Sudden Troubleshooter

by Frederick H. Christian

  The two men shook hands warmly as a sullen rumble of thunder rattled the windows lightly and the sunlight outside turned a faintly darker shade of amber.

  ‘Storm buildin’ up in the Yavapais,’ muttered Shorty Willis.

  ‘It’s the time o’ year for them,’ another old-timer agreed.

  Meanwhile, Bleke was beckoning to Gunnison and Sudden. His words stilled the hum of conversation which had arisen. ‘There is one final point to be cleared up, gentlemen. Who was behind all these raids on the property of the homesteaders?’

  ‘Well, Appleby was the brains, o’ course,’ Sudden said. ‘But his orders was carried out by?’

  ‘Stand damn still, every last one o’ yu!’ The command came from the grimly compressed lips of Jim Dancy, who had, as Sudden had started to indict him, leaped backwards towards the door of the saloon, clear of the clustered watchers of the drama in the court. A wicked sawn-off shotgun lay across his forearm, cocked and murderous.

  ‘Don’t nobody even blink,’ he warned the silent crowd, ‘or I’ll spread this crowd around some.’ He moved forward two steps and those nearest to him shrank backwards, away from the gaping muzzles of the shotgun. ‘Clear a way, damn yore eyes!’ grated the Saber foreman. ‘Yu’ – he gestured with the gun towards Appleby’s captors – ‘turn him loose!’ The men holding the Marshal’s arms complied hastily, and Appleby scuttled around until he was beside his companion in crime, dragging Susan Harris back with him, protecting his body with hers. He lifted a six-shooter from the holster of the nearest spectator, his face lit with a hellion’s smile. Sudden, unarmed, watched helplessly as Randy Gunnison wailed plaintively, ‘Dancy! What about me?’

  ‘Stay an’ hang, yu spineless Jessy!’ rasped Dancy.

  Appleby was close to the door, gun cocked. His teeth shone whitely as he smiled wolfishly behind Dancy. ‘One last thing,’ he hissed. ‘For yu, Sudden!’ He raised the gun and fired, all in one movement, but the shot was hasty. Sudden felt the cold breath of the bullet on his temple, heard a grasping groan behind him from Randy Gunnison. The son of the Saber owner slumped to the floor, blood pumping from a wound near his heart.

  Appleby had not waited to see the result of his shot; he was already through the door, dragging the struggling Susan Harris along with him. The batwings swung inwards as Dancy backed towards them and caught the burly Saber foreman on his shoulder, upsetting his balance for a fraction of a second. In that moment young Philadelphia moved, his gun belched flame. The bullet spun Dancy backwards out through the doors, the shotgun pellets blasting harmlessly into the ceiling. Dancy fell dead in the street outside as Sudden, scooping his gun belt out of the old jailer’s unresisting hands, dashed into the open in time to see Appleby thundering out of town towards the north, the girl slung half-conscious across his saddle in front of him.

  Men spewed out of the saloon and one or two were about to fire after the fleeing lawman until Jake Harris stopped them with a sharp word; even if they were lucky enough to hit the fast-disappearing figure of Appleby, there was too much danger that Susan might also be hurt. Sudden was already in the saddle of the first horse he had found at the hitching-rail, and by the time others had followed his example he was out of the environs of the town and heading in pursuit of the fugitive lawman.

  Over the prairies an evil yellow murk had descended. The Yavapais were already disappearing into slate-colored cloud, and lightning flickered once or twice.

  ‘Goin’ to be a real one when she comes,’ muttered Sudden, his eyes intent upon the dot on the open plain ahead which was Appleby. He cast a quick glance behind him. The rest of the pursuers were strung out in an uneven line, about two hundred yards to the rear. Off to his right he saw a lone horseman thundering eastwards, heading for the low hills lining the horizon, and wondered vaguely who it was. The first heavy spots of rain dashed against his face as he spurred the animal beneath him to ever greater speed. Slowly he drew nearer to his prey, pounding now along the trail towards the Mesquites.

  ‘Runnin’ scared an’ runnin’ blind,’ was Sudden’s first thought, but then he realized that such was not the case at all. Appleby was heading for the Badlands, the rough, flint-covered edging to the desert. ‘If he gets in there I’ll lose him shore,’ he told himself, renewing his efforts to coax even more speed from the horse, wishing as he did so that he had hat time to find Midnight, who would have run down with ease the double-laden animal Appleby was riding. Crooning to the horse, Sudden peered ahead into the murk. He was gaining on Appleby. The lawman was now only about five hundred yards ahead, and veering eastwards off the trail towards the Badlands. The rain was becoming heavier now; it splattered wickedly into Green’s eyes as he raced on.

