Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

That was the way they’d talk.

That , thought Webster, is the wind that’s roaring in my brain.

The flashing of the crazy colored sign made a ghostly flicker along the walls and floor.

Fowler is seeing that, thought Webster. He is looking at it and even if he isn’t, I still have the kaleidoscope.

He’ll be coming in and we’ll sit down and talk. We’ll sit down and talk—

He tossed the gun back into the drawer, walked toward the door.

As pulp magazines counted them, this story is a novel, one of two that led off the six stories and three “fact articles” included in the October 1944 issue of Big-Book Western Magazine , in which it appeared. Cliff Simak’s journals do not show that he wrote a story with this title, but they do show that he was paid $177, in 1944, for a story entitled “Sixguns Write the Law”—and the hero of this story was a frontier lawyer, so it seems reasonable to conclude that this is that story.

I would presume that the size of the payment to the author reflected the length of the story …

Smoke still wisped from what had been a cabin crouched beneath the cottonwoods that grew above the spring. The embers, smothered in gray ash, still exuded a stifling heat. Flame-scarred, the cottonwoods themselves stood limp with withered leaf and drooping branch.

But something else than cabin logs and homemade furniture had gone up in flames. Beneath two smoking timbers lay an outline, ash-covered, fire-blackened, that could be neither log nor furniture, steer-hide trunk nor sweat-stained saddle.

Shane Fletcher tossed idly in one hand the things he had found upon the ground and stared at the shape beneath the timbers, wrinkling his nose against the stench that told him better than the shape itself, what lay there in the ashes.

The things in his hand clinked as he tossed them.

“Find something?” asked the man who sat bolt upright on the wagon seat, both hands grasping the cane planted stiffly before him.

“Yes,” said Fletcher.

“Cartridges?”

“How did you know?”

“My ears,” said Blind Johnny. “You’re tossing them. They clink.”

“Three of them,” Fletcher told him. “Fired not long ago. Powder smell still on them.”

“Blood on the grass?” asked Johnny.

Fletcher shook his head. “Nope. They got him near the door, yelled at him to come out and gunned him down when he stepped outside.”

A dog came from the weeds down by the spring, snaked a frightened, apologetic course toward the wagon and the men, tail tucked tightly between his legs, eye-whites showing.

Fletcher patted the animal. “Hello, there, pup!”

A charred wooden bucket lay tilted on its side a few feet from the smoking heap that once had been a cabin. Part of a rude bench lay nearby. A tin wash basin gleamed in the smoky sunlight.

Those, thought Fletcher, had been the things from which Harry Duff had washed his hands and face, dipped a drink of water. This was Harry’s dog, seeking human protection against the whiplash crack of rifles, the angry roar of flames that consumed the things which had been his home.

The dog sat down and stared with eyes abrim with wonder and fear. Fletcher patted the yellow head, felt the quivering fright that ran along the body.

“Tracks?” asked Blind Johnny.

“Maybe,” Fletcher told him. “If there are, they’d head straight into the badlands.”

Blind Johnny wagged his head. “Can’t figure why anyone would want to do something like that to a man like Harry. Never harmed a fly, Harry never did.”

The blind man sat stiffly on the wagon seat, both hands clutching the cane, head unturning, as if he might be staring at the far horizon.

Fletcher patted the yellow head and the dog moved closer, pressed tight against his legs.

“It was just the other day that he was in to see me,” Fletcher said, staring at the ashy mound that lay twisted in the embers. “Happy as a bear knee-deep in honey. Seems an uncle died someplace in the east and left him a few hundred. Enough, he said, to pay off his debt and send back for his girl. Law firm that wrote the letter wanted some information, but he didn’t have it with him. Asked me to drop out again.”

“What kind of debts?” demanded Johnny. “He didn’t drink and didn’t gamble.”

“Mentioned something about a mortgage,” Fletcher said.

“Maybe someone heard he’s been left some money and thought he had it in the cabin.”

Fletcher shook his head. “Not that kind of killing, Johnny. No robbery intended. This is murder. Someone shot him and threw his body in the cabin, then set fire to make it look like he was in there sleeping and couldn’t make it out in time.”

He tossed the gleaming cylinders in his hand. “Careless, too. Leaving things like these around.”

“Most of them are,” Blind Johnny told him. “Careless in one way or another. Though some of them aren’t. Take a smart hombre, now, and he’ll get away with it.”

Fletcher dropped the empty cartridges in the pocket of his coat, moved toward the wagon. “Come on, boy,” he invited the dog. The animal trotted behind him, stood beside the wagon. Stooping, Fletcher boosted him up, climbed to the seat and took the reins.

“What now?” asked Johnny.

“Back to Gravestone and tell the marshal,” said Fletcher.

“Won’t do any good,” declared the blind man. “Marshal Jeff Shepherd is so dumb he can’t even catch a cold.”

“We have to report it, anyhow,” insisted Fletcher. “Our duty as citizens.”

Johnny chuckled. “Awful upset about a killing. But you’ll get over that.”

“Happens often, huh?”

Johnny screwed up his face. “Well, not every day, exactly, but right frequently. Matt Humphrey was shot this Spring by some rustlers running off his cattle. Matt was plumb foolish. Went out and tried to argue with them. Then there was Charlie Craig, last winter.”

“Homesteaders?” asked Fletcher.

“Both of them,” said Johnny.

Fletcher sat staring at the smoking cabin site. Remembering the happiness that had shone in Duff’s face that day he’d come up to the office. A chance to pay off his debts, he’d said, and send back for the girl who was waiting in the East. A chance to start making a home. To buy a few more head of cattle, maybe.

“You don’t wear a gun, do you, Shane?” asked Johnny.

“Why, no,” said Shane, puzzled.

“You look plumb undressed without one,” declared Johnny. “Everyone wears ‘em, you know. Even Banker Childress. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”

Fletcher stared at the ash and embers, his eyes narrowed against the sun and smoke. “I think, maybe,” he said, “I could hit a barn.”

He gathered up the reins, clucked to the team, swung a wide circle away from the cottonwoods. . .

The town of Gravestone drowsed in the afternoon sun, huddled on the broad, glassy plain at the foot of the four-square butte. A dog slept in front of the barber shop and his feet twitched as he chased rabbits in a dream. Dan Hunter sprawled on the steps of the Silver Dollar, whittling with a jackknife on a piece of board. Shavings littered the sidewalk and the street beyond.

“What you making, Dan?” asked Fletcher.

“Nuthin’,” Hunter told him. “Just whittlin’ to pass away the time.” He went on whittling.

The wooden signs along the street swung wearily in the gusty wind that walked along the prairie. From the blacksmith shop, two doors down, came the sound of hammer blows as Jack McKinley shoed a horse. Far up the street the flag fluttered in the breeze from the pole in front of the schoolhouse.