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

by Frederick H. Christian

  Chapter Four

  They kept to the high hills for a night and a day.

  The following night they had put nearly half a hundred miles between themselves and the border, and hunkered down beside their blazing campfire, fully relaxed for the first time, A blackened coffee pot simmered on the flames; Severn reached across and poured another cupful of the delicious brew. As he did so, the gambler brought up for the first time since the fracas in the cantina at San Jose the subject of their meeting.

  ‘I never got around to thankin’ yu properly, Severn,’ he said.

  ‘Tit for tat,’ Severn reminded him with a grin. The gambler returned the smile.

  ‘Waal, more or less. Jest the same, I was in a bind back there. If yu hadn’t stepped in ...’

  ‘Hate to see a whipsaw,’ Severn said shortly. There was a silence between them for a moment. Somewhere off in the black night a coyote yelped.

  ‘Why’d yu bother?’ Main asked.

  ‘Yu looked like yu needed help. Yu was some crowded.’

  ‘I know it. Knowed it then. It still warn’t none o’ yore affair. Yu could’ve stood by, let me skin my own cats.’

  Severn shrugged, sticking out his lower lip a little.

  ‘Got to admit I had an ulterior motive,’ he said slowly.

  Main said nothing. He simply raised his eyebrows, and shifted his position slightly.

  ‘Needed some help my own self,’ Severn continued. ‘I figgered yu’d be the right kind. I’d heard o’ yu.’

  ‘Heard o’ me?’

  ‘Ricky Main. Saloon gambler, but not a tinhorn cardsharp. They say yu play the cards the way they fall, which is some unusual Heard yu was fair to middlin’ good with that pee-ant-sized shooter o’ yourn.’

  ‘Where’d yu hear all that?’ put in Main quietly.

  ‘Oh, here an’ there. El Paso. Fort Griffin. Abilene. Tuscon. Yu been around, Rick.’

  ‘True enough. Movin’ targets are harder to hit.’

  Severn grinned and sipped his coffee When he looked up it was into the bore of the ‘pee-ant-sized’ Smith & Wesson he had just slightingly referred to, the nickel-plate catching wicked highlights from the flickering fire.

  ‘Okay, lawman!’ snapped Main. ‘Shuck yore belt.’

  ‘Yo’re wrong, Main,’ Severn said, quietly. He made no move to unbuckle his gun belt.

  ‘I’d hate to have yu think I was bluffin’.’ the gambler said, a cutting edge in his tone. ‘An’ I’d hate to have to prove I ain’t.’

  Severn shrugged. With careful movements, keeping his hands always in plain sight, he eased undone the buckles of his twin cartridge belts and laid them on the ground in front of him. Main gestured with the little gun, and Severn moved away from his guns.

  ‘Now — who sent yu?’ Main’s voice was quiet, level, and deadly.

  ‘Nobody sent me,’ Severn replied. ‘I knowed about yu, that’s all.’

  ‘Then yu also know there’s a reward out for me.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘An yu were thinkin’ of collectin’ it.’

  ‘Nope. Couldn’t be done.’

  ‘Yo’re damned right!’ snapped Main. ‘Not by yu, anyhow, although I got to admit yo’re pretty good with them guns o’ yourn.’

  ‘Shore,’ scoffed Severn. ‘Us bounty hunters is all alike. We pull our man out o’ shootin’ trouble, ride a half-hundred miles further away from home with him, an’ then let him get the drop on us. We’re mighty smart, all right.’

  Puzzlement touched Main’s face for a moment. The lines of concentration deepened between his brows.

  ‘What d’yu mean — let me get the drop on yu?’

  ‘Hell, Main, put yore peashooter away. If I’d been after the reward on yu, I’d’ve picked a better way o’ collectin’ it than this. I need yore help.’

  Main gazed at Severn goggle-eyed. Everything the man said made sense, and yet none of it seemed sensible, certainly nothing more than the last sentence.

  ‘Yu — need my help?’ he managed. ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m goin’ down to San Jaime to bring in the Cullanes.’

  For a moment, Main was silent. His jaw had dropped slightly when this saturnine individual who had saved his life had asked for help. Now it positively fell. Gradually, however, his lips thinned, his mouth opened, a grin began, became a giggle, then a laugh, then a roar. Main smacked his thigh, roaring with laughter, laughter which rose and fell and rose and fell and then petered out when he saw that his companion was not even smiling.

  ‘Why — by God! I reckon yo’re even half-serious about it.’

