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

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘One o’ the things they did teach a man real good was how to make prisoners talk. They was real experts. I never seen a man that could last fifteen minutes. They either talked fast, or they never talked no more.’

  Catching Sudden’s intent, Dave played up to it. He saw Parr’s eyes roll white in the approaching dusk, and asked a question. ·

  ‘They ever teach yu any o’ them tricks to make a man talk?’

  An almost imperceptible nod and grin showed that Green had appreciated Dave’s quickness of wit in divining his intention.

  ‘Shore,’ he said. ‘I was just thinkin’, maybe I oughta practice up a mite. Parr here knows a few things we need to know. Maybe he’ll tell us about them without any persuasion, though.’ Parr spat an obscenity.

  ‘One o’ the tough ones,’ Green smiled coldly. ‘They sometimes last about three minutes longer.’ He then went on to talk in low, even tones, about the days of the Indian wars, of ‘

  Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, upon whose face no white man had ever looked and lived to speak about. He described the savagery of a Comanche raid, the tactics of the wheel attack, and spent some minutes going into particular detail about the contributions various Southwestern tribes had made to medical knowledge with their variations upon the themes of torture and murder. A fleeting glance towards the huddled form of their prisoner revealed that this was having its effect, and at this moment, Sudden ostentatiously withdrew a Bowie knife from. his saddle bags and thrust the long blade into the glowing embers of the fire that he had built when tending Dave’s wounds. He then went into the brush and rummaged around there for a few moments, returning with a stout branch four feet in length, which he proceeded to strip of its branches. This, he also thrust into the coals. Parr watched this performance with eyes which had suddenly become fear-widened and white-rimmed.

  ‘What … what are yu doin’?’ he trembled out.

  Green ignored the question completely, and hunkered down beside his partner.

  ‘I better warn yu—this ain’t pretty,’ he warned Dave.

  ‘Good!’ enthused that worthy. ‘I’m hopin’ Parr’s got more guts than I think he has, so yu can give him a real workin’ over. I’m a-goin’ to enjoy this!’

  Green nodded, then walked over to Parr, whose bonds he then deliberately and methodically tested. Nodding once more, he turned away from the prisoner and withdrew the now red-hot knife from the fire. Hefting it carefully, he turned back to the prone man, who uttered a moaning scream and tried in vain to wriggle away from his tormentor. Green’s face was hard and unrelenting.

  ‘Parr,’ he intoned, ‘there ain’t anybody within fifty miles o’ here, an’ even if there was, I misdoubt they’d want to save yore soul. Yo’re scum, an’ anythin’ I do to yu is piddlin’ compared with what yu got comin’. Now: I want some information m’ I want it fast!’ He waved the glowing blade of the knife in front of Parr’s sweating face.

  ‘Yu—yu can’t!’ Parr gasped. ‘Yu wouldn’t … yo’re a white man. Yu wouldn’t pull an Injun trick like that .... ’

  ‘I could an’ I will,’ Green said grimly, ‘unless yore jaw loosens some. First question: who’s yore boss?’

  Parr hesitated. Then, incredibly, he shook his head. Fear of Sudden was one thing; fear of Barclay and Linkham was another. He did not really believe that Green would use Indian torture on him.

  ‘Yo’re a fool!’ snapped Sudden, ‘an’ I got no time for fools.’

  He bent and ripped away the front of Parr’s shirt. Holding Parr’s shoulder in a grip like steel, he brought the glowing knife blade inexorably closer to the shrinking skin. Writhing, sobbing, Parr tried to move away from the growing sear of the blade, but without success. When it was within half an inch of his body, he broke, and sobbed wildly, ‘Barclay! Barclay hired me! Damn it! Yu, put that thing away!’

  ‘Barclay hired yu personal? Sudden insisted.

  ‘No, not personal. Linkham did all the hirin’, but he’s Barclay’s foreman. It’s the same thing.’

  ‘Yu reported to Linkham, then, not Barclay?

  ‘Yes, yes, I told yu, yes! Put that damned knife down .... ’

  ‘Right, full marks so far. Now the big question, Parr: who ramrods the Shadows?’

  Parr’s face tightened. ‘I can’t tell yu that—they’d kill me fer shore!’

  ‘Yu think I’m likely to give yu a medal?’ snapped Green harshly. He brought the knife back in front of Parr’s eyes. ‘Talk, damn yu!’

  ‘Linkham! Linkham runs the Shadows?

