Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1)

by Frederick H. Christian

‘I'm sorry that it has proven necessary to call your debt, Tate,’ the banker said, ‘but I’m sorrier that I can’t give you longer to raise the money. As it is, I’m stretching things to the limit?

  ‘One thing,’ Tate asked. ‘How many other debts are yu callin’?’

  The banker spread his hands and lifted his shoulders slightly. ‘You know I can’t tell you that, my friend. A banker is like a doctor—he must respect the confidences of his customers.’

  Tate nodded shortly, and rose to leave. De Witt came around from behind his desk to open the door for them. ‘You’ll be driving pretty soon, then, I take it?’ he suggested.

  ‘Pretty soon,’ was Sudden’s reply, and with it the banker had to be content. He bade the Slash 8 men goodbye, and returned to his chair with a frown twisting his features. Slowly, a satisfied smile replaced it, and he briefly reviewed his plans out loud.

  ‘You have something of a surprise coming to you, Mister Green,’ he snarled. ‘Ten days or ten minutes, it makes no difference. There’ll be no Slash 8 cattle sold, and you won’t be around to back that doddering old fool up. The Slash 8 is as good as mine.’ He chuckled evilly, then his thoughts reverted again to the cowboy who had accompanied Tate. ‘James Green. An apt enough name: the man’s evidently a fool—I expected better from what Linkham told me. Must have been luck—despite the hardware. He let all his plans slip like a dolt. Bah! Linkham can attend to him!’ Whereupon Hanging Rock’s respected banker rubbed his bony hands together in unholy glee.

  Chapter Five

  The afternoon sun was beginning its slow slide down behind the mountains as George Tate and Sudden left Hanging Rock. Heading along the trail towards the Slash 8, the old rancher finally allowed his bottled-up curiosity to spill forth, and addressed his not-very-surprised employee with the query: ‘Jim, what in Hades were yu up to back there at the Bank?’

  ‘Well, seh,’ admitted Sudden with a wry smile, ‘I got to admit I kinda twisted the fac’s by the tail a mite.’

  ‘That’s shore puttin’ her mild,’ retorted Tate. ‘Why for did yu tell de Witt that yarn about the herd? I shore don’t recall yore mentionin’ any Marty Black buyin’ our beef.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ grinned Sudden, ‘but he exists, which is all that I was concerned with. As it turned out, de Witt had never heard o’ Marty Black, but I couldn’t know that.’

  ‘I don’t quite figger all this, Jim.Yu mind tellin’ me why our deal with Newman was worth this smoke-screen? Unless yu figger de Witt’s crooked which I find hard to believe.’

  ‘What’s hard to believe? That I think de Witt ain’t square, or the possibility that he ain’t anyway, irregardless of what I think?’

  ‘Don’t twist words, Jim.Spit her out straight, boy.’

  ‘Wal, I just had me the hunch in town that the fewer folks know about our plans the less chance there is of anyone puttin’ a crimp in them. Now de Witt may be as honest as the day’s long—although my hunch is that he ain’t—but a word dropped carelessly can get to the wrong ears just the same as if we posted notices all over the valley advertizin’ what we aim to do.’

  ‘Yu shore got me beat,’ muttered the old rancher. ‘But I allow I share yore hunch about that banker feller.’

  Sudden looked at his employer inquiringly, and Tate continued, ‘Yu heard me ask him if he was callin’ any other debts ?’

  At Sudden’s nod, Tate went on, ‘Reason I asked was I know durn well he ain’t goin’ to pay no mine payroll with my measly couple o’ thousand. There ain’t no real big operation in these exceptin’ Barclay that could carry a loan heavy enough to make up the rest o’ that twenty thousand dollars. So where would the money come from? An’ if there ain’t no other loans, then he’s callin' my loan for some other reason—not to get enough money to make the payroll up. Damn me if I can figger it out.’

  ‘How friendly are de Witt an’ Barclay?’ Sudden’s question made the old rancher turn sharply in his saddle and regard his employee keenly.

  ‘That’s a funny kinda question, Jim,’ he remarked.

  ‘Funny or not, what’s the answer?’

  ‘I don’t know as I could say. Barclay’s often away for weeks at a time, an’ I wouldn’t know whether he sees a lot o’ de Witt or nothin’ at all. I ain’t never heard nothing about them bein' particularly pally. Why’d yu ask?’

  ‘Well, I kind of expected Barclay to be in town today,’ Sudden told him.

