Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

The stars blinked out and the wind in the cottonwood was a roaring sound that thundered in his brain—a roaring sound that suddenly was staccato, like a series of explosions.

The ground came up and hit him and the rope loosened about his neck and his starving lungs drew in great gulps of air. Slobbering, whimpering, dazed, he crawled along the ground, hitching himself along like a twisting snake, one thought only in his mind—to get away from the tree that had held the rope.

The moaning of the wind in the cottonwoods came back and his eyes came open. He flopped over on his back and saw the stars burning in the sky, burning with an impish, flickering light that made a glittering dance.

A footstep crunched nearby and he tried to crawl, but he was too tired.

A voice said: “Where are you, Charley? Where the hell have you gone to?”

Cornish sat bolt upright and croaked, his battered throat refusing to form words.

The man moved through the night, scuffing through the grass, his figure looming darkly.

“Steve!” croaked Cornish.

The bartender knelt down, loosened the rope, flung it over Cornish’s head.

“Nicked one of the dirty sons,” he said, “but they got away.”

“That was you shooting, then,” squeaked Cornish. “Heard something that sounded like shots just before they dropped me.”

Steve’s knife sawed through the ropes that bound Cornish’s hands.

“Yeah,” said Steve, “I quit the job. Figured I might as well. Tumbling K boys would be out after my hide for what I done this afternoon.”

Cornish massaged his throat, trying to work out the burn and fever where the rope had been.

“Manage it down to the creek?” asked Steve. “Drink of water would do you good.”

“Got to get down to the Cottonwood,” said Cornish. “Something’s happened down there. Titus said there wasn’t going to be a meeting.”

“Seems you should have had enough for one night,” protested Steve, “without asking for any more.”

“They got me sore,” Cornish explained. “They tried to rough me up and they tried to hang me. Now there’re trying to mess up my wire deal.”

“O.K.,” agreed Steve. “O.K., I’ll let you have my horse to get down there and lend you a gun. And you use that gun—don’t hold back a minute if you get backed into a tight.”

Cornish rose shakily to his feet. “Guess you’re right, Steve. About time to start using a gun.”

He headed for the creek. “I’ll get that drink,” he said.

The bartender’s horse was waiting when he came back to the trail.

“Here’s the gun,” said Steve. “Buckle it around you and keep it handy.”

“Guess I owe you some thanks,” said Cornish.

“Not a one,” protested Steve. “Glad of the fun. Figured I’d better trail along behind you just to sort of check up. Them human rattlers out at the Tumbling K are liable to do most anything. Can’t trust them for a minute.”

Cornish swung into the saddle, headed down the trail. His throat still burned with a throbbing ache and it was a torture to turn his head. His brain still buzzed with a keening pain and his mouth was dry as the bitter dust that lay along the trail.

But within him a rage was growing—a cold and twisted rage against the Tumbling K, against Titus, against the old system of free range that said a man could keep all the land he could seize and hold.

Once wire fenced in the valley of the Cottonwood, the Tumbling K would be barred from the pasture and the water its herds had used for more than twenty years. Used by custom rather than by right, by six-gun power rather than by legal status.

The nesters hadn’t bothered them so much at first, for the punchers still threw the herds down into the valley despite the scattered cabins, bluffing their way in and out with the six-guns they packed. But the wire would make if different. Wire was a definite thing, a deadline, a sign of legal possession—something that marked off one man’s land from another man’s.

The trail broke free of the shaggy hills, came out into the wide valley of the Cottonwood, forked north and south. Cornish took the south fork.

A mile beyond he drew up before the huddled group of buildings that belonged to old Bert Hays. The place was silent and lightless.

A dog came tearing out of the barn, barking savagely. It reached Cornish’s horse and circled it, yapping viciously.

The cabin door slammed open and a man with a rifle stepped out—a man barefooted and clad only in his underwear.

“Hello, Bert,” yelled Cornish to make himself heard above the barking of the dog.

The gun muzzle, trained at his head, never wavered.

“So it’s you,” spat Hays. “Come down to raise some more hell in the valley.”

“Come down to see what happened,” declared Cornish. “Understand the meeting was called off.”

Hays yelled at the dog. “Shut up! Shut up before I take a club to you!”

The dog fell silent, trotted off, tail between its legs, sat down to watch from a safe distance.

Hays spat into the dust. “Yeah, it was called off.”

“Called off by the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.

“Don’t matter who called it off,” the nester bellowed. “None of your damn business who called it off. It’s been called off. We don’t want no wire. That’s all you need to know.”

Cornish leaned forward in his saddle. “They bluffed you out. They threatened you and you folded up. Every last one of you put your tail between your legs and crawled.”

The old man hauled back the hammer of the rifle. “Cornish,” he warned, “I’ve shot men for less than that.”

“You should have started on the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.

“All you care about is selling wire,” yelled Hays. “You don’t care what happens after that. You don’t care how many men get shot across that wire after you have sold it.”

“They sent three men to run me out of town this afternoon,” said Cornish, hotly, “and I ran them out instead. They just tried hanging me and that didn’t work either. You’re not the only one taking the risk in this deal of ours.”

“We’re the ones that got to go on living here,” yelled Hays. “We’re the ones that have to protect that wire after it is up. We decided we’d rather live at peace without no wire.”

“Live at peace!” Cornish shouted. “Man, don’t you know there’ll never be any peace along the Cottonwood until you call the Tumbling K—call them and make it stick. As long as you have the grass and water that they want, wire or no wire, you’ll never have any peace. You’re going to have to fight and you may as well fight over wire as anything else.”

“Get out of here,” screamed Hays. “Get out of here before I put a bullet in you!”

A swift figure stepped from the cabin door, reached out a hand, wrenched the rifle away from Hays with one quick motion.

Cornish lifted his hat. “Good evening, Miss Hays,” he said.

Her face was a white blur in the starlight, but he could tell from the poise of her body, the tilt of her head, that she was angry.

Her words bit like the swift lash of a snarling whip.

“I’m ashamed of you,” she said. “Ashamed of the both of you. Two grown men, standing here, yelling at one another like two alley cats.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” said Cornish.

“By God, I’m not,” Hays bellowed. “He can’t come riding in in the middle of the night and tell me my own business. He can’t make me buy his fence if I don’t want to buy it. He don’t care a hang about what happens after the fence is sold …”

“Father,” yelled Molly Hays. “Father you be still!”

The old man suddenly fell silent. The dog sat watching, ears cocked forward.