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

by Frederick H. Christian

  This was a telling point, and de Witt felt he could almost warm his hands at the glow of approval which came from the crowd. He turned to Grace Tate. ‘Miss Tate, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all that has passed; for all your unhappiness. I am glad to tell you that your ranch is free and clear of all debt. And all threat, I might add,’

  Grace Tate found herself convinced against her will. She thrust out her hand, despite the detaining arm judge Pringle laid upon her arm, and shook the banker’s limp fingers. ‘Let us start afresh, Mr. de Witt,’ she said, her pretty face glowing with happiness at the thought that the Slash 8 would now belong to her in her own right. Her shining eyes met Dave’s.

  It was at this moment that the Judge drew her back to her chair, and stood up himself, thundering, ‘Mr. de Witt. There are still some unanswered questions!’ The general conversations, which had begun at the apparent termination of the explanations the banker had made, came to an abrupt halt. ‘You have not yet told us anything about the outlaw gang which you claim Barclay led-the Shadows. Who are they? And where is the money which they stole from the Bank?’

  De Witt looked around him at the curious, not unfriendly faces of the people ringing the room. Mentally he sneered at them, sheep that they were. They could never know. Linkham would never talk. He suddenly knew, with a heady sense of power, that he was to these poor fools as man is to the reptiles. And so he made his mistake.

  ‘I know nothing of them whatsoever,’ he told Pringle. ‘Perhaps we shall never know.’

  One second later, sheer, ice cold terror slid into his veins as a well-remembered voice, cold with disdain, called flatly across the room. ‘Liar!’

  De Witt looked frantically towards the door. And there, a cold smile on his face, stood the foreman of the Slash 8.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Liar!’

  The word hung in the silence like a pronouncement of death; and no one in the room was more affected by it than the man to whom it was addressed. He wheeled to present a pleading face to Brady, but the Sheriff had already bustled across towards Green.

  ‘Now see here, Green,’ he bumbled, ‘yu can’t say things like that—’

  ‘Brady, yo’re a disgrace to that star yo’re wearin’.’ Sudden’s cold words stopped the lawman in his tracks. ‘I had my doubts about yu—I figgered yu must be a part o’ this deal somewheres, but it looks like yu was just stupid. Which is probably natural to yu. But I’m warning yu: get out o’ my way. I want some words with that mealy-mouthed polecat over there!’

  So saying, he thrust his way to the side of the Slash 8 contingent, who beamed a welcome for their foreman, slapping his back, glad to see him. In a few swift sentences, Dave explained what had preceded Sudden’s arrival; the foreman’s face tightened at the sight of Barclay’s sprawled figure. He bent to have a whispered conversation with the old judge, nodding from time to time as the old man told him the things he wanted to know. Then Sudden drew himself upright.

  ‘So yu salivated Barclay,’ he said to de Witt.

  ‘That was in self-defense, Mr. Green.’ Some of the fright had gone from the banker’s face, and arrogance began to alter his stance. ‘I must say I find the remark you addressed to me improper and offensive.’

  ‘I’ll lie awake tonight an’ fret about it,’ the Slash 8 man said, coldly. ‘But for now, I’ll add to what I said. Yo’re a liar, Mister Banker. Yo’re also a cheat, a thief, and a murderer.’

  A gasp of sheer amazement escaped the crowd at this statement, and Brady bustled forward once more. ‘Green, yu’d shore better be able to back up that kind o’ talk with somethin’ more than those guns. Mr. de Witt just got through explainin’.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ jeered Sudden. ‘I’m likely to cry. If yu’ll quit interruptin’ there’s a few things I’d like to ask our banker.’

  ‘Yeah, stand back, Shady, yo’re blockin’ the view!’ yelled someone. A chorus of jeers descended upon the unfortunate Sheriff’s head and he scuttled aside.

  ‘You may ask any questions you like, Mr. Green,’ said de Witt with considerable dignity. ‘I regret to tell you, however, that I have no intention of answering you. You have neither the right nor the power to make me do so.’

  ‘Wrong again, de Witt,’ Sudden told him. ‘I got both.’ From a secret pocket in the lining of his gun belt, he produced a silver badge, which he tossed carelessly on the table. Brady picked it up, and in an awed voice read the words inscribed upon it. ‘Deputy United States Marshal!’

  ‘So that was his game,’ muttered Dave. ‘The ol’ son-of-a-gun.

