Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

The drunk, drunk no longer, crouched behind his table, two guns out. One of them smoking.

The crowd at the bar surged forward, but Jeff swept the gun barrels at them.

“Stay where you are,” he yelled. “And reach for the sky.”

They halted, retreated until their backs were against the bar. Slowly their hands came up.

“Some of you hombres are all right,” said Jeff, “and some of you ain’t. I ain’t got no way of knowing. The ones that move, I’ll figure that they ain’t.”

The drunk spoke slowly, almost conversationally. “You take them from that side, kid, and I’ll take them from the other.”

“Dan!” yelled Jeff.

“Yeah, it’s me, all right. But keep your eyes peeled. That buckaroo on the floor must be one of them that dry gulched me that day. Can’t explain what he did no other way.”

The blood drummed through Jeff’s head, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. Dan was alive … alive and in this room with him. The two of them putting down the chips against Slemp and Owen.

The tableau held. The line of men against the bar were still and silent, hands high in the air. Slemp still on the floor, Owen standing just a few feet out in the room. The wounded man slumped on the floor, head hanging, hand clawing at his shoulder.

But it would have to break. It couldn’t last, Jeff knew.

He stared at the faces staring at him. Jim Churchill was the only one he knew. But there must be others here who were ready to fight Slemp and Owen.

The wounded man was babbling. “I was sure I got him. It was dark, but I was sure. His horse ran and it was dark. The money was in the saddle bags and I didn’t go back to look. I was …”

“Shut up, you fool,” yelled Owen.

“So,” snarled Jeff, “you don’t want him to talk.”

“Men,” yelled Owen, “are you going to stand for this? Are you going to let this hombre get away with it?”

A few of those at the bar stirred uneasily, but no one went for his guns.

Churchill, arms still high, moved out.

“Better explain yourself, Jones,” he snapped.

“Simple,” said Jeff. “Owen and his gang here has been killing off the ranchers when they’re coming in to pay their loans. Owen gets the money and Slemp gets the land.”

“I never had a thing to do with it,” yelled Slemp. “It was Owen thought it up …”

The line at the bar exploded. A gun roared and a bullet thudded into the door post behind Jeff’s head.

Owen was charging and Jeff brought up a gun, pressed the trigger. But the big man came on.

Shots were hammering and a lamp crashed, spraying oil across the floor.

Jeff leaped to meet Owen’s charge, but his foot slipped in the pool of oil and his hands slid off Owen’s body. The batwings flapped as if hit by a sudden wind and the man was gone.

A bullet thudded into the floor and flying splinters stabbed at Jeff’s face. A gun crashed directly above him. One of his own guns was lost, but he still had the other. With a heave he gained his feet and plunged for the door.

Owen was on his hands and knees in the dust of the street, like a trapped animal, with one foot fast in the broken bottom step.

With a yell, Jeff launched himself in a flying tackle even as Owen’s foot came free.

Warned by the yell, Owen twisted to meet him, flung up an arm that broke the swing of Jeff’s gun. Thudding into the man, Jeff felt his arm go numb, felt the gun fly from suddenly limp fingers.

A fist caught him in the jaw, rocked him back against the porch. In front of him, Owen was scrambling to his feet, hands reaching for the guns that dangled from his hips.

Desperately, Jeff leaped, good arm swinging. The blow caught Owen in the side of the head and staggered him. Jeff followed, left fist punching as Owen clawed for steel.

One of Owen’s guns was out and coming up. Jeff swung again, stepping in fast, putting every ounce of power into the blow. It connected with a thud that snapped Owen’s head back between his shoulders, sent him rocking on his heels against the hitching rail. A gun blasted and Jeff felt a sharp snarl of pain slash across his leg.

Owen was against the rail, groggy, weaving. Jeff stepped forward and his leg screamed with agony. The gun came up again, shaky, uncertain.

Jeff’s fist lashed out, straight to the chin. Owen slumped like a sack, gun tumbling from his hand.

Hanging onto the railing, Jeff stooped and picked it up, straightened up again, still clutching the rail. He couldn’t move, he knew. He had to hang to that rail.

He lifted his head, stared dully at the Silver Dollar. The place was a hum of voices, but there was no shooting. Light still spilled from the windows.

His head spun and he fought to keep his grip. But the railing seemed to writhe and twist and his hand slipped off. He knew that he was plunging to the street, flat on his face.

He awoke choking and coughing, clawing at his throat. Through bleary eyes he saw a glass half full of whisky in a fist before his face.

He fought his way to a sitting posture and looked around. Men were standing in a circle, among them a man with a bearded face.

“How about it, Dan?” he asked, his voice raspy.

“It’s all right, kid,” said Dan. “Slemp coughed up his guts. We got enough evidence to hang them all.”

“But you,” asked Jeff. “How did you get away with it?”

Dan laughed. “Slemp was the only one that ever saw me close. I was too busy on the ranch to spend much time in town. And then the beard fooled them, would have fooled even Slemp. And no one pays much attention to a floating drunk. I figured what the setup was and I meant to get the evidence. But you almost upset my plans. When you came barging in this afternoon, I nearly came dealing myself a hand when Churchill jumped you …”

“Lucky thing for me,” said Churchill, “that you didn’t.”

“Only thing,” said Dan, “I wasn’t even sure, myself. That scar of yours.”

Jeff’s hand went to his cheek, “Got it the week after you left home,” he said. “Bronc bucked me off into a barbed wire fence.”

Originally named “Martian Lilies,” this story, which was apparently written in late 1939 or early 1940, was rejected by Amazing Stories , Astounding Science Fiction, and another magazine not named in Cliff’s journals before being accepted by Planet Stories late in 1942. The magazine paid Cliff a hundred dollars, and the story appeared its fall 1943 issue. In a way, readers can view this story as a reversal of the plot of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, as well as an extension of the idea underlying the Superman comic books (I know Cliff read Wells, but there’s no evidence that he ever read the Superman comics). But the most important thing about “Message from Mars” is that it contains, appropriately, the seeds of the later Simak novel All Flesh Is Grass.

“You’re crazy, man,” snapped Steven Alexander, “you can’t take off for Mars alone!”

Scott Nixon thumped the desk in sudden irritation.

“Why not?” he shouted. “One man can run a rocket. Jack Riley’s sick and there are no other pilots here. The rocket blasts in fifteen minutes and we can’t wait. This is the last chance. The only chance we’ll have for months.”

Jerry Palmer, sitting in front of the massive radio, reached for a bottle of Scotch and slopped a drink into the tumbler at his elbow.

“Hell, Doc,” he said, “let him go. It won’t make any difference. He won’t reach Mars. He’s just going out in space to die like all the rest of them.”

Alexander snapped savagely at him. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You drink too much.”