On they went; two tiny specks moving across the flat, empty wasteland. Overhead, buzzards wheeled hopefully; a tall cactus spread lonely arms towards them. Ahead, a roadrunner ratcheted crazily along for a few minutes before rushing blindly into the rocky waste. Somewhere the wicked buzz of a rattler sounded and stopped.
The midday sun was now growing unbearable, and Dave heaved a genuine sigh of relief as his companion called a halt. Together, the two men sought the shelter of a rocky gully where overhanging shelves of rock threw a welcome shade. Here, they watered the horses thriftily and with a small fire of tinder dry wood, made coffee and ate some of the food Green had brought.
‘Didn’t yu bring anything with yu to eat?’ asked Sudden in mock exasperation.
‘Hell, I didn’t know we was goin’ picknickin’,’ admitted Dave. ‘If I’d ’a known I’d’ve brought some o’ those fish eggs . . .what d’yu call ’em—’
‘Caviare, yu mean?’ asked Sudden.
‘That’s the one,’ enthused Dave. ‘An’ some o’ them other fancy foods they eat back East.’
‘Shucks, yu wouldn’t like ’em,’ Sudden told him. ‘I tried that fancy eatin’ one time. Shore pretty to look at, but they don’t do more than whet a man’s appetite.’
‘Them fancy restyraunts must be really somethin’,’ Dave mused.
‘Shucks, some of ’em’s all right; said Sudden. Then, with a grin, ‘I recall one tough ol’ feller went up to Kansas City with a herd, an’ went into one o’ them high toned joints. Not knowin’ what to order—they give him a menu as big as a newspaper, he plays safe and asks for steak. Well they done brought him the toughest piece o’ boot leather man ever cut from cow. Ol’ Jesse he struggles with that steak for a while, tryin’ not to lose his temper, then he finally calls the waiter across. “Lookahere, feller,” he says. “I reckon yu oughta take this yere meat back an’ give ’er another broilin’.” The waiter takes a step back as if Jesse’s just said he’s in favor o’ wimmin lawyers, an’ asks, haughty-like, “Are you suggesting that our chef doesn’t know how to cook a steak, sir?” Jesse thumps that skinny hombre on his back an’ yells, “Damn me, I’ve seen cows hurt worse ’n that get better back in Texas!” I reckon he had the right of it. Me, I’d sooner have bacon an’ beans out in the open than all yore fancy city meals.’
They finished their meal, cleaned out the plates with sand, put out their fire by pouring the coffee grounds upon it and kicking sand upon the hissing embers. Within half an hour, they were back in the saddle heading westwards. Ahead of them the tumbled hills rose, their serried sides cut diamond sharp and clear in the brilliant sunlight.
Eventually Dave felt constrained to break the silence once more, and inquired of his companion their destination.
‘Up ahead a ways,’ was the reply, which gave the young cowboy no information at all. ‘Bloomin’ clam,’ he muttered, ‘I could get more chatter outa one o’ them cactus trees.’ A covert glance revealed that if the other had heard this remark he was not going to be drawn into comment. With a shrug, Dave settled grimly into his saddle, hunching his shoulders against the blasting heat and trying to ignore the itching trickle of sweat beneath his clothes. The two men moved on into the faceless desert.
Curt Parr was in an evil mood. After his summary dismissal from the Slash 8, he had ridden into Hanging Rock. There he had discovered that his grievances only floated on top of the liquor he poured down his throat. The fiery spirit did, however, inflate his shattered conceit, and by the time he had consumed almost a bottle of Diego’s tequila he could see very clearly how indispensable he was to Zachary Barclay. His fuddled brain reasoned that since the Box B owner had been responsible for his working on the Slash 8-and the others before it—it was now Barclay’s responsibility—no, duty-to grubstake him before he departed this part of the country. ‘I got plenty on yu, Zack ol’ boy,’ he mumbled. ‘Yu better be—reasonable.’
It was dawn by the time he reached the Box B, but the slow, solemn beauty of the sunrise meant less than nothing to Parr. At this early hour, he encountered no one until he was in the yard of the Box B, where a light shining from the main house window apprised him of the fact that someone was already up and about. Congratulating himself on his luck, Parr stumbled up the steps and hammered on the door. In a moment it was thrown open, and Parr’s drunken warmth froze in his veins as the barrel of a .45, held in the huge list of Burley Linkham, was thrust into his face.
