The statement brought forth oaths of surprise and indignation from the audience. Rough, uncultured, hard-shelled as these men were, they possessed the instinctive respect of their type for the weaker sex, be she never such a poor example of it. The marshal saw the effect created and hastened to destroy it.
"Sheer bluff," he asserted. "Burdette wanted to git yu on yore knees without a battle. But we're driftin' from the point, which is this; ever since this fella Green appeared this town's had trouble, an' he's bin the hub of it. I reckon yu gotta git a new foreman, Purdie."
"Meanin' yu aim to run him out?" the rancher asked. "I'll see yu in hell first."
The marshal stood up, his thin, rodent-like jaws working. "I'm lettin' yu down easy," he rasped. "This yer town stood for Burdette's bullying, but it ain't goin' to stand for yores. Sabe?"
A confirming growl told him he had struck the right note. Sudden, sardonically scanning the coarse, savage faces around the room, saw that, for the moment, the marshal was on top. He knew the shallow minds of these men, easily stirred to passion, and jealous of their rights as free and independent citizens. He knew too the swift certainty with which they would strike when once they had come to a decision. He glanced at Purdie and guessed his thought; the C P owner was wishing he had brought more of his outfit. Ere the stinging retort which might have precipitated a fracas could leave the rancher's lips, the foreman interposed.
"How long yu givin' me to leave, marshal?" he quietly asked.
The puncher's friends could scarcely believe their ears. Slype's expression was one of mingled triumph and amazement; he had not looked for so easy a victory. The fellow was a four-flusher after all. He laughed evilly.
`Yu got till sundown; after that, yore stay is liable to be plenty permanent," he answered.
Someone sniggered at the. gibe. Bill Yago opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking when he caught his foreman's eye. Weldon, the blacksmith, moved as though about to say something, but changed his mind when Sudden shook his head. Leaning indolently against the wall, his thumbs tucked in his belt, the man who had been so unceremoniously told to "pull his freight" looked at the ring of faces. Many of them were hard and hostile, others contemptuous, while all expressed curiosity. Deliberately he got out his "makings," rolled a cigarette and lighted it. He dropped the match, placed his foot upon it, and straightened up as though he had reached a decision.
"Good enough, marshal, that'll give me time to complete what I came to these parts to do," he said. Holding open one flap of his vest, he disclosed a metal star sewn on the inside. "Yu know what that is?" he questioned. They all did, and a ripple of surprise ran through the spectators. What was a United States deputy-sheriff doing in Windy? Upon Slype the appearance of an officer whose authority far exceeded his own fell like an avalanche. Half-dazed, he heard the C P foreman explain that he had been sent to investigate the Black Burdettes, tales of whose plunderings for a hundred miles round had come to the Governor's ears. This statement restored the marshal to normality; the Battle Butte gang was broken, the deputy's work was done; he, the marshal, had nothing to fear from him. Satisfied on this point, he began to bluster.
"Why didn't yu come to me right away an' declare yoreself?" he asked. "I could 'a' helped yu."
Sudden smiled mirthlessly. "Yu did, but I ain't thankin' yu," he replied. "When yu bumped off Mart Burdette ..."
The marshal jumped as though jerked with a string. "Why, I was in the bar there when the fight ended," he protested.
"Yu left before he did, an' turned my hoss loose so that I'd be delayed, which would help when yu tried to throw suspicion on me," Sudden replied evenly. "Raw work, marshal."
"All damn nonsense," Slype sneered. "Mart was a friend."
"An' so was Sim, huh? Yet yu shot him down under a flag o' truce in the fight at the Circle B," the cold voice continued.
The hiss of indrawn breath betokened the amazement of the spectators of this strange scene. Save for the scuffle of restless feet as men leant forward, there' was little sound. All eyes were focused on the man in the chair, who from being accuser had so swiftly become the accused.
The marshal's laugh was not convincing. "Musta bin a wonderful shot," he said, "seein' I was in town an' asleep at the time, Purdie not havin' asked for my assistance."
This remark caused some merriment, but the puncher's next statement stilled it.
"I saw yu at the moment yu fired," he said.
"That goes for me too," came the wheezy, cracked voice of California. "Shore thought yu was on Purdie's side an' that mebbe yu didn't notice the flag."
