Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Fletcher crossed the street. “Who was it?” he asked of Hunter.

“Hombre name of Wilson,” Hunter said. “Used to be a rancher.”

“Used to be?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Mortgaged the place and lost it.”

“To Childress, huh?”

“That’s right,” said Hunter. “Seemed to be sore about it.”

“Lucky for Childress,” observed Fletcher, “that you were sitting here.”

Hunter grinned. “Ah, it wasn’t nothin’,” he declared.

The banker had gotten up from the sidewalk, was waddling out into the street toward the crowd that surrounded the body.

Fletcher jerked his thumb at him. “For a man who wears a gun, he sure don’t stand up to gunfire.”

“Lots of birds that pack guns,” said Hunter, “don’t know how to use them.”

“You do,” said Fletcher.

“Just comes natural,” Hunter told him.

Fletcher saw the insolent slope of Hunter’s shoulders, the hard lines of the mouth, the coldness of the eyes.

Hunter flipped his knife point toward the street. “Here comes the schoolmarm,” he declared.

Cynthia Thornton was walking down the other side of the street, obviously trying not to notice what had happened in front of the blacksmith shop. She wore a blue and white gingham dress that looked prim and fresh. She carried a silly little parasol in her hand.

“You will pardon me,” Fletcher said to Hunter.

Hunter grinned. “Sure,” he said. He sat down on the steps, started whittling again.

Fletcher met Cynthia Thornton at the bottom of the stairs which ran up to his office. She smiled rather wanly and he saw that the hand which carried the parasol was shaking. “What happened, Shane?” she asked.

“A little disagreement,” Fletcher told her. “Someone by the name of Wilson tried to gun Childress, but Hunter shot him down.”

“It’s terrible,” said Cynthia Thornton. “Do you think that someday—”

“Certainly,” said Fletcher. “Someday the town will grow up and it’ll be safe to walk the streets.”

“I can’t stand here,” said Cynthia. “You’ll have to let me go.”

“Duck up to the office for a minute,” suggested Fletcher. “I want to talk to you.”

She hesitated.

“Strictly business,” Fletcher told her. “I’ve got a hunch.”

She nodded at him and started up the steps.

Inside the office he hauled paper from the desk, took a pencil from his pocket. “Pull up a chair,” he said. “I want you to help me figure out a few things.”

Wonderingly, she took the pencil that he handed her, poised it above the sheet of paper.

“You know the country around here better than I do,” he said, “or I wouldn’t have to bother you. I want a map, showing the ranches and the homesteads. Doesn’t have to be fancy or accurate. Just show their relative locations.”

“Starting where?” she asked.

“Starting with Harry Duff’s.”

She looked frightened. But she bent her head above the paper, sketched carefully, neatly. Fletcher came around the desk to stand behind her, watching the paper over her shoulder.

“That’s enough,” he told her. “It’s all I need to know.”

She smiled at him. “Go ahead, and be mysterious, my dear.”

He grinned at her. “By the way—I have a dog for you. One I picked up today. He’s at the livery barn.”

“How nice of you. When can I see him?”

“Any time. He’s Duff’s dog. Came out of the weeds today, scared and frightened. You heard about Duff, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Some of the children told me.” She tapped the parasol absent-mindedly on the floor.

“It’s nice to have a dog,” she said. “We always had one at the ranch. I’ll take him with me tomorrow when I go riding.”

Fletcher laughed. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Some target practice, I suppose?”

She looked a bit angry. “If I like to shoot,” she told him, “I’m going to shoot. My daddy taught me to ride a horse and handle a gun when I was a little girl and now—”

“And now you spend every Saturday with a horse and gun,” he said.

She made a face at him and swept out.

He grinned, listening to her footsteps tripping down the stairs. Then he laid the map she had drawn, flat on the desk, studied it with a frown.

Craig’s place was west of Duff’s, and Wilson’s between Craig’s and Humphrey’s. And cornering to the south with Duff’s and Craig’s, was Zeb White’s.

Whistling softly, Fletcher folded the paper carefully and tucked it in his coat pocket.

In the back room, where he slept, he unlocked the brass-bound steamer trunk, lifted out a top tray and, burrowing deep into a pile of shirts and socks, brought up a cartridge belt and gun.

He clicked the gun open, spun the cylinder, squinted through the barrel. With swift, sure fingers, he fed in cartridges, clicked the weapon shut, strapped the belt around him.

“Blind Johnny was right,” he told himself. “Time I took to wearing one.”

Blind Johnny was softly fiddling Pop Goes the Weasel in the front room of the Silver Dollar, but not much of a crowd had gathered yet. A few men were standing at the bar and a drunk was sleeping it off at a table in the corner.

Mike, the bartender, raised a hand to Fletcher. “What’ll it be tonight?” he asked, reaching for a bottle.

“Pass it up, for the moment, Mike,” said Fletcher. He jerked his head toward the back room. “Game still going on?”

Mike nodded. “White still raking it in. Don’t know how he does it. The way they fall, I guess.”

Fletcher stopped at the table where Johnny was playing. “How goes it, Johnny?”

The blind man lowered the fiddle. “Fletcher, isn’t it?”

“That’s it. Guess you are right about the killings. Man should get used to them after awhile.”

“Man and boy,” said Johnny, “I been fiddling up and down the country. Seen towns where there were more shooting and others that had less. This is just average, I guess.”

“Understand Wilson lost his ranch here some time ago.”

“Lost it to Childress,” Johnny said. “Gave the bank a mortgage and was all set to pay up when someone cleaned him out. Ran off almost every head he had. Without his stock, Wilson couldn’t pay up and Childress wouldn’t listen.”

“Foreclosed, did he?”

“Lock, stock and barrel,” said Johnny. He lifted the fiddle and dashed off a few twinkling notes, lowered it again.

“How about White?” asked Fletcher. “The one who’s making a killing out back. He got a mortgage, too?”

“Danged near everyone in this country’s got a mortgage,” Johnny said. “Sure, he has. But right now he ought to be able to pay it off. Boys tell me he’s got it stacked up in front of him three deep.”

“To Childress?”

Johnny shook his head. “To Blair.”

“Didn’t know Blair lent money.”

“Once in a while,” Johnny told him. “When he figures it’s a good deal.”

Fletcher rose from the chair. “Think I’ll go back and look on awhile.”

The back room was a fog of smoke and alcoholic fumes. A silent knot of men crowded around the table in the center of the room. Lamplight poured down from the ceiling.

Standing by the door, Fletcher picked out faces that he knew. There was McKinley, the blacksmith, with a huge cigar clamped tightly in his jaw. Tony, the barber, standing behind him on tiptoe trying to see. Lance Blair, owner of the Silver Dollar, stood close to the table, arms folded across his chest, twisted stogie between his teeth, his face good-natured in the lamplight. But his lips were a hard straight line. Beside him stood Dan Hunter and nearer to the door, Jeff Shepherd, the marshal. It was a gathering of wolves.