The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two

by Clifford D. Simak

“I’ll be watching,” warned Westman, “and if you try to trail me, I’ll waste a bullet on you … right between the eyes.”

  The horse paced slowly down the road … back toward Sundown.

  But he couldn’t go there, Harrison knew. He couldn’t go anywhere.

  “Damn fool,” he told himself.

  He switched around in the saddle and Westman still sat his horse in the middle of the road, a vague blot in the feeble moonlight.

  I could pull my gun and shoot it out, Harrison told himself. I could …

  But he’d gain nothing in a shoot-out with Westman, he realized. That wasn’t the way to go about getting out of the jam … and what a jam, he thought. Assisting an accused murderer in escape, resisting a marshal, stealing a horse.…

  “They’ll hang me, sure,” he said.

  He shrugged and faced forward in the saddle, rocking with the slow plodding of the horse, head bent forward, thinking. There had to be a way to carry out the thing he had started to do. There had to be a way to find out where Carolyn had been taken, to find out why she had been taken. And Satan? There was Satan, too. Best horse he ever had.

  Then, suddenly, he had it. Doc might help him. Doc would understand. Doc, with his legendary gold mine, with his riding off and coming back with money, Doc with his cold wry humor and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, might be the friend he needed. Hours of darkness still remained. Time to go and see.

  Doc might know something.… Doc might help him out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Trapper Bill Disappears

  Squeezed tightly against the wall of the bank, Harrison stood motionless in the narrow alleyway between the bank and Smith’s general store, listening for any sign of life out on the street. Back of the bank the horse he had taken from the bartender whickered softly and pawed at the ground.

  “Damn the horse,” thought Harrison. “He’ll wake somebody up.”

  But the street apparently was clear. Over it and up and down its length hung the unnatural, breathless silence that comes in the dark hours just before dawn.

  Satisfied, Harrison slipped out of the alleyway, ducked into the doorway that led upstairs over the bank to Doc Falconer’s office and living quarters.

  Light seeped from beneath the door of Doc’s waiting room and Harrison hesitated, sudden fear gripping at his throat.

  “Of course, he might have a light,” he told himself. “He might leave one burning so if someone needed him.…”

  Carefully he approached the waiting room door, reached out and turned the knob.

  Doc was slumped forward on top of the desk on which the lamp was burning, slumped not as a man would slump in sleep, but with his body twisted.

  “Doc!” Harrison whispered hoarsely.

  A knife hilt stuck out of Doc’s back, just between the shoulder blades, a little low and to the left. The cheap rag rug was scuffed beneath his feet as if he’d tried to rise and then had fallen back.

  Harrison moved across the room, stood beside the desk, hands hanging at his side. Doc was dead. There could be no doubt of that. The one man who might have been able to tell him some facts that he needed to know, must know.

  Killed with a knife blow in the back as he sat writing at the desk. Harrison’s eyes took in the pencil and the scattered sheets. Harrison stiffened, remembering back to the afternoon. Doc’s words came back to him:

  Wonder if you’d keep a letter for me and forget you ever saw it.

  A letter that he said he might come back and get but if he didn’t Harrison was to mail. Perhaps … perhaps this very letter.

  Harrison stooped quickly to examine the desk, reaching out to shuffle the paper. But there was no letter. The sheets were blank and clean … no pencil strokes upon them.

  Harrison’s breath caught in his throat. Here was the letter … or at least a duplicate of the letter Doc had been writing. The pencil had been hard and the paper thin and the lines were lettered here, once the light caught the paper right, as legibly as they had been upon the sheet on which they had been written.

  He bent closer to the sheet, adjusting it so that the light brought out the lines, and read:

  U.S. Marshal,

  Omaha

  My dear sir:

  You no doubt have received complaints of the horse thievery going on in this territory. Through diligent observance, not without danger to my person, I have ascertained that the gang is using Grizzly Valley as it headquarters. Few persons know the exact location of this valley and while I hope to be here to lead you and your party to it when you arrive, if such should not be the case, I would advise that you contact Trapper Bill, who has a cabin.…

  A creaking board brought Harrison spinning around, right hand darting for his gun.

