Clifford Simak - The Thing in the Stone - And Other Stories

Parker’s hand slid to his holster. “Betz,” he said softly, “I don’t think Luke Atkins killed your boss, but the evidence says he did and I’ll arrest him on that. Got any more to say?”

Betz, red-faced and squat, hunched forward in the saddle. “Not another word,” he said. “That’s good enough for me.”

Parker touched the buckskin with a spur and they cantered down the hillside. The old ranch dog came out at a rheumatic lope to meet them, bawling as he came. The bawling changed to welcome when he sighted Parker and he galloped toward the house, tail wagging them forward.

Old Matt Atkins, stubby pipe sticking from his graying whiskers, struggled from the rocking chair on the sagging porch.

“Howdy, son,” he hailed and then stopped in mid-speech, eyes widening at the sight of Betz.

“Hello, Matt,” said Parker. “Luke around?”

“Guess he is somewhere. I’ll go in and tell Ma you’re here. She’s taking her nap.”

Parker raised his hand to stop him. “Not right yet,” he said. “How is she?”

The old man puffed stubbornly at the pipe, smoke drooling from his whiskers.

“Right poorly,” he told Parker. “Neither of us young as we used to be. She misses you, Clint. Don’t stop by as often as you used to.”

“I’m busy,” Parker replied, but even as he said it, he knew how lame an excuse it was. Not the way to act with folks who took you in when you were an orphan and treated you like you were their own.

The front door opened and Luke came onto the porch.

“Thought I heard you out here,” he said. “Looking for me, Clint?”

Parker nodded, moistened his lips with his tongue.

They know there’s something wrong, he told himself. Just Betz being along would tell them there was something wrong. They knew he wouldn’t ride with scum like Betz.

“What’s the matter, Clint?” asked Luke.

“Nothing much,” said Betz, speaking for the first time. “Just a little killing!”

Old Matt’s hands went out and clutched the railing of the porch. “What’s that damn land-grabber doing along with you, son?” he demanded. “Him and his yarn of killing?”

“He’s right, Matt,” Parker said. “There has been a killing. Byron Campbell was bushwhacked in Calf Canyon.”

“Hell,” Old Matt spat across the railing, “is that all. The man that done it ought to get a bounty.”

“They think Luke done it,” Parker told him quietly. “They found a .45-70 cartridge not thirty feet away from the body.”

Old Matt straightened, hobbled forward. “You’re joking, Clint,” he said. “Too early in the day for that kind of—”

“Killing,” snarled Betz, “is a damn poor kind of joke.”

Luke shook his head, befuddled. “If you found a .45-70,” he said, “it must be from that old gun of ours. Only one like it in the country. But there must be some mistake. I ain’t been off the place all day.”

“Luke ain’t had that gun down for a week,” Old Matt yelled at them. “Last time he shot it was a week ago last Sunday when he went out to get a wolf that had been hanging ’round.”

“Ah, hell,” snarled Betz, “let’s cut out the jawing. Luke’s the one that did it, all right.”

Parker swung on Betz angrily. “Damn it, keep your mouth shut!”

He turned to Luke. “We can’t try it here. Afraid you’ll have to ride to town with us.”

“You mean you are arresting me?”

Parker nodded. “I guess that’s what it amounts to.”

“So you’ve turned against us!” Old Matt bellowed. “Against the ones that raised you. The ones that’s always been your friends. You’ve tied up with the dirty, thieving land-stealers. Since you took to running around with Horton’s daughter, you—”

Luke’s hand reached out and grasped his father’s shoulder, swung him around.

“You keep out of this, Pa,” he said. “This is between Clint and me. I’ll go with him, but I’ll be right back and I’ll bring Clint home to supper with me.”

“That’s what you think,” growled Betz.

Parker was lighting the lamp against the first dusk of evening when Ann Horton stepped into his office.

She looked very slender in her checkered shirt and Levi overalls. He thought he detected a frown of worry on her pretty, freckled face.

“Good evening, Ann,” he said, soberly, suddenly glad that she was there, glad that here was someone he could talk to.

He placed the chimney on the lamp, tossed the burned-out match into the coffee-can ash tray.

She came to the desk swiftly.

“That was an awful thing to have to do, Clint,” she said.

He nodded. “Guess it was something I asked for when I took up this job of sheriffing.”

“But Luke!” she protested. “Luke is your best friend, why he’s almost like your brother.”

“That’s right,” Parker agreed. “The Atkins never treated me like an orphan. Whenever Luke had a pair of new overalls, I had a new pair, too. And old Matt gave Luke more lickings, seems like, than he gave me, although usually I was the one that got the two of us in trouble.”

He stared at the lamp, remembering. “We did all the fool things that boys will do,” he said. “We even had a secret cave where we dug for treasure and played at hiding from Indians, never telling a soul about it.”

“I know,” Ann told him, softly. “You showed me where the cave was. Remember?”

He shot a quick glance at her and saw the brightness of her eyes, as if tears were just behind them. One of his hands reached out and closed on hers atop the desk.

“Yes, I recall it, Ann. You’re the only one, but Luke and me, that knows about it to this very day.”

The girl’s voice was almost a whisper. “What are you going to do about it, Clint?”

Parker’s face hardened in the lamplight. “Luke didn’t do it,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t. And yet they found that cartridge there behind the tree and the only gun that shoots that sort of cartridge is the one old Matt brought to this country with him. I remember it from the time I was a kid. It always hung in the sitting room and once in a while old Matt would take it down and let Luke and me sight along the barrel. But he never let us use it, not then, because he said it was a man’s gun. Even now, Luke doesn’t use it often, only when he figures on some long distance shooting.”

“But Campbell was shot close, from ambush.”

“I know,” said Parker. “And that’s what I can’t understand. The bullet went in the chest and never came out. Almost as if the shot had come from far away and the bullet was kind of petered out before it hit him. But the cartridge was behind the tree, not more than thirty feet away.”

He stopped as he heard the sound of footsteps, but they continued past the door.

“Can’t say I’d of blamed Luke much if he had shot him,” he went on. “Campbell had been crowding him considerable. Shoving stock over into Luke’s meadow and down onto the creek. Kept Luke busy shoving the critters back.”

“I don’t suppose that now you’ll think any more about that job up north?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. Not with this coming up. I got to keep on being sheriff, as long as I’m needed. There are so many folks depending on me. There’s Luke and George Lane and Jack Kennedy …”

His voice ran thin and stopped, embarrassed.

“You mean,” Ann told him levelly, “you got to back the little ranchers against the folks like us.”

“If all the big fellows were like your dad,” said Parker, “I wouldn’t have to worry. Your dad gets along tolerable well with all his neighbors, just little ruckuses now and then, but nothing serious. It’s the land and water hogs like Campbell and Hart out at the Hashknife and Danielson’s Bar C that cause all the real trouble. If I stepped out of office and let them elect Gibbs, the little fellows wouldn’t have a sheepherder’s chance. They’d be wiped out before the year was over.”