Corkscrew and Other Stories (7 page)

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 Cañon 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 that-away, 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 that-away, 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon. 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 cañon's next twist.

Beyond the bend, the floor of the cañon 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 cañon-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 hop-head 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.

XIII

Except
for plenty of guns of all sizes and more than plenty of ammunition to fit, we didn't find anything very exciting until we came to a heavy door—barred and padlocked—set half in the foundation of the principal building, half in the mound on which the building sat.

I found a broken piece of rusty pick, and knocked the padlock off with it. Then we took the bar off and swung the door open.

Men came eagerly toward us out of an unventilated, unlighted cellar. Seven men who talked a medley of languages as they came.

We used our guns to stop them.

Their jabbering went high, excited.

“Quiet!” I yelled at them.

They knew what I meant, even if they didn't understand the word. The babel stopped and we looked them over. All seven seemed to be foreigners—and a hard-looking gang of cutthroats. A short Jap with a scar from ear to ear; three Slavs, one bearded, barrel-bodied, red-eyed, the other two bullet-headed, cunning-faced; a swarthy husky who was unmistakably a Greek; a bowlegged man whose probable nationality I couldn't guess; and a pale fat man whose china-blue eyes and puckered red mouth were probably Teutonic.

Milk River and I tried them out with English first, and then with what Spanish we could scrape up between us. Both attempts brought a lot of jabbering from them, but nothing in either of those languages.

“Got anything else?” I asked Milk River.

“Chinook is all that's left.”

That wouldn't help much. I tried to remember some of the words we used to think were French in the A. E. F.

“
Que désirez-vous?
” brought a bright smile to the fat face of the blue-eyed man.

I caught “
Nous allons à les États-Unis
” before the speed with which he threw the words at me confused me beyond recognizing anything else.

That was funny. Big 'Nacio hadn't let these birds know that they were already in the United States. I suppose he could manage them better if they thought they were still in Mexico.

“
Montrez-moi votre passe-port
.”

That brought a sputtering protest from Blue Eyes. They had been told no passports were necessary. It was because they had been refused passports that they were paying to be smuggled in.

“
Quand êtes-vous venu ici?
”

Hier
meant yesterday, regardless of what the other things he put in his answer were. Big 'Nacio had come straight to Corkscrew after bringing these men across the border and sticking them in his cellar, then.

We locked the immigrants in their cellar again, putting Rainey and the Mexican in with them. Rainey howled like a wolf when I took his hypodermic needle and his coke away from him.

“Sneak up and take a look at the country,” I told Milk River, “while I plant the man you killed.”

By the time he came back I had the dead Mexican arranged to suit me: slumped down in a chair a little off from the front door of the principal building, his back against the wall, a sombrero tilted down over his face.

“There's dust kicking up some ways off,” Milk River reported. “Wouldn't surprise me none if we got our company along towards dark.”

Darkness had been solid for an hour when they came.

By then, fed and rested, we were ready for them. A light was burning in the house. Milk River was in there, tinkling a mandolin. Light came out of the open front door to show the dead Mexican dimly—a statue of a sleeper. Beyond him, around the corner except for my eyes and forehead, I lay close to the wall.