Grotto of the Dancing Deer

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Save your preaching,” Packard told him, “for someone who wants to listen to it. It’s people like you who shove a man along a path he doesn’t want to travel and then use him as a horrible example when he up and follows it.”

  He turned to the door and opened it. Then turned back. “You were right, Preacher,” he said. “I did come here for something and I’m going through with it.”

  Out on the path he strode rapidly down the hill. Night had fallen and Hangman’s Gulch was a blur of darkness speared with blinking lights, filled with the hum of a fevered humanity.

  It was all, Packard told himself, how you happened to be born. It your father killed men and held up stages and robbed banks, you killed men and held up stages and robbed banks. You might try hard not to do it. You might try to live another kind of life, but it would catch up with you in the end. As it finally had caught up with him. A man, after all, had to make a living somehow.

  At the bottom of the hill, just before the path broke out on the street, a man stepped from behind a tree. Packard stopped, hands lifted to his guns.

  “The horses,” said the man, “are up this way.”

  Packard moved toward him, walking softly. Close at last, he asked: “You’re riding with me?”

  “That’s right,” said the man. “Blade is the name. John Blade. Put her there, pardner. I’m proud to be ridin’ with you.”

  By impulse, Packard put out his hand, found the other’s in the darkness. The man’s handclasp was swift and sure. Swift and sure and warm … a warmth that sent a thrill through Packard, a feeling of comradeship.

  “Blade,” he said, “I’m proud to be riding with you, too.”

  Chapter IV

  DEATH FOR A PINCH OF DUST

  The moon was late in rising and the night was dark, dark and chill, with an autumn wind whining along the ridges and whipping down the canyons. Blade seemed to know the way almost by feel and although they went slowly, there seemed no hesitation at the choosing of the path. Packard rode behind him.

  Apparently the man who had been set to tail him had not reported back to Randall. For if Randall had known of his visit to Page, he at least would have been called upon the carpet, asked for an explanation.

  Randall, undoubtedly, thought that he had him trapped, that he had no choice but to play Randall’s game. Packard smiled grimly in the darkness. Something would happen tomorrow, he felt certain, something that would give him the chance that he was waiting.

  Grimly he speculated upon his chance of having defied Randall, knew almost as soon as he posed the question that it would have been no use. There actually had been no choice. Randall had had him dead to rights. Had known who he was and why he came to town. Had known his connection with Cardway. Randall, he knew, would never have let him get out of town alive.

  Actually, he told himself, this satisfied him better than the Cardway deal. Even with the connivance of the guard, robbery of the express office under Randall’s nose would have been the height of madness.

  Although it wasn’t only the matter of saving his own skin. It was something else as well. A certain bitter hatred that a man like Randall could hold and rule a town, could set up no matter how temporary an empire with the use of six-gun power. That a man like Preacher Page could be placed in danger because he dared oppose such a six-gun empire. That a man could say that if gold were stolen, he was the one to steal it, that he had the right of thievery staked out.

  He had not been anxious to tie up with Cardway, he remembered. Only the bitterness of desperation had driven him to fall in with the schemes Cardway vaguely hinted at. Cardway had been all right, of course, but he was a shifty character. Packard found himself remembering the cigarette that drooped from his lips and poured smoke into the squinting eyes.

  Cardway, without a doubt, had been ready to use him. Had sat and watched him shooting at those glass balls and sensed the advantage such marksmanship might have. Had found out who he was and worked on that.

  “Hell, kid, you haven’t got a chance. No one will ever give you a break, see. The world ain’t built that way. Always looking for someone to kick. And your old man gives them a chance to kick you. Quit being a sucker, kid. With a knack with guns that you live, there’s money to be made …”

  There was some truth in what he said. A hell of a lot of truth, in fact. There was the job with the circus and the one before that with the feed store down in Kansas and the two weeks Packard worked as bank guard until the trembling, horrified directors found out who he was.

