The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Chester S. Geier

  John Balleau went into the banking room and returned, a few minutes later, with a handful of green credits. He folded it carefully and put it into his pocket.

  “Your John Henry three times and we’re all set,” Bates smiled.

  Balleau sat down and affixed the necessary signatures. He leaned back with a sigh as Bates called: “Henry, come here and witness this, will you? It won’t take a second.”

  The clerk, a pale little oldster, came into the office. He signed mutely in the proper spaces, and scuttled out.

  Bates picked up one of the sheets and folded it three times. “Your copy,” he said, “and it’s been a pleasure.”

  John Balleau got up from his chair, folded the sheet again and put it in with the money. “You’re very accommodating. I appreciate it.”

  “Any time,” Frank Bates said, and he slapped John Balleau’s shoulder cordially as he let him out the front door.

  Cory Balleau wandered aimlessly up the street after he had finished his business at Carter’s. He stood for some time in front of Sam Helger’s—Gunsmith, surveying the stock in the small window. There were three pyro-guns—hand weapons—heavy and competent; a para-rifle which he knew nothing about, and an atom cutter—a slim-looking weapon with a long barrel.

  At home there were two pyro-guns and a para-rifle. The rifle had never been out of his uncle’s room so far as the youth knew. Cory had little interest in guns. A sprinkling of men went armed in the town, but few of the farmers ever wore guns.

  Cory wandered on and walked in under the swinging wooden sign of the Golden King. It was dim and cool in there and a pleasant smell hit his nostrils. He stepped up to the bar and ordered tanza. It came in an immense cup and as he lifted it to his lips, the barkeep wiped the bar in front of him.

  A card game was going on at a round table rearward of the long room. There were five men—three Terrans and two Martians—participating. Cory picked up his cup and wandered back. Only one of the players bore any resemblance to a gambler. He was a pale-faced man with a pair of expressionless eyes and a cold cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. He looked up and said: “Sit in, son? Open game—anybody can win.”

  Cory shook his head and the gambler accepted the deck from his right, shuffled with a few lightning movements, and pushed the deck back for a cut.

  The door up front swung open and the dealer looked up, continuing to deal. Three men strode into the drinking room. Immediately the dealer looked less bored.

  The three men stopped at the bar and were given a bottle from which each had several drinks. Then, wiping the backs of hairy hands across their mouths, they moved back toward the poker table.

  The dealer smiled. “Glad to see you back, Mr. Frake.”

  The man addressed as Frake sat down at the table. His chair creaked under him. “Meet a couple of friends o’ mine. Boys with credits and an itch in their fingers. Tip Snead, and Mel Dorken. I want you to treat ’em right when they come in here.”

  The dealer’s smile was like a sheet of thin tissue paper over his face. “We always aim to do that, Mr. Frake. It’s five-card stud.”

  Corry Balleau was in the grip of a cold chill. He turned from the table and walked back to the bar with slow, careful steps. He set his cup down, half-full and stared into the wavy mirror behind the bar. He saw a pale face staring back at him. Then the door opened and John Balleau was standing beside him.

  The older man glanced at Cory and turned to face the mirror. But he turned back suddenly; “What’s the matter, Cory? Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Never saw you that pale before. What are you drinking?”

  “Just tanza.”

  CORY GRIPPED his schooner, trying to analyze and quell the cold shock within his body.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  John Balleau had a shot glass full of whisky raised to his lips. He tossed off the liquor and set the glass down. “Of course.”

  Out in the street, walking toward the wagon, Cory felt better. “Those three men—they came in just before you did. There at the poker table. Did you see them?”

  “I saw them go in. I understand they rented some grazing land from Frank Bates. Why?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Did they set you off some way?”

  “No.”

  The two climbed into the truck and started home. John Balleau made no further inquiries. They rode in silence.

