Sudden 3 Read online

  “We shore did, Tucson,” he told the giant. “Two we nailed, an’ seven out yonder makes nine out o’ sixteen. I’d say they’ll skedaddle.”

  “Yo’re right, Quincy,” called the youngster. “They’re pullin’ out.”

  It was true. The Apaches, strung out in an uneven line, were moving away from the scene of their defeat, but Green knew they would not go far away. As he watched, one of the Apaches detached himself from the line and turned in the saddle to shake a vengeful fist at the defenders in their rocky stronghold. It was Juano. His defiant gesture spoke as plainly as words: I have only lost a battle, not the war. Green pursed his lips.

  From here on in, Juano would fight the true Apache way: skulking, ambushing, only attacking when the odds were in his favor. The puncher did not believe for a second that they were clear of the Chiricahuas yet. Shiloh Platt, however, was of a different viewpoint He slapped his thigh and gave vent to a whoop of joy.

  Then placing his hand flat upon one of the boulders, he vaulted into the open, sliding the big knife from his belt, his eyes fixed upon the dead Apaches lying in the sun.

  “Hold it right there!”

  Shiloh wheeled as if he had been stung, while his three companions froze in their tracks. There was absolutely no mistaking the deadly menace in the words, and death was instinct in the stance of the man who had uttered them.

  Shiloh’s flickering eyes narrowed.

  “Green?” he uttered. “What th—?”

  “If yo’re aimin’ to add to yore collection o’ scalps, forget it!” was the rasping command.

  Platt frowned, studying the man facing him properly for the first time. He had pegged Green as a cowpuncher who’d got lucky, but now the ice-cold grey-blue eyes, the crouching stance with the hands poised over the dull shining gun butts all indicated complete readiness to kill. Shiloh’s eyes edged towards his companions. Quincy was regarding Green with an intent frown, as if seeking some memory in the puncher’s face.

  “Yore sidekicks might chip in, but yu’d still be dead, Shiloh,” Green said softly. “Just do like I told yu an’ ease on back in here.”

  Still Shiloh Platt waited, silently weighing the situation. Green’s words were chillingly final, but they could still be bluff. Maybe it was a good time to find out what caliber of man this Green was: gunman, or drifting cowpunch carrying two guns for added firepower in Apache country? Shiloh’s instincts told him the former, but that half of him which was Mexican and darkly proud seethed with hatred at being ordered about, tested before those who followed him. His fingers moved slowly until they were curled above the gun at his side. Green made no movement, his eyes watching Shiloh with hawk-like keenness, ready for any action from the half breed. Before the moment, tense and fraught, erupted into violence, Quincy’s hoarse cry shattered the silence.

  “Shiloh! Don’t draw!” he cried. “He’s that Texas outlaw -Sudden!”

  Sudden! Platt’s eyes widened and a gasp of astonishment burst from his lips. He had nearly tried to draw on Sudden, the man whose reckless courage and deadly gunplay had already made his sobriquet a legend throughout the Southwest! His hand moved away from the butt of his gun as though it had suddenly grown red hot. Yet still the Texan stood, his cold gaze fixed unwaveringly on the half-breed.

  “I told yu to get back in here,” he said flatly.

  Platt nodded, shaking himself into action. “Shore, shore,” he mumbled, and although his heart seethed with hate, he did as he was bid.

  The Texan straightened up, the cold light still lying just behind his gaze, and faced Quincy. “Yu know me?” he said.

  “Shore I know yu, Sudden, an’ yu know me. Fort Griffin, Texas. Sergeant Quincy, it was then.”

  The memory flooded back. Now Green recalled the name, and the face, unscarred then and beardless. Quincy had been an Infantry sergeant in the Sixth Cavalry. He had been broken – expelled from the Army for excessive brutality, having nearly beaten a young recruit to death. The man’s ungovernable rages had been more than even the rag-tag frontier Army was prepared to stomach. Quincy enraged was a mindless killer. They had crossed paths when Green had worked for a while as a scout for the Army; he had left without notice when a reward poster bearing his description had appeared on the notice-board outside the adjutant’s office.

  “Yu wasn’t sportin’ that scar when I seen yu last,” Sudden remarked to the scalphunter. “What happened?” Quincy grinned evilly. “All war whoops don’t part with their ha’r so willin’, yu know,” he said. “One played doggo – damn’ near got me.”

