Sudden: The Marshal of Lawless

by Oliver Strange

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she asked, after an awkward pause.

  “I shore am, ma’am,” drawled the culprit. “Blockin’ the trail thisaway is certainly scand’lous.”

  Sitting there, hugging his knees, a grin on his upturned face, he looked like a mischievous youngster. She had hard work not to smile, but instead she said reprovingly:

  “I wasn’t referring to that. I meant for being—” She paused confusedly.

  “Drunk,” he assisted, and the engaging grin was again evident. “Don’t yu mind my feelin’s—the barkeep inside didn’t when he threw me out on my ear, though I’ve spent near enough in there the last two-three days to buy the hull shebang. Drink is a shore deceiver; it lifts a fella up, but it sets him down again mighty hard.”

  “Knowing that, then why do you do it?” she naturally asked.

  “Yu got me guessin’,” he smiled. “I reckon men is like hosses—even the steadiest will buck once in a while, sorta temp’rary rebellion ‘gainst the thusness o’ things, yu sabe? Now I’ve put up my kick, I’ll get me a job an’ be a respectable citizen for a piece.”

  She had a suspicion that he was amusing himself, and her next remark was a little ironical.

  “Oh, you do work?”

  “Shorely,” he grinned. “I got a healthy appetite to provide for.”

  She smiled too at this, and then, as she glanced down the street, he saw a little more colour steal into her cheeks. A tall, rather carefully-clad young cowpuncher was swinging along towards them. The girl prepared to depart.

  “If you come to the Double S my uncle might be able to use you,” she said.

  “I’m obliged to you,” the man said. “If I don’t get the job I’m after, I’ll shore remember that.”

  With a little nod she went on her way and his eyes followed her with a gleam of admiration. The newcomer’s greeting was an elaborate sweep of his sombrero, and after chatting for a moment, they turned and went along the street together.

  “She’s certainly soothin’ to the sight,” the prostrate puncher murmured. “An’ it looks like yu may be lucky, Mister Man, whoever yu are. She’ll be Miss Antonia Sarel, o’ course.”

  The door of the saloon opened, the posse from Sweetwater came out, and, humorously bewailing their fate, took saddle again. The sheriff followed their example, after one contemptuous glance at the hunched-up figure on the sidewalk. The latter watched until the visitors, with a shrill cowboy yell, vanished in a cloud of dust.

  “Good huntin’, sheriff,” he muttered, for through the open window of the saloon he had heard the story of the stage robbery. “Wonder what yu’d ‘a’ said if I’d claimed to be Sudden?

  Called me a liar, I betcha, seein’ I was in the Red Ace when the hold-up happened. But it would ‘a’ been the sober truth alla-same, though I ain’t the man yo’re lookin’ for; he’s Sudden the Second, an’ I’m hopin’ to meet him my own self.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet, staggered round the corner of the building, and straightened up. “Guess I got this burg thinkin’ what I want it to, but We’ll play the hand right out,” he continued. “Mebbe that jasper is still hankerin’ for my hoss.”

  Dropping his shoulders, he lurched away to the corral behind the saloon. Here he found a short, stocky rancher saddling a horse, and studying the other animals in the enclosure. One of them, a big, rangy, black mustang seemed to get most of his attention. He looked up as the cowpuncher approached.

  “Changed yore mind ‘bout sellin’?” he asked, with a twinkle in his good-humoured eyes.

  “Nope, but I’ll gamble with yu,” the puncher replied. “Yu put up fifty bucks agin the hoss an’ we’ll cut the cards—highest wins. What yu say?”

  The rancher considered the proposition for a moment. He was a lover of horses, and he wanted the animal, but Andrew Bordene, of the Box B ranch, was a man of slow decisions.

  Cheap as good horseflesh was, he knew the black was worth twice the figure named. To give himself time, he asked a question:

  “I don’t know the brand. Where’d yu get him?”

  “From a fella who catched him in Texas. I took him wild, broke him myself, an’ branded him J. G.—my name bein’ James Green,” the cowpuncher told him. “Nigger is a good hoss.”

  He whistled, and the black came trotting to the corral bars and rubbed his velvety muzzle against his master’s outstretched hand. Bordene hesitated no longer; he liked a gamble, and this was all in his favour. Still, if the puncher wanted the money…

  “I’ll go yu,” he said, and diving into a pocket, produced a pack of cards.

