The Project Gutenberg EBook of Goodbye, Dead Man!, by Tom W. Harris

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Goodbye, Dead Man!

Author: Tom W. Harris

Illustrator: Becker

Release Date: September 12, 2009 [EBook #29963]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOODBYE, DEAD MAN! ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Mattup had killed a man, so it was logical
he should be punished. It was Danny who came up
with the idea of leaving him with the prophecy--

Goodbye, Dead Man!

_by Tom W. Harris_

It was Orley Mattup's killing of the old lab technician that really made
us hate him.

Mattup was a guard at the reactor installation at Bayless, Kentucky,
where my friend Danny Hern and I were part of the staff when the
Outsiders took everything over. In what god-forsaken mountain hole they
had found Mattup, and how they got him to sell out to them, I don't
know. He was an authentic human, though. You can tell an Outsider.

Mattup and Danny and I were playing high-low-jack the night Uncle Pete
was killed, sitting on the widewalk where Mattup had a view of the part
of the station he was responsible for. High-low-jack is a back-country
card game; Danny had learned it in northern Pennsylvania, where he came
from, and Mattup loved the game, and they had taught it to me because
the game is better three-handed. The evening sessions had been Danny's
idea--I think he figured it might give him a line on Mattup.

On the night in question, Mattup was on a week's losing streak and was
in a foul humor. He was superstitious, and he had called for a new deck
twice that evening and walked around his seat four different times. His
bidding was getting wilder.

"You'd better cool down," Danny told him. "Thing to do is ride out the
bad luck, not fight it."

Orley picked his nose and looked at his cards, "Bid four," he growled.

Four is the highest possible bid. Tim played his cards well and he had
good ones. He had sewed up three of his points when we heard somebody
moving around down on the reactor floor. It was old Uncle