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

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘I’m nigh on ready,’ was the terse reply. ‘Let ’em come a mite nearer.’ He was packing the waxed paper parcel into a tack box which he had found on the blacksmith’s workbench. Sudden then straightened up, eyeing the bales of straw stacked against the south wall of the stable. He gauged its height in relationship to the windows and nodded.

  ‘Billy, Doc! Get away from that window!’

  The two men moved rapidly away from the window, their widening gaze of astonishment fixed on Sudden. The puncher had fashioned from the willow branches which he had cut from the stalls a makeshift bow and an arrow. To the arrow was fastened the tack box full of powder. Around it was a sheaf of straw. The arrowhead was a broken knife blade.

  ‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Hight.

  Sudden grinned mirthlessly. ‘Yu both better start prayin’ this thing works he told them. ‘I ain’t used a bow an’ arrow since I was about fifteen. I’m hopin’ I recall how it goes. If I get it wrong, I’m begin’ yore pardon in advance. We won’t be around afterwards if it lands in here.’ He clambered up on top of the pile of straw bales.

  Billy, unwilling to reveal his ignorance and unable to contain his curiosity, whispered a question to the doctor.

  ‘It’s an Injun fire arrow, an’ then some,’ Hight said. ‘Watch!’

  Sudden struck a match and touched it to the bundle of straw. The flame flickered, then blazed up, and as it did, in one smooth, sweet, sure movement Sudden pulled back the bowstring to its fullest extent and released it.

  The burning arrow described a line of light from Sudden’s position on top of the bales of straw, thrumming through the window and imbedding itself into the still-advancing wooden shield, low on one side, near the ground.

  For perhaps half a second there was a silence, then a thunderous, flashing roar which hurled a cloud of smoke and sand and stones high into the air, spattering the stable walls, pattering down on the roof. Billy thought he had heard a scream but couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Put some shots into that smoke!’ yelled Green. ‘Pile it on!’ The four of them sent a seeking hail of bullets into the thinning cloud of oily smoke which hung on the afternoon air. Gradually, it sifted sideways, swaying in a faint breeze, clearing slowly, thinning, disappearing.

  There was a shallow, black-edged hole in the street. The wooden shield lay ten yards away, split into three pieces. Some smaller shards of wood lay scattered about. Between the stable and the still smoking crater lay two broken, sprawled bodies.

  ‘My Gawd in Heaven!’ breathed Davis in an awed voice.

  ‘They never knew what hit them,’ commented Hight.

  Sudden vaulted down from his platform of straw bales. Outside, the street was still again. Nothing moved. It was as if Cotton’s men were stunned by the complete demolition of the wooden shield, by the murderous blast which had torn their two comrades apart. Green scanned the street as well as he could without exposing himself to a seeking sniper.

  ‘Where’s everybody gone?’ he muttered. ‘They ought to be hoppin’ wild! They ain’t that afraid o’ four men … unless…’

  ‘Unless what, Jim?’ Billy’s question was eager.

  ‘Unless they ain’t got many men left themselves!’ Sudden told him.

  ‘Let’s reckon it up. How many men did yu tell me Sim Cotton had out at the Cottonwood? Fifteen, was it?’

  ‘Somethin’ like that Billy confirmed.

  ‘Not more?’

  ‘Hell, no. A dozen hard cases was plenty to keep this town in line,’ Davis told him with a self-critical smile.

  ‘Yu’ve proved Cotton wrong about more than that today,’ Sudden told him. ‘An’ if my reckonin’s correct, yore Mr Cotton is a mighty worried hombre. He ain’t a-tall shore whether there’s a U.S. Marshal comin’ here or not. We know there ain’t, but Cotton can’t take the chance that I wasn’t bluffin’. He’s lost some o’ his men, includin’ his top gun. I’d say, all things bein’ equal, that Sim Cotton must be what them novelists call thinkin’ furiously.’

  ‘Yeah, shore,’ interposed Davis, ‘but he ain’t exactly short o’ manpower. I make it he’s still got mebbe seven or eight men left.’

  ‘Odds o’ two to one,’ muttered Billy. ‘We can do it.’

  ‘We can,’ Green told him grimly, ‘as long as we don’t use no more ammunition than we got to. I’m pretty low: how about yu men?’

