Sudden--Dead or Alive (A Sudden Western #4)

by Frederick H. Christian

  Severn dismounted outside the largest adobe. It sprawled in an ungainly fashion across the corner of what the town probably called its plaza: few Mexican towns did not have one, even when, as in this town, the plaza consisted of little more than a dusty square of ground around which the larger buildings were grouped. Here, in the evenings, they would pasear, take that endless evening walk around the square, men and young boys in one direction, girls and their mothers in the other, giggling and smiling, jostling and whispering. During the paseo, business was done, marriages arranged, troths plighted, huge sighs sighed.

  The sign burned into the wooden lintel of the doorway with a branding iron was a crudely lettered word: Cantina. The huge door was wide open. Two Mexicans stood by it, their eyes half closed. They looked half-asleep but Severn was not misled by their demeanor. ‘Keepin’ watch on who comes in,’ he surmised. ‘But why?’ The reason was not long in revealing itself. As he pushed through the crowded room towards the bar, the tension in the saloon became obvious. The air was electric with it. Every eye in the place was riveted upon a table in the corner, and on the four men sitting there.

  ‘Cards,’ Severn murmured to himself. ‘Poker, I’m bettin’. An’ pretty sizeable stakes, if the sweat on that jasper’s forehead is anythin’ to go by.’

  That jasper, was a huge individual, barrel-chested and bearded, with huge hands like claws clutching the greasy pasteboards close to his chest. He would stand, Severn reckoned, close enough to six and a half feet tall in those cracked, dusty boots; the Navy Colt’s drooping on the meaty thigh looked like a child’s toy, so big was its owner. Every few moments the big man dashed the perspiration from his brow, tugged at the matted, wiry beard, his piggy eyes glaring suspiciously from beneath beetling brows,

  Ordering a drink, Severn covertly surveyed the other players at the table. The two men sitting on Blackbeard’s right and left were dressed in ordinary range garb, distinguishable from ordinary forty-and-found punchers everywhere only by the sullen faces and crafty eyes of professional thugs. The fourth member of the quartet, however, was not of the breed and as Severn’s eyes rested upon him, his eyebrows rose slightly. Ricky Main, the man from Hatchett’s Folly said to himself, ‘An’ in mighty bad company.’

  For now the identity of the big man had come to him. He had been racking his brain to recall where he had seen or heard of that hulking physique, and now it came unbidden to his mind. This was Black Bill Morrison, uncrowned king of the border ruffians. Morrison was well known in El Paso and in Tucson. No rustled herd, no stolen gold, no smuggled goods crossed the border out of America into Mexico that Morrison did not know about, and take his cut. Woe to the man who tried to slide a few rustled head across the Rio Bravo without first clearing his passage with Black Bill. Not that Morrison considered himself an unfair man; with his say-so, a man could get away with paying-out only a ten per cent cut. But if anyone crossed his patch without his permission, Morrison and his cutthroats would take everything - including the life of the man who unwisely chose to ignore Morrison’s power. Without his connivance, even the Cullane brood could not so boldly ride across the border, for when the pursuit grew hot, Morrison’s boltholes were legion - if the dues were paid. If they were not, you stood alone and Morrison would laugh as the rurales cut you down. Severn glanced around the crowded Saloon. It was crammed full, but it did not take his practiced eye long to spot Morrison’s men located in strategic positions around the cantina. The two Mexicans by the door. The thin-faced hombre with the scattergun there by the rickety staircase. The skinny kid with the tied-down holsters leaning against the bar just a few feet from where Severn stood. That seemed to be all; but it was more than enough if you were Ricky Main, gambler, gunman, and fugitive, alone in a Mex town a hundred miles south of the Rio Bravo with a reward on your head of five hundred dollars.

  There was much more than that on the table, piled high in front of Main: golden eagles, ten dollar bills, twenty-peso coins, an untidy bundle of notes - more money than most of the people in that cantina had probably ever seen, and certainly sufficient to hire any of Morrison’s cut-throats to do their evil work. If Ricky Main thought any of this, his face did not show it. He sat impassively beneath the flaring coal-oil lamp suspended above the table, his dark hair glistening, his eyes shadowed. His clothes were sober: a black broadcloth coat, a white linen shirt, a dark four-in-hand tie, neatly tied. His hands were well kept; they rested now flat upon the table, his cards splayed face down in front of them.