‘It’s me, Link, Curt Parr,’ he gasped hurriedly. Linkham’s face did not change, nor did he lower the six-gun. He simply looked at the sniveling Parr, whose liquor bolstered courage was rapidly evaporating. ‘Burley, for God sake, it’s me, Curt. I got to see Barclay,’ he whimpered.
‘What for?’ was the cold query.
Without volition, Parr’s voice spilled out of him; he recounted the events of the proceeding evening at the Slash 8, his dismissal, his need of a grubstake. Linkham cut in on his whining, harshly. ‘What makes yu think anyone cares about yore bad luck?’ he growled callously.
Parr drew himself up carefully. ‘Link,’ he said, in as level a voice as he could muster, ‘Just ’cause I allus reported to yu, don’t mean yo’re the boss. I want to talk to Zack.’
‘What about, Curt?’ Linkham’s voice had gone softer, soothing. Parr felt better. Linkham knew that he was important. That Zack needed him.
‘Yu know,’ he told Linkham coldly. ‘I need a stake. I’m getin’ out.’
‘Well, okay, yo’re goin’. Why should Zack stake yu?’
‘Because I know plenty, that’s why.’ Parr’s defiance was his last effort. He stood there, hating this big brutal man who stood between him and Barclay. Linkman would show no sympathy, offer no help. Only Barclay. Barclay would have to listen.
‘What do yu know, Curt?’ Linkham’s voice was almost gentle.
‘Enough,’ snapped Parr. ‘Now let me talk to Zack.’
Linkham’s answer was a casual, almost lazy movement with his right hand. It described a short, vicious arc, and the six-gun it held caught Parr across the bridge of the nose and hurled him backwards off the porch, writhing in agony and pawing at the blood spurting from his shattered face. Linkham looked at him unemotionally.
‘Yu know nothin’,’ he told the prostrate figure in the dust.
‘Yu’ll say nothin’. If yo’re in this country tomorrow I’ll kill yu. The word will go out today, Parr. If any Box B man or any of my boys sees yu, he’ll have orders to kill yu like the coyote yu are. Now get out o’ here before I kill yu myself!’
Linkham stepped back quietly into the house. The whole scene had taken only a few minutes; moving carefully, he opened the door of Barclay’s bedroom and listened. The sound of even breathing told him Barclay was not yet awake. He nodded to himself, and said, ‘What he don’t know won’t bother with.’ An evil smile lit his face as he returned to the window and watched the blood-spattered Curt Parr climb into the saddle and ride off into the morning, his body lurching with every movement that the animal made.
Curt Parr was a sorry picture. Blood had stiffened all the front of his shirt and spattered his pants. His face between forehead and chin was a solid mass of puffed skin and blue-black bruises, and every step his horse took jarred a curse from his aching lips. In his mind, Parr cursed in a steady monotone the man whom he held responsible for his condition, and many were the vicious revenges he visited in his imagination upon the foreman of the Slash 8. The sun was already becoming hot, and Parr realized he was too far into the Badlands to head for the river. Almost without volition, after leaving the Box B, he had headed west towards South Bend. In the back of his mind was the knowledge that he must get out of Sweetwater Valley as soon as possible. By now, the Box B crew would have been given their daily orders by Linkham; and Linkham would have told them to shoot Curt Parr on sight. As the sun grew hotter, so Parr’s thirst grew worse. The drinking of the previous night, and the treatment he had received this morning, conjured fantasies of running water in
his mind; there on the desert floor he could see blue lakes of icy water. He laughed. Then he sobered and told himself that if he didn’t find water soon, he would collapse. He spurred the tired horse towards a group of rocks ahead; he would sit in the shade a while and rest before going on to the only waterhole he knew in the Badlands. And it was in this state of half delirium that he found the traces of a two-man camp. Instantly, he forgot his pains and an animal cunning and alertness Hooded his body. Had he been travelling too slowly? Had a couple of Box B men already gotten ahead of him? Like a skulking wolf Parr sidled up to the camp-site and carefully checked the nearby gully. There was no one in sight. He felt the ashes of the fire. Still hot. That meant that the men had only left a few minutes, possibly a quarter of an hour ago.
