Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1) (9 page)

The
afternoon sun was beginning its slow slide down behind the
mountains as George Tate and Sudden left Hanging Rock. Heading
along the trail towards the Slash 8, the old rancher finally
allowed his bottled-up curiosity to spill forth, and addressed his
not-very-surprised employee with the query: ‘Jim, what in Hades
were yu up to back there at the Bank?’

‘
Well, seh,’ admitted Sudden with a wry smile, ‘I got to admit
I kinda twisted the fac’s by the tail a mite.’

‘
That’s shore puttin’ her mild,’ retorted Tate. ‘Why for did yu
tell de Witt that yarn about the herd? I shore don’t recall yore
mentionin’ any Marty Black buyin’ our beef.’

‘
Neither do I,’ grinned Sudden, ‘but he exists, which is all
that I was concerned with. As it turned out, de Witt had never
heard o’ Marty Black, but I couldn’t know that.’

‘
I don’t quite figger all this, Jim.Yu mind tellin’ me why our
deal with Newman was worth this smoke-screen? Unless yu figger de
Witt’s crooked which I find hard to believe.’

‘
What’s hard to believe? That I think de Witt ain’t square, or
the possibility that he ain’t anyway, irregardless of what I
think?’

‘
Don’t twist words, Jim.Spit her out straight,
boy.’

‘
Wal, I just had me the hunch in town that the fewer folks know
about our plans the less chance there is of anyone puttin’ a crimp
in them. Now de Witt may be as honest as the day’s long—although my
hunch is that he ain’t—but a word dropped carelessly can get to the
wrong ears just the same as if we posted notices all over the
valley advertizin’ what we aim to do.’

‘
Yu shore got me beat,’ muttered the old rancher. ‘But I allow
I share yore hunch about that banker feller.’

Sudden
looked at his employer inquiringly, and Tate continued, ‘Yu heard
me ask him if he was callin’ any other debts ?’

At
Sudden’s nod, Tate went on, ‘Reason I asked was I know durn well he
ain’t goin’ to pay no mine payroll with my measly couple o’
thousand. There ain’t no real big operation in these exceptin’
Barclay that could carry a loan heavy enough to make up the rest o’
that twenty thousand dollars. So where would the money come from?
An’ if there ain’t no other loans, then he’s callin' my loan for
some other reason—not to get enough money to make the payroll up.
Damn me if I can figger it out.’

‘
How friendly are de Witt an’ Barclay?’ Sudden’s question made
the old rancher turn sharply in his saddle and regard his employee
keenly.

‘
That’s a funny kinda question, Jim,’ he remarked.

‘
Funny or not, what’s the answer?’

‘
I don’t know as I could say. Barclay’s often away for weeks at
a time, an’ I wouldn’t know whether he sees a lot o’ de Witt or
nothin’ at all. I ain’t never heard nothing about them bein'
particularly pally. Why’d yu ask?’

‘
Well, I kind of expected Barclay to be in town today,’ Sudden
told him.

‘
I expect he’s away again,’ Tate said. ‘I seen his foreman,
Linkham, in town. Usually where yu see one, yu see the
other.’

Sudden’s
line of questioning had put the old man into a deep, thoughtful
mood, and they rode along in silence for a few miles. Soon they
entered a narrow defile, where tumbled rocks which in past ages had
fallen from the towering cliffs of the Needles lay scattered like
giant’s playthings alongside the trail. Not far ahead, Sudden knew,
lay the fork in the main trail which would lead them to the left,
skirting the foothills of the mountains along the well-worn trail
to the Slash 8. He reflected upon their conversation with the
banker, and was reviewing what had been said in his mind when his
hat was snatched from his head, and the ugly whisper of the bullet
blended with the double whiplash-crack of a rifle from the rocks
above them. Reacting without conscious thought, Sudden was out of
the saddle and prone on the ground in one fast, flowing movement,
and was relieved to see Tate following his example, rolling from
the saddle and hitting the dirt solidly a little further ahead. The
two horses, reins trailing, ran a few yards and then stopped,
ground hitched—as all western horses were trained to stand when the
reins trailed—and began to crop at the sparse grass bordering the
trail.

