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

Gibbs’ voice was wishful thinking: “Kind of nice if Luke would escape. Sheriff that can’t keep a prisoner, once he’s got him, don’t amount to shucks. And if a posse should have to go out and bring Luke back dead it wouldn’t help him to speak of, neither.”

The voices were fading and Parker knew that they were moving to the door.

Fists bunched at his side, he slid out of the cell door into the corridor, took a step toward the office, then stopped.

My own deputy, he thought. My own deputy against me. Working for Gibbs, bought off by the big outfits. Plotting against me in my own office. Sawyer thinks I’m down at the hotel or he’d never let Gibbs in.

He slid along the wall of cell blocks, moving swiftly past the door into the office, catching sight of Sawyer standing in the door talking to the man outside.

He let himself out the back door, closed it behind him. He stood leaning for a moment against it, staring up at the stars that blazed in the sky above, drawing in deep breaths of the fresh air. His head still ached, but he wasn’t dizzy any longer and his legs were sure and swift beneath him. He checked his guns. Both of them were in the belt and had not been tampered with.

The town was quiet again. Apparently Luke had made his getaway without any trouble, without being seen and, suddenly, Parker was glad of that.

In the stable back of the jail the buckskin gelding was chewing a mouthful of hay and stamping his feet. As Parker opened the door the smell of hay and leather, the cozy warmth of the place rushed out at him.

“Whoa, boy,” he said, and stepped swiftly inside, pulling the door behind him. He found the saddle in the dark and cinched it on.

The single light in the kitchen of the Atkins ranch house was a friendly beacon in the night and Parker, heading for it, recognized the softness of the moonlight and the contour of the country, the smell of sagebrush and the squat blackness of the buildings crouching in the coulee as old, familiar things. Things that had a special meaning here as nowhere else.

The old dog exploded from beneath the porch and rushed to him, across the yard, baying like an angry lion.

“Hi-yah, Shep,” said Parker and the baying changed to friendly barking as the dog bounced up and down like a rocking horse.

The door swung open with the faint gleam of light from the kitchen seeping along the hall and in it stood the bulky figure of old Matt, a heavy cartridge belt around his bulging middle.

“Who in hell is there?” he thundered.

“It’s Clint,” said Parker. “You can put up your shooting iron.”

Parker swung off the buckskin, strode up the porch steps.

“Luke with you?” asked the old man.

Parker shook his head. “Luke broke out. Hit me over the head and got plumb and slick away.”

“And you’re hunting for him. Figure he came here.”

“Not hunting him, exactly. Think I can put my hands on Luke anytime I want to. Just came to tell you folks.”

Parker moved past the old man and into the hall. Matt closed the door behind him, shuffled back toward the kitchen, Parker following.

A woman’s voice, quavery, came out of the darkness.

“Who is it, Pa?”

“It’s Clint,” the old man told her. “Come to tell us that Luke broke out of jail. Danged scamp. Never could keep him locked up. Used to lock him in a closet when he was up to devilment and he always managed to get out somehow.”

“Drag up a chair and rest your guns,” Matt told Parker. “I’ll stir up the fire and we’ll have a cup of coffee.”

Parker pulled a chair back from the table, dropped his hat on the floor and sat down heavily. Looking through the door into the sitting room, he could see the glint of the light on the old .45-70 hanging on the wall, hanging where it had hung as long as he could remember.

“Wouldn’t happen,” asked old Matt, “that you kind of helped Luke get away? Like I figure maybe you must of helped him out of that closet off and on.”

“No, I wouldn’t do a thing like that to Luke. That would brand him as the man who did it. It would turn him outlaw.”

“Maybe he figures that he can track down the killer.”

“Maybe,” said Parker.

Slippers padded softly out of the darkness and a woman stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

Parker rose from the chair. “Hello, Mother,” he said.

Tall and thin, white hair smoothed back tightly against her head, she stood stiffly in the doorway, one hand clutching at the jamb.

“You know Luke never done it, Clint,” she said.

Parker shook his head. “Of course he didn’t. I had to take him in because the evidence was against him and because it wasn’t safe to let him stay here. Betz would have had his men around this place like coyotes around a dying steer.”

She walked towards him and smiled wanly.

“You were both good boys,” she said. “Remember how every Sunday we had our Bible lessons out in the living room.”

Parker reached out and hugged her close.

“And now,” she sobbed. “And now…”

Old Matt stood staring at them, eyes blinking rapidly, beard trembling just a little, coffee pot in one hand, stove poker in the other.

“Now, Ma,” he said. “Clint ain’t chasing Luke. He just come to tell us.”

The old clock on the wall ticked heavily, marking off the seconds with a solemn face. A vagrant gust of wind moaned in the chimney corner.

“You’re staying the night with us, ain’t you, Clint?” asked Matt.

Parker nodded. “Might as well,” he said.

Mother Atkins drew away from Parker, dabbing at her eyes, reached for the coffee pot.

“Standing around,” she snapped. “Standing around all the blessed time. Here, get out of my way. Can’t you see the boy is starved.”

In Luke’s attic room, Parker undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, remembering the time when he and Luke had shared this very room. An orphan lad, taken in by neighbors who never let him feel that he was an orphan. Licked by old Matt as his dead father would have licked him when he did wrong, cried over and babied by the woman he had learned to call Mother, sitting solemn-eyed and very straight with Luke every Sunday morning for the Bible lesson.

He hung his gunbelt on the bedpost, slipped out of shirt and trousers, blew out the light and slid into bed, felt the old familiar mattress yielding to his body.

The wind marched across the roof, rattling a shingle here and there, came back to rattle them again. A low hanging tree branch scraped against the side of the house and downstairs he heard the mumble of voices as the old folks talked themselves to sleep.

Shut your eyes, he told himself, and pretend that it is ten years ago. Pretend that Luke is lying here beside you and that tomorrow the two of you are going fishing down in the big sucker hole just above the drift fence. Shep is a young dog and Mother has fewer wrinkles in her face than she had tonight. Old Matt’s beard is just starting to turn gray and maybe, in the morning he will take down the gun and let you sight along its barrel and brag about all the game that you could get if he’d only let you use it.

But it would be no use, he knew. No use to try to purchase even a moment’s forgetfulness. For Luke was not in this bed, but somewhere out in the night, a hunted man, hunted for a thing that he never could have done. And Shep was old and had rheumatism so bad that of winter nights he was allowed to come in and sleep beside the kitchen stove. And Matt never could look at that gun again without remembering.

Parker lay, staring into the darkness, listening to the wind walking on the roof and tripping on the shingles.

Suddenly he sat straight up in bed, jerked upright by something that had come out of the night. Rubbing his eyes, he waited for it to come again.