Clifford Simak - The Ghost of a Model T - And Other Stories

Young Bill Watson snickered, nastily. “When I hit ’em, they stay hit.”

“Still, just to be safe…”

The puncher’s frantic voice broke in. “Boss! The cattle!”

Old Watson’s voice bellowed. “Yes, damn it, I almost forgot.”

Feet tramped across the floor, jarring it.

“You riding with us, Gray?” Bill Watson asked.

The banker’s voice was hesitant. “No. Think I’ll head back for town. Got some business…”

The slamming door cut off his words.

Silence stalked across the room, a deathly, terrible silence.

A dark drop dripped down on the floor no more than an inch from Benton’s left eye. A drop that hit and spattered…and was followed by another.

Blood, thought Benton. Blood! Dripping from my head. From where Bill Watson’s gun butt got me.

His hand twitched beneath him and he gritted his teeth to keep it where it was, to keep it from reaching up and feeling of his head, feeling to see just how bad the head wound was.

A wave of giddiness swept over him and beneath him the floor weaved just a little. The blood went on, dripping on the boards before his eye, forming a little puddle on the floor.

A glancing blow, he thought. A glancing blow that ripped my scalp half off. Head must be in one hell of a mess to make them think I’m dead.

Only the banker isn’t sure I’m dead. He was the one that wanted to put a bullet into me to be sure and finish it. And he’s still in the room here with me.

Pain lanced through his brain and across his neck, a livid finger of pain that etched an acid path along his jangled nerves. A groan came bubbling in his throat and he caught and held it back, held it with teeth that bit into his lip.

Feet shuffled slowly across the floor and in his mind Benton could imagine the slouching form of the banker stalking him, walking softly, warily, watching for some sign of life.

Play dead. That was it. Lie still. Be careful with your breathing, just sucking in enough air to keep your lungs alive. The way he’d done it on the night when the Yank patrol was hunting for him down in Tennessee.

The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece hammered through the room…a fateful sound. A sound that measured time, that sat and watched and didn’t care what happened. A sound that ticked men’s lives away and never even hurried.

The boots walked past and then turned back, came close. Benton felt his body tensing, fought it back to limpness.

A toe reached out and prodded him…prodded harder. Benton let his body roll with the prodding toe.

An inner door squeaked open softly and someone gasped, a hissing gasp of indrawn breath that could only come with terror.

The boots swung around and Benton knew that in the little silence the two of them were looking at one another…Gray and the person who had come into the room.

“I’m sorry, madam,” said the banker, “that you happened in.”

A woman’s voice came from across the room…a remembered voice.

“It’s…it’s…who is it?”

Gray’s voice was at once brutal and triumphant. “It’s young Benton.”

“But it can’t be!” There was a note of rising horror in the words. “It simply can’t be. Why, only this afternoon he promised me…”

The outer door slammed open and boots tramped harshly across the floor, passed close to Benton’s head.

“So you talked to him,” said young Bill Watson’s voice. “That’s where you were today.”

“Bill!” screamed the girl. “Bill, it’s not…”

Watson’s voice shrieked at her, lashed with blinding fury. “Just as soon as my back is turned, you go crawling back to him.”

“Listen, Bill,” said Jennie Watson. “Listen to me. Yes, I did talk to him…and I’m leaving you. I’m not living with a man like you…”

Something in his face wrenched a shriek from her, something in his face, something in the way he walked toward her.

“So you’re leaving me! Why, you damned little tramp, I’ll…”

She screamed again.

Benton heaved himself upward from the floor, gun clutched in his hand.

Watson was wheeling around, wheeling at the sound behind him, hands blurring for his guns.

“Bill,” yelled Benton, “don’t do it! Don’t try…”

But Watson’s guns were already out, were swinging up.

Benton chopped his own wrist down, pressing the trigger. The gun bucked and shook the room with thunder. Through the puff of powder smoke, he saw Watson going down.

Another shot blasted in the room and Benton felt the gust of wind that went past his cheek, heard the chug of a bullet crunching through the wall beyond.

He swung on his toes and swept his gun around. The banker stood before him, smoking gun half raised.

“So it’s you,” said Benton.

He twitched his gun up and Gray stared at him in white-faced terror. The gun dropped from the banker’s hand and he backed away, backed until the wall stopped him and he stood pinned by the muzzle of Benton’s gun. The man’s mouth worked but no words came out and he looked like he was strangling.

Benton snarled at him in disgust. “Quit blubbering. I won’t kill you.”

Blood trickled from his right eyebrow and half blinded him. He raised his free hand to wipe it off and the hand came away smeared a sticky red.

“Lord,” he thought, “I must be a sight.”

At a sound behind him, he swung around.

Watson was sitting up and Jennie was on her knees beside him. Both of them were staring at him.

“I’m sorry,” Benton told the girl. “I tried to stop him. I didn’t want to shoot him. I didn’t shoot until I had to.”

The girl spoke quietly. “You used to be kind and considerate. Before you went off to war and learned to kill…”

Watson bent from his sitting position, reaching out his hand, clawing for a gun that lay on the floor.

Benton jerked his own gun up and fired. Splinters leaped shining from the floor. Watson pulled himself back, sat hump-shouldered, scowling.

“Try that again,” invited Benton.

Watson shook his head.

Benton nodded at the girl. “You have her to thank you’re alive right now. If I could have brought myself to kill Jennie Lathrop’s husband, you’d been dead a good long minute.”

He wiped his face again, scrubbed his hand against his shirt.

“After this,” he said, “be sure you hit a little harder when you want to kill a man.”

“Next time,” Watson promised, “I’ll put a bullet through your skull.”

Benton spoke to the girl. “Better get that shoulder of his fixed up and get him in shape to travel. I don’t want to find him around here when I come back.”

Feet scuffed swiftly and Benton whirled about. Gray was leaping for the window, arms folded above his head to shield his eyes against the flying glass, feet swinging outward to clear the sill and crash into the already shattered panes.

Benton snapped his gun up, but before his finger pressed the trigger, gray had hit the window in a spray of showering glass and splintered wood.

Benton’s shot hammered through the broken window, a coughing bark that drowned out the tinkle of the falling shards. Outside, on the porch, a body thumped and rolled, crashed into the railing, flailed for a moment as Gray thrashed to gain his feet.

Benton bent his head, ran two quick steps, hurled himself after Gray, went sailing through the broken window, landed on the porch floor with a jar that shook his teeth.

Out in the moon-washed yard the banker was swinging on his horse at the hitching rack. And as he swung up, his hand was clawing at the saddle, clawing for something hidden there…a metallic something that came up in his fist, gleaming in the moonlight, and exploded with a gush of flame spearing through the night.