‘Yo’re sayin’ that Gunnison don’t know someone on his ranch tried to kill my gal?’ the homesteader asked.
Green nodded. ‘Can’t rightly rigger it out,’ he said. ‘She don’t make sense. Unless there’s some other reason for gettin’ yu off this land that ain’t got nothin’ to do with Gunnison …? ’
The old man shook his head. ‘Beats me, Jim. This land just don’t seem worth all the trouble.’
‘Tell me about when yu first come here, Jake,’ suggested Green. ‘It might just give me some ideas.’
‘Not much to tell,’ the homesteader told him. ‘Reb Johnstone an’ Stan Newley was the first to file on land up here. When I came out from Missouri it seemed a likely thing to file alongside ’em. Kitson came next, then Taylor.’
‘How long ago was all this?’ the cowboy wanted to know.
‘Gettin’ on three, four years now,’ Harris told him. ‘Reb’s been here longest: just over four years.’
‘Yu all built yore own places?’
Harris nodded. ‘No, wait a minnit,’ he corrected himself. ‘Reb Johnstone moved into an old cabin when he first come up here. His place stands where the cabin used to be. Some kind o’ line shack, I think it was.’
Green nodded again. ‘This trouble – the raids, the horse-stealin’ that Kitson mentioned: when did all that start?’
‘Oh … mebbe eighteen months ago, more or less. Difficult to say, exactly. Never took notice at first: figgered it was just wanderin’ bucks liftin’ a few o’ Terry’s hosses. On’y got wise to it when it kept on happenin’. When Reb Johnstone an’ Stan Newley had night riders on their land we knew it warn’t no accident.’
‘An’ Gunnison started complainin’ about losin’ beef around the same time?’
The homesteader looked at Green for a long moment, a light dawning in his eyes. ‘I’m beginnin’ to get yore drift, Jim,’ he said. ‘Yo’re figgerin’ mebbe the same outfit’s behind the whole thing?’
‘Could be,’ Green told him, ‘but who? If it ain’t Gunnison, an’ it ain’t any o’ yore people – who is it?’
The homesteader shook his head. ‘I keep goin’ around in the same tracks yu do, Jim, an’ I keep comin’ up with the same answer: I dunno.’
The old man poked a twig into the flickering fire and lit an old black pipe with the brand. He puffed away in silence for a while, looking reflectively into the flames.
‘Jim,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We ain’t talked much, yu an’ me.’
The puncher nodded, not speaking.
‘I got the feelin’ there’s somethin’ yu wanted to tell me,’ Harris said. ‘Yu reckon now might be a good time for it?’
Green looked at the old homesteader for a long moment and then a bitter look crossed his face. ‘Yo’re better off not knowin’,’ he said harshly.
‘Never figgered exactly why a feller like yu would want to work for a farmer,’ Harris continued imperturbably. ‘Yo’re a top hand, Jim. Yu coulda got good wages on any spread in Arizona. Yet yu come here. Why?’
‘I heard down in Tucson that there was some tough hombres gatherin’ in these parts,’ Green told him. ‘I figgered mebbe the men I’m lookin’ for might be in Yavapai.’ Harris looked his interest, and the cowboy continued, ‘Their names is Webb an’ Peterson. Yu ever run across them?’
‘Can’t say I have,’ Harris admitted. ‘What yu want ’em for?’
‘They’ve lived too long,’ Green said, and there was a deadly coldness in his words that sent a chill across the rancher’s heart.
‘Yu ain’t on the dodge, Jim?’
Green shook his head. ‘Yu better hear the whole story, Jake,’ he told his employer. ‘Yu know me as Jim Green, but back in Texas they call me Sudden.’
Sudden! Jake Harris looked as if for the first time at this quietly spoken man who sat beside him. So this was the daredevil whose exploits were a legend, the man whose speed with a six-gun was talked about with bated breath wherever men spoke low over a game of cards or a drink. Sudden, who had cleaned out Hell City!’ Harris had heard about his lightning speed on the draw, his amazing adventures. And a chord in his memory told him that Sudden was wanted for murder. ‘Yu said yu wasn’t on the dodge,’ he pointed out. His voice was mild, but Green did not miss the reproachful note.
