Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘Hell, no, Terry. Yu boys give me yore word yu wasn’t lifting Saber beef an’ I believe yu. But Gunnison’s losin’ ’em just the same, an’ yu can’t blame him for feelin’ hot about it. He swears it has to be yu boys. I keep tellin’ him it ain’t. It’s deadlock.’

  ‘Ol’ goat,’ muttered Jack Scott. ‘He’s slapped his brand on enough mavericks in his time.’

  ‘I’m just tellin’ yu what he said,’ Appleby remarked. ‘Ain’t sayin’ I agree. I’m just hopin’ I can find sumthin’ out afore Lafe takes it into his head to go on the warpath.’

  ‘He better come dressed fo’ a buryin’,’ Johnstone snapped. ‘He’ll sho’ be participatin’ in one if he comes up heah with a war party.’

  ‘Let’s hope it don’t come to that,’ said Appleby. ‘I wouldn’t take much pleasure in standin’ in the middle tryin’ to keep yu boys an’ the Saber crew apart. In the meantime, if anybody has to go to town, mebbe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave yore guns at home.’

  ‘Fat chance o’ that,’ snorted Johnstone. ‘No damn Yankees are goin’ to scare me into shuckin’ mah shootin’ arm.’

  ‘Just friendly advice, Reb.’ The Marshal rose and picked up his wide-brimmed black hat. ‘Miss Susan, thank yu for the cawfee. I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ yu in town right soon. Maybe I can return the compliment: Mrs. Robinson’s restaurant serves a fair cup o’ cawfee these days.’

  ‘Yu’ll have to stand in line, Tom,’ laughed Fred Peters. ‘There’s about seventeen guys just waitin’ for the chance.’

  Appleby smiled. ‘Shore,’ he agreed, ‘but how many o’ them live in Yavapai?’

  Bidding all those present goodnight, he went out, and they watched him mount and ride up the trail into the timber.

  ‘Well, Jim,’ asked Taylor when Appleby was out of sight. ‘What d’ye think of our Marshal?’

  ‘Pretty cool customer,’ commented Green.

  ‘I don’t like the look o’ him,’ added Philadelphia.

  ‘Hell, Philly, yo’re a mite biased,’ grinned Jack Scott, and Jake Harris roared with laughter as the boy flushed.

  ‘Cool is about the right word,’ Terry Kitson said to Green. ‘He’s pretty fast with that gun when he has to be. He runs a clean town an’ he’s tough. Even if he has to bend over backwards to stay in the middle o’ the road.’

  ‘Sounds durned uncomfortable to me,’ was Philadelphia’s comment, to which Jake roared out, ‘Jumpin’ jehosophat, Philly, don’t yu fret none. Susie don’t go to town that often!’

  ‘Oh, Father!’ snapped Susan, ‘stop talking about me as if I weren’t in the room. Tom Appleby is a gentleman, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ chortled her parent, unabashed. ‘Don’t yu forget, neither: a gentleman is only fifty per cent gentle; all the rest is man.’

  To which remark Susan, having no adequate reply, tossed her head and flounced out of the room.

  Chapter Four

  SUSAN HARRIS pulled her horse to a stop, and Philadelphia reined in his own animal, dismounting to tether the two beasts to a nearby tree. Sue’s face was flushed and shining from the gallop, and her dark hair was disarrayed prettily. The little glade in which they had stopped offered a welcome oasis of shade on the open prairie, and a small brook babbled cheerfully on its way down to the Yavapai river.

  ‘Oh, I did enjoy that,’ she told Philadelphia, ‘didn’t you, Philly?’

  ‘Shore, did, ma’am,’ was his enthusiastic reply. ‘This is a mighty purty country.’

  She looked at her companion quizzically. ‘You sound more like Jim Green every day, do you know that?’

  The youngster flushed. ‘He’s a fine man, Miss Susan.’

  ‘He must have impressed you greatly to inspire such devotion.’

  ‘He saved my life,’ Philadelphia told her simply.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ replied the girl thoughtfully. ‘I still cannot imagine why that awful man Dancy picked on you.’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess,’ said the boy, whimsically. ‘It wouldn’t be so one-sided if he tried it now.’

  ‘Oh, Philly, really. You mustn’t think that practicing with that silly gun is going to keep you out of trouble. In the end guns only make things worse.’

  ‘That ain’t true, Miss Susan,’ he said. ‘There’s some men yu can only convince that way.’

