Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 (16 page)

If it frightened Sudden he
gave no indication of it, but said, ‘Yu better not!
Fade!’

Appleby turned on his heel
without a word and rushed out of the house, his face like thunder.
The men inside watched him go in astonishment, turning towards
Sudden, who brought Susan in from the kitchen with him. As
Appleby’s horse thundered off up the trail he told them with a
smile, ‘Miss Susan just turned down the Marshal’s marriage offer.
He’s so peeved about it I’d misdoubt he’ll be around for a while.’
He shook his head when they bombarded him with further questions,
and taking the girl by the arm, he led her back into the
kitchen.

‘Yu look like yu need yore
mind takin’ off yore own troubles,’ he told her. A faint smile
broke through her troubled, expression and Sudden smiled in
response. ‘I brung an ol’ pack-rat back here with me who ain’t et
nothin’ but beans an’ bacon for so long he’s plain slaverin’ at the
smells comin’ out o’ this kitchen. Ol’ Doc Green’s goin’ to
prescribe a course o’ feedin’ an’ fattenin’ for him, an’ a course
o’ lookin’ after lost sheep for yu. By the way, how’s yore
patient?’

With a startled ‘Oh!’ Susan
remembered her charge
in
the small bedroom, and ran eagerly towards
it.

‘Looks like he’s no worse,’
Sudden told himself, with a smile. Then his expression hardened as
he looked
through the window to where the
faint haze of dust raised by Appleby’s horse still sparkled
brightly in the sunlight.

LAFE GUNNISON
was in a foul mood. Dancy, who had seen the storm
brewing, had wisely found something requiring his attention
elsewhere. The rest of the hands were out about their daily chores.
The cook, who poked his head around the door to find out if the
boss wanted any more coffee, was stampeded back to his kitchen by a
blistering round of invective.

‘Dang me if workin’ here
don’t git more like bein’ in the Army every day,’ muttered that
worthy. ‘If yu don’t do it yu gets chewed out, an’ when yu offer to
do it yu gets chewed out. Dang me if the Army ain’t better, come to
think of it!’ Continuing his complaints under his breath, the
panhandler rattled angrily amid his cluttered pots and
pans.

The old man inside did not
hear him, any more than he watched the clouds drifting across the
cerulean sky through the grimy windows of the ranch house. His mind
was circling like a fox in a foot-trap, trying to pin down some
small thing that he had heard, somewhere, some hint that remained
in his mind and gnawed away, spoiling his sleep, his digestion, and
his peace of mind.

Silently he catalogued his
worries: the constant loss of cattle reported by Dancy, and Randy’s
continued harping upon them, and his insistence that the
homesteaders would eventually steal the Saber from under his, Lafe
Gunnison’s, nose, while he sat and vacillated. Against this he had
to set the visit of the cool-talking cowboy from the Mesquites, who
had so contemptuously dismissed the danger inherent in riding on to
Saber land, and who had claimed that the attempted assassination of
Susan Harris and the boy – what was it he called himself?
Philadelphia – might have been carried out by
someone on Saber. Gunnison felt now as he had felt when he
first talked to the man called Green. Something told him, assured
him, convinced him, that Green was more than just another drifting
cowboy and anything but a liar. And that boy … the amazing
resemblance had shaken him more than he cared to admit. While every
fiber of him cried out to believe, he denied himself the luxury of
sentimentality. It was coincidence, no more. Impossible! His mind
was still revolving around the same thoughts when his son came into
the room and sprawled into a chair near the window. Lafe Gunnison
eyed his offspring with distaste.

‘Decided to honor us with
yore presence again, eh?’ he growled. ‘When I was yore age I was
chousing cows at daybreak, ’stead o’ lollin’ in bed until
mid-mornin’.’

‘Father, please don’t start
all that again,’ Randy protested. ‘My head’s aching.’

‘If yu can’t handle yore
likker, stay away from Tyler’s,’ growled the old man. He rumbled on
about Randy’s constant habit of leaving without saying where he was
going, staying away without giving anyone any notion of
when he would be back Randy Gunnison sat and
listened sullenly to the tirade. His father was a dull old fool,
Randy felt, who had nothing in his head except cattle. There was
plenty of money, but his father could think of nothing to do with
it except spend it on more improvements to Saber. Even the yearly
trips to St. Louis or Phoenix were long, boring rounds of
whisky-drinking with other cattlemen, buyers, drovers, full of
dreary reminiscences about tawdry cattle towns and long-dead
companions.

