Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 (24 page)

Off to the left now he
could just distinguish a dark mass which he realized must be the
wooden bridge across Borracho Creek. A quick glance over his
shoulder revealed no sign of the rest of the pursuers. He smiled
grimly to himself.

‘He’s got to slow down for
Borracho Creek,’ he thought. ‘Them crick sides are too steep to
ride down at that speed.’ Then, ‘My Gawd!’

This last expletive was
occasioned as Appleby, without slacking his horse’s speed one iota,
hit the edge of Borracho Creek and went over. The horse tried
frantically to keep its balance as its forefeet slid on the steep
creek banks, the clay giving no purchase. With the double load,
however, the animal could not stay upright, and with a scream that
echoed shrilly across the now-silent prairie the horse fell
forward, throwing its rider and his prisoner over its head. Susan
Harris lay where she had fallen, stunned; but Appleby by some
miracle was unhurt, and scrambled to the shelter of some large
rocks scattered along the creek bed.

Pulling his mount to a
sliding stop, Sudden threw himself to the ground as Appleby’s shots
whined about his head. Slowly the puncher edged forward. Risking a
quick glance around the side of the rock behind which he was
crouched, he was just in time to discern, through the veil of rain,
Appleby’s form scuttling up the creek towards another jumble of
rocks. He threw a hasty shot at the fugitive, and edged forward.
Below him he could see Susan Harris; she was stirring slightly as
the drumming rain revived her. Sudden was wet through now, and he
chanced a quick dash forward, hoping that the bad light and the
rain would spoil Appleby’s aim. Several shots whined about him
ineffectually as he slithered behind another rock, just at the edge
of the creek bed. The rain had turned into a torrent now, and
thunder crashed incessantly above them. From the south another
thunder-roll, different in intensity and tone, caught his attention
momentarily, but he dismissed the distraction as he concentrated
upon his inch-by-inch forward progress. He slithered over the edge
of the creek bed. Totally exposed now to Appleby’s shots, he rolled
over on to his left side, trying to grasp the damp clay, to
get enough purchase to throw a shot at Appleby if
the lawman showed himself. His slide stopped when his questing hand
clutched a sparse tuft of grama grass, and he found himself within
a few feet of Susan Harris.

‘Yu all right, ma’am?’ he
asked.

‘Yes … I think so. Is … is
he …?’

‘No, he ain’t. I lost sight
o’ him. I think he’s behind those rocks over there. Can yu
move?’

‘I’ll try,’ she said
gamely. But when she moved her leg she paled, her face twisted with
pain. ‘It’s my ankle,’ she moaned. ‘I think I’ve twisted
it.’

Green reached his left hand
for her, digging his heels into the clay bank for purchase. It was
no good. Her dead weight was too much for him to move one-handed.
He holstered his revolver and pulled the girl towards him, hearing
as he did so that same curious thunder that he had heard before,
but louder now, and nearer. In that same moment Tom Appleby slid
into sight over the edge of the creek bed, his gun cocked and aimed
at Sudden’s heart.

‘Well, well,’ he jeered,
panting. ‘Rescuin’ damsels in distress seems to be yore specialty,
Sudden. I’ll see it’s carved on yore tombstone.’ So saying, he
raised the six-shooter, his face distorted with hatred, while
Sudden, taking one last desperate gamble, rolled sideways away from
the expected shot, his mud-covered hand flashing for the holstered
gun at his side. Before he had drawn properly a shot thundered out,
and Appleby’s leg buckled under him. The shot which was to have
killed Sudden whined off into the darkness, and Sudden’s shot,
fired as he lay on his back supporting the dead weight of the girl,
took the lawman high in the chest, sending him rearing upwards,
toppling backwards, falling against the top level of the creek bed
and sliding downwards at an angle on the rain-slick clay, to slump
huddled in a heap at the bottom. For a moment Sudden thought he
heard the man cursing him, but at that instant Philadelphia’s head
appeared above him, and the boy yelled, ‘Jim! Jim! Get up
here!
Get up! Run for it!’
The thunder Sudden had heard before was now a
roar, and it seemed to mount to monstrous proportions even as he
heard it. A cold chill touched Sudden as he realized what it
was.

Flash flood!

