Corkscrew and Other Stories (9 page)

He wouldn't. He screamed and cursed and pleaded and denied knowledge of the murder.

“Back you go!” I said.

Dr. Haley put a hand on my arm.

“I don't want you to think I am interfering, but I really must warn you that what you're doing is dangerous. It is my belief, and my duty to advise you, that you are endangering this man's life by refusing him some of the drug.”

“I know it, Doctor, but I'll have to risk it. He's not so far gone, or he wouldn't be lying. When the sharp edge of the drug-hunger hits him, he'll talk!”

Gyp Rainey stowed away again, I went back to my room. But not to bed.

Clio Landes was waiting for me, sitting there—I had left the door unlocked—with a bottle of whisky. She was about three-quarters lit up—one of those melancholy lushes.

She was a poor, sick, lonely, homesick girl, far away from her world. She dosed herself with alcohol, remembered her dead parents, sad bits of her childhood and unfortunate slices of her past, and cried over them. She poured out all her hopes and fears to me—including her liking for Milk River, who was a good kid even if he had never been within two thousand miles of Forty-second Street and Broadway.

The talk always came back to that: New York, New York, New York.

It was close to four o'clock Thursday morning when the whisky finally answered my prayers, and she went to sleep on my shoulder.

I picked her up and carried her down the hall to her own room. Just as I reached her door, fat Bardell came up the stairs.

“More work for the sheriff,” he commented jovially, and went on.

I took her slippers off, tucked her in bed, opened the window, and went out, locking the door behind me and chucking the key over the transom.

After that I slept.

XVI

The sun was high and the room was hot when I woke to the familiar sound of someone knocking on the door. This time it was one of the volunteer guards—the long-legged boy who had carried the warning to Peery Monday night.

“Gyp wants t' see yuh.” The boy's face was haggard. “He wants yuh more'n I ever seen a man want anything.”

Rainey was a wreck when I got to him.

“I killed him! I killed him!” he shrieked at me. “Bardell knowed the Circle H. A. R. would hit back f'r Slim's killin'. He made me kill Nisbet an' stack th' deal agin Peery so's it'd be up t' you t' go up agin 'em. He'd tried it before an' got th' worst of it!

“Gimme a shot! That's th' God's truth! I stoled th' rope, planted it, an' shot Nisbet wit' Bardell's gun when Bardell sent him back there! Th' gun's under th' tin-can dump in back o' Adderly's. Gimme th' shot! Gimme it!”

“Where's Milk River?” I asked the long-legged boy.

“Sleepin', I reckon. He left along about daylight.”

“All right, Gyp! Hold it until the doc gets here. I'll send him right over!”

I found Dr. Haley in his house. A minute later he was carrying a charge over to the hypo.

The Border Palace didn't open until noon. Its doors were locked. I went up the street to the Cañon House. Milk River came out just as I stepped up on the porch.

“Hello, young fellow,” I greeted him. “Got any idea which room your friend Bardell reposes in?”

He looked at me as if he had never seen me before.

“S'pose you find out for yourself. I'm through doing your chores. You can find yourself a new wet nurse, Mister, or you can go to hell!”

The odor of whisky came out with the words, but he wasn't drunk enough for that to be the whole explanation.

“What's the matter with you?” I asked.

“What's the matter is I think you're a lousy—”

I didn't let it get any farther than that.

His right hand whipped to his side as I stepped in.

I jammed him between the wall and my hip before he could draw, and got one of my hands on each of his arms.

“You may be a curly wolf with your rod,” I growled, shaking him, a lot more peeved than if he had been a stranger, “but if you try any of your monkey business on me, I'll turn you over my knee!”

Clio Landes' thin fingers dug into my arm.

“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it! Why don't you behave?” to Milk River; and to me: “He's sore over something this morning. He doesn't mean what he says!”

I was sore myself.

“I mean what I said,” I insisted.

But I took my hands off him, and went indoors. Inside the door I ran into sallow Vickers, who was hurrying to see what the rumpus was about.