  ‘I expect he’s away again,’ Tate said. ‘I seen his foreman, Linkham, in town. Usually where yu see one, yu see the other.’

  Sudden’s line of questioning had put the old man into a deep, thoughtful mood, and they rode along in silence for a few miles. Soon they entered a narrow defile, where tumbled rocks which in past ages had fallen from the towering cliffs of the Needles lay scattered like giant’s playthings alongside the trail. Not far ahead, Sudden knew, lay the fork in the main trail which would lead them to the left, skirting the foothills of the mountains along the well-worn trail to the Slash 8. He reflected upon their conversation with the banker, and was reviewing what had been said in his mind when his hat was snatched from his head, and the ugly whisper of the bullet blended with the double whiplash-crack of a rifle from the rocks above them. Reacting without conscious thought, Sudden was out of the saddle and prone on the ground in one fast, flowing movement, and was relieved to see Tate following his example, rolling from the saddle and hitting the dirt solidly a little further ahead. The two horses, reins trailing, ran a few yards and then stopped, ground hitched—as all western horses were trained to stand when the reins trailed—and began to crop at the sparse grass bordering the trail.

  Levering himself slightly up on his elbows, Sudden whispered to Tate, ‘He’s up on the rocks, ahead somewhere. Cover me, an—’ He stopped abruptly, with the chilling realization that the old rancher had not stirred since falling from the saddle in what Sudden had assumed was an evasive action. He now divined the reason, and wormed his way forward to where the old man lay. He could hear the old rancher’s stertorous breathing while he was still a couple of yards away; when he reached the spot, he found Tate lying face downward in the dirt. Sudden turned the old rancher over. Blood drenched the front of Tate’s shirt, and the old man’s face was grey and drawn in the half light. Sudden had looked upon Death many times; the old rancher had not long to live. He lifted Tate’s head gently, and the rancher opened his eyes. Gradually, they came into focus, and he spoke.

  ‘Hurt … bad,’ he whispered weakly. ‘Said … they’d … get… me.’

  ‘Take it easy, old-timer,’ murmured the cowboy. ‘I’ll get yu some water.’

  ‘No... don’t go!’ Tate grabbed Sudden’s shirt sleeve urgently. ‘Want...to...tell...yu some...thin’.’

  ‘Hell, it can wait,’ said Sudden, through gritted teeth. ‘I got to get yu to a doctor.’

  ‘Wastin’ … yore … time. Tate managed a faint grin. ‘Jim … the ranch.’

  Alarm and worry erased the pain momentarily from the lined old face.

  ‘Don’t yu worry none about the ranch. I’ll take care of things,’ Sudden assured him.

  ‘Pringle … knows … our deal.’ The old man sighed; a trickle of blood coursed from his grey lips He struggled to sit up, his eyes wide. ‘Grace … take care .... ’

  ‘Shore,’ Sudden told him softly. ‘I’ll take care o’ Grace. Rest easy, ol’ timer. I got to get yu home.’

  ‘Home.’ A sigh escaped the old rancher’s lips, and with an imperceptible movement, his body slowly relaxed in Sudden’s arms. The cowboy let Tate’s head slowly and gently down to the ground, knowing that the old man was dead. Sudden’s lips were compressed into a thin line, and his eyes were the color of arctic seas. With a deft movement, he drew his guns, and eased away from the body.

  A quick glance around; then he moved slowly forward, scanning the surrounding rocks to check whether the ambusher had moved down nearer the trail for a second attempt. Everything was deathly still. The cowboy nodded
to himself.

  ‘I got a hunch Mister Bushwhacker is gone,’ he told himself, ‘but there’s only one way to be shore.’

  So saying, he stood upright, poised for an instant dive to the shelter of the shadowed ground. No shot greeted this daring exposure of his unprotected body, and he stood for a moment, lining up angles and distances. Off to the right, a very faint path, running at almost right angles to the trail, offered a possibility, and he moved on silent feet towards it. Peering closely at the hard earth, the Slash 8 man detected signs that the surface of the path had recently been disturbed, and, although the light was failing rapidly, he followed the track upwards into the jumbled rocks overlooking the trail. Here, a snapped-off twig on a sagebrush; there, a minute sign which would have escaped eyes less keen, told him that he was on the right track. Bending low, scanning the ground, he found further traces that someone had passed this way. Bruised grass not yet returned to its normal upright position, the faint impress of a boot heel on the hardened ground, were sufficient to enable him to hazard a guess as to the bushwhacker’s probable route. For perhaps another fifty yards he thrust his way through the fringe of brush and jumbled rocks, and eventually straightened up with a sigh. Here was the place he had been seeking.

