Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2)

by Frederick H. Christian

  Reissuing classic series fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  The Cotton boys owned the town. Nothing moved in or out without their say–so. Drifters weren’t encouraged. Move on, they were told. There’s a lot of lead in the air. All except one moved on. He was a dark-haired stranger who gave the name Green, and asked about two men he was looking for. When the Cottons tried to gun down an unarmed kid, he took a hand. The Cotton boys decided to make an example of him to the rest of the town. They didn’t know what they were taking on, but they found out - SUDDEN.

  SUDDEN AT BAY

  SUDDEN 2

  By Frederick H. Christian

  First Published by Transworld Publishers Limited in 1968

  Copyright © 1968 by Frderick H Christian

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: June 2013

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This edition (text) copyright © Piccadilly Publishing

  Cover design © 2013 by Westworld Designs

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with Frederick Nolan.

  For Anthony Mock, Hornbold, the delightful Mrs. T.—and Mumbles.

  Chapter One

  ‘Are yu comin’ out, or do I have to come in after yu?’ The voice was immature, and broke in its highest register, but there was no gainsaying the deadly intent behind the words. They rang clear and sharp on the morning air. The speaker was a young man of perhaps twenty, with the clean and open face of a person who has never had a thing to hide. He was dressed in a worn, faded pair of Levi’s, and a heavy work shirt; his boots were scuffed and worn.

  The few pedestrians on the street at that hour had scattered fast as the boy had thundered up the street of Cottontown and swung down out of the saddle outside the town’s only saloon—‘The Oasis’—to issue his challenge. They watched from behind windows or from the safety of doorways as he stood bareheaded in the dusty street, his eyes fixed on the batwing doors of the saloon, his right hand clenching and unclenching above the smooth butt of an old cap- and-ball Colt’s Army model thrust into the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘Buck Cotton! I’m countin’ five!’ the boy called. ‘If yu ain’t out here by then, I’m a-comin’ in to get yu!’

  The boy was oblivious to the owlish eyes of the spectators clustered at the windows of the saloon and, indeed, of every other building up and down the street.

  ‘That’s young Billy Hornby o’ the Lazy H, ain’t it?’ queried one watcher. ‘What’s his quarrel with Buck Cotton?’

  ‘Search me,’ his neighbor replied, with bated breath. ‘But he’s shore loco to be pickin’ it.’

  The first speaker nodded. Crossing the Cottons was undoubtedly the unhealthiest pastime to pursue in this town. This angry youth was apparently intent on bringing about his own destruction in the most reckless manner.

  ‘One!’ called Hornby. ‘Two! Three! Four! Five!’ His mouth set in a tight line. ‘I’m comin’ in for yu, Buck!’

  The spectators by the windows flattened themselves against the walls of the saloon as the boy mounted the sidewalk and thrust his way through the batwing doors and into the saloon. There were no more than a dozen men in the place so early in the day. All of them turned to watch the reaction of the man at the far end of the long bar which ran the length of the saloon, object of the boy’s heedless challenge.

  This was a young man perhaps a year or two older than the boy who now stood glowering on the threshold of the saloon. Dressed in black, his clothes spotless, boots highly polished, Buck Cotton was almost a handsome man. His features were finely chiseled, and only the shifty eyes and a certain weakness about the mouth betrayed his basically shallow nature. Cotton’s face was pale beneath his healthy tan, and his lower lip was clenched between his teeth to still its trembling. Desperately, his eyes shifted around the room for support or help, neither of which was forthcoming. The bystanders wanted no quarrel with this intruder with the blazing eyes. Buck Cotton’s faltering gaze met that of his nemesis.

  ‘I ain’t fightin’ yu, Hornby,’ he whispered through dry lips. ‘I got no quarrel with yu.’

  ‘Yu shore as hell have,’ grated the Lazy H man. ‘Pull yore iron, yu sidewinder.’

  The bartender, a tall, balding man with a lined, but kindly face, moved carefully along behind his bar towards young Hornby, keeping both hands well in sight on his spotless counter.

  ‘Billy,’ he remonstrated. ‘Yu better cool off, son. This is big trouble. Climb on yore hoss an’ skedaddle out o’ here afore it gets wuss.’

