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

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘Jenny,’ he reminded her, ‘yu know that ain’t so.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, dully. ‘Yes. I suppose it was foolish of me to mention it and I will not do so again. She shook her head. ‘It seems we cannot influence Fate after all.’

  ‘¿Que sera, sera?’ he said. ‘Yu believe that, Jenny?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. What will be, will be. I — I will ask you to leave now, Mr. Severn.’

  He rose awkwardly, and put out his hand to touch her shoulder. ‘Jenny—’

  ‘No more, Don,’ she said, sharpness in her voice. ‘It has cost me a great deal of my pride and self-respect to — to offer myself to you. Well, you’ve made your decision. Now all I ask of you is that you go!’

  Severn nodded, and went to the door, stepping out on to the porch, and turning to face her.

  ‘I ain’t forgettin’ yu saved my life, Jenny,’ he said, softly. ‘Whatever happens, I won’t forget that.’

  She did not answer; closing the door without a sound, Jenny Winn turned and went back to her chair by the window. She heard Severn’s footfall on the board walk and then it faded. Her face crumpled into an angry mask and she hurled the pretty needlework sampler across the room in fury.

  ‘Damn you, damn you, damn you!’ she sobbed. She cried for four or five minutes, silently, her shoulders moving. Then she dried her eyes and went about her business.

  From his vantage point on a brush-covered knoll about half a mile southwest of San Jaime, Severn hunched beneath a dark-colored blanket, watching the lights go out in the plaza. A soft breeze played on his face, and he looked up at the stars in their courses, and remembered a laughing woman. As the hours slipped past, he began to hope that what he had suspected would prove unfounded. There was no proof; just that slight prickling of the intuition that so many ‘civilized’ men disregard, the atavistic warning of race memory which lies deep, deep beneath the veneer and which is so very rarely wrong.

  Faintly, then, he heard the thud of muffled hoofs, and shortly afterwards descried a faint movement in the blackness. He stepped into the bushes, and clamped his hand firmly on Midnight’s velvet muzzle.

  ‘No friendly greetin’s, Night,’ he warned. That ain’t no friend of our’n.’

  The rider, a darker object in the darkness below the bluff moved slowly clear of the town, and then when at a distance where the hoofbeats would not be heard in the plaza, urged the horse to a trot, then a canter, then a ground-eating pace across the prairie towards the unseen mountains in the distance. The rider passed directly below Severn’s vantage point, and the Marshal nodded silently to himself. He had hoped against hope that his hunch was ill-founded, but the evidence of his own eyes could not be controverted. He knew who the spy was; and he knew now that the Cullanes would attack at daybreak, armed with full knowledge of the disposition of the defenses.

  He swung into the saddle and urged Midnight down the slope. The great stallion bucked playfully, and Severn swatted him across the ears with his Stetson.

  ‘G’wan, yu big phony,’ he told the horse. ‘Yo’re so fat on Yope’s grain, yu couldn’t turn on the speed if yore tail was on fire!’

  As if to prove him wrong, Midnight tossed his head, and leaped into a thunderous gallop towards the plaza.

  Severn swung the horse into the livery barn, and Poynton and Rick Main ran to meet him.

  ‘Well?’ asked Main, with bated breath.

  ‘Was yu right?’ added Dad Poynton, in no less suspense.

  ‘I was right,’ Severn told them.

  Main whistled, long and low.

  ‘Man, we better get busy, busy, busy!’ he exclaimed. ‘We got a mess o’ work to do!’

  ‘Well, don’t stand there jawin’,’ rasped Dad, ‘fly at it, boy! Git yore purty han’s dirty for once!’

  They went out of the livery stable wrangling good-naturedly, while Severn watched them with affection. Men who could take the news he had just given them like that, and react as they had reacted, were men to ride the river with. Then he went over to the jail to give them a hand in moving the prisoners across the square and into the crypt of the church.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Into the dark dawn, moving without talking in a solid black phalanx of men and horses, the old man led his paid guns. Tall and proud in the saddle, Billy Cullane went ahead of his army, looking neither to right or left, the patrician head held high, the bushy eyebrows shading eyes which glowed with the lambent fire of vengeance.

  Across the plain they rode, moving easily and steadily towards the little town. There was no attempt to conceal their passage. Once or twice they passed small jacals, little hovels in which lived Mexican dirt farmers, and the people in them sat in silence and looked at each other as the riders went by. Ten, twenty, thirty men. Men from as far north as Montana, as far west as Oregon. Men who had fought in Lincoln County, in Texas, in Arizona. Men who had robbed, pillaged, and killed. Hard, vicious, combat-hardened fighting men followed Billy Cullane’s flag. They would give no quarter. At Billy Cullane’s side rode his young namesake, eyes alight in anticipation. Opposite rode Glenn Cullane, his face dark with a just-controlled apprehension.

