Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1) Read online

  Midnight playfully nipped at his master’s arm.

  ‘G’wan yu ol’ bag o’ bones, or I’ll trade yu in for a hoss,’ grinned the cowboy. ‘Yu shore ain’t much of a help.’

  At that moment, he tensed as the sound of several horses came through the open doorway from the yard; but he relaxed as he told himself that it was probably Tate’s riders in from the range. He idled over to a window to catch a glimpse of the Slash 8 crew in time to see four riders come to a milling halt before the verandah of the ranch. Soundlessly, Green moved back from the window; the glint of light on drawn guns showed that these men were on no friendly errand.

  Outside, the leader of the quartet shouted in a thick, grating voice: ‘Tate, come out, you ol’ buzzard!’

  A moment or two passed, and then the old man came out of the house, the same shotgun with which he had threatened Green canted menacingly towards the four men facing him on horseback.

  ‘Buzzard, is it?’ he snapped. ‘An’ who sent you, big mouth?’ Before the leader had even time to open his mouth, Tate went on, ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. Yore boss Barclay sent you. Well, you came. Now turn round an’ git. Whatever you came for, the answer’s no.’

  Green smiled to himself; old Tate had more than his share of sand. He kept watch through the window on the other side of the stable, which gave a clear view across the yard.

  The leader dismounted. He was a big man, dressed in the common garb of the range seen everywhere in that country. As he approached Tate, the other three dismounted in unison and fanned out behind their leader so that Tate was forced to keep the shotgun barrel weaving in an arc to cover them. The big man spoke again. ‘Afore you turn me down, Tate, you’d better listen to my offer.’

  ‘You ain’t got anything to offer me that I’d take,’ snorted Tate.

  ‘So—afore I lose my patience—’

  ‘—I’m offerin’ you yore life,’ snapped the big man, and Tate’s face changed as the words were uttered.

  ‘Yo’re what?’ His voice was incredulous.

  ‘You heard, Tate,’ smiled the big man. His voice assumed a gloating tone as he mistook Tate’s disbelief for fear. ‘I got a message for you from The Shadows—get out o’ this valley, an’ get out fast. The air ’round here is bad for yore health. If you stay, it might prove—fatal.’

  ‘Well, damn me if you ain’t got more gall than a Pawnee Injun,’ crackled old George Tate, his voice tight with anger. ‘You climb back on yore nag and take this message back to King Barclay. Tell him I’ll see him in Hell afore I’ll move off my range. An’ tell yore friends ahind you there to keep their itchy feet still, or you’ll be cartin’ them home belly down—I’m gettin’ mighty tired o’ totin’ this cannon, an’ it wouldn’t take much to make it go off.’

  ‘You shore are the tough one, ain’t you?’ jeered the leader of the quartet. ‘Anyone’d think you had someone in the house there backin’ yore play.’

  The import of the big man’s leering tone suddenly registered on Tate, and on the hidden watcher in the bam at the same time. Moving like a prowling cat, Green headed silently through the stables and around out of sight behind the outbuildings. Meanwhile Tate’s uncertainty was deepening. ‘You figgerin’ on yore cook backin’ you up, old man? Why don’t you give him a shout?’ The big man laughed as at some huge joke, and Tate called, without turning his head, ‘Cookie! Cookie, are you all right? The silence was deathly. Unwittingly, Tate turned his head to call again, giving the big man an opportunity which he seized instantly. With a tigerish leap, the intruder grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and wrested it from Tate’s grasp, and in the same movement, delivered a backhanded blow which sent the old rancher reeling to the ground. Blood trickled from Tate’s mouth as he gasped, ‘You scum-what have you done to him?’

  ‘He’s all right, old man,’ said the leader. ‘He’s bein’—taken care of.’ He raised his voice. ‘Ain’t that right, Ray?’

  ‘Right,’ came a voice from the house.

  ‘Damn yore eyes,’ said Tate, weakly, struggling to rise. ‘If my boys was around, you’d—’

  ‘Well they ain’t,’ snapped the big man with finality. A gesture brought two of the gang to his side. They grasped the rancher firmly by the arms and dragged him to his feet. The leader lifted Tate’s drooping chin with his hand. ‘So you’ll see us in Hell afore you’ll run, will you?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Looks like kind words ain’t no use at all with ornery ol’ birds like you.’ With an oath, he tossed the shotgun away into the corral, and reached to his saddle horn for the coiled rope hanging there.

