Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 09 - Sudden Makes War(1942)

by Oliver Strange

  “Yeah. When Trenton learned I wasn’t comin’—he had a list, yu know—they had to get me away from the ranch-house. Why, they even fired a gun in case I didn’t hear ‘em. Havin’ played safe with the paper, I went along; yu see, there was just a chance someone was after the cows.”

  “I guess you’ve got the straight of it,” the foreman said. “Mebbe that dead hoss’ll tell us somethin’ in the mornin’.”

  But this hope proved futile; on the left hip of the animal a square patch of skin had been stripped off. The marauders had not overlooked any bets, as they believed.

  Chapter IX

  Yorky was the proudest member of the outfit. Not only had he eclipsed them all by partnering the peerless Miss Trenton, but promotion had come to him.

  “That kid was the on’y one of us to notice that them Wagon-wheel outcasts had sneaked away from the show,” Dan told his foreman. “He goes on the pay-roll at twenty a month, an’ it’s up to him to make it more.”

  To the surprise of the bunkhouse, the usually precocious youth accepted his good fortune modestly. “It’s mighty good o’ Dan,” he said. “I ain’t wort’ a dime to him, but I’m aimin’ ter be.”

  “That rich uncle—” Slow began.

  “Aw, go an’ fry snowballs,” Yorky grinned.

  “Honest, I’m glad, Yorky,” Blister put in. “I was scared we’d lose you as well as Tiny.”

  “Lose me?” the boy queried. “An’ where’s Tiny goin’?”

  “Well, I figured las’ night you’d soon be ridin’ for the Wagon-wheel,” was the reply. “An’ Tiny’s fixed to marry the school-marm an’ help lam the kids.”

  The big puncher addressed the company. “Blister ain’t a natural liar; it’s just that his tongue gits ahead o’ his thoughts.”

  When Yorky appeared for the morning excursion, Sudden noticed, with inward satisfaction, a coiled lasso hanging from his saddle-horn.

  “Ain’t proposin’ to hang yoreself, are yu, son?” he asked. The boy was used to his friend’s sardonic humour. “Naw,” he replied. “Guessed yer might larn me to t’row it. C’n yer rope?”

  “Well, I’m not as good as some, but I expect I can give yu some pointers,” the puncher admitted.

  When they reached the pool, and had enjoyed their swim, Yorky was instructed in the rudiments of roping, which he found to be a much more difficult art than he had imagined. Also, he was treated to an expert exhibition which caused his eyes to bulge, and filled him with an ambition to do the like. In the puncher’s hands, the lariat seemed to become a live thing, obeying every twitch of the deft wrist.

  “Gawd, I’d give a lot ter handle a rope like that,” Yorky said admiringly.

  “Yu’ll have to—a lot o’ time,” Sudden told him. “Practice, son, just practice, an’ a leetle savvy—that’s all yu need.” As the teacher was preparing to leave, the pupil asked, “What will a gun cost me, Jim?”

  “Probably yore life,” was the grim reply. “Yu got enough to keep yu busy with ropin’, hawg-tyin’, an’ learnin’ to ride somethin’ a bit more uncertain than Shuteye yonder.”

  “I ureter carry a gat.”

  “The devil yu did? An’ what was yore other name—Bill Hickok?”

  “Oh, I ain’t no sharp-shooter, but I was in with a hard bunch,” Yorky replied airily. “I knows which end of a gun th’ trouble comes out of.”

  “It’s the trouble that comes outa the other fella’s yu gotta keep in mind,” Sudden warned.

  “Yu leave shootin’ be for a spell; get a grip o’ them other things first.”

  And because of his faith in this man who had done so much for him, Yorky pushed into the background his most cherished ambition, and contentedly applied himself to the task of mastering his lariat. As Sudden had hoped, the fresh, bracing air, new interests, and the revival of hope, were working wonders, and “li’l of Noo York” was fast becoming a less glamorous memory.

  It was some days later that Yorky went in search of adventure, and found it. He had not yet been raised to the dignity of being assigned a definite job, and time was more or less his own.

  He knew nothing of the country round, and determined to find out something about it.

  Particularly he wanted to see the Wagon-wheel ranch-house, perhaps cherishing a hope of getting a glimpse of the girl who had been kind to him at the dance—kindness, until he had come West, was a rare experience. So, when Sudden had left him, he set out. Casual questions in the bunkhouse had given him the route.

