Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (20 page)

‘Depends,’ his companion said.
‘It’s pretty easy to get into the habit o’ lettin’ someone else do
yore thinkin’ for yu. Once that happens, every day that passes
makes it tougher to think for yoreself ag’in.’

‘Shucks, Jim,’ scoffed Billy. ‘I
ain’t never felt thataway.’

‘Yu ain’t, mebbe,’ Sudden reminded
him, ‘but mebbe a few o’ the men in this town has. An’ they ain’t
shore that gettin’ rid o’ one problem ain’t just takin’ on another.
So they’re sittin’ tight, waitin’. If we come out o’ this alive,
they ain’t no wuss off than afore. If we don’t, then they ain’t
goin’ to have Sim Cotton takin’ after them for sidin’ with
us.’

Billy made a rueful face. ‘I hadn’t
given it much thought along them lines,’ he admitted. ‘Could be
yo’re right. Yu’ve bin right about ’most everythin’ else.’ He bent
a frowning gaze upon his friend. ‘I dunno how yu do it. Yu ain’t
exactly elderly—’

‘Well, thanks for that,’ murmured
Green.

‘An’ yet yo’re wise to the way all
kinds o’ different folks see things. I ain’t never seen a man so
fast on the draw as yu are, but yu ain’t that much older than me.
How come, Jim?’

‘Just luck, I guess,’ came the
reply, but Sudden’s voice was far from light. Behind it Billy
Hornby sensed a deep sadness and knew, without being sure why, that
his words had burned deep into some corner of his companion’s
thoughts like salt rubbed into an open scratch.

‘Hell, Jim, I shore didn’t mean to
pry—’ he began, but Sudden cut him off with a gesture.

‘Forget it,’ he smiled. ‘Yu wasn’t
to know. Some fellers has to learn the ropes in different schools
to others, that’s all.’

His mind went back into his own
past. He saw himself again as he had once been, a thin,
half-starved youngster roaming around the southwestern territories,
more or less the property of the old Paiute horse-trader who had
raised him. He recalled the nomadic life, the slow turning of the
seasons as they had moved from place to place, the eventual
discovery that the Indian was not his father. And then the years
with Bill Evesham. The kindly old rancher had taken a fancy to the
nameless boy and ‘bought’ him from the old Paiute, given him a
name, a name which Sudden had discarded after the events which set
him upon the trail of the two men he had vowed to his dying
benefactor that he would find.’

‘I shore can’t believe that all
this has happened in on’y one day,’ Billy began again tentatively.
‘Seems like half a lifetime to me.’

At these hesitantly spoken words,
Sudden shook off his thoughts of the past. ‘I’m gettin’ worse’n an
old-timer,’ he chided himself. ‘Next thing yu know I’ll be
chatterin’ about the good ol’ days.’ To the boy he said: ‘Yo’re
right. She’s been a’mighty long day. Makes yu realize what them men
in the Alamo went through when Santy Anna was tellin’ his band to
play the
deguello.’

Billy knocked on the wooden wall
and whistled. ‘I hope she don’t come out the same way,’ he said,
with a shiver.

‘We got a fifty-fifty chance,
anyways,’ Sudden told him. ‘Sim Cotton shore ain’t got the weight
he had when all this started. He’s lost twelve men to our
two.’

‘That still leaves him mebbe three
or four—not countin’ hisself, an’ I’m thinkin’ yu’d have to hump
yoreself, good as yu are, to beat Sim Cotton to the draw,
Jim.’

Sudden looked up. ‘He’s fast, is
he?’

‘Like a rattler,’ confirmed Billy.
‘He don’t make no play about it, but some as have seen him in
action reckon he could’ve given that Texas outlaw, Sudden, a run
for his money.’

To this last remark the puncher made no reply, but
the grim lines around his mouth deepened slightly. For the fiftieth
time he wondered how, and when, the next move would come.

It came about half an hour later.

Billy Hornby had eased himself
carefully upwards to peer out from his vantage point at the window.
As his eyes swept the empty street, he straightened quickly, gun
cocked and ready. Noting the boy’s reaction, Sudden was already
rising swiftly and moving to his own window as the boy hissed
excitedly, ‘They’re wavin’ some kind o’ flag out o’ the jailhouse
window.’

A glance confirmed to Sudden that a disembodied arm
was indeed waving a dirty white rag tied to the end of a stick from
the window across the street.

