Hight came into the house, his hands carefully held level with his shoulders. Art Cotton turned to Whitey.
‘Any movement out there?’
The man at the window shook his head.
‘Nary a sign, Art.’
Cotton turned to face Hight, planting his feet apart and thrusting his face forward until it was within inches of that of the medical man.
‘Well, now, Doc,’ he leered. ‘We seen yore sidekick Green goin’ back into the stable, which means he was creatin’ some kind o’ diversion. Now why would he want yu to sneak out, stead hisself?’
Hight made no reply.
‘I’m guessin’ Green managed to surprise my men,’ whispered Cotton, his voice held deadly low. ‘Which adds to the score he’s goin’ to pay. But it don’t explain why yu come out alone, Doc. Yu want to tell me?’
Hight managed to inject some surprise into his voice, praying that Art Cotton would not detect any quaver in it.
‘They said they were coming out behind me, as soon as I was clear…’ he bluffed.
Art Cotton shook his head, his expression coldly mocking.
‘No, that won’t do, Doc. Yu can do better than that. I’ll give yu one more chance. Why did they send yu out, an’ why did they send yu here?’
Hight desperately tried another tack.
‘The boy,’ he gasped. ‘He’s wounded. I needed … things … to dress his wound.’
‘The kid was at the window throwin’ lead not half an hour ago,’ interposed Whitey’s flat voice. ‘I seen him.’
‘So.’ Art Cotton whispered. ‘Lyin’ to me again, Doc?’
‘No … I…’
‘Liar!’
Cotton’s screamed accusation was accompanied by a wicked backhanded blow to Hight’s face. It sent the doctor reeling backwards, stemming against the wall, blood welling from a gash on his cheekbone caused by the heavy signet ring on Art Cotton’s finger.
‘No…’ Hight managed, holding up a shaking hand. ‘I’m telling you the truth!’
Art Cotton stepped forward after him, his hands at his sides, a snarl disfiguring his face.
‘No — yu — ain’t!’
Each word was punctuated by another slashing blow. The third dropped Hight to his knees, fighting for consciousness. He fought against the panic in his mind: this man was insane, he would beat him to death. Art Cotton towered over him, his long fingers working, an empty light in his catlike eyes.
‘They … they told me … to make a run for it,’ Hight mumbled.
‘Liar again!’ Cotton’s voice crackled like a whip. ‘Yu wasn’t tryin’ to get away — yu headed for yore own house!’ The fist drew back again. ‘Why, damn yu?’
Hight cringed backwards. ‘No — I’m tellin’ yu the truth…’ Cotton reached down angrily, grabbing Hight’s blood-spattered shirt in his meaty fists, hoisting the doctor to his feet. He thrust his face forward until the cold empty eyes were no more than a few inches away from Hight’s own.
‘Yu better tell me Doc,’ he hissed or yu won’t get off with just a broken leg next time.’
Hight shook his head, dazed.
‘You ... you?’ he managed. ‘I always thought…’
‘It was Dave Rodgers? Shore, he was there, Doc. But he never broke yore leg.’ A sneering smile was on the Cottonwood man’s lips.
A reckless, seething, quite foreign rage seized Hight. This, then, was the man who had crippled him! The anger ousted all the physical fear from his mind, leaving only a cold and empty anger. Without thinking, he spat in Art Cotton’s face. It was probably the bravest thing he had ever done, and he regretted its futility.
Art Cotton’s face contorted with rage and his fist smashed forward. Hight felt a blow between his eyes, the searing snapping pain as his nose was broken, and the warm gush of bright blood. The room went black and spun away and when he could see again he was lying face down on the floor, not thinking, his brain disconnected by shock. Waves of pain blurred his vision, but he could vaguely see, far above him, the blurred form of Art Cotton. The man’s leg moved, and Hight saw light nicker on the shining leather of a boot. The boot thudded into his ribcage, and an agonizing pain spread throughout his chest and back. He felt as if something was broken inside of him, and he let the blackness come down again, welcoming it, escaping into it. It seemed to last a long time. He felt himself being hauled upright and tried to open his eyes but something seemed to be stopping him from doing so. He did not know that both his eyes were rapidly closing, his broken brows horribly swollen, or that a huge contusion of oozing blood marked the point where Art Cotton’s massively punishing blow had broken his nose. His hands moved feebly, and somewhere in the back of his mind he felt a terrible fear that Cotton had blinded him, but then his vision cleared slightly. He was pinned against the wall by Cotton’s grasp on his coat lapels. He tried to put his weight on his legs, but they were rubbery and weak. Cotton’s voice came to him across years of time. It said something. A question. He shook his battered head.