  ‘Keep tendin’ yore bottles, Blass!’ grated the kid. ‘This is atween me an’ that pizen toad over there.’ He bent his narrowed gaze once more upon the cringing figure at the far end of the bar.

  ‘Yu goin’ to fight like a man or die like a dawg, Cotton?’ he rasped. Buck Cotton lifted his hands away from his hips to an almost horizontal position, indicating his refusal to fight.

  ‘I … I don’t know what’s eatin’ yu, Billy,’ he mumbled. ‘I ain’t about to draw on yu.’ He turned his head towards the watching bystanders. ‘Yo’re all witnesses,’ he croaked. ‘I won’t draw. My brothers…’

  ‘Damn yore brothers an’ damn yu!’ snapped Billy Hornby. He snatched the pistol from his waistband in a smooth sweep, and leveled it at Buck Cotton. Chairs scraped as men moved away from the line of fire, and the bartender ducked hastily down behind his bar.

  ‘I reckon I’ll have to put yu down like the dawg yu are, then,’ Hornby went on, menacingly. ‘At that, it’ll be better’n yu deserve.’

  His thumb eared back the spurred hammer of the old Colt’s. Buck Cotton cringed back against the bar, his hand held up in front of him, abject terror in every line of his body.

  ‘Hold it right there, Hornby!’

  The boy froze, the leveled gun needing only the relaxation of his thumb to send its deadly messenger on its errand.

  ‘Uncock that cannon, boy! Slow an’ easy!’

  Every eye in the saloon except Hornby’s had swiveled towards the speaker, a portly, gray-haired man with a tired, lined face who wore a silver star on his vest.

  ‘Holy cow!’ muttered one man watching this new development, ‘I figgered Buck Cotton was a goner shore.’

  ‘Ten seconds more an’ he would’ a’ been,’ grunted another. ‘He’s lucky Harry Parris was around.’

  ‘Yeah, mighty handy, havin’ yore own tame sheriff to bail yu out,’ interposed a third, sardonically.

  The sheriff moved crabwise across the room until he was in a position to cover both men. He gestured with his drawn gun.

  ‘Let ’er drop, Billy,’ he said, threateningly. ‘I got yu dead to rights.’

  For a moment, it looked as if young Hornby might dispute the command, and in the pregnant silence the sound of Parris’ .45 being cocked made several men jump visibly. Then, his shoulders slumping dejectedly, the boy complied. The gun clunked to the saw dusted wooden floor.

  ‘Step away from it, Hornby,’ commanded Parris. ‘Easy, now.’

  Hornby took two steps backwards, so that he was no more than arm’s length from the sheriff. As he did s
o, Buck Cotton scooped up the old revolver and in one movement had cocked it and leveled it at Hornby’s heart. Gone now was the look of abject fear, to be replaced by an expression of hate and triumph which distorted his handsome face, giving him the outward appearance of a devil incarnate.

  ‘So…’He snarled. ‘Now, who’re yu goin’ to beef, tough boy?’

  ‘I ought to’ve blown out yore light an’ took a chance on yore mumblin’ friend,’ snapped Hornby. ‘Yu ain’t fit to live.’

  ‘Watch yore lip, nester!’ rapped Buck Cotton. ‘Yu say too much an’ I’ll put yu down for good!’

  ‘Take it easy, now, Buck,’ interposed Parris. ‘He ain’t goin’ no place. Yu, boy―’ this to Hornby. ‘What’s all this about? Yu gone crazy tryin’ to tree this town, assaultin’ one o’ our leadin’ citizens?’

  Scornfully Hornby jerked his head at Buck Cotton. ‘Ask him he replied. ‘He knows what it’s about.’

  Cotton looked momentarily uncomfortable, then a brazen expression settled itself upon his features.

  ‘He’s loco,’ he told the sheriff. ‘I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about.’

  ‘Yu better have some explanation, Hornby,’ said Parris severely. ‘Sim Cotton is goin’ to want to know what yu took after his brother for.’

  Hornby shrugged. It was as if he knew that nothing he said would make the slightest difference, that no power on earth could alter the chain of events he had so impetuously set in motion. ‘Yu reckon yore boss’ll care whether I got a reason or not?’ he asked the sheriff contemptuously.

