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  There was a reward of five thousand dollars for the man who could bring Barbara Davis out of Apacheria alive. Every outlaw, gunman, and scalphunter in the south-west had drifted in to Tucson, then out into Apache country, lured by the dream of easy gold. The Apaches killed some of them slowly and horribly; but still they came. Governor Bleke knew unless the girl was brought out soon, he would have a full-scale Indian war on his hands. He sent for the one man who might be able to do it. A tall, slow-drawling man who wore his six-guns tied low and looked as if he knew how to use them. A Texas outlaw on the run: SUDDEN!

  SUDDEN – APACHE FIGHTER

  SUDDEN 3:

  By Frederick H. Christian

  First published in 1969 by Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © 1969, 2013 by Frederick Nolan

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: September 2013

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Chapter One

  Apaches!

  They came out of the arroyo where they had lain silent throughout the desert night, the faint grey light of dawn revealing them: swift-moving, crouching figures moving with deadly purpose across the deserted ranch yard, to catch the sleeping house unawares. The cook, bustling about his early-morning chores behind the kitchen saw them, and screamed just once before he fell, gutted by the swift sweep of a razor-sharp knife.

  The Chiricahuas were everywhere, running flat out now across the open space before the house, their thin screams harsh and unearthly in the chill dawn, echoing from the thick adobe walls.

  Old Larrabee, the stove-up horse wrangler, had been up early. Seeing them as he ambled down towards the corral, hearing them coming, he grabbed his Winchester and ran to meet them, pumping slugs into the breech and firing as he ran, yelling at the top of his voice for help from the hands in the bunkhouse. His first shot cartwheeled one of the Apaches off his feet, his second smashed another sideways in the dirt; the third shot caught one in the thigh, slewing him around screeching in agony; and then they were on Larrabee. The long knives rose and fell and the dust fogged high over the heaving piles of bodies as the other warriors ran around it without breaking their stride.

  The five riders in the bunkhouse had awakened to the sound of shouting and the explosion of shots. They spilled out of bed with their guns in their hands; there was only one explanation for such noises. They came piling out of the bunkhouse door into a murderous rain of bullets from the waiting Indians. Two of the riders wilted downwards as Jackson, the foreman, yelled hoarsely for his men to get back. Through the swirling gunsmoke he saw the lithe dark figures moving like wraiths, and emptied his six-gun at them as he rolled sidewards. Behind him, Tanner and Taylor cursed as they slid to a prone position in the dirt and laid a slicing barrage across the yard as they edged back for the shelter of the bunkhouse. Jackson frantically reloaded his revolver as his men blasted one of the Chiricahuas off the porch, but now another and another were there. Facing them defiantly stood the old, half-blind Mexican woman who had been a nurse to the family for nearly twenty years. She held her arms wide as though barring the Indians access to the door. One of them struck her aside brutally with the butt of his rifle and rushed wildly in, only to be hurled back like some broken puppet as the Navy Colt in the hands of Sarah Davis boomed not two feet from his chest. The two warriors behind him leaped back swiftly, flattening themselves against the rough mud surface of the three-foot thick adobe walls. The woman inside retreated slowly from the gaping doorway, her eyes wide, the gun in her small hands trembling slightly. Reaching the door of the bedroom, she bolted inside and slammed the door, barring it. Then, with the aid of her eighteen-year-old daughter Barbara, she pushed a heavy dressing table against it. Sarah Davis took her daughter’s hand and patted it, but the ears of both the women were attuned to the sounds in the yard outside.

  The three riders in the bunkhouse had managed to regain its shelter and, manning a window each, were searching the open space with their accurate rifle fire, picking off one of the warriors near the door, then the other; pinning the war party down.

