“Yu an’ yore men lead the way—we’ll follow,” Sudden said. “At the first sign of funny business, yu’ll take a header into hell, Navajo.”
The man scowled, but made no reply. He realized that the prisoners would be of no use dead, and he was not sure of his leader’s attitude towards them; Rogue did not confide in him.
So, when they set out, he and his ruffians went first, followed by Sudden and Sandy with the girl riding between them. Carol, who had not heard all that passed, was curious.
“Who are these men?” she asked.
“Some of Rogue’s Riders an’ they are takin’ us to their chief,” Sudden told her. “We ain’t out o’ the wood yet.”
“Rogue?” she cried in amazement. “But he’s a Texan outlaw. What is he doing so far north?”
“He followed us—it was his gang stampeded the herd.”
“Well, at least they are white—not savages.”
Luckily she did not see the look her companions exchanged; it would not have added to her comfort.
Two hours of slow but arduous riding, owing to the difficult nature of the trail, brought them to the outlaws’ camp pitched in a glade on the bank of a stream and shadowed by tall pines.
A small fire, near which lay cooking utensils, a little heap of stores covered by a slicker, saddles carelessly thrown down, picketed ponies, and the absence of any shelter, denoted the temporary nature of the halting-place. Around a spread blanket four men were playing cards, while another paced slowly to and fro. He looked up as Navajo rode in.
“Get any buffalo?” he asked.
“Never seed hide nor hair o’ one,” the half-breed replied. “The boys’ll have to pull their belts in tonight. Allasame, we had good huntin’.”
Rogue’s eyes widened when he saw the last three of the party. “How come?” he asked sharply.
Sullenly the man recounted the circumstances. His coup was not being received with the enthusiasm he had looked for. His chief heard him with an expressionless face until he came to the weapon incident, and then he said:
“So Jim didn’t wanta part with his guns, huh?”
The jeer in his voice stung the half-breed. “It would have meant a battle; I reckon I played it right,” he retorted angrily. “yu played it safe, anyway,” came the sneer. “Awright, I’ll talk to Jim now—alone.”
“Yu ain’t overlookin’ what this means, Rogue?” the other urged. “That’s Carol Eden there, an’ her dad’ll turn over the whole herd to git her back. Why, it’s a pat hand. But mebbe this is what yu bin plannin’? Mebbe Jim an’ Sandy was fetchin’ her in when the Injuns”
His leader’s cold gaze stopped him. “Mebbe yu’ll mind yore own business, Navajo,” he said. “When I want yore advice I’ll shorely ask for it. Tell Jim I’m waitin’.”
The scowling half-breed slouched to where the girl and her companions were standing, and gave the message. His leeringeyes swept over Carol and brought the hot blood to her cheeks.
Sudden saw the look and said sternly:
“If any guy gets fresh, Sandy, shoot him.”
When he had gone, the girl turned to her companion and said quietly, “What is going to happen?”
“I dunno,” the young man told her. “Jim’ll get us out; he’s a wizard, that fella.”
“You seem to think a great deal of him,” she said.
“I think more of him than anyone else in the world—but wo,” he added hastily.
“Your father and mother?” she suggested.
Sandy shook his head. “Dad, yes, but I can scarcely remember my mother.”
She did not pursue the inquiry. There was a ‘warmth in his eyes which stirred her pulses despite the danger which threatened them.
Sudden found the outlaw sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the camp. He greeted the young man with a hard smile. He seemed to have aged, the lines in his face were deeper, and he looked haggard. Sudden sat down and rolled a cigarette.
“Howdy, Jim,” the outlaw greeted. “Navajo said yu wanted to see me.”
“Well, I wasn’t goin’ to let him fancy he fetched me in,” Sudden explained.
Rogue nodded in comprehension. “Allasame, yu’ve lost out, Jim, an! I’ve won,” he stated.
Sudden’s eyebrows went up. “That so?” he queried. “The game ain’t finished yet.”
“Talk sense, boy,” Rogue retorted. “Sam Eden thinks the world an’ all o’ that girl; I can make my own terms. She’s the winnin’ card an’ I hold it.”
“But yu won’t play it,” Sudden said quietly.
