“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 there. 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 Canyon 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,”
