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

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘I’ll give yu five,’ Severn offered.

  The man rose slowly to his feet; he was tall and well-built, and moved on cat feet, deceptively smoothly for so big a man.

  ‘The price is ten. If yu can’t pay it or won’t — move on.’

  The hostler’s eyes slid to the twin guns at Severn’s hips. ‘An’ don’t try throwin’ down on me with them, neither. Won’t get yu no place a-tall in San Jaime.’

  ‘Tough town, huh?’ Severn remarked.

  ‘Nobody ast yu to come,’ was the sneered reply.

  ‘I ain’t huntin’ no trouble,’ the puncher told the man. ‘Ten it is.’

  He handed over the money and led Midnight into a stall. The man watched, picking his teeth with a straw, no expression at all upon his smooth face.

  ‘Don’t try ridin’ him,’ Severn warned the man. ‘Less yo’re weary of it all.’

  ‘Pertickler who rides yore nag, are yu?’ jeered the hostler.

  ‘No, but he is,’ Severn replied.

  The man shrugged. ‘I got me a horse,’ he rumbled.

  ‘Fine,’ was the equable reply. ‘Healthier, too.’

  Without waiting for a reply, Severn walked out of the livery stable and turned towards the brightly lit hotel on his right. Like most of the buildings in San Jaime it was of adobe, but unlike the others, it consisted of two stories, its walls thick and solid to provide some coolness beneath the searing sun, yet retain warmth in the bitter coldness of the desert nights.

  Severn paused on the ramada to light a cigarette. The plaza was not crowded, but here and there knots of men lounged beneath the porches of buildings, or stood in quiet groups talking, smoking, laughing. As the dusk slid up from the river like a thief stealing the light, bright yellow patches of lamplight split the gloom from a dozen windows, and somewhere Severn heard the liquid laugh of a happy woman soft on the still night air. The mañana spirit was everywhere, and people moved in a leisurely way about their appointed tasks; yet Severn sensed also an air of oppression, of discontent. He shrugged; yo’re gettin’ too imaginative by half, he told himself.

  Inside the cantina which comprised the entire eastern half of the hotel’s ground floor, smoke hung like a thick fog. The flaring coal-oil lamps hissed, spreading their solid flaring light over the rough sawdusted boards of the floor, the hefty deal tables and stout chairs constructed for hard wear rather than beauty, and the long plank bar which ran the length - or rather the depth - of the building. The cantina was crowded, and yet not noisy or boisterous like a border saloon. Men sat at tables playing cards: monte, the newcomer observed, seemed to be the most popular game. There seemed to be again about the place a certain sense of subjugation; as if the people were those of some conquered country. Severn sensed this immediately: San Jaime was not a town where men made up their own minds or spoke them freely. But then, it was the town of the Cullanes. The only law here was their law, the only Judge, Judge Colt.

  Severn crossed to the bar, which was tended by a Mexican with a shock of snow-white hair who hurried to serve the new customer, although the dark eyes were downcast and betrayed no interest, no glimmer of curiosity.

  ‘Seen too many strange faces an’ found it don’t pay to be curious,’ was the puncher’s surmise, as he ordered a glass of beer.

  ‘Bueno,’ he said as he set down the glass. ‘I’ll take another.’

  ‘Si, señor’ was the non-committal reply. ‘Ees two dollar.’

  ‘Two dollars?’ This was well over four times the highest price a man would pay along the border for a drink. ‘Yu got high prices, amigo.’

  Severn reached for his glass, but even as he did so a shot blasted out from the far end of the bar and the beer glass exploded into smithereens, splattering both the Mexican and his customer with beer. As the bartender ducked to floor level behind his bar, Severn wheeled to see a pair of slouching figures standing facing him some ten feet along the bar. One held a smoking .45 in his hand.

  ‘Somethin’ about the prices yu don’t like, mister?’ asked the one who had fired.

  His type was common enough: what the Mexicans called Bravados, one of those swaggering mercenaries, driven out of the States by Texas Rangers or Arizona lawmen, cooling their heels in old Mexico until the heat died down and they could drift back to their chosen professions: robbery, looting, arson, murder, rustling - the lexicon of the lawless. They were both dressed Spanish style; wide-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombreros, silver jingling on their boots, vests, gun belts; the wicked pointed rowel spurs, the flared trousers of the imitation hidalgo were all there. Each wore a heavy gun belt; the one who had not yet spoken wore crossed twin belts like Severn.