  Just at that moment, Morrison shattered the silence by smashing a fist like a ham down upon the baize-covered table. The coins leaped and jingled, and the faint hum of conversation ceased abruptly.

  ‘I’ll see yu, damn yore eyes!’ Morrison exploded. ‘Aces an’ fours!’ He flung his cards face up into the middle of the table, and hunched forward expectantly, as if daring Main to have better cards. Main’s eyes slid sideways for a moment; he was as well aware of the positioning of Morrison’s men as was Severn.

  ‘Sorry, Bill,’ Main said tightly. ‘Three jacks beats yu.’

  A catastrophic curse escaped the thick lips of the bearded man. The other men at the table cringed backwards as though Morrison might explode, blowing them all to kingdom come and indeed, the big man’s visage was disfigured by an apoplectic rage. Severn noticed from the corner of his eye that the skinny kid by the bar leaned forward, his cold grey eyes lighting with an unholy fire which died as Morrison controlled himself, sinking back into his chair, his mouth working with the effort.

  ‘Damned if I know how yu do it, stranger!’ Morrison rumbled.

  ‘Luck, I guess,’ Main said, and there was relief in his voice as the big man’s rage seemingly abated. ‘Runnin’ my way tonight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sneered Morrison. ‘Well let’s see how good it really is. I’m goin’ to go yu double or nothin’ — one cut o’ the cards!’

  Main looked up quickly, his eyes narrowing. For the first time, those directly in the line behind Morrison shifted uneasily. There was a flat anger in the gambler’s eyes which had not been there before and it boded no good for anyone who fanned it to flame.

  Yet when he spoke, Main’s voice was mild. ‘Anythin’ yu say,’ he agreed. ‘I reckon this is about seven hundred dollars American. Let’s see yore dinero.’

  Morrison leaned back in his chair and shrugged, then made an exaggerated pretense of going through his pockets. He let an expression of bovine amazement spread across his heavy features, and his lips parted in a wide grin, showing tobacco-stained teeth.

  ‘Well I be dogged,’ he exclaimed, ‘if I ain’t left my wallet to home.’ He shook his huge head at his own folly, then looked up, his pig eyes gleaming with malice as he spoke. ‘Yu’ll take my note, o’ course?’

  Main’s smile was as cold as an Arctic breeze. Instead of answering Morrison he simply spread his arms in a wide semicircle and pulled all the money on the table in front of him into a pile. He then began to methodically stow it in his pockets while Morrison watched with astonishment which turned to a huge, roaring, belly-stretching laugh. The giant threw back his head and roared with laughter, but there was no more amusement in the laugh than in the predatory growling of a jackal.

  ‘Yu — yu ain’t plannin’ — yu ain’t plannin’ on quittin’ the game while yo’re that much ahead o’ me, are yu, tinhorn?’ he wheezed, choking.

  ‘Yu got no flour, yu can’t cook pancakes,’ was Main’s unemphatic reply. He started to rise from the chair.

  ‘Siddown!’

  Main’s cold grey eyes narrowed and his hand moved, almost in reflex action, towards his shoulder. It stopped before it had travelled six inches, for he realized the odds. The kid at the bar was leaning forward now, poised on the balls of his feet, his eyes alight with demonic anticipation; and in the total stillness of that moment, the sound of the shotgun being cocked by the man near the staircase sounded like a thunderclap. Main’s shoulders dropped perhaps two inches. He nodded.

  ‘That�
�s better!’ gloated Morrison. ‘Yu ain’t goin’ noplace in pertickler, are yu?’

  ‘Shore don’t look like it’ Main admitted, with the ghost of a smile touching his lips.

  ‘What I figgered,’ Morrison rasped. ‘Now let’s yu an’ me talk turkey.’

  Main shrugged. ‘Coyote, more like. I ain’t got any choice, have I?’

  ‘Not much,’ Morrison confirmed. ‘Yu taken quite a pile off me, boy. Mebbe fair an’ square, but more likely not. Either way, yu don’t just walk off with my dollars.’

  ‘Yu lost it,’ Main reminded him. ‘Fair an’ square.’

  ‘Well, I reckon I just started on a winnin’ streak, tinhorn, an’ I’m aimin’ to cash in on it! We’re gonna cut the cards, yu an’ me. High card takes the pot. How much yu reckon yu got there, yu say?’

