Corkscrew and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

the use of profane language.
    â€œIf you’ll let me have that list, I’ll study it,” I promised.
    He gave it to me, but he wasn’t to be put off with promises.
    â€œTo refrain even for an hour from punishing wickedness is to be a partner to that wickedness, brother. You have been inside that house of sin operated by Bardell. You have heard the Sabbath desecrated with the sound of pool-balls. You have smelled the foul odor of illegal rum on men’s breaths!
    â€œStrike now, brother! Let it not be said that you condoned evil from your first day in Corkscrew! You have seen men whose garments did not conceal the deadly weapons under them! In that list is the black record of many months’ unatoned sinfulness. Strike now, brother, for the Lord and righteousness! Go into those hells and do your duty as an officer of the law and a Christian!”
    This was a minister; I didn’t like to laugh.
    I looked at the others. They were sitting—men and women—on the edges of their chairs. On their faces were the same expressions you see around a prize ring just before the gong rings.
    Mrs. Echlin, the livery man’s wife, an angular-faced, angular-bodied woman, caught my gaze with her pebble-hard eyes.
    â€œAnd that brazen scarlet woman who calls herself Señora Gaia—and the three hussies who pretend they’re her daughters! You ain’t much of a deputy sheriff if you leave ’em in that house of theirs one night longer—to poison the manhood of Orilla County!”
    The others nodded vigorously. Echlin’s eyes had lit up at his wife’s words, and he licked his lips as he nodded.
    Miss Janey, school teacher, false-toothed, sour-faced, put in her part:
    â€œAnd even worse than those—those creatures, is that Clio Landes! Worse, because at least those—those hussies”—she looked down, managed a blush, looked out of the corners of her eyes at the minister—“those hussies are at least openly what they are. While she—who knows how bad she really is?”
    â€œI don’t know about her,” Adderly began, but his wife shut him up.
    â€œI do!” she snapped. She was a large, mustached woman whose corsets made knobs and points in her shiny black dress. “Miss Janey is perfectly right. That woman is worse than the rest!”
    â€œIs this Clio Landes person on your list?” I asked, not remembering it.
    â€œNo, brother, she is not,” the Reverend Dierks said regretfully. “But only because she is more subtle than the others. Corkscrew would indeed be better without her—a woman of obviously low moral standards, with no visible means of support, associating with our worst element.”
    â€œI’m glad to have met you folks,” I said as I folded the list and put it in my pocket. “And I’m glad to know you’ll back me up.”
    I edged toward the door, hoping to get away without much more talk. Not a chance. The Reverend Dierks followed me up.
    â€œYou will strike now, brother? You will carry God’s war immediately into blind tiger and brothel and gambling hell?”
    The others were on their feet now, closing in.
    â€œI’ll have to look things over first,” I stalled.
    â€œBrother, are you evading your duty? Are you procrastinating in the face of Satan? If you are the man I hope you are, you will march now, with the decent citizens of Corkscrew at your heels, to wipe from the face of our town the sin that blackens it!”
    So that was it. I was to lead one of these vice-crusading mobs. I wondered how many of these crusaders would be standing behind me if one of the devil’s representatives took a shot at me. The minister maybe—his thin face was grimly pugnacious. But I couldn’t imagine what good he’d be in a row. The others would scatter at the first sign of trouble.
    I stopped playing politics and said my say.
    â€œI’m glad to have your