The marshal's agile brain was racing. How much did this damned interloper know? He must gain time to think.
"Might as well claim I wiped out King too while yo're about it," he sneered.
"Not exactly, but yu had to do with it," Sudden returned. "He came straight from yore office to `The Plaza,' an' I figure you sent him in search o' me, hopin' we'd kill one another."
Slippery shrugged his shoulders disdainfully; the needed flash of inspiration had come, and he thought he saw a way out. He turned to the waiting, breathless company.
"Well, boys, I s'pose I gotta explain," he began. "For quite a while I've knowed the Burdettes was bad medicine --robbers, rustlers, an' killers."
"But friends o' yores," came the acid reminder.
The marshal achieved a passable chuckle. "I let 'em think so," he said. "A fella what represents the law don't allus have to show his hand; yu didn't yoreself, Green." A sly glance at his hearers told him he had scored a point. "I kept cases on 'em an' waited for opportunities. Some o' yu may think it was a sneaky way o' doin', but, when yu go after a wolf yu don't give him a chance to bite, an' if I'd come out into the open, how long would I 'a' lasted, marshal or no? Well, I got Mart an' Sim, an' would 'a' got King in time, doin' this yer town the biggest service any fella could." He affected a jocularity he was by no means feeling as he nodded at the deputy-sheriff. "Me an' yu was workin' on the same job, an' if yu'd come to me at the start it might 'a' bin put through in better shape."
He slumped back in his chair and mopped his brow, conscious of excited whispering. His story was clever, plausible, and daring. Because the Burdettes were a threat to the town he had made war upon them. His methods might be questionable, but he was not the first law-officer to strain his powers and shoot a criminal instead of arresting him; such a procedure was only too common in those turbulent times. These fools would swallow it, was his thought. Then he looked at his accuser, and shivered; here was a man who would not. For in the narrowed eyes he read the scornful disbelief of one who knows what he has heard to be untrue. Sudden's voice, coldly impassive, told him that the battle was not yet over.
"Slype, yu are a liar from yore toes up. The two crimes yu have confessed to were committed not by virtue of yore office but for yore own ends. When yu murdered Old Man Burdette ..."
"Gawd A'mighty, did Slippery do that too?" Weldon shouted, and his remark was followed by profane expressions of astonishment from all parts of the room.
"... an' let the C P be suspected, yore object was to bring the ill-feeling between the two ranches to an open rupture. Yore plan seemed to be succeedin' when King shot young Purdie an' let Luce shoulder the blame."
Sudden heard a muttered exclamation, and knew that Purdie's last lingering doubt of his daughter's suitor had vanished. For the rest, some nodded meaningly as if to say they had known it all along, while others appeared incredulous. Slype, scanning their faces narrowly, took his cue from the latter.
"Easy to pin things on a fella if yu kill him first," he scoffed. "Yu ain't proved anythin' yet. Why should I want the Purdies an' Burdettes a-scrappin'?"
"So that, if they wiped one another out, yu could grab their ranches--yu knew neither o' the families had any kin. Also, yu wanted Cal's gold mine," Sudden said sternly, and then his voice changed. "Yu played ze beeg game, senor." So life-like was the imitation that the marshal started and glanced fearfully
round the room, almost convinced that it was the dead Mexican who had spoken. He had a swift vision of the pain-wrecked, twisted body, with its wide-open, glazing eyes, lying in the sun-drenched gully. The puncher's next words dispelled the illusion. "No, Ramon is not here, Slype; yu made shore o' that. Do yu remember the `leetle story' he told before yu shot him down?"
Under the shock of this further blow the marshal shivered. What else did he know, this saturnine devil of a deputy-sheriff who had dropped from the clouds? He tried to think, but his brain seemed to be paralysed. The net was closing, he was in deadly peril, he must say something--but what? When at length his trembling lips formed the words he did not recognize his own voice:
"He tried to down me."
Sudden's expression was withering. "What's the use o' lyin'--Ramon never went for a weapon," he said. "Me an' Bill Yago, up on the rim, saw an' heard everythin'. Yu an' the Mex were sittin' face to face. Yu folded yore arms, an' when he made his proposition, yu pulled that double-barrelled derringer yu wear under yore left shoulder, shot him twice, an' galloped away. He warn't dead when we got to him, an' he signed this before he cashed in."
