“These wooden walls are not sound-proof,” Joan smiled. “I happened to hear your last question. Is this what you want? It was taken only a few months before he—went away.”
Sudden scrutinized the photograph, which seemed oddly familiar. The costly cowboy clothes, ornate belt and weapons were there, but the face of the wearer was younger, smiling, and the eyes did not lack expression. A mark showed on the right side of the chin. He pointed to it, and the girl nodded.
“A faint scar, the only thing about him that hasn’t altered,” she said sadly. “You see, I was the cause of that. It happened when we were children: I had teased him, and running after me, he fell on a stone; the wound healed badly. All along I have been persuading myself there must be some mistake, but when I saw that …”
The quiver in her voice and the trembling fingers as she took back the picture told him that she was very near tears.
“A fella who takes the wrong trail can come back an’ start again,” he consoled.
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes met his meaningly. “I would like Jeff to have that chance.”
Sudden understood—she was asking him not to kill. To his great relief, the Colonel called her, and he was spared the necessity of replying.
At supper that evening, he asked questions about Red Rock, and casually mentioned his holiday. The announcement met with a mixed reception.
“Why, yu ain’t been here no time,” one of the older men commented. “How’d yu work it, Green?”
“Held a gun on the 01’ Man, I should think,” Turvey sneered.
“Yeah, that’s yore trouble, Turvey,” Sudden retorted. “Yu should, but yu don’t. I just asked, that’s all.”
“Ken must be drunk or loco; strike while the iron’s hot is my motto,” Frosty grinned, as he made for the door. “I’d like to go with yu, Jim.”
He was back in ten minutes, still wearing the grin, but hisred face told a different story. A dozen eager voices put the same question.
Frosty shook his head. “Said he was mighty sorry, but he couldn’t have two of his best men absent at the same time, which shows he’s in his senses all right. 0’ course, that don’t shut out all o’ yu.”
A yelp of ironical mirth greeted this modest explanation and in the midst of it, Lagley entered. He shot a sour look at Sudden.
“Why didn’t yu come to me if yu wanted to lay off?”
“Thought I’d save yu the trouble of askin’ the boss,” was the careless reply.
The implication that he had not the power to give permission only deepened the foreman’s frown, but it was Turvey who spoke.
“Allus did hate a ranch where the owner keeps pets,” he said viciously.
“Well, yu ain’t tied to it, are yu?” Sudden enquired acidly.
Lagley averted a possible storm by calling the new hand outside.
“Keith said yu were goin’ to Red Rock. How long d’yu aim to stay away?” he asked.
“Two-three days, mebbe.”
“Have yu told—him?” He jerked a thumb towards the hills.
“Lord, no. I ain’t sold him my soul.”
“Wait an’ see,” was the reply, and the puncher could have sworn there was a tinge of bitterness in the tone. “D’yu figure that he won’t know?”
“I ain’t carin’, but shore he will,” Sudden said. “Why, yonder goes Turvey, takin’ the glad tidin’s.”
Even as he spoke, a hunched-up little horseman shot away from the corral, heading through the gloom towards the hills. The foreman swore.
“Damnation, yo’re way off the target, Green. That hombre has to night-herd the bunch o’ three-year-olds yu an’ Frosty have rousted out’n the brush.”
Sudden accepted the explanation but did not believe it. “A fella can’t allus hit the mark,” he said. “Got anythin’ else to tell me?”
“On’y this,” Lagley replied. “Yo’re sittin’ in a bigger game than yu savvy; don’t over-value yore hand.”
“Oh, I’m growed up an’ got all my teeth,” the puncher returned lightly. “Any messages for Red Rock?”
He got no answer to this flippant enquiry. Seated on the bench outside the bunkhouse, he smoked, and turned things over. Despite the fact that they were supposed to be working together, the foreman did not like him. That he had guessed correctly as to Turvey’s errand he felt positive.
“Steve don’t want me in neither camp,” he reflected. “Probably he’s plannin’ to play me some scurvy trick right now. Wonder if that little rat is goin’ on to Red Rock to make arrangements?”