  The puncher shuffled them carelessly and held them out for his opponent to cut.

  Bordene’s card was the knave of diamonds; Green cut the ten of hearts.

  “I lose,” he said, with a cheerful grin. “Say, I got a saddle an’ bridle that set me back a hundred and twenty in Tucson not too long ago. I’ll put ‘em up against the hoss if you’re willin’?”

  The rancher nodded, shuffled, and proffered the pack. A look of relief appeared on the puncher’s face when he turned up the queen of spades, only to vanish again when Bordene showed the king of diamonds. Nevertheless, he laughed.

  “That busts me wide open,” he said, and then, “No, it don’t, mebbe. See here, the round-up’ll be comin’ along an’ yu’ll want more help. I’ll stake two months o’ my time against the saddle an’ bridle. I know cattle.”

  Bordene looked at him in surprise, almost suspecting a jest; but though the puncher was grinning he was quite in earnest. Somehow, the rancher’s heart warmed to this gay loser.

  “I’m trustin’ yu—like yu did me,” he responded. “That deck might ‘a’ been phony.”

  “Shucks!” was the reply. “I know a white man when I see one.”

  The play was resumed. The puncher won the first cut, lost the next, and then won the two following, thus regaining both saddle and horse. He looked quizzically at his opponent.

  “We ain’t got nowhere,” he remarked. “One more flip, fifty cash against the hoss, to finish it.”

  He cut and displayed the three of spades.

  “Poor luck, friend,” said the older man. “I’m thinkin’ yu’ve lost yore mount.”

  With a grin of commiseration and confident of success he exposed his own card. His face changed with ludicrous rapidity as he saw it: he had cut the two of spades.

  “Well, may I be teetotally damned if yu don’t win!” he cried regretfully, and then his eyes twinkled. “No matter. I like the way yu play, an’ if yo’re huntin’ a job in these parts come an’ see me at the Box B.”

  “I certainly will, seh,” the cowpuncher smiled. “I like the way yu lose.”

  He took the money the other tendered and waved a farewell as the rancher swung into the saddle and loped for the trail. Then he smiled contentedly. He knew the story would get around, and that he would be regarded as a stray puncher, who, having overdone his spree, had to risk losing his horse to rehabilitate himself.

  “Reckon that will blind my tracks aplenty,” he muttered, and made his way to the Red Ace.

  The saloon was empty, save for the bartender, whose face at once assumed a surly expression when he recognized the visitor. Green walked to the bar, slammed down a twenty-dollar gold piece, and said sharply:

  “Gimme my guns.”

  With some uneasiness of mind, Jude produced the pawned weapons—two forty-fives, the almost black walnut butts of which showed signs of much use.

  “Whisky,” came the next order, as the cowboy, examining the guns to make sure they were still loaded, thrust them into his holsters.

  Jude pushed forward bottle and glass, concealing his satisfaction. The fellow would get soaked again and the guns would soon return behind the bar. He knew these range-riders; if they had a taste for liquor they would spend their last peso to satisfy it. With a saturnine smile he watched the customer pour his drink and raise the glass to his nose. Then the spirit was coolly tipped out on the sanded floor.r />
  “Hey, yu, what’s the matter with my whisky?” asked the astonished and outraged supplier of the drink.

  “Didn’t you take for it?” asked the customer; and when the other sullenly nodded, “then that makes it my whisky, don’t it?—an’ shorely a fella can do what he likes with his own.”

  The barkeeper could not refute the argument; this cold-eyed, firm-jawed person was a very different proposition from the limp, drink-sodden bum he had so unceremoniously flung out a few hours before. Pushing forward a coin from the change lying before him, the cowboy poured himself another dose. This he also smelt, then took a mouthful, rolling the liquor around his tongue before finally spitting it out.

  “You see, fella, it can be did,” he remarked to the astounded Jude. “Of Man Booze can be beat. Yu wanta get yore think-box workin’ an’ reorganize yore ideas some. Sabe?”

  He strolled casually out of the saloon, leaving an almost petrified bartender giving a lifelike impersonation of a newly-caught codfish. After a visit to the barber, Green purchased a new shirt and kerchief, which he donned in the room behind the store, and emerged looking and feeling a very different individual. There were still some hours of daylight remaining, and having nothing else to do, he sauntered along to the eastern end of the town, which was also the Mexican quarter. Passing a dumpy adobe building, which he rightly guessed to be a drinking dive, he heard his own tongue.