  The speaker was a particularly evil-looking specimen. Greasy black hair lay in rat-tails upon his filthy collar, and his equine face was scarred and unshaven. One of his eyes was an opaque, sightless, milky white. His companion was shorter by a foot, and his hair was a fiery red. His clothes, although in the same style, were neater and better kept than those of the man who had fired the shot, and he wore them with more authority. But when Severn’s eyes rested upon him, he realized that the one with the smoking gun was only the trouble-stirrer. The shorter, red-haired one had pale-blue, wicked, sharp and totally empty eyes, the eyes of a soulless killer. Severn raised his hands away from his hips in a move indicating his peaceful intentions; he forced a grin on to his face.

  ‘Prices are fine,’ he said. ‘It’s the friendly service that kills me.’

  ‘Town’s plumb full o’ things that could kill a nosy stranger,’ offered the one with the gun. ‘If he wasn’t keerful.’

  Severn made his smile stretch even wider,

  ‘Yu ain’t never met a “keerfuller” feller than me,’ he said, ingratiatingly. In fact, to show there’s no hard feelin’s, I’ll buy yu boys a drink.’

  ‘Crawlin’,’ sneered the little man, speaking for the first time. ‘I mighta known it. Hell, keep yore drink, drifter. Put yore iron away, Flatman. He ain’t worth havin’ the drop on, even.’

  The man called Flatman shrugged, and sheathed his six-gun, turning back to the bar and reaching for the drink he had set down there. Even as he did so, a shot rang out and a bullet scarred the planking within a millimeter of his reaching hand. Flatman snatched back his hand as if the bullet had actually burned it, whirling around again, eyes wide with shock.

  ‘Who the—!’ he burst out, and then fell silent as the reply, cool and level, came from his victim of a moment ago.

  ‘Me,’ said Severn, and the smile was vanished now.

  He leaned, as he had been leaning before, against the bar; but now there was a difference. In his right hand, level at the hip and as unwavering as a rock, was a smoking .45. Its bore menaced everyone with democratic generosity.

  ‘Seen a big bluebottle,’ Severn explained. ‘Right by yore hand, there. Nasty critters. I’ve heard tell they carry germs as could kill a man — if he wasn’t “keerful”.’ His eyes moved slightly, touching the soulless gaze of the smaller man behind Flatman. In fact, like yu was sayin’, the town’s probably full o’ things that could kill a man.’

  The onlookers nearby craned forward, their astonishment overriding their sense of caution. Who was this foolhardy stranger? Didn’t he know where he was? Or who he was bucking? Wise-heads noted how the tall stranger had picked, as if by accident, a spot from which he could command every corner of the room and yet still not be caught off-guard by someone coming in through the door. Younger ones noted only the tied-down holsters, and the casual ease with which the newcomer had placed a bullet within half an inch of a moving hand. Those who made their living by the gun - and there were more than a few in the place - remarked silently to themselves that they had not discerned the movement of the stranger’s hand when he drew his six-gun. One moment his hand had hung at his side, negligent, empty; the next, it had a gun in it spouting fire. And a man who could draw that fast and shoot that well was no pilgrim.

  Nobody had seen any flies on the bar. So they
craned forward in their seats, balanced upon the balls of their feet and ready for a rapid sideways, downward movement towards the floor if the shooting started up again.

  ‘Damfool trick!’ raged Flatman. ‘Yu coulda maimed me!’

  ‘Yu’d do well to remember it,’ Severn drawled. ‘Come to think of it, yu coulda blinded me, shootin’ my glass to bits thataway. However, yu didn’t: I can see real good. Which means, Shorty, that I can see yu easin’ yore left hand towards yore gun. A word of advice: don’t!’

  The smaller man thus addressed pushed his blustering crony aside, and faced Severn squarely. The pale eyes were cold and level, but they were not stupid.

  ‘Put yore gun up,’ he said, a note of warning heavy in his voice. ‘We’ll call it quits an’ yu can be on yore way.’

  Severn’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘This yore place?’ he asked.

  ‘In a manner o’ speakin’. Take the advice: it’s good.’

  ‘Must be,’ agreed Severn. ‘I’m gettin’ so much of it.’