‘I ain’t wanted in Arizona,’ he told Harris. ‘An’ I never even seen the man they’re huntin’ me for killin’ in Texas.’ His words were biting, compelling. Harris sat in astounded silence as the black-haired cowboy outlined the story of his past, the chain of events in which mere chance had resulted in his becoming the legendary gun-fighter called Sudden, and how he had come by the unenviable reputation he owned. With only an occasional exclamation Harris heard of a boy’s promise to a dying man, of a never-ending search for two murderers named Peterson and Webb. In uncompromising phrases the cowboy told his employer of the false accusation which had resulted in his being outlawed, sent alone into the endless West, a price on his head and every man’s hand turned against him.’ At the end of the story Harris shook his head.
‘Jim, I never heard anythin’ like it,’ he confessed. ‘But I’m believin’ yu right down the line! If yo’re Sudden, then there’s been a pack o’ damned lies told about yu!’
‘I’m obliged, seh,’ was Green’s grateful reply. ‘I’m thinkin’ it might be better if yu keep it to yoreself for the time bein’. No need to advertise it: it might come back on yu, hirin’ a notorious gunfighter.’
His words were bitter, and the old man rose and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘If there’s real trouble I can’t think of a man I’d rather have alongside me,’ he said. ‘I’m behind yu all the way, an’ billy-be-damned to anyone as don’t like it. But if yu want to play her that way, what yu say goes, Jim.’
Green smiled; his employer’s confidence in him was a rewarding thing. ‘Yu won’t regret it, Jake,’ he said.
‘I ain’t figgerin’ to,’ Harris rumbled. ‘Yu got any idea how to get to the bottom o’ these troubles we been rakin’ over, Jim?’
‘One or two,’ Green told him. ‘I’d like to disappear for a few days. Like to poke around, ask a few questions. Would yu cover for me if anyone asks where I’m at? Tell ’em I’ve gone up into the Yavapais to see if I can get a line on the rustlers.’
‘Yu ain’t meanin’ our people, too, Jim?’ Harris was shocked, but Sudden’s voice was grim as he replied:
‘Until we know for shore who’s behind these troubles, I ain’t shore yu oughta confide in anyone, Jake. Let’s make her yore secret an’ mine until I’ve had a chance to look around in peace. After that, we might have a line we can follow.’
Harris looked dubious, but he nodded. ‘Whatever yu say, Jim.’ He knocked out the dottle from his pipe into the fireplace, asking, ‘When d’yu figger to leave?’
‘First light,’ Green said. ‘An’ don’t let Philadelphia foller me. I aim to travel far an’ fast.’
With this final injunction he bade his employer goodnight. The homesteader filled his pipe again, lighting it by the same method as before. Leaning in his chair, he watched the smoke drifting upwards, his face thoughtful. Remarkable though the black-haired cowboy’s revelation had been, he did not for a moment entertain any doubt that every word of it was true. ‘Driftin’,’ he told himself. ‘An’ driftin’ the wrong way. I just knowed he warn’t no ordinary puncher. I’m durned glad I ain’t the Sheriff who’s lookin’ for him: I’d hate to find him, if he didn’t want to be found.’
Chapter Nine
RIVERTON, THE next town south of Yavapai on the trail to Tucson, was almost a carbon copy of its northern neighbor. The dirt street, the straggle of buildings of timber, ’dobe, or mixtures of both were different only in the signs on them. In Riverton’s street the dust was hock-deep, and a stiff westerly breeze tossed handfuls of it into the eyes of pedestrians hurrying about their business. Unlike Yavapai, Riverton boasted no bank, and its only eating place was a hash-house run by a wooden-legge
d ex-cowboy named Casey, who had been trampled in a stampede many years earlier and, after a few years as a trail cook, had decided to go into business for himself. His food was eatable; nothing more. The lack of competition kept him busy, and at around one o’clock in the afternoon he was usually able to stand with his greasy hands on his ample hips and count a satisfactory full house. He was doing this very thing when the stranger came in, and he bent his full attention upon the newcomer. Tall, but stooped as though his shoulders bore some heavy weight, the man was dressed in cheap Levi’s, a woolen shirt that looked as if it had been cast off in the War Between the States, and cracked, battered boots without spurs. He wore no gun belt, but Casey could see the butt of what looked like an old cap and ball revolver protruding from the man’s trouser waistband. The man removed a grease-stained old sombrero from his head, revealing hair matted with dirt and sand, and whose color might once have been dark brown or black. Steel-rimmed eyeglasses and a heavy stubble of beard adorned the face, and when the newcomer smiled sheepishly at him and took a seat at a table Casey noted that the man’s teeth were stained and yellow. Casey was a great one for taking note of his customers’ personal appearance. He had several times, when he first opened for business, made the mistake of serving panhandlers like this one only to find, after they had consumed his food, that they had no money. He had extracted his price from their faces with his own meaty fists, but it wasn’t the same. He had vowed therefore to make sure which of his customers could pay before he served them. Casey stumped over to where the man had taken his seat, and the man cringed at his approach.