  “Well, yu got me fixed. Go ahead an’ finish it, yu scum.”

  Noiselessly pushing open the swing-door he saw a curious sight. In the centre of the earthen floor a short, stout cowpuncher was standing, his gun out. In front of him, right and left, were two Mexicans with drawn knives. Behind him, leaning over the rough wooden bar, was another, an older man, who had a shotgun trained on the cowboy’s back. Green entered just in time to see the hand of the fellow on the left flash up, and promptly fired. The bullet, shattering the thrower’s elbow, spoiled his aim and sent the knife thudding into the front of the bar, where it quivered, winking wickedly in the sunlight.

  “Drop it,” Green said sharply to the other knife expert, and when the weapon tinkled on the floor and its owner had frozen into immobility, he turned to the man at the bar. “Push that gun over an’ hoist yore paws, pronto!”

  The command was obeyed with ludicrous promptitude. Green looked at the puncher.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “Friend, yo’re as welcome as a fourth ace—these skunks shore had me cold,” was the reply. “I was in here yestiddy, an’ I don’t just remember what happened. S’pose they hocussed my liquor. This mornin’ I wakes up with a head like a balloon, way out on the desert under a mesquite, an’ my roll was missin’. I walks in, an’ nacherally calls to enquire. Bein’ hoppin’ mad, I don’t look at my gun first; o’ course, they’d drawed the shells an’ if yu hadn’t happened along I reckon I’d be tryin’ to twang a harp about now. An’ I never had no ear for music,” he finished whimsically.

  “Which of ‘em, would yu say, has yore mazuma?” Green asked.

  “They was all here, but I’m guessin’ the old piker has it—he’s the boss, the other two are just relations,” the puncher explained.

  Green looked at the proprietor. “Ante up,” he said. “If this hombre don’t get his roll, I’ll have to ask yore widow about it.”

  “‘To be or not to be,’ amigo,” grinned the little puncher, busy stuffing cartridges into his gun.

  Green looked at him in surprise and then chuckled inwardly. The Mexican, his beady eyes full of hate, reached into a drawer beneath the bar and threw out a roll of bills secured by a rubber band, the while he jabbered a string of excuses. The senor had been seized with illness; he had taken care of the money lest the senor be robbed; it would have been returned in due course; it was only a joke…

  “Yore brand o’ humour’ll get yu fitted with a wooden suit one o’ these fine days,” Green grimly warned him, as he backed out of the door the puncher was holding ajar. They stood without for a moment, waiting, but there was no demonstration from the dive. As they turned up the street the rescued man said quietly:

  “I’m obliged to yu.”

  “Shucks! Nothin’ to that,” Green returned hastily. “I’m bettin’ that, like myself, yo’re a stranger hereabouts.”

  “Yeah, drifted in coupla days back—just moseyin’ round the country,” explained the other.

  “I’m stayin’ here; what about comin’ in for a pow-wow?”

  He had halted before an unpretentious log and shingle two-storey building, above the door of which a rudely-lettered board announced, “Durley’s Rest House. Good Food and Likker.”

  Green read the notice and smiled.

  “I hope he cooks better’n he spells,” he said.

  “Shore does, an’ I reckon he’s square at that,” responded the stranger, as he thrust open the door.

  CHAPTER III

  The bar they entered was small but neat and clean. A man of middle age, with a round, red, jovial face greeted the smaller of the pair with a reproving shake of the head.

  “Yore bed don’t appear to ‘a’ bin used any last night,” he said. “Sleepin’ out in thisyer town ain’t supposed to be healthy. No business o’ mine, o’ course, but—” He pushed forward the customary bottle and glasses. The little puncher shuddered visibly at the sight of them.

  “Not if yu paid me, ol’-timer,” he said earnestly. “I’m feelin’ like a warmed-up corpse right now.”

  “Yu look it,” the landlord told him. “Been to Miguel’s, I s’pose? Yo’re old enough to know better.”

  “I do know better, but I went there—wanted suthin with a kick in it.” He grinned ruefully.