  ‘About seven hundred,’ Main repeated.

  ‘Seven hundred it is,’ nodded Morrison. He reached into his pocket and brought out a dirty piece of paper and a stub of pencil, with which he scrawled something on the paper which he then tossed into the center of the table. That’s my note for seven hundred dollars American,’ he scowled, Main’s thin smile touched his lips again.

  ‘An’ if I win — how do I collect?’

  ‘That’s yore problem, smartass!’ was the savage reply. ‘Shell out yore dinero.’

  ‘Can’t say I like the odds much,’ was the mild retort, ‘S’posin’ I decide to hang on to it?’

  ‘That’d be a mistake,’ Morrison said, evil permeating every syllable. ‘Yu can’t take it with yu.’

  He paused to let his words sink in, and sat there glowering at Main, while the silence in the cantina grew to immense depths. Not a man there so much as dared to shuffle a foot for fear of precipitating the violence which seemed to hang over the room like some strange, poisonous fog.

  It was in this silence that Severn moved. Unseen, unnoticed, he had during the conversation sidled along the bar until he was alongside the skinny kid with the killer eyes. Now in one eye-baffling movement he whirled and smashed a fist into the boy’s unprotected middle. With a sound like an exploding paper bag the breath burst from the kid’s mouth and he folded forward, sinking to the floor. A gun appeared in Severn’s hand as if by magic, and a round handed blow smashed the youth down, buffaloed and unconscious. Without even breaking the flow of his movement, Severn palmed the gun upwards and two shots blasted out. The first smashed the scattergun out of the hands of the man by the stairs, and the second tore into his shoulder, whirling him backwards into a huddled, groaning heap against the wall. The two Mexicans near the door leaped forward at the sound of the shots, only to find themselves facing the bore of the unwavering forty-five and its twin held in hands as steady as the slitted eyes of the man behind them, the ordinary-looking cow-puncher who had passed them on his way into the saloon and who now stood, legs braced apart, his back to the bar, like some devil incarnate. Their hands crept to shoulder height, and they stood helpless and uncertain, their eyes shifting uneasily from Severn’s guns to the stricken face of their bandit boss.

  ‘What the Hell an’ damnation is this?’ screeched Morrison.

  ‘It’s called a surprise,’ gritted Severn. ‘An’ yu got it.’

  ‘Yo’re makin’ a bad mistake, mister whoever-yu-are!’ snarled Morrison. This ain’t none o’ yore never-mind.’

  ‘Seein’ a man whipsawed allus makes me make errors o’ judgment,’ Severn told him coldly. ‘Empty yore pockets.’

  Morrison shouted an obscene oath and Severn grinned. ‘Anatomically impossible,’ he noted. ‘I’m countin’ to three. Shell out, or yu’ll be missin’ an ear or two.’

  The bearded man locked eyes with his antagonist for a moment. Without haste, Severn said, ‘One’. The baleful eyes still locked with his own, but now a cold breath of fear touched Morrison’s rage-filled mind. Who was this imperturbable intruder? Damn the man! He looked very capable of carrying out the threat he had so calmly voiced. The way he had disposed of the Kid and Headley. ... A strangled noise compounded of equal parts of rage and frustration escaped Morrison’s bearded lips.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Damn yore soul to Hellangone!’ raged Morrison. He tore the pockets of his coat, spilling money on to the table, a bundle of notes from his hip pocket, loose change from a thick purse. That’s the lot!’

  ‘Yu—!’ Severn gestured to the gambler, who had watched all that had passed with eyes hooded with puzzlement.

  ‘Count it.’

  Main shrugged and rapidly flicked through the bundle of notes, counted the coins.

  ‘A little over eight hundred bucks,’ he reported.

  ‘Fine,’ Severn nodded. ‘Shuffle the cards.’

  Main complied, and laid the deck neatly upon the tatty baize of the table. Severn gestured with one of his guns. ‘Cut,’ he told Morrison.

  The bearded man spat a defiant oath. Severn shrugged and almost negligently fired his right hand gun. The apparently casually aimed bullet tore the heel from the big man’s boot, and he staggered to one side, his face stricken by livid fear.

  ‘Cut,’ Severn repeated.