  He surveyed Green with some satisfaction, his hands placed akimbo on his hips. At this moment the girl came out from behind the rocks to join them.

  “Well, girlie, come an’ join us,” Quincy said with false heartiness in his voice. “I was just sayin’ to yore friend Sudden that now the Apaches has skedaddled, we oughta be movin’ out o’ here.”

  “You are coming with us?” the girl asked, puzzled.

  “Wouldn’t dream o’ lettin’ yu cross this dangerous country all alone, girlie,” Quincy leered. “Besides yore gunfighter friend here ain’t so ungrateful as to not share the ree-ward with us after we done saved yore skins; now are yu, Green?” Shiloh said, with a meaning glance at the girl. “We don’t want nobody to get hurt, do we?”

  “Yu better make yore meanin’ good an’ clear,” Sudden told him coldly, “afore I lose my temper an’ just naturally blow yore light out.”

  “Blaze away, Sudden,” sneered Shiloh. “Yu might get one of us, two even, but we’d get yu. Anyways, them warpaints is goin’ to come back – I reckon yu oughta be glad o’ some pertection. Yore best plan is to put up yore guns an’ face facts – yo’re jest going to have to split that reward five ways.”

  Before Green could answer, Barbara Davis pushed forward and planted herself in front of him. Her face was flushed with anger, and there were storm warnings in her pale blue eyes. “What reward is he talking about?” she demanded.

  “Yu mean – he ain’t told yu, girlie?” Quincy said with disbelief in his voice.

  The girl shook her head. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she snapped, stamping her foot. “Mister Green, I demand to know!”

  Shiloh stepped forward, smiling greasily. “Why, lady, it looks like Mister Sudden here misled yu some. He ain’t no knight in shinin’ armor come to rescue the princess in the giant’s castle, no ma’am. Yore daddy posted a reward o’ five thousand dollars for yore return, an’ Mister Sudden here was aimin’ to hawg it all hisself, warn’t yu, Jim?”

  The Texan made no reply. Shiloh laughed and continued: “He realized, however, he was makin’ a mistake tryin’ to outrun the ’paches on his lonesome. So he’s hiring us as sorta bodyguards, make shore yu get home to yore daddy.”

  He put a grimy hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Barbara Davis pulled away, distaste evident upon her face. A flush mounted in Shiloh’s face. Too good for the likes of him, was she? Well, there’d be time…He pasted the smile back on his face. “Here, I ain’t mindin’ my manners none at all,” he said with forced jocularity. “Shiloh’s my monicker, Shiloh Platt. The giant there is called Tucson; don’t answer to no other name. He ain’t none too bright, but he’s a big ox for shore, ain’t yu, Tucson?” He cackled at his own poor joke.

  “Aw, quit that, Shiloh,” Tucson rumbled. There was no real anger in his voice. He seemed to be accustomed to this kind of talk.

  “The gent with the scar is called Quincy,” Shiloh went on. “Good man with gun or knife or fists. Strong as a hoss. The kid there’s called Rusty. Yu, Rusty, step over here an’ say howdy to the lady.” The youngster shook his head, blushing slightly. “Suit yoreself,” Platt said. “He’s kinda new to the game,” he explained. “Yu’ll have to excuse him.”

  The girl shook her head in exasperation.

  “Mister Green, will you please tell me what is going on? Why do these men keep calling you ‘Sudden’?”

  “Why ’cause that’s his nom-dee-ploom,”
Quincy grinned, the side of his mouth twisted by the scar. “Yore Mister Green is wanted for murder in Texas, girlie. Yu can bet the on’y reason he come after yu was to nail that ree-ward. Money means plenty to a man on the dodge.”

  Barbara Davis looked at Sudden with deep contempt. “I – I really thought – you were trying to help me,” she choked.

  “Which I shorely was, ma’am,” the Texan said gravely.

  “Oh, I don’t believe it!” she burst out.

  “Never figgered yu would,” the Texan said quietly, as the girl went on: “How can I trust you? Any of you?”

  “All the same if yu do or yu don’t girlie,” Quincy leered. “Yo’re stuck with us.”

  “Don’t yu worry none, lady,” the giant Tucson rumbled. “We’ll git yu back to yore daddy safe an’ sound.”

