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

Gray mumbled at him. “What you want to know?”

“About the ranches. It was a put-up game?”

Gray shook his head. “All legal,” he protested. “Everything was…”

Benton strode toward him and the man moaned in fright, putting up his hands to shield his face.

“All right, then,” said Benton. “Spit it out.”

“It was the Watsons that thought it up,” Gray told him. He stopped to spit the blood out of his mouth and then went on. “They knew about the market up north and they wanted land and cattle.”

“So you fixed it up to go broke,” said Benton.

Gray nodded. “The bank really didn’t go broke, you see. We just doctored up the books, so there’d be some excuse to foreclose on our loans.”

“Then what?”

“That’s all,” said Gray. “I foreclosed and the Anchor brand took over. Paid the bank the money and took the land.”

“And you’ll testify in court?”

Gray hesitated. Benton reached for him and he backed away. He wiped his mouth again. “I’ll testify,” he said.

Suddenly Gray straightened to attention, head cocked to one side, like a dog that has suddenly been snapped from sleep by an unfamiliar sound.

Then Benton heard it, too. The click and rattle of horses’ hoofs, somewhere across the ridge.

Gray whirled about, staggered up the slope.

“Help,” he yelled. “Help!”

Benton leaped after him, swift rage brimming in his brain.

“Help!” yelled Gray.

Benton reached him, grasped his shoulder, hauled him around. The man’s mouth was opening again, but Benton smashed it shut, smashed it with a blow that cracked like a pistol shot. Gray sagged so suddenly that his falling body ripped loose the hold Benton’s hand had upon his coat.

This time he did not moan or stir. He lay huddled on the ground, a limp pile of clothing that fluttered in the wind.

The hoofs across the ridge were speeding up and heading for the top. Frantically, Benton explored the ground for a gun. Three guns, he thought, and not a one in sight.

For a single instant he stood in indecision and that instant was too long.

Mounted men plunged over the ridge top, black silhouettes against the moon and were plunging down the slope. Dust smoked in silver puffs around the horses’ jolting hoofs and the men rode silently.

Benton ducked swiftly, started to run, but those on the ridge top saw him, wheeled their mounts, tore down upon him.

Faced about, he waited…and knew that final hope was gone. Gray had yelled when he heard the hoofs, but he could not have known that the riders were from the Anchor ranch. He had only taken a chance, gambling on the fact that they may have been.

And they were.

Four men, who wheeled their horses in a rank in front of Benton, reined them to a sliding stop, sat looking at him, like gaunt, black vultures perching on a tree.

Benton, standing motionless, ticked them off in his brain. Vest, the foreman of the Anchor spread, Indian Joe, Snake McAfee and old Dan Watson himself.

Watson chuckled in his beard, amused.

“No guns,” he said. “Can you imagine that. The great Ned Benton caught without no guns.”

“I shoot him now?” asked Indian Joe and lifted up his gun.

Watson grunted. “Might as well,” he said.

Indian Joe leveled the gun with a grossly exaggerated gesture of careful aiming.

“I nick him up a bit,” said Joe.

“None of that,” snapped Watson, peevishly. “When you fire, give it to him straight between the eyes.”

“No fun that way,” complained Indian Joe.

Watson spoke to Benton. “You got anything to say?”

Benton shook his head.

If he turned and ran, they’d stop him with a storm of lead before he’d gone a dozen feet.

On the hillside above a rock clicked and Vest stiffened in his saddle.

“What was that?” he asked.

Snake laughed at him. “Nothing, Vest. You’re just spooky. That’s all. Shooting at them shadows back there.”

Slowly, deliberately Indian Joe raised his gun. Benton stared straight into the ugly bore.

The gun flashed an angry puff of red into his eyes and the wind of the screaming bullet stirred the hair upon his head.

“Missed, by Lord!” yelped Indian Joe in mock chagrin.

Watson yelled angrily at him. “I told you none of that!”

Indian Joe was the picture of contriteness. “I do better next time.”

He leveled the gun again and Snake growled at him. “You take too damn long.”

“Got to hit him this time,” said Indian Joe, “or boss get awful mad. Right between the eyes, he said. Right between…”

Up the hill a rifle snarled and Indian Joe stiffened in his saddle, stiffened so that he was standing in the stirrups with his body tense and rigid.

Vest yelled in sudden fright and Indian Joe’s horse was pitching, hurling the rider from his back, a rider that was a tumbling empty sack instead of a rigid body.

With a curse, Snake swung his horse around, reaching for his gun. The hilltop rifle spoke again and Snake was huddled in his saddle, clawing at his throat and screaming, screaming with a whistling, gurgling sound. Blackness gushed from his throat onto his clawing hands and he slumped out of the saddle as the horse wheeled suddenly and plunged toward the canyon mouth.

Benton dived for the shining gun that fell from Snake’s hand, heard the hammer of the rifle talking on the hill. A horse screamed in agony and far off down the slope he heard the hurried drum of hoofs.

Scooping the weapon up, Benton whirled around. A sixgun roared and he felt the slap of the bullet as it sang across his ribs.

In the moonlight Dan Watson was walking toward him, walking slowly and deliberately, gun leveled at his hip. Behind him lay the horse that he had been riding, downed by the rifle on the hill.

Watson’s hat had fallen off and the moon gleamed on his beard. He walked like an angry bear, with broad shoulders hunched and bowed legs waddling.

Benton snapped Snake’s gun up, half fumbled with the unfamiliar grip. A heavy gun, he thought, a heavier gun than I have ever used. Too heavy, with a drag that pulls the muzzle down.

Watson fired again and something tugged at Benton’s ear, a thing that hummed and made a breeze against his cheek.

By main strength, Benton forced Snake’s gun muzzle up, pulled the trigger. The big gun jolted in his hand…jolted again.

Out in front of him, Watson stopped walking, stood for a moment as if surprised.

Then his hand opened and the gun fell out and Watson pitched forward on his face.

From up the hill came a crash of bushes, a cascade of chattering rocks that almost drowned out the beat of plunging hoofs.

Benton swung around, gun half raised. Two riders were tearing down upon him.

One of them waved a rifle at him and screeched in a banshee voice.

“How many did we get?”

“Jingo!” yelled Benton. “Jingo, you old…”

Then he saw the second rider and his words dried up.

Stones rattled about his boots as Ellen Madox reined in her horse less than six feet from him.

Jingo stared at the three bodies on the hillside.

“I guess that finishes it,” he said.

“There were four of them,” said Benton. “Vest must have got away.”

“The hell he did,” snapped Jingo. “Who’s that jigger over there?”

He pointed and Benton laughed…a laugh of pure nervousness.

“That’s Gray,” he said. “I got him and he coughed up everything, He’ll testify in court.”

“Dead men,” said Jingo, sharply, “ain’t worth a damn in court.”

“He isn’t dead,” protested Benton. “Just colder than a herring.”

“Young Watson should be around somewhere,” said Jingo. “What say we hunt him up?”