  ‘Yo’re shore?’

  E Parr nodded vehemently. ‘There’s eight of them: Morley, Smith, Callaghan, Roberts, MacAlmon, a fellow called Ray, an’ Bull Pardoe. He’s in charge when Linkham ain’t there, which is most o’ the time.’

  ‘Is he the big broken-nosed fellow?’

  Parr nodded, eager to please now, his resistance gone completely. ‘Bull don’t give no orders, though. They only do what Link tells them. The rest of the time they hole up.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a canyon I could take yu there,’ Parr said. A fleeting expression of cunning momentarily lighting his foxy eyes.

  ‘Yu ain’t goin’ anyplace, Parr,’ Sudden told him coldly, ‘so don’t strain yore tiny little brain. Yu just tell me where they hole up—an’ don’t lie to me. I’d take exception to it.’ He gestured with the knife again.

  ‘A canyon, I told yu,’ Parr blurted hastily. ‘I’m tellin’ yu the truth. Yu head up northwest through the Badlands along the bases o’ these hills until yu come to a canyon. Yu’ll know it ’cause they’s some rocks that look like a lizard. The canyon looks like a blind draw, but it opens into a little valley. There’s a shack there. That’s where they hole up.’

  Green looked dubious. He regarded the prisoner for a moment, and then said, ‘Parr, I think yo’re lyin’—’

  ‘No!’ screeched Parr, ‘I ain’t! Yu got to believe me!’

  Green shook his head and thrust the Bowie knife back into the fire.

  ‘Green, yu can’t!’ screamed Parr. ‘I’ve been there. It’s the truth. I’ve told yu the truth. The truth!’

  Sudden, his back towards Parr, smiled to himself. Then, nodding as if coming to a decision, he turned and faced the prisoner.

  ‘I’ll take a look.’ He turned back to Dave. ‘Can yu get back to the Slash 8 on yore own?’

  Dave’s face turned sullen. ‘Hell, Jim, I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Let me come with yu.’

  ‘No, Dave. If yu can get back to the ranch, I want yu there. I’m goin’ to mosey up an’ take a look for this shack. If I ain’t back inside o’ forty-eight hours, get over to Judge Pringle at South Bend an’ tell him what happened. He’ll know what to do. Now don’t argue with me, Dave. I got a feelin’ yo’re goin’ to be needed at the ranch, an’ yu got to get that shoulder looked after.’

  Dave grumbled mightily, but he knew in his heart that Green was right; in this condition, he would be a hindrance to the foreman.

  Sudden turned now to Parr. ‘I’m turnin’ yu loose, Parr,’ he told the wide-eyed prisoner. ‘I’d guess from the look o’ yore face that yore old bosses have given yu marchin’ orders. I’m reinforcin’ whatever they told yu. Get outa this country, pronto. If I hear o’ yore bein’ seen around here, I’ll take after yu personally.’ He bent and whispered something to Parr, who recoiled and looked at him in amazement. ·

  ‘Yo’re—’

  ‘Yes, I am!’ Sudden interrupted, ‘so yu know I ain’t just talkin’.’ He slashed the man’s bonds, and pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Git!’ he told the battered Parr. Stumbling, uncertain, terrified, the bandit mounted his horse and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘Yu reckon that was wise, Jim?’ Dave asked; ‘He might go straight to warn them yo’re comin’.’

  ‘No,’ Sudden told him. ‘Parr is finished, an’ he knows it. He ain’t worth the price of a bullet. Let him go—we got bigger fish to fry.’

  Shortly afterwards, the two
men mounted their horses. Dave shook hands soberly with his friend.

  ‘Good luck, Jim,’ he said. Sudden smiled and moved off, leaving his friend watching as the tall, spare form of the man who had become his friend disappeared on the black horse into the blacker night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took Dave four hours’ straight riding to reach the Slash 8, and his hail was answered at the ranch house by Gimpy and Grace Tate, who appeared on the porch. Swaying slightly in the saddle, dust-caked, his shirt in tatters and the blood seeping slowly from his opened wound, Dave looked like the survivor of a massacre.

  The others came tumbling out of the bunkhouse, and tender hands helped Dave down from the saddle. He was taken into the house, where Grace Tate, dismissing his protests with a wave of the hand, took care of his wounded shoulder, exclaiming softly, while Dave related the events of the day in terse, rapid sentences. When he came to the events of Parr’s perfidious ambush, threatening sounds came from one or two of the Slash 8 men, and Shorty exclaimed, ‘Why, the dirty … !’

