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.
We could hear our company long before we could see them. Two horses—but they made enough noise for ten—coming lickety-split down to the lighted door.
Big ’Nacio, in front, was out of the saddle and had one foot in the doorway before his horse’s front feet—thrown high by the violence with which the big man had pulled him up—hit the ground again. The second rider was close behind him.
The bearded man saw the corpse. He jumped at it, swinging his quirt, roaring:
“Arriba, piojo!”
The mandolin’s tinkling stopped.
I scrambled up.
Big ’Nacio’s whiskers went down in surprise.
His quirt caught a button of the dead man’s clothes, tangled there, the loop on its other end holding one of Big ’Nacio’s wrists.
His other hand went to his thigh.
My gun had been in my hand for an hour. I was close. I had leisure to pick my target. When his hand touched his gun-butt, I put a bullet through hand and thigh.
As he fell, I saw Milk River knock the second man down with a clout of gun-barrel on back of his head.
“Seems like we team-up pretty good,” the sunburned boy said as he stooped to take the enemy’s weapons from them.
The bearded man’s bellowing oaths made conversation difficult.
“I’ll put this one you beaned in the cooler,” I said. “Watch ’Nacio, and we’ll patch him up when I come back.”
I dragged the unconscious man halfway to the cellar door before he came to. I goaded him the rest of the way with my gun, shooed him indoors, shooed the other prisoners away from the door, and closed and barred it again.
The bearded man had stopped howling when I returned.
“Anybody riding after you?” I asked, as I knelt beside him and began cutting his pants away with my pocket knife.
For answer to that I got a lot of information about myself, my habits, my ancestors. None of it happened to be the truth, but it was colorful.
“Maybe we’d better put a hobble on his tongue,” Milk River suggested.
“No. Let him cry!” I spoke to the bearded man again. “If I were you, I’d answer that question. If it happens that the Circle H. A. R. riders trail you here and take us unawares, it’s a gut that you’re in for a lynching. Ahorcar, understand?”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“Sí, sí. T’at Peery an’ hees hombres. T’ey seguir—mucho rapidez!”
“Any of your men left, besides you and this other?”
“No! Ningún!”
“Suppose you build as much fire as you can out here in front while I’m stopping this egg’s bleeding, Milk River.”
The lad looked disappointed.
“Ain’t we going to bushwack them waddies none?”
“Not unless we have to.”
By the t
ime I had put a couple of tourniquets on the Mexican, Milk River had a roaring fire lighting the buildings and most of the saucer in which they sat. I had intended stowing ’Nacio and Milk River indoors, in case I couldn’t make Peery talk sense. But there wasn’t time. I had just started to explain my plan to Milk River when Peery’s bass voice came from outside the ring of light.
“Put ’em up, everybody!”
XIV
“Easy!” I cautioned Milk River, and stood up. But I didn’t raise my hands.
“The excitement’s over,” I called. “Come on down.”
Ten minutes passed. Peery rode into the light. His square-jawed face was grime-streaked and grim. His horse was muddy lather all over. His guns were in his hands.
Behind him rode Dunne—as dirty, as grim, as ready with his firearms.
Nobody followed Dunne. The others were spread around us in the darkness, then.
Peery leaned over his pony’s head to look at Big ’Nacio, who was lying breathlessly still on the ground.
“Dead?”
“No—a slug through hand and leg. I’ve got some of his friends under lock and key indoors.”
Mad red rims showed around Peery’s eyes in the firelight.
“You can keep the others,” he said harshly. “This hombre will do us.”
I didn’t misunderstand him.
“I’m keeping all of them.”
“I ain’t got a damned bit of confidence in you,” Peery growled down at me. “You ain’t done nothing since you been here, and it ain’t likely you ever will. I’m making sure that this Big ’Nacio’s riding stops right here. I’m taking care of him myself.”
“Nothing stirring!”
“How you figuring on keeping me from taking him?” he laughed viciously at me. “You don’t think me and Irish are alone, do you? If you don’t believe you’re corralled, make a play!”
I believed him, but—
“That doesn’t make any difference. If I were a grub-line rider, or a desert rat, or any lone guy with no connections, you’d rub me out quick enough. But I’m not, and you know I’m not. I’m counting on that. You’ve got to kill me to take ’Nacio. That’s flat! I don’t think you want him bad enough to go that far. Right or wrong, I’m playing it that way.”
He stared at me for a while. Then his knees urged his horse toward the Mexican, ’Nacio sat up and began pleading with me to save him.
Slowly I raised my right hand to my shoulder-holstered gun.
“Drop it!” Peery ordered, both his guns close to my head.
I grinned at him, took my gun out slowly, slowly turned it until it was level between his two.
We held that pose long enough to work up a good sweat apiece. It wasn’t restful!
A queer light flickered in his red-rimmed eyes.
I didn’t guess what was coming until too late.
His left-hand gun swung away from me—exploded.
A hole opened in the top of Big ’Nacio’s head. He pitched over on his side.
The grinning Milk River shot Peery out of the saddle.
I was under Peery’s right-hand gun when it went off. I was scrambling under his rearing horse’s feet.
Dunne’s revolvers coughed.
“Inside!” I yelled to Milk River, and put two bullets into Dunne’s pony.
Rifle bullets sang every which way across, around, under, over us.
Inside the lighted doorway Milk River hugged the floor, spouting fire and lead from both hands.
Dunne’s horse was down. Dunne got up—caught both hands to his face—went down beside his horse.
Milk River turned off the fireworks long enough for me to dash over him into the house.
