Chapter Nine
“You aren’t like – the others,” Barbara Davis said quietly to Rusty. They sat together at a table, eating the cold meat that was their only food. Sudden had insisted upon advantage being taken of the lull in the onslaught.
“No tellin’ when they’ll hit us again,” he had said. “It makes sense to grab somethin’ to eat while the goin’s good.”
None of them, not even Rusty himself, had remarked that Sudden’s organization of the breaks had resulted in the boy’s being left alone with Barbara Davis, but Sudden’s plan had been deliberately effected. “If that kid’s a wrong ’un then I’m gettin’ old an’ oughta be put out to pasture,” he had told himself. “Mebbe if he talks to the girl...” Thus the two sat together now, Barbara looking earnestly at her young companion. Rusty looked up at her words and hope fled across his face, leaving bitterness in its wake. “Shore I am,” he said finally. “Yu can’t touch pitch—”
“And not be defiled? Oh, Rusty, that’s nonsense and you know it,” she insisted. “I cannot bring myself to believe that you—” She stopped, unable to bring herself to complete the rest of her sentence.
“That I done my share o’ scalphuntin’, yu was goin’ to say,” he said. “Well, yo’re right about that, at least. I never lifted no ’pache hair, but I reckon that ain’t no excuse. I’m one o’ them an’ that’s that.”
“Won’t you tell me how you came to be mixed up with this dreadful band?” the girl asked. The concern in her voice thrilled him, although he shifted uncomfortably in his chair in the hope that she would fail to see his reaction.
“Yu really want to know?”
“I really want to know, Rusty.”
The young man’s face was serious as he recounted the events which had led him into this present company. It was not a very original story; a rancher’s daughter, Barbara Davis had heard it, or variations upon it, many times in her life. The young puncher, his monthly pay burning a hole in his pocket goes into the nearest town to spend it as fast as possible. Full of rotgut whisky, he finds himself in a saloon, half drunk at a gaming table, betting steadily and losing every hand.
“Shoulda knowed, if I’d had a lick o’ sense, that cardsharp was a-usin’ a stacked deck. But I jest kept on plungin’ an’ in the end, when I was down to my last chip, the gambler makes a slip an’ I see him cold-deckin’ me. I call him, an’ he goes for his gun. I get mine out faster an’ he goes down. These two strangers grab me an’ hustle me out o’ there. They tell me the law don’t take kindly to its citizens bein’ salivated. They tell me they’re leavin’ town for a long trip in the mountains, an’ need an extra hand what’s useful with a gun. I ain’t got much choice, so I ride with them.”
“They were—?”
“Quincy an’ Shiloh, that’s right,” he confirmed. “They offered me a deal. If we made any money prospectin’ – that’s what they told me at first – they’d take my share an’ square the law in Bisbee. Then I’d be free an’ clear. They was rough, but I wasn’t in no spot to be choosy, so I rode along. Tucson was waitin’ for them outside o’ town. I believed the pair o’ them about goin’ prospectin’ in the Dragoons. What a fool!” he cursed. “I never knowed then what they was aimin’ to go prospectin’ for.”
Barbara gasped at this. “You discovered that they were – bounty hunters?”
“Call ’em what they are: scalphunters,” he gritted. “Yeah, I found it out. They come into camp one night, Quincy an’ Shiloh, Apache scalps hangin’ on their saddles. I faced ’em with it, said I wasn’t aimin’ to ride with no scalp lifters an’ they laughed at me. ‘Pull out if yu’ve a mind,’ Shiloh tol’ me. ‘Yu won’t get a mile on yore own. The Injuns has yu spotted for one of us, an’ they’ll treat yu accordin’.”
The boy shrugged. “I had to admit he was right. I wouldn’t have had no chance alone. So I promised myself I’d cut loose o’ them the minnit we got to Tucson again, give myself up an’ take the consequences. We was headin’ south when we seen yu an’ Green runnin’ ahead o’ that Chiricahua war-party.”
“Green,” she said with a tiny grimace. “He’s no better than that – that half-breed!”
“I ain’t so shore,” Rusty told her. “I heard o’ plenty o’ men with Sudden’s kind o’ reputation gettin’ crimes pinned on them they never done.”
“How can you defend him?” she asked in amazement. “He is a murderer, wanted by the law!”