  The moon came up, bulging over the eastern horizon, a huge red ball bisected at the moment by a straggly pine that grew atop a ridge.

  Blade drew his horse to a stop and Packard rode alongside and pulled up.

  Blade had his makings out and was building a cigarette. Packard sat his horse and stared over the wild and tumbled land, half lighted by the reddish moon-glow, half-buried deep in shadow.

  Blade handed over the sack and papers.

  “Have one on me,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Packard.

  Blade thumbed a matchhead into flame, lit his smoke, tossed the match away.

  “So you went to see Page,” he said.

  Raising his cigarette to his lips to lick the paper shut, Packard stared across at the other man. Deliberately he tongued the cylinder, put it in his mouth. “Maybe,” he finally said. “that ain’t a question you should ask.”

  “Perhaps it isn’t, Packard. But I figured that you would. Randall’s one slick operator.”

  Packard nodded, seeking for the meaning in the other’s words. Apparently the man believed that Randall had sent him to Page.

  Smoke drooled out of Blade’s nose and suddenly the smoke turned into a bloody spray. Blade opened his mouth to scream, but the scream did not come out and his mouth stayed open, with the cigarette still sticking to his lower lip.

  A sound ripped through the night and Blade was falling from his horse, tipping in the saddle and going over and the horse was rearing as if to spill him off.

  Packard’s fist drove for a six-gun, whipped it clear of leather, fighting his plunging mount with the other hand.

  “Put away the gun, kid,” said a voice.

  Packard swung around. A man was standing just outside the shadow of a clump of pines, rifle in his arms. “Hurley!” yelled Packard.

  “That’s right,” said Hurley. “I’ve just dealt myself a hand.” He stepped out into the trail, seized the reins of Blade’s frightened horse, talked to the animal in a soft, soothing tone.

  “Can’t have you runnin’ home, feller,” he said. “Can’t have you going back and tippin’ Randall off.”

  “I thought,” said Packard, coldly, “that you ran with Randall’s pack.”

  “Sure,” admitted Hurley. “Sure I do. Or did. Now I’m switching back to the Packard gang. Don’t know anyone I’d rather ride with than a Packard bunch.”

  “There isn’t any Packard bunch,” said Packard.

  Hurley gulped. “Don’t mean to say, kid, that you are on your own?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I be damned,” said Hurley. “The nerve of it … the blessed nerve of it.”

  He chuckled. “Just like your old man,” he said. “Never had a big bunch. Said they got in one another’s way. Just you and me and Jim and Charley and the four of us could have given Randall aces and beat him at the laydown.”

  Warning bells rang in Packard’s head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Hurley,” he declared. “I’m riding Randall’s trail. None of the lone wolf stuff for me. Randall made a deal and it sounded good to me.”

  Hurley shambled forward until he stood close to Packard’s horse, looked up at the younger man, the full light of the moon shining on his face.

  “You’re lying, youngster,” he declared. “No Packard would mean a thing li
ke that. You’re figuring on taking over once the gold is where you want it. You’ll be using Randall’s gang to help hold up the coach, but Randall won’t see an ounce of the stuff.”

  “And you’re figuring on dealing in with me?”

  Hurley spat. “Damn right. I rode with your old man … Say, is Charley coming in?”

  “Charley?”

  “Sure, Page. Me and Charley Page and Jim Davis, we were the ones who made up the Packard gang. Now Jim is dead and Charley’s got religion and …”

  Packard drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “So Page knew who I was all the time. The low down hypocrite!”

  “Charley ain’t no hypocrite,” snapped Hurley. “He’s really got religion. Only, I thought maybe Charley might be getting a bit discouraged and he’s only human—”

  “But,” said Packard, “Page knew who you were.”

  “Sure, but he never said a word about me and I never give him away. Randall knew who I was, of course, but none of the other boys. We never got well known, the way your old man did. He was the front, you see—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” said Packard, impatiently.