  No wonder he played his cards so close to his chest!’ He glanced at Grace, who was covering her confusion as well as she could; he smiled to himself. ‘She’s recallin’ what she thought o’ Jim when he first met her,’ he thought.

  De Witt, however, was stricken harder by the sight of this mark of Green’s power than any man in the room, and his bearing showed it. The cringing stance fell once more upon his shoulders, and the man looked positively ill.

  ‘I’ll ask yu them questions now, banker,’ Sudden told him.

  De Witt nodded, his eyes blind. His mind was racing. How much did this devil know? ‘First off, yu was Barclay’s banker?’

  De Witt nodded again. ‘Then yu’d know all about his business transactions, right?’

  De Witt nodded a third time. Where was this leading?

  ‘Yet yu try to tell these people that Barclay was the owner of all the ranches in the Sweetwater Valley?’

  De Witt drew himself up. ‘To the best of my knowledge, that was true,’ he said.

  Sudden ignored him, and turned to Judge Pringle, who withdrew from his case a sheaf of documents. Sudden held them up for everyone to see. ‘These are certified copies of registration certificates for the ownership of the Sheppard ranch, the Carpenter ranch, Stackpole’s Diamond S. All o’ them in the same name. Yu want to make a guess at whose name, banker?’

  De Witt essayed a look of surprise. ‘Barclay’s of course.’ How had this confounded gunfighter found out about the registrations? Not that it mattered; nothing could be proved. Judge Pringle stood up. ‘When Green asked me to go to Mesilla and look at these land certificates I thought he was crazy. He told me that the assumption of truth is not enough, and I see now that he was right. The name on the registrations was not Zachary Barclay, but that of a man named Seth Miller. Nobody of that name is known in this area.’

  ‘Bah! It was probably some false name Barclay used to cover his own identity,’ interjected de Witt. ‘He was very cunning and devious about his business transactions. Surely you don’t think he told me everything?’

  ‘He seems to have told yu everythin’ else,’ said Sudden, sardonically. ‘But it makes no never-mind. Barclay couldn’t have registered that land without identification that he was really Seth Miller.’

  ‘Maybe he was,’ said de Witt, coolly. ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘An’ yu’ve made shore we can’t ask him,’ came the dry comment. ‘Another question. Do yu know a man called Bull Pardoe?’

  ‘No. I’ve never heard the name.’

  ‘Funny. He knows yu.’

  ‘Lots of people know me, Green. I am well known hereabouts.’

  As Midnight escaped some of the audience, and de Witt grew more confident. He would best his cold-eyed inquisitor even yet.

  ‘In which case, that would explain why Burley Linkham knows yu, too?’

  ‘I know Linkham. He was Barclay’s foreman. Barclay sent him in to me with messages—orders, sometimes.’

  ‘He says he wasn’t Barclay’s foreman.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ So! Green had already questioned Linkham. Caution!

  ‘Linkham says that bein’ Barclay’s foreman was a blind. He says that he was workin’ for yu, and that yu promised him he’d get the Box B to run when yu owned the valley an’ Barclay was dead.’

  In the utter silence of the room, de Witt stood silent while his mind scurried around like a
rat in a maze. Somehow this devil had made Linkham talk; but the day was DOI yet lost! It was still only Linkham’s word against his own, the word of a rough-neck against that of the respected town banker. While de Witt stood speechless, Sudden turned to Dave, and a quick word sent that worthy pushing through the crowd and out of the saloon.

  ‘I really cannot understand why you persist in this tissue of invention, Green,’ de Witt said smoothly. ‘Now you are asking these people to take the word of a blackguard like Burley Linkham against mine. Whatever your authority, I am sure you are exceeding it!’

  A murmur of sympathy arose from the watchers. Hearing it, Sudden realized that slowly the banker was winning the crowd’s support, and that so far he had failed to penetrate the man’s defenses, force the banker to make a slip. He turned as Dave came back into the saloon, herding before him two shuffling, bound, sheepish-looking men. A shout arose from someone.

  ‘Hey! That’s Burley Linkham!’

  ‘Who’d yu get the worst of, Burley?’

  Linkham indeed looked like the sole survivor of a train wreck, and Pardoe, his arm in a sling, his clothes in tatters, looked scarcely more prepossessing. Dave shoved the two men forward into the cleared space by the bar.