‘Good … good day to you, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d … I’d like …’
‘Afore yu tell me what yu’d like, let’s see the color of yer money,’ Casey told him peremptorily. ‘This ain’t no charity I’m runnin!’
One or two of his regular customers grinned. Casey’s preference for cash on the barrel was well known in Riverton; they watched, half hoping that the nondescript newcomer would have no money, for Casey would surely thereupon provide an entertaining few minutes before the penurious one was thrown into the dusty street. They were disappointed, however; the man produced a greasy buckskin sack, and showed Casey a dollar bill-creased and battered almost beyond recognition, but a dollar it surely was. Casey nodded and, returning to his kitchen, dished up the meal. He thereupon forgot about the man, as customers finished their meals, and paid; others entered and ordered. Around the middle of the day was always busy, and it was not until about two-thirty that the wooden-legged hash-slinger noticed that the stranger who’d paid with the ragged dollar bill was still in his chair, smoking a vile-smelling cigar. He stumped across the room, now empty except for the smoking one, and stood facing him, arms akimbo.
‘Yu’ve finished.’ It was not a question, and the man nodded nervously. ‘Yu’ll be leavin’, then.’ The man nodded again.
He rose to go, and then hesitantly stuttered, ‘Mi-might I ask yore help, mister?’
‘If it’s money yu want, the answer’s no,’ Casey told him flatly.
The stranger shook his matted head. ‘No … heh, heh … not money, got plenty o’ money. Well … as good as money.’ He tapped the side of his nose and winked at Casey knowingly, while that worthy maintained his outward air of puzzled indifference.
‘What’s yore name, mister?’ Casey barked.
‘Name’s Smith,’ the man told him. ‘John Smith.’ His cracked smile was evil, and the stink of liquor on his breath was strong enough to cut with a carving knife. ‘Yu reckon I could find me a buyer for some cows I got?’
‘How many head?’ Casey wanted to know. ‘An’ what’s the brand?’
‘Fifty,’ replied the man who had called himself Smith. ‘As to the brand … heh, heh, heh … it’s the Variable brand … heh, the Variable.’ He spluttered and wheezed as though these words were mountainously funny, while Casey regarded him stonily.
‘What makes yu think I can help yu find a buyer?’ he snapped. ‘I ain’t in the cattle business.’
‘Never said yu was,’ cackled Smith. ‘If yu don’t know nobody, no harm done I’ll be off to the saloon, then.’
Casey watched the man leave his premises, and waited until Smith had loped across the street and into Buckmaster’s Long Branch saloon. Then, with surprising speed, the hash-handler doffed his apron, clapped a Stetson on his bald pate, and quit his establishment, following a route which led him around the back of the houses on the east side of the street to an alley shaded by a tall cottonwood. He knocked on a heavy timber door, and a cold voice said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Casey,’ puffed the old man, winded by his effort in the afternoon sun. The door opened, and a cold-eyed man in a dark suit bade him enter.