‘The sooner the old fool
dies the better,’ Randy thought viciously. But he knew his father
was as tough as rawhide; it would be years. Randy Gunnison sat
wishing for some act of providence, some accident to strike the old
man down. ‘If I had the ranch,’ he thought, ‘it would change
things!’ As he thought it, however, a cold sense of dread closed in
on him and he imagined what this hugely powerful man who was his
father might do if he had any inkling of the things in which his
son was involved. At least, Randy told himself, it was going
to
mean money now, instead of in ten or
twenty years’ time when the old fool cashed in his
checks.

‘He’ll never die,’ Randy
whispered to himself. ‘Never.’ In his half-hearing, the diatribe
continued as Lafe Gunnison paced the floor. Same old story, Randy
thought wearily, I’ve heard it so many times … maybe it was because
I never had a mother … how much he wished she’d left Hank and taken
Randy instead … how hard he had worked to make something of himself
… started off as a thirty a month cowboy and built this ranch from
nothing with these hands … Randy turned off his hearing again as
his father ranted on. With some difficulty he recalled what had
started this off, and then remembered that he had some news which
would at least stem the avalanche of words.

‘If you’ll let me speak,’
he told his father coldly, ‘I’ll tell you some news which will make
you very glad I went to Yavapai.’

‘Yu waster, what could yu
tell me to make me glad except the news yu’d had yore head
changed?’

‘Father, stop yelling and
listen to me. Two men were killed in Yavapai yesterday. Their names
were Johnstone and Newley. Aren’t you interested?’

The old man had stopped in mid-stride,
thunderstruck.

‘What’s that yu say?
Killed? Who killed them? Who?’ He crossed the room in two strides
and stood towering over his son. ‘If yu had anythin’ to do with it
…’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,
Father!’ snapped the younger man. ‘If you’ll be quiet for a minute
I’ll tell you. Shouting at the top of your voice isn’t going to
help.’

The old man nodded, swallowed deeply, and
retreated. He sat down heavily on the arm of an old chair.

‘Go ahead,’ he
ordered.

Randy Gunnison proceeded to
describe the events of the preceding day in vivid detail, relishing
the look on his father’s face. He described how the two
homesteaders had come into the saloon in Yavapai, their mild
quarrel with the gunman Cameron, and the violent events which had
ensued in the street. He omitted only that he had
seen the
whole affair from
the vantage point of a bedroom window over Tyler’s, in a room
occupied by one of
the girls employed
there. A faint sneer crossed Randy’s face. Maybe I ought to tell
him just to see what he’d
do
,
he
thought. The old fool’d probably have a stroke. With an effort he
put these thoughts aside and paid attention to the question his
father was repeating, impatiently this time.

‘I asked yu – is his name
Wes Cameron?’ When Randy indicated that this was so, the old man
asked, ‘How long has he been in town?’

‘I don’t know. A day or
two. Not long.’

‘Appleby allowin’ a killer
like that to stay in town ain’t my idea o’ good town-Marshalin’,’
growled Gunnison.

‘I heard they had a run-in
of sorts,’ Randy said. ‘Appleby agreed to some kind of truce as
long as Cameron didn’t get involved in any trouble. He braced
Cameron after the fight and Cameron backed him down.’

‘Tom Appleby backed down?’
The old man frowned. ‘That ain’t like him.’

‘It was a clear case of
self-defense. There were dozens of witnesses. Nothing Tom could
have done.’

‘So he’s still in
town?’

‘Cameron? Yes, and I can’t
see anyone making him leave until he’s good and ready. The man’s a
born killer.’

‘Nobody’s a born killer,
boy,’ the old man told him. ‘Yu got to learn it.’

Randy remembered what he had been told to
say.

‘There was some talk that
Harris might be behind it.’

Lafe Gunnison looked as if his son had just
offered to sell him the moon.

‘Yu must be plumb loco!’ he
grated. ‘Why for would Harris hire his neighbors
killed?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’
said Randy cunningly, ‘unless he was trying to get control of their
land for some reason.’