  “It’s hard to believe you mean it,” the girl said tremulously. “But you are right. I have no choice.”

  “Attagirl, Barb-rie,” Quincy chuckled. “Yu ain’t likely to find nobody out here can give yu banker’s references, an’ yu can tie to that.”

  At this remark the girl fell silent. What the scar-faced man had said was only too true. If anyone were to outwit the Apaches it would be men like these, not the well-mannered young men with soft hands and voices who had called upon her at her father’s ranch. These men were cruel, vicious, and rough; but it was a cruel and vicious land. She recalled in all its grim detail the scene in the ranch that night, after the Apaches had burst down the door of the bedroom, and…no, she would not think of that. Nor would she condemn men who killed the very beasts who had perpetrated the outrage. Barbara Davis was a frontier-bred girl, and of tough and durable ancestry. Her chin came up and a sparkle of pride touched her glance.

  “Just take me home,” she said. “My father will pay your ransom.”

  Shiloh Platt grinned at these words and turned to face Sudden. “Looks like yo’re whipsawed, Sudden,” he jeered. “Yu might as well make the best of it.”

  “Yu won’t mind if I take the “drag”?” was the sarcastic reply. It elicited a raucous burst of laughter from Quincy, who explained to the puzzled Tucson that the “drag” was a cattleman’s term for the rear position on a trail drive. “Mister Sudden’s skeered we aim to shoot him in the back,” jeered Quincy.

  “I don’t blame him for that,” was Barbara Davis’s cutting reply. It wiped the smirk off Quincy’s face like a wet cloth taking chalk from a blackboard; dark rage suffused the scarred face for a moment; but Quincy controlled it.

  Sudden was the only one to see the fleeting malevolence on Quincy’s face, but he made no comment, content to file it away in his mind as another reason for not allowing the scar faced scalphunter any rope at all.

  “Less’n he wants some to hang himself with,” Green reflected with a mirthless smile. Aloud, however, he said: “If we head out now we can get to Apache Wells afore dark, I’d as soon have adobe walls around me if they decide to take another crack at us.”

  “Amen to that,” confirmed the youngster, Rusty, and he gave Green a friendly smile. Shiloh Platt nodded. Green was talking hard sense. Their supply of ammunition was not limitless, and another attack such as the one they had just survived might have a totally different ending if the Indians came back in full force.

  “Tucson!” he shouted. “Get the hosses; I’ll lead out.” He turned to Sudden and there was a pure taunting malice in his snaggle-toothed grin. “Yu take the rear, will yu, Sudden?” Roaring with laughter at his jest, he rode forward to join Quincy, and shook his head at a thought which came into it.

  “Funny, Quince, I oughta be skeered o’ the same thing Mister Sudden is: a bullet in the back. On’y I ain’t. Now howd’yu figger that?”

  Quincy said: “I heard a lot about Sudden, but I never heard he was the backshootin’ type.”

  “Yu better be right,” Shiloh told him.

  Chapter Seven

  Apache Wells was one of the relay stations built by William Buckley and Silas St. John for the Butterfield Stage Line in the year 1858. Located near a plentiful spring of water, the Wells was a large stone building surrounded by a stone corral some forty-five feet long and fifty-five feet wide. It was situated on an open plain backing on to a high shelving slope; with the stage line long since defunct, it was used now as a stopping place for travelers and prospectors moving east to Apache Pass and old Fort Bowie, south to Tucson, or north-west to Phoenix.

  The big old building stood sheltered in the shade of a grove of cottonwoods which Bill Buckley had planted when the station was first completed. The original building had been composed of a large central room with four rooms on each of its eastern and western sides; now, one wing was a pile of tumbled masonry colored here and there with the faint green of a cactus which had found a fragile bed between the cracked stones. The windows of the station were little more than narrow slots, and had heavy plank shutters on the inside, loopholed for rifle or six-gun barrels. The building had withstood a hundred Apache raids in its time; if its walls could have spoken, what a tale they could have told of the days of Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, of treachery and massacre and deceit!

  The five men and the girl rode wearily up to the corral in the fading light, the horse’s nostrils flaring as they scented the nearby water. The riders dismounted and slapped the dust from their clothes with their Stetsons.