The possibility sent him to bed chuckling.
Sudden’s reception in the morning at Black Sam’s was not the one he had expected, for though the negro professed to be glad to see him, it was very evidently untrue. His hands shook as he supplied the drink ordered, and his anxious gaze was never off the door. A blunt enquiry elicited that nothing had been seen of Scar and his friends, but that other denizens of the bandit stronghold had visited Dugout and behaved themselves decorously.
“Then what’s yore trouble, ol’-timer?” the puncher demanded. “Why treat me like I had a catchin’ complaint?”
The saloon-keeper furtively pushed a piece of paper the bar. “Done foun’ it dis mawnin’, shove undeh de do’, quavered. “I silo’ gotta leave heah.”
Clumsily scrawled in pencil on the soiled scrap were the words : “One more offense an’ you dekorate a tree.
SATAN.”
Sudden laughed as he read it. “I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry, Sam,” he advised. “Why, yu numskull, don’t yu reckon Jeff Keith can write an’ spell better’n that?”
The negro’s gloomy features lightened. “Yo’re sho’ly right, ser,” he agreed. “Dis niggeh got no savvy. Massa Jeff he done went to college.”
“It’s friend Scar, o’ course, tryin’ to frighten yu. Lemme have the message, an’ next time I meet the gent I’ll make him eat it.”
He pocketed the warning and casually mentioning that he was bound for Red Rock, departed. Climbing the long slope to Hell City, an idea occurred to him which brought a mischievous grin to his hard face. The custodian of the gate opened without question or comment, though it was not the man he had seen before. Evidently he was expected. The bandit chief received him without any sign of surprise and his first remark told that Turvey’s time had not been entirely devoted to night-herding.
“Aren’t you rather wide of the route to Red Rock?” Sudden affected astonishment he did not feel. “Yu are well served,” he said.
“As a man should be who serves himself,” was the reply. “Did the girl ask you to be silent?”
“It was a good guess.”
The masked man grimaced. “Well, call it that. Now I’ll tell you another thing—you never had any intention of visiting Red Rock.”
“Me bein’ here, it shore looks thataway,” the puncher countered. “Mebbe yu know about this too.” He produced the scrap of paper and told where he had obtained it. “Not quite yore style, I’d say, threatin’ an old darkie who musta been pretty good to yu as a kid,” he added sarcastically.
The effect was volcanic. Through shut lips the bandit barked an order which sent Silver scuttering. His master paced to and fro, his fists bunched till the knuckle-bones showed white beneath the skin, obviously seething with anger. In a few minutes the dwarf returned, with Roden slouching behind. With a furious gesture, Satan flung the paper at his feet.
“What’s the meaning of that?” he snarled.
The man picked it up. “I dunno ” he began, and stopped as he saw the gun levelled at his breast.
“One lie and you’ll never speak again.”
The rascal did not doubt it. In those pale eyes shone a lust to take his life, and he knew that the finger on the trigger was itching to press it. His tanned skin turned to a sickly yellow.
“Aw, Chief, I didn’t mean no harm,” he muttered. “The nigger’s bin gittin’ uppity—you know what he done to some of us a bit back, an’ I wanted
to give him a bad moment, that’s all.”
“All? You dared to act without permission, and use my name? One more break like that, you damned dog, and I’ll feed you to the buzzards. Get out, and remember, that warning now applies to you.”
Only when the fellow had crept, utterly cowed, from the room did Satan replace his revolver and turn again to his visitor. The storm had passed.
“I am obliged to you,” he said. “These brutes must learn that there is only one head.”
“Would you have shot him?” the cowboy asked curiously. “Certainly, and he knew it,” the bandit replied, and with a cold smile, ” You dont believe that. Well, I have another case to deal with—a worse one. You shall see.”
He nodded to his satellite, who went and opened the door. Two men entered, gripping the arms of a third; behind them came some half-dozen others. Ragged, ill-favoured fellows, all of them, who found in the lawless West a haven where they might keep their freedom.
