The Big Front Yard: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  “I refused to sell you men out,” said Carson, “and now you’re selling me out. You won’t back my play. I should have taken that ten thousand.”

  Their eyes were shifty, refusing to meet his. A strange fear was upon them.

  Kelton said, “But you don’t understand, Morgan. Our wives and kids. We never thought it would come to this –”

  From the street outside came wild shouts and the sound of running feet.

  “Fire!” the single word ran through the startled night, crashed into the lamp-lighted Tribune office. “Fire! Fire!”

  Carson spun toward the window, saw the leaping flames across the street.

  “It’s my place!” yelled Bill Robinson. “My store! Every dime I have – every dime –”

  He was rushing for the door, clawing at the jamb, sobbing in his haste.

  The room exploded in a surge of men leaping for the door. Across the street dark figures of men, silhouetted against the windows, hurdled the porch railing of the North Star, hit the street running. At the hitching posts the horses reared and screamed and pawed at the air in terror.

  Flames were leaping and racing through the store, staining the whole street red. Smoke mushroomed like an angry cloud, blotting out the stars. Glass tinkled as a window was shattered by the heat.

  Carson pounded through the dust. Running figures bumped into him. Voices bellowed – yelling for pails, for someone to start the windmill.

  The flames shot through the roof with a gusty sigh, curled skyward, painting the pall of smoke with a bloody hue. One peak of the roof crumbled in as the fire raced through the seasoned timber. In the back something exploded with a whoosh, and for a moment the street was lighted by a garish flare that seemed to illuminate even the racing flames, then thick black clouds of smoke blotted it out.

  The kerosene drum had gone up.

  The building was dissolving, tongues of fire licking through the solid wall. Someone screamed a warning and the building went, the upper structure plunging in upon the flame-eaten nothingness that lay beneath it. Burning embers sailed into the street and the men ducked as they thudded in the dust.

  For a moment the crowd stood stricken into silence, and all that could be heard was the hungry soughing of the fire as it ate its way into oblivion.

  Men who had been rushing from the windmill with water to douse the side and roof of the sheriff’s office to keep it from catching fire, lowered their buckets and as the fire died down a new sound came: the clanking of the windmill.

  Through the crowd came Bill Robinson, face white, shirt smoldering where a brand had fallen. He stopped in front of Carson.

  “Everything is gone,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself. His eyes were looking beyond Carson, scarcely seeing him. “Everything. I’m ruined. Everything. …”

  Carson reached out a hand and gripped the man by the shoulder, but he wrenched away and shook his head, and plodded down the street. Men stood aside to let him pass, not knowing what to say.

  Gordon Purvis was at Carson’s elbow. He said quietly: “We’ll have to figure out something. Pass the hat –”

  Carson nodded. “We may as well go back to the office. Nothing we can do here.”

  A man came leaping through the open door of the Tribune, saw them and headed toward them at a run. Carson saw that it was Jake. And as the man drew near he knew there was something wrong.

  “The type!” gasped Jake. “All over the floor and throwed out the door. And someone’s used a sledge on the press –”

  Carson broke into a run, heart down in his stomach, his stomach squeezing to put it back in place, the cold feet of apprehension jigging on his spine.

  What Jake said was true.

  The back shop was a shambles. Every type case had been jerked out of the cabinets and emptied, some of it heaved out of the door into the grass along the path that ran to the livery stable. The press was smashed as if by a heavy sledge. The same sledge had smashed the cans of ink and left them lying in sticky gobs upon the floor.

  The work of a moment – of just the few minutes while the fire was racing through Robinson’s store.

  Carson stood slump-shouldered and stared at the wreckage.

  He finally turned wearily to Purvis. “I guess,” he said, “we don’t print that extra after all.”

  Purvis shook his head. “Now we know that fire was no accident,” he declared. “They wanted us out of here, and they picked a way that was sure to get us out.”