  Hurley sighed. “So I guess Charley won’t be coming in. It’s just the two of us.”

  “Look,” snapped Packard, “you’re the only one who’s been talking about double-crossing Randall. You’re the one that’s all steamed up about it. I haven’t said a word.”

  “Ah, hell,” protested Hurley, “you can talk to me. I was your old man’s pal.”

  “I suppose,” said Packard, “that you’ll have to ride along with me. I don’t know the way, you see.”

  He pivoted in his saddle, looked at the huddled heap lying in the trail.

  “I hope,” he said, “you got a good one figured out to explain why it’s you instead of Blade with me.”

  “Shucks,” declared Hurley, “that won’t be hard to do. The boys won’t know who Randall sent along. We’ll not mention Blade at all. They’ll think that it was me who was with you all the time.”

  “Somehow,” said Packard, “I don’t like what you done to Blade. He was an O.K. hombre.”

  “Tell you the truth,” confessed Hurley, “I’d just as soon it had been someone else. Can think of a couple I would rather it had been. Blade was the one … But you ain’t told me your plans.”

  “I haven’t any plans.”

  “Look, kid, you can’t fool me. You can’t—”

  Packard leaned over from his horse. “Are you riding along or not?” he snapped.

  “Oh, sure. Sure, I’m riding along.”

  Hurley tied Blade’s mount to one of the pines, got up on his own, trotted up the trail. Packard urged his horse to follow.

  Packard’s stomach was a leaden knot of disgust as he watched Hurley’s swaying form.

  So this was the way it was, he told himself. You gunned down your own friends, you broke faith with your own gang, you did anything that put your groping fingers into a sack of gold. You had no honor and you walked with your back hunched against a bullet that might come from a man that you called a friend, because in this business there were no such things as friends … just other men that you watched, wondering if the day would come when they killed you or you killed them for an ounce or two of gold, a roll of bills, for anything at all.

  Even Preacher Page!

  The moon climbed higher and from some far ledge a wolf howled lonesomely. An owl swooped down over Packard’s head, a bulleting soundlessness that floated through the night. Little things scuttered and scampered along the rocky trail.

  Their horses turned a sharp bend in the trail and in a pocketed valley a tiny fire was burning.

  Hurley turned his head. “That’s the camp,” he said.

  Packard nodded.

  “How about it, kid?” asked Hurley. “Got anything to tell me?”

  “Not a thing,” said Packard.

  And his mind thought: I can’t trust you, Hurley. How do I know you’re on the up and up? How can I be sure that Randall didn’t plan it all just to sound me out? If I talked to you, really told you what I had in mind, you might pay me off with a bullet in the head.

  But Hurley had played square with Page, hadn’t peeped to Randall about who the Preacher was. And it would have been worth a lot to Randall to have known that, with Page threatening to bring in martial law. It would have given Randall a club that would have either silenced Page or sent him scuttling out of town.

  That was the hell of it, Packard told himself. You never could be sure.

  The men were waiting around the fire when they arrived. Hard-faced men who stared at them for a long moment without speaking.

  Finally one of them strode forward.

  “Howdy,” he said. “New man?”

  Hurley chuckled. “That’s right, Pinky. A new one that Randall wants us to break in. Name of Packard. Steve Packard’s kid.”

  A smile split Pinky’s face.

  “Ought to be all right,” he said, “if he’s anything like his old man.”

  He walked toward Packard, hand held out. “Name is Traynor, Packard. But the boys all call me Pinky.”

  Packard shook his hand.

  “Meet the boys,” said Pinky. “This old hombre is Pop Allen. And the one over there is Marks. The fellow by the fire is Sylvester. Hell of a name, ain’t it?”

  For a single instant Sylvester’s left eye flashed, picking up and reflecting the flare of the campfire … and there was something about the man’s face that rang bells of recognition in Packard’s brain … a haunting recollection that sent his thoughts scurrying back along the last few days.