  ‘I’ll thank yu to remember that Sim Cotton ain’t my boss,’ snapped Parris testily. ‘I keep the law around here my way. Nobody else’s.’

  ‘Shore, Harry,’ the boy said wearily. ‘An’ pigs have wings.’

  ‘Watch yore lip, nester boy,’ growled Buck Cotton. ‘Yu ain’t out o’ the woods yet.’

  ‘I’d say yu’ll be elderly afore yu get out o’ where yu’ll go for this,’ Parris added. ‘Assault with a deadly weapon…’

  Hornby looked at him, his eyes flat and expressionless.

  ‘Get on with it, Parris,’ he rapped. ‘Don’t bother tryin’ to make it look good. Do what Sim Cotton pays yu for.’

  Blass, the bartender, interposed at this point.

  ‘Billy, don’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘Yu’ll get a trial. Won’t he, Harry?’

  ‘Shore he will,’ said Parris. There was no inflexion in his voice.

  ‘Yu can say yore piece then, boy,’ the bartender continued. ‘A jury…’

  ‘Jury! Cotton’s handpicked verdict-makers! Yu know the ropes around here, Blass. The Cotton’s’ll have me killed tryin’ to escape like they’ve done with half a dozen oth—’

  ‘Shut yore lyin’mouth!’ As he screeched these words, Buck Cotton hurled an open-handed blow at Hornby, rocking him backwards and drawing a trickle of blood from a split lip. Hornby’s muscular young frame tensed and almost automatically, the right hand drew back, bunched into a fist. In the same second, the old sheriff slid close in behind him, and he felt the uncompromising hardness of the gun barrel in the small of his back. His hand fell to his side and as it did so, Cotton, his eyes gleaming now with hatred, once more rocked the prisoner’s head with an open-handed slap.

  ‘Here now, wait a min—’ began the bartender. He fell silent as Parris swung the six-gun barrel towards him.

  ‘Stay out o’ this, Blass!’ Parris warned.

  Again Buck Cotton slapped the man in front of him.

  ‘Tough as all get-out, ain’t yu?’ raged Buck Cotton. ‘Big man! Yu an’ that high an’ mighty sister o’ yores. Well, she ain’t so high an’ mighty any more, is she?’

  He fell back as he uttered these words, for an ugly, almost insane growl of hatred was issuing from Billy Hornby’s throat. All expression was gone from the boy’s eyes, which held the same pale empty glare as those of a hunting puma. Without volition, Hornby’s hands reached forward for Buck Cotton’s throat, the shoulder muscles stiff with killing rage.

  ‘Yu … dirty…’ Hornby took a step, two steps forward, his fingers clutching for this hated thing before him. In the same moment, Buck Cotton lurched backwards very rapidly, his eyes wide with ungoverned terror, pulling up the gun to ward off this nemesis, while Sheriff Parris, a cold smile on his mouth, cocked his pistol to blast Billy Hornby down from behind.

  And in that moment, two shots rang out like thunder.

  One of them ripped the old Colt’s Army model out of Buck Cotton’s hand and sent it hurtling across the bar, smashing into a bottle on the shelf there and yanking a curse from Buck’s twisted mouth. The second, fired so close as to seem part of the first shot, ripped into the forearm muscles of the sheriff’s right arm, knocking him spinning to the left, the cocked .45 exploding harmlessly into the air and leaving him reeling against the polished bar, struggling to turn and face this unexpected attack. Buck Cotton’s hand flashed towards the holstered gun at his side as he, too, wheeled around.

  ‘Think about it for a moment was the sardonic warning. Though the words were quietly spoken, they conveyed a threat which the would-be killers dared not ignore.

  ‘What the … who the hell are yu, mister?’ Parris managed.

  ‘I’m called Green,’ was the monosyllabic reply. ‘But don’t bet on it.’ Parris surveyed the speaker, who leaned against the wall of the saloon with the easy grace of the trained athlete, the smoke from a cigarette dangling in his mouth spiraling undisturbed towards the ceiling. Green looked like any other drifting cow-puncher. Still in his twenties, a slim-hipped, broad- shouldered hombre dressed in worn cowboy rig—blue shirt, silk bandanna, heavy leather chaps, high-heeled boots—that was neat and serviceable. Only the twin gun belts, the holsters tied down to his thighs with rawhide thongs, set him apart. There was a look about him. His lean, clean-shaven, deeply-bronzed face was saturnine, almost Indian except for the absence of the typical high cheekbones of the race. There was a difference too in the level eyes, as cold now as Polar seas, and in the quirk of humor which softened the hard lines of the mouth. Parris observed these details and drew a wrong conclusion.