  Tate’s eyes widened. ‘What you aimin’ to do?’ he asked, apprehension in his tone.

  ‘Why, we aim to give you somethin' a mite more lastin’ than advice,’ grated the ruffian. ‘Bring him over here.’ He turned towards the tall cottonwoods which threw their shade over the yard of the ranch. The shadows were now deepening along their base, and the last sunlight was softening the outlines of the distant mesas. He turned to face the old rancher. ‘We got a remedy for roosters as crow too much,’ he grinned evilly. ‘We stretch their necks a mite.’

  Meanwhile Green, moving across the back of the ranch house, had rapidly assessed the situation. Unseen by the riders intent on binding Tate’s hands and feet, he circled noiselessly around the back of the house and moved silently through the kitchen; and into the hallway. There he paused a moment to orient himself with the unfamiliar house. The faint shuffle of a man’s feet came startlingly clear. Risking a quick glance around the edge of the door, Green saw the old cook’s body sprawled beside the window, half sitting up, and obviously dazed from a blow dealt him by the tall, gangling man who now, his back to Green, was watching the proceedings outside. In one swift, merciless movement, the cowboy leaped across the room and slashed the man Ray across the back of the head, behind the ear, with the barrel of his forty-live. Ray fell like a pole-axed steer, and without a wasted motion, Green stripped the man’s belt and gun belt from his waist and with them tightly bound Ray’s hands and feet. A moment or two more sufficed to revive Cookie sufficiently for Green, finger to his mouth to enjoin silence, to thrust Ray’s pistol into the cook’s hand, and motion him to keep the stunned ruffian covered. Cookie nodded; without a word Green retraced his path out of the house and back towards the stables. This route brought him around the side of the building within a few yards of the tall cottonwood where the four men had thrust Tate roughly into the saddle of a horse.

  ‘Any message you want us to take to our boss, Tate?’ jeered the leader, amid the guffaws of his cronies.

  ‘You—can—go-·plumb—to-hell!’ croaked the old man. The man reacted with a curse and swung his arm back to slap the horse across its haunches. His hand never completed its downward movement, for in that split second a shot rang out which spun him backwards on to the ground, cursing and clutching a shattered arm. The other three whirled in the direction from which the shot had come, hands flashing towards their holsters.

  ‘Don’t even think it,’ was the icy warning, and one look at the slit-eyed stranger holding the still-smoking six-shooter was enough to make them jerk their hands away from their weapons as if they had suddenly become red hot. They were three to one, but they were all well aware that a bullet travels faster than the hand of the greatest gunman, and this black-haired intruder had the look of a man who would shoot first and ask questions later. Green accepted their obedience as a matter of course.

  ‘First, shuck yore gun belts. Pronto!’ He emphasized the order with a gesture of the six-shooter, and the three men complied rapidly. Green thereupon directed one of them. to unbuckle and throw to one side the gun belt of their wounded leader, who was now sitting upright, nursing his wounded arm and cursing in a steady monotone. In a moment, still keeping the unwholesome quartet covered, Green had stepped beside Tate and with a quick slash of his knife freed the old man’s hands. Tate slid easily out of the saddle and dipped a pistol from one of the discarded belts. Then he backed over bes
ide Green.

  Meanwhile, the big man had staggered to his feet. His face was white with pain, but he faced his captors without fear. To Green, he said, ‘Mister, yo’re new in these parts, an’ maybe you don’t know what yo’re gettin’ involved in. Take my tip—move on, or you’ll regret it till the day you die. Which will be very soon.’

  Green grinned mirthlessly. ‘You shore are long on threatenin’ folk,’ he murmured. ‘Anyone’d think you had some kinda ace-in- the-hole.’

  ‘Yo’re damned right.’ snarled the leader, raising his voice. ‘Let him have it, Ray!’

  Green did not move a muscle, although the captives flinched in anticipation of the shot from the house which never came.

  ‘Ray can’t let me have it,’ grinned the cowboy. I took it off him.’ Seeing the look of consternation on his prisoner’s face, Green went on,. ‘Yo’re a bushwhacker shy. Ray’s lyin’ down on the job.’ He paused to let his double meaning sink in, and then the bantering tone had left his voice when he spoke again. ‘Now’—the voice was flat and menacing as the hiss of a cobra—‘who are you, mister man, an’ who sent you?’ The wounded bandit sneered, and then invited Green to perform a long and rapid journey in obscene language.