  Dave found himself unable to ignore the cool touch of Grace Tate’s hands as she efficiently dressed his aching shoulder. To occupy his thoughts, he asked those assembled whether anything had happened during his and Green’s absence.

  Gimpy nodded grimly, and receiving Grace’s permission to tell the story with a nod from her, he told Dave that he had ridden into Hanging Rock with Grace that morning to pay off their mortgage. When they had arrived at the bank, de Witt had received them with scant courtesy, and had insisted upon Sheriff Brady’s being present before he would discuss the mortgage on the Slash 8 with them.

  ‘What on earth would Brady need to be there for?’

  In sentences no less terse than those Dave had himself used, Gimpy told him of the events which had transpired in de Witt’s office. Brady had huffed in and taken his place beside the banker. Grace laid the money on the banker’s desk and asked him to count it. He did so, and then looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  ‘There are only fifteen hundred dollars here, Miss Tate,’ he said, surprise in his voice.

  Grace was nonplussed by his statement, and said as much. ‘I was under the impression that fifteen hundred dollars was the amount involved, Mr. de Witt.’

  ‘Then you have been misinformed, madam. That is the reason that I asked Sheriff Brady to come along.’ He delved into a drawer of his desk and produced a piece of paper. It was notepaper of the Hanging Rock Bank, and was in the form of a loan agreement between George Tate and the Bank. ‘You will see that the amount involved is, in fact, four thousand five hundred dollars,’ the banker told them coolly. ‘Surely you knew that?’

  ‘No, I did not, and I do not,’ Grace said, equally coldly. ‘I

  am sure there is some mistake, Mr. de Witt.’ f

  ‘That is your father’s signature, is it not, Miss Tate?’ asked de Witt. Grace nodded dumbly, and he continued, ‘Surely you must have known that the amount was larger than fifteen hundred dollars? You must have realized that I should hardly have called your mortgage for so small an amount?

  Stricken to silence by this revelation, Grace had simply stood there while the banker told her that, while he had been fully prepared to wait until she had sold her cattle to realize the money to pay off her mortgage, she would appreciate that he could no longer wait.

  ‘I am afraid that I shall have to foreclose on your mortgage de Witt said with finality, ‘unless you can raise the other three thousand dollars inside the original deadline. I am a man of honor, Miss Tate. I offered your man Green ten days. That concession still has forty-eight hours to run. I give you until then to raise the money. Failing that, I will ask Sheriff Brady to foreclose immediately upon the Slash 8, and sell the ranch in public auction. Sheriff?

  Brady had stepped forward, pompous and self-important. ‘Forty-eight hours,’ he snapped. ‘Then the Slash 8 goes up for sale.’

  Gimpy and the mistress of the Slash8 had left town like thieves; they both knew that there was not the slightest hope of their being able to raise three thousand dollars within the deadline so callously set by the banker.

  ‘So there we are,’ Gimpy said. ‘Yu ain’t the on’y one been havin’ fun.’

  ‘Brady can’t sell off the ranch,’ Dave said. ‘It ain’t legal!’

  ‘That’s the worst part of it, Dave,’ Grace told him sadly. ‘It is legal. Every bit of it is entirely legal and we cannot oppose it.’

  ‘I don’t swaller that so easy, ma’am,’ Dave said. ‘There’s a nigger in the woodpile here someplace.’

  ‘Oh, Dave, if only that were true! As it is, I feel I shall have to sell the ranch to Mr. Barclay.’

  ‘Sell to Barclay? Never!’ snapped Dave. ‘Yu can’t do that!’

  ‘David, I must. Barclay would at least pay what the ranch is worth. If I wait until the mortgage is foreclosed, I will not get a penny for the ranch; I’ll lose everything.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t figger,’ Dave mused. ‘Why should Barclay pay yu full price for the ranch when, if he waits forty-eight hours, he can get it for a song?’

  Grace flushed, then, chin high, admitted, ‘There was … a condition. Zachary Barclay asked me to marry him.’

  Dave stood up, shaking off the hands which tried to restrain him.

  ‘Marry that skunk? Yu can’t do that!’ His voice was thick with anger.

  ‘Oh?’ bridled Grace Tate. ‘And why not, may I ask?’

