Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

“Good evening,” said Cornish.

“The peace of the Lord be on you,” the scarecrow replied.

Startled, Cornish sat in the saddle, staring at the man.

“A preacher?” he asked.

“That’s right, my friend. I carry the Word to strange corners of the earth.”

“Nothing strange about this corner of the earth,” protested Cornish.

“Any place that has not heard the Word is strange,” the old man told him. “This Silver Bow, now, it has no church?”

Cornish shook his head. “I don’t believe it has. Five saloons, but not a single church.”

“And no man of God?”

“That’s right,” said Cornish. “Not a single preacher.”

“Then,” declared the scarecrow, “it is the place for me.”

“What denomination?” asked Cornish.

The old man made a gesture that was almost contempt. “I just heard the call and went. I said to myself, if old Joe Wicks can do anything that will please the Lord, he’ll bust a gut a-trying.”

Loco, thought Cornish. Loco as a pet coon.

“And you, my friend,” the old man asked. “What might be your calling?”

“Me?” said Cornish. “I’m just a barb wire salesman.”

“You’ll be riding back this way?”

Cornish nodded.

“Going to a meeting down in Cottonwood valley. Make me or break me.”

“Wonder would you do something for me,” asked the preacher.

“If I can, I will,” said Cornish.

“Keep an eye peeled for a little bucket, will you? Must of bounced out of the wagon. Looked all over and I can’t find it. Used it to cook my oatmeal in.”

“Sure will.”

“Wouldn’t want to step down and have a cup of coffee?”

“Can’t stop,” said Cornish.

He reined the horse around. Back on the trail, he looked behind him, saw the ragged old man standing outlined against the fire, with one arm raised in farewell.

Cornish kept watch for the bucket that had fallen from the wagon, but his thoughts were on other thing, were running along the trail ahead of him to the meeting down at Russell’s cabin, where the nesters of Cottonwood valley would decide whether or not they would buy the wire to fence in their valley against the ranging herds of the Tumbling K.

Swiftly Cornish ran over in his mind the men he could depend on. Billings and Hobbs and probably Goodman. Russell was for it, but not as enthusiastic as he might be. Old Bert Hays was against it because he said it would only stir up trouble with the Tumbling K. And a lot of the men would listen to what Bert had to say.

Molly might have helped, but she wouldn’t listen to him, Cornish thought. She had a way with Bert. Orneriest man in the whole dang valley, his neighbors said of Bert, but that gal of his’n can twist him around her finger.

Selling wire was tough work—and dangerous, at least out here where the big cattle outfits regarded wire as the devil’s doings, looked upon it as something that barred the way to watering places, cut off pasturage they had called their own by the right of usage. Wire was the thing that would doom free range and the cattlemen weren’t having any of it when they could do anything about it.

Sometimes they did unpleasant things, thought Cornish. Unpleasant things had happened to Anderson and Melvin. And not only them alone, but other barb wire men who had run up against the antagonism of the cattle barons.

The horse trotted down a slope and Cornish heard the sound of trickling water—a little unnamed stream that ran into the Cottonwood five miles or so below.

The trail leveled off and ran beside the stream. Bunches of cottonwoods loomed up, their bushy tops black against the stars. The horse’s hoofs clopped through the trail dust with a muffled, drumming thud. On the hills above a coyote yapped and far off an owl chuckled over some quiet joke.

A dark shape moved beside a cottonwood and Cornish pulled the horse to a halt, half swung across the trail.

“Make a move,” said a voice from the shadow, “and I’ll plug you sure as hell.”

For a moment dark panic swirled inside Cornish’s brain, then smoothed out. No use of running. No use of trying to fight back, for he had no gun. Just wait and see what happened.

Horses moved from beneath the cottonwood and blocked the trail. Metal gleamed in the starlight and the men were black shapes watching him.

“Going to a meeting?” one of them asked and Cornish, remembering the voice back in the saloon, recognizing the angular shadow that sat upon the horse, knew that it was Titus. The other two riders sat silently.

Titus chuckled viciously. “There ain’t going to be no meeting, Cornish.”

“Nice of you,” said Cornish, “to ride out and tell me.”

“You’re too damn smart,” snarled Titus. “We’ll take that out of you.”

“With a rope,” said one of the other men as he moved behind Cornish and forced his hands behind his back.

“Steady,” snapped Titus. “Stay right where you are.”

His gun made a threatening motion.

The ropes bit into Cornish’s wrists, bit and burned with the savage strength of the man who pulled them tight and tied them.

“Titus,” said Cornish, half in a whisper.

“Yes,” said Titus, “but it won’t do you any good to squall. We’re going to haul you up and leave you hanging there. You can crawl all you want to and it won’t help you none.”

Cornish fought for calmness, made his tongue move in a mouth that suddenly was dry as cotton.

“You can hang me,” he said, “and a dozen others like me, Titus, but you won’t stop the wire. It’s coming, sure as God made green apples, it’s coming out into this country to hold your cows where they belong. It’s going to mark the land that’s yours and the land that’s the other fellow’s and when it comes guns won’t be worth a damn against it.”

A harsh, biting loop was flung out of the darkness behind him, brushed his face and settled on his shoulders.

“You talk too much,” rasped Titus savagely.

The rope jerked tight and for a single instant Cornish felt the blind rush of overwhelming fear. His muscles tensed and his feet moved swiftly, but the gun that Titus held jammed itself into his belly and he stopped, stood rigid—rigid with a night-born terror talking in the wind-rustling of the cottonwood above him, in the murmur of the creek that hurried down its stream bed.

He clamped his teeth and felt the muscles of his jaws go stiff. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t beg or whine. That was what these men wanted—a show before they hanged him. A little laughter before they strung him up.

The rope jerked tight again for an instant, eased up for a second and then tightened into a steady pull that was tugging at his body. They had thrown the rope over the lowest limb of the cottonwood, he knew, and were holding it taut.

A voice asked. “Shall we let ‘er rip?”

Titus holstered his gun. “Swing him up,” he said.

The rope tightened with a savage yank and Cornish tried to cry out as a band of fire burned around his throat, as his neck and shoulder muscles screamed with wrenching pain—but his tongue was leaden and there was no breath to yell with and the world was spinning in a giddy dance of stars and tree tops.

His unbound feet danced on empty air and he strained for an instant to tear his hands free of the rope that held them, his body twitching and quivering, mind fighting against the strangling black mist that rolled in from the stars. His lungs burned and his mouth gulped air that could not reach the lungs.

The mists of darkness rolled in wispily and clung to him and seeped into his mind, so that his thoughts were dull and he knew that his body was twirling slowly on the rope that held it off the ground.