Corkscrew and Other Stories (5 page)

“Can you tell me who spread the grand news that I was a deputy sheriff?” I asked Milk River, who was making a cigarette while I lit one of the Fatimas he had refused. “It was supposed to be a secret.”

“Was it? Nobody would of thought it. Our Mr. Turney didn't do nothing else for two days but run around telling folks what was going to happen when the new deputy come. He sure laid out a reputation for you! According to his way of telling it, you was the toughest, hardest, strongest, fastest, sharpest, biggest, wisest and meanest man west of the Mississippi River.”

“Who is this Turney?”

“You mean you don't know him? From the way he talked, I took it you and him ate off the same plate.”

“Never even heard any rumors about him. Who is he?”

“He's the gent that bosses the Orilla County Company outfit up the way.”

So my client's local manager was the boy who had tipped my mitt!

“Got anything special to do the next few days?” I asked.

“Nothing downright special.”

“I've got a place on the payroll for a man who knows this country and can chaperon me around it.”

He poured a mouthful of grey smoke at the ceiling.

“I'd have to know what the play was before I'd set in,” he said slowly. “You ain't a regular deputy, and you don't belong in this country. It ain't none of my business, but I wouldn't want to tie in with a blind game.”

That was sensible enough.

“I'll spread it out for you,” I offered. “I'm a private detective—the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency. The stockholders of the Orilla Colony Company sent me down here. They've spent a lot of money irrigating and developing their land, and now they're about ready to start selling it.

“According to them, the combination of heat and water makes it ideal farm land—as good as the Imperial Valley. Nevertheless, there doesn't seem to be any great rush of customers. What's the matter, so the stockholders figure, is that you original inhabitants of this end of the state are such a hard lot that peaceful farmers don't want to come among you.

“It's no secret from anybody that both borders of this United States are sprinkled with sections that are as lawless now as they ever were in the old days. There's too much money in running immigrants over the line, and it's too easy, not to have attracted a lot of gentlemen who don't care how they get their money. With only 450 immigration inspectors divided between the two borders, the government hasn't been able to do much. The official guess is that some 135,000 foreigners were run into the country last year through back and side doors. Compared to this graft, rum-running—even dope-running —is kid stuff!

“Because this end of Orilla County isn't railroaded or telephoned up, it has got to be one of the chief smuggling sections, and therefore, according to these men who hired me, full of assorted thugs. On another job a couple of months ago, I happened to run into a smuggling game, and knocked it over. The Orilla Colony people thought I could do the same thing for them down here. So hither I come to make this part of Arizona nice and lady-like.

“I stopped over at the county seat and got myself sworn in as deputy sheriff, in case the official standing came in handy. The sheriff said he didn't have a deputy down here and hadn't the money to hire one, so he was glad to sign me on. But we thought it was a secret—until I got here.”

“I think you're going to have one hell of a lot of fun,” Milk River grinned at me, “so I reckon I'll take that job you was offering. But I ain't going to be no deputy myself. I'll play around with you, but I don't want to tie myself up, so I'll have to enforce no laws I don't like. If you want to have me hanging around you sort of loose and individual-like, I'm with you.”

“It's a bargain. Now what can you tell me that I ought to know?”

He blew more smoke at the ceiling.

“Well, you needn't bother none about the Circle H. A. R. They're plenty tough, but they ain't running nothing over the line.”

“That's all right as far as it goes,” I agreed, “but my job is to clean out trouble-makers, and from what I've seen of them they come under that heading.”

“You're going to have one hell of a lot of fun,” Milk River repeated. “Of course they're troublesome! But how could Peery raise cows down here if he didn't get hisself a crew that's a match for the gunmen your Orilla Colony people don't like? And you know how cowhands are. Set 'em down in a hard neighborhood and they're hell-bent on proving to everybody that they're just as tough as the next one—and tougher.”

“I've nothing against them—if they behave. Now about these border-running folks?”

“I reckon Bardell's your big meat. Whether you'll ever get anything on him is another thing—something for you to work up a lather over. Next to him—Big 'Nacio. You ain't seen him yet? A big, black-whiskered Mex that's got a rancho down the cañon—four-five mile this side of the line. Anything that comes over the line comes through that rancho. But proving that's another item for you to beat your head about.”

“He and Bardell work together?”

“Uh-huh—I reckon he works for Bardell. Another thing you got to include in your tally is that these foreign gents who buy their way across the line don't always—nor even mostly—wind up where they want to. It ain't nothing unusual these days to find some bones out in the desert beside what was a grave until the coyotes opened it. And the buzzards are getting fat! If the immigrant's got anything worth taking on him, or if a couple of government men happen to be nosing around, or if anything happens to make the smuggling gents nervous, they usually drop their customer and dig him in where he falls.”

The racket of the dinner-bell downstairs cut off our conference at this point.

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 Cañon. A close-twisted rope was tight around a small knob of rock at the cañon'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 cañon. 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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 cañon. 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 cañon 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 Cañon. Then I started to work up toward the point where the rope had been let down.