  In the doorway stood the man with the flowered waistcoat who had come in with the stage. His lips were drawn back in a vicious snarl and one gold tooth gleamed dully in the lamplight. His hand, coming away from the inside pocket of his coat, held a snub-nosed gun.

  The gun snicked viciously, like a tiny, yapping dog. The bullet slammed past his head and smashed into the window.

  Harrison tilted up the muzzle of his own gun, hauled the trigger back savagely, too hurried for smooth shooting.

  The little gun in the gold-toothed man’s hand snarled again, but its tiny noise was drowned out by the bellow of the .45 in Harrison’s fist. Something twitched at Harrison’s left shoulder, a stinging blow that rocked him on his heels as he watched the man in front of him sag back against the door.

  The man hit the door jamb and bounced forward, wilting as he bounced. The gun leaped from his fingers, skittered and slid, a spinning wheel of blue across the lamplit floor. The man slumped to his knees, hung for an instant, then pitched forward, fell on one elbow and rolled over, face up, limp jaw hanging open, eyes rolled back.

  Slowly, cat-footed, Harrison moved back toward the window. His eyes switched from the dead man in the doorway to the dead man at the desk and for the first time he saw the soft gleam of the chain that hung from Doc’s fingers. Stooping swiftly, he examined it … a gold watch chain, its fragile links snapped at both ends.

  And as he looked at it, he knew why the man in the doorway had come back … knew whose hand had wielded the knife still sticking in Doc’s back.

  Swiftly, he went across the room, stooped over the dead man, saw the two ends of broken chain that hung from the pockets of the flowered waistcoat. A chain that Doc, rising in the moment before death had struck him down, had seized and broken as the knife-man backed away from his victim.

  On the street below a door slammed open with a bang. Boots hit the steps. Harrison spun around, raced for the window shattered by the gold-toothed man’s bullet, dived through it, crossed arms shielding his face. He landed on the lean-to roof and rolled. Sprawling on the ground, he scrambled to his feet. In front of him the tied horse snorted and reared. With one swift jerk, Harrison tore loose the reins from the post, leaped for the saddle.

  From the window he’d just quitted a gun blasted in the night. The horse was spinning on dancing hind feet, forelegs reaching out. Harrison yelled and the animal came down with a jolt and ran. The gun spoke again and Harrison heard the whine of the bullet passing overhead.

  Faint shouts came from the street. Harrison bent low on the horse’s neck, the drum of hoofs beating in his head. The cool wind smelled of grass that had been drying in the sun. The sickle moon hung low above the western horizon.

  For the first time, Harrison became aware of the stiffness in his left shoulder and when he put up a hand, he found that the shirt was soaked. Moving his arm, he knew no bones were broken. The stranger’s bullet had no more than creased him, tearing through muscles.

  Something rustled in his shirt pocket as he moved his arm. Taking it out, he saw that it was a wad of crumpled paper. The duplicate of the letter that Doc had s
tarted, the letter to the marshal back at Omaha.

  Wonder if you’d keep a letter for me.…

  Harrison crinkled his brow, thinking. There could be no doubt that this was the letter Doc had meant for him to keep. But why keep? If Doc had wanted to tip off the marshal, he could have mailed the letter himself. It was as simple as that. But he’d said that maybe he’d be back to pick it up. Did that mean that under certain circumstances he would not have mailed the letter?

  Harrison shook his head. Carefully he smoothed the sheet of paper out and folded it, put it back into his pocket.

  The man with the flowered waistcoat and the shiny gold tooth had killed Doc to get that letter. Had gotten it, in fact, and then came back to get the broken watch chain, knowing that it would be evidence that might convict him. Too rattled to take it the first time and coming back to get it. Or maybe not realizing that it had been broken until he’d left the place.

  The man had come in on the stage and within the next few hours had plunged his knife into Doc’s back and stolen the letter. That must mean the man had come to Sundown to do that very thing … and if such had been the case, he must have known that Doc intended to write the letter. Harrison frowned. But that was impossible, he told himself. Doc wasn’t one to talk. He told no one his business and maybe that was part of the reason that nobody really liked him.

