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

They think I’m soft, he thought. They despise me because I’m soft. They would leave me in a minute if it served their purpose or they’d put a knife into me without a second thought if that should serve their purpose…if there was something that I had they wanted.

There had been no choice, he realized. He could not have gone alone into this wilderness, for if he’d tried he probably wouldn’t have lived beyond the second day. It took special knowledge to live here and a special technique and a certain kind of mind. A man had to develop a high survival factor to walk into Mars behind the settlements.

And the settlements now were very far away. Somewhere to the east.

“Tomorrow,” Wampus said, “we change directions. We go north instead of west.”

Webb said nothing. His hand slid around cautiously and touched the gun at his belt, to make sure that it was there.

It had been a mistake to hire these two, he knew. But probably none of the others would have been better. They were all of a breed, a toughened, vicious band of men who roamed the wilderness, hunting, trapping, mining, taking what they found. Wampus and Nelson had been the only two at the post when he had arrived. All the other sand men had gone a week before, back to their hunting grounds.

At first they had been respectful, almost fawning. But as the days went on they felt surer of their ground and had grown insolent. Now Webb knew that he’d been taken for a sucker. The two stayed at the post, he knew now, for no other reason than that they were without a grubstake. He was that grubstake. He supplied them with the trappings they needed to get back into the wilderness. Once he had been a grubstake, now he was a burden.

“I said,” declared Wampus, “that tomorrow we go north.”

Webb still said nothing.

“You heard me, didn’t you?” asked Wampus.

“The first time,” Webb said.

“We go north,” said Wampus, “and we travel fast.”

“You got a Seven staked out somewhere?”

Lars snickered. “Ain’t that the damnedest thing you ever heard of? Takes seven of them. Now with us, it just takes a man and woman.”

“I asked you,” said Webb to Wampus, “if you have a Seven caged up somewhere?”

“No,” said Wampus. “We just go north, that’s all.”

“I hired you to take me west.”

Wampus snarled at him. “I thought you’d say that, Webb. I just wanted to know exactly how you felt about it.”

“You want to leave me stranded here,” said Webb. “You took my money and agreed to guide me. Now you have something else to do. You either have a Seven or you think you know where you can find one. And if I knew and talked, you would be in danger. So there’s only one of two things that you can do with me. You can kill me or you can leave me and let something else do the job for you.”

Lars said: “We’re giving you a choice, ain’t we?”

Webb looked at Wampus and the man nodded. “You got your choice, Webb.”

He could go for his gun, of course. He could get one of them, most likely, before the other one got him. But there would be nothing gained. He would be just as dead as if they shot him out of hand. As far as that went he was as good as dead anyhow, for hundreds of miles stretched between him and the settlements and even if he were able to cross those many miles there was no guarantee that he could find the settlements.

“We’re moving out right now,” said Wampus. “Ain’t smart to travel in the dark, but ain’t the first time that we had to do it. We’ll be up north in a day or two.”

Lars nodded. “Once we get back to the settlements, Webb, we’ll h’ist a drink to you.”

Wampus joined in the spirit of the moment. “Good likker, Webb. We can afford good likker then.”

Webb said nothing, did not move. He sat on the ground, relaxed.

And that, he told himself, was the thing that scared him. That he could sit and know what was about to happen and be so unconcerned about it.

Perhaps it had been the miles of wilderness that made it possible, the harsh, raw land and the vicious life that moved across the land…the ever-hungering, ever-hunting life that prowled and stalked and killed. Here life was stripped to its essentials and one learned that the line between life and death was a thin line at best.

“Well,” said Wampus finally, “what will it be, Webb.”

“I think,” said Webb, gravely, “I think I’ll take my chance on living.”

Lars clucked his tongue against his teeth. “Too bad,” he said. “We was hoping it’d be the other way around. Then we could take all the stuff. As it is, we got to leave you some.”

“You can always sneak back,” said Webb, “and shoot me as I sit here. It would be an easy thing.”

“That,” said Wampus, “is not a bad idea.”

Lars said: “Give me your gun, Webb. I’ll throw it back to you when we leave. But we ain’t taking a chance of you plugging us while we’re getting ready.”

Webb lifted his gun out of its holster and handed it over. Still sitting where he was, he watched them pack and stow the supplies into the wilderness wagon.

Finally it was done.

“We’re leaving you plenty to last,” Wampus told him. “More than enough.”

“Probably,” said Webb. “You figure I can’t last very long.”

“If it was me,” said Wampus, “I’d take it quick and easy.”

Webb sat for a long time, listening to the motor of the wagon until it was out of hearing, then waiting for the gun blast that would send him toppling face forward into the flaming campfire.

But finally he knew that it would not come. He piled more fuel on the fire and crawled into his sleeping bag.

In the morning he headed east, following backward along the tracks of the wilderness wagon. They’d guide him, he knew, for a week or so, but finally they would disappear, brushed out by drifting sand and by the action of the weak and whining wind that sometimes blew across the bleakness of the wilderness.

Anyhow, while he followed them he would know at least he was going in the right direction. Although more than likely he would be dead before they faded out, for the wilderness crawled with too much sudden death to be sure of living from one moment to the next.

He walked with the gun hanging in his hand, watching every side, stopping at the top of the ridges to study the terrain in front of him before he moved down into it.

The unaccustomed pack which he had fashioned inexpertly out of his sleeping bag grew heavier as the day progressed and chafed his shoulders raw. The sun was warm…as warm as the night would be cold…and thirst mounted in his throat to choke him. Carefully he doled out sips of water from the scanty supply the two had left him.

He knew he would not get back. Somewhere between where he stood and the settlements he would die of lack of water or of an insect bite or beneath the jaws and fangs of some charging beast or from sheer exhaustion.

There was, once you thought it out, no reason why a man should try to get back…since there was utterly no chance that he would get back. But Webb didn’t stop to reason it out; he set his face toward the east and followed the wagon tracks.

For there was a humanness in him that said he must try at least…that he must go as far as he could go, that he must avoid death as long as he could. So on he went, going as far as he could go and avoiding death.

He spotted the ant colony in time to circle it, but he circled it too closely and the insects, catching scent of food within their grasp, streamed out after him. It took a mile of running before he outdistanced them.

He saw the crouching beast camouflaged against the sand, where it was waiting for him, and shot it where it lay. Later in the day, when another monstrosity came tearing out from behind a rock outcropping, his bullet caught it between the eyes before it had covered half the distance.