“You could have told me.”
“Cold, you mean?”
“That’s what I mean. I would not have believed you, of course. Not at first.”
“Don’t you understand? I could not have told you. The concealment now is second nature. One of the defenses I talked about. I simply could not have brought myself to tell you, or anyone.”
“Why me? Why wait all these years until I came along?”
“I did not wait, Boyd. There were others, at different times. None of them worked out. I had to find, you must understand, someone who had the strength to face it. Not one who would run screaming madly. I knew you would not run screaming.”
“I’ve had time to think it through,” Boyd said. “I’ve come to terms with it. I can accept the fact, but not too well, only barely. Luis, do you have some explanation? How come you are so different from the rest of us?”
“No idea at all. No inkling. At one time, I thought there must be others like me and I sought for them. I found none. I no longer seek.”
The cork came free and he handed the bottle of wine to Boyd. “You go first,” he said steadily.
Boyd lifted the bottle and drank. He handed it to Luis. He watched him as he drank. Wondering, as he watched, how he could be sitting here, talking calmly with a man who had lived, who had stayed young through twenty thousand years. His gorge rose once again against acceptance of the fact—but it had to be a fact. The shoulder blade, the small amount of organic matter still remaining in the pigment, had measured out to 22,000 years. There was no question that the prints in the paint had matched the prints upon the bottle. He had raised one question back in Washington, hoping there might be evidence of hoax. Would it have been possible, he had asked, that the ancient pigment, the paint used by the prehistoric artist, could have been reconstituted, the fingerprints impressed upon it, and then replaced in the grotto? Impossible was the answer. Any reconstitution of the pigment, had it been possible, would have shown up in the analysis. There had been nothing of the sort—the pigment dated to 20,000 years ago. There was no question of that.
“All right, Cro-Magnon,” said Boyd, “tell me how you did it. How does a man survive as long as you have? You do not age, of course. Your body will not accept disease. But I take it you are not immune to violence or to accident. You’ve lived in a violent world. How does a man sidestep accident and violence for two hundred centuries?”
“There were times early,” Luis said, “when I came close to not surviving. For a long time, I did not realize the kind of thing I was. Sure, I lived longer, stayed younger than all the others—I would guess, however, that I didn’t begin to notice this until I began to realize that all the people I had known in my early life were dead—dead for a long, long time. I knew then that I was different from the rest. About the same time others began to notice I was different. They became suspicious of me. Some of them resented me. Others thought I was some sort of evil spirit. Finally I had to flee the tribe. I became a skulking outcast. That was when I began to learn the principles of survival.”
“And those principles?”
“You keep a low profile. You don’t stand out. You attract no attention to yourself. You cultivate a cowardly attitude. You are never brave. You take no risks. You let others do the dirty work. You never volunteer. You skulk and run and hide. You grow a skin that’s thick; you don’t give a damn what others think of you. You shed all your noble attributes, your social consciousness. You shuck your loyalty to tribe or folk or country. You’re not a patriot. You live for yourself alone. You’re an observer, never a participant. You scuttle around the edges of things. And you become so self-centered that you come to believe that no blame should attach to you, that you are living in the only logical way a man can live. You went to Roncesvalles the other day, remember?”
“Yes. I mentioned I’d been there. You said you’d heard of it.”
“Heard of it. Hell, I was there the day it happened—August 15, 778. An observer, not a participant. A cowardly little bastard who tagged along behind the noble band of Gascons who did in Charlemagne. Gascons, hell. That’s the fancy name for them. They were Basques, pure and simple. The meanest crew of men who ever drew the breath of life. Some Basques may be noble, but not this band. Not the kind of warriors who’d stand up face to face with the Franks. They hid up in the pass and rolled rocks down on all those puissant knights. But it wasn’t the knights who held their interest. It was the wagon train. They weren’t out to fight a war or to avenge a wrong. They were out for loot. Although little good it did them.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It was this way,” said Luis. “They knew the rest of the Frankish army would return when the rearguard didn’t come up and they had not the stomach for that. They stripped the dead knights of their golden spurs, their armor and fancy clothes, the money bags they carried and loaded all of it on the wagons and got out of there. A few miles further on, deep in the mountains, they holed up and hid. In a deep canyon where they thought they would be safe. But if they should be found, they had what amounted to a fort. A half mile or so below the place they camped, the canyon narrowed and twisted sharply. A lot of boulders had fallen down at that point, forming a barricade that could have been held by a handful of men against any assault that could be launched against it. By this time, I was a long way off. I smelled something wrong, I knew something most unpleasant was about to happen. That’s another thing about this survival business. You develop special senses. You get so you can smell out trouble, well ahead of time. I heard what happened later.”
He lifted the bottle and had another drink. He handed it to Boyd.
“Don’t leave me hanging,” said Boyd. Tell me what did happen.”
“In the night,” said Luis, “a storm came up. One of those sudden, brutal summer thunderstorms. This time it was a cloudburst. My brave fellow Gascons died to the man. That’s the price of bravery.”
Boyd took a drink, lowered the bottle, held it to his chest, cuddling it.