“What room is Bardell's?”

“214. Why?”

I went on past him and upstairs.

My gun in one hand, I used the other to knock on Bardell's door.

“Who is it?” came through.

I told him.

“What do you want?”

I said I wanted to talk to him.

He kept me waiting for a couple of minutes before he opened. He was half-dressed. All his clothes below the waist were on. Above, he had a coat on over his undershirt, and one of his hands was in his coat pocket.

His eyes jumped big when they lit on my gun.

“You're arrested for Nisbet's murder!” I informed him. “Take your hand out of your pocket.”

He tried to look as if he thought I was kidding him.

“For Nisbet's murder?”

“Uh-huh. Rainey came through. Take your hand out of your pocket.”

“You're arresting me on the say-so of a hop-head?”

“Uh-huh. Take your hand out of your pocket.”

“You're—”

“Take your hand out of your pocket.”

His eyes moved from mine to look past my head, a flash of triumph burning in them.

I beat him to the first shot by a hairline, since he had wasted time waiting for me to fall for that ancient trick.

His bullet cut my neck.

Mine took him where his undershirt was tight over his fat chest.

He fell, tugging at his pocket, trying to get the gun out for another shot.

I could have jumped him, but he was going to die anyhow. That first bullet had got his lungs. I put another into him.

The hall filled with people.

“Get the doctor!” I called to them.

But Bardell didn't need him. He was dead before I had the words out of my mouth.

Chick Orr came through the crowd, into the room.

I stood up, sticking my gun back in its holster.

“I've got nothing on you, Chick, yet,” I said slowly. “You know better than I do whether there is anything to get or not. If I were you, I'd drift out of Corkscrew without wasting too much time packing up.”

The ex-pug squinted his eyes at me, rubbed his chin, and made a clucking sound in his mouth.

His gold teeth showed in a grin.

“'F anybody asks for me, you tell 'em I'm off on a tour,” and he pushed out through the crowd again.

When the doctor came, I took him up the hall to my room, where he patched my neck. The wound wasn't much, but my neck is fleshy, and it bled a lot—all over me, in fact.

After he had finished, I got fresh clothes from my bag and undressed. But when I went to wash, I found the doctor had used all my water. Getting into coat, pants and shoes, I went down to the kitchen for more.

The hall was empty when I came upstairs again, except for Clio Landes.

She went past me without looking at me—deliberately not looking at me.

I washed, dressed, and strapped on my gun. One more angle to be cleaned up, and I would be through. I didn't think I'd need the .32 toys any more, so I put them away. One more angle, and I was done. I was pleased with the idea of getting away from Corkscrew. I didn't like the place, had never liked it, liked it less than ever since Milk River's break.

I was thinking about him when I stepped out of the hotel—to see him standing across the street.

I didn't give him a tumble, but turned toward the lower end of the street.

One step. A bullet kicked up dirt at my feet.

I stopped.

“Go for it, fat boy!” Milk River yelled. “It's me or you!”

I turned slowly to face him, looking for an out. But there wasn't any.

His eyes were insane-lighted slits. His face was a ghastly savage mask. He was beyond reasoning with.

“Put it away!” I ordered, though I knew the words were wasted.

“It's me or you!” he repeated, and put another bullet into the ground in front of me. “Warm your iron!”

I stopped looking for an out. Blood thickened in my head, and things began to look queer. I could feel my neck thickening. I hoped I wasn't going to get too mad to shoot straight.

I went for my gun.

He gave me an even break.

His gun swung down to me as mine straightened to him.

We pulled triggers together.

Flame jumped at me.

I smacked the ground—my right side all numb.

He was staring at me—bewildered. I stopped staring at him, and looked at my gun—the gun that had only clicked when I pulled the trigger!

When I looked up again, he was coming toward me, slowly, his gun hanging at his side.

“Played it safe, huh?” I raised my gun so he could see the broken firing-pin. “Serves me right for leaving it on the bed when I went downstairs for water.”