  ‘Philly,’ she said, appalled at this statement, ‘yu can’t really believe that!’

  ‘Can, an’ do,’ the youngster assured her. ‘An’ I aim to keep on practicin’ in case I meet any o’ them.’

  She looked at his set face and knew that he was not joking. ‘No one would ever believe that you have only been out West a few weeks, Philly. You already sound like a Westerner.’ She smiled. ‘You even look the part.’

  The compliment pleased the young man mightily. In truth, the days spent in the open, the hard work, and the simple fare had greatly changed the pasty-faced youngster who had been bullied in Tyler’s by the Saber foreman. The clothes, once raw and new were already faded by the bleaching Arizona sun, and the pallor of the city streets had been replaced by a healthy tan. Philadelphia’s whole bearing was different, and his hitherto slight frame had filled out.

  The girl asked another question.

  ‘Why did you come to Arizona, Philly?’

  ‘I guess I allus wanted to,’ he told her. ‘My ol’ man was a cowboy, down Prescott way.’

  ‘Really? You never told me that.’

  ‘Never talked about it much. Yu see, I never knew him.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the girl said contritely, ‘I shouldn’t pry.’

  ‘He – heck, ma’am, that’s all right,’ he reassured her. ‘My mother was born in Philadelphia, yu see, an’ she ran away from home to marry my Pa. They met when she was visiting some folks in Phoenix. He was just an ordinary cowpuncher, thinkin’ o’ startin’ up on his own. When they got married her family disowned her.”

  The girl made no reply, but her downcast eyes encouraged him to continue.

  ‘She must have had a tough life,’ Philadelphia continued. ‘It was pretty hard in them days. When I was born she was so ill that my Pa sent her back to her family, an’ she took me with her, leaving my brother an’ my Pa in Prescott.’

  ‘And she never went back?’ Susan asked, aghast.

  ‘I don’t know exac’ly what happened,’ the young man confessed. ‘She never would talk much about it. I allus figgered the family just wouldn’t let her go back, an’ my Pa never come to fetch her. All I recall about him was that he was a tall man with long black hair, an’ big gentle hands. I suppose he’s dead.’

  ‘Didn’t you try to find him when you came to Arizona?’

  ‘Shore I tried,’ Henry exclaimed, ‘but I didn’t have much to go on. My mother would never talk about my Pa, an’ I had no one else to ask. All I knew was that he called the ranch the Lazy L. When Mother died, I found some letters, but they was just signed “yore lovin’ husband”, which warn’t much help. Nobody down in that part o’ the country remembered any Lazy L ranch run by a big black-haired man with a son about ten. It was hopeless. Like I said, I reckon he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, Philly,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry …’

  ‘Shucks, that’s all right, Miss Susan. I wanted yu to know, anyways,’ he told her. He said no more, but Susan, wise beyond her years, knew that there was much left unsaid. They were silent for a long moment, and then she rose, her manner thoughtful.

  ‘I can understand how your mother must have felt,’ she told him as they untethered the horses. ‘Often, I think about what will happen to me—’

  ‘Gosh, ma’am, I thought yu loved it here!’ blurted Philadelphia.

  ‘I do,’ she told him. ‘I love the country, and the people. But marriage …’ Her voice tailed away, and then her chin lifted. ‘I’m going to look after Daddy,’ she said. ‘No quarter section as a cowboy’s wife for me. I want to see the world, have fine clothes, and a lovely home. I
don’t want to turn into an old woman before my time, looking after a house full of children.’

  Having thus crushed the seeds of every dream, hope, and ambition in her escort’s mind, the lovely Susan Harris mounted her horse and turned him towards home. She was leading the way out of the little glade at a canter when a shot rang out and her horse fell, screaming, throwing her heavily from the saddle.

  Philadelphia reined his horse in sharply, so sharply that the shot which followed, and which might have blasted him out of his saddle, buzzed by his head like an angry hornet. His gun already in his hand, the youngster charged full tilt at the hillock about fifty yards distant from behind which he had caught a flash of light. Without thought he emptied his gun in the direction of the would-be assassin as he careered towards the ambuscade. Another shot rang out and Philadelphia cartwheeled backwards out of his saddle to the ground, a thin trickle of blood oozing from his scalp. He lay there, half unconscious, as the muffled thunder of hoofs receded and the unseen assailant made good his escape. Then a quick, dark cloud descended over his mind, and he plummeted into a dark, never-ending abyss.