‘Flag o’ truce?’ he muttered.
‘What the devil—?’

Even as the words left his lips, the figure of a man
stumbled out of the jailhouse door, faltering on the threshold as
though unwilling to move further. Obviously someone had ordered him
to go out into the silent, unwelcoming street, and was now
insisting that the man proceed, however reluctantly. There was no
mistaking the furtive stance, the unshaven visage, the stained and
disreputable clothes.

‘Kilpatrick!’ breathed Billy. ‘An’
he shore ain’t keen on his work.’

The decrepit old lawyer stepped tentatively towards
the street, the sagging banner raised high in one hand.

‘Parley!’ he called hoarsely.
‘Flag o’ truce!’

‘Looks like they wanta palaver,’
suggested Billy. ‘If that ol’ goat can make hisself heard over the
noise o’ his knees knockin’.’

Sudden smiled. ‘He looks a mite
nervous,’ he allowed, then raising his voice, called ‘Come ahead,
Judge — but come careful!’

‘I ain’t heeled!’ screeched
Kilpatrick, stopping in mid-stride in the center of the dusty
street. ‘Don’t shoot! I ain’t heeled!’

‘Yu better not be!’ rapped Sudden.
‘Come ahead an’ say yore piece — but yore friends better not get
any ideas: I’m tetchy jest
now, an’ if
anyone makes me jump I’d just nacherly shoot yu right through the
gullet.’

Kilpatrick’s scrawny Adam’s apple
bobbed as he swallowed
deeply. Billy Hornby
squinted along the barrel of his gun laid
steady on the sill of the window. ‘Shore is a real temptin’
target,’
he suggested.

‘It is at that,’ agreed Sudden,
‘but yu couldn’t pull the trigger any more’n I could.’

Billy sighed. ‘Yo’re right, o’
course. I’m thinkin’ I may regret it, just the same, afore
tomorrow.’

Kilpatrick stood stock still in the
street. Sweat trickled down
his wrinkled
jowls, glistening on his stubbled cheeks, soaking his
shirt. It was clear to those watching that he was
even having trouble holding the flag steady.

‘Nerves playin’ yu up, Judge?’
called Sudden, sardonically. ‘Yu wasn’t so shaky this
mornin’.’

A fleeting expression of hatred
twisted Kilpatrick’s face, to be
quickly
concealed. But Sudden had seen the look and knew his jibing words
had found their mark.

‘I ain’t shaky now, damn yu!’
snapped Kilpatrick, a vestige of
his old
asperity returning to his voice. ‘I’m offerin’ yu a chance
to
ride out o’ this town afore it’s too
late.’

‘Yo’re
offerin’ us a chance?’ Sudden’s voice was stiletto
cold.

‘Sim Cotton is willing to let you
ride out of here and no hard feelings,’ continued the old
man.

‘Mighty generous o’ him,’ retorted
the puncher. ‘What’s the catch — there’s gotta be one.’

‘The terms are simple, Green. Turn
the boy over to Sim and
you ride out of
here alive. Refuse, and you’ll be carried out dead —
both of you.’

The old voice was dry with venom.
Kilpatrick squinted up at the blank windows of the stable. ‘You
hear me, Green?’

‘I hear yu,’ came Sudden’s flat
reply. ‘Now yu hear me, yu
mangy ol’ goat.
Get back off the street afore I put a slug in yore
worthless hide, an’ tell yore boss I’d sooner make
a deal with Satan!’

Kilpatrick made one more attempt, his voice
quavering.

‘Yo’re making a mistake,
Green!’

Sudden’s reply was not in words.
Without seeming to aim, he
planted a shot
within an inch of Kilpatrick’s right toe, the bullet chunking a
gout of dust upwards. The old man leaped as though
stung, his eyes bugging, a shrill screech issuing
from his throat as he broke in
voiceless
terror, dropping the grubby flag of truce and scuttling back
towards the jailhouse like a frightened rabbit. A ragged rattle of
covering fire spattered into the walls of the stable as the two men
ducked down.

Sudden grinned across at Billy, who
grinned back. Then Billy’s face turned serious.

‘Jim, I’m thankin’ yu again,’ he
essayed. ‘Yu coulda rid out o’ here.’

‘Shucks, I wouldn’t get twenty
yards afore I got a slug in the back, an’ yu know it,’ Sudden said,
‘so don’t bother thankin’ me none. I’m allus inclined to play
things safe.’

