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

by Frederick H. Christian

  With a disdainful gesture, he tossed a misshapen piece of lead on to the table in front of the Sheriff, and proceeded to wipe his hands upon a large and none too clean rag, produced from one of the capacious pockets of the rusty frock coat. He then turned his back on Brady and the entire proceedings, and poured himself a liberal drink from the bottle which Jake Burkhart had placed in readiness upon the bar.

  Brady meanwhile examined the bullet carefully, as though he were appraising a diamond, turning it over in his hands, squinting at it. ‘Patches is right,’ was his verdict. ‘Prob’ly a forty-four, an’ purty near every gun in the Territory is the same. I’m guessin’ this won’t give us no leads.’ He passed the bullet across to the jurors who examined it closely, shaking their heads. Brady called Sudden forward.

  ‘Yu was the last man to see George Tate alive. Suppose yu give us yore version o’ what happened.’

  Sudden thereupon recounted once again the bare details of the bushwhacking, the search he had made, and the arrival of the Slash 8 men. The only thing he left out was the discovery of the cartridge case. When he had finished Brady stood up and faced him.

  ‘Yu get a look at the killer, Green?’

  Sudden shook his head, and Brady, clasping his hands behind him, prowled up and down in front of the Slash 8 man. In a moment, he stopped, and pointing at Green, shot out a question.

  ‘Yu say the last thing George Tate said was that yu should take care o’ the ranch an’ his daughter, Grace?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sudden told him.

  ‘Yet yu’ve on’y been here a few days yorself, Green. How come Tate put so much trust in yu?’

  ‘He needed someone to keep the ranch runnin’ until his daughter can get here from the East. I’ll stay in charge until she’s twenty-one. That’s what Tate told me.’

  A murmur of surprise ran around the room at this revelation, and Brady’s pig eyes gleamed. .

  ‘Yu shore got yore hands on a good ranch, one way or the other,’ he leered.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sudden asked coldly.

  ‘Never mind that. What caliber are them guns o’ yourn?’

  ‘Forty-fives,’ was the reply. ‘So’s my saddle gun. Why? Yu tryin’ to hint that I shot George Tate?’

  ‘All I’m sayin’ is yu had a motive for killin’ the old man,’ was the heavy reply.

  ‘Yu fat fool,’ Sudden snapped. ‘If I was lookin’ for pickin’s, I shore wouldn’t have picked a ranch loaded with a mortgage that’s liable to be foreclosed in ten days time.’ A guffaw escaped several of the onlookers.

  ‘Yu could have other reasons,’ shot back the nettled lawman.

  ‘I could be George Washington, but I ain’t,’ retorted Sudden.

  ‘These are fool questions, Brady an’ yu know it. Two men were at the scene o’ the murder a couple o’ minutes after it happened.’

  ‘Hell, that don’t prove nothin’,’ muttered Brady. ‘Yu could all be in cahoots to get the ranch.’

  ‘What the devil for?’ interposed a biting voice. Brady wheeled to discover Patches regarding him with cold eyes, elbows propped behind him on the bar. ‘Assuming that Green killed Tate—which only a complete fool would believe for a second—what would he want the ranch for?’

  Brady’s eyes rolled around the room, seeking some kind of support, for in truth, he had no idea how to answer the question his nemesis had posed.

  ‘How in ’ell do I know?’ he squealed. “This feller had a motive, an’ for all I know, seein’ he was alone with Tate, bumped him off, intendin’ to sell the ranch . . .’ His voice tapered off as the stupidity of what he was saying seeped through his muddled brain.

  ‘That’s right—think!’ came the jeering voice from the bar.

  ‘Green just told us the place is mortgaged. Do you know anyone—apart from a congenital idiot like yourself—who would be willing to buy a mortgaged ranch, Sheriff?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Brady realized the untenable position he was in, and retreated from it in a cloud of bluster. ‘I got to ask questions, haven’t I? How else are we gonna rind out the truth?’

  ‘Yu figger we ever will, Shady?’ came the cutting question from Gimpy.

  ‘If yu’ll quit yore yawpin’, we might,’ barked the thoroughly confused Sheriff. ‘Yu—Green. About that business of yu bein’ involved in Tate’s murder: I’ve changed my mind—’

  ‘Glad to hear that, Sheriff; said Sudden, mildly. ‘The one yu was usin’ shore wasn’t much good.’

