Rainbow's End by James M. Cain

a Jezebel and other things too, still worse. One thing led to another, like her trying to beat me up.” I showed the tooth marks on my cheek and went on: “Then she slammed back in her room. Later she came out and called you. Finally she went outside and drove off in my car.”
    â€œWhere to?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œDave, I asked you where to.”
    â€œGoddamn it,” I roared, going slightly mountain myself, “knock it off with the third degree. I told you, I don’t know where to. What’s more, I don’t much care. Now how’d you like to get the hell out?”
    â€œI’ll go when I get ready.”
    â€œI’m telling you: go now.”
    I stood up and went over to him, where he’d sat down on the sofa. He got up and started backing away. I picked up his hat, which he’d put beside him, and handed it over to him. He took it and went, still backing, and not once looking at Jill.
    â€œ Well !” she exclaimed. “Talk about unruly passengers! He was one for the pilot to deal with. ... And the pilot did!” She gave me a little admiring shake. “I love it, how you deal with them.”
    â€œI never liked Uncle Sid much.”
    We watched as Sid drove off down the lane to the highway. “Do they all dress like that in Flint?” she asked.
    â€œYou mean the black hat?”
    â€œHe looked like one of the bad guys on TV.”
    â€œI hadn’t thought of that.”
    â€œWell? He did.”
    â€œThe black hat is pretty much a mountain thing. Yes, they dress like that—at least on Sunday for church. He was all dressed up in your honor.”
    â€œThe more I see of mountains, the more valleys appeal to me.”
    â€œThis is a valley, right here.”
    â€œThe Muskingum Valley—I love it.”
    â€œAnd a mountain is looking at you.”
    â€œYou’re not mountain, at all.”
    â€œBut I am, as you ought to know.”
    She put her arms around me, kissed me, then kissed me again. “You mean—it was mountain that sighted that Enfield?”
    â€œSpringfield,” I corrected.
    â€œIt was an Enfield. I know from my days in summer camp. Our camp mother believed in such things. The Enfield bolt-pull is curved. On the Springfield it’s straight.”
    â€œYou halfway sound mountain yourself.”
    â€œDavid Howell, I’ve fallen for you—hard, harder than I want. But if you try to make me go mountain, I’ll unfall so fast you’ll get dizzy. Do I make myself clear?”
    I think she expected a laugh, a hug, and a kiss, and they’re what I wanted to give her. But all of a sudden I felt a throb in my throat and heard myself ask her: “You want a straight answer to that?”
    â€œI demand a straight answer to it.”
    â€œMountain saved your life.”
    â€œAll right, all right, all right. Mountain can up and do it, when something has to be done. But don’t ask me to take part.”
    â€œDon’t ask me not to.”
    We did kiss then, kind of an armistice kiss, but warm and loving at that.
    â€œTell me more about Sid. What does he do for a living in Flint? What does anyone do there?”
    â€œFlint’s a dead coal camp of the Ajax Coal Corporation. Nobody lives there but Sid. He’s caretaker of the mine and is on the company payroll at five hundred dollars a month and a house, rent-free, that the super used to live in. But that’s just the beginning for Sid. His real business is booze which ties in with the mine, and does he make it pay!”
    â€œYou mean he mines it?”
    â€œAll but. But to understand about that, you must understand a coal mine, especially an abandoned coal mine.”
    By that time we were on the sofa, with her snuggled tight in my arms. She whispered: “Go on, tell me.”
    â€œIn the first place, there’s the floor which pumpkins up, as they call it, so it’s one hump after