While I smashed the lamp chimney, blew out the flame, he slammed the door.
Bullets made music on door and wall.
“Did I do right, shooting that jigger?” Milk River asked.
“Good work!” I lied.
There was no use bellyaching over what was done, but I hadn’t wanted Peery dead. Dunne’s death was unnecessary, too. The proper place for guns is after talk has failed, and I hadn’t run out of words by any means when this brown-skinned lad had gone into action.
The bullets stopped punching holes in our door.
“The boys have got their heads together,” Milk River guessed. “They can’t have a hell of a lot of caps left if they’ve been snapping them at ’Nacio since early morning.”
I found a white handkerchief in my pocket and began stuffing one corner in a rifle muzzle.
“What’s for that?” Milk River asked.
“Talk.” I moved to the door. “And you’re to hold your hand until I’m through.”
“I never seen such a hombre for making talk,” he complained.
I opened the door a cautious crack. Nothing happened. I eased the rifle through the crack and waved it in the light of the still burning fire. Nothing happened. I opened the door and stepped out.
“Send somebody down to talk!” I yelled at the outer darkness.
A voice I didn’t recognize cursed bitterly, and began a threat:
“We’ll give yuh—”
It broke off in silence.
Metal glinted off to one side.
Buck Small, his bulging eyes dark-circled, a smear of blood on one cheek, came into the light.
“What are you people figuring on doing?” I asked.
He looked sullenly at me.
“We’re figurin’ on gettin’ that Milk River party. We ain’t got nothin’ against you. You’re doin’ what you’re paid to do. But Milk River hadn’t ought of killed Peery!”
Milk River bounced stiff-legged out of the door.
“Any time you want any part of me, you pop-eyed this-and-that, all you got to do is name it!”
Small’s hands curved toward his holstered guns.
“Cut it!” I growled at Milk River, getting in front of him, pushing him back to the door. “I’ve got work to do. I can’t waste time watching you boys cut up. This is no time to be bragging about what a desperate guy you are!”
I finally got rid of him, and faced Small again.
“You boys want to take a tumble to yourselves, Buck. The wild and woolly days are over. You’re in the clear so far. ’Nacio jumped you, and you did what was right when you massacred his riders all over the desert. But you’ve got no right to fool with my prisoners. Peery wouldn’t understand that. And if we hadn’t shot him, he’d have swung later!
“For Milk River’s end of it: he doesn’t owe you anything. He dropped Peery under your guns—dropped him with less than an even break! You people had the cards stacked against us. Milk River took a chance you or I wouldn’t have taken. You’ve got nothing to howl about.
“I’ve got ten prisoners in there, and I’ve got a lot of guns, and stuff to put in ’em. If you make me do it, I’m going to deal out the guns to my prisoners and let ’em fight. I’d rather lose every damned one of them that way than let you take one of ’em away from me!
“All that you boys can get out of fighting us is a lot of grief—whether you win or lose. This end of Orilla County has been left to itself longer than most of the Southwest. But those days are over. Outside money has come into it; outside people are coming. You can’t buck it! Men tried that in the old days, and failed. Will you talk it over with the others?”
“Yeah,” and he went away in the darkness.
I went indoors.
“I think they’ll be sensible,” I told Milk River, “but you can’t tell. So maybe you better hunt around and see if you can find a way through the floor to our basement hoosgow, because I meant what I said about giving guns to our captives.”
Twenty minutes later Buck Small was back.
“You win,” he said. “We want to take Peery and Dunne with us.”
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XV
Nothing ever looked better to me than my bed in the Cañon House the next—Wednesday—night. My grandstand play with the yellow horse, my fight with Chick Orr, the unaccustomed riding I had been doing—these things had filled me fuller of aches than Orilla County was of sand.
Our ten prisoners were resting in an old outdoor store-room of Adderly’s, guarded by volunteers from among the better element, under the supervision of Milk River. They would be safe there, I thought, until the immigration inspectors—to whom I had sent word—could come for them. Most of Big ’Nacio’s men had been killed in the fight with the Circle H. A. R. hands, and I didn’t think Bardell could collect men enough to try to open my prison.
The Circle H. A. R. riders would behave reasonably well from now on, I thought. There were two angles still open, but the end of my job in Corkscrew wasn’t far away. So I wasn’t dissatisfied with myself as I got stiffly out of my clothes and climbed into bed for the sleep I had earned.
Did I get it? No.
I was just comfortably bedded down when somebody began thumping on my door.
It was fussy little Dr. Haley.
“I was called into your temporary prison a few minutes ago to look at Rainey,” the doctor said. “He tried to escape, and broke his arm in a fight with one of the guards. That isn’t serious, but the man’s condition is. He should be given some cocaine. I don’t think it is safe to leave him without the drug any longer. I would have given him an injection, but Milk River stopped me, saying you had given orders that nothing was to be done without instructions from you.”
“Is he really in bad shape?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go down and talk to him,” I said, reluctantly starting to dress again. “I gave him a shot now and then on the way up from the rancho—enough to keep him from falling down on us. But I want to get some information out of him now, and he gets no more until he’ll talk. Maybe he’s ripe now.”
We could hear Rainey’s howling before we reached the jail.
Milk River was squatting on his heels outside the door, talking to one of the guards.
“He’s going to throw a joe on you, chief, if you don’t give him a pill,” Milk River told me. “I got him tied up now, so’s he can’t pull the splints off his arm. He’s plumb crazy!”
Corkscrew and Other Stories Page 7