  Quincy led the way towards the dark doorway. He was detailing Tucson to take care of the horses when a shot thundered from one of the narrow window and his hat was whipped off his head by a heavy-caliber slug.

  “What the—” Quincy’s hand whipped down to the gun at his side; his piggy eyes sought the source of the shot.

  “Stand still, thar!” came a creaky voice from within the building. Squinting his eyes against the poor light, Sudden could just descry the octagonal barrel of a Sharps’ buffalo rifle poking through one of the slit windows. Before he could speak, Quincy’s voice boomed out:

  “Hold yore fire, damn yu – we’re white men!”

  “Step into the light whar I can see ye!” came the uncompromising reply. A shutter swung back and the lamplight inside the building spread across the yard, throwing the figures standing there into bold relief. After a moment, the rifle barrel was withdrawn and they heard the rusty door-bolts squeaking as they were laboriously drawn. An old man, his snowy hair shining like a halo in the lamplight, stood on the porch; the rifle was ported warily across his arm, ready to be swung into instant action if need be.

  Quincy spread his hands in a reasoning gesture.

  “Take it easy, old-timer,” he said. “You c’n see we ain’t Injuns.”

  “Got ye an Injun squaw thar, ain’t ye?” snapped the man. “I don’t hold none with stealin’ ’pache wimmin…”

  “Naw,” Quincy said, “yo’re off-beam, mister. She’s a white gal we took off the war whoops in trade.”

  “Hmph,” the old man grunted, not altogether convinced.

  “Yu own this place?” Shiloh asked, “or are yu going to stand aside an’ let us come in?”

  “Why for yu throw a shot at me, anyway?” Quincy said in an aggrieved tone. “Yu could see we wuz white, couldn’t yu?”

  “I c’d see white-men’s clothes,” the old man replied “It wouldn’t be the fust time a few Chiricahuas rigged theirselves up in store clothes to git near to a house. Hit don’t hurt none to be shore. Yu don’t get no second chance with them red divils.’

  “We jest had a run-in with a war-party our own selves, mister,” Rusty said. “The young lady is mighty peaked, so if yu – ”

  Hell, o’ course, o’course! Don’t jest stand there, dammit! Bring ’er in, boy! Bring ’er in!”

  They followed him into the station, entering a huge square room. Down one side of it ran a counter that had obviously been a bar at one time; at the end furthest from the door was an area filled with broken-down chairs and tables where in former days travelers on the stagecoach had dined. An old cast-iron range still stood in one corne
r; it had proven too strong for either the Apaches or the weather to break. The old timer had kindled a cherry wood fire in it against the growing chill of the night. The smell of coffee filled the dust-mantled room.

  “Eady’s m’name,” the old man told them. “Tobias Eady. I do a leetle prospectin’ hereabouts.”

  Rusty looked at the man as though he had declared his ability to fly. “Yu – do what?” he choked. “Don’t yu know these mountains is crawlin’ with hostiles?”

  “Shore,” Eady said unrepentantly. “I tries to pacify ’em if I meets up with any.” He leaned over and patted the shining stock of the Sharps’, and ran a forefinger down the serrated row of notches neatly sliced into it. “They leave me alone, I leave them alone,” he finished. “Otherwise, Betsy hyar discourages ’em a mite.” He shook his head, laughing softly to himself, and shuffled over to the stove, the red coals throwing a warm glow on his worn, but clean buckskins. “Yu boys got any grub, I’ll be happy to cook it fer ye,” he offered. “Yo’re shore welcome to share m’cawfee.”

  “Thanks a lot, Eady,” Green said, stepping forward and speaking for the first time since they had entered the station. He had been carefully assessing its defenses and had noted with satisfaction that the building was still capable of resisting all but the most overwhelming onslaught. “I better call off some names to go with the faces yu see. I’m Jim Green. The young lady’s name is Davis. Barbara Davis.” He paused to see if the name registered in any way, but Eady evinced not a flicker of interest. “The kid’s called Rusty – which yu’d figger with that mop o’ red hair,” Green went on with a grin. Tucson is the big feller. The other two is Quincy an’ Platt,”

  Eady nodded disinterestedly; he was preoccupied with his chores. Once he looked up and said to the girl: “They’s plenty water if yu feel like washin’, missie. Won’t take but a minnit to hot yu some up.”