  “Foller th’ creek, ford her at th’ white stone, an’ bear right,” he repeated. “Sounds dead easy, Shuteye, but we gotta watch out—them Wagon-wheelers is mebbe feelin’ sore.”

  Like the rest of the outfit, Yorky believed that a raid on the cattle had been attempted.

  Paddy had been sworn to silence, explaining the bump on his cranium by an invented fall over a chair in the dark, a solution which evoked ribald reflections on his sobriety.

  He crossed the stream, and then headed north-east over an expanse of grass-land plentifully besprinkled with brush, which enabled him to keep under cover for the most part. The necessity for this was soon apparent, for he had gone less than a mile when a horseman swung into an aisle he was about to enter. Just in time he forced Shuteye headlong into a thicket of thorn—to the discomfort of both of them—and waited while the rider went by.

  “Flint!” the boy breathed. “That’s onct I’m lucky.”

  When the man disappeared he resumed his journey, and presently, in the distance, saw what he knew must be the place he sought. The ground about it was too open to conceal a horseman, so he hid his mount in a clump of brush, dropping the reins over its head as Sudden had told him, and advanced on foot, keeping to the right, stooping and running swiftly from one bush to another.

  He had got within a hundred yards of the house when two men emerged and, to his dismay, walked directly towards the tree behind which he was hiding. He looked round, but there was no cover he could hope to reach without being seen. His eyes went upward; the tree was a cottonwood, thickly foliaged. With a bound he managed to grasp the lowest branch and, panting with the unusual exertion, climbed to the crotch above. Since he could only see below through one small opening, he judged he was safe so long as he stayed quiet.

  “If I bark, I’m a goner,” he murmured, and instantly a violent desire to do this very thing assailed him. Smothering it, he bent down to listen, for they had stopped beneath him. Garstone opened the conversation.

  “Well, Bundy, why have you brought me out here?”

  “Because it’s quiet, an’ to ask you one plain question: Are you at the Wagon-wheel to help Trenton, or to help yoreself?”

  “What the hell do you mean? How dare you— “Easy, Mister Garstone,” the foreman cut in. “Puttin’ on frills ain’t apt to pay in these parts where “one man is as good as another, ‘cept with a six-shooter. Now mebbe yo’re fast with a gun—I don’t know—but I’m tellin’ you that I am—damned fast.”

  “Are you trying to pick a quarrel with me?” Garstone asked.

  “No, I want you to talk to me as man to man, an’ not as a boss to a dawg who works for him,” Bundy returned sourly.

  “I am here to help Trenton, and in doing so, I hope for some advantage to myself. Does that satisfy you?”

  “It’s a law-sharp’s answer. I’ll put it plainer: are you prepared to sit in at a game what’ll help you, but not Trenton?” Yorky, easing a cramped leg, made a slight rustling. Apparently the foreman must have glanced up, for the trembling boy heard Garstone say, “Birds,” and add with a laugh, “Hope they don’t forget their manners.” After a moment’s pause, he answered the question. “It would depend, of course, on what the game meant—to me.”

  “Half the Circle Dot, or around twenty-five thousand bucks, as we might decide,” Bundy said coolly.

  “You may deal me a hand,” the big man replied. “If I like the cards, I’ll play; if not, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Goo
d enough. Well, here’s the layout; with forty thousand we could buy the Circle Dot an’ run it ourselves, or sell it to Zeb for fifty thousand.”

  “Marvellous! Not suggested by our talk with Trenton, of course.” His tone betrayed disgust and disappointment.

  “All that jaw suggested to me was that we’d be fools to help another fella to a wad o’ coin we could have ourselves,” Bundy replied.

  “And, of course, you know where to find the money?”

  The foreman was losing his patience. “The mistake you make, Garstone, is to think eveyone else a blasted fool,” he said. “Shore I know; what’d be the sense in talkin’ if I didn’t?”

  “That makes all the difference. Go ahead.”

  “The cash will be on the ten-fifteen from Washout tomorrow mornin’, consigned to the bank at the Bend. It will be a small train, just the engine, one coach, an’ a baggage-car, containing the coin.”

  “Coin? You mean bills, with the numbers known,” Garstone commented. “Too dangerous.”