  ‘Tut, tut!’ interposed George Tate, stepping forward. ‘You mustn’t say things like that, or somebody’ll shore ’nough do this to you!’ “This” was a wicked swinging uppercut delivered with all the force in Tate’s wiry frame and backed by his pent-up feelings. It lifted the big man back on his heels and sent him reeling backwards into the arms of his comrades. Tate blew thoughtfully upon his skinned knuckles. With a wry grin he turned to Green and said, ‘Sorry, Jim. But I shore figgered I owed him that one.’

  ‘One day you’ll pay for that,’ spat the leader of the gang. ‘In spades.’

  ‘One more yap outa you an’ we’ll be employin’ some spades to pat you in the face with,’ Green told him. ‘From above.’ He faced the cowering group squarely, and addressed them collectively. ‘Just so you won’t think I’m foolin’—watch!’

  The sound of his gun was like rolling thunder. The awed watchers saw a half-stomped tin can picked up by the first bullet, smashed by the second a further fifty yards, thrown at an angle by the third, and carried off over the corral fence by a fourth. None of them had been able to detect any interval between the shots, nor had this saturnine cowboy apparently troubled to aim his pistol. Wreathed in smoke, Green stepped a pace forward. ‘Now you know I can hit what I shoot at, I’m tellin’ you: I’m countin’ to three. At three, you all lose yore left toes.’ The bandits looked at each other in consternation. This loose-lounging figure surely meant every word he said; there was no hint of humor in the clamped jaws and mirthless lips. Green began counting.

  ‘One.’

  One of the outlaws whispered urgently to the leader.

  ‘Two.’

  The leader shook his head. The others joined in. Their conversation was plainly audible now as they forgot their need for secrecy in the face of Green’s count.

  The leader lurched forward. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘First, yore name.’

  ‘Pardoe. Bull Pardoe. Much good it’ll do you to know. Yo’re a dead man, mister. I’ll tell you anythin’ you want to know, because tomorrow you’ll be dead meat for the buzzards. I’m Bull Pardoe. These others are my men. We call ourselves The Shadows.’

  ‘Sidewinders’d be a better name, I’d say,’ Green told him coldly. ‘I’m not interested in yore label, Pardoe. Who sent you?’

  ‘Nobody sent us. We don’t run anyone’s errands, an’ we don’t need to.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’ snapped Tate. ‘Why you lyin’ scum, I know yo’re Barclay’s hired guns, so why bother to deny it?’

  ‘Barclay don’t own us, mister,’ was the vicious reply. ‘Nobody owns us.’

  ‘I can see where nobody would want to,’ observed Green dryly, ‘but me, I wouldn’t believe you if you told me it was goin’ to snow next winter.’

  ‘Then don’t ask yore smart questions, stranger. Save yore breath, because when yo’re dyin’ you’ll need it.’

  Green regarded the big man thoughtfully for a moment. He nodded, as if coming to some decision. A quick word with George Tate sent that worthy hurrying up to the ranch house, and in a few moments he reappeared, this time with Cookie, prodding the still-groggy Ray with that worthy’s own six- shooter. ‘Git on, you sidewinder,’ the cook was snapping, ‘an’ don’t keep all yore sidewinder buddies waitin’. Git!’ The order was emphasized by another jab from the gun barrel. The old cook herded the sullen Ray over with the others, then turned to Green with a pleased smile on his face. The cowboy returned his attention to the prisoners.

  ‘You made yore play, an’ it come unstuck. Yore loudmouth friend Pardoe has made it plain that lettin’ you go would be a mistake. So I reckon I better kill you.’

  Gasps of consternation broke from the group in front of him. One of the men, a small, pock-marked individual, railed at Pardoe. ‘You an’ yore big yap—now look what you done!’ Pardoe faced Green, frowning.

  ‘You wouldn’t do it.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Nope. I don’t reckon I would,’ was the reply, which produced a visible relief among Pardoe’s comrades. ‘I sure oughta. However, I wasn’t treatin’ you to a shootin’ display for fun. I can hit someone yore size easier’n a tin can, an’ I will if you come pokin’ around here again. And since I’m by nature a forgetful man, I’m aimin’ to make shore I know you if we meet up again.’

  Without a word, his hand flashed to the left hand holster, and the pistol was talking fire before the watchers had fully appreciated that he had drawn. Each of the gang screeched in fear as the bullets burned furrows along their cheekbones, nicking the tips of their left ears.

  Green regarded the cringing figures before him with distaste as they attempted to stem the trickles of blood from their ears.