  The gold-toothed man had come on the stagecoach to kill Doc and while he’d been on the stage someone had kidnaped Carolyn Elden. Maybe fancy waistcoat had had something to do with the kidnaping, too. Maybe things hadn’t happened just the way he told them. He could have told any story that he wanted to, for there was no one to contradict him. Carolyn had been kidnaped and the driver of the stage was dead.

  It linked somehow … what had happened to Carolyn and Doc, Doc’s letter, Westman in jail, even Dunham riding with the posse. For Sundown wasn’t Dunham’s town. Rattlesnake was more to Dunhams’s liking and Sundown seldom saw any of the Bar X men. Funny that Dunham should have been Johnny-at-the-rat-hole when the stage came in.

  Harrison put his hand up to the shirt pocket and the letter crinkled under his touch. Grizzly Valley, the letter had said, and added that few folks knew its exact location. Harrison touched the letter again. Grizzly valley, one of those places you hear about once in a while, but where no one’s ever been. But Trapper Bill would know, Trapper Bill, at his cabin out on the south edge of the badlands.

  The horse had slowed to an easy lope and Harrison urged it to greater speed.

  “Hoss,” he said, “we’re dropping in on Trapper Bill.”

  The sun was three hours up the sky when the horse and rider wound cautiously down the tortuous trail that led to the coulee where Trapper Bill’s cabin huddled under the looming cliff of vari-colored clay.

  Smoke rose lazily from the chimney of the shack and Trapper Bill lounged against the door, watching Harrison ride up. Two decrepit hounds came bellowing and escorted the rider in.

  Trapper Bill took the pipe out of his whiskers, spat across the chopping block.

  “Howdy, young feller,” he said. “Where did you leave your wagon?”

  “Back in town,” Harrison told him, shortly.

  Trapper Bill eyed him speculatively. “Been in a ruckus?”

  “Little argument,” Harrison explained. “Hombre shot me up a bit.”

  “You shot back, I reckon.”

  Harrison got down out of the saddle, stiffly. The horse stood with bowed head, sides heaving.

  “Riding kind of hard,” said Trapper.

  Harrison nodded. “The marshal took a dislike to me.”

  Trapper snorted. “That there marshal don’t have right good sense. Probably the feller needed a little shooting to make a Christian of him.”

  Harrison leaned against the other side of the doorway, took out papers and tobacco sack, began a cigarette.

  “Tell me, Trapper. You know how to get to Grizzly valley?”

  Trapper pulled the pipe out of his whiskers.

  “Figuring on going there?”

  Harrison nodded. “Ain’t in your right mind,” Trapper told him. “Ain’t been there myself for ten years or more. Nothing to go for.”

  “Have to meet a fellow there,” Harrison explained.

  Trapper wagged his head. “Funny spot you pick for a meeting place. But if you’re bound set on getting there.…”

  He squatted on the ground, traced with his finger in the dust.

  “You go straight north until you hit Cow Canyon.…”

  His voice mumbled on, his finger tracing the map.

  “Figure you got it fixed square in your mind?” he asked.

  Harrison nodded. Trapper smoothed the dirt with his palm, arose.

  “You look all beat out,” he said.

  “No sleep since yesterday morning,” Harrison told him.

  “Better come in and take a nap while I cook you up some coffee.”

  Harrison shook his head. “Got to be pushing on.”

  “Hell,” said Trapper, “that marshal won’t nohow find you here. He’ll hit plumb for Rattlesnake. Figure that you streaked for there.”

  “Not this marshal, he won’t,” said Harrison. “You wouldn’t catch this marshal dead ten miles in any direction from Rattlesnake.”

  Trapper puffed at his pipe. “Did hear the Rattlesnake and Sundown folks were plumb bitter about some little matter.”

  “Splitting a county,” said Harrison.