  “I got the kick awright, on my head from the way she aches. If you had a cup o’ strong coffee now—” He looked enquiringly at Green.

  “Coffee sounds good to me too,” that young man replied. In a few moments they were seated at one of the small tables, and the rescuer had an opportunity to study the man whose life he had probably saved. The round, plump face, with its twinkling eyes and generous mouth suggested good-humour, and there was strength in the squat figure and slightly-bowed legs.

  Despite the fact that he must have passed the mid-thirties his manner showed the irresponsibility of a boy. He swallowed half the cup of thick, black beverage the landlord had just put before him.

  “That’s the stuff,” he said appreciatively. “Now, s’pose we get acquainted; my name is Barsay, but my friends call me—”

  “Tubby?” queried the other, with a grin.

  The little man stopped rolling a cigarette and stared in open-mouthed astonishment. Then he grinned too.

  “Hell! I was goin’ to say ‘Pete,’” he pointed out. “How’d yu guess ‘bout that infernal nickname?”

  “You told me yoreself—back there in the dive,” Green smiled. ” ‘To be or not to be,’ yu said, an’, lookin’ at yu, it was easy to find the answer.”

  The other man raised his hands in ludicrous despair. “Awright, I’ll be good,” he said. “Yu see, it’s thisaway. Years back, I’m punchin’ for the Bar 9 in Texas, an’ I go to see a play by a fella named Shakespeare. That bit of it sticks in my noddle, but every while or so she slips out through my mouth. The boys plastered the name on me, an’ I can’t lose it. I reckon,” he added sadly, “she does kinda fit my figure.”

  “Shore does,” Green laughed; “but I wouldn’t worry. That same fella, Shakespeare, also says, ‘What’s in a name?’ Mine is Green, but I’ve been told I don’t look it.”

  “An’ that’s terrible true,” Barsay grinned. “If yu got any other I’m aimin’ to use it.”

  “I answer to ‘Jim’ when the right fella says it,” came the reply. “What yu doin’ in this prairie-dog’s hole of a town?”

  “Well, I’ve punched cows from the Border to Montana an’ back again. I s’pose I’d be chasin’ a job right now if you hadn’t rescued my roll for me.”

  “I’ve done considerable
harassin’ o’ beef my own self, an’ I want a change.”

  “This is cattle country.”

  “Shore it is, but I hear there’s a vacancy for a town marshal.”

  The little man sat up suddenly. “Sufferin’ serpents!” he cried. “Yu must be tired o’ life; marshals here don’t last as long as a dollar in a cowboy’s pocket. Say, if yo’re as broke as that, half o’ what I got is yores.”

  “Thank yu, but I ain’t busted, an’ I come here a-purpose to land the job,” the other told him. “What’s more, I got my eye on the deputy I want—short, fat fella, ‘bout yore size.”

  “Take that eye off,” gasped the ‘fat fella.’ “Me a deputy? Why, I wouldn’t fit nohow. I’ve bin a hold-up, hoss-thief, rustler—”

  “I knowed I was right,” Green interrupted. “Yu got all the qualifications. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’ they say. Yo’re shore elected, amigo.”

  Barsay shrugged resignedly. “Why didn’t yu let them Greasers finish?” he asked plaintively. Then his face brightened. “But yu ain’t roped her yet,” he added.

  “I’m goin’ to,” Green said confidently. “Point is, how do we go about it?”

  Barsay called the landlord over. “Hey, Durley, my friend here is hot on bein’ marshal o’ this burg. What’s his best move?”

  The innkeeper’s face lost its jovial expression. “His best move is to fork a cayuse an’ ride straight ahead till he forgets the notion,” he said seriously. “Bein’ marshal o’ Lawless is just plain sooicide.” He saw that his advice would not be taken and added, “Well, ‘The Vulture’ is the king-pin; if he gives it yu, the job’s yores.”

  “That’s Raven—who runs the Red Ace, huh?” Green asked. “Is he white?”

  “Claims to be on his father’s side, though I reckon it’s on’y Mex white at that,” Durley replied. “His mother was a Comanche squaw.”

  “Why for the fancy name?” asked Barsay.

  “Chap Seth had treated mean give it him,” Durley explained. “Said a vulture was the on’y sort o’ bird he resembled. Yu don’t wanta overlook no bets when yo’re dealin’ with him.”