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

There was a long silence while Culver smoked and Hamilton teetered in the chair.

“Now what?” Hamilton finally asked.

“Nothing, I guess,” said Culver. “No trace of him. Can’t even be sure that he came here. I asked all along the line, but there was nothing doing. Doesn’t prove he didn’t come, of course, but I have no proof that he did.”

“Want to stick around for a few days before you go back,” Hamilton told him, easily. “Interesting town.”

Culver shook his head. “Can’t go back. I’m next door to dead broke.”

He waited but the man across the desk kept silent.

Finally Culver said, “Thought you might have a job for me. I still can handle a deck all right and I know my players.”

Hamilton eyes him closely, cunning in his face. “Figure you could do a trick or two?”

“Not a chance,” Culver told him, curtly. “I always played them straight. No funny business. I won because I was a better player than the other fellow. Stands to reason I would have been. It was my business, but just his way of having fun.”

“Can’t do it that way here,” Hamilton declared. “This is a short shot proposition. Mines may peter out any day. Got to clean up when you can. Got a lot of cash invested. Have to get it back.”

He tilted forward in the chair, took his thumbs out of the armholes of the vest. “How about a loan?” he asked.

Culver shook his head. “I’ll look around a bit.”

“Come to think of it,” said Hamilton, “I might be able to give you a job.”

“Swamping out, maybe,” Culver said, bitterly.

“Nope, a good job. There’s a place across the street, see. Goes by the name of Golden Slipper. Given me a lot of trouble. Hombre by the name of Brown runs it. Barney Brown. Things going on over there I’d like to know about.”

Culver hurled the half smoked cigar into the spittoon angrily. “I’m no spy,” he said, shortly.

“Let’s talk sense.” Hamilton spoke easily. “You’re the only man I can trust. Maybe we don’t like one another, but I can trust you and that’s more than I can say for anyone else around here. All you’ve got to do is go over and see Brown. He will grab you in a minute. Cripes, after you killing one of my men and all, he’ll—”

Culver sat bolt upright in the chair. “One of your men!”

Hamilton laughed at him shortly. “Sure, Stover. I thought you knew.”

“Hell, no,” said Culver. “He was just someone that got in my hair. Wouldn’t have nothing come of it if he hadn’t gone for his gun. Then, naturally, I had to. …”

“Certainly,” Hamilton told him. “Certainly. No need to make excuses.”

“Perkins one of your men, too, I suppose.”

Hamilton nodded.

“Lord, what a mangy lot.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Hamilton. “Hard to get good men. That’s why I need you.”

Culver rose. “The answer is no, Hamilton. I’m not doing any spying for you or any other man.”

Hamilton leaned back again and inserted his thumbs into his vest, rocked gently.

“If I were you, Culver, I’d walk sort of easy. Stover had some friends, you know.”

“I suppose that’s a threat,” said Culver.

“Frankly,” Hamilton told him, “that’s just exactly what it is.”

The street had quieted somewhat, but men still moved along the sidewalks and shrieks of drunken laughter came from the open windows. Across the street was the Golden Slipper and next to it a print shop. GUN GULCH GAZETTE said the uneven sign scrawled across the window in black paint. Behind the window a man perched on a stool at a type cabinet, shoulders bent above his work.

A hand tugged at Culver’s sleeve and he turned around. The man with the peg-leg stood beside him.

“Good evening,” said Peg-leg. He pulled the notebook from his pocket, took the pencil stub from behind his ear. “Wonder if you would tell me how to spell Atwood’s name. Afraid I got it wrong. Don’t mind about the other words, but I like to get the names right.”

“I thought you had his name once!”

“Did,” said Peg-leg. “But I got to put it down again. He got shot, you know.”

“You mean you put down all the shootings?”

“Most of them,” said Peg-leg, proudly. “Maybe I miss a few of the piddling ones, but I catch the main ones.”

Culver grinned. “You should be a newspaper reporter.”

Peg-leg scratched his ear. “Am, sort of. Jake, over there at the Gazette, gets lots of his stuff from me. Folks pay me to get things in the paper about them and Jake gives me a drink or buys me a dinner for bringing him the stuff, so it works out all right both ways.”

“By the way,” asked Culver, “what’s your name?”

“It’s Harvey,” said the man, “but they mostly call me Crip.”

He poised the pencil above the notebook. “Now, if you will tell me how to spell Atwood?”

Culver told him, then asked a question: “How do I get across the street? Have to wade?”

The peg-legged man chuckled. “Feller up the street has a plank throwed across the mud. He charges you a buck.”

Across the street and his dollar paid, Culver stood for a moment in front of the Golden Slipper, listening to the sound of revelry that came from behind the door.

“Brown will snap you up,” Hamilton had said.

Culver shrugged. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to do it, but not yet.

He went on past the place, turned in at the printshop door.

The man sitting on the stool looked up as he came in.

“You’re Jake, I suppose?” said Culver.

The man put aside the type stick, slid off the stool and came toward him.

“That’s it, stranger. Jake Palmer is the handle.”

“Mine is Culver.” Culver put out his hand and the man took it in his bony, ink-stained paw.

“You must be the gent that plumb perforated Stover.”

Culver nodded.

“What can I do for you, stranger?” Jake asked. “Any hombre that removes a skunk like Stover is a friend of mine.”

“Thought maybe you could help me,” Culver told him. “I’m looking for a friend by the name of Farson. Mark Farson. Thought maybe you had heard of him.”

Jake put up one hand and scratched his hair-thin head. “Seems as how there was a gent by that name around a while back. But I can’t rightly remember. Didn’t hang around long, seems to me.”

He showed snagged, tobacco-stained teeth in an apologetic grim. “Sorry I can’t be no more help than that.”

“Crip told me about you,” said Culver. “I figured maybe you might know.”

Jake shook his head. “That Crip gets me into more trouble. Goes around claiming he’s collecting news for me. If it wasn’t that he was cracked he’d been buzzard meat long ago. Got enough stuff in that danged notebook of his to convict half the town if it could be proved.”

“He seemed all right to me,” said Culver.

“He ain’t,” insisted Jake. “He’s crazy as a coot and everybody knows it. That’s why they don’t pay attention to him. If they did, he’d be so full of holes he downright wouldn’t hold whiskey.”

“Seems like a lively place,” declared Culver. “Crip probably finds plenty to write down.”

“Mister,” Jake declared, solemnly, “this town ain’t seen nothing yet. Hell is bound to pop one of these days and when it does you’ll walk up to your ankles in blood out there in the street. Hamilton and Brown are getting all squared off. …”

“Hamilton?”

“Bet your boots. Him and Brown, you see, have got the only two big places here. The little ones don’t count. Don’t amount to shucks to them palaces of sin run by Hamilton and Brown. Both of them making money hand over fist and they still ain’t satisfied. Each one of them wants to run the other out. Been importing gunslicks and one of these days there’s going to be a showdown.”