  ‘Ain’t any better for him,’ he consoled himself. ‘Worse, probably … tryin’ to cope with the girl as well.’

  Off to the left now he could just distinguish a dark mass which he realized must be the wooden bridge across Borracho Creek. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed no sign of the rest of the pursuers. He smiled grimly to himself.

  ‘He’s got to slow down for Borracho Creek,’ he thought. ‘Them crick sides are too steep to ride down at that speed.’ Then, ‘My Gawd!’

  This last expletive was occasioned as Appleby, without slacking his horse’s speed one iota, hit the edge of Borracho Creek and went over. The horse tried frantically to keep its balance as its forefeet slid on the steep creek banks, the clay giving no purchase. With the double load, however, the animal could not stay upright, and with a scream that echoed shrilly across the now-silent prairie the horse fell forward, throwing its rider and his prisoner over its head. Susan Harris lay where she had fallen, stunned; but Appleby by some miracle was unhurt, and scrambled to the shelter of some large rocks scattered along the creek bed.

  Pulling his mount to a sliding stop, Sudden threw himself to the ground as Appleby’s shots whined about his head. Slowly the puncher edged forward. Risking a quick glance around the side of the rock behind which he was crouched, he was just in time to discern, through the veil of rain, Appleby’s form scuttling up the creek towards another jumble of rocks. He threw a hasty shot at the fugitive, and edged forward. Below him he could see Susan Harris; she was stirring slightly as the drumming rain revived her. Sudden was wet through now, and he chanced a quick dash forward, hoping that the bad light and the rain would spoil Appleby’s aim. Several shots whined about him ineffectually as he slithered behind another rock, just at the edge of the creek bed. The rain had turned into a torrent now, and thunder crashed incessantly above them. From the south another thunder-roll, different in intensity and tone, caught his attention momentarily, but he dismissed the distraction as he concentrated upon his inch-by-inch forward progress. He slithered over the edge of the creek bed. Totally exposed now to Appleby’s shots, he rolled over on to his left side, trying to grasp the damp clay, to get enough purchase to throw a shot at Appleby if the lawman showed himself. His slide stopped when his questing hand clutched a sparse tuft of grama grass, and he found himself within a few feet of Susan Harris.

  ‘Yu all right, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes … I think so. Is … is he …?’

  ‘No, he ain’t. I lost sight o’ him. I think he’s behind those rocks over there. Can yu move?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said gamely. But when she moved her leg she paled, her face twisted with pain. ‘It’s my ankle,’ she moaned. ‘I think I’ve twisted it.’

  Green reached his left hand for her, digging his heels into the clay bank for purchase. It was no good. Her dead weight was too much for him to move one-handed. He holstered his revolver and pulled the girl towards him, hearing as he did so that same curious thunder that he had heard before, but louder now, and nearer. In that same moment Tom Appleby slid into sight over the edge of the creek bed, his gun cocked and aimed at Sudden’s heart.

  ‘Well, well,’ he jeered, panting. ‘Rescuin’ damsels in distress seems to be yore specialty, Sudden. I’ll see it’s carved on y
ore tombstone.’ So saying, he raised the six-shooter, his face distorted with hatred, while Sudden, taking one last desperate gamble, rolled sideways away from the expected shot, his mud-covered hand flashing for the holstered gun at his side. Before he had drawn properly a shot thundered out, and Appleby’s leg buckled under him. The shot which was to have killed Sudden whined off into the darkness, and Sudden’s shot, fired as he lay on his back supporting the dead weight of the girl, took the lawman high in the chest, sending him rearing upwards, toppling backwards, falling against the top level of the creek bed and sliding downwards at an angle on the rain-slick clay, to slump huddled in a heap at the bottom. For a moment Sudden thought he heard the man cursing him, but at that instant Philadelphia’s head appeared above him, and the boy yelled, ‘Jim! Jim! Get up here! Get up! Run for it!’ The thunder Sudden had heard before was now a roar, and it seemed to mount to monstrous proportions even as he heard it. A cold chill touched Sudden as he realized what it was.

  Flash flood!