“You know about this,” he said. “No one else does. Perhaps no one had ever wondered what happened to those Gascons who gave Charlemagne the bloody nose. You must know of other things. Christ, man, you’ve lived history. You didn’t stick to this area.”
“No. At times I wandered. I had an itching foot. There were things to see. I had to keep moving along. I couldn’t stay in one place any length of time or it would be noticed that I wasn’t aging.”
“You lived through the Black Death,” said Boyd. “You watched the Roman legions. You heard first hand of Attila. You skulked along on Crusades. You walked the streets of ancient Athens.”
“Not Athens,” said Luis. “Somehow Athens was never to my taste. I spent some time in Sparta. Sparta, I tell you—that was really something.”
“You’re an educated man,” said Boyd. “Where did you go to school?”
“Paris, for a time, in the fourteenth century. Later on at Oxford. After that at other places. Under different names. Don’t try tracing me through the schools that I attended.”
“You could write a book,” said Boyd. “It would set new sales records. You’d be a millionaire. One book and you’d be a millionaire.”
“I can’t afford to be a millionaire. I can’t be noticed and millionaires are noticed. I’m not in want. I’ve never been in want. There’s always treasure for a skulker to pick up. I have caches here and there. I get along all right.”
Luis was right, Boyd told himself. He couldn’t be a millionaire. He couldn’t write a book. In no way could he be famous, stand out in any way. In all things, he must remain, unremarkable, always anonymous.
The principles of survival, he had said. And this part of it, although not all of it. He had mentioned the art of smelling trouble, the hunch ability. There would be, as well, the wisdom, the street savvy, the cynicism that a man would pick up along the way, the expertise, th
e ability to judge character, an insight into human reaction, some knowledge concerning the use of power, power of every sort, economic power, political power, religious power.
Was the man still human, he wondered, or had he, in 20,000 years, become something more than human? Had he advanced that one vital step that would place him beyond humankind, the kind of being that would come after man?
“One thing more,” said Boyd. “Why the Disney paintings?”
“They were painted some time later than the others,” Luis told him. “I painted some of the earlier stuff in the cave. The fishing bear is mine. I knew about the grotto. I found it and said nothing. No reason I should have kept it secret. Just one of those little items one hugs to himself to make himself important. I know something you don’t know—silly stuff like that. Later I came back to paint the grotto. The cave art was so deadly serious. Such terribly silly magic. I told myself painting should be fun. So I came back, after the tribe had moved and painted simply for the fun of it. How did it strike you, Boyd?”
“Damn good art,” said Boyd.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t find the grotto and I couldn’t help you. I knew you had seen the cracks in the wall; I watched you one day looking at them. I counted on your remembering them. And I counted on you seeing the fingerprints and finding the pipe. All pure serendipity, of course. I had nothing in mind when I left the paint with the fingerprints and the pipe. The pipe, of course was the tip-off and I was confident you’d at least be curious. But I couldn’t be sure. When we ate that night, here by the campfire, you didn’t mention the grotto and I was afraid you’d blown it. But when you made off with the bottle, sneaking it away, I knew I had it made. And now the big question. Will you let the world in on the grotto paintings?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. What are your thoughts on the matter?”
“I’d just as soon you didn’t.”
“Okay,” said Boyd. “Not for the time at least. Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you want?”
“You’ve done the best thing possible,” said Luis. “You know who I am, what I am. I don’t know why that’s so important to me, but it is. A matter of identity, I suppose. When you die, which I hope will be a long time from now, then, once again, there’ll be no one who knows. But the knowledge that one man did know, and what is more important, understood, will sustain me through the centuries. A minute—I have something for you.”
He rose and went into the tent, came back with a sheet of paper, handing it to Boyd. It was a topographical survey of some sort.
“I’ve put a cross on it,” said Luis. “To mark the spot.”
“What spot?”
“Where you’ll find the Charlemagne treasure of Roncesvalles. The wagons and the treasure would have been carried down the canyon in the flood. The turn in the canyon and the boulder barricade I spoke of would have blocked them. You’ll find them there, probably under a deep layer of gravel and debris.”
Boyd looked up questioningly from the map.
“It’s worth going after,” said Luis. “Also it provides another check against the validity of my story.”
“I believe you,” said Boyd. “I need no further evidence.”
“Ah, well,” said Luis, “it wouldn’t hurt. And now, it’s time to go.”
“Time to go! We have a lot to talk about.”
“Later, perhaps,” said Luis. “We’ll bump into one another from time to time. I’ll make a point we do. But now it’s time to go.”
He started down the path and Boyd sat watching him.
After a few steps, Luis halted and half-turned back to Boyd.
“It seems to me,” he said in explanation, “it’s always time to go.”
Boyd stood and watched him move down the trail toward the village. There was about the moving figure a deep sense of loneliness—the most lonely man in all the world.
The Reformation of Hangman’s Gulch
Described by an unnamed editor as a “smashing owlhoot novel,” “The Reformation of Hangman’s Gulch” was originally published in the December 1944 issue of Big-Book Western Magazine, which, at that time, bore a cover price of fifteen cents. In this and perhaps a couple other westerns, Clifford Simak displays his apparent fascination with the way smoke from a burning cigarette can rise up into the eyes of the smoker.