  James Green had been checking the herd with Jake Harris when faintly in the distance they heard the shots, the flatter crack of the rifle followed by the popping of Philadelphia’s six-shooter, then the final flat sound of the rifle again. The two men looked at each other grimly.

  ‘Sounds like it came from over that way,’ Green offered, nodding towards the low hills to the South. Harris nodded. ‘Probably down by – my God! Philly an’ Sue rode down that way! Come on!’

  He dug in his spurs and rocketed away, Green thundering in his wake. Together they swept across the open plain for two or three miles until a fringe of trees broke the horizon. ‘Glade … Susie often goes there …’ Green heard Harris shout as they thundered along. Within a few more minutes they were on the scene of the ambush, and Harris gave a mighty cry of relief as he saw his daughter sitting upright on the ground, shaking her head. Green espied his young friend lying off to the right and swung Midnight around. Dismounting, and turning the boy over, he breathed a sigh of thanks as he saw that the trickle of blood across the boy’s brow stemmed from a raw gash across the side of his head.

  ‘Creased,’ he muttered. ‘But who …? ’

  His brow furrowed, he lifted down his canteen from the saddle and was forcing some water between the youngster’s lips as Jake Harris came over with the still-dazed Susan.

  ‘Some jasper threw shots at the pair of ’em,’ Harris growled. ‘Dropped Susie’s hoss an’ then it looks like he tried to kill the kid.’

  Philadelphia’s eyes fluttered, and he suddenly sat up.

  ‘Sue!’ he cried, trying to struggle to his feet.

  ‘It’s all right, son,’ Harris reassured him. ‘Take it easy. She’s fine.’

  The boy relaxed as Green poured water on to his bandanna, wincing as the puncher cleaned the gash on his head. In a few terse words he described what had happened, while Harris and Green looked grimly at each other.

  ‘They’re stoopin’ pretty low, shoot in’ at girls an’ kids, now,’ rumbled the old man.

  ‘Daddy, Philly’s not a kid,’ said Susan with passion in her voice. ‘If it hadn’t been for him …’ She stopped, and for no apparent reason blushed.

  For the first time a trace of a smile touched Green’s lips, but vanished immediately as he stood up and said, ‘Let’s take a look-see if Mr. Bushwhacker left any sign.’

  Striding across to the hillock that Philadelphia had indicated, Green scanned the area with keen eyes. From this vantage point the trail leading out of the glade was easily covered, and he nodded to himself.

  ‘Mr. Bushwhacker knowed his spot,’ he murmured. ‘He musta hunkered down here someplace.’ Casting around for a few more moments, he found a place where the earth was scuffed and the indentation of two boot-heels was clear in the earth. Back-tracking, mentally putting himself in the ambusher’s place, it did not take Green long to discover where the would-be killer had hidden his horse. The lower foliage of a tree had been nibbled, and several branches bore evidence of chafing. The hoof-prints showed that the animal had been restive. He was kneeling, studying these marks, when Harris, his daughter, and the now fully recovered Philadelphia came up.

  ‘Nothin’ much to go on,’ he announced. ‘Our bush-whackin’ friend was mighty careful to pick up his shells, an’ almost anyone coulda left those heel-marks.’

  ‘Hell, Jim, who else could it ‘a’ been except one of Gunnison’s hirelin’s?’ demanded Harris, ‘Who else’d want to take a shot at my gal?’

  ‘Yu so shore it was Miss Susan they was really after?’ queried the puncher.

  ‘Why, Jim,’ said Philadelphia, surprise in his voice, ‘I don’t know anyone in these parts! Why’d anyone want to take a shot at me?’

  ‘Philadelphia, I figger yu rattled Mr. Bushwhacker chargin’ at him like that. Mebbe all he aimed to do was throw a scare into Miss Susan. Likely she’d tell her daddy an’ he’d get the message.’

  ‘Yu think mebbe this was a warnin’, Jim?’ asked the old man. ‘To keep me mindful o’ the fact that I could be hurt other ways than—’

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ that’s it,’ Green said. ‘It just might be, that’s all.’

  He hunkered down again and studied the tracks. Then he announced his decision.

  ‘I’m goin’ to follow his tracks,’ he said. ‘Jake, yu take Philly an’ Miss Susan back to the JH.’

  Harris nodded, his face somber. ‘Susie, yu can ride double with me. Let’s go, Philly.’