‘Shore,’ Billy said, mock scorn in
his voice. ‘Yu play things safe. An’ I’m Ulysses S.
Grant.’

The puncher’s smile widened.
‘Thought yu looked familiar,’ he said. ‘Must be the beard.’ Then
before the boy could suitably reply he went on, ‘Sim Cotton must be
gettin’ worried to try somethin’ like that. What yu reckon he’s up
to?’

‘Search me,’ said Billy, ‘but
whatever it is, it ain’t no good.’ It was not to be many minutes
before the two men were to discover the truth of this
statement.

While Kilpatrick had distracted the
attention of the two men in the livery stable, Sim Cotton’s men had
been busy. Two of them had sneaked up to the northern end of the
town, using the houses as cover. One of them was the man called
Ricky, a dirty bandanna tied around the lacerated scalp which had
been the result of his earlier collision with the puncher. The
other Cottonwood man, a burly fellow named Rolfe, lumbered along
behind. They entered the vacant general store, where Rolfe
appropriated two large metal drums of kerosene. Then they scuttled
across the empty street, out of sight of the two men in the stable,
and worked their way down behind the bank, then the saloon, until
they were close to the blind northern wall of the stable. They
could see Kilpatrick in the street, and hear his exchange with the
puncher.

Rolfe, the kerosene drums swinging
at his side, looked questioningly at Ricky, who was piling refuse,
dried leaves, bits of brushwood and any other rubbish which he
could lay his hands upon, against the wall of the stable. When
Ricky at last nodded, Rolfe swung the drums to the ground. Tearing
the cap off one, he sloshed its contents heedlessly upon the pile
of refuse. Ricky, following suit, splashed the contents of the
second drum up against the walls, soaking the dusty timber and the
ground around the bonfire. The canister, now half empty, he laid
upon the top of the pile, and then and then stood back, hands on
hips, surveying the results of their efforts.

‘Yu think it’ll work?’ whispered
Rolfe hoarsely.

‘It better,’ his companion told
him grimly, ‘or Sim Cotton’s finished, an’ so are we.’

Rolfe nodded. Sim Cotton’s plan had
been murderously simple: to distract the men in the stable with a
phony parley while giving his men the opportunity to prepare this
last-ditch attempt at forcing the besieged men into the
open.

Ricky raised a hand as a signal,
and then with a gesture to Rolfe to move out, struck a match and
tossed it on to the kerosene-drenched pile. The kerosene ignited
with a slight
whoomp
and then the seeking flames bit deeply into the pile of
rubbish and brushwood. Within a few seconds, long hungry tongues of
questing flame were reaching up the side of the livery stable,
blistering the ancient paintwork, feasting joyously upon the
bleached wood of the building, as Sudden’s contemptuous shot put
Martin Kilpatrick to flight, and the two Cottonwood men faded back
and headed by their circuitous route towards the
jailhouse.

Sim Cotton, from his vantage point
in the jailhouse, had watched the developments in the street with a
cold and pitiless smile. Kilpatrick’s discomfiture — he did not
deign to turn as the old man stumbled in from the street, fighting
for breath and rigid with fear — was a tiny price to pay for the
chance to lay these two rebels by the heels. Sim Cotton’s mind had
callously totaled the odds and found them wanting. Somehow,
incredibly, this sardonic drifter and a dirt-poor youth had broken
his hold on this valley, had cut his crew down until now there was
only himself and two riders. His lip curled: he knew exactly how
long he would have the loyalty of the remaining two if this last,
desperate gambit failed.

‘Dawgs,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Yeller dawgs. They figger if I win they’ll get a bigger cut, an’
if I lose they can crawfish out.’ His black brain planned, twisted,
discarded, appraised. The cowboy, Green, had he sent for the U.S.
Marshal? Was he bluffing or not? Sim Cotton shook his head. He
could not take that chance. If a U.S. Marshal was on his way, then
Green and the boy must be dead before he arrived.

He glanced contemptuously at the huddled figure of
Martin Kilpatrick, wheezing still in the darkened corner of the
room.

‘Old fool,’ he thought, callously.
‘Pity that slug didn’t put him out o’ his misery.’

At this moment the rear door
opened, and Ricky and Rolfe came in. Cotton lowered his
quickly-cocked gun.