  “Part of it’ll be paper, but by an—oversight—the list o’ numbers will be missin’—at the other end; that’ll cost us a thousand. The rest will be in gold. There’ll on’y be the engine-driver, his mate, one conductor, and the baggage-man to deal with. Three of us oughta be able to handle it.”

  “Three? Who’s the other?”

  “Flint. He gits a thousand too—that’s arranged.”

  “So we lose two thousand?”

  “What did you expect, money for nothin’?” Bundy asked, his voice pregnant with contempt.

  “Oh, all right. What’s your plan?”

  “Ten mile short o’ the Bend the line runs through a thick patch o’ brush an’ pine. One o’ the trees dropped across the metals will stop the train. You cover the driver while Flint an’ me take up the collection—we’ll have to skin the passengers too an’ make it look like a reg’lar hold-up. O’ course, we cut the wires first.”

  “My size is rather outstanding,” Garstone objected.

  “We’ll all be masked, an’ dressed in range-rig, nobody’d reckernize you. I’ll borrow Jupp’s duds—he’s about yore build —an’ havin’ strained a leg at the dance”—this with a wink—“he ain’t usin’ ‘em.”

  “Well, it certainly sounds feasible,” Garstone admitted. “Feasible?” the foreman echoed ironically. “Why, it’s cash for just stoopin’ down.”

  “Not much of a stoop for you, perhaps, but it’s a hell of a one for me, Chesney Garstone,” was the reply. “However, the opportunity is there, and must be taken advantage of. By the way, what did Zeb expect to find at the Circle Dot?”

  “I dunno—paper o’ some sort, but they failed, so Flint couldn’t tell me anythin’. Trenton’s got some scheme for raisin’ the wind, but he’s pretty tight-mouthed ‘bout it.”

  “We’ll help him,” Garstone smiled. “The more money he has, the higher price he can pay for the Circle Dot. How did you get on to this, Bundy?”

  “I ain’t sayin’,” the foreman replied. “You can take it the facts is correct; that’s all as matters.”

  They moved away, and it was not until—peering between carefully-parted branches—he saw them vanish among the buildings, did the boy dare to move his stiffened limbs. Dropping to the ground, and bent double, he scurried from cover to cover, and, after what seemed to him an age, reached his pony.

  “Us fer home, Shuteye,” he gasped, as he scrambled into the saddle. “An’ we ain’t losin’ no time neither, git me?”

  Following Sudden’s instructions, he had taken note of landmarks likely to assist him in finding his way back, and presently came almost in sight of the ford over the Rainbow. Here he received a fright—a horse was splashing its way through the water. He was heading for the nearest shelter when a soft voice called, and he saw that the rider was Miss Trenton.

  “Why, Yorky,” she smiled, as she cantered up. “Were you running away from me?”

  “I hadn’t seen yer—on’y heard th’ hoss,” he explained. “It mighter bin—anyone.”

  “But surely none of our riders would harm you?” she said. “I b’long to th’ Circle Dot outfit—that’d be enough.”

  She shook her head, unconvinced. “Have you been to visit me?” she enquired.

  Yorky’s thin cheeks reddened. “Naw, I jus’ wanted ter see yer home.”

  “And what do you think of it?”

  “Betche’d be happier at the Circle Dot,” was the unexpected answer.

  It was now her turn to colour up, though afterwards she could not imagine any reason for so doing. There was a trace of reproof in her reply. “Thank you, but I am quite comfortable.”

  Yorky was not slow-witted; he saw that he had displeased her. “I warn’t meanin’ ter be rude,” he apologized, and looked so downcast that she had to smile again.

  “And I wasn’t meaning to be cross,” she said. “So we’ll both forget it. Why did you leave the dance so early; weren’t you having a good time?”

  “The best ever, an’ that goes for all of us.” He was itching to get away; the trip had taken much longer than he had thought, and the sooner his news was told, the better. He did not realize the full import of what he had learned, but it was plain that a train was to be robbed and the plunder used to obtain the Circle Dot, though how that was to be done without the present owner’s consent was beyond his comprehension.

  “Including Mister Dover?” she asked.

  “I didn’t hear no complaints.”

  “I think he might have let the men stay a little longer,” she persisted.

  “Dan’s young, but he knows his job,” Yorky said loyally—even this lovely girl must not find fault with his boss. He fidgeted in his saddle. “Guess I oughter be goin’; I bin out all day, an’ th’ boys’ll be worryin’; I ain’t wise ter th’ country— yet.”