The scrap of paper he produced passed rapidly from hand to hand, the eyes of each man as he read it going to the drooping figure in the chair. Somehow the marshal seemed to have shrunk, his clothes hung loosely upon him. In an ashen mask, his eyes were cavernous pools of stark fear. He realized that he was doomed; one look at the ring of silent, relentless faces was enough to tell him this. He knew these men--had drank and gamed with many of them--and yet, they would hang him and go back to their work or play with a scornful jest on their lips. He had, without a qualm, hurled others into the unknown, and now the Dark Destroyer was at his own elbow; a few moments of agony and then--what? The thought appalled him; terror spurred his frozen faculties to action; in a hoarse, unnatural voice he made his last bid.
"Green, yo're an officer o' the law; I demand to be taken to the country seat."
It was his only chance. The country seat was weeks distant; he might escape on the journey. Even if he did not, a smart lawyer could find excuses for putting off the trial; the jury would be composed of strangers; in the lapse of time evidence might cease to be available. In any case he would procure a respite, and to the abject, broken wretch who felt death clawing at his throat, a few weeks, days, or even hours seemed a priceless boon. Shaking as with an ague, he looked fearfully at the man who held his fate in his hands. The deputy-sheriff's face was that of a statue, his eyes cold, expressionless.
"I don't remember any talk o' the country seat when yu were lettin' 'em hang Luce Burdette," he said slowly; and the cowering man in the chair knew that he was being condemned. "When I came here the Governor gave me a free hand." He paused a moment, considering. Slype's lips moved, but no sound came from them. Sudden's narrowed gaze swept the silent assembly, and when he spoke again his words fell like hammer-blows upon the numbed brain of the man to whom they were addressed.
"These men made yu marshall it is for them to judge yu."
As the puncher passed through the empty bar Slype's agonized accents followed him. He could vision the fellow, crazed by the dread of death, frantically appealing on his knees for the mercy he could not hope to receive. Hesitation claimed him for an instant, and then another picture presented itself--that of a little grey-eyed man who had said sternly, "Make a clean job of it."
He went on, out into the sunlight.
Some weeks later a rider, on a big black horse, paced slowly in the direction of the tiny cemetery. It was early morning, and the oblique rays of the rising sun filtered through the foliage and blotched the track along which he rode with dancing splashes of shadow. There were little currents of air, pine-laden, and the whistling of the birds accentuated the silent peacefulness. In the depths of the valley an opalescent haze was lifting.
Sudden had said good-bye to the C P, and it had not been easy. To all Purdie's offers--they had been more than generous--he had but one reply:
"That little Governor fella will be wantin' my repawt."
To the young couple who owed him so much, and the outfit generally, he used the same excuse, but to Bill Yago --whose pride in his promotion to the post of foreman was entirely submerged by the fact that in gaining it he lost a friend--he gave a different reason--he had another task. And Bill, who knew what it was, snorted in disgust.
"Aw, hell, yu'll never find them hombres, Jim."
"Not if I wait for 'em to come to me, ol-timer," Sudden had replied. "No, I got a good reason for goin' an' none for stoppin'--now."
Which cryptic remark Yago might have better understood had he seen his late foreman bending over the recent grave to lay upon it an armful of blooms gathered in a certain glade which had taken him somewhat out of his way. And Bill would scarcely have known him. The hard lines which playing a man's part in a world of men had graven upon his young face had gone, the steel-like eyes which could be so forbidding were gentle, even misty.
"Yu was fond o' flowers," he said softly. "I won't be here, but Miss Nan has promised ..." And then, after a pause, "I wish he had got me."
He rose and stood, hat in hand, looking down upon the simple mound beneath which lay the gay, tempestuous girl who had given her life for him. What freak of fate had brought her to this wild corner of the world? Misfortune, a spirit of adventure inherited from some filibustering forbear--she had Spanish blood in her--or a rank rebellion against the restraints of civilization? He would never know now.
"I reckon Life gave yu a raw deal, ma'am," he whispered. "Mebbe Death will be--kinder."
Slowly mounting his horse, he turned to face a world which, all at once, seemed strangely empty.
THE END
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Sudden (1933) Page 25