  ‘Stranger in town, doesn’t know what he’s gettin’ into,’ was his unspoken thought. He turned to the bartender.

  ‘Blass, tell this jasper what he’s pokin’ his nose into.’

  ‘Trouble, I’ll bet,’ jeered Green. ‘Allus been my downfall. Every time I see someone tryin’ to gun down an unarmed man I go an’ do it again. Keep still, yu!’

  This snapped command froze Buck Cotton, whose hand had been stealthily easing towards his holstered gun.

  ‘I ain’t tellin’ yu because yu deserve the warnin’,’ he told Cotton coldly. ‘I just hate shootin’ skunks out o’ season.’ His words brought the blood rushing to Buck Cotton’s cheeks.

  ‘Yu better be able to fight as good as yu can talk, mister,’ he sneered. ‘Yu don’t know it yet, but yu just bought into more trouble than most men avoid in a lifetime.’

  ‘There yu go again,’ Green said mildly. ‘Scarin’ me to death. Yu’ll have my knees knockin’ if yu keep it up.’ He addressed himself to young Hornby. ‘Step away from them polecats, kid, and move over by the door.’

  Hornby did as he was told, and then Green backed over until he stood alongside him.

  Now that the imminent threat of death was seemingly past, Buck Cotton’s confidence was returning. Parris, too, was struggling to put on a more dignified expression.

  ‘Yu better head for the border, Green,’ jibed Cotton. ‘Yu stay in these parts an’ yore life ain’t worth a plugged nickel.’

  ‘He’s right, Mr Green,’ whispered the boy. ‘This is Sim Cotton’s town. They catch us here an’ we ain’t got a prayer.’

  Green nodded. ‘Yore hoss outside?’

  Billy replied affirmatively.

  ‘Then we better be moseyin’.’ He turned to face the men in the saloon. ‘I can usually hit what I shoot at,’ he warned them. ‘Don’t go makin’ the mistake
o’ stickin’ yore head out o’ the door for a few minnits if yu aim to keep it on yore neck.’

  ‘Git while the goin’s good, stranger,’ screeched Buck Cotton. ‘My brothers’ll hunt yu down like dawgs.’

  ‘That’s about how I’d expect them to hunt,’ grinned Green mirthlessly. He nodded to the boy and backed carefully towards the door. At that same moment, the head and shoulders of a very tall man appeared above the frame of the batwings. Green saw the expression on Sheriff Parris’ face change, and wheeled to face this unseen threat but the man outside had already assessed the situation and was acting. His gun barrel crashed down on Green’s head, sending him stunned to the floor, and in a continuation, of the movement, the man slashed sideways, catching Billy Hornby above the left ear, jarring the boy into insensibility. A second blow dropped Billy prostrate alongside his protector. Within another few minutes they were trussed like turkeys and dragged senseless by the heels across the street to the jail.

  Chapter Two

  ‘If this is Paradise, I shore am disappointed.’ Green’s pained comment as he regained consciousness brought a wry smile to the blood-streaked face of Billy Hornby. He surveyed his new-found friend and shook his head.

  ‘Mr Green, yu look about the way I feel,’ he vouchsafed. Indeed, both of them were sorry sights. Their clothes were dusty and stained, and the trickle of dried blood on Billy Hornby’s forehead was matched by one which had oozed from the split in Green’s scalp. Their hands and faces, too, were scratched from their unceremonious dragging across the wheel-rutted street of Cottontown.

  ‘Looks like they drug us in here by the feet,’ commented Green. He tested the ropes which bound his hands and feet. ‘I shore am hawg tied.’ There was no slack in his bonds; they had been expertly tied. ‘This the jail?’ he asked.

  Hornby nodded, glancing gloomily about the tiny cell.

  ‘Stands about opposite the saloon,’ he told his companion. He hesitated for a moment. ‘Mr Green … I never got a chance to thank yu for what yu done back there …’