Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Bullets rattled in the weed stalks, plunked into the ground, hissed through the grass.

  Burns’ fist tightened on his gun and there was a tightness in his throat and his tongue was saying something that was almost a prayer:

  “Just let me get one good shot at him—just one good shot—that’s all I ask—just one good shot …”

  He crawled in unison to the words that rattled in his brain, as if they were a march to go on his hands and knees.

  Crawled, not away from the flaming, jabbering guns, but toward them, crawling with grim determination, spurred on by hate and the hope of vengeance.

  I’m the only one left, he thought. The only one left to stand up for Bob Custer and the things he stood for. For homes and grazing cattle, for Saturday nights in town, for a place to hang one’s guns.

  Long ago, he thought, I was looking for a place to hang my guns. Because I was sick of gunsmoke, sick of bloodshed, sick of fighting. But there’ll never be a place now to hang those guns—they’ll keep on talking till my hands can’t hold them.

  He gathered his feet under him, tensing for the effort that would heave his body upward. A bullet kicked dust in his face. Another clipped weeds above his head.

  From far away came a drumming sound, a rhythmic sound that beat faintly through the night—a sound that grew and hammered as an undertone to the snarling of the guns that swept the weed patch.

  Steve heaved himself clear of the weeds, snapped up his gun.

  Before him, advancing like a line of skirmishers, were dark figures, etched against the glowing pile of coals where the jail had stood.

  His gun bounced in his fist and one of the dark figures threw up its hands and yelled, pitched forward.

  A bullet twitched at Burns’ shirt and the sixgun barked again. Another of the men in front of him jerked backwards, folding up and falling. Like a shadow show, thought Burns.

  Fingernails of fire raked across his legs and droning lead stirred the air whining past his cheek. In front of him specks of flame were dancing, like fireflies in the night.

  A man was lunging at him—a man with a white shirt and a black tie whipping in the wind. Flame lanced from the hand of the lunging figure and pain lashed across Burns’ ribs.

  Carson—Carson coming at him! Carson with his white shirt and fancy vest and the bunched cravat that had come loose and was flapping in the wind.

  Steve felt the gun buck against his wrist, heard Carson’s sudden cry, saw the man stumbling on unsteady feet.

  There were other cries—cries and the drum of hoofs. Hoofs that came thundering down the street and stormed across the vacant ground back of the smouldering jail. The high clear sound of hoofs and the yells of men and the shapes of running horses that charged the line of skirmishers. Charged them with whoops of vengeance and the spat of gunfire and the slow drift of powdersmoke blue against the glow.

  Burns felt his knees buckling beneath him, felt the gun slip reluctantly from fingers that slowly went lax—held himself erect with sheer determination, watching Carson staggering toward him.

  Carson’s right hand, Burns saw, was a bloody smear where the bullet had smashed bone and flesh. But his left hand was in his coat pocket, fumbling …

  Bells of alarm rang through Burns’ brain and he drove his beaten body forward in a spring even as Carson’s hand came out of the pocket and steel glimmered as he lifted it to strike.

  Burns felt his body smashing into Carson’s, saw the gleaming knife start its downward thrust, threw up his arm to ward off the blow. The knife point caught his wrist and slashed downward to the elbow, but Carson was stumbling backward, giving ground, knocked off his balance by the body block.

  With a yell of rage Steve twisted his wrist, caught Carson’s hand in a steel trap grip, wrenched with a savage jerk. The knife flew from suddenly deadened fingers and Carson was going down, Burns on top of him.

  The red haze in front of Burns’ eyes spun in a tightening circle and the black crept in, constricting the red until it was no more than a spinning ball.

  Hands were on his shoulder, lifting him, tearing loose his fingers, dragging him back to a sense of consciousness.

  “Take it easy, bub,” a voice said. “We want to have a few to bring into court.”

  Burns struggled with the hands, fighting to get free.

  “Bob,” he mumbled. “It can’t be you. You’re dead.”

  “Not so you’d notice,” Custer told him. “The bullet nicked me on the head. Knocked me out. Woke up good as new.”

  Burns shook off the hands, struggled to his feet, stood there swaying, suddenly aware of the crowd that hemmed him in, aware of the throb that beat across his shoulder.

  Straight before him he saw a face, a face half covered by bushy whiskers.

  “Stranger,” said the whiskers, “you sure will do to ride the river with.”

  Burns tried to make his tongue work, but somehow it failed.

  “I’m Randall,” said the man. “Jim Randall. Ann’s father. Guess I can tell you this crowd will do almost anything you want.”

  Burns croaked at him. “Shucks, I don’t want nothing, Randall. Maybe just a peg somewhere to hang my guns.”

  “We cleaned them out,” said Randall. “Those that ain’t dead are high-tailing it out of here so fast they’re burning up the grass. Now we can come back and settle down.”

  A small figure in a torn shirt and dusty levis pushed past Randall, ran toward Burns.