  Before the man facing him could speak again, he went on, ‘However, there’s a matter o’ two dollars for the drink yu spilled, an’ — prices bein’ what they are in these parts — say another dollar for the glass.’

  Anger flared momentarily in the pale eyes of the small man, and his hands twitched convulsively over the twin .45s.

  For a moment, the anger building in him urged the smaller man to make a move for his guns; but he controlled himself. A deep sigh escaped his lips, and his curling hands went limp. He shook his head.

  ‘I ain’t fool enough to try an’ beat a drawn gun,’ he said. ‘An’ I don’t need to. Mister — yu had yore warnin’ an’ yu chose to disregard it. As far as I’m concerned yo’re buzzard meat!’

  ‘Yu talk mighty big for a little feller,’ Severn chided him, wickedly. Again fury blackened the man’s face at the puncher’s jibe; Severn had banked upon him being touchy about his lack of inches — most short men were. When they packed two guns and made sport of defenseless men, it was a sure thing.

  ‘Damn yore eyes!’ snarled the red-haired one. ‘Do yu know who yo’re talkin’ to?’

  ‘Ulysses S. Grant, mebbe?’ hazarded Severn. Then, ‘Naw, couldn’t be — yu ain’t old enough to grow a beard, although the height’s more or less right.’

  Once again his dart found its mark. The President of the United States was renowned for many things, but great height was not one of them. The added inference that Red-Hair was not even old enough to shave was the match in the powder keg. The pale eyes flared, a foul oath escaped the tight lips as Red-Hair’s hands streaked for his guns.

  ‘Tut, tut!’ Severn said, and with a blindingly swift movement he buffaloed the red-haired man, laying the barrel of his .45 alongside the man’s temple and dropping him like a pole axed steer. The one called Flatman had not time to even react before the unwavering muzzle of the six-gun in Severn’s hand was once more aligned upon his navel. The red-haired man lay huddled on the floor, a trickle of blood coursing down the side of his face.

  ‘All right, the party’s over!’ rasped Severn. ‘Yu - Flatman! What’s yore amigo’s name?’

  ‘Cullane. Yancey Cullane!’

  Severn’s eyes narrowed. This was almost providential. Although he had not sought the encounter by any means, to have run into one of the Cullanes this early in the game was a stroke of the greatest good fortune. He made a rapid decision.

  ‘Right, mister man,’ he told the cowering bully. Take this — carcass back to where it belongs. An’ tell it, when it wakes up, that I ain’t takin’ that advice. I like it here.’

  For a brief moment, Flatman’s courage returned; perhaps what Severn had said encouraged him to believe he would be leaving the town scot-free.

  ‘Mister,’ he sneered. ‘Yo’re makin’ a bad mistake. This is Cullane’s town.’

  Severn shook his head. ‘Wrong ag’in,’ he said, ‘It used to be.’

  Flatman’s eyes opened wide. ‘Yu aimin’ to take over here?’

  ‘In a manner o’ speakin’,’ Severn agreed. ‘If by that yu mean keepin’ scum like yu off the streets, I am. Yu tell yore sidekick -when he wakes up from them sweet dreams — that if he crosses my path again, I’ll nail his hide to the stable wall.’

  Flatman was not impressed by these words, and the sneer on his ratty face showed it.

  ‘Yo’re talkin’ big now, Mister whatever-yore-name-is,’ he scowled. ‘But when the Cullanes come a-lookin’ for yu, yu won’t be talkin’ so high an’ mighty. San Jaime belongs to the Cullanes. Their mark is on this town.’

  ‘An’ mine’s on yu!’ Severn said, without emphasis. As he spoke, however, the gun in his hand roared out a staccato beat of shots, and those watching gazed unbelievingly at a demonstration of shooting skill such as they had never witnessed. Even as the four shots in his right-hand gun were fired, Severn had drawn the left-hand six-gun and the staccato roll of shots continued without a break. Their target was the unfortunate Flatman. Two bullets burned across the tops of his ears, leaving an ugly weal in their wake and bringing the man’s hands up to his ears with a screech of pain which changed to a grunt of astonishment as the next shots stripped the gun belt from his waist, the spurs from his heels and the heels from his boots. For a long second, Flatman teetered off-balance, astonishment and panic fleeting across his rodent’s face, and then, arms flailing like some runaway windmill, he measured his length on the saloon floor. Those watching, silenced at first by fear, then by awe, now burst into huge roars of laughter at the ridiculous spectacle which they had witnessed. To see a Cullane humbled they had never expected; to see them made to look futile and helpless was nothing short of hilarious, and more than a few men who had lived in the little town for many years felt a surge of admiration and friendship for the tall, saturnine man who had effected this miracle. Flatman, however, did not stay long down. With an oath of combined fear and anger, he scrambled to his feet only to encounter once more the unwavering muzzle which had previously threatened his middle and which now pointed to exactly the same spot as unerringly as a compass points north.