  ‘Because yo’re goin’ to marry me, that’s why!’ Dave snapped, and then, realizing what he had said, muttered half defiantly, his face burning, ‘That is … if yu’ll have me. When all this is … over.’

  Grace Tate looked at him, her eyes shining. He took her by the shoulders, and for a moment the pair of them were oblivious to the other occupants of the room.

  ‘Miss Grace, I had no right to say that,’ Dave said, ‘but I do have a right to say what I’m goin' to say now. I’m ridin’ for South Bend, an’ I’m bringin’ Judge Pringle back here. No matter what happens, no matter what Barclay offers yu, promise me yu’ll stall him off, do nothing, until I get back with Judge Pringle. Will yu promise me that much?’

  Grace nodded, raptly, and in the next moment, suddenly realized that she and Dave were anything but alone. Dave realized it simultaneously, and without another word, stumbled out of the house. In a moment, they heard the sound of his horse’s hoofs receding down the river trail. To cover her confusion, Grace turned to the crew and told them, ‘I am going to do what he said.’

  ‘That Eggers, ma’am,’ said Gimpy. Whereupon Grace flushed an even deeper scarlet and lied from the room.

  The towering face of the mesa frowned down on the parched desert floor below. Moving along the foot of the cliff, Sudden felt the strength of the sun, like a heavy weight on his shoulders, but his consuming interest in the whereabouts of the outlaw hideout effectively diverted his mind from his own discomfort. Presently, the canyon wall began to veer away to the left, and he found himself in a long, narrow canyon which grew narrower towards its far end about a mile distant, and which looked, from Sudden’s viewpoint, like a complete dead end. Above him, tumbled rocks took the form of a lizard.

  ‘Wonder if they keep a lookout posted? Sudden mused.

  ‘More’n likely. Better take no chances, although I shore don’t feel much like walkin’ in this heat.’

  He dismounted, and tethering Midnight to a clump of twisted thorn where there was shade and the horse could not be seen by any passing rider, Sudden took off his boots and began the slow approach towards the end of the canyon. By the time he reached the box wall an hour later, his feet were blistered and cut from the hot sharp rocks and the burning sand; but he disregarded these minor irritations as his keen eyes scanned the tumbled rock formations towering around him.

  'Now, if I wanted to keep my eye on this canyon, I reckon I’d I find me a spot with some shadow,’ he mused. ‘Which means on that slope over there.’ He lay prone on the rocks and slowly, methodi
cally, let his eyes range foot by foot across the tumbled terrain. Lizards scuttled across the rocks as he lay motionless.

  Once, a black shadow flickered over the rocks as a prowling buzzard weighed its chances of a meal. It veered off when Sudden rolled over to one side; this was no dead animal, and the ugly carrion bird is too much of a coward to attack anything which can defend itself. A half hour went by; an hour. After another fifteen minutes, Sudden’s patient scrutiny of the terrain was rewarded. About fifty yards higher up on the canyon wall, a shifting gleam of sunlight on metal revealed human presence.

  ‘On yore own are yu?’ wondered Sudden, aloud. ‘Well, we better go look; I don’t guess they’re expectin’ trouble, though.’

  Inch by inch, foot by careful foot, placing his weight carefully to avoid dislodging a stone or starting a small slide which would reveal his presence, the Slash 8 man moved in a large circle around and above his unsuspecting quarry. Presently, flattened against a high round pillar of rock, the hunter was rewarded by the sound of metal scraping against stone, a man coughing. Moving carefully-for he was well aware how sound can be deflected off rock and lead the hearer into misplacing its origin, Sudden closed in on the guard. Prone on his stomach, he peered around the edge of the rock, and was rewarded by the sight of a burly back. The guard was hunched behind a natural parapet of rock which commanded a view of the entire canyon opening. One glance was sufficient to tell the Slash 8 man that the guard was asleep. Moving like a shadow, Green drew his .45 and in a blur of movement closed in on the man and crashed the barrel of his gun down upon the drooping head. The guard keeled forward like a pole—axed steer, and a muffled snore emerged from his slack mouth. Sudden grinned.

  ‘Seemed like a shame to wake yu up,’ he murmured. Quickly and efficiently he bound the man’s hands and feet, then began his descent towards the hidden aperture to the valley beyond which, from this vantage point, it could be plainly seen.

  Back on the canyon floor, however, the screening brush effectively hid any trace of the narrow fissure in the rock walls which opened up into the hideout. Sudden shook his head in admiration.