Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

“The boss will be showing up before long,” said the fence-sitter. “He’ll know who they are.”

The man who had taken Fletcher’s gun looked at Johnny. “How about him?”

The man with the bandage shook his head. “He never carries one.”

The men were nervous, Fletcher decided, looking at them. Waiting for something to happen—and not too sure about it. Beneath their day’s growth of beard their faces were tensed and strained and they were ill at ease.

He said: “I hope you fellows know what you’re doing.”

“We’re just being careful, stranger,” said the bandaged one. “We ain’t taking any chances. More than likely we’ll turn you loose once the boss blows in.”

“Here he comes now,” said one of them.

Fletcher swung around, saw a horse trotting swiftly toward the camp from the canyon mouth. He started at the sight of the man in the saddle. It was Lance Blair!

He glanced quickly at Johnny, saw that the blind man was standing still and straight, faced toward the approaching rider, face tense, almost as if he were seeing him and recognizing him. Savagely he hunted in his mind for some way to tip Johnny off, to let him know who the rider was, to prepare him for what was yet to come. But there was, he knew, no way of doing it. Once Blair opened his mouth, Johnny would have him spotted.

Blair pulled his animal to a sliding stop, sat glaring at the men who stood before the door. “A fine bunch!” he said. “Let a gang of ranchers put the run on you!”

The man with the bandage around his head pushed forward. “I can explain it, boss. They were tipped off and waitin’ for us. We—”

The look on Blair’s face stopped him. He gestured toward Fletcher and Johnny. “When did these two show up?”

“Just now,” said the bandaged man. “We figgered maybe you’d know who they are.”

A wolfish grin snaked across Blair’s face. “Sure! They’re friends of mine!”

“We didn’t know, boss.”

Blair started to swing off his saddle and in that moment Blind Johnny acted. His hand snaked smoothly inside his coat, under his armpit and back out again, all in one rapid motion that was accomplished almost as quickly as a man could blink his eyes.

“Take him, Shane!” he yelled.

Silently, he flung himself at Blair, a powerful leap that caught the saloon owner as he was still swinging from the saddle, driving him mercilessly into the side of his mount. With clawing hands, Blair dropped to the ground, bootheels skidding in the earth and sliding out from under him. The startled horse reared and screamed.

Fletcher hurled himself at Blair in a flying leap, twisting his body to escape the booted leg that jackknifed up viciously, aimed at his stomach. He landed and heard the whoof of breath driven from the man beneath him.

Blair was clawing for his gun and Fletcher drove his hand to catch the wrist, snapped it in a viselike grip, ground it savagely into the sand beneath them. Blair’s fist caught Fletcher on the jaw, shaking him with a blow that rocked his head. Blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, Fletcher struck back blindly.

Back of him, Fletcher heard the snarling crash of guns, instinctively, even as he fought, hunched his shoulders against the bullet that he knew must come.

And even as he fought Blair’s wrist farther from the gun, even as he drove his hand toward the other’s throat, his mind clicked over and decided that this had been a foolish thing to do. An unarmed man and an armed blind man against five other men who were fully armed.

Blair arched his body, bucking, trying to throw him off. With cool deliberation, Fletcher smashed a blow into the other’s face.

As he felt Blair go limp beneath him, Fletcher let go of the wrist, snatched at the gun, snaked it from the holster. With a yell, he wheeled from Blair, crouched low, gun swinging in his hand.

The man who had been sitting on the fence was stretched flat on the ground, arms outspread, face pushed in the earth. One of those who had stood in the doorway was on his knees, bent over, body wracked with coughing.

Johnny was sagging in front of the other man who had stood in the doorway, his gun arm limp and dangling, head pushed forward like a man who was walking against the wind.

Deliberately the man in front of Johnny raised his gun again and Fletcher, breath catching in his throat, jerked up his gun, pressed the trigger.

The man in front of Johnny spun around and his face, for a single instant, was a thing of twisted horror and then went blank. For a moment, he tottered, gun tumbling from fingers that were suddenly limp. Then, like a falling tree, he pitched onto his face.

Off to the side, Johnny slipped forward gently …

There was no sign of the man with the bandaged head. The one who had been on his knees had tipped over, lay like a bear rolled into a ball for winter sleeping, knees drawn up, arms still clutching his belly to drive away the pain.

Fletcher crouched on the ground, suddenly became aware of the weird silence that hung empty and voiceless in the sunlight that streamed across the turreted land.

Slowly, Fletcher rose to his feet, holstered the gun he had taken from Blair. On leaden feet he moved forward, walking around the body of the man who had fallen like a tree, stood for a silent second before he knelt and turned Johnny on his back.

The eyes in Johnny’s face flicked open and stared at Fletcher. A tiny stream of blood ran out of the corner of Johnny’s mouth and trickled down his chin.

“Johnny,” said Fletcher. “Johnny.”

“You know it now,” said Johnny, still staring at him. “Maybe you guessed it all the time.”

“Know what, Johnny?”

“That I wasn’t blind.”

“I wondered some,” admitted Fletcher.

“They wanted me back East,” said Johnny. “I opened too many safes—like—like the one back at the bank. I had educated fingers.”

“It was a disguise?” said Fletcher, softly.

“Sure, Shane. Who’d look for a cracksman who was blind? Who’d ever think a blind man had a price upon his head?”

Fletcher hugged the man close against him, as if by sheer physical power he might keep the ebbing life within the body. “But, Johnny,” he said, “you could have gone on—”

“You stopped and talked to me every time you came in the Silver Dollar,” Johnny told him. “You asked me to go for walks with you. You introduced me to that schoolmarm of yours. You took me for the ride when you went to get the books. Like I was another man—just like yourself. You didn’t ask me how it felt to be blind, or how I came to be blind, or. . .”

The voice pinched into a whisper, ran down until the lips still moved but no sound came. The lids slid over the eyeballs as if Johnny suddenly were tired and had gone to sleep even as he talked.

For a moment, Fletcher stared down into the face of the man he held, then lifted his eyes, swept the heights that hemmed them in. The tiny meadow droned with early morning quietness and the spires and pinnacles had taken on a new and flashing light with the coming of the sun.

Quiet, thought Fletcher. The quiet that comes after the belch of gunsmoke.

The quiet of life that has ended after years of hiding behind a pair of eyes that had been trained to a blank, unwinking stare … the stare that the eyes of the blind would have. The self discipline that allowed a man to see a thing, yet never act as if he’d seen it. The years that had drilled a certain consciousness of his role into a man until he came to think of himself as a blind man who fiddled in saloons up and down the land. A man with educated fingers who must, at times, have chuckled to himself when he was alone, chuckled at the joke that he was playing on all humanity.