The elder man glowered at him. “Th’ hell I won’t? Who’ll stop me?”
“Yu will,” came the cool response. “Listen to me, Rogue. yo’re one tough hombre—I never met a tougher—but at bottom yo’re a white man an’ yu can’t forget that once yu had women-folk yu thought a lot of, an’ that there was a time when yu’d ‘a’ shot a man just for speakin’ disrespectful of a girl like Miss Eden. She’s in yore han’s by accident; yu can’t use her to rob her father, an’ yu know it.”
For a moment he thought the man he had spoken to so boldly was about to spring upon him. The cold eyes had grown hot and the big fists were bunched into knots. But the outlaw held himself in, only his voice betraying the tearing passion which possessed him.
“What’s past is past an’ no damn business o’ yores,” he said thickly. “Why should I care how she comes to be here? To Sam Eden I’m a road-agent an’ cattle-thief an’ if I fell into his han’s, even by accident”—with a heavy sneer—“he’d stretch my neck. All right, I ain’t blamin’ him, but this time it happens to be my turn. I’d be loco to pass up such a chance as this, an’ what d’yu s’pose my men would say, huh?”
Under his hat-brim, the younger man’s eyes gleamed slyly. “Hadn’t thought o’ that,” he admitted. “yeah, I reckon yu’d find it middlin’ hard to persuade ‘em.”
He saw the other’s jaw tighten and his own face remained wooden under the sharp scrutiny it received. Rogue pondered heavily for a while, his brows knitted, and then stood up, motioning the cowboy to follow. The card-game had ceased and the men were gathered in a group listening to the half-breed. They opened out when their leader approached.
“Well, Navajo, yu got it figured out to yore satisfaction?” Rogue asked.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t need any figurin’,” he replied. “Eden hands over the herd an’ gits his gal back; that’s all there is to it.”
The outlaw leader folded his arms, his eyes flinty.
“The girl goes back to her father, now, an’ without conditions,” he said deliberately. “I don’t war with women.” The decision stunned them to silence for a moment and then babel broke out. Above the protesting voices that of Navajo made itself heard:
“See here, Rogue, we all got a say in this,” he cried. “yu ain’t the on’y one.”
“I’ve said it,” the outlaw told him. “As long as I’m boss o’ this band I run things my own way.” His baleful, bloodshot eyes travelled to the half-breed. “Navajo, yu got ambitions to fill my shoes. Step out an’ pull yore gun; we’ll settle it here an’ now.”
The other men watched the half-breed curiously. Any one of them might have shot down the challenger but it would have meant a battle, for not all of them were disloyal to Rogue. Also, there was that lean-limbed cowboy, of whose ability to use his gun there was no doubt. Navajo was not the stuff to stand an acid test.
“Yu got me all wrong, Rogue,” he protested. “I ain’t makin’ trouble, an’ I reckon the boys don’t want none neither. Gittin’ the herd is all that matters. It seemed an easy way, but if yu got it fixed different, we ain’t carin’.”
Having gained his end, Rogue was too astute to overplay his hand. He knew the men, understood that self-interest was the only factor which governed their crude natures. Once satisfied that they would not lose, they would be tractable enough.
“I want them cattle as bad as yu do—got to have ‘em, in fact,”
he said quickly. “So yu needn’t to worry ‘bout that.”
Boldly turning his back on them, he walked to the tree-trunk. Sudden stepped after him.
The tempest of emotion which had raged through him seemed to have weakened the outlaw physically; he looked tired and his face was drawn.
“Rogue, yu acted like a white man an’ I’m rememberin’ it,” Sudden told him.
“I acted like a damn fool an’ I’m forgettin’ it,” came the sardonic reply. He was silent awhile, pondering. “How in hell am I to get that gal back to her of man? It’s most of ten mile. Can’t use any o’ the boys, an’ I dursn’t leave ‘em just now.”
“Send Sandy, an’ yu can have my word, an’ his, that he’ll come back—alone,” Sudden suggested. “yu can tell him that my life depends on his doin’ that, though there’s no need.”
“Yu trust him that much?” the outlaw asked, almost a wistful note in his voice, and when Sudden nodded, “Well, it ‘pears to be the on’y trail out.”
