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

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

“I’d just as soon you didn’t.”

“Okay,” said Boyd. “Not for the time at least. Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you want?”

“You’ve done the best thing possible,” said Luis. “You know who I am, what I am. I don’t know why that’s so important to me, but it is. A matter of identity, I suppose. When you die, which I hope will be a long time from now, then, once again, there’ll be no one who knows. But the knowledge that one man did know, and what is more important, understood, will sustain me through the centuries. A minute—I have something for you.”

He rose and went into the tent, came back with a sheet of paper, handing it to Boyd. It was a topographical survey of some sort.

“I’ve put a cross on it,” said Luis. “To mark the spot.”

“What spot?”

“Where you’ll find the Charlemagne treasure of Roncesvalles. The wagons and the treasure would have been carried down the canyon in the flood. The turn in the canyon and the boulder barricade I spoke of would have blocked them. You’ll find them there, probably under a deep layer of gravel and debris.”

Boyd looked up questioningly from the map.

“It’s worth going after,” said Luis. “Also it provides another check against the validity of my story.”

“I believe you,” said Boyd. “I need no further evidence.”

“Ah, well,” said Luis, “it wouldn’t hurt. And now, it’s time to go.”

“Time to go! We have a lot to talk about.”

“Later, perhaps,” said Luis. “We’ll bump into one another from time to time. I’ll make a point we do. But now it’s time to go.”

He started down the path and Boyd sat watching him.

After a few steps, Luis halted and half-turned back to Boyd.

“It seems to me,” he said in explanation, “it’s always time to go.”

Boyd stood and watched him move down the trail toward the village. There was about the moving figure a deep sense of loneliness—the most lonely man in all the world.

Described by an unnamed editor as a “smashing owlhoot novel,” “The Reformation of Hangman’s Gulch” was originally published in the December 1944 issue of Big-Book Western Magazine , which, at that time, bore a cover price of fifteen cents. In this and perhaps a couple other westerns, Clifford Simak displays his apparent fascination with the way smoke from a burning cigarette can rise up into the eyes of the smoker.

—dww

A gust of wind swept up the canyon and set the thing that hung in the cottonwood to swaying. Stanley Packard’s horse shied, skittish, as the rope creaked against the limb. Packard spoke softly to the animal and reached out to pat its neck.

The horse quieted and Packard spurred closer, staring up at the man who hung there. Something familiar in that grotesque shape, something that struck a chord of memory in him.

A cloud sailed clear of the moon and light struck down through the autumn-thinned leaves of the mighty tree … light that for a moment revealed the face bent at an awkward angle against the hangman’s knot.

The eyes were open in terror and the pressure of the rope pressed the jaws tighter than they should have been, but there was no mistaking the face. Too many times had Packard seen that face, leering eyes squinted against the smoke that drooled from a cigarette hanging from its lips. Hanging could not change the tiny, well-cared-for mustache nor death wipe away the old knife scar that ran along the cheek.

The body swayed slowly, like a pendulum, and the dead eyes stared at the moon. The boots dangled pitifully, toes hanging down, as if the man were reaching for the earth. The hands were tied behind the back and a tiny stream of blood had drooled from one corner of the mouth, leaving a dark stain meandering down the chin.

A sudden chill struck into Packard, a chill that was not of the autumn night. Swiftly he looked around, panic rising in him.

But there was no sign of life except the twinkle of the few lights far down the canyon, lights that marked the outskirts of the town of Hangman’s Gulch. Otherwise there was only rock and scrub, and here and there a tree, bare limbs lifted against the night.

Packard’s hand went up to his coat, fingers pressing against the letter in the inside pocket. A rustle of paper told him it still was there.

He let his hand fall back again and shuddered. If that letter had caught up with him a little quicker, if he’d come a little sooner, there might have been two men on that limb instead of one.

Cardway, of course, hadn’t written exactly what he had in mind. But it wasn’t hard to guess, wasn’t hard to read between the lines. Not too hard when Packard remembered the straight thin lips with the dangling cigarette that poured smoke into those leering, squinting eyes.

But now, he told himself, he’d never know for sure what Cardway had in mind. Men who decorate a cottonwood don’t make explanations.

Carefully Packard backed his horse away from the cottonwood, back into the trail, headed once again for Hangman’s Gulch.

The trail broadened out into a street as the canyon flared to make a pocket, with the shacks and tents that were Hangman’s Gulch clambering up the two slopes.

Packard made note of places as the horse clopped down the street. A stagecoach stood, horseless, in front of the express office. The place blazed with light and two men armed with rifles sat just inside the door.

Sounds of revelry came from the Crystal Palace, the tinny tinkle of an out-of-tune piano, the shrill laughter of a woman, the drunken shout of some miner in to drink his dust.

In an empty restaurant a Chinese sprawled across a table, fast asleep. A barber next door trimmed industriously while a long row of men waited for the shears. Two men sat, hiked back in tilted chairs, in front of the livery stable. Just beyond stood a two-story structure, the word “Hotel” painted in a sprawl across one lighted window.

Packard pulled up at the stable, swung himself from the saddle. One of the men thumped down on his chair, clumped forward, picking his teeth with a stem of hay.

“Do somethin’ for you, stranger?”

“Got any grain for the horse?” asked Packard. “He’s been on the go all day.”

The man shook his head. “Nothin’ but hay. Good stuff, though. Can’t get no grain freighted in. Costs too much.”

Packard nodded, remembering the trail that he had covered. Freight would be costly along a road like that.

“If you come all the way from Devil’s Slide,” said the man, “you know what I mean.”

Packard smiled tightly. He recognized the words as a way to ask a question in a country where questions were something one simply did not ask.

“No harm in saying I came from Devil’s Slide, is there?” asked Packard.

The man scratched his chin with dirty fingernails. “Can’t say as there is, stranger. Didn’t happen to see anyone along the way, did you?”

“Aw, hell, Clint,” said the man still tilted against the stable, “he wouldn’t see anyone. The Canyon gang don’t bother with nothin’ except stagecoaches plumb weighed down with dust.”

“Only man I saw,” Packard told them, “was hanging in that old cottonwood just outside of town.”

“Oh, him,” said Clint. “He was a hombre who wandered in a couple weeks ago. The vigilantes got him.”

“Vigilantes?”

“Damn tootin’,” declared Clint. “This here town is plumb going to get civilized or bust a lung tryin’. Been too much hell-raisin’ to suit the citizens.”