  In the laughter which followed this remark, Brady struggled visibly to regain his composure. Looking around the room, his eyes fell upon the banker, de Witt, who was standing inconspicuously at the rear.

  ‘Mr. de Witt,’ called the Sheriff. ‘Can yu confirm that the deceased’s ranch was mortgaged the way this feller says?’ The banker’s dry voice was flat and unemotional. ‘He had a mortgage. The amount of it is of no concern here, I think. I have one suggestion to make to this inquiry, however.’

  Every head in the room turned towards him.

  ‘Has it occurred to anyone that these bandits in the mountains might be responsible for George Tate’s death?’

  ‘The Shadows?’ Brady’s voice was high pitched. ‘Why should they want to kill George Tate?’

  ‘I understand that he had been threatened by some masked men, and that he and Green had run them off his ranch. They may have decided to take their revenge by bushwhacking both men. I congratulate you, Mr. Green, on your escape.’

  Brady pounced upon this idea like a terrier upon a rat. ‘It’s shore a possibility; he said. ‘I didn’t know yu’d had a run-in with the Shadows, Green. Why wasn’t it reported to me?’

  Sudden lounged back against the table, a faint smile on his face.

  ‘Well, to tell yu the truth, Sheriff, yu was so busy chasin’ the Shadows for robbin’ the bank, it hardly seemed worthwhile me tryin’ to get them arrested for threatenin’ the Slash 8.’

  Again the unfortunate lawman suffered the torment of laughter at his expense, but he banged on the table with his mallet and finally achieved order. ‘This puts a new light on this yere killin’,’ he announced. ‘I’m wagerin’ that these jurymen here are goin’ to agree that George Tate prob’ly met his death by ambush at the han’s o’ one or more o’ the Shadows, an’ that the motive for the murder was revenge.’

  He turned to the men behind him, and held a whispered colloquy with a lanky citizen evidently serving as jury foreman. Then, ‘Unless anyone has any new evidence to present, this jury finds-—as I expected—that George Tate was prob’ly murdered by the Shadows.’

  He looked about him with an air of triumph, as though he had accomplished something tremendously difficult. His self-satisfaction evaporated like a flash when from behind him came the voice of the town doctor.

  ‘Now that we’re all agreed on that, what are you going to do about it, Shady?’

  The Sheriff looked around him, bewildered. ‘Do about it? What d’yu expect me to do about it? This feller here’—he jerked a thumb at Sudden—‘already told us he couldn’t find no trail, an’ he never got a sight o’ who done the shootin’. What am I supposed to do-—go out there an’ invent some clues?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ was the meaningful reply. ‘Yu told us that it was probably the Shadows. Why don’t you raise a posse and go out and scour the Badlands until you find this gang?

  The old doctor’s suggestion met with a roar of approval from the watchers. There were cries of ‘Yeah!’ and ‘I’m ready to go, Shady!’ from one or two of the less sober citizens.

  ‘Yu know that’s impossible!’ snorted Brady. ‘Them mountains is plumb full o’ hidey-holes. A posse could spend months out there an’ still not find a thing.’ He whirled to face the Slash 8 contingent. ‘Yu fellers are the most concerned in this: do yu disagree with the findin’s o’ this jury?’

  ‘Let’s put her this way,’ Green said coldly. ‘She’s the only verdict we got. Personally, I wouldn�
��t take yore jury’s word for what time it was.’

  A babel of conversation now boiled forth from the pent-up watchers. Many were the arguments that raged hither and thither as men who had known George Tate discussed the circumstances of his killing and the activities of the outlaw band in the hills. Many sidelong glances were cast at the saturnine figure of the new Slash 8 ramrod, who, if he noticed them, gave no indication of it. Meanwhile, Brady pounded the table with his mallet, and when a small lull in the babble of talk came, he yelled, ‘Unless anyone’s got further evidence to offer, this hearin’s officially closed.’

  He laid down his hammer and crossed the room to where Sudden was standing talking to Gimpy and Dave.

  ‘Green, I want a word with yu,’ he snapped.

  Sudden turned to face him. ‘Fire away,’ he invited.