  ‘Serious enough,’ Severn replied.

  ‘An’ yo’re askin’ me to help yu?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  Main shook his head, and with a sigh, slipped the little revolver back into its shoulder holster.

  ‘Severn, either yo’re goin’ loco, or yu been loco ever since I first laid eyes on yu. Mebbe yu was allus loco. One man goin’ into Cullane country trouble-huntin’ is headed on a one way ticket to Hell! Suicidal! I been in an’ out o’ their country a dozen times, an’ I’m tellin’ yu, those boys is like God down there. Nobody can touch them.’

  ‘I aim to change that.’

  The words were delivered without emphasis, and not a trace of braggadocio. Main frowned again.

  ‘Yu know, for a minnit there yu almost had me believin’ it, an’ I ought to know better. I’d even go so far as to say if I thought any one man might be able to do it, I’d put my dinero on yu. But it can’t be did, hombre! Nobody can touch the Cullanes.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Severn repeated. ‘But I shore could use some help. Someone I could trust.’

  ‘Me, yu mean?’

  Severn nodded. ‘Someone who’s been there afore, someone that everyone knows. Someone I can have at my back if things go tough.’

  ‘That’s quite a someone yu got there, Severn, but it ain’t me. Why the Hell should I get myself shot to Hellangone by the Cullanes? I ain’t lost any.’

  ‘True,’ admitted Severn.

  ‘Well, then,’ Main said. There was a pause for a moment. The gambler shifted restlessly. ‘Hell, man, it ain’t none o’ my affair.’

  Severn nodded. True,’ he repeated. ‘But that murder charge yo’re runnin’ from is.’

  The silver gun flickered into sight again. Main was very fast, Severn thought.

  ‘All right, lawman, spit it out: what the Hell do yu know about that?’ ground out Main.

  ‘On’y the fac’s — an’ mebbe a little more,’ Severn said. ‘Yu was in a little game up Galeyville way, in a saloon called the Painted Lady. Feller called yu a cheat, an’ yu salivated him. Turned out he wasn’t armed.’

  ‘An’ that’s a damned lie for a start!’ snapped Main. ‘He had a gun alright. He had a Colt’s pocket pistol in his hand when he got up from his chair, an’ if I hadn’t let him have it, he would have killed me shore.’

  ‘That ain’t what the record shows,’ Severn interpolated.

  ‘Bet yore sweet life it ain’t, Main replied. ‘That fat Sheriff took nigh on to three thousand dollars out o’ my pockets in that jail. He was more interested in seein’ me swing than in the right an’ wrong of the case.’

  ‘Shore, shore,’ Severn said soothingly.

  ‘Lissen, yu dumb cluck, how in hell d’yu think I got out o’ that burg? That damned Sheriff there let me out o’ jail, rode me to the edge o’ town and turned me loose. Said if I ever showed me face in Arizona again, I’d swing higher’n Haman. I was pretty sore about losing my pile, but not sore enough to swing for it. I scratched dirt, an’ let out for the border.’

  Severn nodded. ‘Can yu prove any o’ that?’

  Main gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Yu think I’d be draggin’ my ass around this Godforsaken country if I could?’ he cried. ‘Why, I’d head on back for Galeyville an’ make that fat slab eat his rope, his star, an’ his six-gun — handle first!’ He gestured with his gun. ‘However
: yu still ain’t explained how come yu know all about me.’

  ‘Common enough knowledge,’ Severn shrugged. ‘It was in all the papers: how yu escaped from Galeyville jest in time to dodge the hangman. I heard Governor Bleke went up to Galeyville to see yu hang, personal.’

  ‘I hope he enjoyed the trip,’ gritted the gambler.

  ‘Dunno about that,’ said Severn, with a smile. ‘Do know what happened when he got there, though — which same yu don’t.’

  ‘Who the Hell cares?’

  ‘Lissen, an’ we’ll see. Bleke got that Sheriff yu admire so much in his office. He gave him a goin’-over — yu’ve heard about Bleke’s goin’-overs?’

  Main nodded. The Governor of Arizona had a fearsome reputation the length and breadth of the lawless frontier.

  ‘Well, when he’d finished with yore Sheriff Holyoake,’ Severn continued, ‘I reckon that Sheriff would’ve been happy enough to hang hisself if Bleke had given the word. An’ pay back yore dinero to boot.’

  ‘Bleke got him to confess?’ Main asked, incredulously.

  ‘In full,’ confirmed Severn. ‘Way I heard it, Bleke has Holyoake’s confession in writin’, in Tucson.’

