‘Yo’re — that Texas feller.’ The old man coughed, and flecks of bright blood touched his cracked lips. ‘Yo’re — yo’re Sudden — ain’t yu?’
‘That’s right, Dad,’ Sudden replied. ‘Yu remembered right.’
The old man sighed, almost contentedly.
‘That’s somethin’ to go out with,’ he whispered. ‘Fit alongside — Sudden. I’m — right proud ...’
His head lolled and his body went limp and heavy, and Sudden knew the old man was dead. He laid Poynton’s head gently down on the rough boards of the ramada, and stood up slowly. Main and Shearer stood in the open plaza in the sunlight and they did not speak. Sudden raised his eyes. He saw Father Malcolm moving among the dead, his head bowed, his fingers busy with his Rosary. All at once he felt an enormous tiredness.
‘We lost some men, Don,’ the alcalde said. There was a dark patch of blood on the upper part of his arm. ‘Caught a loose slug,’ he explained, seeing Sudden’s gaze. ‘Nothin’ serious.’
‘Tell me,’ Sudden demanded, harshly.
‘Montoya,’ Main said. ‘Drew an’ Turnbull. They was caught in the open. Jesus Rodriguez. Ogston. An’ the ol’ man, there.’
Sudden looked down at the crumpled form of the vinegary old deputy who had saved his life. There did not seem to be anything to say.
‘Get some shovels,’ he said, harshly. ‘We got work to do.’
Silently the men of San Jaime turned to do his bidding.
Chapter Eighteen
A week had passed; and now San Jaime had returned to what it had been before: a sleepy Mexican placita slumbering beneath the fierce sun. Only someone who had lived through the terrible day when the Cullanes were destroyed would have noticed the scars here and there: the new windows in some of the houses, the blackened walls on the western side of the church where the dynamite had exploded, and the pocks of bullets scarring adobe walls around the plaza.
On the steps of the church, a small group of men stood to say their farewells to a friend. Sudden had saddled Midnight earlier, and then walked around the plaza once, as if seeing it for the first time. As if knowing that he did not wish it, no one spoke to him, although there were tears in the eyes of many of the Mexican women and some of the men. Shy children had retreated giggling out of sight of the tall man who would forever be their hero. Now he was ready to go, and he asked the alcalde a favor.
‘Yu say adios for me,’ he asked. ‘I ain’t much good at it.’
‘Severn,’ Shearer said bluffly. There ain’t no way to thank yu for what yu done—’
‘Then don’t try it,’ Sudden said with a quick smile. ‘No need of it, anyways.’
‘Hell, let me make my speech!’ growled the alcalde in mock anger. ‘I bin rehearsin’ it two days, an’ I shore ain’t goin’ to waste all that effort!’
‘Yu aimin’ to take long, Shearer?’ put in the ever-laconic Long. ‘If yu are, I reckon I’ll go have a beer until yo’re through.’
‘Yu stay put an’ hear this, Tom,’ Shearer said. ‘It ain’t over-long. Don—’ he turned to the tall man, ‘the people here want yu to know that any house in San Jaime is yore house. Any time. They ast me to say that. Where yu come from, why yu come, I don’t know, an’ I misdoubt yo’re about to tell me. It don’t make no never-mind. We’re on’y grateful that yu did, an’ we’re sorry to see yu leavin’.’
‘Amen to that,’ muttered Long.
‘I’m thankin’ yu,’ Sudden said, quietly. ‘I’m thankin’ all o’ yu.’
He turned abruptly and fiddled for a long moment with his saddle-girth; then he swung up into the hurricane deck of the great black stallion, and looked down at the quartet: Shearer, Long, Rick Main, and Father Malcolm.
‘Rick,’ he said, eventually. ‘Yu’ll do like I told yu?’
‘Shore, Don,’ the young gambler said. ‘I ride up to Tucson an’ see Bleke. I tells him Marco an’ the others was sent to Anahuila City for trial, an’ God willin’ they’ll hang ’em thar.’
Sudden nodded. ‘Give him that letter I wrote about yu.’
‘Hell, Don!’ burst out the gambler, unable any longer to keep his feelings in check. ‘Why won’t yu do like I said an’ ride up there with me? It’s yu he’s expectin’, not me!’
‘I might — later. Later on. I got me some thinkin’ to do,’ Sudden said, slowly, as if thinking aloud. ‘Jest — jest awhile to think about things. A man can’t go on forever.’ He shook his head as if to dispel his own thoughts, and then announced quietly, ‘I’ll be ridin’.’ He lifted a hand in farewell. ‘Adios!’
