Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 02 - Sudden(1933) (45 page)

 
          
Some
o’ yu may think it was a sneaky way o’ doin’, but, when yu go after a wolf yu
don’t give him a chance to bite, an’ if I’d come out into the open, how long
would I ‘a’ lasted, marshal or no?

 
          
Well,
I got Mart an’ Sim, an’ would ‘a’ got King in time, doin’ this yer town the
biggest service any fella could.” He affected a jocularity he was by no means
feeling as he nodded at the deputy-sheriff. “Me an’ yu was workin’ on the same
job, an’ if yu’d come to me at the start it might ‘a’ bin put through in better
shape.”

 
          
He
slumped back in his chair and mopped his brow, conscious of excited whispering.
His story was clever, plausible, and daring. Because the Burdettes were a
threat to the town he had made war upon them. His methods might be
questionable, but he was not the first law-officer to strain his powers and
shoot a criminal instead of arresting him; such a procedure was only too common
in those turbulent times. These fools would swallow it, was his thought. Then
he looked at his accuser, and shivered; here was a man who would not. For in
the narrowed eyes he read the scornful disbelief of one who knows what he has
heard to be untrue. Sudden’s voice, coldly impassive, told him that the battle
was not yet over.

 
          
“Slype,
yu are a liar from yore toes up. The two crimes yu have confessed to
were
committed not by virtue of yore office but for yore own
ends. When yu murdered Old Man Burdette …”

 
          
“Gawd
A’mighty, did Slippery do that too?” Weldon shouted, and his remark was
followed by profane expressions of astonishment from all parts of the room.

 
          
“…
an’ let the C P be suspected, yore object was to bring the ill-feeling between
the two ranches to an open rupture. Yore plan seemed to be succeedin’ when King
shot young Purdie an’ let Luce shoulder the blame.”

 
          
Sudden
heard a muttered exclamation, and knew that Purdie’s last lingering doubt of
his daughter’s suitor had vanished. For the rest, some nodded meaningly as if
to say they had known it all along, while others appeared incredulous. Slype,
scanning their faces narrowly, took his cue from the latter.

 
          
“Easy
to pin things on a fella if yu kill him first,” he scoffed. “Yu ain’t proved anythin’
yet. Why should I want the Purdies an’ Burdettes a-scrappin’?”

 
          
“So
that, if they wiped one another out, yu could grab their ranches—yu knew
neither o’ the families had any kin. Also, yu wanted Cal’s gold mine,” Sudden
said sternly, and then his voice changed. “Yu played ze beeg game, senor.” So
life-like was the imitation that the marshal started and glanced fearfully
round the room, almost convinced that it was the dead Mexican who had spoken.
He had a swift vision of the pain-wrecked, twisted body, with its wide-open,
glazing eyes, lying in the sun-drenched gully. The puncher’s next words
dispelled the illusion.

 
          
“No,
Ramon is not here, Slype; yu made shore o’ that. Do yu remember thè leetle
story’ he told before yu shot him down?”

 
          
Under
the shock of this further blow the marshal shivered. What else did he
know,
this saturnine devil of a deputy-sheriff who had
dropped from the clouds? He tried to think, but his brain seemed to be
paralysed. The net was closing, he was in deadly peril,
he
must say something—but
what? When at length his trembling lips formed
the words he did not recognize his own voice:

 
          
“He
tried to down me.”

 
          
Sudden’s
expression was withering. “What’s the use o’ lyin’—Ramon never went for a
weapon,” he said. “Me an’ Bill Yago, up on the rim, saw an’ heard everythin’.
Yu an’ the Mex were sittin’ face to face. Yu folded yore arms, an’ when he made
his proposition, yu pulled that double-barrelled derringer yu wear under yore
left shoulder, shot him twice, an’ galloped away.

 
          
He
warn’t dead when we got to him, an’ he signed this before he cashed in.”

 
          
The
scrap of paper he produced passed rapidly from hand to hand, the eyes of each
man as he read it going to the drooping figure in the chair. Somehow the
marshal seemed to have shrunk, his clothes hung loosely upon him. In an ashen
mask, his eyes were cavernous pools of stark fear. He realized that he was
doomed; one look at the ring of silent, relentless faces was enough to tell him
this. He knew these men—had drank and gamed with many of them—and yet, they
would hang him and go back to their work or play with a scornful jest on their
lips. He had, without a qualm, hurled others into the unknown, and now the Dark
Destroyer was at his own elbow; a few moments of agony and then—what? The
thought appalled him; terror spurred his frozen faculties to action; in a
hoarse, unnatural voice he made his last bid.