  ‘Even if yu can’t count, I can,’ Severn reminded him. ‘I make it there’s one slug left in here — although I could’a’ miscalculated. If yu’ve a mind to find out, yore gun’s at yore feet an’ yu’ve got all the time in the world.’

  The audacity of the statement drew a gasp from the watchers. The shots had been fired so fast that it had been impossible to count them. Was the tall man bluffing? If he was, then he had nerves of cold steel.

  ‘He don’t look the bluffin’ type to me,’ whispered one bystander.

  ‘I’d say Davey Flatman agrees with yu,’ agreed his companion, as Flatman’s shoulders slumped and the man took a step away from the weapon by his feet.

  ‘Right,’ snapped Severn. ‘Get yore hosses an’ get out o’ town – pronto! Next time we meet yu better have a big feller with yu.’

  Flatman hoisted his half-conscious companion to his feet; Cullane groaned and shook his head blearily as Flatman pulled him roughly erect, his arm hanging loosely around Flatman’s shoulder, and walked Cullane, whose feet dragged and stumbled stupidly, towards the door. When Flatman reached the batwings, he turned and a scowl of defiance lit his face.

  ‘Next time, mister, I’ll do just that!’ he shouted.

  ‘The name’s Severn,’ drawled the unperturbed figure at the bar. ‘Bring six if they’re all as yeller as that one.’ And he calmly proceeded to drop the gate of his six-gun and reload the empty weapon, while every eye in the cantina watched him with an almost superstitious awe.

  Chapter Six

  The hush in the saloon lasted for a full minute after Flatman, half dragging and half carrying the slumped form of Yancey Cullane, went out into the night. Then, with shouts of delight, the onlookers surged to their feet, rushing to slap the back or shake the hand of the man who had just so convincingly demonstrated his wizardry with the weapons which were now once more snugly holstered at h
is side.

  Shrugging off the more insistent of those wanting to add their congratulations, Severn managed to find a clear space for himself to stand and face the crowd, his hands held up in the Indian sign for ‘stand back’.

  ‘Hell’s bells, Severn!’ one excited, perspiring onlooker was saying, ‘I never seen any thin’ like that in all my born days!’

  ‘Me either,’ chorused another. ‘I allus thought Yancey Cullane was fast with a gun, but yu made him look like he had creepin’ arthritis!’

  To stop the excited flow of words, Severn asked a question. That he knew the answer mattered not; he wanted to hear the reaction of the townspeople to the vanquishing of one of the Cullanes, for on it hinged his future plan.

  ‘What did that jasper mean about ownin’ this place?’ he asked.

  ‘Meester Severn.’ It was the white-haired Mexican who had first served Severn when he came into the cantina. ‘I teenk you find that Cullane - que malo hombre! —- mean he family they own thees town. No own each building, you onnerstan’ , no each hacienda. But San Jaime—’ he waved an arm to encompass the whole town, ‘—San Jaime she belong to them. San Jaime is they town. They do anything they like here. Take anything. No pay. No let anyone come here without they say. You make ver’ bad trouble for thees town, senor. And for you’self. Thees Cullane mucho malo hombre, Keel yu queek. Much better you ride away ver’ fast’

  ‘That’s the way of it, is it?’ Severn said. ‘An’ yu let them do what they want?’

  ‘We are seemple people, señor,’ remonstrated the old man.

  ‘No gunfighters. No bravados. If we resist - they keel.’

  Severn shook his head. ‘Yu ever tried?’

  There was a silence. One or two men hung their heads, and feet shuffled uncomfortably.

  ‘Hell, Severn,’ one man said. ‘Everybody knows what the Cullanes done up north at Fronteras. Ain’t no call to invite them to do the same down here.’