“So’m I,” he reminded her flatly.
She shook her head. “It isn’t the same, Rusty; don’t deny it. The name of Sudden is synonymous with gunfighting and killing.”
“Mebbe,” Rusty admitted. “Allasame, I can’t picture him murderin’ defenseless Injuns for their scalps like Quincy, nor enjoyin’ it like Shiloh Platt. Nope, bar Miss Davis, I mean—” he stopped in confusion.
The girl touched his hand shyly. “Barbara is fine, Rusty,” she told him.
“Wal – Barbara,” Rusty hoped the gulp was soundless. “I was goin’ to say: if we got any chance o’ gettin’ out o’ this alive, I’m bettin’ it’s Jim who’s going to pull it off.”
“You like him, don’t you?” she said, wonderingly.
“I reckon he’s square,” Rusty told her. “But even if he ain’t, I want yu to know one thing: I’ll do the best I can to see yu come to no harm.”
The girl bent her head, a slow flush mounting to her cheeks.
To cover her confusion, she stammered “I want you to know – I believe you, Rusty. About why you had to join up with Platt, and what happened in Bisbee. When we get back—” Her voice faltered for a moment, and she said despairingly, “Oh, Rusty do you think we shall ever reach Tucson alive?”
“Shore we will,” he said, trying to put an assurance into his words that he was far from feeling.
Eady broke the silence.
“Yu boys ain’t told me yet huccome yo’re ridin’ in these parts anyways.” When neither Quincy nor Shiloh replied he asked a question of Sudden: “Yu boys allus ride together?”
The Texan shook his head. “We ain’t together,” he said flatly.
“Jest – teamed up,” added Shiloh Platt, and then: “Yu found any gold up in the mountains, Eady?”
“Enough to eat with,” was the terse reply. “How long yu boys been scalphuntin’?”
The air went electric at these casual words from the old timer, who watched their reactions carefully as he spoke them. Quincy broke the tension with a harsh laugh.
“Dunno what yo’re talkin’ about,” he said. “We ain’t scalphunters, we’re prospectors. Like yu, old timer.”
“Yu ain’t like me an’ don’t yu ever think hit,” Eady snapped. “An’ don’t think I’m so old I gone blind. I seen the scalps on yore saddles. Yu ain’t no more prospectors than I’m the King o’ China.”
Shiloh rose lazily from his chair by the window “Okay,” he said softly. “So we’re scalphunters. So what, yu ol” goat?”
The old man shrugged. “I jest wanted to sort things out in my haid,” he replied. “Yu boys oughta know that the ’paches don’t take kindly to scalphunters. Yo’re bad luck in this country, an’ that’s sartin. If we get out o’ this bilin’ yu boys brung with yu, I’m servin’ yu notice: I’ll be cuttin’ loose. I don’t want to be within ten miles o’ yu if them Cheery-cows ketch yu.”
“They ain’t goin’ to ketch us, old man,” sneered Shiloh. “Yu can bet yore boots on that.”
“Hit ain’t my boots; it’s my skin what’s up for grabs,” retorted the grizzled oldster unabashed. He turned to face Sudden. “Yu ain’t exackly over-talkin’ yoreself,” he observed. “Yu another o’ this breed?” He jerked a contemptuous thumb at Shiloh.
“Mister Green is an adventurer,” Barbara Davis interposed, overhearing the question as she and Rusty rose from the table. Rusty laid a restraining hand upon her arm, but she shook it off, without anger. “You probably know him by his better-known name: Sudden.”
Eady whistled. “So…yo�
�re Sudden, are yu? I heard a lot o’ tales about yu,” he told the Texan. “Some good; some not so good. Usually operate alone, don’t yu?”
“He operates wherever the money is best, I’m sure,” Barbara Davis said with an edge in her tone. Eady nodded absently, a frown creasing his brow. Sudden felt that the old man sensed something amiss, some hint of the tension between Sudden and the scalphunters, but before he could speak, Shiloh Platt yelled “Here they come!” and levered a stutter of shots out of his window.
The men leaped for their positions like well-trained troops, their guns scything a hail of bullets across the yard. The Apaches had sneaked up to the corral wall and then, en masse, vaulted it and were running flat out for the house heads down, as if ignoring the very presence of the deadly guns.
“They been makin’ medicine,” Sudden shouted. “They figger they’re bulletproof. Prove ’em wrong!”