  Off to the right, the leader of the raiding party, an imposing figure with a jagged lightning emblem painted on his copper chest, gave a signal to one of his warriors. The squat Apache dismounted and quickly made a small fire. The others unslung the short Apache bows from their ponies, and tied dry grass around the arrowheads. When they were ready the leader nodded again, and a moment later a rain of flaming arrows arced across the brightening sky, streaking down into the tarpaper roof of the bunkhouse. The thin yellow flames licked the flimsy material, as if tasting it. Then they bit deeper, leaping as if in joy, spreading and dancing. Heavy black smoke rose high in the still morning air; within ten minutes the bunkhouse was an inferno. The three men inside wrapped blankets about their faces to shield them from the flames and made a desperate try for the ranch house. The Chiricahuas cut them down with the feral joy of hunting wolves.

  Now the leader gave another signal. The warriors gathered for a moment, then hurled themselves at the house once more. They came into it panting, their musky stink filling the pretty room. In an orgy of blind destruction, the Apaches smashed the windows, ripped down the flowered curtains, splintered the furniture. One of them found a cupboard filled with bottles; they drained the whisky like water. And then they broke down the bedroom door. Sarah Davis killed two of them before they reached her.

  Chapter Two

  “I don’t care if it means killin’ off every damn’ Apache buck in the territory, Bleke – I want my girl back!” The speaker was a small, compactly built man of about forty-five. His aggressive stance and small shrewd eyes gave some hint of the burning drive which had made John Davis the biggest rancher in southwestern Arizona. He had come West the year after the end of the Civil War, driving before him two mules and a milk cow. Defying the elements, the warring Apaches, and the treacherous land itself, he had carved an empire out of the desert. In one terrible night, all he had worked for over the years had been reduced to ashes. Davis had returned to his ranch after a business trip to Phoenix which had necessitated him staying overnight, something he rarely did these days, to ride back with the rest of his riders. They had found the ranch a smoldering ruin, the bloated bodies of the dead strewn like tattered dolls in front of it, savagely mutilated. What he had found inside the house had overnight turned Davis’s hair to grey.

  Now he thrust his heavy chin forward and glowered from beneath bushy brows at the quiet man who sat listening to his tirade.

  “John,” the man said. “I know how you feel. I’m doing everything within my power as Governor—”

  “Hell an’ damnation! Bleke, it ain’t enough!” Davis would not be silenced. “I’m goin’ to play it my way whether yu like it or not!”

  “Don’t you think you’ve caused trouble enough already, John?” Governor Bleke was a quietly spoken man. Short, as sturdily built as his visitor, there was little about the man in his grey business suit which would have singled him out in a crowd – except perhaps the cold grey eyes. Any man who looked into them for more than a moment could scarcely fail to divine the shrewd brain, the unquestioned courage, and the determination which had made Bleke’s name hated and feared by every lawbreaker in the territory, just as it was held in high esteem b
y the law-abiding.

  “Listen to me, John,” Bleke continued. “Ever since you posted that five thousand-dollar reward every outlaw, gunman and scalphunter in the south-west has drifted into Tucson. And then drifted out again. Out into Apache country, they’ve gone, to kill peaceful Indians in cold blood. They’ve tortured women and children, they’re spilling more blood than that madman Chivington did at Sand Creek – all in the name of finding your daughter. What started as a raid by one renegade war party is building into an all-out Indian war, John, and I’m telling you – it’s got to be stopped!”

  “Then find my daughter!” yelled Davis. “Yu think I want her married off to some Apache buck?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “But nothin’!” Barbara was stole two months back, Bleke. Yo’re no nearer findin’ her now than yu was then!”

  “The Army—” Bleke began.

  “Don’t tell me about the U.S. Cavalry, Bleke, I don’t want to know. That shave tail idjut at Fort Cochise ain’t got the sense to know when he’s bin hit with a rock.”

  “The Army patrols have been out,” Bleke persisted. “They all hear the same thing wherever they go. The friendly Indians say that this renegade Chiricahua called Juano has your daughter.”

  “On’y nobody can find ’im, right?” sneered Davis. “So that’s a mighty big help. Hell, if I knowed where he was, I’d give all my riders shotguns an’ do a little Injun huntin’ my own self, mebbe.”

  “John, you’re talking wild. I know you are worr—”

  “Bleke, why don’t yu tell the Army to ride into the Dragoons an’ stay there until they find her?”

