Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

The door swung open and the two came in, Quinn huge, square-shouldered, flashy even in a plain black suit; Delavan quiet and dignified with his silvery hair and bowler hat.

“This is a pleasure,” Carson said. “Two of the town’s most distinguished citizens, both at once. Could I offer you a drink?”

He bent and rummaged in a deep desk drawer, came up empty-handed.

“Nope,” he said, “I can’t. Jake found it again.”

“Forget the drink,” said Quinn. He seated himself on Carson’s desk and swung one leg back and forth. Delavan sat down in a chair, prim and straight, like a man who dreads the job he has to do.

“We came in with a little business proposition,” said Quinn. “We have a man who’s interested in the paper.”

Carson shook his head. “The Tribune’s not for sale.”

Quinn grinned, pleasantly enough. “Don’t say that too quickly, Carson. You haven’t heard the price.”

“Tempt me,” invited Carson.

“Ten thousand,” said Quinn, bending over just a little as if to keep it confidential.

“Not enough,” said Carson.

“Not enough!” gasped Quinn. “Not enough for this?” He swept his hand at the dusty, littered room. “You didn’t pay a thousand for everything you have in the whole damned place.”

“Byron Fennimore,” Carson told him levelly, “hasn’t got enough to buy me out.”

“Who said anything about Fennimore?”

“I did,” snapped Carson. “Who else would be interested? Who else would be willing to pay ten thousand to get me out of town?”

Delavan cleared his throat. “I would say, Morgan, that should have nothing to do with it. After all, a business deal is a business deal. What does it matter who makes the offer?”

He cleared his throat again. “I offer the observation,” he pointed out, “merely as a friend. I have no interests in this deal myself. I just came along to take care of the financial end should you care to sell.”

Carson eyed Delavan. “Ten thousand,” he asked, “spot cash? Ten thousand on the barrel-head?”

“Say the word,” said Quinn, “and we’ll hand it to you.”

Carson laughed harshly. “I’d never get out of town with it.”

Quinn spoke softly. “That could be part of the deal,” he said.

“Nope,” Carson told him, “ten thousand is too much for the paper. I’d sell the paper – just the paper, mark you – for ten thousand. But I won’t sell my friends. I won’t sell myself.”

“You’d be making a stake out of it, wouldn’t you?” asked Quinn. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”

Carson leaned back in his chair, hooked his thumbs in his vest and stared at Quinn. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that you or Fennimore could understand why I came here. You aren’t built that way. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I told you I saw Trail City as a little cowtown that might grow up into a city.

“Gentlemen, that’s exactly what I saw. And I’m here, in on the ground floor. I’ll grow up with the town.”

“Have you stopped to think,” Quinn pointed out, “that you might not grow up at all? Might just drop over dead, suddenlike, some day?”

“All your gunslicks are poor shots,” said Carson. “They’ve missed me every time so far.”

“Maybe up to now the boys haven’t been trying too hard?”

“I take it,” said Carson, “they’ll try real hard from now on.”

He flicked a look at Delavan. The man was uneasy, embarrassed, twirling the bowler hat in his hands.

“Let’s stop beating around the bush,” suggested Carson. “I don’t know why you tried it in the first place. As I understand it, Fennimore will give me ten thousand if I quit bucking him, forget about electing Purvis for sheriff and get out of town. If not, the Bar Y boys turn me into buzzard bait.”

“That’s about it,” said Quinn.

“You don’t happen to be hankering after my blood, personally?” asked Carson.

Quinn shook his head. “Not me. I’m no gunslinger.”

“Neither am I,” Carson told him. “Leastwise not professionally. But from now on I’m not wearing this gun of mine for an ornament. I’m going to start shooting back. You can noise that around, sort of gentle-like.”

“The boys,” said Quinn, sarcastically, “will appreciate the warning.”

“And you can tell Fennimore,” said Carson, “that his days are over. The days of free range and squeezing out the little fellow are at an end. Maybe Fennimore can stop me with some slugs. Maybe he can stop a lot of men. But he can’t stop them forever.

“The day is almost here when Fennimore can’t fix elections and hand-pick his sheriffs, when he can’t levy tribute on all the businessmen in town, when he can’t hog all the water on the range.”

“Better put that in an editorial,” said Quinn.

“I have,” declared Carson. “Don’t you read my paper?”

Quinn turned toward the door and Delavan arose. He fumbled just a little with his hat before he put it on. “You’re coming to the house tonight for supper, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I thought so, up to now,” said Carson.

“Kathryn is expecting you,” the banker said.

Quinn swung around. “Sure, go ahead, Carson. Nothing personal in this, you understand.”

Carson rose slowly. “I didn’t think there was. You wouldn’t have a man planted along the way, would you?”

“What a thought,” said Quinn. “No, my friend, when we get you, it’ll be in broad daylight.”

Carson followed them to the door, stood on the stoop outside to watch them leave. They crossed the street toward the bank, the dust puffing up from their boots to shimmer momentarily in the slanting rays of the westering sun.

A horse cantered down the street, coming from the east, its rider slouching in the saddle. A hen scratched industriously in the dust and clucked to an imaginary brood. The sun caught the windows of the North Star Saloon, directly opposite the newspaper office, and turned the glass to glittering silver.

Trail City, thought Editor Morgan Carson, looking at it. Just a collection of shacks today. The North Star and the bank and sheriff’s office with the jail behind it. The livery stable and the new store with the barber shop in one corner.

A frontier town, with chickens clucking in the dust and slinking dogs that stopped to scratch for fleas. But someday a great town, a town with trains and water tower instead of a creaking windmill, a town of shining glass and brick.

A man was coming down the steps of the North Star, a big man stepping lightly. Carson watched him abstractedly, recognized him as one of Fennimore’s hired hands, probably in town on some errand.

The man started across the street and stopped. His voice came quietly across the narrow stretch of dust.

“Carson!”

“Yes,” said Carson. And something in the way the man stood there, something in the single word, something in the way the man’s face looked beneath the droopy hat, made him stiffen, tensed every nerve within him.

“I’m calling you,” said the man, and it was as if he had asked for a match to light his smoke. No anger, no excitement, just a simple statement.

For a single instant time stood still and stared. Even as the man’s hands drove for the gun-butts at his thighs, the street seemed frozen in a motionlessness that went on forever.

And in that timeless instant, Carson knew his own hand was swooping for his gun, that the weapon’s butt was in his fist and coming out.

Then time exploded and took up again and Carson’s gun was swinging up, easily, effortless, simple as pointing one’s finger. The other man’s guns were coming up, too, a glitter of steel in the sunlight.