  ‘In private,’ Brady told him. The Slash 8 man’s face grew cold at these words, and his voice was icy when he spoke. ‘If yu got anythin’ to say to me, yu can say it in front o’ Dave an’ Gimpy,’ he told the perspiring lawman. ‘Speak yore piece or forget it-—I ain’t carin’ which.’

  Brady’s mouth opened and closed, and then he regained the use of his voice and croaked, ‘I just want to warn yu—don’t try takin’ the law into yore own hands. Yo’re supposed to report any incident such as them hombres threatenin’ the old man to me personal. So in future, yu see that I’m kept informed, yu hear?’

  Sudden’s eyes bored into the pudgy man. ‘Yu fat frog,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with this town that it had to pin the star on a pizen toad like yu, but that’s Hangin’ Rock’s affair. I’ll give yu some information, an’ yu better listen good: yu come around givin’ the Slash 8 trouble an’ yo’re liable to get tamped down with a shovel.’ He paused to let the words sink in through Brady’s thick hide. ‘The Slash 8 buries its own dead, Brady, an’ that’s whatever. Fade!’

  Amid jeers from one or two bystanders who had overheard the exchange, the lawman beat a hasty retreat, throwing a glance of malevolent hatred over his shoulder at the Slash 8 man. Sudden watched his departure with distaste, and turned to Gimpy and Dave once more.

  ‘I can shore see why that Patches feller don’t like Brady,’ he remarked.

  ‘Patches don’t like anybody much,’ was Gimpy’s reply, ‘but he ain’t skeered to speak his mind, which is more than most o’ the folk in this town do. He says what he thinks—every time.’

  Sudden nodded, and then, acting upon an impulse, walked over to the bar and joined the doctor. On closer inspection it was evident that Patches’ decrepit appearance was largely due to neglect of his clothes and personal hygiene; Sudden put the man’s age at no more than forty-five.

  ‘I’d admire to buy yu a drink, seh,’ he offered, ‘an’ thank yu for backin’ me up before.’

  ‘Brady is quite detestable, Mr. Green,’ replied Patches, ‘but I spoke up because I am a believer in the truth, and not because of any feeling of sympathy for you or for the Slash 8. I have no time to waste upon sympathy.’

  ‘Men with a quest rarely do have,’ said Sudden. The effect of this upon the doctor was electric. He stood upright, his drink slopping over the rim of the glass and on to the bar, while his eyes fastened upon Green’s with a terrible intensity. His shaking left hand grabbed Sudden’s shirt front, and in a croak, he said, ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Shucks, yo’re not a drunk, an’ yo’re not a bum,’ Sudden told him. ‘That means yo’re either disguised or else yu got side-tracked by the drink. I did myself, one time. Yu just have to quit drinkin’, doctor.’

  The man looked at the cowboy for a long, long moment, but then his eyes fell, and he shook his head violently, a shudder racking the bony frame.

  ‘Changin’ the subject,’ Green said, as though none of this had taken place, ‘Did the bank cashier say anything afore he died?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Patches spoke from some far off place, a light gradually coming back into his eyes as he seemed to focus properly upon Green again.

  ‘He didn’t speak?’

  ‘Not at all. Why do you ask?’

  ‘To tell yu the truth, I had a hunch that he might have held the key to who these Shadow hombres are. He must have recognized one o’ them. I Egger he was shot to keep him quiet?

  ‘You are unusually perspicacious, Mr. Green. Have you any other theories?’

  ‘A few,’ Sudden grinned. ‘I’ll tell yu about them some time.’

  Patches nodded. ‘Do that, Mr. Green, do that. And while you are theorizing, ask yourself this question: how did banker de Witt know that Tate’s ranch had been visited by the Shadows?’

  ‘I been askin’ myself that already,’ Green told him with a grin.

  ‘And so have I, Mr. Green. Good day, sir.’ With a courteous bow, the doctor pushed his way out of the saloon, leaving Sudden to rejoin his men. Tate’s body had been loaded back into the wagon for its last journey back to the Slash 8. The men were ready to leave.

  ‘Yu get anythin’ out of old Patches? Dave asked.

  ‘Some advice,’ Sudden told him. ‘He said get to bed early an' stay away from people who ask fool questions, an’ I’ll probably live till I die.’

  Dave gave his foreman some implicit instructions and directions for his immediate future and recommended route. Sudden smiled and said nothing. But when Gimpy asked him, ‘What yu make of Patches, Jim?’ the new ramrod of the Slash 8 neither smiled nor made reply.