Moving snake-like across the small clearing, Parr eased his way up the side of one of the overhangs until he reached the flattened crown of the rock pile. From this vantage point he could see clearly in every direction, and he swept the glittering surface of ·the desert floor with narrowed eyes, cursing as the sun roasted him on the flat rock. Down below him, perhaps a mile away, he espied two figures on horseback moving slowly in a westerly direction. Good. Traveling slowly, he could stay behind them and dodge into the hills at nightfall. He was about to turn and descend from his lookout when something familiar about one of the riders tugged at his memory and he looked again, shading his eyes from the sun.
Green!
There was no doubt at all, he exulted. There weren’t two black stallions like that in the valley. One of the two men ahead was the foreman of the Slash 8, and that was enough for Curt Parr. Feeling as if his prayers had been answered, he slithered—down to his tethered horse, climbing into the saddle and pushing the tired animal into a loping route that would take him around and ahead of the two riders. His aching body forgotten, Parr chanted soundlessly to himself as he rode, patting the stock of the rifle he had pulled from its saddle scabbard.
‘Now, Green,’ he muttered, ‘Now, now, now!’
Chapter Thirteen
The trail across the Badlands was at best only faintly defined, and several times, Dave found himself lost in admiration of his foreman’s uncanny skill in charting their way across the monotonous drifting sandy waste; he relieved himself of a long-drawn sigh of relief as a small clump of trees appeared on the rim of the desert, and Green, hearing the sound, straightened up in the saddle and grinned, ‘Water ahead. Yu can have a bath—an’ yu could use one.’
‘Shucks,’ replied Dave. ‘I just hope I get to the water afore yu dip yore beak in, or she’ll be plumb spoiled for drinkin’.’
With a whoop of high spirits which came as a complete surprise to Dave, Sudden whisked off his hat and slapped Dave’s horse across the ears. The young cowboy spent the next few minutes trying to control his pony, which was giving a creditable imitation of a horse trying to fly; by the time he had the animal under control once more, the Slash 8 foreman was a fast-receding figure at the head of a plume of dust arrowing towards the waterhole some miles ahead. With a mild oath, Dave pointed his still-edgy bronc after Green, and rocketed in pursuit.
‘Shore beats all the way that gent’ll look so sleepy, an’ then jus’ when yo’re lulled, he’ll pull a fool stunt like that,’ he soliloquized.
By the time he reached the waterhole, Green was already hunkered in the shade of one of the few trees, starting a fire. His horse, unsaddled, was cropping the sandy tufts of grass.
‘What kept yu?’ Green asked innocently as Dave reined up alongside. ‘No—don’t tell me. The minnit I leave yu alone for a second, yu go an’ get yoreself lost. Shore beats me how yu ever find yore way home, the way yu keep harin’ all over the landscape. O’ course, if yu could control that bone-bag yu call a hoss .... ’
He subsided into laughter as Dave’s pent-up fury threatened to burst him at the seams, and continued to smile as his companion’s choicest invective rolled like a cascade about his ears.
When Dave began to run out of adjectives and breath, Green inquired, ‘Yu want some coffee? I figgered so. In which case, whyn’t yu just toddle down to the water an’ fill this yere pot. And wash out yore mouth while yo’re at it…I ain’t never heard such scandalous talk.’
With a mock swipe at Sudden’s head, Dave took the coffee pot and proceeded down to the edge of the pool where its muddy sides were pocked by the footprints of the many animals that drank there. He caught a glimpse of the track of a mountain cat, and turned to call Green.
He never heard the shot. Parr, up on the hillside overlooking their camp, had been watching the two men ever since they arrived at the waterhole. When Haynes finally took the coffeepot down to the water’s edge, the dark-visaged ambusher had his first clear aim at the two men, and he acted almost instantly.
His first shot dropped Dave Haynes like a log half in, half out of the water, and he whipped the Winchester around like a snake as Green leaped to his feet, moving with a powerful thrusting leap towards his saddle and the rifle in his scabbard on it. Parr’s second shot knocked the Slash 8 foreman sideward and back into the shadow of the tree, where he lay unmoving, curiously huddled, with one arm outstretched and the other doubled beneath his body.
Parr let five minutes go by. Then another five.
Neither man moved. Haynes lay as he had fallen, and from his vantage point, Curt Parr could see the slow stain of red darkening the water. Green lay in black shadow but there was no hint of movement from his body. Parr twitched the bush behind which he lay; nothing happened. Gingerly, he raised his Stetson on the barrel of the rifle, above the level of the bush.