‘Go … to … Hell.’
He heard a smashing sound inside his own head and then the blackness came. He slid into it gratefully.
Cotton turned away from the slumped body of the doctor, his face an insane mask of hatred.
‘Nick!’ he managed hoarsely. ‘Get some water!’
The rider, who had watched aghast as his employer had battered the doctor, nodded hastily and edged past Hight’s unconscious form, returning in a moment from the kitchen with a milk can full of water. This he handed to Art Cotton, who deliberately dashed it into Hight’s swollen face.
The doctor groaned weakly, pawing at his face; he tried to sit up but could not. Once more Art Cotton pulled him upright, holding Hight on his feet by sheer brute strength.
‘Still feelin’ cocky, Doc?’ Cotton grated, ‘or are yu ready to talk?’
He shook Hight the way a terrier shakes a rat, cruelly, viciously, furiously. Hight’s head lolled. ‘Talk, damn yu!’ screeched the Cottonwood man. ‘Talk! Talk! Talk!’
Hight’s head lifted slowly. He peered at his tormentor through the slit of one eye.
‘You’d better kill me, Art,’ he mumbled through his torn lips. ‘You’d better kill me, or as sure as God is my judge, I’ll kill you. I don’t know when, but I’ll do it, I’ll—’
With a scream of uncontrolled, inarticulate rage. Art Cotton smashed the doctor backwards against the wall with a blow which carried every ounce of his weight. Hight was unconscious before his careening body bounced off the wall and slid to the floor. A thin pool of blood began to stain the carpet where he lay.
‘My Gawd, Art!’ breathed Whitey, ‘yu’ve killed him shore.’
‘Damn him for a pulin’ crawlin’ swine, an’ damn yu, too!’ hissed Art Cotton, his chest heaving. ‘Mind yore own damn’ business! If he’s dead—’ he controlled himself with an effort as he said the words, ‘it’s good riddance.’
He stood swaying, rage gradually dying from his features, looking down at the prostrate form at his feet. As the disfiguring anger left his face, it was replaced by another expression, one of dawning realization, then triumph, quickly replaced by cunning. He laughed, almost hysterically.
‘I got it, by God!’ he croaked. ‘Why in hell didn’t I think of it afore?’
Nick and Whitey exchanged glances. Had Art gone mad?
‘What … what is it, Art?’ Whitey ventured.
Cotton regarded his men as if they were idiots.
‘Yu can’t see it?’
The two men shook their heads, frowning. Art’s gloating, crooning voice, the spittle formed about his mouth, the mingled expression of triumph and cunning, all supported their fear that Cotton had gone insane, but when he spoke again it was in a normal tone, and the madness had left the cat eyes.
‘So Sim thinks I’m all washed up, does he?’ he muttered. ‘Show him about that.’ He began to pace across the room, back, forward, back, his step that of a caged tiger. ‘He’s goin’ to be sorry he wro
te me off,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry. Very sorry. Yu’ll see. It’ll all be mine. I’ll get them, an’ it’ll all be mine.’ He looked up quickly ‘Yu boys with me?’
Whitey nodded hurriedly. ‘Shore, Art, shore.’ His tone was mollifying.
‘Good,’ Art nodded, pacing again. ‘That’s good. I’ll need yu boys.’ His mind was racing wildly, for in truth the violence of the past fifteen minutes had partially unhinged a mind which had never fully been sane. He issued a command. Whitey looked at him in amazement.
‘What do yu mean, take his clothes off?’ he managed.
‘Yu stupid clod, do what I tell yu an’ don’t argue!’ screeched Art. ‘Strip his clothes off him.’ He whirled on Nick, who cringed away. ‘Yu, Nick!’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘Get yore clothes off.’ Nick hesitated momentarily, and Art Cotton slapped his thigh impatiently, keening in rage. ‘Do it, damn yu!’ Nick shrugged, and began to unbutton his shirt as Whitey stripped off Hight’s coat, boots, pants and shirt. Art Cotton watched the procedure, nodding throughout, muttering, ‘Good, good.’ The two riders, their tasks complete, looked at him for further instruction. He ground out an oath.
