Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“You win, mister,” Culver told the muddy man. “You made a bigger splash than I did.”

The man lumbered forward a step or two, pig-eyes glaring from above the bushy beard. Then his arm was moving, coming up and crooking, pistoning down for the gun butt at his side.

Culver’s fingers snapped around his six-gun’s grip and spun it free of leather. His wrist jerked to the impact of the recoil.

Out on the sidewalk the bear-like man straightened out of his gunning crouch, straightened until it seemed that he was standing on his tiptoes, while a tiny stream of red came out of his forehead.

He tottered, the gun dropped from his fingers, then he fell, like a tree would fall, stiff and straight. His head and shoulders splashed into the mud, but his boots stayed on the sidewalk.

Culver turned to face the porch. Slowly he lifted his six and blew across the muzzle to clear away the smoke.

“Perhaps,” he suggested softly, “one of you gentlemen wouldn’t mind stepping out into the street to get my carpetbag.”

They stood still and silent, watching him with steady cold eyes, but he noticed that their hands were very careful not to move toward their belts.

Culver sighed. “I should hate to insist,” he told them.

One of them moved out of the crowd and started down the stairs, hobbling on the wooden peg that served him for a right leg. The peg tapped loudly in the silence as the man inched slowly down the steps.

“Wait a second,” Culver said sharply. “You aren’t the one to do it. You didn’t laugh half loud enough when I was lying out there.”

He singled out a man with his six-gun barrel. “Now, that gent there,” he told the crowd, “was fair beside himself. I never saw a man get so much entertainment out of such a simple thing. …”

“If you think I’m going out to get your bag,” the man roared at him, “you’re loco.”

Culver shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose you have a gun,” he said.

He saw the man’s face go white and drawn.

He blustered. “If you think. …”

“Shoot or wade,” Culver told him, almost indifferently.

Another man spoke quietly, sharply. “For God’s sake, Perkins, go and get it. You wouldn’t have a chance.”

Perkins looked around, searching the faces that ringed him in.

His shoulders drooped. “All right,” he said.

He came slowly down the steps, crossed the sidewalk, stepped gingerly out into the mud. The mud was to his knees when he reached the bag, tugged it out of the grip of the clinging gumbo and brought it back. Carefully he set it on the sidewalk, climbed the stairs again.

Culver searched the faces on the porch.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

One or two heads nodded.

“Just want to be sure no one feels he’s been slighted,” Culver told them.

No one seemed to be. He holstered the six-gun, picked up the carpetbag.

“One thing you fellows have to remember,” he told them. “It’s damn bad manners to push strangers into mud-holes.”

He turned and headed down the sidewalk, but behind him came a tapping and a hailing voice. “Just a minute, mister.”

He swung around and saw the peg-legged gent hurrying after him. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Peg-leg fished a notebook from his pocket, flipped the pages, took a pencil stub from behind his ear and wet it on his tongue.

“I wonder if I could have your name,” he said.

Culver started at the question. “Why, I suppose you can. Culver. Grant Culver.”

The man wrote with cramped and laboring fingers.

“From where?” he asked.

“From the Mississippi,” Culver told him. “Sometimes the Missouri.”

“The jasper you smoked out,” said Peg-leg, “was Stover. He had a big time pushing people in the mud. Thought it was a joke.”

He closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, stuck the pencil stub behind his ear. “Thank you very much,” he said and started to turn away.

“Say, wait a second,” Culver told him. “What’s all this about?”

“Vital statistics,” Peg-leg said.

“You mean you get the names of everyone who comes to town.”

“Most of them,” Peg-leg said. “Once in a while I miss a few.”

“Have you got a Nancy and Robert Atwood? They should have come in yesterday.”

Peg-leg got out his notebook, thumbed it through. “Yep, here they are. Got in yesterday. Staying at the Antlers Hotel just down the street. Gal’s a looker. Brother’s an engineer and damn poor poker player.”

He snapped the book shut, put it in his pocket. “That will be a buck,” he said.

“A what?”

“A buck. A dollar. A cartwheel. For information. I don’t give out information free of charge.”

Culver gasped. “Oh, I see,” he said. He took a dollar from his pocket, handed it to the man. He took it, touched his ragged hat by way of thanks.

“Anytime you want to know something just come to me,” he said. “If I don’t know, I’ll find out.”

“I wonder—” Culver began.

“Yes. What is it? Want to know something else?” Peg-leg’s hand was dipping in his pocket for the book.

Culver shook his head. “Nope. Just skip it. Some other time, perhaps.”

“Okay,” Peg-leg said cheerfully. He turned around and hobbled down the street.

Culver stared after him, scrubbing his chin thoughtfully with his hand. Then he picked up his bag and headed down the street toward the Antlers Hotel.

Gun Gulch was a seething brew of humanity turned mad by the gold-germ running in its veins. Its one main street was churned to a strip of paste-like, sucking mud by chugging wagon wheels, by the pounding, straining hoofs of horses bringing in the freight that built the false-front stores and stocked them with the needs of the frontier brood.

Back in Antelope town, Culver had been told in way of warning:

“Gun Gulch is a tough town. You walk in the middle of the street and you mind your business.”

And that, he thought, standing at the window of his room, was right. Walk in the middle of the street, unless you got pushed off. Deliberately, by a man with a black beard and pig-eyes that watched every move you made.

The name of the place had been the Crystal Bar. That would be Hamilton’s place. Hamilton might have heard of Farson, might be able to tell him something of him. Certainly, if Farson passed through Gun Gulch, Hamilton would have known it.

Culver frowned, thinking back on his past associations with Hamilton. A man that made a little shiver run up your shoulder-blades. A man whose handshake was like grabbing a flabby fish that was sweating just a little. And the worst of it was that if Hamilton had no word of Farson, he would have to ask the man for a job. That dollar he had given Peg-leg had been almost his last.

Maybe Peg-leg had Farson in his notebook. He had almost asked him and then had decided against it. Hamilton would keep his mouth shut and Peg-leg probably wouldn’t. Culver grinned, remembering the little man tapping along on his wooden peg.

The first lamps of evening were blooming out of the windows along the street, throwing splashes of orange and yellow light across the crowded sidewalks and out into the muddy road. A wagon went past, piled high with freight. From where he stood, Culver could hear the high, shrill profanity of the teamster above the babble of the street.

Letting himself out the door, he headed for the stairs, had almost reached them when a voice called from the hall behind him. He swung around and saw Nancy Atwood, standing in front of an open door almost opposite his own.

“Grant Culver,” she said, “will you come and say hello to me.”

He walked toward her, smiling. “I was wondering when I’d see you. A man with a wooden leg told me you had put up here.”