Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Inch by slow inch he hitched himself along. And still the silence held. Almost as if the room were empty, as if hungry guns were not waiting to roar into sudden, flame-etched death. Fletcher put out a hand, let it slowly down. But instead of smooth, hard floor, it met a boot that suddenly exploded into action.

For a single instant, Fletcher saw the huge body looking over him, coming down toward him through the dark.

Hands fastened themselves on one of his feet and hauled. He twisted and struck blindly with the barrel of his gun, felt it slash into puffy flesh, heard the grunt that it knocked out of Childress. Then the hands left his foot, were feeling for him in the dark.

Fletcher doubled his fist and struck into the darkness, struck yielding flesh with an impact that jarred him to the shoulder. Behind him, from the corner by the safe, a gun was barking, drooling flame that made Johnny’s face a thing that flickered.

Johnny, he knew, was trying to keep Blair under cover with that rapid fire, was trying to give him time to reach the door.

Fletcher doubled up his legs and lashed out savagely, sent the crouching banker slamming against the wall. Then he was on his feet and running, jerking the door wide, turning his gun on the desk behind which Blair crouched.

“Johnny!” he yelled. “This way!” Then he emptied his six-gun at the desk.

Feet thundered across the room and Johnny was past him, out into the street. With a leap, Fletcher followed him, reached and passed him. “Come on, Johnny!” he shouted.

“Just go ahead,” puffed the blind man. “I can follow you. I can hear your feet.”

From far up the street other men were running toward the bank. Someone shouted something from near the blacksmith shop. A rifle crashed in the stillness and a bullet whined above their heads.

Fletcher halted momentarily, grasped Johnny by the arm, ducked into the narrow alley between the Silver Dollar and the livery barn, hauling the blind man behind him. The horses were waiting and he lifted Johnny, boosted him bodily onto one of them, then vaulted into the saddle of the other.

With the reins of Johnny’s horse in one hand, he kicked his mount into a gallop. Ahead loomed the massive height of the mighty butte, a black shadow on the starlit plains.

“We can’t go to Phillips’ place now,” Fletcher told himself. “Having to take care of Johnny, they’d catch me before I was halfway there.”

There was only one place to go, only one place where he could elude pursuit. Grimly he headed the running horse toward the butte and the badlands beyond.

Dawn thrust golden spears into the tangled badlands, lighting fantastic spire and minaret, scrambling and intensifying the colors that had been subdued pastels as the first faint light had crept up from the east.

The horses picked their careful way down a narrow canyon which held a chattering stream. Fletcher threw a glance over his shoulder, saw that Blind Johnny still clung to the saddlehorn with both hands, head drooping, body swaying.

As if the man became aware of Fletcher’s scrutiny, he lifted his head, blinking with staring, vacant eyes. “Where are we, Shane?” he asked.

“In the badlands,” said Fletcher. “Deep in them. The sun will be rising in a little while. I’m looking for a place to hole up.”

“We haven’t any food,” said Johnny.

Fletcher shook his head. “No, we haven’t, Johnny. We’ll just have to get along. Come night and we can try to make a ranch.”

A jackrabbit burst from a clump of brush, sailed up the canyon slope in soaring leaps. Birds twittered and sang. On a high ridge that rose above the canyon a wolf slunk past like a shadow.

“Been wondering about something, Johnny,” Fletcher said. “How come you pack a gun?”

“Don’t,” Johnny told him, “except on special occasions. Last night was one of them.”

“Shoot by ear, I suppose.”

“That’s right,” said Johnny, cheerfully.

“Better than most men can by sight,” said Fletcher. “You nailed Jeff first off.”

Johnny grunted. “Dark as it must have been, eyes wouldn’t have done a man much good.”

The canyon, Fletcher saw, was ending, widening out into a patch of meadow land.

They left the canyon and struck out across the meadow. Slowly, Fletcher swiveled his head, looking for some place of concealment where they might put up. And as he swung to the right, he stiffened, tightening on the reins. His horse stopped and the other horse bumped into it.

“What’s the matter?” Johnny asked.

“Men,” said Fletcher.

The camp lay in a pocket where a butte curled in upon itself and then flared out again. Horses stirred restlessly within the pole corral and smoke rose in a narrow ribbon from the log cabin that huddled against the cliff.

A man who was sitting on top of the corral fence straightened up and stared at them.

“We better made a run for it,” suggested Johnny.

“Can’t,” Fletcher told him. “We pushed these broncos hard last night. They’re too played out to travel very far. Only thing we can do is ride up and bluff it out.” He stared at the camp. “Anybody got a ranch out here?” he asked. “Just starting up, maybe?”

Johnny snorted in disgust. “Nobody’s loco enough to try to ranch out here.”

The man on the corral fence called out and two men came to the cabin door, stood staring at the two at the canyon’s mouth.

At a walk they approached the camp. The two men still stood in the doorway. The man on the fence dropped off it and walked slowly toward the cabin. All three were waiting, silently, when Fletcher pulled up.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said.

“Howdy,” said the one who had been on the fence. The other two said nothing.

“Didn’t know there was anyone out here,” Fletcher said.

“We ain’t been here long,” said one.

The fence-sitter jerked his thumb toward Johnny. “That’s Blind Johnny, ain’t it?”

“Sure, that’s who I am,” said Johnny, “but I don’t recognize your voice.”

“What’s this hombre doing with you?” asked the man.

“Just takin’ me out for a ride,” said Johnny. “Like to get out in the air once in a while.”

“Must have got an early start.”

A fourth man came to the door. He wore a bloodstained bandage around his head and the whiskers on one side of his face were matted with dried blood. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked.

The fence-sitter said: “We got company. These hombres are gittin’ them some air.”

“Where’s your manners?” demanded the one who had the bandage. “Ask them to light and have some chow.”

“Sure, sure,” said the fence-sitter. “Get down and pull up with us.”

Fletcher gathered up the reins. “No, thanks just the same. We better be getting on. Got to get back to town before noon.”

“Get down!” said the man. His voice did not raise, but there was a whiplash of insistence in it. His hands were resting on his gun butts and he looked like a compressed spring ready to be released into violent action.

Fletcher stared at him. “I don’t quite understand,” he said.

The man patted his gun butts. “I got something here that will make you understand. Crawl down off them nags.”

Fletcher smiled wearily. “I guess we better get down, Johnny.”

Slowly he slung his leg over the saddle and dismounted, dropped the reins upon the ground. Johnny, he saw, was piling off the second horse.

One of the men in the doorway stepped forward and lifted Fletcher’s gun out of the holster, stuck it in his own waistband. “Hate to get rough,” he said, “but we can’t nowise let you get away. Too bad you rode in on us.”