Grotto of the Dancing Deer: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  “It was a glass eye, you see,” he said. “It would look something like a marble.”

  The man in the chair wheezed in bewilderment.

  “No, I haven’t seen it. What makes you think you lost it here?”

  “Don’t know where I lost it,” explained the little man. “Got drunk, you see, and when I sobered up it wasn’t there.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “It might be most anywhere,” said the little man.

  “I’ll keep a watch for it,” the man in the chair promised.

  “I wish you would,” the other told him. “I feel undressed without it.” He turned and shuffled off, head bent, as if looking for the eye.

  The man in the chair looked up at Packard.

  “We get the damndest people here,” he apologized.

  Packard stood with his elbows on the bar, nursing his drink and staring in the mirror.

  The Crystal Palace roared with life. Through the buzz of voices came the clink of glasses, the whir of gambling wheels, occasionally the soft snick of chips from the poker tables in the back. In one corner an old man with a violin and a younger one with an accordion teamed with the out-of-tune piano, fought a losing battle with the throaty rumble that ran through the place.

  So Preston Cardway had shot an express company guard and been hung by the vigilantes, his body left dangling in the tree as a sort of grim warning for any who might come riding down the trail!

  Well, it was something anyhow, Packard told himself, staring at the bottle-stacked mirror, to have that kind of warning. Even if Cardway had to die to give it. Cardway, the damn fool, going off half-cocked and shooting down a man. Although he hardly could be blamed for thinking he could get away with it. In his day, Cardway had shot down many men in the main streets of many towns in broad daylight and gotten away with it. What reason could he have had to think it would be any different here?

  Only there was something wrong. Something that didn’t click somehow. Hangman’s Gulch didn’t seem the kind of town that was cleaning up, not the kind of place where vigilantes rode to bring law and order.

  For one thing, Hangman’s Gulch wasn’t old enough. It still was new and raw, a boom town scarcely dry behind the ears. There was too much yip and ki-yi in it. Towns don’t get civic conscious, Packard told himself, until the shiny newness is worn off of them.

  A man elbowed his way through the throng, thrust himself alongside Packard. In the mirror, Packard studied him. A man with a white collar and a black cravat in which a diamond stickpin gleamed, the tie bunched above a fawn-colored vest that sported a slender chain with a dangling golden toothpick.

  The man’s mouth moved. “A stranger, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” said Packard, talking to the reflection in the mirror rather than the man himself. “Just rolled in tonight.”

  “My name,” said the man, “is Jason Randall. Owner of this place. Saw you here. Wanted to tell you that you’re welcome.”

  “Mine is Packard,” Packard told him. “Stanley Packard. Just riding through.”

  “Thought maybe you might stick around,” said Randall. “Lots of people do. Hangman’s Gulch is a good town. Won’t find none better between here and the coast.”

  Packard studied the man with open interest. A slick customer, he figured. Ruthless and mean. Glossy and soft like a spider squatting in his web.

  Randall’s eyes shifted away from Packard’s, stared beyond his shoulder. Packard swung around. A man stood just inside the swinging doors. A tall, straight man who didn’t wear a gun, a man whose silver hair was brushed back from his forehead like a gleaming crown of light, shining in the crystal lamps swaying from the ceiling. His head was high and he looked at the smoke-dimmed crowd with something that was close to pity on his face.

  Someone on the floor saw the man standing by the door and shouted at him: “Hey, here’s Preacher. Come on, Preacher, belly up. I’ll stand you to a drink.”

  The man did not move, eyes still searching the crowd. A woman tittered, a shrill, high sound that cut across the wheezing music, the rumble of many voices, the clatter of the wheels.

  The man saw Randall now, stood staring at him for a moment, Randall staring back. Then, slowly, the man paced forward. The crowd parted to let him pass. Faces turned after him.

  He halted in front of Randall. His voice was low: “Mr. Randall, could I see you for a moment?”

