Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

There it was, a deep rut in the earth, with the ragged edges of it still crumbling. Slowly he moved the match and saw the other marks, the skidding hoof-marks of horses fighting against the neckyoke to hold the dead weight of the load on the downhill grade.

Cornish tossed the match away and got to his feet, staring out into the vast bowl of darkness that was Cottonwood valley.

The wagon had come this way and somewhere down there in the darkness, working their way slowly across the Narrows, were Joe Wicks and Steve, stringing out the wire. Two men who had no interest in barb wire or nesters, laboring in the night to work out the valley’s destiny.

And was there any use, Cornish wondered—any use at all of stringing out that wire now that Titus had carried back the word?

Cornish shook his head, blundered down the trail, careful in the dark, left arm and shoulder swaddled in the white petticoat bandage that Molly Hays had fashioned. A target in the dark that the Tumbling K could aim at.

Stones rolled beneath his boots and he fought to keep his balance. Once his bandaged shoulder scraped against a tree and he doubled up with the pain lancing through his body.

Here, beneath the trees, the night was dark as pitch, although the valley ahead was faintly lighted by the shine of stars in the cloudless sky.

At the foot of the gully, he found the beginning of the fence, three strands of wire wrapped and stapled around a scrub white oak. One hand upon the strand, he followed it across the undulating terrain of the valley, a deep pride quickening in him at the feel of stretching steel. For although some of the intervals between the trees were long, the strands were taut and sang an excited song when he tapped his gun against them.

Up ahead, he knew, Steve and Joe were stringing the three strands simultaneously, using the wagon as a stringer and a stretcher. His feet hit something in the dark and he stumbled over it. Desperately he threw himself to land on his good shoulder, save the shattered left. Wind knocked out of him, he struggled to his feet, sought the thing that tripped him. It was the abandoned core of one of the spools of wire.

At the fence again, he found the splice in the wire and wondered. One of the men stringing that wire up ahead was a man who knew barb wire and it couldn’t be Steve. Steve had spent his life behind the bars throughout the West. It must be Wicks.

Standing beside the fence, he listened, and there was no sound of hammering, no buzzing in the wire as there would have been if it were being worked with at the other end.

Terror welled up in him and he hurried along the fence, crossing the swells, stumbling down into a thicket.

Out of the trees a dark figure rose and words came through the night.

“Stand right where you are and h’ist up your paws.”

Cornish skidded to a stop, raised his right hand high.

The man came warily toward him. “What’s the matter with the other hand?” he asked.

“Shot,” said Cornish, flatly.

“Cornish!” the other man whispered fiercely. “Damn my eyes if it ain’t the boy hisself.”

He moved forward and the starlight fell across the silvered beard, the slouchy, battered hat.

“Joe Wicks!”

“Hush yourself,” Wicks cautioned. “We are lying low. One of them damned Tumbling K riders just scouted through.”

“More than likely looking to see if there was any fence,” said Cornish. “Titus got away and told them about the wire.”

“He’d better not come messin’ around,” Wicks said fiercely, “or we’ll blow his bloody guts out.”

Cornish stared at him. “You don’t sound like a preacher, Joe.”

Joe spat and to Cornish came the smell of whiskey breath.

“Ain’t no preacher,” Wicks declared. “Never was no preacher. All of that was just a disguise. Me, I’m working for the same outfit you are.”

“Ajax!”

“Exactly,” said Wicks. “Seems there were too many accidents a-happening to the fellers selling wire, too many of them dropping out of sight and turning up missing. So they sent me out here to keep an eye on you. And when I got here I found hell starting in full swing, so I did the best I could.”

He spat again. “Reckon we got a chance to stop them?”

“If the nesters will back us up,” said Cornish. “Molly went down to warn them.”

“Great gal,” declared Wicks. “Got a lot of guts. Left her old man in the doctor’s care and came along with us. Said if outsiders, meaning us and you, could stand up to the Tumbling K, it was the least that she could do.”

Another figure came stealing through the trees. “The rider just went back,” he said. “We’d better start with that wire again, pronto.”

Steve came through the darkness, peered at Cornish.

“Figured you was dead,” he said. “Titus knocked you out of the saddle slick and clean.”

Wicks chuckled thinly. “Takes more than a little lead to stop an Ajax man.”

They stood together in the darkness, listening to the high, thin whine of the wind moving in the trees and walking through the grass. From the bluffs to the west an owl laughed irrationally. The stars were a glittering net strung across the sky.

“Hey, Joe,” whispered Steve. “Haul out that bottle. When a man’s come back from the dead, we gotta drink to it.”

Wicks shuffled his feet, dug into his back pocket. The hiss of glass sliding on denim came softly through the night.

“Quiet!” snapped Cornish. “Listen!”

They stood like frozen men in an attitude of attention. Faintly at first it came, then louder … the thunder of horses’ hoofs sweeping up the valley.

Steve’s voice almost sobbed. “It’s them! And we ain’t got the wire strung!”

Cornish, listening, felt the cold weight of defeat dropping down upon him. Those hoofbeats were too far to the east … they would miss the fence entirely, would go on up the valley to catch the hesitating nesters before they had a chance to fight.

“We have to turn them,” he yelled and started to run. Steve clumped after him.

“What are you doing?” he shrieked at Cornish. “Come back, you fool! They will run you down.”

“We got to turn them,” gasped Cornish. “We have to get east of them and open up on them.”

He was out of the trees and running in the open, teeth clenched against the pain that lanced through his shoulder with every jarring step. Running a race with hoofbeats that thundered through the night, running a race with the sound of fury that was storming up the valley.

Behind him he heard the thumping of Steve’s feet and the quick, short breaths of the racing Wicks.

The ground opened beneath his feet and he was skidding down the banks of the Cottonwood, down into the water, wading across the stream, the water reaching to his waist, the suck of treacherous sands clutching at his feet.

He reached the opposite bank and clambered up in a shower of mud and crumbling clay, flopped face down in the grass and listened—and knew that they had won. The horses were west of the stream and they had outflanked them.

Slowly, confidently, his hand went back to the holster, pulled out the six-gun.

“Start shooting soon as you can see them,” he whispered. “Drive them into the fence.”

Steel gleamed in the starlight as Steve lifted out his gun and Joe Wicks, settling his body prone in the grass, was chuckling as he pushed his rifle forward.

Shadows suddenly were moving on the opposite bank, shadows that were silent except for the drum of hoofs, shadows highlighted by the gleam of stars on glittering rifle barrels.

Shouts rang out across the stream and the drum of hoofs was broken, became a threshing sound of snarled and frightened horses, like the writhing struggles of a wounded beast of prey.