The heavy rains had
gathered in the low foothills until they were rivulets, then
streams, then together had channeled into this twisting creek bed
to form a roaring, raging monster of a river. He remembered Jake
Harris’s words to Philadelphia: ‘Keep a good fifty yards away if it
looks like rain in the hills!’ Philadelphia’s extended hand helped
him the last few feet up the side of the creek bed, and he
scrambled to his feet, lifting the girl as if she weighed no more
than a baby, and ran flat out up the slope and across the level
prairie to where he had left the horse, paced by the hobbling
Philadelphia. Behind them the thunder grew to incredible
proportions and through the murk they could see vaguely a churning
torrent of dark brown water sweeping along the creek bed towards
the Yavapai. They lay in the pouring rain. their lungs laboring, as
the water smashed down past them, hulling on its crest huge stones
and uprooted trees, smashing them to gravel and kindling, roaring
over the edges of the creek bed, lapping only a few yards from
where the two men and the girl lay. In a few seconds a raging
torrent filled the entire creek bed, and only the sound of the
hissing rain and a growl of far-off thunder could be heard. Sudden
looked bleakly at his companion, who stood with his arm about the
shoulders of the sobbing Susan Harris.

‘I guess he probably never
knew what hit him, huh, Jim?’ said Philadelphia.

Sudden nodded, a terrible
weariness descending upon him. ‘I guess not,’ he said, glad that
the boy had not heard Appleby’s final, terrible scream.

Two minutes later the townspeople found
them.

A
WEEK
had passed, and much had
happened. Governor Bleke had returned to Tucson, and already the
new Marshal he had appointed was on his way to Yavapai.

A crowd of irate townsfolk,
led by Gunnison’s crew from the Saber, had stormed into Riverton
and, after a running chase, captured Ranee Fontaine. The fat man,
Vince, had died defiantly, guns blazing to the last, cut down by a
hail of bullets from the posse. Fontaine had been hung from the
nearest tree. Jim Dancy had been buried on Boot Hill alongside his
partner in crime, Randy Gunnison. The body of the villainous
Marshal of Yavapai had never been found.

Old Lafe Gunnison, now
rapidly recovering from his wound, had sent one of his riders
across to the Mesquites with a note asking Sudden and Philadelphia
to ride across to see him. The Saber rider, whose name was Higgins,
answered one of Sudden’s questions with a grin.

‘Jack Mado? I’d rigger he
was halfway to Montana by now. He must’a’ been in Tyler’s when
Dancy made his play, an’ sneaked out while the goin’ was
good.’

‘At that, he got a better
break than he deserved!’ growled Jake Harris.

‘He was just a tool,’
Sudden told him. ‘I misdoubt he knowed much about what was goin’
on. He probably just done what Randy tol’ him, ’thout worryin’ much
about the meanin’ o’ what he was doin’.’

Sudden and Philadelphia
saddled up and accompanied Higgins back to the Saber, where they
were welcomed by the burly old rancher, now looking considerably
more like the man they had met here those many days past. Sudden
remarked upon this fact with a grin, and Gunnison
nodded.

‘Feelin’ better, too,’ he
said. ‘Like havin’ a poison ’arrer pulled outa yore hide. Can’t do
nothin’ but good.’

As they entered the house the cook bustled
in with coffee, a sly grin on his face.

‘Never thought I’d see the
day we was feedin’ them damn’ nesters, boss,’ he told
Gunnison.

‘Yu better get used to it,’
the rancher told him. ‘I’m thinkin’ we’ll be doin’ it a lot
more.’

After a while the rancher turned to
Sudden.

‘I’m interested to know how
yu finally cottoned on to Appleby’s scheme, Jim,’ he said. ‘I had
him figgered as straight.’

‘So did I, at first,’
Sudden replied. ‘I reckon yu could
say it
was process of elimination what done it.’

‘How so?’ queried
Gunnison.

‘Well, seh, it allus seemed
mighty strange to me that a man who owned the Saber’d be
small-minded enough to want the homesteaders off their land –
accordin’ to the stories Appleby told Harris – one minnit an’ then
write to the Governor askin’ him to send someone to investigate
things the next.’

‘I tell yu, writin’ them
letters was the best thing I ever done,’ Gunnison told the two
men.

‘O’ course, yu mighta been
foxy enough to write to Bleke in order to throw suspicion off
yoreself,’ smiled Sudden. ‘However, there was any number o’ men in
Tucson who was willing to swear that Lafe Gunnison was straight as
a die, an’ about as subtle as a stampede. After I talked with yu I
agreed with them. Overhearin’ Dancy in yore stables gave me the
clue I needed that somethin’ was happenin’ on Saber without yore
knowin’.’

