XV
Nothing ever looked better to me than my bed in the Canyon 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 storeroom 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!”
The doctor and I went inside, the guard holding a lantern high at the door so we could see.
In one corner of the room, Gyp Rainey sat in the chair to which Milk River had tied him. Froth was in the corners of his mouth. He was writhing with cramps. The other prisoners were trying to get some sleep, their blankets spread on the floor as far from Rainey as they could get.
“For Christ’s sake give me a shot!” Rainey whined at me.
“Give me a hand, Doctor, and we’ll carry him out.”
We lifted him, chair and all, and carried him outside.
“Now stop your bawling and listen to me,” I ordered. “You shot Nisbet. I want the straight story of it. The straight story will bring you a shot, and nothing else will.”
“I didn’t kill him!” he screamed. “I didn’t! Before God, I didn’t!”
“That’s a lie. You stole Peery’s rope while the rest of us were in Bardell’s place Monday morning, talking over Slim’s death. You tied the rope where it would look like the murderer had made a getaway down the canyon. Then you stood at the window until Nisbet came into the back room—and you shot him. Nobody went down that rope—or Milk River would have found some sign. Will you come through?”
He wouldn’t. He screamed and cursed and pleaded and denied knowledge of the murder.
“Back you go!” I said.
Dr. Haley put a hand on my arm.
“I don’t want you to think I am interfering, but I really must warn you that what you’re doing is dangerous. It is my belief, and my duty to advise you, that you are endangering this man’s life by refusing him some of the drug.”
“I know it, Doctor, but I’ll have to risk it. He’s not so far gone, or he wouldn’t be lying. When the sharp edge of the drug-hunger hits him, he’ll talk!”
Gyp Rainey stowed away again, I went back to my room. But not to bed.
Clio Landes was waiting for me, sitting there—I had left the door unlocked—with a bottle of whisky. She was about three-quarters lit up—one of those melancholy lushes.
She was a poor, sick, lonely, homesick girl, far away from her world. She dosed herself with alcohol, remembered her dead parents, sad bits of her childhood and unfortunate slices of her past, and cried over them. She poured out all her hopes and fears to me—including her liking for Milk River, who was a good kid even if he had never been within two thousand miles of Forty-second Street and Broadway.
The talk always came back to that: New York, New York, New York.
It was close to four o’clock Thursday morning when the whisky finally answered my prayers, and she went to sleep on my shoulder.
I picked her up and carried her down the hall to her own room. Just as I reached her door, fat Bardell came up the stairs.
“More work for the sheriff,” he commented jovially, and went on.
I took her slippers off, tucked her in bed, opened the window, and went out, locking the door behind me and chucking the key over the transom.
After that I slept.