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BORN TO DIE A SUCKER’S DEATH
As the man threw a leg over the sill of the window, Jody shot him through the body. The rifle hit the ground and the man smashed back into the house.
More gunfire fractured the hot and dusty air. This time it was the sheriff who was hit: he’d run from cover into the bullet-thick street.
‘My God,’ thought Jody. ‘I’m all alone!’
STORM 9: BLOOD ON THE HILLS
By Matt Chisholm
First Published by Mayflower Books in 1972
Copyright © 1972, 2015 by P. C. Watts
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: January 2015.
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
Jody Storm reckoned he was the biggest sucker ever born. He’d always suspected it. Now he was sure.
It happened this way.
He was riding along, minding his own business. Which was maybe a change for Jody.
And there was this man, sitting at the side of the trail. Just sitting there, smoking his pipe. A beefy, sunburned man with dark mustaches that were so long that they seemed to tickle the sides of his chin. He was dressed in a dark suit with black boots that came to his knees. He had a hard face and cold light-colored eyes. He could have been anything ranging from a cattleman in his town clothes to a tinhorn gambler. But he wasn’t anything within that range at all. As Jody was to learn.
As Jody rode up to him, the man lifted a hand and said: “Howdy.”
Jody stopped his red roan gelding and said: “Howdy.”
It seemed to the young man on the horse that this was a long way from anywhere in particular for a man to be sitting at his ease without a horse.
“Goin’ far?” the man asked.
“Can’t say,” said Jody.
“What kinda answer is that?” the man demanded.
“The truth,” said Jody.
They eyed each other. Neither seemed to like much what they saw.
The man said: “You could be wonderin’ how come a man’s sittin’ way out here at the side of the trail without a horse.”
Jody said: “No, sir, it didn’t for one little moment occur to me to wonder about that. For all I care you could be sittin’ a-top of yonder tree or a-coolin’ of your feet in that there crick.”
Interest gleamed in the man’s eyes.
“You know,” he declared, “that sounds like a-comin’ mighty near to sass to me.”
“You could be right,” Jody said.
The man rose.
“You know who you’re talkin’ to, son?” he demanded.
“Don’t call me "son’,” Jody told him, “An’ you ain’t told me your name, so I can’t know who I’m talkin’ to.”
“My name is William T. Froud an’ I’m High Sheriff of this county,” the man said. “The title an’ the office demand some respect. Will you grant me that?”
“Yessir, I’ll grant you that,” said Jody, “but it don’t seem right that a high-soundin’ important hombre like you should be a-settin’ at the side of the trail. You should ought to be back in your office with your feet on your desk with a few deputies runnin’ around for you-all.”
The man looked sad—“There’s a mite of truth in that. But I ain’t. I’m afoot in this goddam wilderness. Right on the trail of a bunch of dangerous outlaws, slap-bang up agin their butts, an’ I’m afoot. Therefore, young feller, in the name of Smith County I hereby requisition that there horse of yourn an’ I’ll thank you to dismount and hand him over right smart.”
They looked at each other.
Jody said: “That sounds real official. I reckon I don’t have no choice but to comply.”
“Glad you see it that way, son.”
Jody started to step down from the saddle. As his right foot touched the ground, it was kicked away from under him. He went down, sprawling and looked up at the man with a hurt expression on his face.
“No call for that kinda thing,” he said.
“Pays to make sure in this vale of tears,” said the man. “Sorry, I shook you up.”
“Don’t even mention it,” Jody told him and climbed to his feet. “Well, I suppose you ain’t no sheriff a-tall, but just a little old horse-thief.”
“No, I’m the sheriff, all right.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I don’t have to.”
Jody thought about that for a moment. Then he said: “Maybe you should ought keep things nice an’ above-board.”
“Just stand away from that horse, boy,” the man said, “an’ I’ll go about my official business. You can pick the horse up in town.”
“What town?”
“Dufane, of course.”
“I never heard of it.”
The man looked shocked. He looked even more shocked when Jody hit him hard in the belly with his right fist. As the man’s head came down, Jody belted him with the ball of his fist behind the ear. He keeled over nicely and hit dirt.
He rolled once and reached back for the butt of his belt-gun.
Jody said: “Don’t.”
The man looked up and saw the gun in the boy’s hand.
He sat up and he almost smiled.
“You can sure move, boy,” he said.
“I ain’t ezackly paralyzed,” Jody agreed.
The man climbed to his feet, pulled back the front of his coat and showed his sheriffs star on his vest—“You just obstructed an officer of the law in the pursuance of his duty.”
Jody said he thought that sounded pretty terrible, but the man could take it in both hands and stuff it where the monkey put the nuts.
The man sighed and Jody made him pull out his gun with the fingers of his left hand and drop it in the dust. Jody then picked it up and stuffed it in the top of his pants. He wasn’t quite sure what he should do then, because he had never braced a sheriff before.