The prisoner was a half-breed, with more Mexican than Indian blood in him the cowboy conjectured, for he displayed none of the red man’s stoicism in misfortune, and his spare frame shook as with an ague when his guards halted him in front of the masked judge. The poor wretch did not know that by his own cowardice he was condemning himself. Satan wasted no time.
“In the Big Bend affair you were one of the men who entered and cleaned up the bank?”
“Si, senor,” was the reply, almost in a whisper.
“And you kept back five hundred dollars in gold, thereby adding to your share and lessening ours,” the cold voice continued.
The man’s lips writhed. “Sefior, eet ees a meestak,” he cried. “Dere was one beeg haste—I no theenk—”
“That I would find out,” the other concluded. “Fool ! All that happens is revealed to me by powers you could not comprehend. Listen: you gave one of the gold pieces to your woman, Anita; the others are buried beneath your blankets. You see, I know all. You have broken your oath to me, and robbed your comrades. The penalty for either is—death.”
The accused tried to speak but his trembling lips were incapable of forming words. Save for the support of the two who held him he would have fallen to the floor. His judge contemplated him with contempt.
“I shall be merciful,” he said, “but you must be punished.”
He paused, and the cowboy saw a gleam of hope in the dark, fearful eyes. “You will receive—fifty lashes.”
The gleam died instantly and stark terror took its place.
Speech came again in a shrill cry: “Not the wheep, senor; keel me, but not the wheep.” He would have dropped on his knees but the guards rudely jerked him upright, and at a sign from their master, dragged him away, still mouthing wild, incoherent entreaties.
Satan motioned to his servant. “See to it, and let me know when all is ready,” he said, and to Sudden, “Well, what do you think?”
“It will kill him.”
“Of course, but it will save me from slaying others for the same offence,” was the callous reply. “That is civilization’s excuse for hanging a murderer—he dies that the rest may live, so even this contemptible coward will have served the community.” From without, the muffled, brazen voice of a bell came to them. “Have you ever seen a man thrashed, Sudden? Come, it is an interesting sight.”
Little as he wished to witness such a spectacle, the puncher could not refuse. A deed of violence was no new thing to him, and in the course of his adventurous career he had encountered men who, spurred on by greed or revenge, would commit any crime in the calendar, but never had he met the like of the inhuman devil at his side. Throughout the mock trial he sensed that the Red Mask was revelling in his power to hurt, and his so-called promise of mercy was no more than calculated cruelty to a culprit already doomed.
They stepped out into the sunlight to find a curious scene awaiting them. At a point where the street widened, stood a stout post, and beside it, fixed to the cliff, a big bell. Sudden had noticed them earlier but without suspecting their sinister purpose. Tied to the post, stripped to the waist, his bound wrists-high above his head, was the half-breed, and by hisale a burly fellow holding a short-handled whip of plaited rawhide, the tapering end of which was knotted at intervals. Ringed round the pair were some two-score onlookers, summoned by the sonorous notes of the bell. Mostly men, their coarse, cruel faces were alight with anticipation. They were about to be entertained, and Sudden, seeking for some sign of sympathy, remembered that the condemned had endeavoured to rob these people; there could be no compassion from them.
The excited chattering ceased and the circle opened as the Red Mask and his companion appeared. A little behind where they stood the cowboy could hear two men muttering. “Five dollars he don’t stand twenty-five strokes.”
“Yo’re on; Pedro is tougher than he ‘pears.”
“But he got the gal Muley wanted an’ that hombre ain’t the forgettin’ sort. Look at him.”
The man with the whip was drawing the lash almost caressingly through his fingers, with a gloating expression which only too plainly betrayed eagerness to begin his ghoulish task. Sudden’s remonstrance brought only a sneer to the Chief’s thin lips.
“I picked him for that reason,” he said coldly. “I shall get good service.”
He was about to give the awaited signal when, from behind a group of spectators, a woman rushed forward and flung herself at his feet. Not yet thirty, she had a bold kind of beauty, but now her face had the pallor of death, the cheeks sunken, the eyes filled with bitter anguish.
“Spare him,” she pleaded. “He did not want the gold—he took it for me, because I taunted him with his poverty. It was my fault, let me take the punishment. I do not fear the whip, but Pedro is ill—it will kill him.”
