Corkscrew and Other Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  His face didn’t have a mark on it that I was responsible for. Mine must have looked as if it had been run through a grinder.

  “Maybe I ought to wash up before we eat,” I said to Milk River as I took my coat and gun.

  “Hell, yes!” he agreed, staring at my face.

  A plump man in a Palm Beach suit got in front of me, taking my attention.

  “I am Mr. Turney of the Orilla Colony Company,” he introduced himself. “Am I to understand that you have not made an arrest since you have been here?”

  This was the bird who had advertised me! I didn’t like that, and I didn’t like his round, aggressive face.

  “Yes,” I confessed.

  “There have been two murders in two days,” he ran on, “concerning which you have done nothing, though in each case the evidence seems clear enough. Do you think that is satisfactory? Do you think you are performing the duties for which you were employed?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Let me tell you that it is not at all satisfactory,” he supplied the answers to his own questions. “Neither is it satisfactory that you should have employed this man”—stabbing a plump finger in Milk River’s direction—“who is notoriously one of the most lawless men in the county. I want you to understand clearly that unless there is a distinct improvement in your work—unless you show some disposition to do the things you were engaged to do—that engagement will be terminated!”

  “Who’d you say you are?” I asked, when he had talked himself out.

  “Mr. Turney, general superintendent of the Orilla Colony.”

  “So? Well, Mr. General Superintendent Turney, your owners forgot to tell me anything about you when they employed me. So I don’t know you at all. Any time you’ve got anything to say to me, you turn it over to your owners, and if it’s important enough, maybe they’ll pass it on to me.”

  He puffed himself up.

  “I shall certainly inform them that you have been extremely remiss in your duty, however proficient you may be in street brawls!”

  “Will you put a postscript on for me,” I called after him as he walked away. “Tell ’em I’m kind of busy just now and can’t use any advice—no matter who it comes from.”

  Milk River and I went ten steps toward the Cañon House, and came face to face with the Reverend Dierks, Miss Janey, and old Adderly. None of them looked at me with anything you could call pleasure.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Miss Janey ground out between her false teeth. “Fighting in the street—you who are supposed to keep the peace!”

  “As a deputy sheriff you’re terrible,” Adderly put in. “There’s been more trouble here since you came than there ever was before!”

  “I must say, brother, that I am deeply disappointed in your actions as a representative of the law!” was the minister’s contribution.

  I didn’t like to say, “Go to hell!” to a group that included a minister and a woman, and I couldn’t think of anything else, so, with Milk River making a poor job of holding in his laughter, I stepped around the better element, and we went on to the Cañon House.

  Vickers, the sallow, pudgy proprietor, was at the door.

  “If you think I got towels to mop up the blood from every hombre that gets himself beat up, you’re mistaken,” he growled at me. “And I don’t want no sheets torn up for bandages, neither!”

  “I never seen such a disagreeable cuss as you are,” Milk River insisted as we climbed the stairs. “Seems like you can’t get along with nobody. Don’t you never make no friends?”

  “Only with saps!”

  I did what I could with water and adhesive tape to reclaim my face, but the result was a long way from beauty. Milk River sat on the bed and grinned and watched me.

  “How does a fellow go about winning a fight he gets the worst of?” he inquired.

  “It’s a gift,” was the only answer I could think up.

  “You’re a lot gifted. That Chick give you more gifts than a Christmas tree could hold.”

  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 cañon. 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 senor 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 Cañon 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 the
re. 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 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 slid
e 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.