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

by Frederick H. Christian

  Jenny’s body was snatched out of the saddle like a discarded puppet and slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust as her pony, dead on its flying feet with half a dozen heavy-caliber slugs in it, went slewing forward headlong and over in a somersault of flying legs. Dust drifted up in a huge cloud, and both the horse and its rider were lost to sight. Sudden saw Old Man Cullane raise his arm and then lower it, and every man with him spurred his horse into a gallop, into the sifting dust, guns blazing, riding down and over the indistinct figure. Then they reined in and turned in their own dust and waited, still out of range of rifle fire from the town. The old man turned his horse and cantered slowly back to where the execution had taken place. He dismounted and Sudden could see him kneel. There was a second of silence, and then, across the prairie like the agonized wail of some trapped and tortured animal, he heard the old man cry out. He saw him stand up and stumble towards his horse. He watched as Billy Cullane climbed slowly, like some old, old man, into the saddle. He saw the tall old body slowly straighten and the head come up. Severn turned and put his pony into the corral, leaping lightly from its back, and moved swiftly through the barn, snatching up his guns, out into the plaza, where Yope leaned against the sun-warmed planking at the front of his stable, his face white and aghast.

  ‘Jesus, Severn!’ he gasped. I’m plumb sorry! It was an accident. Believe me, it was an accident!’

  Sudden put his hand on the livery-stable owner’s shoulder, reassuringly. ‘It’s all right, Peter,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘But — but they kilt her, Severn!’ Yope ground out. ‘They rode her down like a coyote — an’ I caused it! It was an accident — I swear it. An accident!’

  ‘It was the luckiest accident you’ll ever have, Pete,’ Sudden told him abruptly. ‘She was one o’ them!’

  ‘Jenny?’ Yope’s face went slack with astonishment. ‘What in ‘ell yu talkin’ about, Severn?’

  ‘She was one of them,’ the lawman insisted. ‘Her husband was one of Cullane’s sons, and she was feedin’ information to the Old Man. Every move we made, every plan, every detail.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ the hostler ejaculated, ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Yu better!’ rapped Sudden. ‘She was ridin’ me outside to set me up for what happened to her!’

  ‘A Cullane!’ Yope shook his head dully. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  Sudden nodded. ‘Get back on yore balcony, Pete, they’ll be movin’ in in a minnit! Thank Gawd, yu’ve given the signal anyways. The boys’ll be ready for ’em!’

  Yope nodded and hurried away, still shaking his head at Jenny’s perfidy. Severn moved to the corner of the stable and looked out across the plain. Then he turned and shouted loud and clear: ‘Here they come!’

  The Cullanes came sweeping in from the southwest in a Comanche sickle, bent low over their thundering horses. Then, while still out of rifle-range, the men on the rooftops of San Jaime saw them bear away to the left, riding parallel with the western perimeter of the town, north along it, and sweeping across behind the old church, narrowing their formation into the arrowhead shape which would drive its point into what they expected to be the weakest point of the town’s defenses.

  Sudden had run across the plaza as the renegades made their run, hunkering down behind the fountain with the men there; they waited, rifles ready: Turnbull, Ogston, and Drew.

  ‘Ball’s about to commence, Severn,’ grinned Ogston tightly, and Sudden nodded without speaking. On the rooftops of the houses he knew his men were ready and waiting. He had concentrated firepower there: three well-armed men on each of the five rooftops. On the end house, Montoya’s, spraddled flat, eyes slitted behind the sights of their rifles, lay Main, Les Lawrence, and the alcalde, Shearer.

  Main was watching now as the thundering group of riders bore down upon their position, and he turned to his companions. Shearer grinned at him, on-off, like that.

  ‘Yu’ll never win my heart with a face like that,’ Main told him.

  ‘Wasn’t plannin’ on it no how,’ Shearer said tightly. Main touched his shoulder lightly, and squirmed forward a foot or so,

  ‘Yu take the right hand target, Paul. Martin, yores is the middle one. I’ll take the left hand side. Fire on three. Ready?’