The impassioned appeal might have been made to a statue. One piteous glance at those implacable eyes told her that she had failed.
“Take her away,” Satan ordered.
The woman stood up. Despair had transformed her from a broken suppliant into a raging fury. She raised a hand heavenwards.
“You devil!” she raved. “May God’s fire strike you—”
Ere she could finish, the words were stifled in her throat. The men who had seized her were about to drag her from the scene when the Chief stayed them.
“Let her remain,” he said harshly. “She shall see her lover suffer, and if she utters but one word, I will double the sentence.”
But the spirit of passion was spent; with a low moan, the woman sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands. The man with the whip, whose advances she had rejected, gazed at the bowed form with brutal satisfaction; every blow he dealt would lacerate her also; his vengeance would be complete.
A curt command and the lash whistled through the air, sweeping across the bared back and cutting a livid weal from shoulder to hip. The half-breed’s whole frame quivered and from his ashen lips sprang a shriek of agony.
“I figured Muley would draw blood at the first lick,” one of the wagerers commented.
“Bah! He ain’t started yet—that was just a taster,” the other replied. “He don’t want Pedro to pass out too soon.”
The cruel work went on, blow succeeding blow, and with fiendish accuracy the wielder of the weapon contrived that each should fall on a new spot, so that by the time a dozen had been delivered, the victim’s back became a red, raw mass. The pain must have been atrocious but after the first cry there was no further sound save the hiss of the lash. Dangling limply from his bound wrists, head bowed between hisbiceps, the sufferer was spared the sight of the brute beasts gathered there to witness his torment.
“Gittin’ tired Muley?” one asked jeeringly. “Somebody did oughta spell you.”
The flogger, already exasperated by the silence of his subject, spat an oath at the speaker and, measuring his distance, rained stroke after stroke, slashing the pulped flesh to ribbons and sending the blood flying. Then he paused, panting, his eyes glaring murder. But his work w
as done; the drooping head of the half-breed sagged sideways. Muley darted forward and grasped it by the hair.
“Cashed!” he cried disgustedly. “He’s cheated me, damn him.”
With a gesture, the Chief stilled the babel which broke out. “Justice is done,” he said grandiloquently.
As they walked away, the puncher was aware that his companion was eyeing him closely.
“Well, what do you think of my method of treating traitors?”
“‘Pears to make yu popular with yore people,” was Sudden’s non-committal answer.
Satan laughed mockingly. “They hate, but are afraid of me,” he boasted, “and that is how I would have it. Poets prate of love, but fear is the strongest of the passions; it is the great governing factor of life; fear of pain, punishment, death and damnation turns us all into cowards and makes so-called civilization possible. Have you ever thought of that?”
“Too high-falutin’ for me,” Sudden said. “What I’m worryin’ about right now is where I’ll sleep an’ put my hoss; I ain’t due back at the Double K till tomorrow evenin’.”
“Silver will see to it, and there is a corral at the other end of the place.”
“I’ll take Nigger along, an’ have a look round.”
“Better wear this,” Satan replied, producing one of the red badges. “It will tell the men that you are now one of us, and may save you trouble.”
Sudden’s truculent tone was back. “If anybody starts somethin’ I hope yu got a good big graveyard.”
The cold eyes glinted. “There’s room in it,” was the answer.
Chapter XIII
It did not take the cowboy long to find the corral, formed by fencing an indentation in the cliff on the left of the street. There was a trough of water, and scanty tussocks of coarse grass afforded some sort of feed. Sudden surveyed it whimsically.
“Short commons, of friend,” he said, as he turned the black loose, “but yu ain’t gotta live here—yet. Don’t yu go to learnin’ bad habits from them other roughnecks.”
By the side of the corral was a largish timber building, a weather-worn sign on which announced it as “Dirk’s Saloon.” Carrying his saddle and rifle, Sudden went in. A middle-aged, pock-marked man behind the bar was the sole occupant; he promptly produced a bottle.
Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 07 - Sudden Rides Again(1938) Page 10