, conmen, and the like. When I was living in New York, back before the war, I had spent quite a few of my evenings in Dick Malloy’s Briar Patch, a cabaret on Seventh Avenue, near where the Ringside opened later. This girl had been one of the Briar Patch’s regular customers a few years after my time there.

I couldn’t find out what her grift was. She talked a blend of thieves’ slang and high-school English, and didn’t say much about herself.

We were getting along fine when Milk River came in.

“My friends still in town?” I asked.

“Yes. I hear ’em bubbling around down in Bardell’s. I hear you’ve been makin’ yourself more unpopular.”

“What now?”

“Your friends among the better element don’t seem to think a whole lot of that trick of yours of giving Big ’Nacio’s guns, and his hombres’, to Bardell to keep. The general opinion seems to be you took the guns out of their right hands and put ’em back in the left.”

“I only took ’em to show that I could,” I explained. “I didn’t want ’em. They would have got more anyway. I think I’ll go down and show myself to ’em. I won’t be long.”

The Border Palace was noisy and busy. None of Big ’Nacio’s friends paid any attention to me. Bardell came across the room to tell me:

“I’m glad you backed the boys down. Saved me a lot of trouble, maybe.”

I nodded and went out, around to the livery stable, where I found the night man hugging a little iron stove in the office.

“Got anybody who can ride to Filmer with a message tonight?”

“Maybe I can find somebody,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Give him a good horse and send him up to the hotel as soon as you can,” I requested.

I sat on the edge of the Canyon House porch until a long-legged lad of eighteen or so arrived on a pinto pony and asked for the deputy sheriff. I left the shadow I had been sitting in, and went down into the street, where I could talk to the boy without having an audience.

“Th’ old man said yuh wanted to send somethin’ to Filmer.”

“Can you head out of here toward Filmer, and then cross over to the Circle H.A.R.?”

“Yes, suh, I c’n do that.”

“Well, that’s what I want. When you get there, tell Peery that Big ’Nacio and his men are in town, and might be riding that way before morning. And don’t let the information get out to anybody else.”

“I’ll do jus’ that, suh.”

“This is yours, I’ll pay the stable bill later.” I slid a bill into his hand. “Get going.”

Up in my room again, I found Milk River and the girl sitting around a bottle of liquor. I gave my oath of office the laugh to the extent of three drinks. We talked and smoked a while, and then the party broke up. Milk River told me he had the room next to mine.

I added another word to the report I had started, decided I needed sleep more than the client needed the report, and went to bed.

XII

Milk River’s knuckles on the door brought me out of bed to shiver in the cold of five-something in the morning.

“This isn’t a farm!” I grumbled at him as I let him in. “You’re in the city now. You’re supposed to sleep until the sun comes up.”

“The eye of the law ain’t never supposed to sleep,” he grinned at me, his teeth clicking together, because he hadn’t any more clothes on than I. “Fisher, who’s got a ranch out thataway, sent a man in to tell you that there’s a battle going on out at the Circle H.A.R. He hit my door instead of yours. Do we ride out thataway, chief?”

“We do. Hunt up some rifles, water, and the horses. I’ll be down at the Jew’s, ordering breakfast and getting some lunch wrapped up.”

Forty minutes later Milk River and I were out of Corkscrew.

The morning warmed as we rode, the sun making long violet pictures on the desert, raising the dew in a softening mist. The mesquite was fragrant, and even the sand⁠—which would be as nice as a dusty stove-top later⁠—had a fresh, pleasant odor. There was nothing to hear but the creaking of leather, the occasional clink of metal, and the plop-plop of the horses’ feet on hard ground, which changed to a shff-shff when we struck loose sand.

The battle seemed to be over, unless the battlers had run out of bullets and were going at it hand to hand.

Up over the ranch buildings, as we approached, three blue spots that were buzzards circled, and a moving animal showed against the sky for an instant on a distant ridge.

“A bronc that ought to have a rider and ain’t,” Milk River pronounced it.

Farther along, we passed a bullet-riddled Mexican sombrero, and then the sun sparkled on a handful of empty brass cartridges.