‘Cashed, the pair of ’em,’ he exulted. ‘So much for yu, Mr. Smart Aleck Green. Yore sidekick’s hard luck: he picked the wrong day to ride with yu.’
Parr wormed backwards away from the ridge, working easily and without haste towards his horse. When he was below the level of the ridge, he levered a fresh round into the chamber of the Winchester. Then, leading his horse, he skirted the rocks behind which he had lain, and carefully approached the camp-site. Ahead of him, Haynes lay where he had fallen. Parr approached the slumped form of the Slash 8 rider cautiously, his rifle at the ready. Haynes did not move, and the pool of blood in which he lay made it obvious to the bushwhacker that Haynes would give him no trouble. Skirting the water’s edge, he sidled over to where Green lay, face down on the dry brown grass which grew beneath the trees.
Leaving the horse’s reins trailing, he poked his foot under Green’s ribs to turn the body over. As he did so, Sudden exploded into activity. His hand grabbed Parr’s foot and jerked it upwards, throwing the ambusher over and back. Parr’s rifle went off but the slug whined harmlessly into the air. He hit the ground with a bone-shaking thud, the rifle jarred from his grasp. Above him, eyes slitted menacingly, Sudden stood straddle-legged, the bore of his .45 poised like a rock three inches from Parr’s face. The ambusher recoiled in horror, crying ‘Don’t shoot me!’
‘I shore oughta,’ gritted Green savagely. ‘I oughta blow out yore light—an’ it would pleasure me to do it—but I got a hunch yo’re goin’ to be useful, so I’m lettin’ yu go on livin’ for the moment.’ There was no mistaking his meaning, and Parr nodded vehemently, offering no protest as Green quickly and efficiently lashed Parr’s hands behind him, rolled the man on his face, and then tied the bound hands to Parr’s ankles, so that the bushwhacker was bent backwards like a drawn bow.
‘Now I aim to see whether Dave is alive or dead,’ Green told
him. ‘Yu’d better pray he’s still breathin’.’
Without another glance at the abject form of his would-be assassin, Green crossed quickly to where Dave lay. A hasty examination reassured him. Parr’s bullet had hit Dave high on the shoulder blade, and tom its way out near the collarbone. The young Slash 8 rider was going to be weak from loss of blood, but it looked much worse than it was. Sudden breathed a sigh of relief and set to work to clean the wound and bandage it with strips tom from Dave’s shirt.
Half an hour later the young man was conscious, propped up against the tree and regarding his partner with puzzled eyes.
‘Hell,’ he said weakly. ‘It can’t be Heaven—they wouldn’t allow such ornery-lookin’ angels on the place.’ Then his eyes fell upon Parr, still lying trussed where the foreman had roughly thrown him. ‘What’s Parr doin’ here?’ And when Green had told him. ‘That—sidewinder! Why for’d he bushwhack us, Jim?’
‘He ain’t said,’ Green informed him, adding meanfully, ‘yet.’
Parr paled as the Slash 8 duo glared at him malignantly. His coward’s brain was busy with wild plans for escape but he knew in his heart that he did not have the courage to try and make a break for it. He had seen that cold-eyed devil in action, and he knew that, unless Green were dead, he would not escape. Almost as if reading his mind, the subject of Parr’s thoughts came over and stood looking down at him.
‘If yo’re thinkin’ of escapin’, forget it. Yo’re on borrowed time right now. Yu an’ me is goin’ to have a little chat. I’m goin’ to ask yu some interestin’ questions, an’ yo’re goin’ to give me some interestin’ answers.’ When Parr’s expression turned to a sneer, Sudden grinned, and turning to Dave, he said, ‘By the way, did I ever tell yu I was brung up by Injuns?’
The wounded man shook his head, puzzled at this change of tack in the conversation. ‘No, can’t say yu ever did, Jim,’ he replied.
‘Happened when I was right small,’ Sudden told him. ‘I was in a wagon train attacked by Comanches. Everybody was wiped out. But Comanches never killed boy children, so they took me with them. After a few years with them I was traded off to the Piutes. They pretty near brung me up.’
Dave nodded. He had not the remotest idea what Green was leading up to, but he was well aware that Green rarely waggled his chin just for the exercise, so he kept his silence as Green went on, almost dreamily.
Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1) Page 14