  ‘Now you got my mark on you,’ he told them coldly. ‘If I see any o’ you again, I’ll start in shootin’ without any o’ the jawin’. Now, fork yore cayouses and keep movin’. An’ don’t make the mistake o’ comin’ back.’

  A gesture from the right-hand six-shooter hastened the thoroughly cowed gang on their way. Pardoe stopped, his foot in the stirrup. ‘I’ll remember you, cowboy,’ he growled, menacingly.

  ‘For your own good health, you better,’ was the expressionless reply. ‘Fade!’

  Wordlessly, the five men turned their horses and pounded away into the darkness now settling like a mist on the valley. Behind Green, George Tate let out his breath in a long whistling sigh. ‘Jim, I’m owing’ you—’

  ‘—an extra piece o’ that apple pie Cookie promised me?’ interrupted Green. ‘An’ I’m aimin’ to 'take full settlement. Shucks, Mr. Tate, I’m glad I was around. Them fellers wasn’t joshing’ none about stringing’ you up. You shore you ain’t never seen any o’ them afore?’

  ‘Not as I recall,’ was the reply, ‘bur that don’t mean much. I don’t know any o’ Barclay’s crew by sight, ’cetin’ Burley Link ham, Barclay’s foreman. Then, there’s hundreds o’ men working’ up on the Thunder Mesa in the silver mines. Why?’

  ‘I got a hunch we’d End that we could currycomb Barclay’s crew and never find a one o’ those jaspers in it. They got some other axe to grind, but just what it is . . .?’

  ‘Whatever it is, is shore doin’ Barclay no harm,’ put in Cookie. ‘They don’t have to work on his home ranch to be on his payroll.’

  ‘Cookie’s right, Jim, Barclay’s shore been the only one to benefit by what these Shadders have been up to,’ pointed out the rancher.

  ‘Well like the feller said,’ remarked Green, ‘when you find a trout in the milk, suthin’s wrong.’

  ‘You figger there’s a trout in this bailing’ o’ milk, Jim?’

  ‘Well, seh,’ Green smiled, ‘let’s say a toddler. An’ it’s shore got me interested.’

  Cookie had been
watching the two men open mouthed during this exchange. At the close of it, he snapped his mouth shut, and then turned and stomped into the house, muttering as he went. ‘Two dang fools, that’s what. Standin’ there talkin’ about trout in the milk when I got work to do, a whole meal to cook, all they talk about is fish .... ’ The slam of the kitchen door punctuated the old cook’s grumbles, although he could still be heard rattling and banging his pots and pans.

  Green and the old rancher walked back towards the porch, and were just settling down in the wicker chairs set on the verandah when, for the second time, approaching horses were heard. Tate rose to his feet and drew his six-shooter. It came as no surprise to him after seeing the man in action that Green was already on his feet, and that the deadly Colts’ were already in the cowboy’s hands, cocked for firing.

  ‘Probably my lads,’ Tate told the cowboy, ‘but let’s make shore.’

  In a cloud of dust, five riders swung into the yard and dismounted in the haphazard, careless way of the born rider. One of them, a tall young fellow with the expression of one who has never had anything to hide, tossed his reins to a grizzled old puncher of about fifty, who walked with a pronounced limp.

  ‘Yore turn to be stable boy,’ grinned the youngster. ‘If you ain’t too tired after racin’ the best rider in the valley.’

  ‘That’s Dave Haynes.’ whispered Tate. ‘He’s a good kid. The old feller is Gimpy MacDonald—been with me for more years ’n I care to recall. Stove up in a stampede one time, busted his leg up real bad, but he’s still a top hand.’

  The young man mounted the porch steps still savoring the victory of the race which had meant he didn’t have to unsaddle his own horse. His face fell, and mock terror replaced the grin as he caught sight of Tate’s drawn gun.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, ‘I done my chores, boss—honest! How come the reception committee?’

  ‘Dave, quit foolin’, an’ step over here an’ meet Jim Green. Lucky for me he was around. Had a mite o’ trouble while you was gone.’

  The others joined them and one by one shook Green’s hand, while Gimpy came trudging across the yard, grumbling to himself. Tate introduced the old puncher to Green. Gimpy’s eyes flicked quickly over Green’s serviceable range gear and the two low-tied guns. He said nothing more than ‘howdy’, but Green knew he had been weighed and judged by the old timer. Tate meanwhile was busily retailing the events of the preceding hours.