Milk River dropped his gun—grabbed mine.

Clio Landes came running from the hotel to him.

“You're not—?”

Milk River stuck my gun in her face.

“You done that?”

“I was afraid he—” she began.

“You — —!”

With the back of an open hand, Milk River struck the girl's mouth.

He dropped down beside me, his face a boy's face. A tear fell hot on my hand.

“Chief, I didn't—”

“That's all right,” I assured him, and I meant it.

I missed whatever else he said. The numbness was leaving my side, and the feeling that came in its place wasn't pleasant. Everything stirred inside me. …

XVII

I was in bed when I came to. Dr. Haley was doing disagreeable things to my side. Behind him, Milk River held a basin in unsteady hands.

“Milk River,” I whispered, because that was the best I could do in the way of talk.

He bent his ear to me.

“Get the Jew. He killed Vogel. Careful—gun on him. Talk self-defense—maybe confess. Lock him up with others.”

Sweet sleep again.

Night, dim lamplight was in the room when I opened my eyes again. Clio Landes sat beside my bed, staring at the floor, woebegone.

“Good evening,” I managed.

I was sorry I had said anything.

She cried all over me and kept me busy assuring her she had been forgiven for the trickery with my gun. I don't know how many times I forgave her. It got to be a damned nuisance. No sooner would I say that everything was all right than she'd begin all over again to ask me to forgive her.

“I was so afraid you'd kill him, because he's only a kid, and somebody had told him a lot of things about you and me, and I knew how crazy he was, and he's only a kid, and I was so afraid you'd kill him,” and so on and so on.

Half an hour of this had me woozy with fever.

“And now he won't talk to me, won't even look at me, won't let me come in here when he's here. And nothing will ever make things right again, and I was so afraid you'd kill him, because he's only a boy, and …”

I had to shut my eyes and pretend I had passed out to shut her up.

I must have slept some, because when I looked around again it was day, and Milk River was in the chair.

He stood up, not looking at me, his head hanging.

“I'll be moving on, Chief, now that you're coming around all right. I want you to know, though, that if I'd knowed what that—done to your gun I wouldn't never have throwed down on you.”

“What was the matter with you, anyhow?” I growled at him.

His face got beet-color and he shuffled his feet.

“Crazy, I reckon,” he mumbled. “I had a couple of drinks, and then Bardell filled me full of stuff about you and her, and that you was playing me for a Chinaman. And—and I just went plumb loco, I reckon.”

“Any of it left in your system?”

“Hell, no, chief! I'd give a leg if none of it had never happened!”

“Then suppose you stop this foolishness and sit down and talk sense. Are you and the girl still on the outs?”

They were, most emphatically, most profanely.

“You're a big boob!” I told him. “She's a stranger out here, and homesick for her New York. I could talk her language and knew the people she knew. That's all there was—”

“But that ain't the big point, chief! Any woman that would pull a—”

“Bunk! It was a shabby trick, right enough. But a woman who'll pull a trick like that for you when you are in a jam is worth a million an ounce, and you'd know it if you had anything to know anything with. Now you run out and find this Clio person, and bring her back with you, and no nonsense!”

He pretended he was going reluctantly. But I heard her voice when he knocked on her door. And they let me lay there in my bed of pain for one solid hour before they remembered me. They came in walking so close together that they were stumbling over each other's feet.

“Now let's talk business,” I grumbled. “What day is this?”

“Monday.”

“Did you get the Jew?”

“I done that thing,” Milk River said, dividing the one chair with the girl. “He's over to the county seat now—went over with the others. He swallowed that self-defense bait, and told me all about it. How'd you ever figure it out, chief?”

“Figure what out?”

“That the Jew killed poor old Slim. He says Slim come in there that night, woke him up, ate a dollar and ten cents' worth of grub on him, and then dared him to try and collect. In the argument that follows, Slim goes for his gun, and the Jew gets scared and shoots him—after which Slim obligingly staggers out o' doors to die. I can see all that clear enough, but how'd you hit on it?”