Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Fletcher took a place alongside Shepherd. By craning his neck, he could see that one of the men at the table had stacks of coins in front of him. He knew it must be White.

“What did you find out at Duff’s?” Fletcher whispered to Shepherd.

“It was Duff, all right,” Shepherd whispered back. “Burned to a crisp. Probably smoking in bed.”

“He was shot,” said Fletcher. “Found three empty cartridges.”

Shepherd grunted. “Doesn’t mean a thing. Harry could have fired them off himself.”

“But they’d been fired only a short time before. Still could smell powder on them.”

“Maybe he shot at something just before it happened,” insisted Shepherd.

“Makes it easy for you that way, doesn’t it?” said Fletcher.

“Shut up, you guys,” yelled someone angrily.

Fletcher said, “I came in here to say something. Give me a minute to say it and then I’ll leave.”

He elbowed forward, pushing men aside until he reached the table. Across the table he saw the hard eyes of Lance Blair on him.

“Anything you have to say, Fletcher,” said Blair, “can wait until the game is over.”

“That’s just the point,” snapped Fletcher. “It can’t.”

He looked across at the man with the stacks of cash. “You White?”

White snarled back at him. “What if I am?”

“You got a mortgage,” Fletcher told him, “with Blair?”

“Now, wait,” yelled Blair. “What has all this got to do with the game? Sure, I hold Zeb’s mortgage, but—”

Fletcher disregarded him. “Got enough in front of you to pay it off?” he asked of White.

“Why, I guess so. Say, what the hell—”

White was rising from the table.

“Sit down, White,” snapped Fletcher. “Count out the money you owe Blair.”

White sat down. “And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t,” said Fletcher, “you won’t live until tomorrow night.”

Blair leaned across the table. “You’re crazy,” he shouted. “Coming in here with talk like this.”

“A man died today,” Fletcher told him evenly, “because he was about to get money that would have paid his mortgage. I only want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen here.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Fletcher saw the swift motion of Hunter’s arm, driving for his gun.

With a wild yell, the lawyer lunged forward, crashing into one of the players, hurling him against the table. The table tottered and went over, spilling money and whiskey glasses to the floor. Fletcher dropped swiftly and whipped his own gun from its holster.

A bullet chunked through the upturned table edge, hurling splinters in the lamplight. The roar of the shot drowned out the thump of feet, the thud of bodies being hurled to the floor out of bullet line.

Hunter came charging around the table, smoking gun leveled at his hip. Behind the table, Fletcher whirled on his toes, brought his gun around.

Hunter’s triumphant face washed over with a frozen stare of surprise and his heels dug into the floor. Fletcher’s gun coughed smokily and Hunter tripped and fell in a headlong crash, one leg folding under him.

Fletcher ducked and the other man fell to the floor so hard that his gun was shaken from his hand and spun like a wheel of light across the boards.

Slowly Fletcher rose and backed toward the wall.

“Blair,” he said, softly, “put away that gun.”

Blair, flat on his belly, opened his hand and the gun dropped with a clatter.

Fletcher glanced around. Men were crouched or squatting or flattened full length upon the floor. Tony the barber huddled under a chair that he held above his head. Shepherd hunkered in one corner, eyes shining in the lamplight.

Fletcher felt the wall at his back and stopped. “White,” he said, “come out and pick up your money. Just so you can’t say I busted up the game and lost you all that cash.”

White rose slowly from the floor, walked toward the center of the room, squatted on his heels and started scooping up the scattered coin.

“Blair,” said Fletcher, conversationally, “if you make one more pass at that gun, I’ll let you have it straight between the eyes.”

He looked at Hunter, writhing on the floor, a pool of blood growing under him.

“Come out from under that chair, Tony,” Fletcher ordered. “You and McKinley. Take a look at Hunter. He isn’t dead. Stove-up leg, most likely.”

Cautiously the two came out, bent above the fallen man.

White was on his feet again, pockets bulging. “Blair,” he said, making an effort to keep his voice calm. “Blair, I want to pay up my mortgage.”

Blair did not move.

White’s hand dipped to his side, rested on his gun-butt.

“You heard me, Blair.”

Blair rose slowly to his feet. “I haven’t got the mortgage with me,” he declared.

“I’ll pay you off,” said White, “and you can write me a receipt. We’ll take care of the paper work later.”

Blair strode across the room, righted the tip-tilted table. Rapidly, White counted out a pile of money. Blair took a piece of paper from his pocket, felt in other pockets.

“Here you are!” Fletcher flipped a pencil on the table.

“Thanks,” said Blair. He bent to write.

“Fletcher,” said McKinley, his voice booming in the room, “if you don’t mind, we’d better get Hunter out of here and run for the doc. He’s losing blood.”

“I don’t mind,” said Fletcher. “The game is over now.”

Blair had handed White the slip of paper and White was folding it, putting it away. Blair was counting out the money on the table. Fletcher holstered his gun. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

On the porch outside, he stopped for a moment, looking up and down the street. The bank’s windows glowed with light and inside he could see Childress moving about, gathering up papers and books and putting them away in the big iron safe that stood in one corner of the room.

A horse clopped down the street, hoofs thudding softly in the dust, rider swaying easily in the saddle. A woman came out of the grocery store, a basket on her arm.

Footsteps sounded behind him and he whirled. Jeff Shepherd was coming toward him, not too fast, gun out, star gleaming in the lamplight. “What is it, Jeff?” Fletcher demanded.

“I’m arresting you,” said Jeff. “Can’t no tenderfoot come into town and raise as much hell as you just raised.”

“O.K.,” said Fletcher. “Put away your iron. I’ll go along with you peaceable.”

Fletcher sat on the cot, sole furniture in the lone cell the Gravestone jail could boast, and tried to figure it out. Matt Humphrey had a mortgage and Matt Humphrey had been shot by rustlers running off his herd. More than likely just before he had been ready to market the cattle. Charlie Craig, another homesteader, had died by violence last winter. It would be interesting to know, Fletcher mused, if Charlie’d had a mortgage, too.

Wilson had given a mortgage on his place, and when he’d been ready to pay up, the same thing had happened to him as to Humphrey except that Wilson, at the moment, only lost his cattle, not his life.

And Harry Duff, less than 48 hours after he had received the legacy that would have paid off his mortgage, had been shot and burned inside his cabin.

It wasn’t, Fletcher told himself, too hard to piece together. Somebody didn’t want those mortgages paid off, somebody would rather have the land that secured the loans, than the loans themselves.

Fletcher got up off the cot and walked to the tiny, barred window. A sickle moon was rising above the butte and the summer stars blazed out above the plains. From far off came the howl of hunting wolves and in the street nearby a horse clopped slowly out of town while his drunken rider sang, off key.