  But there was a question in the mind of Cory Balleau: Why did I feel like that? And how did I know him—that man they called Mel Dorken? Just one look at his face and it was as if I’d seen him only yesterday. Nothing but eyes and nose and a beard—yet I knew him and I’d know him fifty years from now.

  The way he held his thumbs out stiff on the table.

  He held them the same way after that fight back there on the Marsport River.

  When he sat on that man and gouged his eyes out.

  It was difficult to stir desire in Mel Dorken. The black cesspool of his mind had been satiated to the point that women had become more of a habit to him than an urge. He had practiced all the forms of debasement that the mind of man could imagine and there were none to Ignite the smouldering ashes within him.

  All the things that the mind of man could invent—Mel Dorken had done, and now a woman had to generate a terrific natural voltage in order to stir him.

  But, riding one afternoon, north of Ngania, Mel Dorken felt the old, dimly remembered eruptions surging through his veins.

  The girl was young—not more than twenty—and slimly arrogant in her carriage and in the freshness of her youth. Yellow hair cascaded down her shoulders.

  Dorken had been riding at an angle with her course of travel, gradually narrowing the gap between them. As he came closer the surging within him increased until he felt his heart pounding inside him with a thunder that beat in his ears.

  The girl was riding a spirited goff and she rode with uncertainty but she did not change her course. At the point of the angle formed by their trails, Mel Dorken came to a dead halt and stared in utter silence. The girl kept moving. She passed a point some ten yards ahead of Dorken and her eyes were on him, wide and unblinking, until she was well beyond the intersection. Then she straightened around and cut the goff with her quirt. The animal leaped forward as though fired from a gun, and girl and mount disappeared over a swell to the north.

  Dorken did not move for five minutes. He stared after the girl and the light in his eyes was as unholy as a fiend saying Black Mass in the depths of some pit.

  Kay Bates lay on the soft grass, her head on Cory Balleau’s shoulder. She was unusually quiet, her blue eyes troubled.

  Cory Balleau said: “Something bothering you?”

  “I’m not sure—whether it ought to bother me or not.”

  “Tell me.”

  “As I was coming north, I crossed trails with a man—a stranger. I’d never seen him before.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did he say something?”

  “No—but—”

  He tilted her face into line with his own. “But what? I never saw you short of words before.”

  “It was the way he looked at me. He was an immense, bushy brute and he looked at me as though he was—well—undressing me. I sort of burned clear down to my heels. It scared me.”

  He surveyed her face with mock criticism and then grinned. “Like this?” and he opened his eyes wide and ran the tip of his tongue along his lips.

  “No, silly—it was—”

  “There’s no law against men looking at girls. I’d think you’d be used to it by now.”

  She shuddered slightly. “I’d never get used to that kind of a look—” she turned in a quarter-roll and put her face close to his—“unless it was from you. Why don’t you look at me that way?”

  He lay back and looked up into the sky and laughed.

  MEL DORKEN made his meandering way
back to his headquarters. He took down the corral bars, lifted the saddle from his mount, and slipped its bridle. The goff kicked its heels and danced away, running in a tight circle before it went down into the dust and rubbed its hide against the ground.

  Dorken threw his saddle over the corral rack and walked slowly toward the house. Inside Tip Snead was cooking supper. Frake was lounging at the kitchen table cleaning a rifle.

  “You been sightseeing?” Snead asked.

  “I saw me a sight. What a sight!”

  Dorken threw his hat into a corner. He turned a chair around and sat down, leaning his arms against its back.

  Frake looked at Snead; “I’d say he was talking about a woman.”

  “I’d say you was right,” Snead answered. He flipped the bacon into the air and there was a cloud of acrid smoke from the burning grease.

  “There’s a yellow-top girl riding around the country,” Dorken said. “About twenty, maybe, and she burns a man to a crisp just lookin’ at her. Any idea who she belongs to?”

  “Why?” Snead asked. “You want to go out and kill him?”

  Frake scowled and said: “There’ll be no killing there. I saw her in town the other day. She belongs to the man we work for—she’s Bates’ daughter.”