Then he touched his heels to the sides of the glossy black horse, and moved off up the narrow street between the church and the row of houses. If he turned his head to look at the house where Jenny had once lived, they could not see it, for he was in deep shadow. They walked across the plaza so that they could see him riding out into the sunlight. He did not look back.
‘He is deeply troubled, I fear,’ said Father Malcolm.
‘Aw, no, padre,’ argued Shearer. ‘Not a man like Severn!’
‘I would have thought especially a man like Severn,’ the old priest said enigmatically.
‘What was all that stuff about Bleke?’ Shearer demanded of Rick Main. ‘Did he mean Bleke of Arizona?’
Main nodded. ‘Bleke sent him here.’
‘Bleke sent him here?’ repeated Long in astonishment.
‘Here?’ gasped the alcalde. ‘Severn? Bleke? Here?’
The gambler nodded again, and as he did, a frown appeared on Long’s face, and then cleared away, and he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand, raising a puff of dust from his Levi’s.
‘Wal, shoot!’ he shouted. ‘Now I got it! I figgered I’d heard o’ him afore somewheres. Severn, Severn: It was the mention o’ Bleke as put it to mind, Rick! Yu fellers know who we been fightin’ alongside? No? Then I’ll tell yu! That was the gent they call “Sudden”!’
Shearer’s jaw dropped in astonishment at the end of Long’s outburst; the old priest nodded, as though what he had heard merely confirmed something he had already suspected. Main smiled.
‘Yo’re right, Tom,’ was all he said.
‘Yu knew?’ Shearer gawped, incredulously.
‘All along,’ confirmed the gambler.
‘Hell an’ damnation, Rick!’ exploded the alcalde. ‘Yu might’a’ said somethin’!’ Shearer’s voice was testy; then he frowned as if struck by another thought. ‘But didn’t I hear Sudden was dead? Kilt somewhere up in Arizona?’
‘Yu might o’ heard it,’ Main announced flatly, ‘but whoever said it was wrong. There’s yore proof!’
He jerked his head towards the open ground which could be seen between the buildings which formed the southeastern corner of the plaza. It was the campo santo, the cemetery where the fallen Cullanes and the men of San Jaime whom they had taken with them on the long ride had been buried, at the end of that death-filled day a week ago. There, too, lay a single plot with a bunch of wild flowers upon it; but none of them had seen Sudden put them there, or knew that he had stood long into the evening darkness in the silence by Jenny Cullane’s grave.
‘Wal, I heard a lot o’ stories about Sudden,’ Shearer announced, finally, mastering his astonishment. ‘But I’ll tell the world this — that’s a real man!’
‘Paul, that’s a thought to buy a drink on,’ Long grinned mischievously. ‘What d’yu say, Rick?’
‘I reckon he’d like that,’ Main said, and led the way across the plaza towards Diego’s, leaving Father Malcolm alone on the steps of the church.
After a while the old priest turned and walked through his church to the little doorway leading into the bell tower. He climbed slowly up the worn stone steps and when he emerged into the sunlit belfry, he crossed to the far parapet. Shading his eyes, he looked out from his eyrie across the endless reaches of the plain. After a moment, his still-keen gaze picked out the tiny figure, solitary in the empty wasteland, moving slowly north towards the Rio Brav
o. Father Malcolm watched for a long time; perhaps a silent prayer was running through his mind. His voice was very soft when he finally spoke.
‘Vaya con Dios - Sudden,’ he said.
About the Author
Frederick Nolan, a.k.a. 'Frederick H. Christian', was born in Liverpool, England and was educated there and at Aberaeron in Wales. He decided early in life to become a writer, but it was some thirty years before he got around to achieving his ambition. His first book was The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall, and it established him as an authority on the history of the American frontier. Later he founded The English Westerners' Society. In addition to the much-loved Sudden westerns, Fred also wrote five entries in the popular Frank Angel series.
Among his numerous non-western novels is the best-selling The Oshawa Project (published as The Algonquin Project in the US) which was later filmed by MGM as Brass Target. A leading authority on the outlaws and gunfighters of the Old West, Fred has scripted and appeared in many television programs both in England and in the United States, and authored numerous articles in historical and other academic publications.
Also in the Sudden Series:
SUDDEN STRIKES BACK
SUDDEN AT BAY
SUDDEN APACHE FIGHTER
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Sudden Dead or Alive Page 17