Levering
himself slightly up on his elbows, Sudden whispered to Tate, ‘He’s
up on the rocks, ahead somewhere. Cover me, an—’ He stopped
abruptly, with the chilling realization that the old rancher had
not stirred since falling from the saddle in what Sudden had
assumed was an evasive action. He now divined the reason, and
wormed his way forward to where the old man lay. He could hear the
old rancher’s stertorous breathing while he was still a couple of
yards away; when he reached the spot, he found Tate lying face
downward in the dirt. Sudden turned the old rancher over. Blood
drenched the front of Tate’s shirt, and the old man’s face was grey
and drawn in the half light. Sudden had looked upon Death many
times; the old rancher had not long to live. He lifted Tate’s head
gently, and the rancher opened his eyes. Gradually, they came into
focus, and he spoke.

‘
Hurt … bad,’ he whispered weakly. ‘Said … they’d … get…
me.’

‘
Take it easy, old-timer,’ murmured the cowboy. ‘I’ll get yu
some water.’

‘
No... don’t go!’ Tate grabbed Sudden’s shirt sleeve urgently.
‘Want...to...tell...yu some...thin’.’

‘
Hell, it can wait,’ said Sudden, through gritted teeth. ‘I got
to get yu to a doctor.’

‘
Wastin’ … yore … time. Tate managed a faint grin. ‘Jim … the
ranch.’

Alarm
and worry erased the pain momentarily from the lined old
face.

‘
Don’t yu worry none about the ranch. I’ll take care of
things,’ Sudden assured him.

‘
Pringle … knows … our deal.’ The old man sighed; a trickle of
blood coursed from his grey lips He struggled to sit up, his eyes
wide. ‘Grace … take care .... ’

‘
Shore,’ Sudden told him softly. ‘I’ll take care o’ Grace. Rest
easy, ol’ timer. I got to get yu home.’

‘
Home.’ A sigh escaped the old rancher’s lips, and with an
imperceptible movement, his body slowly relaxed in Sudden’s arms.
The cowboy let Tate’s head slowly and gently down to the ground,
knowing that the old man was dead. Sudden’s lips were compressed
into a thin line, and his eyes were the color of arctic seas. With
a deft movement, he drew his guns, and eased away from the
body.

A quick
glance around; then he moved slowly forward, scanning the
surrounding rocks to check whether the ambusher had moved down
nearer the trail for a second attempt. Everything was deathly
still. The cowboy nodded to himself.

‘
I got a hunch Mister Bushwhacker is gone,’ he told himself,
‘but there’s only one way to be shore.’

So
saying, he stood upright, poised for an instant dive to the shelter
of the shadowed ground. No shot greeted this daring exposure of his
unprotected body, and he stood for a moment, lining up angles and
distances. Off to the right, a very faint path, running at almost
right angles to the trail, offered a possibility, and he moved on
silent feet towards it. Peering closely at the hard earth, the
Slash 8 man detected signs that the surface of the path had
recently been disturbed, and, although the light was failing
rapidly, he followed the track upwards into the jumbled rocks
overlooking the trail. Here, a snapped-off twig on a sagebrush;
there, a minute sign which would have escaped eyes less keen, told
him that he was on the right track. Bending low, scanning the
ground, he found further traces that someone had passed this way.
Bruised grass not yet returned to its normal upright position, the
faint impress of a boot heel on the hardened ground, were
sufficient to enable him to hazard a guess as to the bushwhacker’s
probable route. For perhaps another fifty yards he thrust his way
through the fringe of brush and jumbled rocks, and eventually
straightened up with a sigh. Here was the place he had been
seeking.

Shadowed
by a twisted juniper tree, and screened from below by the bushes,
was a flat rock which bore several scratches, and a soft small
thread of red cotton caught on a protruding Hint. Two indentations
in the soft earth had been caused by the toes of the ambusher’s
boots as he lay prone on the rock watching the trail. Lying in the
same position, Sudden could see the trail clearly, and the two
horses cropping the grass not far from the sprawled body of George
Tate.

‘
Easy as A-B-C,’ he told himself.

A dull
gleam of metal caught his eye, and he stooped quickly. From a
crevice between the rocks he fished out a cartridge
shell.

‘
Remington repeater—they ain’t so common.’

