“I think you’re going to have one hell of a lot of fun,” Milk River grinned at me, “so I reckon I’ll take that job you was offering. But I ain’t going to be no deputy myself. I’ll play around with you, but I don’t want to tie myself up, so I’ll have to enforce no laws I don’t like. If you want to have me hanging around you sort of loose and individual-like, I’m with you.”
“It’s a bargain. Now what can you tell me that I ought to know?”
He blew more smoke at the ceiling.
“Well, you needn’t bother none about the Circle H.A.R. They’re plenty tough, but they ain’t running nothing over the line.”
“That’s all right as far as it goes,” I agreed, “but my job is to clean out troublemakers, and from what I’ve seen of them they come under that heading.”
“You’re going to have one hell of a lot of fun,” Milk River repeated. “Of course they’re troublesome! But how could Peery raise cows down here if he didn’t get hisself a crew that’s a match for the gunmen your Orilla Colony people don’t like? And you know how cowhands are. Set ’em down in a hard neighborhood and they’re hell-bent on proving to everybody that they’re just as tough as the next one—and tougher.”
“I’ve nothing against them—if they behave. Now about these border-running folks?”
“I reckon Bardell’s your big meat. Whether you’ll ever get anything on him is another thing—something for you to work up a lather over. Next to him—Big ’Nacio. You ain’t seen him yet? A big, black-whiskered Mex that’s got a rancho down the canyon—four-five mile this side of the line. Anything that comes over the line comes through that rancho. But proving that’s another item for you to beat your head about.”
“He and Bardell work together?”
“Uh-huh—I reckon he works for Bardell. Another thing you got to include in your tally is that these foreign gents who buy their way across the line don’t always—nor even mostly—wind up where they want to. It ain’t nothing unusual these days to find some bones out in the desert beside what was a grave until the coyotes opened it. And the buzzards are getting fat! If the immigrant’s got anything worth taking on him, or if a couple of government men happen to be nosing around, or if anything happens to make the smuggling gents nervous, they usually drop their customer and dig him in where he falls.”
The racket of the dinner-bell downstairs cut off our conference at this point.
VIII
There were only eight or ten diners in the dining-room. None of Peery’s men was there. Milk River and I sat at a table back in one corner of the room. Our meal was about half eaten when the dark-eyed girl I had seen the previous day came in.
She came straight to our table. I stood up to learn her name was Clio Landes. She was the girl the better element wanted floated. She gave me a flashing smile, a strong, thin hand, and sat down.
“I hear you’ve lost your job again, you big bum,” she laughed at Milk River.
I had known she didn’t belong to Arizona. Her voice was New York.
“If that’s all you heard, I’m still ’way ahead of you,” Milk River grinned back at her. “I gone and got me another job—riding herd on law and order.”
Something that could have been worry flashed into her dark eyes, and out again.
“You might just as well start looking for another hired man right away,” she advised me. “He never kept a job longer than a few days in his life.”
From the distance came the sound of a shot.
I went on eating.
Clio Landes said:
“Don’t you coppers get excited over things like that?”
“The first rule,” I told her, “is never to let anything interfere with your meals, if you can help it.”
An overalled man came in from the street.
“Nisbet’s been killed down in Bardell’s!” he yelled.
To Bardell’s Border Palace Milk River and I went, half the diners running ahead of us, with half the town.
We found Nisbet in the back room, stretched out on the floor, dead. A hole that a .45 could have made was in his chest, which the men around him had bared.
Bardell’s fingers gripped my arm.
“Never give him a chance, the dogs!” he cried thickly. “Cold murder!”
“He say anything before he died?”
“No. He was dead when we got to him.”
“Who shot him?”
“One of the Circle H.A.R., you can bet your neck on that!”
“Didn’t anybody see it?”
“Nobody here admits they saw it.”
“How did it happen?”
“Mark was out front. Me and Chick and five or six of these men were there. Mark came back here. Just as he stepped through the door—bang!”
Bardell shook his fist at the open window.
I crossed to the window and looked out. A five-foot strip of rocky ground lay between the building and the sharp edge of the Tirabuzon Canyon. A close-twisted rope was tight around a small knob of rock at the canyon’s edge.
I pointed at the rope. Bardell swore savagely.
“If I’d of seen that we’d of got him! We didn’t think anybody could get down there, and didn’t look very close. We ran up and down the ledge, looking between buildings.”
We went outside, where I lay on my belly and looked down into the canyon. The rope—one end fastened to the knob—ran straight down the rock wall for twenty feet, and disappeared among the trees and bushes of a narrow shelf that ran along the wall there. Once on that shelf, a man could find ample cover to shield his retreat.
“What do you think?” I asked Milk River, who lay beside me.
“A clean getaway.”
I stood
