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.