  The heavy rains had gathered in the low foothills until they were rivulets, then streams, then together had channeled into this twisting creek bed to form a roaring, raging monster of a river. He remembered Jake Harris’s words to Philadelphia: ‘Keep a good fifty yards away if it looks like rain in the hills!’ Philadelphia’s extended hand helped him the last few feet up the side of the creek bed, and he scrambled to his feet, lifting the girl as if she weighed no more than a baby, and ran flat out up the slope and across the level prairie to where he had left the horse, paced by the hobbling Philadelphia. Behind them the thunder grew to incredible proportions and through the murk they could see vaguely a churning torrent of dark brown water sweeping along the creek bed towards the Yavapai. They lay in the pouring rain. their lungs laboring, as the water smashed down past them, hulling on its crest huge stones and uprooted trees, smashing them to gravel and kindling, roaring over the edges of the creek bed, lapping only a few yards from where the two men and the girl lay. In a few seconds a raging torrent filled the entire creek bed, and only the sound of the hissing rain and a growl of far-off thunder could be heard. Sudden looked bleakly at his companion, who stood with his arm about the shoulders of the sobbing Susan Harris.

  ‘I guess he probably never knew what hit him, huh, Jim?’ said Philadelphia.

  Sudden nodded, a terrible weariness descending upon him. ‘I guess not,’ he said, glad that the boy had not heard Appleby’s final, terrible scream.

  Two minutes later the townspeople found them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A WEEK had passed, and much had happened. Governor Bleke had returned to Tucson, and already the new Marshal he had appointed was on his way to Yavapai.

  A crowd of irate townsfolk, led by Gunnison’s crew from the Saber, had stormed into Riverton and, after a running chase, captured Ranee Fontaine. The fat man, Vince, had died defiantly, guns blazing to the last, cut down by a hail of bullets from the posse. Fontaine had been hung from the nearest tree. Jim Dancy had been buried on Boot Hill alongside his partner in crime, Randy Gunnison. The body of the villainous Marshal of Yavapai had never been found.

  Old Lafe Gunnison, now rapidly recovering from his wound, had sent one of his riders across to the Mesquites with a note asking Sudden and Philadelphia to ride across to see him. The Saber rider, whose name was Higgins, answered one of Sudden’s questions with a grin.

  ‘Jack Mado? I’d rigger he was halfway to Montana by now. He must’a’ been in Tyler’s when Dancy made his play, an’ sneaked out while the goin’ was good.’

  ‘At that, he got a better break than he deserved!’ growled Jake Harris.

  ‘He was just a tool,’ Sudden told him. ‘I misdoubt he knowed much about what was goin’ on. He probably just done what Randy tol’ him, ’thout worryin’ much about the meanin’ o’ what he was doin’.’

  Sudden and Philadelphia saddled up and accompanied Higgins back to the Saber, where they were welcomed by the burly old rancher, now looking considerably more like the man they had met here those many days past. Sudden remarked upon this fact with a grin, and Gunnison nodded.

  ‘Feelin’ better, too,’ he said. ‘Like havin’ a poison ’arrer pulled outa yore hide. Can’t do nothin’ but good.’

  As they entered the house the cook bustled in with coffee, a sly grin on his face.

  ‘Never thought I’d see the day we was feedin’ them damn’ nesters, boss,’ he told Gunnison.

  ‘Yu better get used to it,’ the rancher told him. ‘I’m thinkin’ we’ll be doin’ it a lot more.’

  After a while the rancher turned to Sudden.

  ‘I’m interested to know how yu finally cottoned on to Appleby’s scheme, Jim,’ he said. ‘I had him figgered as straight.’

  ‘So did I, at first,’ Sudden replied. ‘I reckon yu could say it was process of elimination what done it.’

  ‘How so?’ queried Gunnison.

  ‘Well, seh, it allus seemed mighty strange to me that a man who owned the Saber’d be small-minded enough to want the homesteaders off their land – accordin’ to the stories Appleby told Harris – one minnit an’ then write to the Governor askin’ him to send someone to investigate things the next.’

  ‘I tell yu, writin’ them letters was the best thing I ever done,’ Gunnison told the two men.

  ‘O’ course, yu mighta been foxy enough to write to Bleke in order to throw suspicion off yoreself,’ smiled Sudden. ‘However, there was any number o’ men in Tucson who was willing to swear that Lafe Gunnison was straight as a die, an’ about as subtle as a stampede. After I talked with yu I agreed with them. Overhearin’ Dancy in yore stables gave me the clue I needed that somethin’ was happenin’ on Saber without yore knowin’.’