Jody mounted his horse and looked down at the man. The fellow hadn’t turned a hair. This kind of thing could have happened to him any day of the week.
“Just pause for a thought, son,” he said. “This could be the cross-roads for you. A good few years back I found myself in a similar situation. My decision come down on the side of the law an’ I didn’t ever regret it. You can see the tracks of my horse. You just follow ‘em along an’ tote that crittur back to me and I’ll forget this ever did happen.”
“To Hell with you,” said Jody.
The man shrugged.
“If that’s the way you want it.”
Jody rode down the trail a quarter-mile, looked back and saw the man was standing beside the trail where he had left him, looking after him. Jody walked his horse off the trail into the west and he found the tracks of a horse. He stayed still looking at them for a while, then he started along them. About a half-mile further on he found a water hole and a sprinkling of grass. There was a sorrel horse cropping the grass. It got a little coy when Jody rode up to it and tried to catch it by its trailing line, so he built a loop and roped the animal. Turning back, he hit the trail and turned south.
The man was sitting down and quietly smoking his pipe.
When J
ody rode up, the man nodded and said: “I took a bet with myself an’ I won. I allus bet on certainties.”
Jody tossed him the sorrel’s line, the man caught it and stroked the animal’s nose with the firm gentle hand of the horseman.
“Thanks,” he said, “how about the gun?”
Jody took the gun from his belt and offered it barrel first. As soon as it touched his hand, William T. Froud flicked it over so fast the eye could not follow and Jody Storm was staring into the muzzle of a cocked gun.
“You’re under arrest,” the sheriff said.
“Jesus,” said Jody, “do we have to go through all that again?”
“That’s a fact,” said Froud.
“I just brought your horse back for you. Maybe I even saved your life.”
“True. As a man I’m grateful. As a sheriff I don’t know the meanin’ of the word. Now, I’m givin’ you a choice. You can break rocks for thirty days or you can swear yourself in as my deputy.”
“What kind of a choice is that?” Jody demanded. “Breakin’ rocks or gettin’ my butt shot off.”
“It’s a choice between vice and virtue, boy.” Froud looked grave. “Make it an’ make it quick.”
Jody thought a while, then he said—“I swear by Almighty God etc etc.,”
“That’ll do fine,” Froud said. “I’m goin’ to holster my gun. You try any more fancy tricks like you pulled a minute back an’ I’ll be sendin’ your effects home to your poor old ma. Do I have your word?”
“You have my word,” Jody said. “When I’m good an’ ready to pin your hide to a barn door, I’ll give you fair warning.”
“You do that,” the sheriff said and stepped into the saddle.
They headed north along the trail, Jody wondering to himself what the hell he had gotten himself into. Maybe this was what he’d been looking for, maybe it was the end of him. He didn’t trust Froud further than he could throw him. He still wasn’t sure if he was a lawman. Anybody could pin a badge on his vest. He decided to play it as it came.
They went two-three miles along the trail when Froud stopped suddenly and pointed to the right.
“See that? They headed for the hills. Knowed they would soon or late.”
Jody couldn’t see anything except some dry dust with a few blades of dispirited grass sticking its brown stalks through it. Yet Froud confidently turned off the trail and headed into country that broke up before them. After a while, Jody’s eyes caught the sight of the prints of horses” feet and knew that Froud was not mistaken. They came near to the lower sweep of the mountains and far above them on the greener slopes Jody saw the slowly moving carpet that he knew was sheep.
As they jogged along, Froud said: “There’s a Basque looks out for them sheep. Don’t speak American, but if anybody rid past him, he’ll see them. He don’t miss nothin’.”
They put their horses to the slopes and heaved up them. Within the hour they came up with the sheepherder. He was a small dark man wearing a cloak of sheepskin and a strange cap on his head of a kind Jody had never seen before. He looked as wild as the two dogs he had with him. There was the faraway look of the lonely man who lives in lonely places. He had a small lean-to shelter and a fire going. On the fire was a coffee pot.
He knew Froud, that much was obvious, greeted them politely and offered them coffee. They stepped down from the saddle and unsaddled to let their horses roll. As they squatted and sipped bitter black coffee, Jody saw that the Basque’s armament was an old single-shot Remington rifle. The sheriff tried him with English, but the man understood no more than a couple of words. Froud was asking him if he had seen a party of armed men.
Jody tried him in his fluent Spanish, learned from the vaqueros of the Texas Brasada. The man didn’t have much Spanish, but enough to tell him that he had seen six men. In fact they had stopped at his camp, helped themselves to some of his precious supplies and shot a sheep for meat. The Basque was very angry about that, because he was proud of the fact that he had lost his employer very few sheep in even the worst of winters. The young señor must understand that it would have been foolish to resist such men with his old rifle. He had three dogs at the time and one of them had tried to savage one of the men and had been shot. That made the sheepherder even angrier. Where could a man find dogs like these? They were more valuable than gold, more trustworthy than men.