  The others checked their cartridge belts quickly, dismay spreading on their faces as they realized how many shots they must have fired during the course of the last few hours.

  ‘Hell’s teeth, Jim!’ gritted Billy. ‘We can’t give up now, when we’ve gone this far. We got to get some more ca’tridges.’

  Sudden nodded. ‘I know it. Doc — yu got any in yore house?’ Hight answered affirmatively, his face setting into serious lines as he realized the import of the puncher’s question. He stepped forward and laid a hand on Sudden’s arm.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he protested. ‘You’re not going to try to get across there and back for cartridges. You’d get your ears shot off.’

  ‘If I don’t get some ammo, they’ll be shot off anyways,’ was Green’s laconic reply. ‘I’d as lief be shootin’ back when it’s tried.’

  Hight shook his head. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he announced. Green looked surprised, and the medico continued, ‘Think for a minute, Jim. Who knows I’m here? Only Sim Cotton — right?’

  Sudden nodded. ‘I reckon. Providin’ he ain’t spread the news.’

  ‘So as long as I can make it across to my house unseen, nobody but him would think it amiss if they saw me in there: right?’

  ‘Yu mean, they’d think yu’d been there all the time?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Hight. ‘If I slide out of the back door, I can easily get across to my place — you can lay down some covering fire to make them duck down while I’m on open ground — and get the ammunition. Coming back would be the same thing in reverse. And we’d be out of the woods.’

  Sudden demurred. ‘Hell, doc, I could do that — better than yu, in fact. Just tell me where the slugs are, an’ I’ll go an’ fetch ’em.’

  ‘Jim,’ argued Hight patiently. ‘You must see the sense of what I’ve been saying. If any of Cotton’s men see me moving around in my own house, that’s one thing. If they spotted you, that would be quite another. And once you were cut off, none of us would have much chance. As it is, I’m expendable. You are most decidedly not.’

  The other two concurred with this latter statement so vehemently that Sudden was forced to admit the logic of what Hight had said.

  ‘Yo’re takin’ a big chance, Doc,’ he pointed out, relenting.

  ‘Nothing like the chance I’ll be taking if I don’t go,’ Hight told him. ‘Now less speeches and more action. Let me get on my way.’

  Sudden smiled, the first real smile that had crossed his features all that day. He touched Hight’s shoulder.

  ‘Yu’ll do,’ was all he said, but Hight beamed.

  Sudden eased the bar from the back door and started to swing it back. The door was open no more than a few inches when a bullet tore into the doorframe, slicing a huge chunk of wood away. The wood went whirring upwards, gashing Hight’s cheekbone as Sudden slammed the door back into place and a veritable hail of shots thundered into the door, slapping into the wooden walls, chasing dull echoes around the stable.

  ‘There goes another good idea,’ the doctor breathed, mopping away the trickle of blood from his cheek. ‘They’ve got the back covered. Now what, Jim?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Inside the livery stable the beleaguered quartet were holding a council of war. Sudden had been talking steadily, his voice level as he outlined a plan. To the others, it seemed little short of suicidal, and Hight said as much.

  ‘Jim, this is madness!’ he gasped. ‘I refuse to let you do it.’

  ‘Can yu think of any other way?’ was the grim rejoinder.

  ‘Hell, Jim we don’t even know how man
y men they got out there,’ Davis interpolated. ‘Yu’d be takin’ a mighty big chance.’

  Sudden’s grin was wintery. ‘I know it,’ he told them. ‘I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to enjoy doin’ her none. But there ain’t no alternative. If we sit here until we run out o’ cartridges, they’ll overrun us worse’n Crazy Horse hit Custer.’

  ‘How about lettin’ me go instead, Jim?’ put in Billy.

  ‘Shore,’ Sudden said, friendly scorn in his voice. ‘Yu’d be fine, shootin’ left-handed agin paid guns.’

  Billy’s face was crestfallen and the puncher clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m shore grateful for the offer, though,’ he told the boy. ‘But look at the fac’s. If Doc can get to his house, he can grab some cartridges. That’ll mean someone’s got to keep those jaspers in the front occupied, an’ we want plenty o’ lead flyin’ around their heads if they try to get across the street an’ cover their boys. Yu an’ Bob can manage that atween yu. Bob shore ain’t built for sprintin’, an’ yu’ve been winged — which leaves yores truly. Now let’s quit arguin’ about it an’ start some doin’.’