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” cried Ann. “You shouldn’t have stayed back there on the trail…”

  Burns put out his one good arm and drew her close. “That was just the start of it,” he said. “This is the end.”

  He looked at Randall. “Maybe there’s a place,” he asked, “Where a man could stake a homestead?”

  Randall regarded the two of them smilingly.

  “I wouldn’t wonder a bit,” he said, “but what there is.”

  Final Gentleman

  What rough beast …?

  In May 1958, Clifford D. Simak began writing a story he initially called “Ghost Writer,” and I believe that story would be published in the January 1960 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title “Final Gentleman.” The writing was a struggle, particularly because Cliff was involved, during much of that time, with a number of crises, including several other writing projects and a move to a new home—“Did more writing on Ghost Writer tonight,” he recorded in his journal on July 15, when he was involved in revising it at Horace Gold’s request. “Rough going, but then, it always is.”

  Gold would ultimately reject the story, as would John W. Campbell Jr., of Astounding; and although Bob Mills of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction would take the story, he would want even more revisions, and would not accept the story until April 1959.

  The story is, I think, as autobiographical as any piece of fiction that Cliff ever wrote: It is about a writer of fiction who, going into retirement, comes to realize that his entire career has been manipulated by an alien force—a force that once, in the dim past, made the much younger writer an offer perhaps reminiscent of the Temptation of Christ.

  But, no, that’s not the “autobiographical” aspect I see in “Final Gentleman.” Rather, I was referring to the story’s portrayal of the loneliness that pervades every aspect of Hollis Harrington’s life.

  And it was Harrington’s emotional connection to the idea of Neanderthal Man—a connection also to be found in Cliff Simak’s life and writings—that saved him.

  —dww

  After thirty years and several million words there finally came a day when he couldn’t write a line.

  There was nothing more to say. He had said it all.

  The book, the last of many of them, had been finished weeks ago and would be published soon and there was an emptiness inside of
him, a sense of having been completely drained away.

  He sat now at the study window, waiting for the man from the news magazine to come, looking out across the wilderness of lawn, with its evergreens and birches and the gayness of the tulips. And he wondered why he cared that he would write no more, for certainly he had said a great deal more than most men in his trade and most of it more to the point than was usual, and cloaked though it was in fictional garb, he’d said it with sincerity and, he hoped, convincingly.

  His place in literature was secure and solid. And, perhaps, he thought, this was the way it should be—to stop now at the floodtide of his art rather than to go into his declining years with the sharp tooth of senility nibbling away the bright valor of his work.

  And yet there remained the urge to write, an inborn feeling that to fail to write was treachery, although to whom it might be traitorous he had no idea. And there was more to it than that: An injured pride, perhaps, and a sense of panic such as the newly blind must feel.

  Although that was foolishness, he told himself. In his thirty years of writing, he had done a lifetime’s work. And he’d made a good life of it. Not frivolous or exciting, but surely satisfying.

  He glanced around the study and thought how a room must bear the imprint of the man who lives within it—the rows of calf-bound books, the decorous neatness of the massive oaken desk, the mellow carpet on the floor, the old chairs full of comfort, the sense of everything firmly and properly in place.

  A knock came. “Come in,”’ said Harrington.

  The door opened and old Adams stood there, bent shoulders, snow white hair—the perfect picture of the old retainer.

  “It’s the gentleman from Situation, sir.”

  “Fine,” said Harrington. “Will you show him in?”

  It wasn’t fine—he didn’t want to see this man from the magazine. But the arrangements had been made many weeks before and there was nothing now but to go through with it.

  The man from the magazine looked more like a businessman than a writer, and Harrington caught himself wondering how such a man could write the curt, penetrating journalistic prose which had made Situation famous.

  “John Leonard, sir,” said the man, shaking hands with Harrington.

  “I’m glad to have you here,” said Harrington, falling into his pat pattern of hospitality. “Won’t you take this chair? I feel I know you people down there. I’ve read your magazine for years. I always read the Harvey column immediately it arrives.”

  Leonard laughed a little. “Harvey,” he said, “seems to be our best known columnist and greatest attraction. All the visitors want to have a look at him.”

  He sat down in the chair Harrington had pointed out.

  “Mr. White,” he said, “sends you his best wishes.”

  “That is considerate of him,” said Harrington. “You must thank him for me. It’s been years since I have seen him.”

  And thinking back upon it, he recalled that he’d met Preston White only once, all of twenty years ago. The man, he remembered, had made a great impression upon him at the time—a forceful, driving, opinionated man, an exact reflection of the magazine he published.

  “A few weeks ago,” said Leonard. “I talked with another friend of yours. Senator Johnson Enright.”

  Harrington nodded. “I’ve known the senator for years and have admired him greatly. I suppose you could call it a dissimilar association. The senator and I are not too much alike.”

  “He has a deep respect and affection for you.”