  Main jumped to his feet, and started pacing up and down.

  ‘Well, Hell’s bells! Hell’s bells!’ he exclaimed. ‘Man, that’s the most marvelous damned news I’ve heard in two years. Hell’s bells! I don’t know what to tell yu. I mean: why—’ He stopped in mid-stride, whirled to face his companion, who was smiling benignly at him. ‘What the Hell are yu grinnin’ about?’ he exploded. ‘Is there somethin’—’

  ‘—else, yep,’ confirmed Severn. ‘A sort o’ snag.’

  ‘Snag?’ asked the gambler in a small voice.

  ‘Snag,’ confirmed Severn. Main nodded slowly, once, twice.

  ‘It figgered,’ he breathed with weary resignation. ‘An’ it has somethin’ to do with yore needin’ my help. Right?’

  ‘Fust time,’ Severn told him. ‘Bleke has the papers to clear yu. Trouble is, he wouldn’t know yu from Adam’s off ox. So yu need a letter identifyin’ yu, from someone who knows yu. Someone who mebbe owes yu a favor.’

  ‘Meanin’ yu.’

  ‘Meanin’ me.’

  Main gestured with the little Smith & Wesson, which he still held absent-mindedly in his right hand.

  ‘I couldn’t mebbe — persuade yu?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Yu could try,’ Severn said. ‘But the letter has to be worded jest so. Any word wrong’d mean I’d been forced to write it, Yu’d never know till yu got to Tucson.’

  ‘Pretty damned smart,’ Main said ruefully. ‘Yu must be some kind o’ John Law, then. I figgered yu was. Well, whistle off, mister. I’ll rot in Hell afore I’ll help yu fry those chickens.’

  ‘I ain’t a lawman, Rick,’ Severn said.

  ‘Prove it.’

  Severn got slowly to his feet. ‘Take it easy with that popgun o’ yours an’ I will.’ He went over to where the saddles lay beneath a yucca. ‘I’m gettin’ a piece o’ paper out o’ my saddlebag - so don’t get nervous.’

  ‘Take it out real slow an’ I won’t,’ promised Main. ‘I ain’t anywheres near trustin’ yu yet, Severn.’

  Severn shrugged, and from the saddlebag he produced a tattered piece of paper. It had a single-word headline and the word was ‘Sudden’. Crudely printed, the poster, for such it was, offered a five hundred dollar reward for the capture of one ‘Sudden’, wanted for robbery and murder. Main read it aloud.

  ‘Young, dark hair an’ moustache, grey-blue eyes, dressed as a cowboy, wears two guns, and rides a black hoss with a white blaze on the face an white stockin’ on the off foreleg.’ The poster had been issued by the Sheriff of Fourways, Texas. Main looked up into the level grey-blue eyes regarding him across the fire.

  ‘Yu ain’t young,’ he said defensively. ‘An’ yu ain’t got no moustache.’

  ‘Midnight ain’t got no white blaze, neither,’ Severn said, ‘unless yu take soap an’ hot water to him.’

  Main shook his head. ‘Sudden? Yo’re him?’

  Severn nodded, and as he did so, a look of triumph flashed into Main’s face. The gambler cocked the revolver in his hand and thrust it forward.

  ‘Now I know yo’re a liar, Severn!’ he shouted. ‘Sudden is dead!’

  Severn shook his head.

  ‘Put yore gun up, Rick,’ he said. ‘An’ sit down. I got somethin’ to tell yu.’

  ‘About Sudden? It better be good,’ sneered Main. ‘Good enough to raise him from the dead, yu might say.’

  ‘It ain’t all that much of a yarn,’ Severn told him. ‘But here’s the how of it. First, what yu said is right. Sudden was dead. That story was put around a few years ago, when he found the men he’d been lookin’ for all over the West.’’

  Main nodded. He had heard the story many times: of the young man outlawed for a crime he did not commit, and his quest to find the two men who had killed his father. People said that Sudden had found them and then just disappeared, never to be heard of again.

  ‘Yo’re sayin’ Sudden ain’t dead?’

  ‘I can prove it,’ Severn said quietly. ‘When Sudden found his men, it happened in a place called Hatchett’s Folly. Turned out, by some freak o’ fate, that one o’ the two men he’d spent all them years chasin’ was his own father. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he just took up his own name, an’ settled down in Hatchett’s Folly. Sudden’s real name was Donald Severn.’