  Hight nodded reluctantly. ‘Jim’s right, boys,’ he told them. Davis and the younger man were forced to agree.

  ‘Yu shore yu got it straight, now?’ asked Sudden of the medico.

  ‘I reckon,’ was Hight’s reply. ‘Yu slide out and distract these jaspers in the arroyo. As soon as I hear shooting…’

  ‘No matter what it sounds like…’ Green prompted.

  ‘No matter what it sounds like — I make my move and get across to my house.’

  ‘By the time yo’re ready to go, I’ll be either comin’ out o’ that arroyo — or not, as the case might be,’ Sudden warned him. ‘Yu be on yore way afore then. If I don’t come out, Bob an’ Billy’ll be makin’ their own break after yu. It’ll be each man for hisself,’ he told them flatly. ‘Don’t nobody make no fool play on my account.’

  The three men nodded miserably in agreement. Hight went on:

  ‘If I get there unseen, I grab some cartridges and get back to the stable whenever I can. That it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ confirmed Sudden. ‘Don’t try to get back until it’s all clear. I’ll be back to cover yu — I hope — an’ there won’t be no guns on yu from the back. If I ain’t — yu’ll just have to play her by ear.’

  Sudden slid his guns from their holsters in a smooth movement, and carefully checked the action and the loads. He thrust the revolvers back and straightened up. His face was set, and his frame tense with the anticipation of forthcoming action. He knew there was no other way to tackle their desperate situation, but neither was he foolhardy enough to believe that he was not taking a very long chance.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he announced. He looked over his shoulder towards Billy Hornby. ‘Anyone in sight out there?’

  ‘Not a soul, Jim.’

  ‘Okay. Be ready to cover the street. The minnit anyone shows his mug, blast away at him — it don’t matter none whether yu hit anythin’ or not. Just discourage ’em from peepin’. Yu ready?’

  Billy nodded. He cocked his weapon and laid the barrel along the sill of the window, his slitted eyes sweeping the entire street. At the other window, Davis followed the younger man’s example.

  ‘Wal, here goes,’ breathed Sudden. ‘Don’t wait up for me, mother.’

  Drawing a deep breath, Sudden stepped swiftly into action, moving in one lithe bound towards the shattered window facing the street. Drawing one gun as he moved, he placed his left hand on the sill and vaulted smoothly out into the street, landing catlike, half-crouched, the cocked gun menacingly aimed ahead. He held this position for perhaps a second, and then straightened, wheeling in the same movement into a swerving run to the left, pounding flat out for the side of the building and the alley between the stable and Doc Hight’s house.

  A yell issued from the jailhouse, then a shot.

  ‘They’re makin’ a break!’ screeched someone’s voice, half-drowned in the staccato roar of firing as Billy Hornby and Bob Davis fanned their .45’s into the windows and doorway of the jailhouse. More yells followed.

  A bullet whined past Sudden’s head as he reached the corner of the stable and then he was around it, lungs tortured for breath, running as fast as he could drive his legs.

  Again the staccato roar of shots boomed from the stable windows and he heard someone shout: ‘Get down, get down!’ as the well-aimed barrage from his friends burned across the street. Now he was in the deep shade of the stable, slowing to a sliding walk. Dashing the perspiration from his eyes, he fell prone to the ground, moving on elbows and knees through the deep dust towards the picket fence which surrounded the back of Doc Hight’s house. He wormed behind it, edging belly-flat across the sundried kitchen garden. His progress seemed maddeningly slow, but within a few more moments he was within yards of the sloping edge of the arroyo which he had — was it only hours ago? — utilized to come up to the medico’s house unobserved. His slitted eyes scanned the empty ground ahead of him; his ears were alert for the sound of running feet, but nothing moved.

  Behind him gunfire boomed. He paused a second, listening. The Cottons were firing now.

  ‘Hopin’ to make the boys duck down, so they can send someone out after me,’ he muttered. ‘Keep ’em pinned down, Billy!’ The rolling boom of twin six-shooters joined in, and he smiled briefly to himself. Billy and Bob were still in business. He rolled over the edge of the arroyo. It was no more than four or five feet deep, and he had both guns out and ready as he came to a stop. Now he crouched down, moving slowly forward, using only his knees and elbows, utilizing every rock, every sparse shrub for cover. The ground was broken, and sharp stones tore at his unprotected hands and arms. Ignoring the pain, his face as impassive as that of a hunting Comanche, he edged northward up the arroyo. Presently it bore sharply to the left. He eased up against the left-hand wall.

