Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Swift feet thudded on the grass behind him, storming footfalls half muffled by the turf.

Fletcher’s hand snaked to his belt and half crouching, he whirled on his heels, rising as he whirled. Even before he saw the man who was charging him, Fletcher knew who it was. Blair! The man who a moment before had been flat upon his back, dazed by a blow—the danger at his back that he had forgotten in Johnny’s death.

Fletcher’s gun moved swiftly in his hand, but not as swiftly as those pounding feet. A thundering weight, half seen, caught Fletcher even as he spun—a weight that crashed him to the ground, that fell on top of him, knocked breath from his lungs and left him reeling in a pit of painful darkness.

Strong fingers seized his gun and jerked and Fletcher tried to fight, tried to retain his grip, tried to twist his wrist so the gun would point toward his opponent’s body. But there was no power left within him.

Then a blow crashed down on his head and filled the world for a moment with flashing lights and spinning, wheeling stars. . .

A vulture wheeled on lazy pinions against the blazing blueness of the sky and a twisted tree clung desperately to the crumbling edge of a painted cliff. Fletcher lay on his back and watched the tree and the bird, wondered how come he was out here in the open, flat on his back, looking at a vulture.

Slowly, sharper consciousness oozed into his thoughts and he became aware of the dull ache that throbbed across his temples, of the pain of hands lashed behind his back. Voices seeped into his ears and he twisted his head around.

Blair and the man with the bandaged head squatted beside a campfire from which a thin, blue thread of smoke rose lazily. A coffee pot simmered on the coals and the man with the bandage poked with a fork at frying strips of bacon in a pan. Beyond the fire a small stream swirled and eddied over a grassy run.

The vulture had left the sky, but the tree still perched with gnarled roots on the brim of the sun-baked cliff. Slowly, methodically, careful to remember all the details, Fletcher thought back, closed his eyes to bring back the pictures of what had happened.

The men back in the meadow had been part of Blair’s terror gang—maybe all of it, for it would take but a few men to do what they had done. Strike and run—striking against single men or single families, all of them unsuspecting, all of them unprepared.

Fletcher wondered if Childress had a hand in organizing the gang and the answer seemed to be that he did not. That, more than likely, had been Blair’s job. Childress had loaned most of the money, and Blair had seen to it that those who borrowed were unable to pay it back.

But something had gone wrong. The man with the bandaged head was proof of that. White apparently had reached the ranches in time and the raiders, instead of striking unsuspecting men, instead of sweeping like a blight across an unprepared range had run into a hail of bullets. Perhaps they had left some of their members back there on the ranches where gunfire had rattled in the night.

But where did he, Fletcher, fit into the picture? Why was he lying here, head throbbing from the blow of Blair’s gun butt, hands lashed behind his back? Why wasn’t he back there in the meadow, dead body stretched alongside that of Blind Johnny?

Grass rustled as feet come toward him. Ungently, a booted toe nudged him in the ribs. He flicked his eyes open and stared up into Blair’s face.

“Time you was coming around,” Blair said.

Fletcher grimaced. “You hit me too hard.”

“Want some bacon and coffee?”

Fletcher struggled to his knees, stood up. “How am I going to eat?” he asked.

“We’ll untie your hands,” said Blair, “but we’ll have a gun on you.”

The man with the bandage, Fletcher saw, had his gun already out. It dangled from loose fingers with the man’s wrist slouched across his knee.

Fletcher nodded at the blanket-wrapped form. “Who’s that?”

Blair blinked his eyes in mock surprise. “Why, don’t you know? That’s Blind Johnny. We have to collect on him, too.”

“Collect?”

“Sure. There’s a price on both of you.”

Fletcher was dumbfounded. “A price?”

“Sure, the bank was robbed. And Childress was killed. So was Jeff. Or don’t you remember?”

Fletcher gasped. “A reward?”

“A thousand bucks apiece. Dead or alive.”

Fletcher stood stiff and straight as Blair stepped behind him, fumbled with the knot that tied his hands. Neat, he thought. A neat piece of work, the kind one would expect of Blair!

Of course the bank had been robbed and Childress had been killed. But neither he nor Johnny had had anything to do with that part of it. That had happened after he and Johnny had left—had happened in the few minutes between the time they had fled into the street and the aroused citizens of the town had reached the bank. It hadn’t taken long. A quick shot and Childress died. A minute’s work to haul the money bags and rolls of bills out of the safe and toss them out a window where they could be picked up later.

Fletcher brought his released hands around in front of him and rubbed them together, massaging his reddened wrists to hide the fact that his hands were shaking.

“Dead or alive,” he said to Blair. “A thousand dollars for either of us, dead or alive?”

Blair regarded him through wary eyes, nodded.

“Then why all the bother of lugging me in alive?”

“Looks better that way,” Blair told him. “Nobody can say that we killed you both to shut your mouths.”

“I can still talk,” said Fletcher.

“Sure,” Blair agreed, “for all the good it does you. You can talk until you’re blue in the face and no one will believe you. Because, you see, we found the loot on you. In your saddlebags.” He motioned toward a pair of bags that lay close to the fire.

“And,” said the man with the bandage, “who in hell would believe the kind of story you’d tell, anyhow?”

Fletcher knew no one would believe it. Not when they took the jury upstairs over the bank and showed them the hole sawed through the floor. No one would believe Blair and Childress had whipsawed the ranchers. No one, that is, but the ranchers themselves. And none of them, Fletcher knew, would have a chance to get on the jury. The very fact that they owed money to Childress or had been foreclosed on by Childress would bring a challenge and they would be excused.

It had been a crazy thing to do, breaking into the bank like that. But it had seemed a good idea at the time. The only way, in fact, to get proof of Childress’ dealings, the only way to learn what ranchers were in danger, the only way to prove in court that Childress had loaned money only to the ranchers who held the land he wanted.

But things hadn’t worked out the way Fletcher had thought they would.

Blair, he saw, was regarding him with amused eyes. “What I can’t figure out,” Blair said, “is what made you do it. You aren’t the kind of man who robs a bank.”

“I’ll tell about that in court,” Fletcher said.

“And why would you lug Johnny along? That was a crazy thing to do. Saddling yourself with a blind man.”

“Ah, hell,” said the man with the bandage, “let’s just shoot him and have it over with.”

“Shut up,” snapped Blair.

“But he’s too slick for us,” persisted the bandaged man. “He’ll get into court and talk himself out of it. Talk us into it, likely, before he gets through with it. He’s a lawyer and law’s his business and—”

The campfire exploded with a vicious, slamming thud that hurled live coals in a smoking shower. Fletcher leaped backward as a red hot ember speared against his arms, burned with a fierce, sudden pain. His bootheel caught against a clump of grass and he felt himself going over, windmilled his arms in sudden fright to keep his balance, but knew it was no use.