  Chapter Seven

  Every second Thursday, weather and road-agents permitting, the stagecoach between Santa Fe and Las Cruces rolled into Hanging Rock on its way south. The driver, known locally as ‘Rye’ Johnson because of his predilection for that particular brand of painkiller, cursed his team up the street shortly after two o’clock on the Thursday following the funeral of George Tate. Pulling the horses to a sweating halt in a huge cloud of dust, Johnson slammed on the long handbrake, leaped down from his perch high up on top of the coach, and threw open the door nearest to the boardwalk.

  ‘Hangin’ Rock, an’ right on time!’ he yelled. ‘Thirty minnits stop for grub an’ a change o’ horses!’

  ‘Rye’ Johnson was not a man to let ceremony stand in the way of his own thirst, and so, without another word, he left his passengers to unload themselves and their luggage and tramped heavily into the welcome shade of Dutchy’s, outside whose saloon the stage always stopped. The passengers began to alight from the stage with that timid reluctance mixed with relief which characterizes people who have travelled long distances in acute discomfort. The first man off was obviously a drummer, sample case clutched in his sweaty hand. He reached up to the luggage rail, pulled down his carpetbag, and followed in Rye’s dusty wake, mopping his shining brow. Behind him was a dark-suited businessman who alighted and walked briskly off down the street with every appearance of a man in town to conduct some business and then make the fastest possible departure. The usual crowd hanging around the verandah of Dutchy’s to watch the arrival of the stage wasted little time watching him, however. Their attention was fixed now upon the man getting out of the coach, which swayed beneath his solid weight. A powerfully-built man, dressed in somber black relieved only by the soft-collared silk shirt and flowing black tie, he might have been dismissed by a chance onlooker as a moderately successful gambler had it not been for the certain arrogance which marked his carriage. Closer inspection would have shown that his clothes, though dusty, were of the finest broadcloth, and that his boots, even beneath the film of desert grit, shone dully with the sheen that many polishings will impart only to fine leather. The man’s face was floridly handsome, with only a hint of weakness about the mouth to indicate that, if this ’man had money, it might not always be wisely spent. All in all, he gave the appearance of wealth and power combined with a forcefulness which was enhanced by his sheer size. His dark-browed face was now, however, smiling fulsomely for the benefit of a small, pretty blonde girl to whom he had turned in order to help gallantly from the stagecoach. S
he looked to be in her early twenties, and her smile, as she thanked the big man, made slaves of the bystanders in an instant.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling, ‘for all your kindness. It would have been a dull journey without your company, Mr. Barclay.’

  ‘Pleasure’s all mine, Miss Tate,’ replied Barclay with a deep bow. ‘I’m hoping you’ll call me Zack, an’ that I’ll see a lot more of yu while yo’re here.’

  The girl flushed slightly at the eager warmth in the big man’s voice, a pleasant sight which Barclay missed completely having turned to a bystander. Snapping his fingers he rapped, ‘You! Take the lady’s bags across to the hotel!’ The habit of commanding and of instant obedience being its effect were natural to this man, and had it been another to whom he had spoken, no doubt his command would have been as naturally obeyed.

  Unfortunately for Barclay, however, the man he addressed so contemptuously was none other than the ramrod of the Slash 8, who had ridden into town with Dave Haynes upon receiving Grace Tate’s telegraphic communication that she would be arriving on the stage. Barclay was apprised of his mistake when a cold voice cut in upon his gallant attentions towards the young woman.

  ‘Yu may think yo’re king- o’ the valley, mister, but I ain’t one o’ yore serfs!’

  Barclay wheeled in amazement upon hearing this cutting remark, and, since he had never seen Sudden before, ejaculated, ‘Who the devil are yu?’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you a hint: I ain’t one o’ yore admirers,’ came the reply. Without another word, the Slash 8 man shouldered past Barclay and presented himself, hat in hand, to the young woman.

  ‘Ma’am, my name’s Jim Green. I’m runnin’ the Slash 8. I brung out a buckboard to take yu back to the ranch as soon as yo’re ready, but I figgered yu’d probably want to eat first, an’ freshen up some, so I made arrangements at the hotel.’ He pointed with his chin across the street, and finished with a smile, ‘Anyway, yu call the shots.’