  Off on the eastern horizon a faint streak of light touched the empty sky, and grew as they moved on, and widened, glowing softly with the coming sun. Somewhere on the plain a lark tested his voice, almost querulously. And there on the prairie in the half-dawn, they could see the lights of the town.

  Billy Cullane reined in his horse, and his riders followed suit, baying around him until they were arrayed in a long, crescent-shaped half circle, the old man at its center.

  ‘Now jest set an’ be ready,’ Old Billy growled. ‘Set an’ be ready!’

  Severn hastened across the plaza towards the livery stable, moving around two men who were wrestling the old cannon awkwardly across the bumpy square towards the barn. He had not slept; nor had any of his men. The Marshal and Tom Long had spent a considerable amount of time circling the perimeter of the town, stopping here and there, burying what looked to the intrigued Main like brown paper parcels.

  ‘Don’s shore actin’ like the Easter bunny out thar,’ he complained to Poynton. ‘What in ’ell’s he up to?’

  ‘Search me, sonny,’ grumbled the deputy. ‘He’s been as tetchy as a sidewinder with rheumatiz since last night. I took the hint an’ kep’ my chin from flappin’, an I’d recommend yu to do the same. He’ll let us in on it when he’s good an’ ready.’

  ‘Well, just tell me why he’s got them jaspers wheelin’ that damn’ ol’ cannon into the barn, will yu?’

  ‘Mebbe he’s skeered the Cullanes’ll pinch it,’ Poynton grinned, mischievously. ‘I told yu, boy, he ain’t taken nobody into his confidence, let alone me.’

  ‘Well, he shore has changed things around from what he said in the cantina’ Main said. ‘I’d say that of Billy Cullane an’ his boys is in for some surprises if they ride in lookin’ for things to be the way Don told it.’

  ‘Well, we know why he did,’ Poynton said, grimly. ‘An’ he was shore right.’

  ‘Still beats me,’ Main admitted. ‘I just can’t get a hold of it.’

  ‘Aw, yu leave that to Severn, boy! Meantime, come an’ get yore backside up on the roof where he told us. I got a feelin’ the ball’s about to open!’

  The men were in their places now. Every roof had its quota of two or three men. Rifles were stacked, ready loaded. Ammunition boxes lay in neat piles. There was a stillness born of tension and expectancy in the air. Severn looked around the plaza one final time. From ground level everything looked normal.

  He went through the barn and up the staircase at the back; the livery man’s house lay on the extreme southern perimeter of the town, with the long barn attached to it like an inverted ‘L’ and the wall of the corral joining both. A verandahed balcony ran along the face of the house, and round the sides, and on this balcony Severn found Pete Yope and Jenny Winn. Yope had an old-fashioned nautical telescope, and he was hunched forward, p
eering through it. Severn touched his shoulder.

  ‘See anythin’?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re out thar, Don,’ the hostler confirmed. ‘But they seem to be jest sittin’, waitin’. What in the name o’ the Almighty are they waitin’ fer?’

  ‘Pete, yore guess is as good as mine,’ Severn told him. ‘Full sunup, I’d guess.’

  ‘Could be,’ Yope shrugged. ‘Seems mighty peculiar, all the same. Yu want me to give the signal like yu told me?’

  ‘Right, Pete!’ Severn confirmed. ‘Soon as yu see them start to make their run, yu let both barrels o’ that ol duck-shooter off!’ He touched the hostler’s ancient shotgun with a foot. ‘Yu shore that thing ain’t goin’ to blow up in yore face?’ he queried.

  ‘Hell, Marshal, don’t matter if she do,’ chuckled Yope. ‘I loaded her with black powder an’ birdshot. Lot o’ noise, lot o’ smoke — but I wouldn’t reckon she’d blow a hole in a pie-crust from two feet away!’

  ‘Hold yoreself ready, then,’ Severn bade him. ‘Jenny, I’m takin’ yu back to yore house. Yu ain’t stayin’ here.’

  She nodded, almost meekly. Head down, she turned and followed Severn, who preceded her down the stairs and through the long, shadowed barn towards the double doors which debouched on to the plaza. She stopped abruptly when she saw the cannon. It stood foursquare in the center of the barn, its muzzle pointing at the plaza. Beside it lay an open keg of powder and another of what looked like nails. Jenny Winn stepped across towards the old field-piece, and then stopped, whirling to face Severn. There was consternation on her face, and some surprise.