  “I’m afraid the United States Army is not responsible to me. John, I telegraphed Washington – you were here when I did it.”

  “An’ they said the job o’ the so’jer boys is to contain an’ control, avoidin’ direct clashes wherever possible. What kind of Army we got these days, anyway? They oughta be out scourin’ them mountains for my girl, dammit!”

  “John, you know as well as I do that there are a million places in the Dragoons where this Juano could be hiding. A regiment of cavalry couldn’t find him if he didn’t want to be found!”

  Davis shook his head like a taunted bull. “Shore, I know it,” he admitted. “I just can’t stand noin’ nothin’, that’s all.” Bleke was silent for a moment. He placed his fingers in a steeple, touching his lips with his fingertips, deep in thought.

  “There’s probably only one man alive who could go into Apacheria and get your daughter out,” he finally announced to the rancher. “I have sent for him.”

  “One man?” exploded Davis. “Yu must be goin’ loco in yore old age, Bleke. I don’t care who he is, one man ain’t goin’ to stand no chance at all in them mountains. I’m tellin’ yu Bleke, yu got to send the Army in!”

  “You aren’t telling me anything, John,” Bleke did not raise his voice but there was a coldness in it which stilled the rancher’s angry outburst. In a quieter tone, Davis asked:

  “Who is this hombre you’re so shore can do the trick?”

  “His name is Green. He is a – friend of mine.”

  “Green. Can’t say I know the name,” Davis mused. “Where’s he from?”

  “Texas,” Bleke replied.

  “What is he?” snorted Davis. “Some kind o’ half-breed?”

  “No,” Bleke said. “He’s white – in every sense of the word. I believe he spent some years as a boy among the Piutes.”

  “Yu seem to set a lot o’ store by him.”

  “He hasn’t let me down yet,” was the quiet reply.

  Davis hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Bleke, if yu say so, I believe yu. I don’t reckon one man can last ten minutes from the time the ’paches spot him, but…” He thrust out his hand, and the Governor shook it; the two regarded each other with mutual respect. Bleke did not particularly like Davis, but he respected the man’s drive, and his achievements. Without such men, this vast land, so full of riches and wealth, a whole new empire which would one day take its proud place on the roll of the United States, would still be an empty desert.

  “I’ll do the very best I can, John,” Bleke promised. “I know I can speak for Green, too. Now – will you withdraw your reward offer?”

  Davis shook his head. “It ain’t that I don’t trust you, Bleke, although I’m guessin’ yu set a mite too much store by this Green jasper. It’s just that as long as the reward stands, there’s men out there lookin’ for my gal, an’ one o’ them might just find her. Tell yore man he’ll be welcome to the gold if he pulls it off. But so will any other man who brings her in – an’ I don’t care if he’s the biggest cutthroat who ever wore boots. I’m right sorry, Bleke, but them’s my feelin’s.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Bleke answered, regret in his voice. “It’s going to make my man’s job that much more difficult. The Apaches need little enough excuse to kill now. With your cut-throats at their foul work, they will need even less.”

  “If he’s as good as yu seem to think he is, he’ll make it,” Davis said unfeelingly, picking up his hat. “Yu tell him he’ll be well paid for the risks he’s takin’.”

  “He isn’t doing it for the money,” Bleke reminded Davis coldly.

  “That’s what they all say until they see the dollars,” Davis barked. “Never met a man yet couldn’t be bought. Some cost a mite more, that’s all.”

  “You couldn’t buy this one,” Bleke told him, softly.

  “I’ll wait an’ see,” Davis said, and marched out of the office, banging the door behind him.

  Bleke shook his head. Power and money had not absolutely corrupted Davis, but they had certainly made him accustomed to having things his own way. Frustration made a man like that strike out blindly, and fall back upon the belief that money could buy anything.