  Snead grinned. “Now isn’t that just luck? To get the gal you want, you have to kill the bird that’s got the golden eggs you want. Why is it always that way? The good things always tied together in a knot you can’t unravel?”

  Dorken said nothing. He had a quiet, almost vacant look on his face.

  Frake eyed him sharply; “Whatever you’re thinking is no good—understand that! We’re not messing up this deal over a yellow-haired skirt. Keep your needs in check until they don’t get in the way of important things. Women come every day, but a Bates drops around once in a life-time.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Dorken said.

  He thought: I’ve got to have that girl. Come deals or hell or earthquake I’ve got to feel that yellow hair in my hands. When you want a certain woman the only thing that will stop the itching inside is to get that woman. Not anything in skirts, but that woman. That one.

  “Pull up.” Snead said. He dumped the contents of the frying pan onto a platter and set the platter on the table. The meal was ready.

  FOR FIVE minutes there was an uninterrupted champing of hairy jaws as the men bolted the food. The platters cleaned, Dorken sat back and lit a cigarette.

  “What’s Bates waiting for?” Dorken asked. “I thought he had a lot of big plans. What the hell are they anyway?”

  “He has got plans,” Frake said. “We’re going to fill in some squares in his checkerboard for him.”

  “Talk sense,” Snead said.

  “There’s some land around here he wants, to make his holdings solid. A few of the nesters have held on too long and with the freight head coming, Bates has got to make a move.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like our cattle drifting. Tonight, after dark we start. There’s some four-inch corn shoots on a land over east. The herd drifts in and grazes that corn. By morning there won’t be much left.”

  “It’s a long way between tromping corn and taking over land.”

  “Not if you’ve got a plaster on the land that the corn’s supposed to pay off.”

  Dorken was silent, staring at his cigarette.

  “Bates takes the land when the mortgage comes due,” Frake went on. “They’re not his cattle that wrecked the crop. He’s in the clear.”

  “So the squatter comes after us,” Snead said.

  Frake grinned. “So he does. And what have we got? A damn bone yard he’d have to sue to get and wouldn’t be worth anything after he got it.” Frake grinned. “You afraid of being sued. Tip?”

  The little knife artist was far from satisfied.

  “Sounds like penny-ante stuff to me. How much territory can three hundred head cover?”

  “It isn’t so much what they cover as where it’s located. This little raid tonight will get Bates two hundred acres. The corn’s all this nester’s got and he won’t be able to plant another stand this year. He ain’t got the seed or the time. We pull three or four like that before we’re smoked out and Bates has got a nice lump of land.”

  “Maybe,” Tip said.

  “And later, there may be some fires. You never can tell.”

  Dorken leaned forward. “All right. So Bates gets his land. What have we got?”

  Frake grinned. “We’ve got Bates.”

  “That’s right,” Snead said.

  But Dorken scarcely heard, so quickly had his mind wandered. He was thinking of a head of shining yellow hair.

  He had to have that woman.

  EVERYTHING was gone. The land he’d cultivated and worked and seeded so carefully—the soft warm land—was torn and defiled by deep pock-marks. Cattle had been here and now all the precious stems had vanished into the bellies of the cattle. Effort—security—nothing left.

  The sight was like a physical blow to the pit of the man’s stomach. He stood motionless. His arms hung limp, his gnarled hands clenched into fists. His throat worked but no sounds came forth.

  He turned and moved away from the field, back toward his barn and corral. A slow stiff walk at first, then increasing to a fast walk; faster until he was running and his breathing was in audible sobs.

  At the corral he got a bridle and put it over the head of a sorry-looking goff. He led the animal out through the gate and then the man’s wife came toward him across the back yard.

  “What’s the matter, Sam? Where are you going? Why’ve you been running? What’s the matter?”

  The man paid no heed. He forked the bare back of the goff and dug his heels into its flanks.

