Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

“Wanted to talk with you,” said Randall, smoothly.

“I haven’t got a thing to talk with you about,” snarled Packard.

Randall did not press the point. “Weren’t taking any chances, were you?” he asked. “Sleeping like that with your clothes on.”

“I was too tired to take them off.”

“Wouldn’t want to be set for a quick getaway?”

Packard shucked his gunbelt to a more comfortable position.

““Look, Randall,” he said, “I’m not making any quick getaway. When I leave this town I ride out, on my own horse, in broad daylight.”

“I hope so,” said Randall. “I most sincerely hope so.” But he sounded as if it was just too much to expect. He reached out for the bottle, tipped it toward one of the two tumblers setting on the table. “Drink?” he asked.

Packard nodded. Watching Randall pour, he saw that the sun was slanting through the window before which Randall sat. It must be late afternoon, he told himself. An hour or so to sundown.

He crossed the room and took the tumbler, sat down on the edge of the table. “Let’s have it, Randall,” he demanded. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s the job,” said Randall. “The one that you turned down.”

“I’m still turning it down,” said Packard.

Randall clucked sympathetically. “And with jobs so hard to get … and keep.”

“I’ll find one,” said Packard.

“Look,” Randall told him, “there’s no use of running a bluff on me. You can’t keep a job and you know it. Your old man was an owlhooter and pretty well known at that. When whoever you’re working for finds that out, you’re hunting another job. You tried to change your name and it didn’t work. Too many people knew your old man.”

“Hurley’s been talking to you,” Packard said.

“Sure, why not? Hurley works for me.”

“I didn’t know, though I should have. So that deal with Stover was all cut and dried. Except maybe that you figured it would work out the other way.”

“Don’t go blaming Hurley,” Randall warned. “If it hadn’t been for him, you’d be buzzard meat right now. I was pretty sore, you see, the way you acted, and I told Stover to go out and finish you. But Hurley told me who you was, and said you should have a chance.”

“A chance! With Stover sneaking in the door behind my back?”

“It wasn’t planned that way,” Randall told him. “It was to be fair and square. But Stover, the dog, double-crossed us all! Well, he got what was coming to him. It probably seemed pretty raw to you, but it wasn’t meant to be. And a man who handles guns like you do is too good a man to let get away.”

Packard shook his head. “I got other things to do.”

“Like holding up the express office?” asked Randall.

The liquor in Packard’s tumbler jerked and slopped, but he held his face steady. “Something like that,” he admitted.

If Randall knew, there was no use denying it. “You saw Cardway out on the trail?” asked Randall. And when Packard nodded:

“Hell of a way to die,” Randall said.

“Never aim to die that way,” said Packard.

“Neither did Cardway,” Randall told him.

He emptied his glass and set it down. “If it’s gold you want, why not come in with me. It’s safe. I run the town.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Leastwise, I’m still running it. But I been sort of lax. One man I have to tighten up on.”

“Preacher Page,” said Packard, casually.

Randall nodded. “Threatening to ask for martial law,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen. I’ll take care of Page.

“Let’s put down our cards. You came here to hold up the express office. Probably you’d never done anything like that before, but more than likely you figured since you couldn’t keep a job, you might as well be what people thought you were. You figured what the hell.”

Packard nodded soberly.

“Well,” continued Randall, “you can’t hold up the express office, for I’ve got the gold staked out. Anyone that lifts a finger toward it is signing his death warrant.”

He stared hard at Packard. “Agreed?” he asked.

“Agreed,” said Packard.

“All right, then,” said Randall, “let’s get together. You can’t hold any other sort of job than the one I’m offering you, for people always will find out just who you are and then out you go. And I need a man like you.”

“I suppose,” guessed Packard, “that if I refuse you’ll try to fix it up so I don’t leave town alive.”

“Your reasoning,” Randall told him, “is downright uncanny. Of course, if you have some ideas of your own … ?”

“Not a one,” Packard told him.

“O.K.,” said Randall, “you’re on the payroll. Five hundred a month and splits.”

“And my duties?”

“Act as if you aren’t one of us. Build up the idea that you are out to get my pelt. I’ll help the idea along a bit.”

“Outside man,” said Packard.

Randall nodded. “Exactly, except—except you’re going to be on one hold-up. A big shipment is going out tomorrow. You’ll ride out tonight.”

“Just so I’m in deep,” said Packard. “So I’m one of you.”

“In this business,” Randall told him, “we can’t have any pure and holy hombres. Your neck’s got to be nominated for the noose just like the rest of us.”

“You,” said Packard, “don’t leave a single thing to chance, do you, Randall?”

“Not a thing,” said Randall.

“And how will I know what I’m to do? Where I’m to go?”

“You’ll be told,” said Randall, shortly.

He pushed himself from the chair, walked across the room. At the door he turned back. “And you’ll be watched,” he added.

“I figured,” said Packard, “that I would.”

Listening to Randall’s footsteps going down the hall, Packard reached out for the bottle, poured himself a drink and gulped it, set the tumbler back on the table again.

It was the only way that he could play it, he told himself, staring at the door. To have refused Randall’s offer would have meant that he’d be dead before the hour had passed.

Getting up, he shucked his gunbelt, shaped his lips into a twisted grin. First he’d get some food. He jingled the few dollars left in his pocket and grinned. He could use some of that money Randall was paying him. Maybe he’d ought to go and hit him for something in advance.

At the Chinaman’s, Packard hung his hat on a nail, sat down and gave his order.

The Chinaman prattled as he ran with knife and fork and plates. “You new man in town, maybe?”

“Maybe,” agreed Packard.

“Maybe man who shot Stover?”

“Might be,” said Packard.

“Good shooting,” said the Chinaman.

He scuttled into the kitchen and out again.

“Preacher Page, he in to find out if you been in. Ask you go his place soon as you show up.”

“Thanks,” said Packard. He ate hurriedly, gulping his food and thinking.

He was glad that Page wanted to see him, glad that the man had inquired about him. It would be taking a chance with Randall to go and see the minister, but he had to take some chances. If Randall climbed him about it, he could say that in seeing Page he was merely out to create the impression he was not on Randall’s side.

Dusk had fallen on the street outside and the first faint stars were beginning to glitter in the east. Packard leaned against the front of the restaurant and fashioned himself a cigarette, strolled leisurely away.

He recognized the twisting path down which he and Hurley had come the night before and took it, following its windings up the mountain side.

Halfway up, he stopped and rested. The climb was steep and he was not used to walking. Below him were the lights of Hangman’s Gulch, a cluster of sparks in the gathering dark.