 
          
“Green,
yo’re an officer o’ the law; I demand to be taken to the country seat.”

 
          
It
was his only chance. The country seat was weeks distant; he might escape on the
journey. Even if he did not, a smart lawyer could find excuses for putting off
the trial; the jury would be composed of strangers; in the lapse of time
evidence might cease to be available. In any case he would procure a respite,
and to the abject, broken wretch who felt death clawing at his throat, a few
weeks, days, or even hours seemed a priceless boon. Shaking as with an ague, he
looked fearfully at the man who held his fate in his hands. The deputy-sheriff’s
face was that of a statue, his eyes cold, expressionless.

 
          
“I
don’t remember any talk o’ the country seat when yu were lettin’ ‘em
hang
Luce Burdette,” he said slowly; and the cowering man in
the chair knew that he was being condemned.

 
          
“When
I came here the Governor gave me a free hand.” He paused a moment, considering.

 
          
Slype’s
lips moved, but no sound came from them. Sudden’s narrowed gaze swept the
silent assembly, and when he spoke again his words fell like hammer-blows upon
the numbed brain of the man to whom they were addressed.

 
          
“These
men made yu marshall it is for them to judge yu.”

 
          
As
the puncher passed through the empty bar Slype’s agonized accents followed him.
He could vision the fellow, crazed by the dread of death, frantically appealing
on his knees for the mercy he could not hope to receive. Hesitation claimed him
for an instant, and then another picture presented itself—that of a little
grey-eyed man who had said sternly, “Make a clean job of it.”

 
          
He
went on, out into the sunlight.

 
          
Some
weeks later a rider, on a big black horse, paced slowly in the direction of the
tiny cemetery. It was early morning, and the oblique rays of the rising sun
filtered through the foliage and
blotched
the track
along which he rode with dancing splashes of shadow. There were little currents
of air, pine-laden, and the whistling of the birds accentuated the silent
peacefulness. In the depths of the valley an opalescent haze was lifting.

 
          
Sudden
had said good-bye to the C P, and it had not been easy. To all Purdie’s
offers—they had been more than generous—he had but one reply:

 
          
“That
little Governor fella will
be wantin’
my repawt.”

 
          
To
the young couple who owed him so
much,
and the outfit
generally, he used the same excuse, but to Bill Yago —whose pride in his
promotion to the post of foreman was entirely submerged by the fact that in
gaining it he lost a friend—he gave a different reason—he had another task. And
Bill, who knew what
it
was, snorted in disgust.

 
          
“Aw,
hell, yu’ll never find them hombres, Jim.”

 
          
“Not
if I wait for ‘em to come to me, ol-timer,” Sudden had replied. “No, I got a
good reason for goin’ an’ none for stoppin’—now.”

 
          
Which
cryptic remark Yago might have better understood had he seen his late foreman
bending over the recent grave to lay upon it an armful of blooms gathered in a
certain glade which had taken him somewhat out of his way. And Bill would
scarcely have known him. The hard lines which playing a man’s part in a world
of men had graven upon his young face had gone, the steel-like eyes which could
be so forbidding were gentle, even misty.

 
          
“Yu
was fond o’ flowers,” he said softly. “I won’t be here, but Miss Nan has

promised
…”

 
          
And
then, after a pause, “I wish he had got me.”

 
          
He
rose and stood, hat in hand, looking down upon the simple mound beneath which
lay the gay, tempestuous girl who had given her life for him. What freak of
fate had brought her to this wild corner of the world? Misfortune, a spirit of
adventure inherited from some filibustering forbear—she had Spanish blood in
her—or a rank rebellion against the restraints of civilization?

 
          
He
would never know now.

 
          
“I
reckon Life gave yu a raw deal, ma’am,” he whispered. “Mebbe Death will
be—kinder.”

 
          
Slowly
mounting his horse, he turned to face a world which, all at once, seemed
strangely empty.

 
          
The
End