  “Reverend,” boomed Randall, “anything you got to say to me, you can say right here.”

  “It is scarcely—” began the man, but Randall cut him short.

  “You want me to close up.”

  The man nodded. “Sunday is the Lord’s day,” he said. “It is scarcely right that a place like this—”

  “All that’s the matter with you, Reverend,” yelled Randall, “is that you’re sore because I have a crowd and you don’t have one. Because your two-bit sermons can’t compete with what I offer here.”

  “It would only be for Sunday,” said the minister. “Say, from Saturday midnight until Monday morning. I have no quarrel with what is done on other days of the week, but on Sunday, certainly, there should be some peace and decorum. Drunken men should not be sprawled on the street so that ladies who come to my church have to walk out in the street to get around them.”

  Randall spat on the floor. “Look, Reverend, you’re sticking in your nose where you have no call. I’m attending to my business and you attend to yours. If both of us do that, we’ll get along—”

  Packard’s hand reached out, closed on Randall’s shoulder, spun him around with a vicious tug that pulled and twisted his coat tight against his body. With another savage tug, he drew the man close to him, so that their faces were no more than scant inches apart.

  “Look,” said Packard, “where I come from we hold some respect for men who wear the cloth. Maybe we don’t agree with them, but at least we treat them decent.”

  “Why, you dirty …” Randall’s hand was flashing toward his belt.

  The minister moved swiftly, closing in on Randall, knocking his hand aside even as its fingers reached the gun. Deftly, the silver-haired man spun Randall’s gun from out the holster, caught it in mid-air.

  “Take it easy, Reverend,” said Packard softly. “No use of you getting mixed up in this.”

  He shoved Randall backward, sent him crashing against the bar.

  “I had my left fist filled all the time,” said Packard. “If he’d ever got that gun I’d tore a hole dead center through his belly.” He stared at Randall. “I don’t like people who push other folks around,” he said. “If you make a move or any of your men make a move, you’ll be eating sawdust.”

  A deathly silence had fallen on the place, a brilliant silence that glittered in the lamplight.

  “I don’t care whether you close up or not,” said Packard. “It ain’t no skin off my nose either way around. But the next time you speak to the Reverend, be sure you are polite.”

  The silence held, a tense and breathless silence.

  “Reverend,” said Packard, “maybe you better get out of here. Seventeen different kinds of hell are apt to bust loose almost any—”

  Packard’s head exploded with a mighty roar. Roman candles speared across the darkness and burst with a screaming sound that spewed whirling stars … stars that grew in size and brilliance as they whirled until they were eye-searing balls of light. He was falling into a foaming sea of brilliant light and he hit it and went under and the light was dark.

  Chapter II

  GLASS BALLS—GLASS EYES

  Slowly, Packard became aware of himself. Aware of pain that lanced across his head with throbbing, knife-like strokes. He raised his hands to his throbbing head.

  “There, lad,” said a gentle voice. “Just lie back again.”

  He groped for his belt, found the holster empty.
>
  “Your guns are over on the table,” said the voice.

  Packard opened his eyes and light tortured them. He shut them again, but he knew that he was not on the floor of the Crystal Palace nor sprawling in the street nor heaved in some back alley as something that had died.

  “The bartender,” said the voice, “hit you with a bottle.”

  Carefully Packard opened his eyes again, saw the face of the silver-haired man bending over him.

  “Hi, Reverend,” he said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” the man told him. “My name is Page and they call me Preacher Page. Mostly just Preacher.”

  Packard hitched himself erect, saw that he had been lying on an old and battered sofa. Ponderously, he swung his feet to the floor, sat hunched on the sofa’s edge.

  “How did I get here?” he asked.

  “I carried you,” said Preacher Page. He chuckled. “It was the least I could do for you after what had happened.”

  Packard glanced about the room. It was furnished shabbily, but it had a certain touch … a touch of home. A rickety rocking chair stood in the corner and there was an old oblong table with a lamp placed upon an embroidered scarf. There were pictures on the wall and some books on shelves.

