No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (17 page)

“Everything,” said Jeff. “Found the oats. There’s just one thing you can do. I sure would appreciate it if you didn’t let on I wasn’t Peaceful Jones. For a while, at least.”

“Any way you want it,” Churchill said.

“Name really is Jones,” Jeff explained. “Jeff Jones. But I never heard of this Peaceful jasper. Looking for my brother, Dan. Use to have a ranch out east a ways.”

“Dan Jones,” said Churchill. “Yeah, I heard of him. Up and disappeared couple, three months ago. Slemp took over his ranch.”

“I know,” Jeff told him. “Rode past the place coming in. Feller there said he was minding it for Slemp. Seems Dan had a mortgage on it.”

“Lots of fellows around here losing their spreads to Slemp,” said Churchill. “Downright uncanny how it happens sometimes. Some of them get killed and some of them are robbed and some just naturally come up missing. Seems almost as if Slemp has luck plumb on his side. Ain’t a one of those places but is worth a sight more than the money owing on them.”

“Who did the killing?” asked Jeff.

“Bunch of riders out in the hills, I guess,” said Churchill. “Leastwise, that’s what we always figured. Hills gang, they’re called. Got the lawmen of ten counties fit to be tied.”

The layout was loaded with sudden death. There could be no doubt of that.

Maybe, Jeff told himself, he should get out before the shooting started. After all, he had deliberately stuck out his neck without proper thought. Had accepted the identity of Peaceful Jones, had listened to Owen’s cold-blooded proposition of robbery and murder, had gone to Slemp pretending he was the man that Slemp had sent for.

That he would be in the middle when the shooting started, Jeff knew all too well.

Both Owen and Slemp, he realized, were ruthless men. Owen was planning to wipe out Slemp who, with his planted spies, knew he was planning it. And neither one, Jeff felt, could be trusted for a fraction of a second.

Hunched above his plate of ham and eggs, Jeff stared out the window of the restaurant to the evening-softened street. A few men were riding in, probably heading for the Silver Dollar.

We had some deals together,
Slemp had said in describing why he was afraid of Owen. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what sort of deals they might have been … not hard to understand why men who owed Slemp money were killed or robbed or simply disappeared.

Dan had had the money to pay Slemp. Jeff knew that, for he, himself, had sent part of it to him, had planned on coming out later on and going in with Dan. That, he remembered, had been something they had talked about for years … the day when they could own a spread together.

Jeff’s fingers tightened on the fork and it shook so that the piece of ham fell off.

Dan, most likely, was dead. That was a thing he had to face. A fact he must accept. Somewhere out here, Dan Jones, his brother, had been shot down, probably from ambush, with not a single chance of fighting back.

Jeff finished the ham, mopping up the egg yolk with the last few pieces, and drained the coffee mug.

Outside night had fallen and the dusky copper of lamplight had bloomed along the street. The stars were a faint, powdery drift in the black vault of the sky and a lonesome wind drummed above Cactus City with a hollow sound.

Jeff stumped up the street toward the bank. Slemp, he knew, must be at work, for the two windows glowed orange with light.

Opposite the bank, Jeff started to cross the street and then drew back into the shadows of the buildings. Someone was inside with Slemp.

Jeff glanced up and down the street. There was no one nearby. Down by the Silver Dollar a few horses were hitched to the rail and a couple of men lounged in front of the livery barn.

Swiftly Jeff strode across the street toward the bank. Through the window he could see Slemp and the other man, standing beside the open back door, talking together. Then the second man stepped out and Slemp closed the door, shot the heavy bolt.

But Jeff had recognized the other man. Tall, haggard, wolfish, there could be no mistake. The man was Buck … the one who had been in the Silver Dollar that afternoon, the one who had picked up the guns that Churchill dropped.

Jeff waited for ten minutes, propped against the building, whistling soundlessly. Then he rapped on the window and pressed his face against the pane. Slemp looked up from his books, peered over the caged-in counter like a startled rabbit. Jeff rapped again.

Slowly, uncertainly, Slemp came from behind the cage and moved toward the window. Then, seeing who it was, he motioned toward the door.

The door opened and Jeff stepped in.

Slemp rubbed his hands together. “So you decided to start the job right away,” he said.

“Get your hat,” said Jeff. “You’re coming with me.”

“My hat?”