  Main shook his head, his doubts assailed by the ring of truth in the story he had just heard, and his own knowledge of the man who had told it. He had heard stories all over the West about Sudden, and his wizardry with six-shooters, his astonishing adventures. In his mind’s eye he recalled Severn’s incredible shooting during the fracas in the saloon at San Jose. Could it be? Why would this quietly-spoken man tell such a story if it were not true? Who else but Sudden would embark upon such a quixotic task as taking the Cullanes? He looked, as if for the first time, at his companion. Somehow, instinctively, he knew that the story was true.

  ‘But yu ain’t — yu ain’t wanted no more?’ he asked, finally. ‘Allus supposin’ I believe yu, o’ course.’

  ‘Nope. The charge was quashed four or five years ago.’

  Then — then why—’

  ‘Why am I doing it?’ Severn’s voice was harsh. ‘A man I respect and trust asked me to do it. He asked me when — when things looked pretty black for me. He wanted to give me some direction to aim in.’

  Main sensed that it had taken a great deal of effort on Severn’s part to confide as much as this, and he asked no further question. With a wry smile he holstered his pistol and thrust forward his hand.

  ‘Don — I don’t care if yo’re ol’ Nick hisself,’ he said. ‘I believe yu, an’ I’ll ride with yu — to Hell an’ back.’

  A warm smile spread across Severn’s face; he looked years younger, and there was a sparkle in the eyes which had been filled with some inward pain.

  ‘I reckon I can promise yu the ride to Hell,’ Severn said. ‘An’ we’ll have to do the best we can about gettin’ back.’

  The gambler grinned; but just behind the grin he knew lay the knowledge that Severn’s jesting words might well be bitter truth. Ahead of them lay the country of the Cullanes. Its canyons were littered with the bones of men who had tried to depose them.

  Main settled down in his blankets for the night. On the far side of the fire, he could see Severn’s shape huddled in sleep.

  ‘Hell,’ he told himself. ‘I reckon the Cullanes can’t scare me much after this: I drew a gun on Sudden twice tonight, an’ I’m still here to tell about it!’

  He fell asleep still wondering what had persuaded Severn to strap on his guns once more, and take to the owlhoot trails and the dangerous, twilight world of the gunfighter. Sudden, he thought. By God, he’s all of that.

  Chapter Five

  By the time he reached San Jaime, Severn knew that Main would have been there a
t least twenty-four hours. They had parted on a trail high in the foothills which ran south and east towards the sierras, and the gambler had made a wry grin when Severn told him to take it easy.

  ‘Dunno how I’m goin’ to take it easy in San Jaime, amigo?’ Main had said. ‘That’s the Cullane town. Nothin’ goes on there they don’t hear about.’

  ‘Well let’s hope they don’t hear just yet that yu an’ me is compadres?’ Severn had replied. ‘Hit the road!’

  Now he cantered down the trail towards the town. It lay in a fold of the hills which marched in yellowing ranks up to the foothills of the San Geronimo Mountains, a hundred miles and more south of the Rio Bravo. It was a small enough place, a town safe from the intrusions of Americano law, where the cohorts and allies of the Cullanes could rest in comfort secure in the knowledge that no man would dare pursue them there. A river meandered across the valley floor, its course marked by a line of stumpy trees. The town itself was laid out in the pattern of an Army post, the buildings grouped in a rough square with the yellow church at its northern end. The twin bell towers housed a fluttering horde of pigeons which clattered upwards as Severn kneed his horse across the open plaza towards the southeast corner, in which squatted a twin-roofed building with a bullet-pocked sign across its front which read La Fonda. Alongside it was another adobe, this time an L-shaped affair which housed a livery stable whose big twin doors were thrown wide. Severn rode straight into the cool darkness of the stable and swung down from the hurricane deck. Leading Midnight towards a stall, he espied a tall, smooth-faced man eyeing him coldly, incuriously. The man made no move to rise from his seat, a chair racked back on its two rear legs and propped up against the plank wall.

  ‘Yu the owner?’ Severn asked. The man nodded.

  ‘Like to feed the horse,’ the puncher said. ‘Grain, water, full room an’ board treatment.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Ten dollars a night,’ he grunted.

  Severn feigned astonishment. ‘Ten bucks? That’s mighty high for room an’ board.’

  ‘Go somewheres else if yu’ve a mind,’ was the surly reply.

  ‘I’m guessin’ yo’re the on’y stable in town,’ was Severn’s deceptively mild response. Once again the man nodded, displaying a total lack of interest in the whole exchange.