One of the ranch buildings was a charred black pile. Nearby another one of the men I had disarmed in Bardell’s lay dead on his back.

A bandaged head poked around a building-corner, and its owner stepped out, his right arm in a sling, a revolver in his left. Behind him trotted the one-eyed Chinese cook, swinging a cleaver.

Milk River recognized the bandaged man.

“Howdy, Red! Been quarreling?”

“Some. We took all th’ advantage we could of th’ warnin’ you sent out, an’ when Big ’Nacio an’ his herd showed up just ’fore daylight, we Injuned them all over the county. I stopped a couple o’ slugs, so I stayed to home whilst th’ rest o’ th’ boys followed ’em south. ’F you listen sharp, you can hear a pop now an’ then.”

“Do we follow ’em, or head ’em?” Milk River asked me.

“Can we head ’em?”

“Might. If Big ’Nacio’s running, he’ll circle back to his rancho along about dark. If we cut into the canyon and slide along down, maybe we can be there first. He won’t make much speed having to fight off Peery and the boys as he goes.”

“We’ll try it.”

Milk River leading, we went past the ranch buildings, and on down the draw, going into the canyon at the point where I had entered it the previous day. After a while the footing got better, and we made better time.

The sun climbed high enough to let its rays down on us, and the comparative coolness in which we had been riding went away. At noon we stopped to rest the horses, eat a couple of sandwiches, and smoke a bit. Then we went on.

Presently the sun passed, began to crawl down on our right, and shadows grew in the canyon. The welcome shade had reached the east wall when Milk River, in front, stopped.

“Around this next bend it is.”

We dismounted, took a drink apiece, blew the sand off our rifles, and went forward afoot, toward a clump of bushes that covered the crooked canyon’s next twist.

Beyond the bend, the floor of the canyon ran downhill into a round saucer. The saucer’s sides sloped gently up to the desert floor. In the middle of the saucer, four low adobe buildings sat. In spite of their exposure to the desert sun, they looked somehow damp and dark. From one of them a thin plume of bluish smoke rose. Water ran out of a rock-bordered hole in one sloping canyon-wall, disappearing in a thin stream that curved behind one of the buildings.

No man, no animal was in sight.

“I’m going to prospect down there,” Milk River said, handing me his hat and rifle.

“Right,” I agreed. “I’ll cover you, but if anything breaks, you’d better get out of the way. I’m not the most dependable rifle-shot in the world!”

For the first part of his trip Milk River had plenty of cover. He went ahead rapidly. The screening plants grew fewer. His pace fell off. Flat on the ground, he squirmed from clump to boulder, from hummock to bush.

Thirty feet from the nearest building, he ran out of places to hide. I thought he would scout the buildings from that point, and then come back. Instead, he jumped up and sprinted to the shelter of the nearest building.

Nothing happened. He crouched against the wall for several long minutes, and then began to work his way toward the rear.

A hatless Mexican came around the corner.

I couldn’t make out his features, but I saw his body stiffen.

His hand went to his waist.

Milk River’s gun flashed.

The Mexican dropped. The bright steel of his knife glittered high over Milk River’s head, and rang when it landed on a stone.

Milk River went out of my sight around the building. When I saw him again he was charging at the black doorway of the second building.

Fire-streaks came out of the door to meet him.

I did what I could with the two rifles⁠—laying a barrage ahead of him⁠—pumping lead at the open door, as fast as I could get it out. I emptied the second rifle just as he got too close to the door for me to risk another shot.

Dropping the rifle, I ran back to my horse, and rode to my crazy assistant’s assistance.

He didn’t need any. It was all over when I arrived.

He was driving another Mexican and Gyp Rainey out of the building with the nozzles of his guns.

“This is the crop,” he greeted me. “Leastways, I couldn’t find no more.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked Rainey.

But the hophead didn’t want to talk. He looked sullenly at the ground and made no reply.

“We’ll tie ’em up,” I decided, “and then look around.”

Milk River did most of the tying, having had more experience with ropes.

He trussed them back to back on the ground, and we went exploring.