‘Yu still can’t see it, can yu?’ he swore. ‘O’ course, I’m mebbe expectin’ too much. All right, I’ll spell it out. Nick — put on Hight’s clothes. Yo’re goin’ to play decoy.’
Nick frowned yet again. ‘Decoy?’
Art Cotton’s plan dawned on both of the gunmen in the same moment, and their laughter was a commingling of relief and admiration. The slow smile of evil spread on Whitey’s dark-mustached face.
‘O’ course,’ he breathed. ‘They’re expectin’ him back?’
‘O’ course,’ sneered Art Cotton. ‘Took yu long enough to get it.’ The wild light was still in his eyes but it was cold now and contained, under a form of control. He inspected Nick, dressed now in Hight’s clothes, with malevolent satisfaction.
‘Yu see it now?’ he asked them. ‘They sent him over here for something’ — mebbe he was tellin’ the truth an’ it was medicine for the kid. Or mebbe they’re low on water or cartridges’, even.’ His smile was pure evil. ‘That’d be even better,’ he whispered, ‘but it don’t make no never-mind. Once I seen it — that they was expectin’ him to come back — I seen how we could take them…’ he snapped his fingers, ‘like that!’
He began his pacing across the room again as Nick made the final adjustments to his disguise. His fingers clenched and unclenched, his thin lips worked as he prowled.
‘So I’m not worth a dime, eh, Sim?’ he spat. ‘Well what does that make yore neck worth, damn yu?’
Then he stopped pacing and gave his men their instructions.
Chapter Nineteen
Apart from a few sporadic, seeking shots from across the street, it had been quiet in the stable. Sudden had relieved Bob Davis at his post by the window, and the storekeeper was coaxing a reluctant fire underneath a coffee pot which he had found, half full, on a table near the rear of the building. The sharp, welcome tang of coffee filled the air.
‘My belly’s been thinkin’ someone’d cut my throat,’ Billy told nobody in particular, gazing hungrily towards where Davis hunkered over the tiny blaze. ‘I ain’t et since breakfast.’
‘When this is all over I’ll buy yu the biggest steak in the territory,’ Sudden told him.
‘Nix on that, Jim,’ grinned the boy. ‘I’m buyin’.’ He heaved a huge sigh. ‘I can see ’er now. A big, thick slab o’ beef, with the juice runnin’ all over the plate, an’ mebbe three aigs on the top. A whole skillet full o’ potatoes, brown an’ crisp on the outside, soft as butter in the middle. Three pounds o’ beans, mebbe—’
‘Was yu brung up by ’Paches, mebbe?’ Sudden asked the boy, smiling. ‘Yu shore know how to make a feller scream for mercy.’ He watched idly as Bob Davis walked over to the window at the rear of the stable. ‘Yu ain’t the only one who ain’t—’
‘Here comes the Doc!’ Davis’ voice cut off Sudden’s mild complaint, and the puncher moved. backwards away from the window, careful not to expose himself, as Davis stepped away from his lookout, his hand reaching towards the door.
‘Hell, he shore ain’t hurryin’ none,’ complained the storekeeper.
‘Come on, Doc, shift yoreself.’
A faint frown touched Sudden’s forehead, and with a sharp admonition to Billy to keep the street covered, Sudden slipped quickly across the stable floor towards the window through which Davis had observed the Doctor’s approach.
‘Anythin’ moves, blast at it as fast as yu can pull the trigger, Billy!’ he called over his shoulder to the boy, as Bob Davis slid the heavy bar away from the door. Sudden reached the window as Davis swung the door ajar. The storekeeper poked his head around it and leaned out, calling hoarsely ‘Hurry up, Doc, for Gawd’s sake!’ Even as the words left his lips Sudden was yelling ‘Slam that door!’ and Davis turned his head sharply, startled. As he did so Hight’s figure lurched forward into a flat run and Sudden saw the flickering movement of two more shapes below the level of the window still moving fast for the door. A blast of shots exploded in the doorway as he moved back and to the side to cover Davis and the storekeeper catapulted back inwards, twisting, falling across the threshold of the door, his feet kicking high.
With a shouted warning to Billy, Sudden’s hands flashed to his guns as three men loomed dark and huge in the doorway, their guns blazing wildly into the semi-gloom, their seeking shots blasting across the position he had just vacated. In this fraction of a second, Sudden recognized the contorted face of Art Cotton. Then the intruders burst into the stable, falling prone in scurrying, rolling movement, their actions kicking up a thin, sun-speckled cloud of dust and chaff.