  ‘Not me,’ declared that young worthy stoutly. ‘I’m goin’ with Jim.’ His friend turned to remonstrate, but the boy said, ‘Don’t yu argue none with me – I’m the one got shot at, remember. I reckon I got a right.’

  Green smiled. ‘Mebbe yu do, at that. Okay, Jake, the kid stays. Yu ride on back. We’ll see where Mr. Bushwhacker leads us.’

  When they had gone, Green rolled and lit a cigarette. He sat down on a small rock and smoked in silence, the furrows deep between his brows.

  ‘Harris is hard hit,’ said his companion. Green nodded. Silence again ensued, and presently Philadelphia tried again:

  ‘I reckon he hadn’t thought they’d try to get at him through Miss Susan.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Green, still busy with his thoughts.

  ‘Dang me if yu ain’t the tightest man I ever met with a word,’ exploded Philadelphia. ‘What does a feller have to do around here to get some reaction out o’ yu – get shot through the head?’

  His mentor looked up, and for the first time a wide grin crossed his face. ‘Yu oughta thank yore lucky stars yu got a crease in yore scalp,’ he told Philadelphia.

  ‘How come?’ that worthy wanted to know.

  ‘Shucks, that’s easy to answer,’ was the reply. ‘If yu’d been hit anyplace else it mighta done some damage. I reckon our bushwhacker didn’t know he was aimin’ at yore thickest part.’

  Before his young friend could suitably reply to this insult the tall puncher was on his feet and striding across the clearing to where Midnight stood patiently cropping the grass.

  ‘Come on, slowpoke,’ Green admonished. ‘What yu standin’ around with yore mouth open for?’

  Philadelphia’s reply was extremely unflattering, and Green grinned. ‘Yo’re learnin’ more than I figgered,’ he told Philadelphia. ‘Let’s ride. That back-shootin’ hombre mighta just been boogered enough to leave a trail we can follow.’

  Chapter Five

  FOR SEVERAL miles Green was able to follow the trail he had selected without difficulty. The tracks of the horse which had been tethered to the tree behind the hillock were clear; Green noted that the would-be assassin had headed south without making any attempt to conceal his passage. Drawing rein as he and Philadelphia crested a slight ridge, he scanned the country ahead of them. Down below them, perhaps a mile away, he could see the dark line of trees and the faint silvery glint of water which marked the course of th
e Yavapai. Off to the east the white scar which was the trail running from the Saber to the Mesquites could be faintly descried, and Green pointed it out to his companion.

  ‘I’m bettin’ our friend aimed like an arrow for that,’ he told Philadelphia. ‘Be mighty hard to track any thin’ once it hit that trail.’

  Philadelphia nodded glumly. ‘I reckon we might as well turn back,’ he said, the slump of his shoulders ample evidence of his disappointment.

  ‘Hold hard, there,’ Green told him. ‘Let’s mosey down an’ take a look at the river-bank. Mebbe Mr. Bushwhacker crossed the river an’ maybe he didn’t. If he did, he might just ‘a been careless about it.’

  They moved down the slope from the ridge, threaded a long arroyo, and found themselves on flat, open scrubland. The trail lay off to their left, and within a few more minutes it cut diagonally across their path. When they reached it Green dismounted and spent long minutes studying the churned, sandy earth. Remounting, he shook his head. ‘Impossible,’ he told the youngster. ‘Let’s head on down to the river.’

  Where the trail actually met the river, the Yavapai ran wide and shallow, with broad sandy banks sloping gently to the water.

  ‘She’s a natural ford,’ Green told his friend. Tethering Midnight, he squatted down and inspected the various tracks which had been made in the sand, his keen eyes narrowed. Slowly, he moved carefully, about a foot at a time, away from the center of the crossing towards its outer edge.

  Philadelphia watched him in wonder. The edge of the river was, to his unaccustomed eyes, a morass of churned hoof-marks, some made by cattle, others by horses, and for all he knew, a few made by wild animals which might use this shallow part of the river as a watering hole.

  ‘Jim, how could yu tell one o’ the hoof-marks yo’re lookin’ for if yu seen it?’ he asked.

  Green, still carefully inspecting the ground, looked up briefly and grinned. ‘There’s an easy way, if she works,’ he told his companion. ‘Yu think about it a minnit or two.’

  Philadelphia frowned. Surely, unless the horse had some special kind of shoes, any horse track would look like any other? He said as much. Green refrained from answering, but instead rose to his feet and announced, ‘He crossed the river here.’