“Sure, your hat. We’re going down to the Silver Dollar.”

Jeff stepped close and lifted the six gun from the banker’s holster.

“You won’t be needing this,” he said. He ran his hand over Slemp’s coat, making sure he had no shoulder gun.

The banker tried to speak, but the words dried up in his mouth and he only sputtered. Jeff reached up, took Slemp’s hat from the nail beside the door and socked it on his head.

“But the Silver Dollar,” yelled Slemp. “Owen …”

“That’s just what I thought,” said Jeff. “You and Owen will want a little talk.”

He drilled the gun muzzle into the banker’s stomach and motioned at the door.

“Out you go,” he said. “Walk ahead of me. Not too fast, not too slow. As natural as you can. If you try to get away I’ll fill you full of holes.”

“You can’t do this,” sputtered the banker. “I hired you to protect me. I’m the one …”

“You hired Peaceful Jones to protect you,” snapped Jeff, “and he ain’t got here yet. Me, I’m another Jones, no relative of his.”

“You aren’t Peaceful Jones!”

“Naw, I’m Jeff Jones. Had a brother name of Dan. Maybe you remember him. He had a mortgage with you.”

“But listen, Jones, all I did …”

“Yeah, I know. You didn’t do a thing except foreclose all legal like. He didn’t show up with the money, so you took his land. We’re going to find out what Owen knows about it.”

“You’ll be sorry for this,” stormed Slemp. “You’re way out on a limb.”

“Maybe so,” admitted Jeff. “We’re finding out.”

He prodded Slemp’s belly with the gun barrel. “Out the door and remember what I said.”

Slemp sidled out the door and Jeff followed.

From the Silver Dollar came the sound of voices, the clink of glasses on the bar, the tinkling music of a tinny piano.

Jeff grinned grimly. This was the payoff. If it failed, if it didn’t click, he had his neck way out and no time to pull it back.

Slemp marched ahead, not looking to left or right, his shoulders hunched as if at any moment he expected the impact of a bullet. At the steps to the saloon he turned and climbed to the porch. Jeff followed.

He stumbled, his foot tripping on the broken board.

In the dark beyond the porch a sixgun hammered and red flames splashed angrily. Jeff went to his knees, hands outflung, the bullet an angry drone above his head. The sixgun roared again and white splinters flew from the porch floor just in front of him.

Savagely, Jeff ripped out a gun, fired at the place from which the shots had come. The hidden Colt barked again and someone was running down the street.

Twisting around, Jeff lined his sights between the porch railing posts and fired. The runner staggered drunkenly, came to his knees in a slashing path of lamplight that spewed from the restaurant.

The ponies were snorting, rearing and jerking at their ties. The Silver Dollar’s batwing doors crashed open under the weight of rushing men. The piano stopped abruptly.

Jeff wrenched his foot free of the broken step, the step that had broken under him that afternoon. A broken step, he knew, that probably had saved his life. For it he hadn’t stumbled when he did, the killer’s bullet would have found him.

The man on his knees in front of the restaurant was leveling his gun. It bellowed and the slug raked across Jeff’s ribs with a blow that numbed his side.

Behind Jeff a sixgun crashed and the kneeling man tipped over, arms outflung, body bent at an awkward angle.

Jeff whirled, grabbed the arm that held the smoking gun and twisted hard. The weapon dropped.

“Someone swiped my shooting iron,” wailed a voice. “Snatched it plumb away from me. Just wait until I get my hands …”

“It’s on the ground,” Jeff said tersely. “Pick it up.”

He spoke to the man he held. “Right nice of you to save my life.”

Slemp squirmed in his grasp, terror on his face. “So you fixed it up,” said Jeff. “You had him planted here. I might have known when I saw him in there with you. One of your spies. Afraid of me, so you decided to scratch me out.”

Slemp tried to speak, but Jeff snarled at him.

“Shut up!”

Three men came back from the restaurant, carrying the limp body.

“It’s Buck,” said one of them. “He’s deader than a door nail.”

They laid him on the porch and someone brought a blanket to throw over him.

Jeff looked up and saw Owen standing on the porch, staring down at him and Slemp.

“I see,” said Owen, “that you’re taking your new job right serious.”

“I aim to,” Jeff told him. He nodded at the blanket covered form. “One of your men, wasn’t he?”