  Bleke crossed his office to the window and looked out upon the scene below. Tucson was a busy little town, still retaining many evidences of its Spanish origins. To the north, gleaming white in the sun, lay the old Mission San Xavier del Bac, founded by the padres three hundred years before. Below him stretched the bustling street, with its houses of sunbaked adobe, wide patios and long shaded porches. On the crowded sidewalks rough-clad miners from the copper mines at Santa Rita jostled with local men in dark business suits. Bleke picked out slow-moving Mexicans clad in trousers tight at the waist and flared out at the ankle, a flash of gaudy sash at the waist, the swart faces shaded by embroidered sombreros; the dusky-eyed senoritas who sent shy glances from the folds of their mantillas at passing cowboys; and on all sides, the mixture of tongues: American and Spanish.

  Somewhere a guitar was being strummed. The air was soft, the hard sky blue. Far to the north, two days’ ride away, rose the mountains, and in them lay the strongholds of the Apache. They were massing up there, Bleke knew, and they were talking war, a big war to sweep the hated white man out of their country for all time. Bounty hunters stoked the fires of hatred with every warrior they ambushed. It was an evil business, an evil trade encouraged by the Mexican Government, which had put a price of fifty pesos on the scalp of an Apache warrior, twenty-five for a woman, and ten for a child. Bleke shook his head; he was powerless to stop it. The added incentive of Davis’s reward had sent the scum of the south-west into Apacheria. The Apaches had killed many of them, slowly and horribly; but still more came to kill innocent men, women and children – for in Mexico no questions were asked as to the tribe of Apaches, whether warlike or peaceful, that the scalp had been taken from – and to rouse even the non-violent tribes into retaliation. Finally, the whole Apache nation would be fired into the bloodiest uprising that the south-west had ever seen. And therein lay the importance of John Davis’ daughter: if she could be brought out of Apacheria alive, then the lure of the reward would be gone, and the lawless ones might move on to new pastures, leaving the territory with a chance at least of solving its problems with the Apaches. Bleke shook his head; it was a big responsibility to give to
one man, even one in whom he had such faith.

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts, and he turned to see a tall, slim man, wide shouldered and deeply tanned, coming into his office. Bleke’s somber expression changed to a warm smile.

  “Jim,” he exclaimed, “it’s good to see you! Here, let me look at you!”

  Still under thirty, slim of hip, standing with the loose grace of a natural athlete, Bleke’s visitor wore ordinary cowboy rig. His clothes, although worn, were neat; the lean, clean-shaven face so deeply bronzed as to almost hint at Indian blood, but the high cheekbones were absent, and there were lines of good humor about the mouth and friendliness in the level, grey-blue eyes. His opening words were whimsical.

  “That feller outside warn’t shore he oughta let me in here, totin’ these.” His hands lightly brushed the tied-down matched six-guns nestling in holsters on his thighs. Bleke’s face was serious.

  “You’re probably going to need those, my boy,” he said. “Sit down and let me tell you why I asked you to come.”

  The man from Texas sat down and listened gravely while the Governor spoke, and went on speaking for perhaps an hour. When Bleke had finished, the puncher whistled softly. “She’s a man-sized job, seh,” he remarked with a tight grin, “but I’ll go yu.”

  “I have no right to ask you, Jim,” Bleke said, slowly. The cowboy grinned. “Shucks,” he drawled. “If yu ain’t, who has?” He stood up, ready to leave. Bleke extended his hand, and the puncher took it firmly.

  “Good luck, Jim,” the Governor said.

  “I’ll prob’ly need some,” was the laconic reply.

  Chapter Three

  “Reckon we’ve arrove, Night,” the rider said, reining in on the crest of a bluff to survey the scene before him. As far as the eye could see the mountains marched along the horizon, slate grey and purple and black. Towards them sloped undulating hills, dotted with mesquite and the sentinel-like saguaro cactus which grows only in this part of the southwest. The sun in the brazen sky was a blinding ball of molten light, beating down relentlessly upon the empty, unprotected land. Beneath it, unseen, the myriad desert creatures led their lives. There a lizard scuttled across a sunlit space to the cool refuge of darkness beneath a huge rock. The landscape was harsh and grey, and a dust as fine as face powder floated gauzily upwards with each hint of breeze that whispered among the desert plants: ocotillo, mescal, Spanish dagger.