  “Running away from me again?” she teased. “Well, so long, Yorky, it is my turn to visit you now, and perhaps I will.”

  He snatched off his hat as she moved on, and it might have pleased her to know that it was probably the first time he had paid this tribute to a woman.

  Splashing through the ford, he thumped his unspurred heels against Shuteye’s well-padded ribs in an effort to extract a little more speed from that lethargic but easy-going quadruped.

  “Yer got four legs, pal—I’ve counted ‘em—use every damn one,” he urged. “If we’d met up with a Wagon-wheeler ‘stead o’ her …”

  He reached the ranch without further interruption, and was unsaddling at the corral when Tiny and Blister rode up.

  “‘Lo, kid, Noo York glad to see you?” the former asked.

  “I didn’t git as fur, but Rainbow is warmin’ up fer th’ weddin’.”

  The big man swallowed the bait. “What weddin’?”

  “Yourn an’ th’ school-marm’s,” Yorky cackled, and dodging Tiny’s grab, made for the ranch-house. Blister’s bellow of laughter followed him.

  He entered by the back door, and the cook—noting the flushed, excited face—was moved to comment. “Phwat hey ye been up to, ye young divil, an’ how much grub has passed yer lips the day?”

  “Oh, hell, Paddy. Where’s Jim?”

  “In th’ front room with Dan an’—Saints, he’s gone.”

  The impetuosity which took him from the kitchen caused him to burst unceremoniously upon the three men. They stared at him in silence for a moment, and then the rancher said quietly:

  “I didn’t hear you knock, Yorky.”

  “I’m sorry, Boss, but I got noos, an’ it won’t keep.”

  “Take a seat an’ tell us,” Dan replied.

  It came out with a rush. Ten minutes later they had heard the story of his adventure, minus the meeting with Miss Trenton, and were regarding the narrator with stunned astonishment. Sudden read the minds of his companions.

  “Is this the truth, Yorky, or one o’ those fine tales yu sometimes invent to amuse the boys?” he wanted to know.

  “Cross me heart, it’s
true, Jim,” came the instant reply.

  “An’ there is a ten-fifteen—I’ve travelled by it a good few times—a little train, made up like he said,” Dan stated.

  “Well, it shore beats the band,” Burke said. “Garstone an’ Bundy doublecrossin’ Trenton; that’s a laugh I’ll enjoy.”

  “I guess not, Bill,” Dan said. “We’ve gotta stop it. With that cash they can make a deal with Maitland, an’ we’re ditched. They wouldn’t buy till the hold-up was stale news, or Garstone would claim to have raised funds East. Oh, it’s smart, an’ I never suspected Bundy o’ brains.”

  “There’s more to him than folks aroun’ here savvy,” the foreman replied. “Have you noticed that he never wears a glove on his right hand?”

  “Gunman, huh?” Sudden said. “An’ advertises it. Shucks!”

  Dover, remembering the shooting in Sandy Bend, understood the puncher’s disdain, and smiled, but his face was soon sober again.

  “Question is, what are we to do?” he asked. “If we tell the sheriff, he’ll just laugh at us, an’ that’s all; so would Trenton. We don’t know who is sendin’ the money so a warnin’ ain’t possible neither.”

  “Take some o’ the boys an’ catch ‘em in the act,” Burke suggested.

  “One of ‘em might get away with the booty, an’ Foxy would turn ‘em loose anyway.

  What’s the joke, Jim?”

  For Sudden’s eyes were twinkling like those of a, mischievous boy. “Just an idea,” he said, and went on to tell them what it was; in a few moments they were laughing too. “Gee! it’d be a great play to make,” Dan chuckled. “But could we pull it off?”

  “I’m sayin’ we can,” Sudden replied confidently. “Why not have a shot at it—just the three of us.”

  “Say, ain’t I in on this, Jim?” Yorky ventured to ask. “I could hold th’ hosses.”

  Sudden’s shake of the head was definite. “No, yu’ve done yore share, an’ we’re all mighty obliged, but there’ll be a lot o’ hard an’ fast ridin’ tomorrow mornin’. Time’ll come when yu can keep up with the best of us; just now, patience is yore strong suit. An’ mind, not a word.”