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

“What you want?” he asked.

“You remember about Campbell being killed?”

“Sure,” said Egan. “Sure, I remember. Luke done it.”

“Luke didn’t do it,” snapped Parker. “Campbell was either shot from far off or with a small caliber gun. If Luke had shot him from behind the tree where the cartridge was found, the bullet would have gone through his body. Would have torn a hole straight through him. That gun of Luke’s is a heavy job. Bone would never stop one of its bullets, fired at thirty feet.”

Egan sat mumbling.

Parker reached out and shook him savagely.

“Do you understand?” he snarled.

Egan repeated, “Luke done it.”

Parker slapped him, an open-handed blow that rocked his head.

Egan stared at him in dazed terror.

“Got to say Luke done it,” he declared.

“Why?”

“Betz said so. Said for me to say …”

“Betz was the one who did it?”

Egan hesitated and Parker lifted his hand. Egan recoiled.

“Go on,” said Parker. “What about Betz?”

“Betz did it,” mumbled Egan, clawing at his beard with one jerky hand.

“Shot his own boss. What did he have against him?”

“Nothing. Just shot him. Paid to do it.”

“Why?”

“Good way to start a fight.”

“Figured the little outfits would rise up,” said Parker, “and it would be an excuse to wipe them out.”

“Sure,” said Egan. He leered through the bloody beard. “Smart, eh?”

“Smart enough to hang you,” said Parker, viciously.

“It was coming anyhow,” said Egan.

“Sure, it was coming, anyhow,” said Parker. “Only Betz helped it along a bit. Tell me, who paid Betz?”

Egan’s mouth clamped shut and defiance crept into his eyes.

“Who paid him?”

Egan shook his head. Parker slapped him, first one side of his face, then another. Egan moaned.

Parker waited.

“It was Hart.”

“And Danielson?”

“That’s right, sheriff. Hart and Danielson.”

“What about Horton? Did Horton pay him, too?”

Egan shook his head.

“You’re sure of that? Horton wasn’t in on it?”

“Horton didn’t even know about it,” mumbled Egan. “Couldn’t trust him. Too damn soft-hearted.”

Parker rocked on his toes, staring at the man.

So the Hashknife and Bar C were the ones that had engineered it. Hart and Danielson had signed the death warrant of their fellow-ranchman to touch off a range war, using the Turkey Track as a cat’s-paw to do the dirty work. Hart and Danielson had deliberately murdered Campbell to carry out their plans. Not that either of them, likely, had anything against him, but it was an easy way, a simple way to do it.

And it had one extra angle—Campbell and Luke had been at guns’ point for months. If it could be made to seem that Luke had done it, they figured, it might compromise the sheriff—might drive him out of office. And with the small outfits wiped out and the sheriff gone, the whole range would be theirs.

Egan made whining, mewing sounds.

“Look, sheriff, you ain’t going to hold this against me. You’re going to let me go. After all, I helped you. I was the one that …”

“Shut up,” snapped Parker.

His hand reached out slowly and gathered in Egan’s shirt front, twisted it tight.

“And now tell me about the cartridge that was found behind that tree.”

“Oh, that,” said Egan. “That was put there. I found the cartridge …”

“You mean you hung around and watched until Luke shot the gun, then sneaked in after he was gone and picked it up.”

“I found it,” protested Egan. “I just was riding along one day …”

“And you saw something shining on the ground.”

“That’s right, sheriff,” said Egan, pleased. “You hit it right on the head.”

“You’ll have a hell of a time making a jury believe that,” said Parker.

Feet crunched outside and Parker swung around, reaching for his gun.

Old Matt’s shadowy form blotted out the moonlight in the doorway.

“Thought I heard a shot,” he said.

“You took your sweet time coming,” Parker told him.

“Hell,” said Matt, disgustedly, “I had to get my pants on. Couldn’t come out just in my shirttail. I came just …”

He stopped, staring at Egan.

“Tried to bushwhack me,” Parker explained.

“Sort of looks like it backfired on him.”

Parker nodded. “Spilled his guts,” he said. “Told me Betz was the one that killed Campbell. That .45-70 shell was planted so it would look like Luke had done it.”

“And now that you got the varmint, what are you going to do with him?”

“Got to take him along with me while I hunt up Luke,” said Parker. “Can’t let him out of my sight.”

“Take him back to jail,” said Matt.

Parker shook his head. “Sawyer’s in with them. He’d get word to the Turkey Track and they’d either have him out or kill him before I could get back.”

Matt shucked up his gunbelt. “Leave him here with me,” he suggested. “I’ll take downright good care of him.”

“Not a chance,” said Parker. “You got other things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting together a bunch of the boys to wait for me in town. When I get back I got work to do.”

Dawn was breaking over the Rattlesnake hills, the darkness rising from the ground against the inroad of thin morning light that revealed the shapes of trees and boulders.

Riding at a low jog, Parker searched the jagged tangle of the towering cliffs, hunting for the almost hidden mouth of that one small canyon which sprang out from the tumbled hills.

It’d been a long time since he had been here. Things somehow looked different than they did those days when he and Luke were hunting pirate gold and fleeing to safety before the imaginary thunder of pursuing redskins.

Gnarled, wind-whipped trees, twisted and maimed like cripples, clung to the tawny hills and it was one of these that he was looking for—one maimed and crippled tree that looked like an old man walking with a cane.

The lead rope tugged at his saddle horn and he twisted, shot a glance behind him.

Egan, hands tied behind him, sat hunched over in the saddle of the led horse. In the pale morning light his face was puffed and swollen and one eye was almost closed by the ring of black and battered flesh around it.

“How do you feel?” asked Parker.

Egan spat awkwardly. “Like hell,” he said.

“We’re almost there,” Parker told him. “I’ll let you rest a while.”

“Look,” asked Egan, “why don’t we make a deal?”

Parker laughed harshly. “No deals, Egan. I’ll need you on the witness stand.”

“I could fix it up with Betz,” said Egan. “He’s a friend of mine. Pardners, see. All I got to do is say the word. We’ll cut you in. Keep the job for life, get a rake-off on the side.”

Parker did not answer, still sat half turned in the saddle, staring at the man.

“Betz would treat you right,” Egan declared.

“Yes, I know. A bullet in the back.”

Deliberately, Parker turned in the saddle. Egan was silent. They rode on into the dawn.

Suddenly, as if it had risen from the ground, the tree was there on the cliff rim, a tree that walked with a cane along the skyline.

Parker reined the buckskin in toward the cliff, saw the tree-masked opening that marked the canyon’s mouth. Slowly, picking their way, the horses advanced, sheer walls towering far above them, boulders scattered along the stream bed through which trickled a tiny flow of water.

Suddenly the canyon widened and a grove of trees appeared.

This was the place, Parker remembered. The place where he and Luke used to leave their ponies and climb to the cave.