  ‘What — what is this?’ she faltered.

  ‘A little surprise for Old Man Cullane,’ Severn said grimly. ‘One o’ several we got lined up for him.’

  A frown deepened the lines between her eyes, and she ran light-footedly to the door, sweeping the entire plaza with one raking glance.

  Then she turned slowly and faced Severn again. Her shoulders were slumped, and there was defeat in every line of her body.

  ‘You knew,’ was all she said. Severn nodded, without speaking. Jenny shook her head once, twice, angrily, but Severn could see that the anger was directed inwardly, and not at himself.

  ‘And, of course, the defenses have been altered,’ she said softly. ‘I was a trap!’

  ‘It was, Jenny,’ Severn said, slowly. ‘It was.’

  ‘And now?’ There was no emotion in her voice. It was dead and flat. All the life seemed to have gone out of her.

  ‘They’ll be waitin’ for some kind o’ signal, I’d say,’ Severn guessed. ‘Yu want to tell me what it is?’

  Jenny Winn shook her head.

  ‘Jenny, yu know that I ain’t so dumb as to think yu wouldn’t have arranged a signal!’ Severn snapped. ‘I want to know what it is.’

  Again she shook her head, and he moved closer, and put his hand on her arm and shook her urgently.

  ‘Jenny, Jenny! I don’t want to hurt yu, but the lives of every man an’ woman in this town are at stake. I don’t care why yu done what yu done — tell me an’ tell me now!’

  She turned her face up to his and her eyes were swimming with coming tears. A sob racked her momentarily.

  ‘Oh, Don,’ she said, ‘you fool! If only you’d—’ She burrowed her head against his chest, and he put a hand on her shoulder but even as he moved, he froze. The unmistakable jut of a pistol barrel ground against his rib cage, and he swore beneath his breath, looking down to see that the same deadly snub-nosed Derringer which had blasted Yancey Cullane into Eternity was jammed against his body. Jenny Winn straightened her arm by stepping backwards slightly. Now her eyes were slit and dark and there was no trace of tears in them; they had the jungle blackness of a hunting panther.

  ‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘There is a signal. And now I’ll give it!’ She gestured with the Derringer. ‘Unbuckle your gun belts!’

  He nodded, but made no move to comply.

  ‘What are yu to the Cullanes?’ he asked, hands idly picking at the belt buckle. There was no hurry; time was on his side. But he reckoned without the animal fury of the woman. Without warning, she slashed at his face with the little pistol, delivering a stunning blow to the temple. Severn reeled, almost falling, clutching at some harness on the wall, his senses swimming. He pawed blood away from his eyes and got his vision into focus again. She had prowled after him like some hunting animal, and her mouth was twisted with hatred.

  ‘If you do not unbuckle your belts I will kill you here and now!’ she seethed, and one look into the unfathomable blacknesses behind her eyes convinced Severn that he had better comply. He unbuckled his gun belts and they hit the straw-covered ground almost soundlessly.

  ‘So you want to know what I am to the Cullanes, do you, Mr. Clever Severn!’ she smiled. It was a cold and inhuman smile, and the beauty of her face was distorted by it. ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, Mr. Sudden!’

  Despite himself, Severn gave away his surprise, and she laughed wildly, a cracked and strange sound as unlike normal laughter as that of a jackal.

  ‘Yes, we knew that, Sudden!’ she hissed. ‘And we knew who sent you — your friend, the good Governor Bleke!’

  ‘Yu seem to know it all,’ Sudden said mildly. ‘But yu still ain’t explained it to me.’

  ‘Then I will. It is only fair that you should know why you are going to die, Sudden.’ She laughed her wild laugh again. ‘You are not going to die for interfering, although you should. You are not going to die because you are who you are, although you merit it. You will die, Mister Sudden, because Bleke hanged my husband and my husband was Billy Cullane’s son!’

  ‘I see,’ Severn said, softly. ‘Killin’ me is yore revenge on Bleke! An’ that’s why yu shot Yancey — yore own brother-in-law — because he would have spoiled yore revenge!’

  ‘This town will see our revenge, Sudden!’ the woman sneered. ‘They will see you killed like the cur you are. And when they have watched that, the Old Man will destroy them, too. And then he will send what is left of you back to Bleke!’ She looked about her wildly, the wild caution of the animal which fears it may be cornered.