  His guns, he saw, were on the table beside the lamp.

  “So the bartender hit me,” said Packard. “Then what happened?”

  “Then one of Randall’s gunmen jerked out his weapon and was pointing it at you and I shouted at him and waved the gun I’d taken from Randall. I told them: ‘Gentlemen, I should regret to shoot you, but if you harm that young man, I shall have to do it.’”

  “Would you have shot?” asked Packard.

  The minister’s face twisted in a grimace. “Fortunately, I didn’t have to make that decision.”

  Shakily, Packard got to his feet, crossed to the table, picked up the guns. Expertly he broke them one by one, spun the cylinders to check the cartridges, slid them into his belt again.

  “Thanks, Preacher,” he said. “Thanks for all you did for me.”

  “But you aren’t leaving?”

  “Sure, I am. I got a date with Randall.”

  Preacher gasped. “But you can’t. They’ll be waiting for you. They’ll—”

  “If he wants to go, Father, let him go,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Packard swung around.

  A girl stood there. A girl one would have known anywhere as Preacher Page’s daughter. The same quiet face, the same level eyes. Plain, thought Packard. Plain, but pretty.

  “Father,” said the girl, speaking to Packard, “always is bringing home broken-down saddle tramps or young brawlers who happen to get hurt.”

  “But, Alice,” protested the old man, “this gentleman stood up for me. He’s the first man since I’ve come here who stood up for me—”

  Thunderous knocking hammered at the outside door, and Packard spun around, right fist jerking clear a gun.

  Preacher’s voice snapped at him, a voice with the edge of steel. “Put that away. In this house there’ll be no—”

  “Preacher,” snarled Packard. “Open up that door. And be sure you stand to one side when you do it.”

  “There’ll be no shooting,” said Preacher. “This is my house and there’ll be—”

  Packard took a step toward him. “You heard me! Open up that door … quick and fast!”

  The gun came up and Preacher moved swiftly, lithely toward the door, swung it open with a jerk. In the fan of light that streamed out into the earth-packed yard stood a tall man, a man with hair graying at the temples, with cheeks that looked like tanned and wrinkled leather, a handle-bar mustache that drooped affectionately over the corners of his mouth.

  “Howdy, Preacher,” said the man.

  “Hello, Hurley,” said Preacher gravely.

  Hurley’s eyes fastened on Packard. “If you’re Packard,” he said, “I got to talk to you.”

  “Talk away,” said Packard.

  Swiftly the man stepped into the room, slammed the door behind him, stood with his back against it.

  “You’d better hit the trail,” said Hurley. “Stover’s on the prod.”

  “Who’s Stover?”

  “Stover,” explained Preacher Page, “is Randall’s top-notch gun-hand. Deadly shot, I’m told.”

  “So am I,” snapped Packard.

  Hurley studied Packard quietly. “Just how good a shot?” he asked.

  “Good enough for Stover,” Packard told him. “Good enough for any of the two-bit gunmen who hanker for my blood. Learned it in a circus. Fellow rode ahead of me and threw up glass balls, fast. I shot them in the air.”

  “You should have stayed with the circus.”

  “I was agreeable,” said Packard. “But they didn’t keep me.”

  Hurley chewed at the corner of his mustache. “Found out who you were, huh?”

  “That’s right,” said Packard. He stared at the man, a tight, grim-lipped stare. “How come you know?” he asked.

  “I rode with your daddy,” said Hurley. “Was with him when he died. Would know you anywhere. At that time he looked just like you do now.”

  Hurley looked at Page. “One word of this, Preacher,” he warned, “and I personally will plumb tie you into knots.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Page, “I haven’t heard a thing.”

  Hurley opened the door, asked: “How about it, kid?”

  Packard holstered his gun. “Just point out this Stover to me.”