  ‘About level with the stable now,’ he breathed. ‘If I’m right, them jaspers oughta be just around this corner.’

  As if in reply to his thought, he heard a cough. Metal chinked thinly; there was a shuffling sound. Someone moving his position, the puncher told himself.

  ‘What the hell’s goin’ on out there?’ he heard a voice mutter, very close. ‘I heard yellin’.’

  ‘Never mind what yu heard,’ snapped another voice. ‘Jest keep that door covered like yu was told.’

  Green’s brow furrowed. Two men had spoken. Was there a third? There was no way to tell, and only one way to find out. He straightened and stepped out into the open.

  ‘Drop yore guns!’ he snapped.

  The scene before him erupted into action. The three men who had been lying on the sloping face of the arroyo under the shade of a thinly-leafed shrub tree whirled about, trying desperately to bring their Winchesters to bear upon this unexpected intruder. But Sudden had foreseen the reflex action and his guns were already blazing. The first shot whipped a big, bearded man backwards, erasing forever his astonished look. The second knocked down his companion, a runty individual wearing a blue shirt, hurling him flat and hard against the further wall of the arroyo, where he slid down in a slither of stones.

  The third man was Jackson, the erstwhile jailer whom Sudden had last seen bound and gagged in the jailhouse. Jackson was moving fast even as Sudden’s first shots were smashing his comrades to the ground, and he levered off a shot which tugged gently at the sleeve of the puncher’s shirt. Sudden, too, was moving, dropping to one knee to confuse Jackson’s aim, firing as he did so. His bullet hit the man high in the chest, tearing him off his feet. Jackson fell, rolling, a groaned curse of pain forcing its way from his lips, but clawing for the gun at his side.

  ‘Don’t do it, Jackson!’ yelled Sudden. His guns were leveled and for a fraction of a second, Jackson hesitated, his darting eyes filled with pain. Then, in one movement, he grabbed for the revolver and tried to roll heavily to one side. The move might have confused another man, but Sudden’s .45 blasted again, and J
ackson fell back; a leg twitched, and he was dead.

  Within a few more minutes, Sudden had gathered together the cartridge belts of the dead men. His lips turned in disappointment when he saw how sparsely filled were the belt loops. ‘

  ‘Still, any’s better’n none,’ he consoled himself, and then scrambled up the shelving slope of the arroyo wall, and moved rapidly across the open ground towards the stable. Doc Hight, he saw, had already moved out, and was poised now at the corner of the stable, peering around it, ready to break across the open space. Sudden waved the doctor on as he moved towards the door and heard the two men inside lay down their covering fire across the street.

  Hight moved away towards his house and Sudden watched in a fever of suspense as the doctor negotiated the open space between the stable and his own house. No shots sought him, however, and in a few moments he was within a few paces of his own back porch. Sudden heaved a sigh of relief: it looked as if Hight had made it. The medico lifted a hand. Then he turned towards the door of his house.

  Sudden turned now, slamming shut the rear door and dropping the heavy bar once more into place. Billy Hornby turned to face him from his post at the window, his face grimy with powder stains. His teeth gleamed whitely.

  ‘Enjoy yore trip?’ he asked whimsically. ‘Yu wasn’t gone long.5

  ‘Seemed long enough to me,’ retorted Sudden. ‘I suppose it would depend on where yu was sittin’.’

  Davis watched them. Their casual acceptance of danger, their ability to joke about it, was incomprehensible.

  ‘How many o’ them was out there, Jim?’ he asked.

  ‘Three,’ was the grim rejoinder. ‘They won’t draw their pay.’

  A chill ran through Davis’s veins. Although he knew that the point of no return was long past, and that now it was kill or be killed. Green’s icy words brought home the reality as so far nothing else had done. His mind lingered for a moment upon the possibilities of what Sim Cotton might do to them should Doc Hight not bring back the extra ammunition they needed. He swallowed deeply. Seeing this, Sudden sought to divert Davis’ thoughts. Fear was beginning to touch the man like some corrosive acid. Maybe conversation would delay it a little.