  Another oath trembled upon the thick lips but it would not come. This satanic-looking stranger had shot off a boot heel without apparently even aiming his six-gun, through a crowd of people, in poor light, at a distance of about fifteen paces: The six-gun was again at full cock. If he missed ...! Morrison had no desire to be crippled; like all horsemen, he had a mortal fear of it. He cut the cards. Severn smiled sardonically. ‘I wouldn’t have missed,’ he remarked conversationally, and Morrison scowled in pure hatred. Could this devil read his thoughts? He looked down at the card in his hand, and a slow smile parted his thick mouth. It was the ten of diamonds.

  Severn nodded to Main now. ‘Yore turn,’ he said.

  Main leaned forward and cut the cards. He held up his choice: queen of clubs.

  ‘Looks like yu win fair an’ square,’ Severn said. ‘Pick up yore dinero.’

  The gambler hastened to comply. Stuffing the money into his pockets, he looked up at Severn.

  ‘I’m obliged to yu,’ he said. Severn ignored his thanks.

  ‘Yore hoss outside?’ he asked.

  When Main nodded, Severn told him to move over towards the door.

  ‘Cover me,’ he said.

  Main drew a small pistol from a shoulder holster and sidled crabwise towards the doorway. When he was in position, Severn stepped backwards to move away, and in that moment, Morrison made his move, too. With a movement astonishingly swift for one so huge, he picked up the table in his enormous hands and with a surge of corded muscle hurled it at the moving figure of his tormentor. Even as the table left his hands, his right hand was stabbing towards the Navy Colt at his hip and he was screaming ‘Get the bastards!’ to his two Mexican cohorts. And then all Hell broke loose.

  Taken only momentarily by surprise, Severn ducked beneath the flying table, which splintered into matchwood against the heavy plank bar behind him. Crouched, one knee just touching the dirt floor, Severn flicked his six-guns level and a blasting roll of fire flamed forth as men scattered for safety behind tables, uprights, the bar. His first three bullets were later found to have hit Morrison within an inch of each other: high on the center of the man’s chest, they tore the life out of Morrison even as his gun came clear of its holster, slashing him off his feet in a slewing heap. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  The two Mexicans, taking advantage of their boss’s diversion, had stabbed for their guns and rolled across the floor, scattering the panicked bystanders with hasty, unaimed shots designed only to keep down the heads of their opponents. Severn, shifting his stance, saw Ricky Main coolly aim the tiny nickel-plated revolver in the classic duelist’s stance and fire, and one of the Mexicans went down flat and dead. The other was throwing wild shots into the air as he scuttled in back of the bar, seeking the protection of its wooden front. Severn’s six-guns blazed again, his slugs seeking the scurrying form. The bullets stit
ched a neat pattern of four holes, exactly level with each other, about eight inches from the floor along the front panels of the bar. There was a high-pitched scream, a groan, and then the sound of a shot fired by the reflex tension of the dying man’s finger. Then, all at once, silence. Severn stood up, holstering his six-guns, and pushed forward through the eddying powder smoke. One look over the top of the bar was enough: the man was lying face down, contorted in death,

  ‘Look out!’

  Severn whirled around as he heard Main’s yelled warning and in the same moment caught the flicker of movement in the sad, half-silvered mirror behind the bar. The man he had downed by the stairs was on his feet, and the scattergun was in his hands and leveled on Severn. Blood-spattered shirt, wild eyes, the menacing muzzles of the shotgun: Severn had no time to see more. Then the short sharp bark of the little Smith & Wesson in Main’s hand reverberated across the cantina and a neat hole blossomed between the man’s eyes. He went over the railing of the staircase backwards, the shotgun exploding into the wooden treads, tearing up a huge splinter of wood which smoked like one of the pits of Hell.

  Severn turned towards the gambler. ‘My turn to thank yu,’ he said tightly. A cold touch of death whispered through his mind: if it had not been for Main he would have had no chance at all. Maybe I’m gettin’ careless in my old age, he thought. Main’s grin dispelled his gloomy thoughts.

  ‘Tit for tat,’ the gambler said. ‘Let’s get the Hell out of here.’

  Severn nodded, raking the room with his eyes. Morrison and his thugs lay where they had fallen. No one would weep for them; they would be buried in unmarked plots in the campo santo with their boots on.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to the gambler, and ten minutes later they were riding Hell for leather towards the rolling hills which lay south of the little placita.