Owen shook his head. “Must be something wrong, Jones. Buck never would have climbed you.”

“He did, though.”

“And,” said Owen, callously, “he got what was coming to him.”

Owen turned away and headed for the doors. “Drinks on the house,” he called.

The men trooped in to line up against the bar.

“Get going,” Jeff told Slemp.

Together they climbed the steps and went through the doors, stopped just inside of them.

Everyone else was at the bar … except one man. The drunk still slept at the table, hat still canted on its brim. He snored and the snore made his whiskers flutter as if there were a wind.

“Owen,” said Jeff and his voice, edged with steel, cut through the voices at the bar, brought every man around, clapped the place in silence.

For a long minute the silence held, then Owen stepped out of the line.

“Yes, Jones, what is it?”

Jeff twisted his arm and sent the banker spinning into the center of the room. Off balance, Slemp tried to right himself, skidded and slipped, sat down hard and slid.

“Slemp here wants to ask you about some money,” said Jeff. “The mortgage money that never got to him.”

“He’s crazy,” screamed the sitting Slemp. “He don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I had a brother Dan,” said Jeff. “He started for Cactus City to pay up his mortgage. He never got here. He …”

At the bar a man moved swiftly, his arms a blur of motion, his gun a streaking thing that glinted in the light.

Jeff’s hands pistoned for his Colts, but he knew he’d be too late. The play had failed … it never had a chance ….

A crashing gun bark jarred the room and the man at the bar huddled forward, twisting, fighting to keep his feet. He staggered out into the room, his guns dropped from his hand and he sat down limply, one shoulder oozing red.

The drunk, drunk no longer, crouched behind his table, two guns out. One of them smoking.

The crowd at the bar surged forward, but Jeff swept the gun barrels at them.

“Stay where you are,” he yelled. “And reach for the sky.”

They halted, retreated until their backs were against the bar. Slowly their hands came up.

“Some of you hombres are all right,” said Jeff, “and some of you ain’t. I ain’t got no way of knowing. The ones that move, I’ll figure that they ain’t.”

The drunk spoke slowly, almost conversationally. “You take them from that side, kid, and I’ll take them from the other.”

“Dan!” yelled Jeff.

“Yeah, it’s me, all right. But keep your eyes peeled. That buckaroo on the floor must be one of them that dry gulched me that day. Can’t explain what he did no other way.”

The blood drummed through Jeff’s head, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. Dan was alive … alive and in this room with him. The two of them putting down the chips against Slemp and Owen.

The tableau held. The line of men against the bar were still and silent, hands high in the air. Slemp still on the floor, Owen standing just a few feet out in the room. The wounded man slumped on the floor, head hanging, hand clawing at his shoulder.

But it would have to break. It couldn’t last, Jeff knew.

He stared at the faces staring at him. Jim Churchill was the only one he knew. But there must be others here who were ready to fight Slemp and Owen.

The wounded man was babbling. “I was sure I got him. It was dark, but I was sure. His horse ran and it was dark. The money was in the saddle bags and I didn’t go back to look. I was …”

“Shut up, you fool,” yelled Owen.

“So,” snarled Jeff, “you don’t want him to talk.”

“Men,” yelled Owen, “are you going to stand for this? Are you going to let this hombre get away with it?”

A few of those at the bar stirred uneasily, but no one went for his guns.

Churchill, arms still high, moved out.

“Better explain yourself, Jones,” he snapped.

“Simple,” said Jeff. “Owen and his gang here has been killing off the ranchers when they’re coming in to pay their loans. Owen gets the money and Slemp gets the land.”

“I never had a thing to do with it,” yelled Slemp. “It was Owen thought it up …”

The line at the bar exploded. A gun roared and a bullet thudded into the door post behind Jeff’s head.

Owen was charging and Jeff brought up a gun, pressed the trigger. But the big man came on.

Shots were hammering and a lamp crashed, spraying oil across the floor.

Jeff leaped to meet Owen’s charge, but his foot slipped in the pool of oil and his hands slid off Owen’s body. The batwings flapped as if hit by a sudden wind and the man was gone.

A bullet thudded into the floor and flying splinters stabbed at Jeff’s face. A gun crashed directly above him. One of his own guns was lost, but he still had the other. With a heave he gained his feet and plunged for the door.