He walked over to where the girl and her companion were waiting, anxiously. Carol, born of fighting stock, faced the famous desperado fearlessly. With scarcely a glance at her, Rogue said roughly:
“I don’t want yu here. This fella”—he gestured to Sandy —“will take yu back to yore camp; it ain’t so far.”
“Thank you,” the girl said. “I am sure my father”
“Don’t get any fool notions,” he interrupted harshly. “Tell Eden I can win without usin’ women.” He beckoned Sandy aside. “The herd lies due west—yu can’t miss it. Now, I want yore word that’yu’ll come back—alone. If yu don’t show up, or bring company, it will go hard with Jim. Yu sabe?”
“I’ll be back—if the war-whoops don’t get me,” the young man promised. “An’ Rogue, I wanta say thisa mighty han’some act”
“Aw, go to hell,” the outlaw retorted. “She interferes, an’ that’s all there is to it. Get agoin’.”
Furtive glances followed the pair as they rode away, but there was no protest, and the inevitable ribald remarks were uttered in undertones. Sudden had waved a cheerful paw but purposely did not go near them; he had no desire to invent explanations. When they had gone, Rogue came to him.
“What about them guns o’ yores, Jim?”
“I’ve pledged myself to stay here till Sandy returns. Don’t yu reckon it would be wiser to let me wear ‘em till then?” The other considered the proposition; in the event of more trouble with the men, the prisoner would necessarily be on his side.
“Mebbe yo’re right,” he decided.
Meanwhile the girl and her escort were slowly making their way in the direction they believed the S E camp to lie, slowly because, there being no trail, they had to pick a path for themselves in the wilderness.
Despite the necessity for constant caution, Sandy stole an occasional glance at the girl riding beside him. She had courage, and if the slim, straight figure now drooped slightly in the saddle, it was only to be expected after the nerve-wracking ordeal of the last forty-eight hours.
Her first words, after they had ridden a mile in silence, took him by surprise:
“Some of those men seemed to know you.”
“We’d met ‘em,” Sandy admitted. “yu run up against all sorts when yo’re driftin round.”
She did not speak for some moments, and then, “Why did that man let me go? He could have made his own terms with my father.”
“It’s got me guessin’,” the boy told her, truthfully enough. “Mebbe Jim struck some sort o’ bargain, seein’ he stayed behind.”
Carol shook her head. “He could have kept all of us,” she pointed out. “He was disputing with his men when the shooting occurred. Was anyone hurt?”
“I expect so,” Sandy replied. “That’s a tough team an’ it takes a hard man to handle ‘em. Rogue’s all o’ that.”
“Somehow I wasn’t afraid of him,” Carol said reflectively. “Though I believe he had just killed or maimed a fellow-creature.”
Chapter XVIII
IN the S E Camp, anxiety at the absence of their young mistress deepened when neither Sandy nor Sudden put in an appearance. A search-party was sent out but owing to the redskins’ use of dividing their forces, was led astray and lost the trail completely on a wide strip of stony ground. Its return with-Jut Carol reduced the invalid to a state of blasphemous despair; he cursed everything and everybody, including himself for exposing her to such a peril. Aunt Judy, who had spent all her life among rough-tongued men, fled before the torrent of vituperation, and her husband, nursing a sore head, listened with awe. As he afterwards confessed to the outfit:
“For comprehensive cussin’ I never heard the beat of it; the ol’ man shorely covered the ground. I reckon he musta bin a mule-skinner one time.”
But bad language, however “good” it may be, gets one nowhere and morning broke upon a helpless, and wellnigh hopeless community. The cattleman, propped up by the fire, looked at his foreman in sullen misery.
“Never oughta let her come,” he burst out presently. “Jeff, yu gotta find that damn trail.
Take all the boys
“The herd” the foreman began, and stopped when the lightning commenced to flicker in his employer’s eyes. “Hey, Jeff, there’s a coupla riders a-comin’,” Pebbles yelled. The foreman ran to the speaker’s side. Two horsemen were entering the valley at the far end. Jeff studied them for a moment and shook his head in disappointment.
“That ain’t Jim’s black,” he said.
