Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

“All you have to do,” said Andrew Smith brightly, “is run Blacky and his gang out of town.”

“But,” protested Meek, “you don’t understand.”

“Five years ago,” the Rev. Brown went on, disregarding him, “I would have hesitated to pit force against force. It is not my way nor the way of the church … but for five years I’ve tried to bring the gospel to this place, have worked for better conditions and each year I see them steadily getting worse.”

“This could be a swell place,” enthused Smith, “if we could get rid of the undesirables. Fine opportunities. Capital would come in. Decent people could settle. We could have some civic improvements. Maybe a Rotary club.”

Meek wiggled his toes despairingly.

“You would earn the eternal gratitude of Asteroid City,” urged the Rev. Brown. “We’ve tried it before but it never worked.”

“They always killed our man,” Smith explained, “or he got scared, or they bought him off.”

“We never had a man like you before,” the Rev. Brown declared. “Luke Blaine is a notorious gunman. No one, ever before, has been able to beat him to …”

“There must be some mistake,” insisted Meek. “I’m just a bookkeeper. I don’t know a thing. …”

“We’d swear you in as marshal,” said Smith. “The office is vacant now. Has been for three months or more. We can’t find anyone to take it.”

“But I’m not staying long,” protested Meek. “I’m leaving pretty soon. I just want to try to get a look at the Asteroid Prowler and scout around to see if I can’t find some old rocks I read about once.”

The two visitors stared open mouthed at hm. Meek brightened. “You’ve heard about those old rocks, maybe. Some funny inscriptions on them. Fellow who found them thought they had been made recently, probably just before Earthmen first came here. But no one can read them. Maybe some other race … from somewhere far away.”

“But it won’t take you long,” pleaded Smith. “We got warrants for all of them. All you got to do is serve them.”

“Look,” said Meek in desperation, “you have got me wrong. It must have been an accident, shooting that gun out of Mr. Blaine’s hand.”

Meek felt dull anger stirring within him. What right did these people have of insisting that he help them with their troubles? What did they think he was? A desperado or space runner? Another gangster? Just because he’d been lucky at the Silver Moon.

“By gosh,” he declared flatly, “I just won’t do it!”

They looked pained, rose reluctantly.

“I suppose we shouldn’t have expected that you would,” said the Reverend Brown bitingly.

The Silver Moon was quiet. The bartender was languidly wiping the top of the bar. A Venusian boy was as languidly sweeping out. The dancing girls were gone, the music was silent.

Stiffy and Oliver Meek were among the few customers.

Stiffy gulped a drink and blew fiercely through his whiskers.

“Oliver,” he said, “you sure are a ring-tailed bearcat with them guns of yours. I wonder, would you tell me how you do it?”

“Look here, Mr. Grant,” said Meek. “I wish you’d quit talking about what I did. It was just an accident, anyhow. What I’m mainly interested in is this Asteroid Prowler you were telling me about. Is there any chance I might find him if I went out and looked?”

Stiffy choked, almost purple with astonishment.

“Good gravy,” he said, “now you want to go out and tangle with the Prowler!”

“Not tangle with him,” Meek declared. “Just look at him.”

“Mister,” Stiffy warned, “the best way to look at that thing is with a telescope. A good, powerful telescope.”

The swinging doors swung open and a man walked in.

The newcomer walked directly toward the table occupied by Stiffy and Meek. He halted beside it, black beard jutting fearsomely, eyes bleakly cold.

“I’m Blacky Hoffman,” he said. “I suppose you’re Meek.” He disregarded Stiffy.

Meek stood up and held out his hand.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Hoffman,” he said.

Blacky took the proffered hand in some surprise.

“Seems I should know you, Meek, but I don’t. Should have heard of you at some time or other. A man like you would get talked about.”

Meek shook his head. “I don’t think you ever have. I never did anything to get talked about.”

“Sit down,” said Hoffman and it sounded like a command.

“I got to be going,” Stiffy piped, already halfway to the door.

Hoffman poured out a drink and shoved the bottle at Meek. Meek gritted his teeth and poured a short one.

“No use beating around the bush,” said Blacky. “We may as well get down to cases. I guess we understand one another.”

Oliver Meek didn’t know what the other meant, but he had to say something.

“I guess we do,” he agreed.

“All right, then,” said Hoffman. “I’ve built up a sweet little racket here and I don’t like fellows butting in.”

Meek essayed to down his liquor, succeeded, gasped for breath.

“But I could use a man like you,” said Hoffman. “Luke tells me you are handy with the blasters.”

“I practice sometimes,” Meek admitted.

A smile twitched Hoffman’s bearded lips. “We have the town just where we want it. The officials can’t do a thing. Scared to. Marshals always eat rock or skip town. Maybe you would like to throw in with us. Not much to do, easy pickings.”

“I’m sorry,” said Meek, “but I can’t do that.”

“Listen, Meek,” warned Hoffman, “you’re either with us or you aren’t. We don’t like chiselers here. We know what to do with guys who try to muscle in. I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but I’m telling you this … straight. If you don’t come in, all right … but if you stick around after tonight I can’t promise you protection.”

Meek was silent, mulling the threat.

“You mean,” he finally asked, “that you’re ordering me out if I don’t join your gang?”

Hoffman nodded. “That, big boy, is just exactly what I mean.”

Slow anger and resentment ate at Meek. Who was this Hoffman to order him out of Asteroid City? This was a free Solar System, wasn’t it? No wonder the Rev. Brown was jittery. No wonder the decent people wanted a clean-up.

Meek’s anger mounted, a cold deadly anger that shook him like a frigid hand. An anger that almost frightened him, for very seldom in his life had he been really angry.

He rose slowly from the table, hitched his gun belt to a comfortable position.

“The town’s been without a marshal for a long time, hasn’t it?” he asked.

Hoffman’s laugh boomed out. “You bet it has. And it’s going to stay that way. The last one took it on the lam. The one before that got killed. The one before that sort of disappeared. …”

Meek spoke slowly, weak eyes burning.

“Horrible condition,” he said. “Something’s got to be done about it.”

The streets were deserted, quiet, a deadly quiet that lurked and hovered, waiting for something to happen.

Oliver Meek polished his marshal’s star with his coat sleeve, glanced up at the dome. Stars glittered, their light distorted by the heavy quartz. Stars in a dead black sky.

Bathed in the weak starlight, the mighty walls of the canyon reared above the dome. A canyon, the only sort of place where a city could rise on one of the planetoids. For the walls protected the dome against the deadly barrage of whizzing debris that continually shrieked down from space. Those mighty cragged mountains and dizzy cliffs were pocked with the blows dealt, through long eons, by that hail of armor-piercing projectiles.

Meek returned his gaze to the street, saw the lights of the Silver Moon. Nervously he felt of the papers in his inside pocket. Warrants for the arrest of John Hoffman for murder, Luke Blaine for murder, Jim Smithers for reckless shooting, Jake Loomis for assault and battery, Robert Blake for robbery.