Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

“The Prowler got ’em,” Stiffy said, triumphantly.

“But how could there be a lost mine?” asked Meek. “Asteroid City was one of the first mining domes built out here. There was no prospecting done until about that time.”

Stiffy shook his head, waggling his beard.

“How should I know,” he defended himself. “Maybe some early space traveler set down here, dug a mine, never got back to Earth to tell about it.”

“But Juno is only one hundred and eighteen miles in diameter,” Meek argued. “If there had been a mine someone would have found it.”

Stiffy snorted. “That’s all you know about it, stranger. Only one hundred and eighteen miles, sure … but one hundred and eighteen miles of the worst danged country man ever set a boot on. Mostly up and down.”

The drinks came, the bartender slapping them down on the table before them. Meek gasped first at their price, then choked on the drink itself. But he smothered the choke manfully and asked:

“What kind of stuff is this?”

“Bocca,” replied Stiffy. Good old Martian bocca. Puts hair on your chest.”

He gulped his drink with gusto, blew noisily through his whiskers, eyed Meek disapprovingly.

“Don’t you like it?” he demanded.

“Sure,” liked Meek. “Sure I like it.”

He shut his eyes and poured the liquor into his mouth, gulped fiercely, desperately, almost strangling.

Said Stiffy: “Tell you what let’s do. Let’s get into a game.”

Meek opened his mouth to accept the invitation, then closed it, caution stealing over him. After all, he didn’t know much about this place. Maybe he’d better go a little easy, at least at first.

He shook his head. “No, I’m not very good at cards. Just a few games of penny-ante now and then.”

Stiffy looked his disbelief. “Penny-ante,” he said, then guffawed as if he sensed humor in what Meek had said. “Say, you’re good,” he roared. “Don’t s’pose you can use them lightnin’ throwers of yours either.”

“Some,” admitted Meek. “Practiced in front of a looking glass a little.”

He wondered why Stiffy rolled in his chair with mirth until tears ran down into his whiskers.

Stiffy held a full house … aces with kings … and his eyes had the look of a cat talking a saucer full of cream.

There were only two in the game, Stiffy and an oily gentleman called Luke. As the stakes mounted and the game grew hotter the others at the table dropped out.

Standing behind Stiffy, Oliver Meek watched in awe, scarcely breathing.

Here was life … the kind of life one would never dream of back in the little cubby hole with its calculators and dusty books at Lunar Exports, Inc.

In the space of an hour, he had seen more money pass across the table than he had ever owned in all his life. Pots that climbed and pyramided, fortunes gambled on the flip of a single card.

But there was something else too … something wrong about the dealing. He couldn’t figure quite what it was, but he had read an article about how gamblers dealt the cards when they didn’t aim to give the other fellow quite an even break. And there had been something about Luke’s dealing … something that he had read about in that article.

Across the table Luke grimaced.

“I’ll have to call you,” he announced. “I’m afraid you’re too strong for me.”

Stiffy slapped down his hand triumphantly.

“Match that, dang you!” he exulted. “The kind of cards I been waiting for all night.”

He reached out a gnarled hand to rake in the coin but Luke stopped him with a gesture.

“Sorry,” he said.

He flipped the cards down slowly, one at a time. First a trey, then a four and then three more fours.

Stiffy gulped, reached for the bottle.

But even as he did, Oliver Meek reached out and placed his hand upon the money on the table, fingers wide spread. He’d remembered what he had read in that article. …

“Just a minute, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ve remembered something. …”

Silence thudded in the room.

Meek looked across the table straight into the eyes of Luke.

Luke said: “You better explain yourself, mister.”

Meek suddenly was flustered. “Why, maybe I acted too hastily. It really was nothing. I just noticed something about the deal. …”

Luke jerked erect, kicking his chair away with the single motion of rising. The crowd suddenly surged away, out of the line of fire. The bartender ducked behind the bar. Stiffy flung himself with a howl out of his chair, skidded along the floor. Meek, suddenly straightening from the table, saw Luke’s hand streaking for the gun at his belt and in a split second he realized that here he faced a situation that demanded action.

He didn’t think about those days of practice in front of the mirror. He didn’t call upon a single iota of the gun-lore he had read in hundreds of books. His mind, for a bare instant, was almost a blank, but he acted as if by instinct.

His hands moved like driving pistons, snapped the twin guns from their holsters, heaved them clear of leather, grabbed them in mid-air.

He saw Luke’s gun muzzle swinging up, tilted down the muzzle of his own left gun, pressed the activator. There was a screeching hiss, a streak of blue that crackled in the air and the gun that Luke held in his hand was suddenly red hot.

But Meek wasn’t watching Luke. His eyes were for the crowd and even as he pressed the firing button he saw a hand pick a bottle off the bar, lift it to throw. The gun in his right hand shrieked and the bottle smashed into a million pieces, the liquor turned to steam.

Slowly Meek backed away, his tread almost cat-like, his weak blue eyes like cold ice behind the thick lensed spectacles, his hunched shoulders still hunched, his lean jaw like a steel trap.

He felt the wall at his back and stopped.

Out in the room before him no one stirred. Luke stood like a statue, gripping his right hand, badly burned by the smoking gun that lay at his feet. Luke’s face was a mask of hatred.

The rest of them simply stared. Stared at this outlander. A man who wore clothing such as the Asteroid Belt had never seen before. A man who looked as if he might be a clerk or even a retired farmer out on a holiday. A man with glasses and hunched shoulders and a skin that had never known the touch of sun in space.

And yet a man who had given Luke Blaine a head start for his gun, had beaten him to the draw, had burned the gun out of his hand.

Oliver Meek heard himself speaking, but he couldn’t believe it was himself. It was as if some other person had taken command of his tongue, was forcing it to speak. He hardly recognized his voice, for it was hard and brittle and sounded far away.

It was saying: “Does anyone else want to argue with me?”

It was immediately apparent no one did.

Oliver Meek tried to explain it carefully, but it was hard when people were so insistent. Hard, too, to collect his thoughts so early in the day.

He sat on the edge of the bed, white hair tousled, his night shirt wrinkled, his bony legs sticking out beneath it.

“But I’m not a gun fighter,” he declared. “I’m just on a holiday. I never shot at a man before in all my life. I can’t imagine what came over me.”

The Rev. Harold Brown brushed his argument aside.

“Don’t you see, sir,” he insisted, “what you can do for us? These hoodlums will respect you. You can clean up the town for us. Blacky Hoffman and his mob run the place. They make decent government and decent living impossible. They levy protection tribute on every businessman, they rob and cheat the miners and prospectors who come here, they maintain vice conditions. …”