‘An’ yu knowed Harris was
straight?’ asked Gunnison.

‘I knew nothin’ to start
off with,’ Sudden replied. ‘But I didn’t have to live on the JH
long to know Jake had no part in stealin’ yore beef. So – the
process of elimination. There wasn’t many other candidates. Trouble
was tryin’ to prove it. If Randy had really killed yu – if he
hadn’t panicked in the courtroom – Appleby’d probably be a free man
today.’

‘A smilin’ damned villain,’
roared Gunnison, ‘who turned a son agin his own father for a measly
sack o’ dollars!’

‘Yu gotta remember, seh,’
Sudden put in slyly, ‘that Appleby didn’t know the money was
worthless. An’ he stood to win irregardless. The way he planned it,
somebody was goin’ to be forced out o’ the valley. If yu went to
war agin Harris, one o’ yu jugheads would’a’ been killed. If Harris
was forced out, Appleby would’a’ filed on his land. If yu was
killed, he had the Saber. I’m guessin’ Randy was next on Appleby’s
list for killin’, anyway.’

‘He had it tied up pretty
neat,’ commented Philadelphia.

‘That’s for shore,’ agreed
Sudden. ‘He on’y made one mistake: tryin’ to pin yore death on me,
‘thout thinkin’
about it long enough. I’m
guessin’ he was stampeded some – he shore didn’t plan on Randy
tryin’ to kill yu.’

‘That – that ingrate!’
choked Gunnison. ‘To think my own son …’ Words failed him, and he
struggled for a moment with his own private grief. After a moment
he straightened, and bent his attention on Philadelphia.

‘There’s somethin’ else I
been meaning to talk to yu about,’ he said. ‘When yu was lookin’
after me on Harris’s place … it kept comin’ to me … somethin’ I
thought when I first seen yu, boy. I ast Susan Harris about yu. She
told me what yu’d told her about yoreself.

Philadelphia looked at the rancher in
bewilderment.

‘I don’t foller yore drift,
seh,’ he told Gunnison.

‘Yu will in a minnit,’
Gunnison smiled. ‘Yore name’s Henry Sloane, I’m told. How come yu
got that name “Philadelphia”?’

‘Shucks, that’s easy, seh,’
interposed Sudden. ‘I gave him that moniker when he told us where
he come from.’

Gunnison looked hard at the youngster.

‘Yu recall yore mother’s
name, boy?’

‘Of course,’ Philadelphia
said, nettled. ‘It was.’

‘Diane – right?’ Gunnison’s
face was wreathed in a self-satisfied smile.

Philadelphia nodded. ‘But
how—?’ he began.

‘How do I know? I know more
than that, boy. Let me tell yu what I know. Yore mother’s name was
Diane; her maiden name was Diane Lloyd Sloane. She married a
good-for-nothin’ puncher, an’ they settled down to raise a family
on a small spread down near Prescott. After her second son was born
she was mighty ill. She went back East to recuperate, an’ her
family convinced her it would be a damn foolish thing to go back to
the life that had near killed her. They got their family doctor to
tell her so; and she stayed, keepin’ her son with her. She’d left
her eldest boy with her husband.’

Philadelphia’s eyes were
wide, his mouth hung slack at these details about his own life that
he had never known.

‘How … how do yu know all
this?’ he whispered.

‘Hell, boy, it ought a be
easy to figger. Diane Sloane was my wife! She was yore mother! When
her family talked her into stayin’ with them she went back to usin’
her maiden name. Yu was brought up thinkin’ it was the
on’y one yu had. But it ain’t. Yore name is Henry
Gunnison – my youngest son – Hank!’

There were tears in the old
rancher’s eyes, and Philadelphia stood trembling at the revelations
he had just heard, his own eyes swimming. He looked at Sudden with
a plea in his expression and, nodding, the puncher rose and left
the two of them alone. Outside he rolled a cigarette and blew smoke
at the stars.

‘If that don’t beat all,’
he told himself. ‘Well, I reckon that takes care o’ the kid’s
future. An’ Sue Harris’s, too, or I miss my bet.’ He flicked the
butt of the cigarette into the yard, where it spun in a shower of
sparks against the dark earth. Sudden straightened and turned to go
in once again. There was a trace of sadness in his face, and for a
moment, with all the hard lines erased from his expression, he
looked curiously young and lost.