His twin six-guns laid down a withering arc of fire from the window at which he stood, blasting out in what sounded like a continuous staccato explosion. Quincy’s Winchester, the booming roar of Eady’s buffalo gun, the sharper bark of the six-guns, all mingled with the whirr of deadly arrows and the hiss of slugs, the shrill Apache yells, combining in a hell of sound that deadened the eardrums and suspended time, stifling the brain until the hands fired the hot guns as if motivated by clockwork, the stiff arms lifting the weapons automatically.
Again the Apaches fell back, their charge stopped dead in its tracks. There were seven more sprawled bodies in the corral outside.
“Jest look at that, will yu,” Quincy exclaimed. “There’s five hundred simoleons a layin’ out there in the sun jest a-waitin’ to be collected.”
“Go on out an’ collect, then,” Shiloh grinned.
“Thank yu kindly,” Quincy said. “Business is jest a mite confinin’ at the moment.”
“Yu got more brains than I give yu credit for,” Eady remarked idly, drawing a black look from the scar-faced one. “Hush, what’s that?”
They listened but could hear nothing. Tucson said as much.
“Hell, yu wouldn’t a’ heard it if the Dragoons fell down,” Eady snorted contemptuously. “I thought I heard horses.”
“They could be pullin’ back,” Sudden guessed.
“Bah,” exclaimed Shiloh Platt. “Yo’re dreamin’.”
Again the silence fell. An hour stole away and then another.
No sounds came from outside, and after a while they heard a bird twitter. Eady looked at Sudden and cocked an eyebrow.
“That ain’t no Injun,” he observed.
Had the Apaches truly gone? Had the punishing defeat made them give up in disgust and return to their stronghold? The Texan felt sure that Juano would not allow them to leave this land with so many of his warriors dead. He edged to the window. The twilight was stealing up from the deeper shadows of the arroyo like a sneak-thief.
“Yu think they’ve skedaddled, Jim?” Rusty asked.
“I reckon not,” was the reply. “But there’s on’y one way to make shore.” Without another word, Sudden eased himself over the window sill, and before any of them could stop him, he had vanished into the death-still silence beyond the empty corral.
Chapter Ten
Twenty minutes later, Sudden was back inside the house, brushing the clinging dust from his clothes as everyone clustered around, their faces eager for news of what he had seen.
“They ain’t gone,” he announced. “They’re down by the crick bed over yonder, mebbe quarter of a mile. I could see the belly-fires. Couldn’t get too close, but I heard enough to know they ain’t pleased with theirselves. They’re fillin’ their bellies with tiswin to get theirselves fired up again for tomorrow.”
His listeners looked grim at this depressing news. Rusty reached out to touch Barbara Davis’s hand, and this sympathetic gesture brought a shy smile to her face.
“That’s bad news, Sudden,” Quincy rumbled. “We can’t hold out indefinite.”
“My thoughts exackly,” the Texan said. “Which is why we’re goin’ to make a run for it.”
They looked at the smiling puncher as if he had miraculously grown a second pair of arms. Shiloh Platt put their feelings into astonished words: “Yu loco, Sudden?”
“Yu ain’t gettin’ me out there with them bucks pirootin’ around full o’ cactus juice,” added Quincy. “I’m kinda attached to my hair.”
“Then keep it on an’ lissen,” was Sudden’s economical comment. “If we stay here, one o’ two things is bound to happen: either we run out o’ water, which’d be bad enough, or wuss – we’ll run out o’ bullets.”
There was a chilled silence. Sudden’s even assessment of their predicament was an accurate one, and it took little enough imagination to picture what would happen to them if the Apaches had the station still surrounded when all the ammunition had gone.
“Hell, mebbe we c’n wait ’em out,” Shiloh said.
“An’ mebbe we can’t,” Eady added. “Green’s right; we’re boxed an’ them red divils know it. All they gotta do is wait. And they’ll do it.” He turned to Sudden. “What’s yore idea, Green?”
“It’s a long shot,” Sudden replied. “An’ mighty chancy. I’m reckonin’ on yore help, Eady.”
“Yu got it,” was the short reply. “Fire away.”
“It means I got to trust yu, too, Quincy,” Sudden said to the scar faced man. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Why, Sudden, what a thing to say!” exclaimed Shiloh, in mock tones of hurt feelings.