  “And I for him,”’ said Harrington. “But this secretary of state business. I am concerned…”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, he’s the man for it, all right,” said Harrington. “Or I would suppose he is. He is intellectually honest and he has a strange, hard streak of stubbornness and a rugged constitution, which is what we need. But there are considerations…”

  Leonard showed surprise. “Surely you do not…”

  Harrington waved a weary hand. “No, Mr. Leonard, I am looking at it solely from the viewpoint of a man who has given most of his life to the public service. I know that Johnson must look upon this possibility with something close to dread. There have been times in the recent past when he’s been ready to retire, when only his sense of duty has kept him at his post.”

  “A man,” said Leonard positively, “does not turn down a chance to head the state department. Besides, Harvey said last week he would accept the post.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Harrington. “I read it in his column.”

  Leonard got down to business. “I won’t impose too much upon your time,” he said. “I’ve already done the basic research on you.”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Harrington. “Take all the time you want. I haven’t a single thing to do until this evening, when I have dinner with my mother.”

  Leonard’s eyebrows raised a bit. “Your mother is still living?”

  “Very spry,” said Harrington, “for all she’s eighty-three. A sort of Whistler’s mother. Serene and beautiful.”

  “You’re lucky. My mother died when I was still quite young.”

  “I’m sorry to hear of it,” said Harrington. “My mother is a gentlewoman to her fingertips. You don’t find many like her now. I am positive I owe a great deal of what I am to her. Perhaps the thing I’m proudest of is what your book editor, Cedric Madison, wrote about me quite some years ago. I sent a note to thank him at the time and I fully meant to look him up someday, although I never did. I’d like to meet the man.”

  “What was it that he said?”

  “He said, if I recall correctly, that I was the last surviving gentleman.”

  “That’s a good line.” Leonard said. “I’ll have to look it up. I think you might like Cedric. He may seem slightly strange at times, but he’s a devoted man, like you. He lives in his office, almost day and night.”

  Leonard reached into his briefcase and brought out a sheaf of notes, rustling through them until he found the page he wanted.

  “We’ll do a full-length profile on you,” he told Harrington. “A cover and an inside spread with pictures. I know a great deal about you, but there still are some questions, a few inconsistencies.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “You know how we operate,” said Leonard. “We do exhaustive checking to be sure we have the background facts, then we go out and get the human facts. We talk with our subject’s boyhood chums, his teachers, all the people who might have something to contribute to a better understanding of the man himself. We visit the places he has lived, pick up the human story, the little anecdotes. It’s a demanding job, but we pride ourselves on the way we do it.”

  “And rightly so, young man.”

  “I went to Wyalusing in Wisconsin,” said the man from the magazine. “That’s where the data said that you were born.”

  “A charming place as I remember it,” said Harrington. “A little town, sandwiched between the river and the hills.”

  “Mr. Harrington.”

  “Yes?”

  “You weren’t born there.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s no birth record at the county seat. No one remembers you.”

  “Some mistake,” said Harrington. “Or perhaps you’re joking.”

  “You went to Harvard, Mr. Harrington. Class of 27.”

  “That is right. I did.”

  “You never married, sir.”

  “There was a girl. She died.”

  “Her name,” said Leonard, “was Cornelia Storm.”

  “That was her name. The fact’s not widely known.”

  “We are thorough, Mr. Harrington, in our background work.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Harrington. “It’s not a thing to hide. It’s just not a fact to flaunt.”


  “Mr. Harrington.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not Wyalusing only. It’s all the rest of it. There is no record that you went to Harvard. There never was a girl named Cornelia Storm.”

  Harrington came straight out of his chair.

  “That is ridiculous!” he shouted. “What can you mean by it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Leonard said. “Perhaps I could have found a better way of telling you than blurting it all out. Is there anything—”

  “Yes, there is,” said Harrington. “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Is there nothing I can do? Anything at all?”

  “You’ve done quite enough,” said Harrington. “Quite enough, indeed.”

  He sat down in the chair again, gripping its arms with his shaking hands, listening to the man go out.

  When he heard the front door close, he called to Adams to come in.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” asked Adams.

  “Yes. You can tell me who I am.”

  “Why, sir,” said Adams, plainly puzzled, “you’re Mr. Hollis Harrington.”

  “Thank you, Adams,” said Harrington. “That’s who I thought I was!”

  Dusk had fallen when he wheeled the car along the familiar street and drew up to the curb in front of the old, white-pillared house set well back from the front of wide, tree-shaded grounds.

  He cut the engine and got out, standing for a moment to let the sense of the street soak into him—the correct and orderly, the aristocratic street, a refuge in this age of materialism. Even the cars that moved along it, he told himself, seemed to be aware of the quality of the street, for they went more slowly and more silently than they did on other streets and there was about them a sense of decorum one did not often find in a mechanical contraption.

  He turned from the street and went up the walk, smelling in the dusk the awakening life of gardens in the springtime, and he wished that it were light, for Henry, his mother’s gardener, was quite famous for his tulips.