Now Sudden’s guns were answering. The puncher had dived sideways towards the stalls on the left of the stable, moving fast and dropping on to his rounded shoulder, as lancing flames from deadly muzzles sought to level on his rolling shape.
Sudden felt something like a red hot iron being drawn across his ribs, all in this one long, endless second, the hammers of his own weapons falling with incredible speed, hearing the rolling blast of Billy Hornby’s gun behind him. The man who had impersonated Doc Hight was doubled over just outside the doorway, his hands clutching his stomach, his head almost touching the floor. A second man, heavily-mustached, was careering sideways, torn off his feet by Billy’s rapid roll of low-aimed shots. The stable was full of powder smoke and the whirring whine of whistling lead and the doorway was empty and there was the ugly sound of men dying.
And then there was a brief, empty silence and then as Sudden reached the end of his roll and gained his feet, there before him, mouth drawn back from his teeth in an animal snarl, was Art Cotton, lurching forward, the front of his shirt black with blood, his eyes empty, desperately striving to raise the gun in his hand while it grew heavier as the strength pumped out of his body.
‘Damn yore eyes!’ screamed Art Cotton, thumbing back the hammer of the gun and bringing it slowly up. Here he could press the trigger, flame flashed from Sudden’s hip and Cotton staggered, pitched sideways and slid to the floor, the weapon dropping from his twitching fingers. Sudden shoved his smoking .45 back into its holster and rose slowly, shaking his head.
‘I had to do it,’ he said, almost to himself. He looked at Billy across the stable floor. Smoke drifted lazily on the still air and there was the reek of cordite. They stood like this for perhaps three seconds, then Sudden snapped back into action.
‘Back to yore window!’ he shouted. ‘Keep that street empty!’ Billy leaped to his post, cursed, and laid four shots across the street. Several of the Cottonwood men who had been drawn from their lair by the sound of the gunfire inside the stable scattered, diving for cover as Billy’s hastily thrown shots buzzed about them. In another moment, their return fire made the boy duck below the window frame as slugs whipped splinters from the woodwork and thudded into the walls. He turned to see Sudden bent over Bob Davis’ still form. The puncher had
slammed shut the rear door and the heavy bar was once more in place. Their eyes met. Sudden shook his head, straightening up slowly.
‘He’s dead, kid,’ he said quietly.
Billy said nothing. There was nothing to say. His eyes moved to the coffee pot, bubbling now on the dying embers of the fire Davis had lit. He turned away from it quickly and looked at the blank, bullet-pocked wall in front of his eyes.
Sudden regarded the sprawled corpses of Art Cotton and of the mustached Cottonwood rider. He shook his head and walked to the window. Just outside the door lay the man who had been dressed in Hight’s clothes, sprawled dead in a pool of blood.
‘Looks like they got the Doc,’ he told himself grimly. ‘Only the devil’s luck they didn’t get us, too.’
It was a victory, but a bitter and unhappy one. Although three more of Sim Cotton’s hired killers had come to the end of their nefarious careers, it was at a terrible cost. He shucked the empty cartridges from his guns, replacing them with bullets taken from the belts of the dead Art Cotton.
‘Anythin’ movin’ on the street?’ he finally said to his young companion.
‘Not a thing, Jim.’ Sudden detected a note of weariness in the boy’s voice. Billy stood slumped against the wall alongside the window. The fresh bright red of new blood stained his shirt.
‘Yu opened that wound again,’ Sudden admonished him.
‘I was jumpin’ around a mite,’ admitted the kid. Then: ‘Is Doc Hight…?’
‘That jasper outside is wearin’ his clothes,’ Sudden told him by way of reply. ‘An’ there’s no movement over at the house.’ A bitter round of curses flowed from the youngster’s lips at these words. Sudden waited until Billy paused for breath, then told him ‘Cussin’s like sittin’ in a rockin’ chair — it gives yu somethin’ to do, but it don’t get yu anyplace. At least we got some more ca’tridges.’
‘It’s a hell of a price to have to pay for ’em,’ ground out the Lazy H man. ‘I’d as lief done without.’
There was nothing to say to that, either. Sudden’s bleak gaze moved to the window.
Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) Page 13