  Shadowed by a twisted juniper tree, and screened from below by the bushes, was a flat rock which bore several scratches, and a soft small thread of red cotton caught on a protruding Hint. Two indentations in the soft earth had been caused by the toes of the ambusher’s boots as he lay prone on the rock watching the trail. Lying in the same position, Sudden could see the trail clearly, and the two horses cropping the grass not far from the sprawled body of George Tate.

  ‘Easy as A-B-C,’ he told himself.

  A dull gleam of metal caught his eye, and he stooped quickly. From a crevice between the rocks he fished out a cartridge shell.

  ‘Remington repeater—they ain’t so common.’

  Nearby he found hoofmarks where a horse had been tethered, and followed the horse’s tracks down from the ambuscade until they reached the main trail and were lost in the churned multitude of tracks. Knowing it would be impossible to track the killer further, he retraced his steps, and was back beside his own horse when the thunder of approaching hoofs sent him fleetly into a shadowed cleft beside the trail where he waited, guns drawn and cocked.

  Within moments, Dave Haynes and Gimpy thundered into the clearing around a bend in the trail, pulling their horses into a rearing halt as they saw the sprawled figure on the ground, and the crouched menacing form of Sudden.

  ‘Hell’s bells, Jim,’ swore Gimpy, ‘what’s happened?’

  ‘We was in the north pasture,’ explained Dave, ‘an’ we heard shots. We come a-runnin’!’

  ‘Pity yu couldn’t have got here about ten minutes earlier,’ remarked Sudden, grimly, as a muffled oath came from Gimpy, who had dismounted and was kneeling by George Tate’s body.

  ‘Hell’s flames, the old man’s cashed. Who done it, Jim?’

  ‘I didn’t get a look at him,’ Sudden admitted. ‘We was sittin’ ducks.’

  He recounted the circumstances of the ambush, and the details of his discoveries in the rocks above.

  ‘Well, there’s plenty o’ red shirts around these parts, so that’s no help. But there can’t be many Remington repeaters hereabouts.’ Gimpy’s voice was fiat with anger. ‘Let’s start by ridin’ over to the Barclay spread an’ askin’ some leadin’ questions.’

  ‘Now that’d be plumb foolish, not to mention dangerous,’ Sudden said mildly. ‘We got no proof that the Box B is involved in this, an’ even if we had, we couldn’t just barge in there an’ demand to see all their guns. They’d show us them, all right—muzzles first. No, I’m thinkin’ we’ll keep our bushwackin’ friend’s Remington a secret for a while. No use tippin’ our hands?

  ‘Shucks, yo’re right, o’ course,’ admitted Gimpy. ‘I kinda lost my wool for a minnit, Jim —seein’ the ol’ man like this .... ’

  ‘I know,’ Sudden said gently. ‘Yu been with him a long time.’

  Gimpy shook his head and did not answer, but brought the rancher’s horse across and threw his own saddle blanket across Tate’s saddle. The grisly task of roping the old man’s body to his saddle was accomplished in grim silence, a silence not broken by any of them the whole way back to the Slash 8. Only the grimly set jaws and the slitted eyes spoke of a reckoning to come.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, Sudden dispatched Gimpy to Hanging Rock with instructions to send a telegram to Tate’s daughter in New York and to inform the Sheriff of the murder of the old rancher.

  ‘Tell him we want a full inquiry,’ he instructed Gimpy.

  “That fat fool,’ growled the grizzled old cowboy. ‘He couldn’t even spell the word.’

  Sudden had nodded. ‘I’m guessin’ yo’re right,’ he had said, ‘but we got to play her Simple Simon at the moment, an’ besides, we want everythin’ down on paper for when the old man’s daughter finally gets here, don’t we?’

  Gimpy had nodded reluctantly. ‘I guess yo’re doin’ her the right way, Jim.It’s just that I feel like saddlin’ up an’ doin’ me some man-huntin’. I can’t nohow stand this foolin’ around with technicalities?’

  ‘Way I see her,’ Sudden reflected, ‘there’ll be a few questions about me takin’ control of the Slash 8. Let’s set them at rest afore we raise any others.’