‘I can’t see it, just the
same,’ the rancher said.

‘Well … who gets the land?
Answer me that!’ snapped Randy.

‘It ain’t logical—’
Gunnison began, but his son did not allow him to continue his
sentence.

‘No, not to you,’ sneered
Randy. ‘You’ll wait until it’s
too late,
hoping that in the end they’ll turn out to be decent fellows and
live and let live. If Harris gets control of all that land up there
you’ll never shift him off it! And if you think we’re losing stock
now you wait until he’s got a hard-case crew up there. This
Cameron, that other one, Green, they’re the same breed.’

Old Lafe Gunnison looked at his son with a
strange light coming into his eyes.

‘Yu don’t think much o’ me,
do yu, boy?’

‘My dear father, what has
that got to do with what we’re discussing?’

‘Let me ask yu a question,
Randy.’ There was an intent gleam in Lafe Gunnison’s eyes. He rose
from the chair and stood tall, facing his sprawling son. ‘Whyfor’re
yu so keen to make me get into a fight with Jake
Harris?’

Randy stood up and faced his father.

‘Because if you don’t, then
one of these days he’ll bring a fight here and that will be the end
of Saber!’

Lafe Gunnison shook his
head. ‘It ain’t that yo’re chewin’ on, Randy. Yo’re just a shade
too anxious to shape my thinkin’, an’ a shade too shore I’m stupid
enough to be swayed by yu.’

Randolph Gunnison’s eyes
began to shift warily. What was the old fool leading up
to?

‘Another question, then,’
continued Lafe Gunnison remorselessly. ‘What makes yu so shore I
didn’t hire Cameron myself?’

The panic welled into Randy
Gunnison’s eyes and he shrank back in his chair.

‘Why … I know you didn’t …
wouldn’t do anything like …’ Randy licked his lips desperately.
‘You’re mad! What’s wrong with you? Why are you asking me all these
questions? You’ve no right …’

Lafe Gunnison advanced upon his cringing
son. Muscles swelled in his neck and shoulders as the anger built
in him.

‘Tell me, damn yore eyes!’
he roared. ‘How are yu so shore?’

‘I’m … you’re not … I don’t
know what you mean,’ squealed the younger man. ‘You’re mad! What
are you saying? I only said what I heard …’

Lafe Gunnison grabbed his
son’s shirt in a hand like a
side of beef,
and hauled Randolph Gunnison up until his son’s toes were almost
off the ground, handling him as if he were a small boy. The old
man’s face was suffused with anger.

‘Who told yu?’ he
thundered. ‘Who said it?’

His ham-like hand slapped
Randy’s face, leaving a red weal across the cheekbone. Randy’s head
swung to the left, to be slashed back again by the returning hand.
Another right, and then backhand left brought tears of rage into
Randolph Gunnison’s eyes and a spittle of hatred formed at the
corners of his split mouth.

‘Tell – me – damn – yu! How
– are – yu – so – shore?’

Hatred and venomous fear
boiled in the younger Gunnison’s heart. ‘He’ll kill me!’ was his
desperate thought as he struggled ineffectually to free himself
from his father’s iron grasp. ‘Damn you, let go of me!’ he
shrilled. Lafe Gunnison ignored his son’s protests, shaking him
like a rat, and his right hand rose again to deliver yet another
series of those stunning blows. It never landed. With a snake-like
twist Randy reached beneath his coat and whipped from beneath his
arm a deadly little snub-nosed Derringer pistol. Almost without
volition he thrust it against his father’s body and pulled the
trigger. The noise of the shot was muffled, but the old man lurched
backwards as if he had been hit with a sledgehammer, and fell with
a crash which seemed to rock the house. Smoke rose from the
scorched shirt. He did not move.

Like a trapped animal, sobs
tearing at his throat, Randy leaped towards the window. His first
hasty glance at the open yard revealed no sign of any of the men,
and he realized with a thrill of fear and excitement that they were
out on the range, that apart from the cook there was no one around.
He stood stock still, listening like a hunted beast. There was no
sound from the kitchen. The cook was probably in one of the other
buildings. If … his mind cast wildly about for ideas while his eyes
fell upon the sprawled body of his father on the floor.