Build My Gallows High Read Online Free PDF Page B

Canyon with a creek in front of it. A footbridge crossed the creek and sometimes, when the boys at the reservoir opened the gates, water ran under the bridge. It was cool and quiet in the canyon. Behind the house a hill rose steeply. You could walk up the creek and then there were no houses—nothing but brown hills on which the Yucca candles were burning out. At night the coyotes howled on the ridge. Mumsie said she used to hate them. That was because they made her lonely. Mumsie said she had forgotten what loneliness was so she didn’t hate them any more.
    A week, and then Red started worrying. So she drove him to Pasadena in the car they had bought and cried a little while they waited for the train.
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t go,’ Mumsie said.
    ‘I have to,’ Red said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I’m running out of money,’ Red told her. ‘I want to sell my business to my partner and start another here. And I can’t do it unless I settle up with Sterling.’
    Mumsie’s eyes grew thoughtful. She started to speak. Watching her, he felt a sudden sharp distrust. Perhaps— He wouldn’t finish the thought. Her speech went unsaid.
    He kissed her and swung up on the steps as the train started moving. Seeing her so small and alone in the fading sun-light, his faith came back.

Four
    The last car pulled out of the driveway. Out in the hall there was the mumble of tired voices as Guy Parker’s boys trekked off to bed. Red rolled over on his back, found a cigarette, lighted it and watched the smoke spiral toward the ceiling. Now Mumsie was Guy’s woman. For how long? When she got tired of him would she put a bullet in his stomach? Or give him a sack to hold and walk out on him. That would give Guy and Red something in common, Red thought wryly. He had been left holding the sack. It was still in his hands.
       
    He met Guy two weeks after he came back from New York with ten thousand dollars of Jack Fisher’s money in his pocket. Jack had jumped at the chance to buy him out and Jack hadn’t asked questions. Neither had Whit Sterling.
    ‘So you couldn’t find her,’ Sterling had said coldly. ‘All right. Run along. When I need you again I’ll look you up.’
    That was all there was to it. Either Red’s reputation for truth satisfied Whit or he had lost interest in Mumsie.
    Red’s office had been opened a week when Guy walked in one morning, his gold chief’s badge gleaming, his blue uniform so well tailored you hardly thought of him as a copper.
    Guy’s hand was thin and hard. ‘Glad to have you around.’ he said.’It’s going to seem odd having an honest private eye-working the town.’
    Red gave him a cigar and waited without comment. A police chief didn’t ordinarily drop around to hand out compliments.
    ‘Heard a lot about you,’ Guy said. ‘All good.’
    ’That’s fine.’
    ‘Lined up anything?’
    ‘Nothing big.’
    Guy chewed on the unlighted cigar for a while. He said suddenly, ’Goddamn it, I’ve got to trust you.’
    There was no answer to that. Red looked through the window at the garish decorations on the dance hall on the other side of the street.
    ‘I got a kid,’ Guy said. ‘He’s in a jam and I can’t do anything about it. Some guy’s bleeding him. I want you to find out who and why.’
    ‘What about your boys?’
    Guy laughed. ‘Tell them? Christ. Let a cop in on family secrets? I’d be out in the street. You know how this town is. Full of longhairs just waiting to needle you. Full of guys waiting to help them.’
    Business in a new town would be lean unless he had someone to give him a hand. Across the desk was a thin guy who was in a position to throw a lot of cases his way. ‘I’ll take a whirl at it,’ Red said.
    Red didn’t see Guy again for a couple of weeks. One night the police chief came across the footbridge and rapped on the door. He handed Red a bundle of dough and said if there was ever anything he could do, just ask. Mumsie was reading in the chair across the room