  The old cowpuncher had snorted something about what he’d do to anyone asking him questions about the running of the Slash 8, but had none the less saddled his horse and pounded off down the trail towards town. An hour or two later, Tate’s tarpaulin—covered body was laid gently in the buckboard, driven by Cookie, and the Slash 8 headed in Gimpy’s wake.

  Hanging Rock was in a ferment when the heavily armed cavalcade from the Slash 8 appeared on the trail outside the town. ’Loungers scurried into Dutchy’s to claim vantage points for the forthcoming ‘inquiry’. The news of this was already common knowledge throughout the town, and Sudden had already specified that Burkhart’s saloon should be the place for , the inquiry to be held. It was to this destination that the Slash 8 contingent now came with their sad burden. As they pulled up alongside the saloon, Sheriff Brady came hulling along the boardwalk.

  ‘Move outa the way, there!’ he puffed self-importantly.

  ‘Stand back, now! Make room, there!’

  ‘An’ plenty of it,’ jibed one bystander. ‘Shady shore ain’t no mannykin!’

  This slighting reference to his bulk brought a flush to the sheriffs face, but he affected to ignore it as he bustled about giving orders which were completely ignored, and in the main merely adding to the confusion in the already crowded street. Passers-by jostled each other for a good view as George Tate’s body was unloaded and borne into the saloon. The Slash 8 men followed in a close phalanx, and ranged themselves around the trestle table upon which the old man’s body was laid.

  Brady settled himself at a table to the left, facing the Slash 8 men, while a hastily sworn coroner’s jury of sheepish Hanging Rock citizens took their places in chairs immediately to his right. The Sheriff’s piggy eyes grew narrower as he noticed the prominently displayed weapons of the Slash 8 crew.

  ‘Yu fellows aimin’ to attend an inquiry or start a war?’ he said.

  ‘Take yore pick, Shady,’ retorted Gimpy. ‘We’ll as lief have one as the other, if yu want to start the ball.’

  The Sheriffs pasty face went a shade paler, and he resorted to bombast.

  ‘Jest sit down an’ have less to say, MacDonald,’ he bleated. This yere’s an official inquiry, an’ we’re goin’ to do her regular.’

  ‘Yu better!’ was the unabashed reply. ‘Quit blatherin’ an’ get started!’

  The Sheriff rewarded this remark with a withering glance which had absolutely no effect whatsoever upon the recipient; Brady thereupon grabbed Dutchy’s wooden mallet and banged on the table in front of him.

  ‘This meetin’s called
to order,’ he bellowed. ‘We’re here to discover how the deceased, George Tate o’ the Slash 8, met his death.’

  ‘He was murdered!’ Sudden informed him coldly. ‘What we’re here for is to get the facts o’ the murder on record.'

  ‘Yu say he was murdered, mister,’ retorted Brady. ‘We’ve only got yore word for it.’

  A murmur of interest arose from the watchers, but it was stilled in a moment as Sudden, his eyes as cold as polar ice, leaned forward and asked very quietly, ‘Yu suggestin’ I’m a liar, Sheriff?

  Once again the Sheriff’s face lost its color, resembling at this moment nothing so much as a discarded lump of putty.

  ‘I ain’t called nobody nothin’,’ he squeaked. ‘I’m only pointin’ out that we can’t assume any fac’s until we’ve established them here.’

  ‘I think we can safely assume that Tate didn’t shoot himself in the back.’

  This interruption came from Patches. The town doctor’s dry voice effectively silenced anything further that Brady might have been about to say. The doctor had been kneeling beside Tate’s body during the exchange between Brady and Sudden; he stood now regarding the Sheriff with studied contempt. ‘If you are quite ready?’

  ‘Let’s have it, Patches,’ snapped the lawman impatiently.

  ‘Yu’—This to a meek looking man sitting to one side—‘make notes.’ The little man nodded emphatically, and bent over the notebook balanced on his knees. The doctor regarded Brady without expression. ‘What do you expect to be told? Tate has been dead perhaps twenty but not less than twelve hours. He was shot from above and behind—which seems to be a fairly common method of killing people in these parts—and probably died within a few minutes of being shot. This, in case you should have the wit to ask, which I doubt, is established from the trajectory of the bullet through the deceased’s body and from the degree of rigor mortis existing in the corpse. I am no expert, but I would say that he was killed by a rifle bullet of medium caliber. Since the bullet hit bone inside the body it is impossible to say what make of rifle fired the fatal shot. Here is the slug.’