Nearby
he found hoofmarks where a horse had been tethered, and followed
the horse’s tracks down from the ambuscade until they reached the
main trail and were lost in the churned multitude of tracks.
Knowing it would be impossible to track the killer further, he
retraced his steps, and was back beside his own horse when the
thunder of approaching hoofs sent him fleetly into a shadowed cleft
beside the trail where he waited, guns drawn and cocked.

Within
moments, Dave Haynes and Gimpy thundered into the clearing around a
bend in the trail, pulling their horses into a rearing halt as they
saw the sprawled figure on the ground, and the crouched menacing
form of Sudden.

‘
Hell’s bells, Jim,’ swore Gimpy, ‘what’s happened?’

‘
We was in the north pasture,’ explained Dave, ‘an’ we heard
shots. We come a-runnin’!’

‘
Pity yu couldn’t have got here about ten minutes earlier,’
remarked Sudden, grimly, as a muffled oath came from Gimpy, who had
dismounted and was kneeling by George Tate’s body.

‘
Hell’s flames, the old man’s cashed. Who done it,
Jim?’

‘
I didn’t get a look at him,’ Sudden admitted. ‘We was sittin’
ducks.’

He
recounted the circumstances of the ambush, and the details of his
discoveries in the rocks above.

‘
Well, there’s plenty o’ red shirts around these parts, so
that’s no help. But there can’t be many Remington repeaters
hereabouts.’ Gimpy’s voice was fiat with anger. ‘Let’s start by
ridin’ over to the Barclay spread an’ askin’ some leadin’
questions.’

‘
Now that’d be plumb foolish, not to mention dangerous,’ Sudden
said mildly. ‘We got no proof that the Box B is involved in this,
an’ even if we had, we couldn’t just barge in there an’ demand to
see all their guns. They’d show us them, all right—muzzles first.
No, I’m thinkin’ we’ll keep our bushwackin’ friend’s Remington a
secret for a while. No use tippin’ our hands?

‘
Shucks, yo’re right, o’ course,’ admitted Gimpy. ‘I kinda lost
my wool for a minnit, Jim —seein’ the ol’ man like this ....
’

‘
I know,’ Sudden said gently. ‘Yu been with him a long
time.’

Gimpy
shook his head and did not answer, but brought the rancher’s horse
across and threw his own saddle blanket across Tate’s saddle. The
grisly task of roping the old man’s body to his saddle was
accomplished in grim silence, a silence not broken by any of them
the whole way back to the Slash 8. Only the grimly set jaws and the
slitted eyes spoke of a reckoning to come.

The next
morning, Sudden dispatched Gimpy to Hanging Rock with instructions
to send a telegram to Tate’s daughter in New York and to inform the
Sheriff of the murder of the old rancher.

‘
Tell him we want a full inquiry,’ he instructed
Gimpy.

“
That fat fool,’ growled the grizzled old cowboy. ‘He couldn’t
even spell the word.’

Sudden
had nodded. ‘I’m guessin’ yo’re right,’ he had said, ‘but we got to
play her Simple Simon at the moment, an’ besides, we want
everythin’ down on paper for when the old man’s daughter finally
gets here, don’t we?’

Gimpy had nodded reluctantly. ‘I guess yo’re doin’ her the
right way, Jim.It’s just that I feel like saddlin’ up an’ doin’ me
some man-huntin’. I can’t nohow stand this foolin’ around with
technicalities?’

‘
Way I see her,’ Sudden reflected, ‘there’ll be a few questions
about me takin’ control of the Slash 8. Let’s set them at rest
afore we raise any others.’

The old
cowpuncher had snorted something about what he’d do to anyone
asking him questions about the running of the Slash 8, but had none
the less saddled his horse and pounded off down the trail towards
town. An hour or two later, Tate’s tarpaulin—covered body was laid
gently in the buckboard, driven by Cookie, and the Slash 8 headed
in Gimpy’s wake.

Hanging
Rock was in a ferment when the heavily armed cavalcade from the
Slash 8 appeared on the trail outside the town. ’Loungers scurried
into Dutchy’s to claim vantage points for the forthcoming
‘inquiry’. The news of this was already common knowledge throughout
the town, and Sudden had already specified that Burkhart’s saloon
should be the place for , the inquiry to be held. It was to this
destination that the Slash 8 contingent now came with their sad
burden. As they pulled up alongside the saloon, Sheriff Brady came
hulling along the boardwalk.