  The others nodded without speaking, Main sensing their response rather than seeing it. Cullane’s riders were no more than four hundred yards away; now three; now two hundred.

  ‘One,’ Main said, conversationally.

  ‘Shearer looked at him pleadingly.

  ‘Take yore time, won’t yu?’ he said.

  ‘Two,’ Main continued, ignoring Shearer’s remark. The Cullanes were practically upon them, no more than a hundred yards away, when Main said, Three!’ and their rifles spoke practically in unison.

  Their targets were three scraps of white paper, pinned to the ground by sticks planted deep. Beneath each piece of paper lay two tobacco-tins full of blasting powder set in a hole filled with small stones. The unerring shots of the three men on the rooftop detonated the primitive mines with a terrific roar precisely at the moment that the van of the arrowhead of riders came up to them.

  There was a moment’s unimaginable panic. Horses reared, eyes bulging in terror, screaming with fear. Others stopped as if they had run into a wall, pitching their riders ten feet ahead of them in tumbling bundles. Cursing, shouting, surrounded by the swirling dust and a raining patter of tiny pieces of rock, the Cullane men were in complete disarray, and it was in the midst of this moment that the men on the rooftops rose to their feet working the levers of their Winchesters furiously, and poured a murderous hail of lead into the milling mass. Fifteen guns smashing down on them, triggered by men with nothing to lose, broke the Cullane bunch like a wave hitting a breakwater.

  Nothing could have withstood such a terrifying onslaught. The panicked riders desperately reformed, pulling their horses away from the blasting hail of death into which they had ridden, while the old man circled back and around them, waving his arm and pointing it cavalry fashion in the direction of the rear of the church.

  ‘Hit the other side!’ the defenders heard his screaming yell. It’s a trap!’

  The renegades bunched once more and spurred their horses away from the northeastern corner of the plaza, swinging around the tall blank back of the church, bearing left towards the gap between the church and the houses on the western perimeter. Behind them sprawled seven of their comrades who would never rise.

  At the northwestern corner, two wagons and piles of crates, barrels and kegs looted from the cantina, even doors torn off their hinges, formed a barricade which all but filled the space between the houses and the church. Behind the barricade crouched two men: Tom Long and Dad Poynton. Long was coolly smoking a cheroot, while Poynton, his eye glued to the small gaps between the pieces of the barricade, had his hand in a wooden box which lay on the ground between himself and Long.

  Now the charging Cullane gang came wheeling around the corner of the church, and Sudden, from his vantage point at the fountain, saw Dad Poynton straighten up, his right hand extended to Long. The laconic puncher touched the end of his cigar to the inch-long fuse on the stick of dynamite taken from the box. In a gesture almost negligent Dad Poynton threw the fizzing explosive up and backwards over the top of the wagon and once again the stuttering boom of the explosion threw the Cullane horsemen into a plunging welter of confused and screaming animals. A cold grin touched Long’s face, and he emulated Poynton’s action, lobbing another stick of dynamite out into the milling mass. It landed directly beneath the feet of a curveting horse whose rider was cursing it, lashing the unfortunate panicked beast with his rifle barrel. The blinding smash of the explosion smote the air, and then there was nothing there: no horse, no rider. Another man stood in the drifting smoke, his clothes all but stripped from his body, a tatterdemalion creature with a look of shocked astonishment on his face. On the roof of the house overlooking the broken formation of riders, one of the Mexicans leaped
to his feet, his rifle blazing, screaming imprecations.

  His first shot hit the tattered man high on the shoulder, and the second slammed the man dead to the ground, but then the guns spoke from below, and the Mexican reeled, tottered on the rooftop, and plunged to the bare earth below. Long and Poynton were running back now towards the fountain, and behind them sputtered the three-minute fuse which Long had casually lit with his still-glowing cigar.

  ‘Any minnit now,’ he panted, as he slid to shelter behind the fountain.