Green made no reply to this, but began to outline the idea he had had while skulking near the Apache camp. The Chiricahuas had lost a large number of their warriors during the fighting, and they were depressed and getting greedily drunk. The Apaches, he went on, abhorred night fighting not because it hampered them in any way but simply because they believed that the darkness was filled with the wandering spirits of their dead, and that these spirits would be displeased at anyone who disturbed their peace.
“I’m guessing that if we provided ’em with a few “ghosts” it might just stampede ’em long enough for us to get out o’ here an’ make a run for it.”
“She’s a mighty long shot, boy,” the old prospector told him.
“I know it,” was the quiet reply. “’Bout the on’y one we got, all the same.”
“S’posin’ yore idea works, Jim,” Rusty interposed. “Won’t they still come after us when they catch on we’ve slid out?”
Sudden nodded. “Shore they will. Which is why I’m suggestin’ that instead o’ headin’ direct down the valley for Tucson we head straight into the desert, goin’ south.”
“The desert? Yu want us to cross the desert?” squalled Shiloh Platt. “What the hell for?”
“Cause it’s about the last thing they’ll be expextin’ us to do,” Sudden told him. “If we can build up a lead, we can get close to Fort Cochise afore they ketch up, an’ mebbe they’ll veer off on account o’ the military patrols.”
“They’s a lot of “ifs” in thar, Jim,” Eady remarked.
“That’s sartin shore,” grinned the Texan. “Danged near as many as there is if we stay here.”
“I don’t fancy crossin’ the desert in summer none a-tall, I’m tellin’ yu,” grumbled Quincy. “It gets mighty hot out there.”
“Hit gits hot in Hades, too, Quincy!” rapped old Eady, “an’ that’s whar yu’ll wind up sartin if yu set here an’ wait for a merrycle.”
“Yu can take yore pick,” Sudden informed him coldly. “Stay here an’ be Injun-bait, or run the way they’ll expect you to run. Either way yu’ll lose yore precious hair.”
“How yu reckonin’ on us gettin’ clear, Jim?” Rusty asked, silencing the squabble.
“When them war whoops see me’ n Eady, there oughta be some hootin’ an’ hollerin’ goin’ on,” the Texan said. “Yu’ll hear it clear. The minnit yu do, scratch dirt away from here. Ride due south. We’ll ketch yu later, so don’t go blazin’ away at us when
we come a-runnin’ – jest in case yu got any ideas along them lines, Shiloh,” he said coldly, “remember that the sound o’ the shots’ll carry plenty far in the night, an’ Apaches has purty sharp ears.”
He returned his attention to Rusty. “Load up some food, all the water yu can carry. Be ready to go the minnit yu hear yellin’.” He paused for a moment, to regard them all soberly. “If yu hear shootin’, however – sit tight. Any shots fired’ll mean our li’l dodge came unstuck, an’ we been took. Yu’ll have to do the best yu can for yoreselves: Eady ’n me won’t be interested – much.”
This cool acceptance of the possibility of his own death at the hands of the bloodthirsty Apaches wrung an expression of admiration from even the slow-thinking Tucson.
“Yu’d do that – fer us?” he queried.
“On’y chance there is, Tucson,” was the smiling reply. “I ain’t plannin’ on gettin’ rubbed out unless it’s – unavoidable.” His face went serious as he spoke again to Rusty. “I’m relyin’ on yu to look after the young lady,” he reminded Rusty.
Rusty had absolutely no doubt what this tall drawling man who so composedly contemplated a grisly death meant, and he nodded. “Don’t yu fret none, Jim,” he told the older man. “She’ll be safe with me.”
A bold stare into Shiloh’s face followed these brave words, and the half-breed’s face darkened.
“Never doubted it for a minnit,” Sudden told him. “Quincy, here’s where I got to trust yu. If we pull ’er off, we’ll be comin’ back fast an’ anxious to leave. We don’t wanta waste time lookin’ for hosses what ain’t there – yu sabe?”
Quincy nodded. “I sabe,” he leered. “Yu reckon yu can trust me, Sudden?”
Tucson frowned and stepped in front of Quincy.
“Hell, Quince, yu wouldn’t set a man afoot in Apache country when he’s jest risked his life fer you, would yu?”
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