  The man’s breath continued in rasping sobs as he belabored the animal—beat his heels against its sides as it struggled to please him. The sweat on its flanks turned to lather. Foam flecked its mouth.

  “All gone,” the man kept muttering. “Wiped out! All gone!”

  When the goff finally made Ngania, the lather was thick and the animal was staggering. The man slid to the ground; left the goff in the middle of the street in front of the office of Henry Dalton, marshal of Ngania. The office was housed in a small building that had been a gift to the town from Frank Bates. The front door was open.

  Henry Dalton did not take his spurred boot off his desk as the man entered the office. Dalton, a wispy oldster with a white goatee serving as an extension of a weak chin, looked up and said, “Sam Bendorf! What’s the trouble? You act like a man with his britches full of ants.”

  “My corn’s all gone! It’s been chewed off and tramped into the ground by cattle! I’m wiped out!”

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Sam? There aren’t any cattle in these parts. You’re going crazy, man!”

  “I seen the tracks with my own eyes. Cattle it was. A big herd.”

  HENRY DALTON’S face took on a calculating look. He tugged at his goatee. “Say now—guess maybe there are some beeves in the neighborhood. I heard a rumor that Frank Bates let out some of his land for grazing—rented to a Terra man.”

  “It was their cattle then that done it and I want justice. I want that feller locked up and made to pay!”

  Dalton got slowly to his feet. “Now, Sam. You’d better simmer down a little. That isn’t the way the law works and you know it. I can’t go running around arresting people just on your say-so. First how do we know it was his cattle? Did you see them in your field? You got any eye-witnesses to testify that his stock ate your corn?”

  Bendorf’s rage flamed anew.

  “Don’t be a fool, Henry. What you trying to hedge for? Whose beef could it have been if there ain’t any others in the country?”

  “Another thing—this man—Frake I think his name is—hasn’t got a head of stock anywhere near your land. He’s located way over the other side. You mean to tell me he drove his cattle six or seven miles just to graze them on your corn?”


  “I don’t know what he did, but the corn is plumb ruined!”

  Dalton laid a placating hand on Bendorf’s shoulder. “Tell you what—you just ride on home and cool down a little and I’ll mosy out and have a talk with this Frake. You don’t want to have anybody arrested until you think it over a little.”

  Bendorf shook off the hand. He backed away, raising his fist. “So this is the kind of law we got in Ngania! A yellow-back marshal without guts enough to make an arrest!”

  “Now Sam—”

  “Well you don’t have to bother. I’ll do my own calling. You just sit here in your office and collect your pay.”

  Bendorf stormed out of the office. He was back on his horse and off down the street before Dalton appeared on the small porch of the building.

  “Don’t you go off half cocked, Sam,” Dalton yelled. “You haven’t got the right to maybe kill someone over what was probably an accident!”

  Bendorf could hardly have heard the warning, but several gaping onlookers did. They gathered around, watching the departure of Bendorf, and Dalton said:

  “That man’s gone plumb crazy. Acts like he’s out for blood.”

  Halfway to where he was going, Bendorf was forced to slow down to a walk. His goff had begun to stagger and was showing signs of collapse. As he approached the place, two other riders were pounding along in his wake. When they had him in sight, they slowed down to move at a more leisurely pace.

  Bendorf jumped from his goff and ran the last hundred yards. Just as he got there, the door opened and two men came out: Frake and Tip Snead.

  “Which one of you is the boss? Which owns that herd of cattle?”

  “What’s the trouble, friend?” Frake rumbled. “I own some cattle. What about them?”

  “They ruint my corn—that’s what about ’em! Your damn herd tromped my whole crop into the ground, and it’s going to cost you plenty!”

  FRAKE RAISED his eyes and squinted across the prairie at the two approaching men. There was a calculating look on his face. He glanced at Snead—a glance full of silent meaning—and then walked slowly toward Bendorf.

  “You’re too excited, neighbor. If I was you I’d simmer down a little so we can talk this over.”