  Out beyond the barricade, the smoke had cleared now and the Cullanes had reformed, with young Billy, his face dark with dust, sweat tracks bisecting it from top to chin like some weird war paint, waving his arm and leading them in a flat-out assault upon the piled wagons and debris. Running right up to the wagons, guns blazing, the Cullane riders leaped from their saddles, dragging mightily on the upturned vehicles, moving them aside by main force, opening a gap through which the rest of the band, guns blazing at the rooftops to keep the defenders at bay, would gallop.

  ‘That damn thing ever goin’ off, boy?’ snapped Dad Poynton testily. As if in answer, there was a tremendous explosion and the two wagons disintegrated into a million pieces of matchwood, tearing apart the men who had been moving them. Of young Billy Cullane there was no sign, but through the swirling smoke of the explosion the rest of the Cullane gang came riding, low over their horses’ necks, firing through the dust at targets which they could not see.

  ‘Here we go!’ yelled Sudden, and stepped forward into the path of the riders, his six-guns blazing in one long unbroken fusillade, tearing the leading rider off his horse, whipping another back dead out of the saddle, a third horse slewing to the right and tumbling the unprepared rider almost into the muzzles of the other men’s guns, for now Long and Poynton and Ogston, Turnbull and Drew faced the onslaught of riders in a widespread line across the face of the plaza, moving backwards as they fired, towards the houses at the side, towards the barn, towards the cantina, their every shot telling.

  In front of them, rearing and plunging, the horses of the oncoming riders sought to turn while their riders tried to force them forward and at the same time throwing shots at the elusive, dodging figures of the defenders before them.

  ‘Cut an’ run!’ Sudden yelled, his voice almost lost in the din. ‘Cut an’ run!’

  He ran, dodging from side to side, towards the livery stable doors directly behind him, seeing the others break to each side, Dad Poynton off to the left towards the jail, others towards the cantina. He saw Ogston, defiant in the center of the plaza, yelling soundlessly, and saw the horse breaker blown off his feet like a straw as a bullet caught Ogston just below the hairline in the center of his forehead. Drew, running for the cantina, slewed to one side with a bullet in his leg, and Sudden saw Turnbull turn and crouch over the fallen boy’s body, his guns blazing defiantly as a tall man on a black horse spurred towards the kneeling man. Sudden threw a shot at the rider, saw the man lurch in the saddle, almost failing as the bullet hit him and then he saw Turnbull reach up and catch the rider around the waist, dragging the man out of the saddle, rolling in the dust, his arm rising and falling, and that was all Sudden saw for now he was inside the cool darkness of the barn, and the plaza was clear of his men.

  He ran to the cannon which stood with its muzzle gaping towards the open door, and scraping a match on his pants into flaring life, thrust it into the touchhole of the old gun. Rammed tight down its throat were perhaps half a pound of powder and the best part of half a keg of assorted nails, screws, nuts, bolts and washers rifled from the hardware store. The ancient cannon thundered and leaped backwards, turning on its side and skidding into one of the stalls of the stable, smashing it to matchwood, while the terrible whickering sound of flying metal filled the air. Through the billowing smoke, Sudden saw the Cullane riders smashed apart as if by some mighty fist, saw horses blasted off their feet, saw men hurled backwards by the solid irresistible hail of spinning, whistling, slicing, blinding projectiles. And then he went out into the sunlight again with the men of San Jaime, who advanced now into the carnage from all sides of the plaza, eyes slitted against the smoke, guns blazing, faces as cold as the avenging angel of Death.

  He saw men fall; before him, and at his side. Men from San Jaime, and Cullane men shattered by the unbelievable thing which had scythed them down. He saw, running across the corner of the plaza towards the jail, a tall, wild-eyed figure with hair flying wildly, eyes as mad as Satan, his guns blazing, and moved towards the old man who had led his raiders into San Jaime. As he did, he saw Dad Poynton step out on to the ramada in front of the jail, and shout something, his gun leveled at the running man.

  Without breaking his stride Old Man Cullane drove a bullet into Poynton’s body, and Poynton reeled backwards against the wall of the jail, blood spreading in a huge stain across the front of his shirt, his gun sliding out of his hand. Cullane leaped up on to the ramada, driving two shots into the door of the jail, insane and blind in his desire to free his son.