  They went back to the office and sat down to wait, but no one came in. Outside, hoofs pounded now and again as men mounted their horses and headed out of town. The hum of voices finally subsided until the street was quiet. Sound of occasional revelry still came from the North Star. The windmill, which no one had remembered to shut off, clanked on in the rising wind. The embers of the fire across the street still glowed redly.

  Purvis, tilted back in his chair, fashioned a smoke with steady fingers. Jake hauled a bottle from his pocket, took a drink and passed it around.

  “I guess they aren’t coming back,” said Purvis, finally. “I guess all of them feel the way that Owens felt. All of them plumb scared.”

  “What the hell,” asked Jake, “can you do for a gang like that? They come in here wantin’ help, and now –”

  “You can’t blame them,” said Carson, shortly. “After all, they have families to think of. They have too much at stake.”

  He picked up a pencil from his desk, deliberately broke it in one hand, hurled the pieces on the floor.

  “They burned out Robinson,” he said. “Cold-bloodedly. They burned him out so they could wreck the shop. So they could stop that extra, scare us out of town. A gang like that would do anything. No wonder the other fellows didn’t come back. No wonder they high-tailed for home.”

  He glanced at Purvis. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  Purvis’ face didn’t change. “Got a place where I can stretch out for the night?”

  “Sure you want to?”

  “Might as well,” said Purvis. “All they can do is burn down my shanty and run off my stock.” He puffed smoke through his nostrils. “And maybe, come morning, you’ll need an extra gun.”

  Carson awoke once in the night, saw Jake sitting with his back against the door, his head drooping across one shoulder, his mouth wide open, snoring lustily. The rifle lay across his knees.

  Moonlight painted a white oblong on the floor and the night was quiet except for the racing windmill, still clattering in the wind.

  Carson pulled the blanket closer around his throat and settled his head back on his coat-covered boots which were serving as a pillow. In the cot, Purvis was a black huddle.

  So this is it, thought Carson, staring at the moonlight coming through the window.

  The press broken, the type scattered, the men he had been working for deserting, scared out once again by the guns that backed Fennimore. Nothing left at all.

  He shrugged off the despair that reached out for him and screwed his eyes tight shut. After a while he went to sleep.

  It was morning when he awoke again, with the smell of brewing coffee in his nostrils. Jake, he knew, had started a small fire in the old air-tight heater in the back. He heard the hiss of bacon hit the pan, sat up and hauled on his boots, shucked into his coat.

  The cot was empty.

  “Where’s Purvis?” he called to Jake.

  “Went out to get a pail of water,” said Jake. “Ought to be good and cold after running all night long.”

  Somewhere a rifle coughed, a sullen sound in the morning air. Like a man trying to clear a stubborn throat.

  For a moment Carson stood stock still, as if his boot-soles were riveted to the floor.

  Then he ran to the side window, the window looking out on the windmill lot, half knowing what he would see there, half afraid of
what he’d see.

  Purvis was a crumpled pile of clothes not five feet from the windmill. The pail lay on its side, shining in the sun. A vagrant breeze fluttered the handkerchief around Purvis’ neck.

  The town was quiet. The rifle had coughed and broken the silence and then the silence had come again. Nothing stirred, not even the wind after that one solitary puff that had moved the handkerchief.

  Carson swung slowly from the window, saw Jake standing in the door to the back room, fork in one hand, pan of bacon in the other.

  “What was it?” Jake demanded. “Too tarnation early in the morning to start shootin’.”

  “Purvis,” said Carson. “He’s out there, dead.”

  Jake carefully set the pan of bacon on a chair, laid the fork across it, walked to the corner and picked up his rifle. When he turned around his eyes were squinted as if they already looked along the gun-barrel.

  “Them fellers,” he announced, “have gone a mite too far. All right, maybe, to shoot a hombre when he’s half-expectin’ it and has a chance at least to make a motion toward his own artillery. But ’taint right bushwhackin’ a man out to get a pail of water.”