  ‘Yu claim yu never seen this man afore?’ Sudden gestured at Pardoe.

  ‘Never!’ De Witt’s reply was categorical.

  ‘An’ yu know Burley Linkham only slightly? Again, the banker’s cool nod.

  ‘Well, I know yu!’ growled Linkham. ‘I know yu damn’ well.’

  ‘Bah!’ snapped de Witt. ‘The man’s an obvious liar and a tough. How would I know anyone of his kind?’

  ‘Because Burley Linkham was the leader of the Shadows,’ Sudden told him, ‘an’ Pardoe here was his second-in-command.’

  A rumble of anger spread across the room. Here, for the first time, the people of Hanging Rock could see before them two of the men who had terrorized the area all these months. Someone at the back jumped up on a chair and shouted ‘Get a rope! String the sons up!’

  Sheriff Brady leaped to his feet and held up a hand for silence. ‘Any more talk like that an’ the man that makes it goes to jail now!’

  For once, the rotund Sheriff was not laughed at, and the spectators fell silent. Easily swayed at any time, their tempers were at fever pitch now that two of the hated Shadows were in their midst. It would take only a spark to ignite the powder-barrel, and Sudden, realizing this, changed the course of his questioning.

  ‘Linkham, who was yore boss? Who gave yu yore orders?’

  ‘Why, him!’ Linkham pointed at the banker. ‘De Witt. I told yu that already!’

  A perfect bedlam of noise followed this statement, as the crowd began to argue furiously among themselves. There were those who felt that, since Linkham had nothing to gain by lying, he must be telling the truth; while others vehemently defended the banker, claiming that Linkham’s word was about as good as a four dollar bill.

  ‘This is becoming intolerable, Green!’ snapped de Witt. ‘I refuse to stand here and be blackguarded by these cut-throats, these renegades.’

  ‘Renegades, is it?’ hissed Linkham. ‘Damn yore eyes, de Witt, yo’re not goin’ to let me swing alone. I’ll take yu with me—I swear it!’

  Sudden turned to face the spectators.

  ‘There’s one way to settle this. Linkham an’ Pardoe have confessed to robbin’ the bank. Linkham ambushed George Tate.’ A small gasp of dismay burst from Grace Tate’s lips as

  Sudden made this revelation. ‘They acted, they say, on de Witt’s orders. Barclay was just a stooge. On the other hand, the banker here says they’re liars, an’ Barclay was behind the whole rotten deal. But maybe we can still get at the truth. Neither Linkham nor Pardoe was in here when Judge Pringle read out the name on those registration papers he found in Mesilla. So: has either o’ yu two ever heard the banker here called any other name except Jasper de Witt?’

  Linkham’s brow furrowed; and as the big man racked his brain, de Witt realized how cleverly the hated Slash 8 man had maneuvered him into this corner. If Linkham had ever overheard . . .

  ‘I refuse to stand for this!’ screeched de Witt. ‘I am leaving immediately.’

  ‘Seth!’ Linkham’s gravelly voice broke into the banker’s wailing speech. ‘Barclay once called him Seth!’

  De Witt had taken several steps across the cleared space as this damning name spilled from Linkham’s lips. With an inarticulate squeal of rage, de Witt wheeled and thrust his shoulder into the chest of the gawking Sheriff Brady, who reeled sideways into Sudden, blocking for a vital few seconds any effective action on the part of the Slash 8 man. In those seconds, de Witt had dragged Grace Tate off her chair, and the six-gun he had snatched from Brady’s belt was pressed against the girl’s temple.

  ‘Not a move from any of you!’ he hissed, ‘or the girl dies. Ah, would you?’ Dave Haynes, thinking de Witt’s attention elsewhere, had sidled to one side to intercept the banker. The six-shooter boomed, and Dave reeled backwards, clutching his arm, blood pumping from between his fingers.

  ‘You all thought you were so smart,’ sneered de Witt, unable to resist this final moment of glory. ‘Yet none of you ever realized, none of you ever knew! Yes, I was the leader of the Shadows. I am Seth Miller. I came here with nothing—keep still, you!’ He gestured with the pistol, and Gimpy MacDonald froze as the menacing bore stilled his imperceptible movements towards de Witt. ‘Nothing—except one piece of knowledge. You fools! You sheep! There will be a railroad through this valley, and I owned all the land. It will be worth millions, millions! And it would have been mine.’ His darting eyes settled on Sudden. ‘Except for one man. You are going to pay for your meddling interference. Die, damn you!’