  ‘He ain’t there, Cullane!’

  Sudden’s yell stopped the old man in his tracks, on the threshold of the jail, and his head froze for a moment, then turned slowly. Slower still, his body twisted, and he came around facing Sudden, the gun in his hand still smoking, and a puzzled frown on the leonine face.

  ‘Ain’t — thar?’ he croaked.

  ‘He’s in the church!’ Sudden said. ‘Yu threw yore men away for nothin’. Drop yore gun, Cullane. I’m takin’ yu in!’

  Just for a moment, in the din of firing, dying now but still going on around the plaza, there seemed to be a long moment’s silence. Then a mad light lit the old man’s eye, and he screeched ‘Take him, Billy!’ and Sudden wheeled to see behind him the bloody, almost unrecognizable face of young Billy Cullane, his clothes in strips, lacerations all over his body, a huge contusion on his forehead, and one arm dangling limp and shattered at his side. In the other hand, however, he held a leveled six-gun, and the madness that lit his father’s eyes was in young Billy’s also.

  ‘Die, damn yu!’ he screamed, and pulled the trigger, but even as he did, another was faster, for Sudden’s gun was in his hand, too, and he was firing and hurling himself to one side even as the boy spoke, knowing that the old man would be gunning him down from behind in the same moment.

  His shot drilled a neat hole exactly between young Billy’s glowering, hate-filled eyes, and blasted him off his feet, dead in an instant, his finger squeezing the trigger of his gun to send a bullet whining off into the distance.

  Sudden hit the ground in the same instant that Billy died, twisting to face the gun of the old man behind him, but no shot came, only a choking, gurgling, horrifying sound, and Sudden saw that Old Man Cullane was lurching on the ramada, his clawed hands plucking ineffectually at the huge and wicked haft of the Bowie knife protruding from the side of his neck. Then a dreadful gout of blood spurted from his mouth, and the last of the Cullanes tottered, reeled and fell, across the sprawled legs of the man who had, almost with his remaining strength, hurled the razor-edged weapon.

  With one bound, Sudden was at Poynton’s side, cradling the old man’s head in his arms. Dad Poynton’s eyes were glazed and sightless. His breath rasped in his chest as he spoke.

  ‘That — that yu, Don?’ he managed, weakly.

  ‘It’s me, Dad,’ Sudden told him. ‘Rest easy. Yu’ll be all right.’

  ‘No — not — somethin’ — somethin’ gone inside o’ me, boy. Don — did I — did I —?’

  ‘Yu got him, ol’ timer,’ Sudden said, softly. ‘Yu saved my bacon.’

  ‘Good,’ Poynton whispered. ‘Worth it - worth goin’ -knowin’ that ...’

  ‘Yu ain’t goin’, old-timer,’ Sudden told him. ‘Rest easy — I’ll get help.’

  He looked up. All at once, it seemed, the firing had stopped, and a terrible stillness had fallen upon the plaza. The hazy powder smoke shifted and swung in the still air, and from doorways, and down
from rooftops, the men of San Jaime came forward slowly, standing then stock still as if aghast at the terrible slaughter which they had wrought. Everywhere, sprawled bodies littered the square. Somewhere a horse shrilled in pain; there was a single shot, and then silence again. The reek of cordite and the rank smell of blood hung like a darkening cloud above the little town. Not a man of the renegade band remained alive.

  ‘Don!’ The old man’s voice was urgent, and Sudden bent low to hear his whispered words. ‘Don — I can’t hear nothin’!’ Poynton gasped.

  ‘It’s all over,’ Sudden told him. ‘It’s finished.’ His tone was flat and grim.

  ‘We — we beat ’em?’

  ‘We beat ‘em, ol’ timer.’ Sudden saw Main and Shearer coming across the square towards him, and he waved them to hurry.

  ‘Don?’ He could hardly hear the old man’s voice, and he bent low again. ‘Don - yu mind if I ast yu somethin’?’

  ‘Anythin’ yu want, Ray,’ he told the dying man.

  ‘I — I remembered — yu. Just - just afore—’