The Big Front Yard: And Other Stories

  He screamed again and this time the scream was directed to those others of his kind who had sent him out.

  Take me back! I am naked! Save me!

  Silence.

  I have worked for you – I have dug out the data for you – I have done my job – You owe me something now!

  Silence.

  Please!

  Silence.

  Silence – and something more than silence. Not only silence, but an absence, a not being there, a vacuum.

  The realization came thudding hard into his understanding. He had been abandoned, all ties with him had been cut – in the depth of unguessed space, he had been set adrift. They had washed their hands of him and he was not only naked, but alone.

  They knew what had happened. They knew everything that ever happened to him, they monitored him continuously and would know everything he knew. And they had sensed the danger, perhaps even before he, himself, had sensed it. Had recognized the danger, not only to himself, but to themselves as well. If something could get to him, it could trace back the linkage and get to them as well. So the linkage had been cut and would not be restored. They weren’t taking any chances. It had been something that had been emphasized time and time again. You must remain not only unrecognized, but entirely unsuspected. You must do nothing that will make you known. You must never point a finger at us.

  Cold, callous, indifferent. And frightened. More frightened, perhaps, than he was. For now they knew there was something in the galaxy that could become aware of the disembodied observer they had been sending out. They could never send another, if indeed they had another, for the old fear would be there. And perhaps an even greater fear – based upon the overriding suspicion that the linkage had been cut not quite soon enough, that this factor which had spotted their observer had already traced it back to them.

  Fear for their bodies and their profits …

  Not for their bodies, a voice said inside him. Not their biologic bodies. There are no longer any of your kind who have biologic bodies …

  Then what? he asked.

  An extension of their bodies, carrying on the purpose those with bodies gave them in a time when the bodies still existed. Carried on mindlessly ever since, but without a purpose, only with a memory of a purpose …

  Who are you? he asked. How do you know all this? What will you do with me?

  In a very different way, it said, I am one like you. You can be like me. You have your freedom now.

  I have nothing, he said.

  You have yourself, it said. Is that not enough?

  But is self enough? he asked.

  And did not need an answer.

  For self was the basis of all life, all sentience. The institutions, the cultures, the economics were no more than structures for the enhancement of the self. Self now was all he had and self belonged to him. It was all he needed.

  Thank you, sir, said he, the last human in the universe.

  Trail City’s Hot-Lead Crusaders

  Cliff Simak wrote this story under the name “Gunsmoke Goes to Press,” but it was published, in the September 1944 issue of New Western Magazine, under a new title … and these days it’s likely that many readers will miss the play on words in the new title. If you’ve read a few Westerns, you probably know that “hot lead” is a euphemism for a gunfight – but the protagonist of this story is a frontier newspaper editor in the days when newspaper publishing often required melting down and recasting the lead alloy used to set type on the printing press. (As it turned out, “Gunsmoke Goes to Press” was retained as a chapter heading in the newly titled story.)

  Clifford D. Simak seems to have had some following in Western literature of the era – in this case, his story was the topmost of the two listed on the front cover of the magazine, and it appeared as the first story in the magazine. Cliff’s journal shows that he was paid $120 for it during a period when the cover price of the magazine was fifteen cents. Several characters in the story bear the names of towns in the area of Wisconsin where Cliff grew up, and the protagonist bears as a last name the name of Cliff’s younger brother, Carson.

  —dww

  Chapter One

  Hit the Trail, Or Die!

  Morgan Carson, editor of the Trail City Tribune, knew trouble when he saw it – and it was walking across the street straight toward his door.

  Dropping in alone, either Jackson Quinn, the town’s lone lawyer, or Roger Delavan, the banker, would have been just visitors stopping by to pass the time of day. But when they came together, there was something in the wind.

  Jake the printer clumped in from the back room, stick of type clutched in his fist, bottle joggling in hip pocket with every step he took, wrath upon his ink-smeared face.

  “Ain’t you got that damned editorial writ yet?” he demanded. “Holy hoppin’ horntoads, does a feller have to wait all day?”

  Carson tucked the pencil behind his ear. “We’re getting visitors,” he said.

  Jake shifted the cud of tobacco to the left side of his face and squinted beneath bushy eyebrows at the street outside.

  “Slickest pair of customers I ever clapped an eye on,” he declared. “I’d sure keep my peepers peeled, with them jaspers coming at me.”

