Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

Cornish stopped, picked up the gun and tossed it across the bar to Steve.

Squint clawed his way erect beside the bar, stood clinging to it with one hand, while he wiped the blood out of his eyes with the other.

“Why the hell,” demanded Steve, “don’t you go ahead and finish off the dirty coyotes? They came in asking for it.”

Cornish shook his head.

“Guess they had enough.”

But even as he spoke, he saw Squint’s hand streaking for the holster, saw the glint of metal flashing in the light.

Cornish flung the battered chair with all his might, then lunged to one side. The gun roared and a window crashed with a muted sound as the bullet smashed the glass.

The chair slammed into Squint and staggered him, sent him reeling back along the bar. Cornish dived, arms looping for the legs of the reeling man. One arm missed, but the other caught and he hugged the legs against his chest, carried the yelling Squint to the floor with him.

Quickly Cornish sprang to his feet. He saw his antagonist rising in front of him. Blued steel flashed in a vicious arc and Cornish ducked, caught the blow of the smashing six-gun on his shoulder, swung his right with the hunched power of a pivoting heel behind it. His fist scraped Squint’s elbow, angled down against the ribs, skidded across them, slammed into the stomach. He heard the whoosh of the breath going out of the man before him.

Cornish leaned against the bar, gasping for breath.

The doorway, he saw, was crowded with watching faces, while others peered through the windows, men pushing one another to get a better look. News of the fight in the Longhorn bar apparently had spread rapidly through the little town of Silver Bow.

Titus had crawled against the bar and propped himself against it. The red-haired man lay still in the center of the room.

Squatted on top of the bar, Steve was talking to Titus.

“Make one move for that gun, Titus, and I’ll put one through your brisket.”

The bartender blew fiercely through his nostrils.

“This fight,” he announced to the crowd, “has been fair so far and I’m plumb set on seeing that it keeps on being fair.”

Cornish pushed himself away from the bar, picked up another chair, spoke to Squint Douglas.

“I don’t just fight for fun,” he said. “Don’t fight often, but when I do, I fight for keeps. What’s your pleasure, Squint?”

Squint stared sourly at him, dabbing at his bloody beard.

He didn’t answer Cornish, spoke to Titus instead. “Let’s get going, Jim.”

Slowly Titus heaved himself erect, stooped to pick up his hat. He socked it on his head and tottered to the door.

“Maybe,” suggested Steve, “some of you gents would get Red out of here. He clutters up the place.”

Two volunteers came in, lifted the unconscious man and carried him out. The others streamed into the saloon.

Steve hopped off the bar, stood back of it.

“Drinks are on the house,” he said.

Slowly, Cornish swung around, walked to a card table in the back of the room, sat down on a chair. Suddenly he felt tired.

The thing that he feared had come and he’d won the first round, but this, he knew, was no more than a mere beginning. After this the Tumbling K would be out for blood. The trio who had walked in the door a while ago had meant to rough him up, to scare him out of town. Next time they would play for keeps.

Maybe Anderson out in the Yellowstone country had won the first round, too. But Anderson had disappeared. Back in Jacobs’ office, there was little doubt as to what had finally happened.

Most of the crowd had drifted away—only a few had gone up to the bar. Even one on the house had been no attraction when staying there and drinking might have been construed as approval of what had happened to the three men from the Tumbling K.

Got the town in the hollow of their hand, thought Cornish bitterly. One big cow outfit rules the whole damn country. Even those nesters out on the Cottonwood had been scared to death. It had taken some fast talking to make them even admit that they wanted barb wire.

One man came slowly from the bar, drink in hand, crossed the room and stood in front of Cornish’s table.

“You don’t scare easy, son,” he said.

“Hell, no,” said Cornish, shortly. “There were only three of them.”

The man turned around and went back to the bar.

One by one they drifted away and the room was empty.

Steve came out from behind the bar and sat down across from Cornish.

“You stuck out your neck,” said Cornish. “You shouldn’t have done that, using the gun on them.”

Steven laughed a little bitterly.

“I’m sick of the job, anyhow,” he said. “Time to be moving on.”

He drummed his fingers along the table.

“First time anyone stood up to the Tumbling K,” he said. “First time anyone ever pushed them around a little. They won’t like it, Charley. They’ll come loaded for bear next time. You better buckle on a gun.”

Cornish shook his head. “My job is selling wire,” he said. “Not fighting. Besides, I won’t be around long. The nesters are having a meeting tonight at Russell’s.”

“To decide whether they’ll buy the wire or not?”

“That’s the idea. And they better buy it, or they won’t be here next year. Without the wire, the Tumbling K will push their stock down into the valley and every nester will be starved out.”

The bartender shook his head. “There’ll be fresh blood on the wire,” he said slowly.

Cornish got up, walked to the bar and came back with a bottle and two glasses.

“Feel like I need that one on the house,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have offered it to them,” Steve declared, moodily. “Look at the ones that turned it down. Spooked of their own shadows, that’s what’s the matter with them. The Tumbling K gang has run this town too long. Every one of them jumps ten feet high whenever Titus snaps the whip.”

“Titus just the foreman, ain’t he?”

“That’s everything he is,” said Steve. “Fellow by the name of Armstrong, Cornelius Armstrong, owns the spread. Ain’t here except a week or two each summer. Lives somewhere in the east.”

“Titus just as good as owns it, then, so far as running it is concerned.”

Steve gulped his drink and nodded. “That’s the way it is, Charley. And he’d cut his own grandma’s throat if it put ten dollars in his pocket.”

Cornish downed his own drink and got up.

“I owe you for one chair,” he said.

“Ah, forget it,” snapped Steve.

He twirled the glass in his hand, considering. “It was worth a chair,” he decided, “to see them three bullies get the hell beat out of them.”

The campfire glowed brightly in the dusk, a speck that stood out like a too-low star in the gentle swells of the heaving prairie.

Cornish saw it first when he was a mile or two away, lost it when the trail dipped down into a swale. And he wondered who would be building a campfire out there when town was so close and darkness was just falling.

The dusk was deeper and the fire glowed brighter when he topped the next swell, and riding across the level land, he saw the canted top of the small covered wagon that stood beside the fire—the covered wagon with the canvas gleaming rosy-white in the reflection of the leaping flames, the scraggy shape of two old crowbaits grazing at their picket pins, the hunched, black figure of a man with a tattered hat bending over the frying pan and coffee pot.

The man hailed him as he drew opposite the fire. Cornish swung the horse off the trail, trotted it toward the wagon.

The man straightened up beside the fire and Cornish saw that he was as much a crowbait as the horses. His clothes were little more than rags that hung about his scrawny frame, his hat was something that any other man would have thrown away many years before. The haggardness of his face showed through the ragged, unkempt beard that hung almost to his chest.