Out on the rocks, Hamilton stumbled forward, as if he had started to run and tripped. His hand came open and the rifle dropped and the man was pitching forward.
Culver let his gun-hand sag, stood and watched Hamilton hit the ground. A dawn wind came rustling up the hillside and stirred the cedar brakes. Hamilton was a huddled darkness on the rocks.
“Mark,” said Culver, “I guess I’ll go back to the river. This isn’t the kind of country for the likes of us.”
He stuffed the six-gun back into his waistband, staggered down the hill on unsteady feet. The shoulder was hurting now, aching with a pounding pain that hammered through his body.
From the trail below came the sound of hoofs. The boys from Gun Gulch, he thought, coming out to see what it’s all about. He reached the trail as they hammered up the slope.
Mike, the burly man Nancy had shot, was in the lead. A lump beneath his shirt sleeve betrayed a bandaged arm. Behind him was Jake, the printer, with about a dozen others. They pulled up, sat their horses in the trail, staring at him.
He shook his head at them. “Too late, gents,” he said. “You missed all the fun. Hamilton is up there.”
Mike chuckled in his beard. “Been having considerable fun yourself,” he said. “Looks like Hamilton might have pegged you.”
“He did,” Culver told him. “But I pegged him back.”
“Hang it, Mike,” snapped Jake, “don’t sit there gabbing. The man is all shot up. Let’s get him back to town.”
“Sure, sure,” agreed Mike. ”The lady will give us hell if we don’t get him back.” He ruffled his beard with a ham-like hand and chuckled. “First time I ever got shot by a woman, so help me.”
“We found Perkins out in the vacant lot,” said Jake, “and he spilled his guts. We’re going to string him up just as soon as we get back.”
“You mean there won’t be any trial for me?”
“No trial,” said Jake.
“Then,” said Culver, “I’ll be going down to the river. Not so exciting, maybe, but a whole lot healthier.”
“Look, stranger,” protested Mike, “we was just figuring how maybe you would stay here.”
Culver shook his head. “I’m a gambling man,” he told them. “My place is back on the boats again.”
“Always deal them straight?” asked Jake.
“Sure,” said Culver. “A man that can’t deal them straight and win had better quit the game.”
“Just the man we want,” said Jake.
“But—”
Mike interrupted. “Seems as how Brown figures on getting out of Gun Gulch. He’s offering the Golden Slipper for sale … real cheap.”
“The boys,” said Jake, “would like to have you run it. Long as they’re going to lose their money anyhow, they’d rather lose it honest.”
“If you’re a little short on cash,” Mike told him, “the boys will pass the hat.”
Culver laughed quietly. “Don’t see how I can disappoint you gents.”
Mike climbed off his horse. “Take it easy with that shoulder,” he said. “Up you go.”
“But you—”
“Hell,” growled Mike, “I take a long walk every morning, anyhow.”
He held up a massive paw and Culver took it, felt the smooth, hard grip.
“You better get going,” said Mike. “The little lady’s waiting for you.”
The Sitters
On September 9, 1957, Cliff Simak wrote in his journal that he was “Beginning to get interested in Baby Sitter plot,” but thereafter, he apparently had trouble with it. On September 27, he wrote, “Unable for some reason to finish Sitters. Came out wrong. May have to recast ending.” But then, on October 6, he wrote “Gold called, needed story”—so Cliff finished typing it and sent it off the next day; and it appeared in the April 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.
In later years, Cliff would describe the story as one that pleased him; but I keep wondering if it isn’t a sort of horror story.
The first week of school was finished. Johnson Dean, superintendent of Millville High, sat at his desk, enjoying the quiet and the satisfaction of late Friday afternoon.
The quiet was massacred by Coach Jerry Higgins. He clomped into the office and threw his muscular blond frame heavily in a chair.
“Well, you can call off football for the year,” he said angrily. “We can drop out of the conference.”
Dean pushed away the papers on which he had been working and leaned back in his chair. The sunlight from the western windows turned his silver thatch into a seeming halo. His pale, blue-veined, wrinkled hands smoothed out, painstakingly, the fading crease in his fading trousers.
“What has happened now?” he asked.
“It’s King and Martin, Mr. Dean. They aren’t coming out this year.”
Dean clucked sympathetically, but somewhat hollowly, as if his heart was not quite in it. “Let me see,” he said. “If I remember rightly, those two were very good last year. King was in the line and Martin quarterback.”
Higgins exploded in righteous indignation. “Who ever heard of a quarterback deciding he wouldn’t play no more? And not just an ordinary boy, but one of the very best. He made all-conference last year.”
“You’ve talked to them, of course?”
“I got down on my knees to them,” said the coach. “I asked them did they want that I should lose my job. I asked is there anything you got against me. I told them they were letting down the school. I told them we wouldn’t have a team without them. They didn’t laugh at me, but—”
“They wouldn’t laugh at you,” said Dean. “Those boys are gentlemen. In fact, all the youngsters in school—”
“They’re a pack of sissies!” stormed the coach.
Dean said gently, “That is a matter of opinion. There have been moments when I also wasn’t able to attach as much importance to football as it seemed to me I should.”
“But that’s different,” argued the coach. “When a man grows up, naturally he will lose some interest. But these are kids. This just isn’t healthy. These young fellows should be out there pawing up the earth. All kids should have a strong sense of competition. And even if they don’t, there’s the financial angle. Any outstanding football man has a chance, when he goes to college—”
“Our kids don’t need athletic subsidies,” said Dean, a little sharply. “They’re getting more than their share of scholastic scholarships.”
“If we had a lot more material,” moaned Higgins, “King and Martin wouldn’t mean so much. We wouldn’t win too often, but we still would have a team. But as it is—do you realize, Mr. Dean, that there have been fewer coming out each year? Right now, I haven’t more than enough—”
“You’ve talked to King and Martin. You’re sure they won’t reconsider?”
“You know what they told me? They said football interfered with studies!”
The way Higgins said it, it was rank heresy.
“I guess, then,” Dean said cheerfully, “that we’ll just have to face it.”
“But it isn’t normal,” the coach protested. “There aren’t any kids who think more of studies than they do of football. There aren’t any kids so wrapped up in books—”
“There are,” said Dean. “There are a lot, right here at Millville. You should take a look at the grade averages over the past ten years, if you don’t believe it.”
“What gets me is that they don’t act like kids. They act like a bunch of adults.” The coach shook his head, as if to say it was all beyond him. “It’s a dirty shame. If only some of those big bruisers would turn out, we’d have the makings of a team.”