  “Delavan’s not so bad,” said Carson.

  “Just pick pennies off a dead man’s eyes, that’s all,” said Jake.

  He spat with uncanny accuracy at the mouse-hole in the corner.

  “Trouble with you,” he declared, “is you’re sweet on that dotter of hisn. Because she’s all right, you think her old man is too. Nobody that goes around with Quinn is all right. They’re just a couple of cutthroats, in with that snake Fennimore clear up to their hips.”

  Quinn and Delavan were stepping to the boardwalk outside the Tribune office. Jake turned and shuffled toward the back.

  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.”

&nbs
p; 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.

  Carson felt his gun buck against his hand, saw the look of surprise that came upon the other’s face, heard the blast of the single shot ringing in his ears.

  The man out in the street was sagging, sagging like a slowly collapsing sack, as if the strength were draining from him in the dying day. His knees buckled and the guns, still unfired, dropped from his loosened fingers. As if something had pushed him gently, he pitched forward on his face.

  For an instant more, the stillness held, a stillness even deeper than before. The man on the horse had reined up and was motionless, the scratching hen was a feathery statue of bewilderment.

  Then doors slammed and voices shouted; feet pounded on the sidewalks. The saloon porch boiled with men. Bill Robinson, white apron around his middle, ducked out of the store. The barber came out and yelled. His customer, white towel around his neck, lather on his face, was pawing for his gun, swearing at the towel.

  Two men came from the sheriff’s office and walked down the street, walked toward Carson, standing there, still with gun in hand. They walked past the dead man in the street and came on, while the town stood still and watched.

  Carson waited for them, fighting down the fear that welled within him, the fear and anger. Anger at the trap, at how neatly it had worked.

  The door slammed behind him and Jake was beside him, a rifle in his hand.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” he asked.

  Carson motioned toward the man lying in the dust.

  “Called me,” he said.

  Jake shifted his cud of tobacco to the north cheek.

  “Dang neat job,” he said.

  Sheriff Bert Bean and Stu Leonard, the deputy, stopped short of the sidewalk.

  “You do that?” asked Bean, jerking a thumb toward the dust.

  “I did,” admitted Carson.

  “That bein’ the case,” announced Bean, “I’m placin’ you under arrest.”

  “I’m not submitting to arrest,” said Carson.

  The sheriff’s jaw dropped. “You ain’t submittin’ – you what!”

 
“You heard him,” roared Jake. “He ain’t a-going with you. Want to do anything about it?”

  Bean lifted his hands towards his guns, thought better of it, dropped them to his side again.

  “You better come,” Bean said with something that was almost pleading in his voice. “If you don’t, I got ways to make you.”

  “If you got ways,” yelped Jake, “get going on ’em. He’s calling your bluff.”

  The four men stood motionless for a long, dragging moment.

  Jake broke the tension by jerking his rifle down. “Get going,” he yelled. “Start high-tailing it back to your den, or I’ll bullet-dance you back there. Get out of here and tell Fennimore you dassn’t touch Carson ’cause you’re afraid he’ll gun-whip you out of town.”

  The crowd, silent, motionless until now, stirred restlessly.

  “Jake,” snapped Carson, “keep an eye on that crowd out there.”

  Jake spat with gusto, snapped back the hammer of the gun. The click was loud and ominous in the quiet.

  Carson walked slowly down the steps toward the sidewalk, and Bean and Leonard backed away. Carson’s gun was in his hand, hanging at his side, and he made no move to raise it, but as he advanced the two backed across the street.

  Quinn pushed his way through the crowd in front of the bank and strode across the dust.

  “Carson,” he yelled, “you’re crazy. You can’t do this. You can’t buck law and order.”

  “The hell he can’t,” yelped Jake. “He’s doing it.”

  “I’m not bucking law and order,” declared Carson. “Bean isn’t law and order. He’s Fennimore’s hired hand. He tried to do a job for Fennimore and he didn’t get away with it. That man I killed was planted on me. You had Bean sitting over there, all ready to gallop out and slap me into jail.”

  Quinn snarled. “You got it all doped out, haven’t you?”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” said Carson. “You used a man that was just second-rate with his guns. Probably had him all primed up with liquor so he thought he was greased hell itself. You knew that I’d outshoot him and then you could throw a murder charge at me. Smart idea, Quinn. Better than killing me outright. Never give the other side a martyr.”