“What’s he say?” Froud demanded.
“I’ll tell you that when I’m through,” Jody said.
“No sass now,” Froud said. “Remember I’m your boss.”
Jody questioned the Basque further. He said they would catch these men and they would pay for the dog and the supplies. Most likely with their lives. The Basque looked pleased to hear this, but he was doubtful if two men could overcome six such men. They were desperados and they were heavily armed.
“Which way did they travel?”
The man knew these hills intimately. He told Jody the trail the men had taken and he told him where he reckoned they were heading.
Jody thanked him and stood up. He took some tobacco from his pocket and gave it to the man who received it with a great show of joy.
“What he say?” Froud demanded.
“He told me all I want to know,” Jody told him. “You just follow behind me and we’ll come up with these men.”
Froud said: “You tell me.”
“No, sir,” said Jody. “I don’t tell you. I do that an’ you know as much as I do. This is my working capital. While I know this you keep me a-live.”
They saddled their horses and mounted. Froud said: “It’s terrible to find so much suspicion in one so young.”
“Ain’t it,” said Jody. “It troubles me nights.”
They lifted their hands to the Basque and rode on into the hills.
After they had covered a mile or so, Jody said: “What did these men do?”
“Now you want information,” said Froud. “I don’t have to tell you a thing.”
“It may surprise you to know, Mr. Smart-Alec goddam Froud,” said Jody, “this ain’t the first time I played lawman. There’s just a mite more behind this baby face than meets the eye, though I says it as shouldn’t. You tell me the facts and maybe you’ll find yourself with a deputy that’s worth his hire of fifty a month.”
“Fifty a month,” screamed Froud. “You’re outa your mind. You know that? I didn’t say nothin’ about takin’ you on a regular basis.”
“An’ I,” said Jody, “didn’t say nothin’ about takin’ this on temporary.”
“I’ll offer you a dollar a day,” Froud said. “Contract terminates when we have these hardcases behind bars.”
Jody stopped his horse.
“Let’s dicker,” he said.
Froud stopped—“This ain’t the time an’ the place.”
“This is just the time an’ the place. Inside an hour the shootin’ could start. I shoot straighter and faster on fifty a month and promise of a bright future.”
“You bastard,” Froud said.
“Sticks an’ stones. An’ remember, you ain’t said so, but you lost the trail an’ you don’t have no more idea where these men is at than how to fly.”
“Goddam you for a…”
“Watch it, Froud, I could get mad.”
The blood was in Froud’s eyes. He looked murderous.
“I could go this alone,” he said, “I don’t need you. You ain’t nothin’ but a two-bit cowhand with a big mouth.”
“I got a big mouth, but you can’t make out without me, sir. You can scarce make out with a half-dozen men. You don’t seem to realize what you’re up against.”
“I know what I’m up against all right,” Froud shouted. “Them fellers has nigh on forty thousand dollars, they killed a man and a boy.”
“An’ you was headed after them on your lonesome?”
“Some of us lawmen ain’t jest fat-assed office-holders with a yeller streak down their spines.”
“All right, fifty a month an’ a pro
misin’ future an’ you’n’me’ll bring in these big bad men.”
Froud looked at the end of his line—“By God, if you fight like you talk we’ll lick ‘em bare-handed.”
“Now you’re givin’ way to exaggeration, sheriff,” Jody chided.
They rode on, Froud swearing something dreadful behind Jody.
Somewhere around the middle of the afternoon, when they were both hot and tired and were ready for a rest and a drink of cool mountain water that they couldn’t find anywhere, the shot came.
They were making their way slowly through craggy wild country that could have hidden an army. They were in a rough-edged canyon where a couple of good men with rifles could have stood off a hundred men of the same caliber.
Chapter Two
The bullet struck the pommel of the sheriff’s saddle and made his horse stagger.
It came from front right and it echoed and re-echoed through the rock. Both men at once whirled their horses and headed back the way they had come, seeking cover.
They knew then that there was more than one man above them, for there came a shot from almost immediately in front of them and Froud’s horse screamed and went down. The sheriff managed to get his feet from the stirrup irons in time to prevent him from being pinned under his horse. The animal was dead when it hit ground and Froud was flung clear.
Jody’s horse leaped the fallen man, Jody sighted cover to his right and turned his horse into it. He was out of his saddle and had his rifle out of the boot as soon as he hit ground.
He took a careful look around and saw Froud lying full-length on the ground. He didn’t stir. Jody groaned out loud. He should have known he’d get himself into this kind of a situation. It was ordained from the beginning.
A man fired a shot from above and it hit rock to whine away into the blue. Jody came back with a couple of fast ones and the fellow decided to keep his head down.
Jody laid down his rifle, ran forward and took ahold of the sheriff under the armpits. The fellow further along the canyon started shooting and the dust started to be kicked up around Jody. Then the man immediately above him decided it was safe to lift his head and started to shoot too.
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