  The barrel of the pistol lifted, but even as the banker started to press the trigger a voice rang out behind him.

  ‘Seth Miller!’

  All eyes turned to the doorway, in which stood framed the figure of the town Doctor, Patches, a shotgun leveled at his hip. But a totally different Patches to the unshaven drunk they had formerly known. This man was sober, clean-shaven, well-dressed. There was no tremor in his stance.

  ‘Seth Miller, I’ve been waiting for this day for two years,’ the doctor said. His tone was Hat, deadly. ‘I knew who you were. Do you know me, Miller?’

  The banker’s face had gone ghastly.

  ‘De Witt!’ he gasped.

  ‘Yes, Miller, Jonathan de Witt, the man whose son you murdered to usurp his name, his position, and his reputation. Are you ready to meet your Maker, Seth Miller?’

  ‘No—don’t! I’ll—I’ll kill the girl!’ screeched Miller.

  ‘And then I shall kill you,’ said the doctor inexorably.

  ‘No … no, look—I surrender. I’m dropping the gun.

  ‘Look!’ He thrust the half swooning Grace Tate to one side, at the same time dropping the six-gun to the saw dusted floor.

  Grace Tate was quickly pulled out of danger by the Slash 8 crew as the doctor regarded the sniveling banker in disgust.

  ‘You’re not even worth killing,’ he snapped, lowering the shotgun. And in that moment, de Witt’s hand flashed once more to his breast, reappearing with the twin of the Derringer that had only a short while before been wrested from his murderous hand. Here he could even level the wicked little gun, however, a shot rang out, and he faltered, half-turning to face the direction whence it had come. There, smoke wreathing from the six-shooter in his hand, stood Sudden, his eyes grim.

  Painfully, with a mad hatred in his face, the dying Miller tried to raise the gun, tried to bring it to bear on the hated form of his nemesis. He had half-raised it when Jonathan de Witt turned loose with the shotgun. The blast of the shot hurled Miller in a huddled heap against the wall of the saloon.

  ‘No offence meant, Jim,’ said the doctor, ‘but I figured that it was my right.’

  Slowly the crowd rose from behind the tables and chairs they had dived beneath for cover when the banker had made
his last insane attempt to strike at his foes.

  Linkham looked down at the huddled form and turned to Green.

  ‘Green, I don’t know as I’ve ever seen anyone pull a gun as fast as you did in my life. He might just as well have shot hisself.’

  And that was Seth Miller’s epitaph.

  Some days later a small gathering of the Slash 8 crew took place in the large, sunny bedroom of the ranch house. Green had come to say his goodbyes to his friend Dave, who was being nursed by Grace; Miller’s shot had been only a flesh wound, but the jagged shoulder wound that Curt Parr had given the young cowboy had, so Grace Tate insisted, needed rest and attention.

  The knowing looks Cookie and Gimpy gave Sudden as they told him this brought deep blushes to the face of that young woman and considerable discomfort to the ‘invalid’.

  ‘Shucks, Jim,’ expostulated that worthy, ‘yu don’t need to go so soon. In fact yu don’t need to leave at all.’

  ‘Yes, Jim. why don’t you stay on?’ Grace Tate asked. ‘We’d —I’d be glad to have you here.’

  ‘No, I ain’t needed here no more. This is goin’ to be a rich valley in a couple o’ years, an’ now that de Witt—I still can’t help callin’ him that—now that Miller’s hold on the valley is broken, I ain’t needed here.’

  ‘How did yu ever get on to Miller, Jim?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘Somethin’ he said one time about the Shadows havin’ raided the Slash 8. I knew he couldn’t have found out about it from anyone here.’

  ‘Shore was funny about Patches, though,’ mused Gimpy.

  ‘Yeah, he musta gone through hell,’ agreed Shorty.

  After the death of the villainous Miller, Patches had told them his story. His son, Jasper de Witt, had been sent from the East to take over a new branch of his bank in Hanging Rock. Somehow Miller, who had been hanging around in Santa Fe, making a living by gambling and as an actor, had met the young man, who had confided in him. Miller had then murdered de Witt, stolen his papers and identification, and come to Hanging Rock where he had assumed the dead man’s place. Through the Bank, he had learned of the plans to build a railroad through the valley, and so made his plans.