Corkscrew and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page B

behind him.
    I got between Peery’s gun and Nisbet, feeling ashamed of the little popping noise my .32s were going to make compared with the roar of the guns facing me.
    â€œWhat I’d like”—Milk River had stepped away from his fellows, and was leaning his elbows on the bar, facing them, a gun in each hand, a purring quality in his drawling voice—“would be for whosoever wants to swap lead with our high-diving deputy to wait his turn. One at a time is my idea. I don’t like this idea of crowding him.”
    Peery’s face went purple.
    â€œWhat I don’t like,” he bellowed at the boy, “is a yellow puppy that’ll throw down the men he rides with!”
    Milk River’s dark face flushed, but his voice was still a purring drawl.
    â€œMister jigger, what you don’t like and what you do like are so damned similar to me that I can’t tell ’em apart. And you don’t want to forget that I ain’t one of your rannies. I got a contract to gentle some horses for you at ten dollars per gentle. Outside of that, you and yours are strangers to me.”
    The excitement was over. The action that had been brewing had been talked to death by now.
    â€œYour contract expired just about a minute and a half ago,” Peery was telling Milk River. “You can show up at the Circle H. A. R. just once more—that’s when you come for whatever stuff you left behind you. You’re through!”
    He pushed his square-jawed face at me.
    â€œAnd you needn’t think all the bets are in!”
    He spun on his heel, and his hands trailed him out to their horses.
    VII
    Milk River and I were sitting in my room in the Cañon House an hour later, talking. I had sent word to the county seat that the coroner had a job down here, and had found a place to stow Vogel’s body until he came.
    â€œCan 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.”
    â€œWas 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.”
    â€œWho is this Turney?”
    â€œYou mean you don’t know him? From the way he talked, I took it you and him ate off the same plate.”
    â€œNever even heard any rumors about him. Who is he?”
    â€œHe’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!
    â€œGot anything special to do the next few days?” I asked.
    â€œNothing downright special.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œAccording 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