  Jake spat at the mouse-hole, missed it. “Especially,” he declared, “before he’s had his breakfast.”

  “Look, Jake,” said Carson, “this fight isn’t yours. Why don’t you crawl out the back window and make a break for it? You could make it now. Maybe later you can’t.”

  “The hell it ain’t my fight,” yelped Jake. “Don’t you go hoggin’ all the credit for this brawl. Me, I’ve had somethin’ to do with it, too. Maybe you writ all them pieces takin’ the hide off Fennimore, but I set ’em up in type and run ’em off the press.”

  A voice was bawling outside.

  “Carson!” it shouted. “Carson!”

  Stalking across the room, but keeping well away from the window, Carson looked out.

  Sheriff Bean stood in front of the North Star, badge of office prominently pinned on his vest, two guns at his sides.

  “Carson!”

  “Watch out,” said Jake. “If they see a move in here, they’ll fill us full of lead.”

  Carson nodded, stepped out of line of the window and walked to the wall. Drawing his gun, he reached out and smashed a window-pane with the barrel, then slumped into a crouch.

  “What is it?” he yelled.

  “Come out and give yourself up,” bawled Bean. “That’s all we want.”

  “Haven’t got someone posted to pick me off?” asked Carson.

  “There won’t be a shot fired,” said Bean. “Just come out that door, hands up, and no one will get hurt.”

  Jake’s whisper cut fiercely through the room. “Don’t believe a word that coyote says. He’s got a dozen men in the North Star. Open up that door and you’ll be first cousin to a sieve.”

  Carson nodded grimly.

  “Say the word,” urged Jake, “and I’ll pick ’im off. Easy as blastin’ a buzzard off a fence.”

  “Hold your fire,” snapped Carson. “If you start shooting now we haven’t got a chance. Probably haven’t anyway. As it is they’ve got us dead to rights. Bean, over there, technically is the law and he can kill us off legal-like. Can say later we were outlaws or had resisted arrest or anything he wants to. …”

  “They killed Delavan and Purvis,” yelped Jake. “They –”

  “We can’t prove it,” said Carson bitterly. “We can’t prove a thing. And now they’ve got us backed into a hole. There’s nothing we can gain by fighting. I’m going to go out and give myself up.”

  “You can’t do that,” gasped Jake. “You’d never get three feet from the door before they opened up on you.”

  “Listen to me,” snapped Carson. “I’m going to give myself up. I’ll take a chance on getting shot. You get out of here, through the back. Weaver will let you have a horse. Ride out and tell the boys that Purvis is dead and I’m in jail. Tell them the next move is up to them. They can do what they want.”

  “But – but –” protested Jake.

  “There’s been enough killing,” declared Carson. “A bit of gunning was all right, maybe, when there still was something to fight for, but what’s the use of fighting if the men you’re fighting for won’t help? That’s what I’m doing. Giving them a chance to show whether they want to fight or knuckle down to Fennimore.”

  He raised his voice. “Bean. Bean.”

  “What is it?” Bean called back.

  “I’m coming out,” yelled Carson.

  There was silence, a heavy silence.

  “Get going,” Carson said to Jake. “Out the back. Crawl through the weeds.”

  Jake shifted the rifle across his arm.

  “After you’re safe,” he insisted. “Until I see you cross that street, I’ll stay right here.”

  “Why?” asked Carson.

  “If they get you,” Jake told him, “I’m plumb bent on drillin’ Bean.”

  Carson reached out and yanked the door open. He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking across at Bean, who waited in front of the North Star.

  The dawn was clean and peaceful, and the street smelled of cool dust and the wind of the day had not yet arisen, but only stirred here and there, in tiny, warning puffs.

  Carson took a step forward, and even as he stepped a rifle barked; a throaty, rasping bark that echoed among the wooden buildings.

  Across the street something lifted Bean off his feet, as if a mighty fist had smote him – struck so hard that it slammed him off his feet and sprawled him in the dust.