  The cheeks were flat and the lips were tight, but there was an angle to the chin and the way the hair swept back from his forehead that seemed to fit in with some other face back in Hangman’s Gulch.

  Then Sylvester was saying: “Howdy, Packard,” and stepping forward with his hand held out, a chubby hand that did not seem to be made to fit a six-gun grip.

  And Packard, gripping Sylvester’s hand, stared at the left eye which no longer glinted.

  Suddenly he knew Sylvester, his mind filling in the face as he had seen it before … a face with some sort of plastic material worked into the cheeks and in front of the gums to puff out the cheeks and lips, to distort the face so that once the silly little mustache had been pasted on no one would ever recognize the man.

  He spoke low, lips scarcely moving, so that no one else might hear.

  “I see,” he told Sylvester, “that you found your eye.”

  Chapter V

  WE DON’T WASTE LEAD!

  From far down the canyon came the faint clatter of wheels, the muffled clop of horses’ hoofs.

  Crouched in the clump of juniper beside the trail, Packard stared out across the rock-ribbed cleft that climbed, twisting deep into the mountain range.

  Again came the far-off squeal of wheels and Packard, straining his ears, tensed, then relaxed again. Eyes narrowed against the morning sun, he took stock of the situation.

  Pinky was across the trail, almost opposite where Packard crouched in the juniper. Marks was farther up. Sylvester and Hurley were between himself and Marks, each on their own side of the trail. Pop Allen was back in the little side canyon, a quarter mile away, holding the horses.

  The four of them, Pinky had told them, were to let the stagecoach pass, were to remain out of sight until Marks stepped out and fired a shot, the first one over the driver’s head, the second one in his head if he made a hostile move.

  Sylvester was to cover the shotgun messenger up on the seat beside the driver, with Hurley to back him up. Packard and Pinky were to take care of other guards, if there should happen to be any. There probably would be, Pinky had said … up on the roof.

  Packard felt perspiration trickling down his face behind the blue handkerchief which se
rved him for a mask.

  He was nervous, he told himself, somewhat surprised. And he shouldn’t be nervous. Never had there been a time when he needed the rock-hard sureness of hand and eye that he might need in the next few minutes.

  The chance he waited, he knew would come in that first moment of swift action when Marks stepped out into the trail and flung up his gun.

  Cautiously, Packard squinted up the trail, trying to make out the positions of the others. He knew where they should be but there was nothing to betray them. No single flutter of a wind-blown handkerchief, no hint of color in the tangled shrubs, no stirring bush.

  Hurley would be up there somewhere. Hurley, who had shot down Blade when the man wasn’t even looking and thus dealt himself a hand. Hurley, he knew, would be watching him, waiting for the sign that would send him into action. Hurley was no fool. Hurley knew there was something in the wind, probably was more than a little nettled that the son of his old friend and trail partner hadn’t let him in on it.

  And yet, Packard told himself, he couldn’t have let him in on it, for there wasn’t really anything … no well-defined plan, no thought-out course of action. Just a hunch that a chance would come, waiting for the break that would give him the upper hand. And when it came there’d be no time for thinking, no time for planning … he’d have to act by what would amount to instinct.

  And there was Sylvester. Just where did Sylvester fit? The man had a glass eye, but one that was so perfect his companions of the owlhoot trail had never found it out. If they had he would bear a nickname that would have marked him as a man of certain distinction. That eye would have furnished more than one jibe, more than one good-natured joke, more than one tall tale.

  If Sylvester was a bona-fide member of the Canyon gang, why should he have been in Hangman’s Gulch, tricked out with facial disguise and checkered suit? And even if he did want to promenade around without anyone knowing who he was, why all that ridiculous hoorah about losing his glass eye? A thing like that wouldn’t accomplish a single thing except attract attention to him.

  The rattling wheels were closer now and the clop of the horses’ hoofs were distinct sounds in the dust. Around the bend a filmy cloud arose, the slowly drifting dust disturbed by the coach’s passing.