  ‘An’ yu knowed Harris was straight?’ asked Gunnison.

  ‘I knew nothin’ to start off with,’ Sudden replied. ‘But I didn’t have to live on the JH long to know Jake had no part in stealin’ yore beef. So – the process of elimination. There wasn’t many other candidates. Trouble was tryin’ to prove it. If Randy had really killed yu – if he hadn’t panicked in the courtroom – Appleby’d probably be a free man today.’

  ‘A smilin’ damned villain,’ roared Gunnison, ‘who turned a son agin his own father for a measly sack o’ dollars!’

  ‘Yu gotta remember, seh,’ Sudden put in slyly, ‘that Appleby didn’t know the money was worthless. An’ he stood to win irregardless. The way he planned it, somebody was goin’ to be forced out o’ the valley. If yu went to war agin Harris, one o’ yu jugheads would’a’ been killed. If Harris was forced out, Appleby would’a’ filed on his land. If yu was killed, he had the Saber. I’m guessin’ Randy was next on Appleby’s list for killin’, anyway.’

  ‘He had it tied up pretty neat,’ commented Philadelphia.

  ‘That’s for shore,’ agreed Sudden. ‘He on’y made one mistake: tryin’ to pin yore death on me, ‘thout thinkin’ about it long enough. I’m guessin’ he was stampeded some – he shore didn’t plan on Randy tryin’ to kill yu.’

  ‘That – that ingrate!’ choked Gunnison. ‘To think my own son …’ Words failed him, and he struggled for a moment with his own private grief. After a moment he straightened, and bent his attention on Philadelphia.

  ‘There’s somethin’ else I been meaning to talk to yu about,’ he said. ‘When yu was lookin’ after me on Harris’s place … it kept comin’ to me … somethin’ I thought when I first seen yu, boy. I ast Susan Harris about yu. She told me what yu’d told her about yoreself.

  Philadelphia looked at the rancher in bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t foller yore drift, seh,’ he told Gunnison.

  ‘Yu will in a minnit,’ Gunnison smiled. ‘Yore name’s Henry Sloane, I’m told. How come yu got that name “Philadelphia”?’

  ‘Shucks, that’s easy, seh,’ interposed Sudden. ‘I gave him that moniker when he told us where he come from.’

  Gunnison looked hard at the youngster.

  ‘Yu reca
ll yore mother’s name, boy?’

  ‘Of course,’ Philadelphia said, nettled. ‘It was.’

  ‘Diane – right?’ Gunnison’s face was wreathed in a self-satisfied smile.

  Philadelphia nodded. ‘But how—?’ he began.

  ‘How do I know? I know more than that, boy. Let me tell yu what I know. Yore mother’s name was Diane; her maiden name was Diane Lloyd Sloane. She married a good-for-nothin’ puncher, an’ they settled down to raise a family on a small spread down near Prescott. After her second son was born she was mighty ill. She went back East to recuperate, an’ her family convinced her it would be a damn foolish thing to go back to the life that had near killed her. They got their family doctor to tell her so; and she stayed, keepin’ her son with her. She’d left her eldest boy with her husband.’

  Philadelphia’s eyes were wide, his mouth hung slack at these details about his own life that he had never known.

  ‘How … how do yu know all this?’ he whispered.

  ‘Hell, boy, it ought a be easy to figger. Diane Sloane was my wife! She was yore mother! When her family talked her into stayin’ with them she went back to usin’ her maiden name. Yu was brought up thinkin’ it was the on’y one yu had. But it ain’t. Yore name is Henry Gunnison – my youngest son – Hank!’

  There were tears in the old rancher’s eyes, and Philadelphia stood trembling at the revelations he had just heard, his own eyes swimming. He looked at Sudden with a plea in his expression and, nodding, the puncher rose and left the two of them alone. Outside he rolled a cigarette and blew smoke at the stars.

  ‘If that don’t beat all,’ he told himself. ‘Well, I reckon that takes care o’ the kid’s future. An’ Sue Harris’s, too, or I miss my bet.’ He flicked the butt of the cigarette into the yard, where it spun in a shower of sparks against the dark earth. Sudden straightened and turned to go in once again. There was a trace of sadness in his face, and for a moment, with all the hard lines erased from his expression, he looked curiously young and lost.