  The board walks were frosty beneath their boots as Packard and Hurley climbed the steps that led to the porch of the Crystal Palace. Inside the lights still burned and a dawdling swamper wielded a broom. Back of the bar the bartender was yawning and cleaning up the glassware. A drunk was sleeping it off at a table in the corner.

  Hurley led the way across the room toward a door that led into the back. The swamper went on sweeping and the bartender took no notice of them. The drunk snored and sputtered in his sleep, thrashing his arms on the table top.

  Packard felt the hair stir at the base of his neck. There was something wrong, he knew. Nothing he could put his finger on, but something that was wrong. The way the swamper went on sweeping, the way the barkeeper yawned and went on polishing his glasses. Paying no attention to them. Almost as if they might have been expecting them.

  “Hurley,” said Packard. “Hurley, there’s something …”

  A faint sound warned him, the whispery creak of the swinging doors up front. Like a cat, he whirled, guns already coming out.

  In the doorway stood a man, a man whose pistoning arms were a blur of motion, whose eyes were gimlets of steel shining in the light. Steel, like the gleam of light on glass balls spinning in the sunshine.

  The man’s guns were clear of leather and were swinging up and, behind him, the batwing doors swung gently to and fro, almost robbed of motion, but still swinging.

  Flame exploded in Packard’s hands, the blasting flame of jumping guns that bucked and hammered, filled the room to bursting with their roar.

  The man in front of the batwing doors was slammed through them, hurled backward through them as if someone had grasped and hurled him with tremendous force. One of his guns was still in his hand, but the other spun from his fingers and skidded through the sawdust.

  And then the doors were swinging violently, flapping to and fro and from under them protruded two boots, toes pointing toward the ceiling.

  The barkeep stood with both hands spread upon the bar, amazement on his face. “I be damned,” he said. “I be double-damned.”

  The swamper leaned upon his broom and stared. The drunk had come alive and was trying to burrow into the sawdust underneath his table.

  The door in the back flung open and Randall stroke out. He stopped, staring at the boots, at the flapping d
oors.

  Then, slowly, his gaze switched to Packard and Packard raised his guns.

  “You next?” asked Packard.

  Randall simply stared.

  “By rights,” said Hurley, coldly, “he’d ought to give it to you. You went and double-crossed us. It was supposed to be a fair fight.”

  Randall shrugged. “What difference does it make? Packard, here, won out.”

  “Four shots,” said the bartender. “Four shots and every one dead center. Four shots before Stover hit the floor.”

  “What’s going on here?” asked Packard coldly. “You gentlemen better start to talk.”

  Randall laughed shortly. “Hell,” he said, “no use of getting riled. Packard, you just killed yourself a job.”

  “A job?”

  “Sure, Stover’s job. I’ll need a man to take his place.”

  “I told you the kid had the right stuff in him. Just like his old man,” Hurley told Randall.

  “I don’t want the stinking job,” said Packard.

  Packard turned on his heel and walked away. Through the silence of the room he heard the rasp of the swamper’s broom, the still frightened gulping of the drunken man. At the door, he pushed the batwings wide and walked around the body of the man who’d tried to shoot him in the back.

  Outside the air was crisp and new with the coming of the day. The stars were paling and Packard suddenly realized that he was sleepy and hungry.

  The frost crunched crisply underfoot as he strode down the walk toward the hotel and suddenly his head felt light and giddy and the throb took up again … the throb of his scalp where the bottle had landed.

  He walked slowly past the livery stable, where a smoky lantern burned redly in the office window. Out of the shadows of the alleyway between the stable and hotel a voice hissed at him.

  Startled, Packard’s right hand plunged for his gun, but the voice said: “Take it easy, Packard. I’m a friend of yours.”

  Hand still on the gunbutt, Packard stepped into the dim alleyway, saw the face of the man before him. A moonlike face, puffy and dissolute, with blubbery lips.

  “Craig is the name,” said moonface. “Cardway said you would be coming.”