Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

Steve nodded. “East place to string a fence. Not more’n half a mile and trees you can use for posts.”

“That’s the idea. And another thing. Can I keep your gun awhile? Had to leave so quick I couldn’t get my own.”

“Sure,” said Steve. “Joe’s got lots of them. Damnest preacher ever I see. Got a bottle cached out and an arsenal of guns. Always figured preachers were downright peaceable.”

Cornish swung his horse around, headed for the valley.

Looking back, he saw Molly Hays standing in the doorway, watching after him.

Cornish squatted on his heels in the shade of a tree and rolled himself a smoke. Far below lay the valley of the Cottonwood, a burnished strip of green that ran between ochre-yellow hills. And spread across the valley, in a straggling line, thin in some places, bunched and fat in others, was the Tumbling K herd.

Cornish struck the match against his thumbnail and lighted the smoke.

Smart, he told himself. Smart as wolves. Letting the cattle move up the valley slowly, not pushing things too hard, not forcing a quick decision. Giving the nesters plenty of time to think it over, time to figure out what a range war meant. Let one family pile its possessions on a wagon and start moving out and the whole valley would follow, one by one, realizing that a divided force could not stand against the ranchers’ march.

Smart and cold-blooded.

Smoking quietly, he considered. The cattle would not reach the Narrows before dark, moving at the rate they were. That gave him time to string the wire under the cover of darkness, to talk the nesters over to the possibility of defending those thin strands of steel—a chance to make them see that wire gave them a chance to make a stand, to break the Tumbling K.

Carefully he crushed out the cigarette, remounted the horse and moved along the hills.

The sun had started down the western slope of the sky when he reached the Narrows, where the valley narrowed to a half mile throat between hundred foot bluffs cut by deep ravines gashing down to the valley floor. Sparse clumps of trees ran across the valley and for a moment, sitting his horse, he mapped out the fence line mentally, sketching it from tree to tree.

He clucked to the horse and started down one of the gullies that led into the valley.

A mile above the Narrows lay the Russell place and as he rode toward it, Cornish saw that at least a dozen horses stood slack hipped in front of the cabin, while men sat about on the doorstep and other perched on the corral fence.

They watched him silently as he rode up, none of them offering greeting.

“Howdy, men,” he said.

They stared back stolidly, almost angrily.

John Russell rose slowly from the doorstep, advanced a few paces toward him.

“Cornish,” he said, gruffly, “you’re not wanted here.”

“Still scared?” asked Cornish, softly.

Russell bristled. “Not scared. Just sensible. What’s the use of fighting when the Tumbling K will buy us out.”

“Buy you out?”

“Sure, we talked with Titus. He made us an offer.”

“You’re wrong,” Cornish declared. “They aren’t buying you out, they’re buying you off. Paying you nuisance money to get rid of you without too much trouble.”

“We’re taking it,” snapped Russell. “We’re selling out!”

“So you’re moving on,” said Cornish. “You’re licked and moving on. You’ll look for a place as good as this and you may never find it. You’ll live out of a wagon and you’ll be without a home. You’ll go back to being wagon men again.”

A great black-bearded man stepped up alongside Russell, face sullen and angry.

“What would you have us do?” he asked and a threat ran through his words.

“I’m offering you a way to stop the Tumbling K,” said Cornish. “I’m bringing out a load of wire. String it across the Narrows and stand back of it with guns. Serve notice on the Tumbling K that any man or critter that touches that wire is fair game.”

“And you’ll grab a gun and stand there with us?” asked Russell, almost sarcastically.

“Damn right I will!” Cornish snapped out.

The black-bearded man slowly shook his head.

“Ain’t no good,” he said.

“Billings,” demanded Cornish, “can you think of a better way?”

Russell’s hand dipped down deliberately, hauled out the six-gun that he wore.

“Get going, Cornish,” he said, “before I let you have it. We don’t want to see any more of you or your damned barb wire. If it hadn’t been for your barb wire talk we’d kept on peaceable. It was you that go the mess stirred up.”

Cornish flicked his eyes from face to face, read the same answer in all of them. Slowly, he wheeled the horse about and rode away, back toward the Narrows.

So this is the end of it, he thought. What was the use of trying to fight when the men you fought for didn’t want to fight—when all they wanted to do was run off with their tails between their legs.

He could well understand their not wanting to fight, not wanting to subject their families to the terrors of range war—the burning cabin and the gutted buildings, the flaming haystacks and the swift shot in the dark, the man coming home draped across the saddle.

But there had to be a time when men would fight. There had to be something that was worth fighting for. And the valley of the Cottonwood, he told himself, must be one of those things, one of those principles, one of those rights for which men always had been willing to haul out their guns.

The horse climbed slowly up the gully that led to the heights above the Narrows. Cornish, slumped in the saddle, thinking, rocked with the horse’s careful pace along the rocky slope.

At first the sound meant nothing—a sharp, short pinging sound that was dimmed by distance—just another sound with the shrill singing of the insects in cliff-side bushes, the chatter of a squirrel down among the cedars.

Then it came again and he jerked erect.

A shot!

The sound came again, the sharp, spiteful spitting of a high power rifle—and on its heels the crash of whipping six-guns.

Cornish yelled at the horse and the animal plunged up the trail, sending a shower of pebbles rattling down the gully.

The guns were an empty rattle in the wind as Cornish topped the bluffs and the horse lengthened out into a racing gallop.

A mile beyond, as they topped a ridge, Cornish saw the wagon, saw the riders who raced beside it with their smoking six-guns.

Joe Wicks stood in the wagon’s front, beard flying in the wind, whip lashing at the crowbait team. The tattered canvas looked like shredded sails, jerking on the bows set in the wagon’s bed and the team was running like scared rabbits.

The wheels hit a hidden rock and the wagon lurched, sailed for a good six feet with all four wheels off the ground, struck the ground and bounced soggily. The team kept on running as Joe Wicks yelled and shrieked.

Crouched beside Wicks, smoking rifle leveled, squatted Steve. Beside Steve was another figure—gingham and golden hair, and as Cornish watched in frozen wonder the girl raised a gun and fired.

The horse was plunging down the slope and Cornish yelled—a savage yell jerked from the bottom of his lungs.

Ahead of him the six-guns yammered as the riders rushed the wagon and the two rifles talked back huskily. One of the bows holding up the canvas buckled, hit and splintered by a bullet.

Cornish stiffened himself in the saddle, brought up his gun and fired.

Splinters flew from the wagon box and a bullet, glancing off a tire, whined its way into the sky.

The rifles crashed with a steady tempo and powder-smoke swirled like a crazy cloud above the bouncing wagon.