  At the sound of the shot, Carson had ducked and spun on his heel, was back in the room again, slamming shut the door.

  The windows of the North Star sprouted licking spurts of gunflame and the smashing of the Tribune’s windows for an instant drowned the crashing of the guns. Bullets snarled through the thin sheathing and plowed furrows in the floor, hurling bright showers of splinters as they gouged along the wood.

  Carson hurled himself toward his heavy desk, hit the floor and skidded hard into the partition behind it. A slug thudded into the wall above his head and another screamed, ricocheting, from the desk top.

  Thunder pounded Carson’s ears, a crashing, churning thunder that seemed to shake the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jake crouched, half-shielded by the doorway into the back shop, pouring lead through the broken windows. Shell cases rolled and clattered on the floor as the old printer, eye squinted under bushy brow, tobacco tucked carefully in the northeast corner of his cheek, worked the lever action.

  From the corner of the desk, Carson flipped two quick shots at one North Star window where he thought he saw for an instant the hint of shadowy motion.

  And suddenly he realized there were no sounds of guns, no more bullets thudding into the floor, throwing showers of splinters.

  Jake was clawing at the pockets of his printer’s apron, spilling cartridges on the floor in his eagerness to fill the magazine.

  He spat at the mouse-hole with uncanny accuracy. “Wonder who in tarnation knocked off Bean,” he said.

  “Somebody out in the windmill lot,” said Carson.

  Jake picked up the cartridges he had dropped, put them back in the apron pocket again. “Kind of nice,” he declared, “to know you got some backin’. Probably somebody that hates Fennimore’s guts just as much as we do.”

  “Whoever he was,” declared Carson, “he sure messed up my plans. No sense of trying to surrender now.”

  “Never was in the fust place,” Jake told him. “Damndest fool thing I ever heard of. Steppin’ out to get yourself shot up.”

  He squatted in the doorway, rifle across his knee.

  “They didn’t catch us unawares,” he said. “Now they’ll be up to something else. Thought maybe they’d wipe us out by shooting the place plumb full of holes.” He pat
ted the rifle stock. “Sort of discouraged them,” he said.

  “It’ll be sniping now,” declared Carson. “Waiting for one of us to show ourselves.”

  “And us,” said Jake, “waiting for them to show themselves.”

  “They’ll be spreading out,” said Carson, “trying to come at us from different directions. We got to keep our eyes peeled. One of us watch from the front and the other from the back.”

  “Okay by me,” said Jake. “Want to flip for it?”

  “No time to flip,” said Carson. “You take the back. I’ll watch up here.”

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. “If we only can hold out until dark,” he declared, “maybe –”

  A furtive tapping came against the back of the building.

  “Who’s there?” called out Jake, guardedly.

  A husky whisper came through the boards. “Open up. It’s me. Robinson.”

  The man slipped in, dragging his rifle behind him, when Jake eased the door open. The merchant slapped the dust from his clothes.

  “So you’re the jasper what hauled down on Bean,” said Jake.

  Robinson nodded. “They burned my store,” he said. “So they could bust up your shop. They burned everything I had – for no reason at all except to let them get in here and stop that extra you were planning.”

  “That’s what we figured, too,” said Jake.

  “I ain’t no fighting man,” Robinson declared. “I like things peaceable … like them peaceable so well I’ll fight to make them that way. That’s why I shot Bean. That’s why I came here. My way of figurin’, there ain’t no peace around these parts until we run out Fennimore.”

  “Instead of coming here,” Carson told him, “you should have ridden out and told the ranchers what was happening. Told them we needed help.”

  “Lee Weaver is already out,” said Robinson. “I was just over there. The stable boy told me he left half an hour ago.”

  A flurry of shots blazed from the North Star, and bullets chunked into the room. One of them, aimed higher than the rest, smashed the clock and it hung drunkenly from its nail, a wrecked thing that drooled wheels and broken spring.