  “Wouldn’t know,” said Trapper. “Don’t get around, myself. Just over to the Elden spread, once in a while. Sing Lee keeps me fixed up with panther juice. Making his own now. Got a still rigged up out of an old wash boiler. Figured maybe the stuff would poison me, but it ain’t hurt me yet.”

  “Hatless Joe was telling me about it,” said Harrison. “Claims it’s got forty rod beat all hollow.”

  “Damn smart Chinaman,” Trapper said. “Taking up reading now. Tried to talk me into it, too, but I ain’t got the patience for it. Foolish way to spend a feller’s time.”

  “Comes in handy, sometimes, though.”

  “Maybe it does,” Trapper agreed, “but I got along without books and stuff for sixty years and I figure I can go another twenty.”

  He squinted at Harrison. “You look plumb tuckered out. You’ll never make Grizzly in the shape you’re in. Better come in and have a little nap. I’ll wake you up in an hour or so.”

  Harrison weakened. Not until now had he realized how tired he was, tired and muscle-sore. And the shoulder where the bullet had flicked him was a dull, red hurt.

  “Just an hour or so,” he finally said. “You’ll promise to wake me, then. Can’t waste much time.”

  “Cross my heart,” pledged Trapper, “and hope to stumble. Some sleep and bear meat under your belt and you’re good for another day. I’ll take care of your animal.”

  Harrison entered the door, made his way around the rickety table, sat down on the bunk. The place was filthy, filled with the odor of ill-cooked food, of sweaty, greasy clothing. But he scarcely noticed it.

  His eyes closed as soon as his head hit the burlap pillow. In just a little while, said a hazy thought, I’ll be on the way again. Grizzly valley. Carolyn. Maybe Satan, too.

  He woke with a sudden start, sitting bolt upright, filled with the feeling that something had gone wrong.

  For a moment he fought to recollect where he was and then it came with a sudden rush.

  “Trapper!” he yelled, surging to his feet.

  There was no answer. Sultry, summer silence hung upon the cabin. Somewhere a fly was buzzing, but there was no other sound.

  Outside in the glaring sunlight the silence held. The sun was high … and that, he suddenly knew, was what was wrong. The sun had been a morning sun when he had gone to sleep and now it was after noon. Standing, spread-legged, staring at
the sun, his hand went to his shirt pocket, tapping for the paper that should have been there. But there was no rustle, nothing there at all.

  He stood for a moment, stupefied.

  Trapper Bill had run out on him, had stolen the paper in his pocket and run out on him. But run to where? A horse nickered and Harrison wheeled around, hand driving for his gun.

  Then he relaxed. For the horse was riderless and trotting toward him and he recognized it as the one he’d taken from the bartender and ridden to this place.

  “Good hoss,” he said. “Good hoss.”

  He moved swiftly forward. He was getting out, he told himself, as fast as the horse could travel.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Johnny Holds Up the Boss

  The man in the gray slouch hat stepped from behind a boulder and thrust forth the rifle.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

  Harrison reined up, sat limply in the saddle.

  “I could have shot you,” said the man, “when you was coming up the trail and I damn near done it. Just natural kindness that kept me from it.”

  “I came to see the boss,” said Harrison.

  “He ain’t seeing no one,” said the man. “Fact, he’d be sorer than hell if he knowed I didn’t shoot you. Told me to. ‘Plug anybody comes up the trail,’ he said.”

  “I got a message from Doc Falconer,” said Harrison.

  The man’s jaw dropped. “But, Doc …”

  Then his mouth snapped shut and he jerked the rifle up.

  Hoofs clattered from the opposite slope and the man, gun almost to his shoulder, hesitated.

  The horseman rounded a bend below the pile of boulders, reined in his horse.

  “Hello, Westman,” said Harrison.

  Westman sat his horse, staring at Harrison, then he spoke to Spike.

  “Put down that gun,” he said. “You might have killed the man.”

  Spike muttered feebly. “But the boss said to shoot anyone that came.…”

  “Yes, sure, he said that. But he didn’t know that Harrison was coming.”

  “You know this jasper?” asked Spike, in amazement.