“They might ‘a’ swapped hosses,” Pebbles said hopefully. “It ain’t neither of ‘em,” Jeff replied, and, as the visitors drew nearer, added, “Why, if it ain’t Mister Baudry.” The gambler it was, and with him was a middle-aged, bent-shouldered fellow, with a long horse-face and deep-set sly eyes. With a word of greeting to the cowboys, the pair rode to where Eden was sitting, and dismounted.
Baudry shook hands with Eden and presented his companion: “Meet Davy Dutt; he’s in a deal with me.”
The cattleman received the stranger without undue enthusiasm—Mister Dutt’s exterior was not impressive. Then, in reply to an inquiry for Carol, he told the story of their predicament, and was surprised at the effect it produced; the gambler’s full, faintly-tanned face took on a yellowish tinge and his voice betrayed real concern.
“My God!” he cried. “Miss Carol in the hands of savages? That’s terrible, Sam. What are you doing about it?”
Eden told him and Baudry swore in perplexity. “you can’t do a thing till you locate those damned heathens. Got any ideas, Davy?”
“Nope,” the stranger confessed. “yu seen the kind o’ country we come through; yu could hide Noo york in it.”
The gambler explained that they had been travelling northwest from Fort Worth, and finding a cattle-trail some way back, had followed it on the chance of it proving to be the S E.
The day passed monotonously enough for the little group left in the camp, and when, as the sun sank in the west, the searchers again reported failure to discover the trail of the red raiders, a blanket of gloom descended upon the whole company. For the cattleman, weakened by illness, the blow was a crushing one, and, strange to say, Baudry was little less affected. Of them all, Judy was obstinately optimistic.
“That Green fella’s got savvy,” she announced. “He’ll fetch her back.”
The prophecy proved nearly correct, for as the dusk was deepening into dark, Sandy and his charge rode wearily into camp and were instantly surrounded by whooping cowboys. The rancher’s eyes bulged when he found the girl he feared was lost forever, kneeling beside him.
One arm hugging her close, the other hand went to Sandy.
“By heavens, boy, yu’ve put me deeper in yore debt than I can say,” he cried.
Sandy fidgeted. “I ain’t done nothin’,” he said. “yu gotta thank Jim.”
Naturally Carol was the centre of attraction; everyone was avid to hear what had happened to her. The story of Sudden’s slaying of Red Fox
brought ejaculations of “Bravo Jim” and “Good old Texas” from the cowboys, but when she related how they had been rescued from the redskins by some of Rogue’s riders, it was Baudry who spoke:
“What’s brought that road-agent to these parts?” he asked. “Think he’s been trailing you, Sam?”
“It would be a safe bet he stampeded our cows,” the tore-man volunteered.
“But if he’s after my herd why did he let yu an’ Sandy go?” Eden asked the girl. “He must ‘a’ knowed he had me cinched.”
“I was to tell you that he could win without women,” she replied.
“Huh! There’s two words to that,” her father said grimly. With the girl safe by his side he was becoming his own dour self again. He looked at Sandy. “Can yu explain it?”
“No, but I’m guessin’ Jim fixed somethin’, an’ that’s why he stayed an’ I’ve to go back.”
“Like hell yu have,” the cattleman exploded.
“I’ve promised.”
“A promise to a prowlin’ thief don’t hold.”
Sandy looked at the girl; in the firelight her cheeks appeared - pale; her lips were silent, but her eyes spoke.
“Rogue’s word to me was that if I didn’t show up’ it would go hard with Jim,” Sandy added.
“Did he call him by his name?” Baudry put in.
“No, he said ‘yore friend,’ ” was the quick reply. “An’ because he’s that, I’m goin’ back—alone.”
The rancher was about to make another angry protest, but Carol anticipated him: “Daddy, he has to go,” she said, and the young man’s heart leapt at the regret in her voice. “Yu would do the same yourself.”
The old man snorted, but his hard face softened as he looked at Sandy. “She’s right, boy, o’ course,” he admitted. “Yu have it to do, but yu can tell Rogue that if he harms either yu or Jim I’ll hound him down an’ hang him, if it takes the rest o’ my days.”
Sandy grinned. “I’ll pass on the message, but he don’t strike me as a man to scare easy.”
Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 04 - Sudden Outlawed(1934) Page 14