—dww
Chapter I
SIX-GUN INVITATION
A gust of wind swept up the canyon and set the thing that hung in the cottonwood to swaying. Stanley Packard’s horse shied, skittish, as the rope creaked against the limb. Packard spoke softly to the animal and reached out to pat its neck.
The horse quieted and Packard spurred closer, staring up at the man who hung there. Something familiar in that grotesque shape, something that struck a chord of memory in him.
A cloud sailed clear of the moon and light struck down through the autumn-thinned leaves of the mighty tree … light that for a moment revealed the face bent at an awkward angle against the hangman’s knot.
The eyes were open in terror and the pressure of the rope pressed the jaws tighter than they should have been, but there was no mistaking the face. Too many times had Packard seen that face, leering eyes squinted against the smoke that drooled from a cigarette hanging from its lips. Hanging could not change the tiny, well-cared-for mustache nor death wipe away the old knife scar that ran along the cheek.
The body swayed slowly, like a pendulum, and the dead eyes stared at the moon. The boots dangled pitifully, toes hanging down, as if the man were reaching for the earth. The hands were tied behind the back and a tiny stream of blood had drooled from one corner of the mouth, leaving a dark stain meandering down the chin.
A sudden chill struck into Packard, a chill that was not of the autumn night. Swiftly he looked around, panic rising in him.
But there was no sign of life except the twinkle of the few lights far down the canyon, lights that marked the outskirts of the town of Hangman’s Gulch. Otherwise there was only rock and scrub, and here and there a tree, bare limbs lifted against the night.
Packard’s hand went up to his coat, fingers pressing against the letter in the inside pocket. A rustle of paper told him it still was there.
He let his hand fall back again and shuddered. If that letter had caught up with him a little quicker, if he’d come a little sooner, there might have been two men on that limb instead of one.
Cardway, of course, hadn’t written exactly what he had in mind. But it wasn’t hard to guess, wasn’t hard to read between the lines. Not too hard when Packard remembered the straight thin lips with the dangling cigarette that poured smoke into those leering, squinting eyes.
But now, he told himself, he’d never know for sure what Cardway had in mind. Men who decorate a cottonwood don’t make explanations.
Carefully Packard backed his horse away from the cottonwood, back into the trail, headed once again for Hangman’s Gulch.
The trail broadened out into a street as the canyon flared to make a pocket, with the shacks and tents that were Hangman’s Gulch clambering up the two slopes.
Packard made note of places as the horse clopped down the street. A stagecoach stood, horseless, in front of the express office. The place blazed with light and two men armed with rifles sat just inside the door.
Sounds of revelry came from the Crystal Palace, the tinny tinkle of an out-of-tune piano, the shrill laughter of a woman, the drunken shout of some miner in to drink his dust.
In an empty restaurant a Chinese sprawled across a table, fast asleep. A barber next door trimmed industriously while a long row of men waited for the shears. Two men sat, hiked back in tilted chairs, in front of the livery stable. Just beyond stood a two-story structure, the word “Hotel” painted in a sprawl across one lighted window.
Packard pulled up at the stable, swung himself
from the saddle. One of the men thumped down on his chair, clumped forward, picking his teeth with a stem of hay.
“Do somethin’ for you, stranger?”
“Got any grain for the horse?” asked Packard. “He’s been on the go all day.”
The man shook his head. “Nothin’ but hay. Good stuff, though. Can’t get no grain freighted in. Costs too much.”
Packard nodded, remembering the trail that he had covered. Freight would be costly along a road like that.
“If you come all the way from Devil’s Slide,” said the man, “you know what I mean.”
Packard smiled tightly. He recognized the words as a way to ask a question in a country where questions were something one simply did not ask.
“No harm in saying I came from Devil’s Slide, is there?” asked Packard.
The man scratched his chin with dirty fingernails. “Can’t say as there is, stranger. Didn’t happen to see anyone along the way, did you?”
“Aw, hell, Clint,” said the man still tilted against the stable, “he wouldn’t see anyone. The Canyon gang don’t bother with nothin’ except stagecoaches plumb weighed down with dust.”
“Only man I saw,” Packard told them, “was hanging in that old cottonwood just outside of town.”
“Oh, him,” said Clint. “He was a hombre who wandered in a couple weeks ago. The vigilantes got him.”
“Vigilantes?”
“Damn tootin’,” declared Clint. “This here town is plumb going to get civilized or bust a lung tryin’. Been too much hell-raisin’ to suit the citizens.”
“Shoot someone?” asked Packard.
The man tilted against the stable supplied the answer. “Yeah, he killed someone all right. One of the guards down at the express office.”
Packard nodded. “I see. Trying to stick up the place.”
“Hell no,” said the man. “Just met him on the street in broad daylight and let him have it. Never gave no reason.”
“Funny thing,” said Packard.
“Ain’t it,” the man agreed.