John Smith sat in the rear of Buckmaster’s saloon nursing his drink. From beneath the forward-tilted brim of his battered Stetson he watched the flow of customers in and out of the saloon with keen eyes. At this time of day there were not many faces to watch, but he kept on guard none the less. A faint smile, completely out of character with the cackling, dirty character who had spoken to Casey, crossed his face. ‘If Philadelphia seen me now,’ he murmured, ‘he’d probably say I was loco – an’ I ain’t shore but he’d be right.’ Sudden – for such was the identity of the itinerant who had so completely foxed the hash-handler – saw no signs that his very broad hints of stolen cattle for disposal had been directed at the right man, but it seemed obvious that someone who had contact with practically every visitor to the town would know what Green wanted to know. This was his reason for coming to Riverton. He had asked Harris for some old and battered clothes, ignoring the older man’s curious stare, and, shortly prior to entering Riverton, had rubbed sand and earth sparingly into his hair to give it a tangled, matted effect. Unshaven jaws had also been rubbed with earth to heighten the look of unvarnished scruffiness, and as a finishing touch Green had found the steel-rimmed glasses in the Harris house just before he had left. The result, when he altered his height by stooping, stained his teeth by chewing tobacco, and swilling whisky round his mouth to make his breath stink of liquor, and changed his normally lithe walk by replacing it with a lop-sided loping gait, was a complete transformation of his appearance.
‘Mightn’t be necessary a-tall,’ he had told himself. ‘But it’d be a mite unfortunate if anyone in Riverton reckernised me.’
As he sat at the table thinking, he saw two men come in, and his eyes narrowed. They let their gaze wander, apparently with only the mildest interest, about the saloon, not remaining on him any longer than anyone else there. One of the two men was a tall, cadaverous-looking individual with a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned white hat such as those worn by plantation owners. The appearance of a rich Southern landowner was heightened by the dark suit, the brocaded waistcoat, and the shining knee-boots, worn without spurs. The man was trimming a long panatela cigar, and Sudden heard him order bourbon whisky with branch water. ‘Riverboat gambler,’ was Green’s guess as he bent his attention upon the man’s crony. This one was almost uncomfortably fat, and perspiration lay upon his face like melting lard. The man stood no more than five feet high, and was almost as wide across the middle. He wore only white linen shirt and trousers, and a pair of flat-heeled half-boots. Around his enormous middle hung a gun belt. As far as the cow-puncher could see, the gambler was unarmed, but he bet himself the man would have a hideaway gun somewhere on his person.
‘Shore looks the type,’ he told himself. ‘Wal, here goes!’
So saying, he rose to his feet, assuming once more the half-crouched gait of the John Smith whose role he was playing, and approached the bar. He ordered beer, and stood next to the tall gambler to drink it.
‘Mighty hot today, ain’t it?’ offered the fat man, mopping his face with a large white bandanna. Sudden nodded, smiling weakly.
‘Kind o’ weather makes a man wish he didn’t have to work for a livin’,’ pursued the fat man.
‘Know … know what yu mean,’ grinned Green fatu
ously. ‘Feel the same way. Yu gents care to set down, jine me fer a snort?’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ agreed the fat man. ‘Ranee?’ He turned to his companion, who affected to notice ‘John Smith’ for the first time.
‘Ah beg yo’ pardon?’
‘This gent’s invitin’ yu to jine him,’ the fat man said.
‘Ah don’t b’lieve Ah’ve had the pleasure, suh?’ the man named Ranee said to Green. Green introduced himself as John Smith, and the man nodded and, dusting the seat with a handkerchief, sat down at the table.
‘What business yu in, Mr. Smith?’ asked the fat man.
‘Heh … this ‘n’ that,’ Green mumbled. ‘Sellin’ an’ buyin’.’
‘An’ what brings yu-all to Riverton, Mr. Smith,’ asked the gambler silkily, ‘buyin’ or sellin’?’
Green smiled. ‘S-sell … say: yu boys ain’t the Law, or anythin’? I mean …’
The fat man held up a deprecating hand. ‘My dear feller,’ he said. ‘Thisyere is Ranee Fontaine. He’s one o’ the biggest businessmen in these parts. Runs a ranch up north o’ here.’
‘Ah’m shoah Mr. Smith heah didn’t come to talk about me,’ said Fontaine. His voice changed, became businesslike and sharp. ‘Who told yu to come here, Smith?’
Sudden smiled grimly to himself at the disappearance of Fontaine’s pose, although no trace of his satisfaction appeared on his face, which was, to the watchers, a study in confusion and nervousness.
‘Why … I … yu … I was told …’ he stuttered, apparently almost frightened out of his wits.
‘Who told yu, Smith?’ snarled the fat man, leaning forward. In the same moment Sudden felt a solid poke in the ribs, and knew that the fat man had drawn his gun under the concealment of his huge midriff, and that the barrel was now flush against his, Sudden’s, heart.
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