  ‘We’ve talked enough!’ she snapped. ‘Now move, damn your soul!’

  ‘Yu got her all planned out, ain’t yu?’ Sudden said, as she prodded him towards the doorway leading into the corral. ‘Yes, and very carefully,’ she agreed, evil in her cold smile. ‘You and I are going to ride out of the corral. Together. Your friends will be puzzled but not sure what to do. No one will shoot at me for fear of hitting you. If you attempt to call out or escape I shall kill you like a dog; but I prefer to give myself the satisfaction of seeing you shot to pieces by every gun that my family can aim at you!’

  ‘An’ there was me thinkin’ yu loved me,’ said Sudden, chidingly. ‘Wimmen is shore fickle!’

  ‘Damn you, Severn!’ she screeched, and jammed the Derringer into his back. ‘If you—’ She controlled herself with a great effort. ‘Do not provoke me again,’ she said flatly. Sudden shrugged. There wasn’t much arguing a man could do with a smoothbore Derringer jammed up against his backbone. His brain was busy, and every movement was weighed, every footstep judged, so that if the barest chance of reversing the situation presented itself, he would be ready for it. They stepped out into the corral. The sun was starting its slow climb now up the side of heaven, but this part of the corral was in deep shade.

  ‘If anyone sees us and calls to you, just wave!’ Jenny Winn told Sudden, emphasizing the order with a jab of the gun. ‘Wave, or smile. Utter one word and I’ll kill you anyway!’

  ‘Yu keep on sayin’ that,’ Sudden said, mildly. ‘Feller’d think yu didn’t care no more.’

  ‘Get mounted!’ she hissed. ‘Up, up!’

  He got onto the bare back of one of the ponies tethered in the corral, and sat there as Jenny Winn, her eyes never once leaving him, the Derringer never once wavering, maneuvered a horse towards a packing case at one side. She stepped quickly from this on
to the animal’s back. There was not one moment when the bore of the gun wavered more than a few millimeters. Sudden shook his head. Once outside ... it looked like the only thing he could do would be to make a blind dash for safety as soon as they went through the gate. His thoughts were interrupted by a prod from the Derringer as Jenny reined close alongside him and gestured with her chin towards the open gate. ‘After you, Mr. Sudden,’ she sneered.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked quietly. ‘I’m expected, I take it?’

  ‘Indeed you are,’ she said, with relish. ‘As soon as they see riders coming towards them, they will know it is you and I. When we are out of range of the town, I will fire this pistol across your horse’s withers. And deliver you into the guns of my family.’

  Her eyes were dark and glowing with hatred, and Sudden shook his head. Could this be the same woman whose lips had brushed his forehead only a few nights ago? Then, he had almost believed. Now ...

  ‘Hey, Don?’ came a voice, ‘where yu goin’?’

  The Marshall looked up to his left to see Pete Yope on the balcony of his house which jutted out beyond the western side of the building, and overlooked the corral. Yope was standing with the old shotgun in his right hand, the barrels pointing downwards.

  ‘We’re just going to check the perimeter again,’ called Jenny Winn quickly. ‘Keep your eye on the Cullanes!’

  ‘Don’t get out o’ sight,’ warned Yope. ‘They’re li’ble to cut loose any moment!’ He turned to go back to his watching post, and as he did so, turning awkwardly, he banged his right hand against the corner of the wall, and the cocked shotgun exploded with a huge boom. Pellets whickered downwards into the corral as a profane oath of astonishment and contrition burst from Yope’s mouth.

  Sudden fought to control the horse he had mounted, but without saddle and stirrups it was practically impossible, and for a few moments there was blind, panicked confusion as the black smoke drifted downwards. Using main strength and hauling cruelly on the rope bridle, he managed to get the pony’s head up, holding the quivering animal back from its inherent desire to bolt for the open space ahead of it, fighting it with every ounce of his strength. Jenny Winn’s horse had taken almost all of the pellets in its rump. Even as Sudden pulled his own horse’s head up, he saw the girl’s horse tear the halter out of her hands and career headlong out of the corral and head straight up and out across the open plain. The long, thin scream of the panicked woman’s voice drifted back towards Sudden, as he eased the pony out of the corral. His face was hard and without pity as he saw her riding headlong towards the crescent of riders arrayed out on the plain. He thought he heard her screaming ‘It’s me, it’s me!’ but they opened up before she got within hearing distance, before they could properly identify her. In her man’s shirt and Levi’s, she looked enough like him; and they could see another rider hanging back by the corral.