Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

I’m the only one left, he thought. The only one left to stand up for Bob Custer and the things he stood for. For homes and grazing cattle, for Saturday nights in town, for a place to hang one’s guns.

Long ago, he thought, I was looking for a place to hang my guns. Because I was sick of gunsmoke, sick of bloodshed, sick of fighting. But there’ll never be a place now to hang those guns—they’ll keep on talking till my hands can’t hold them.

He gathered his feet under him, tensing for the effort that would heave his body upward. A bullet kicked dust in his face. Another clipped weeds above his head.

From far away came a drumming sound, a rhythmic sound that beat faintly through the night—a sound that grew and hammered as an undertone to the snarling of the guns that swept the weed patch.

Steve heaved himself clear of the weeds, snapped up his gun.

Before him, advancing like a line of skirmishers, were dark figures, etched against the glowing pile of coals where the jail had stood.

His gun bounced in his fist and one of the dark figures threw up its hands and yelled, pitched forward.

A bullet twitched at Burns’ shirt and the sixgun barked again. Another of the men in front of him jerked backwards, folding up and falling. Like a shadow show, thought Burns.

Fingernails of fire raked across his legs and droning lead stirred the air whining past his cheek. In front of him specks of flame were dancing, like fireflies in the night.

A man was lunging at him—a man with a white shirt and a black tie whipping in the wind. Flame lanced from the hand of the lunging figure and pain lashed across Burns’ ribs.

Carson—Carson coming at him! Carson with his white shirt and fancy vest and the bunched cravat that had come loose and was flapping in the wind.

Steve felt the gun buck against his wrist, heard Carson’s sudden cry, saw the man stumbling on unsteady feet.

There were other cries—cries and the drum of hoofs. Hoofs that came thundering down the street and stormed across the vacant ground back of the smouldering jail. The high clear sound of hoofs and the yells of men and the shapes of running horses that charged the line of skirmishers. Charged them with whoops of vengeance and the spat of gunfire and the slow drift of powdersmoke blue against the glow.

Burns felt his knees buckling beneath him, felt the gun slip reluctantly from fingers that slowly went lax—held himself erect with sheer determination, watching Carson staggering toward him.

Carson’s right hand, Burns saw, was a bloody smear where the bullet had smashed bone and flesh. But his left hand was in his coat pocket, fumbling …

Bells of alarm rang through Burns’ brain and he drove his beaten body forward in a spring even as Carson’s hand came out of the pocket and steel glimmered as he lifted it to strike.

Burns felt his body smashing into Carson’s, saw the gleaming knife start its downward thrust, threw up his arm to ward off the blow. The knife point caught his wrist and slashed downward to the elbow, but Carson was stumbling backward, giving ground, knocked off his balance by the body block.

With a yell of rage Steve twisted his wrist, caught Carson’s hand in a steel trap grip, wrenched with a savage jerk. The knife flew from suddenly deadened fingers and Carson was going down, Burns on top of him.

The red haze in front of Burns’ eyes spun in a tightening circle and the black crept in, constricting the red until it was no more than a spinning ball.

Hands were on his shoulder, lifting him, tearing loose his fingers, dragging him back to a sense of consciousness.

“Take it easy, bub,” a voice said. “We want to have a few to bring into court.”

Burns struggled with the hands, fighting to get free.

“Bob,” he mumbled. “It can’t be you. You’re dead.”

“Not so you’d notice,” Custer told him. “The bullet nicked me on the head. Knocked me out. Woke up good as new.”

Burns shook off the hands, struggled to his feet, stood there swaying, suddenly aware of the crowd that hemmed him in, aware of the throb that beat across his shoulder.

Straight before him he saw a face, a face half covered by bushy whiskers.

“Stranger,” said the whiskers, “you sure will do to ride the river with.”

Burns tried to make his tongue work, but somehow it failed.

“I’m Randall,” said the man. “Jim Randall. Ann’s father. Guess I can tell you this crowd will do almost anything you want.”

Burns croaked at him. “Shucks, I don’t want nothing, Randall. Maybe just a peg somewhere to hang my guns.”

“We cleaned them out,” said Randall. “Those that ain’t dead are high-tailing it out of here so fast they’re burning up the grass. Now we can come back and settle down.”

A small figure in a torn shirt and dusty levis pushed past Randall, ran toward Burns.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” cried Ann. “You shouldn’t have stayed back there on the trail…”

Burns put out his one good arm and drew her close. “That was just the start of it,” he said. “This is the end.”

He looked at Randall. “Maybe there’s a place,” he asked, “Where a man could stake a homestead?”

Randall regarded the two of them smilingly.

“I wouldn’t wonder a bit,” he said, “but what there is.”

What rough beast …?

In May 1958, Clifford D. Simak began writing a story he initially called “Ghost Writer,” and I believe that story would be published in the January 1960 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title “Final Gentleman.” The writing was a struggle, particularly because Cliff was involved, during much of that time, with a number of crises, including several other writing projects and a move to a new home—“Did more writing on Ghost Writer tonight,” he recorded in his journal on July 15, when he was involved in revising it at Horace Gold’s request. “Rough going, but then, it always is.”

Gold would ultimately reject the story, as would John W. Campbell Jr., of Astounding ; and although Bob Mills of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction would take the story, he would want even more revisions, and would not accept the story until April 1959.

The story is, I think, as autobiographical as any piece of fiction that Cliff ever wrote: It is about a writer of fiction who, going into retirement, comes to realize that his entire career has been manipulated by an alien force—a force that once, in the dim past, made the much younger writer an offer perhaps reminiscent of the Temptation of Christ.

But, no, that’s not the “autobiographical” aspect I see in “Final Gentleman.” Rather, I was referring to the story’s portrayal of the loneliness that pervades every aspect of Hollis Harrington’s life.

And it was Harrington’s emotional connection to the idea of Neanderthal Man—a connection also to be found in Cliff Simak’s life and writings—that saved him.

After thirty years and several million words there finally came a day when he couldn’t write a line.

There was nothing more to say. He had said it all.

The book, the last of many of them, had been finished weeks ago and would be published soon and there was an emptiness inside of him, a sense of having been completely drained away.

He sat now at the study window, waiting for the man from the news magazine to come, looking out across the wilderness of lawn, with its evergreens and birches and the gayness of the tulips. And he wondered why he cared that he would write no more, for certainly he had said a great deal more than most men in his trade and most of it more to the point than was usual, and cloaked though it was in fictional garb, he’d said it with sincerity and, he hoped, convincingly.