Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 04 - Sudden Outlawed(1934) (24 page)

 
          
The
scowling half-breed slouched to where the girl and her companions were
standing, and gave the message. His leeringeyes swept over Carol and brought
the hot blood to her cheeks.

 
          
Sudden
saw the look and said sternly:

 
          
“If
any guy gets fresh, Sandy, shoot him.”

 
          
When
he had gone, the girl turned to her companion and said quietly, “What is going
to happen?”

 
          
“I
dunno,” the young man told her. “Jim’ll get us out; he’s a wizard, that fella.”

 
          
“You
seem to think a great deal of him,” she said.

 
          
“I
think more of him than anyone else in the world—but wo,” he added hastily.

 
          
“Your
father and mother?” she suggested.

 
          
Sandy
shook his head. “Dad, yes, but I can scarcely remember my mother.”

 
          
She
did not pursue the inquiry. There
was a ‘warmth
in his
eyes which stirred her pulses despite the danger which threatened them.

 
          
Sudden
found the outlaw sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the camp. He greeted
the young man with a hard smile. He seemed to have aged, the lines in his face
were deeper, and he looked haggard. Sudden sat down and rolled a cigarette.

 
          
“Howdy, Jim,” the outlaw greeted.
“Navajo said yu wanted to
see me.”

 
          
“Well,
I wasn’t goin’ to let him fancy he fetched me in,” Sudden explained.

 
          
Rogue
nodded in comprehension. “Allasame, yu’ve lost out, Jim, an! I’ve won,” he
stated.

 
          
Sudden’s
eyebrows went up. “That so?” he queried. “The game ain’t finished yet.”

 
          
“Talk
sense, boy,” Rogue retorted. “Sam Eden thinks the world an’ all o’ that girl; I
can make my own terms. She’s the winnin’ card an’ I hold it.”

 
          
“But
yu won’t play it,” Sudden said quietly.

 
          
The
elder man glowered at him. “Th’ hell I won’t? Who’ll stop me?”

 
          
“Yu
will,”
came
the cool response. “Listen to me, Rogue.
yo’re one tough hombre—I never met a tougher—but at bottom yo’re a white man
an’ yu can’t forget that once yu had women-folk yu thought a lot of, an’ that
there was a time when yu’d ‘a’ shot a man just for speakin’ disrespectful of a
girl like Miss Eden. She’s in yore
han’s
by accident;
yu can’t use her to rob her father, an’ yu know it.”

 
          
For
a moment he thought the man he had spoken to so boldly was about to spring upon
him. The cold eyes had grown hot and the big fists were bunched into knots. But
the outlaw held himself in, only his voice betraying the tearing passion which
possessed him.

 
          
“What’s
past is past an’ no damn business o’ yores,” he said thickly. “Why should I
care how she comes to be here? To Sam Eden I’m a road-agent an’ cattle-thief
an’ if I fell into his
han’s
, even by accident”—with a
heavy sneer—“he’d stretch my neck. All right, I ain’t blamin’ him, but this
time it happens to be my turn. I’d be loco to pass up such a chance as this,
an’ what d’yu s’pose my men would say, huh?”

 
          
Under
his hat-brim, the younger man’s eyes gleamed slyly. “Hadn’t thought o’ that,”
he admitted. “
yeah
, I reckon yu’d find it middlin’
hard to persuade ‘em.”

 
          
He
saw the other’s jaw tighten and his own face remained wooden under the sharp
scrutiny it received. Rogue pondered heavily for a while, his brows knitted,
and then stood up, motioning the cowboy to follow. The card-game had ceased and
the men were gathered in a group listening to the half-breed. They opened out
when their leader approached.

 
          
“Well,
Navajo, yu got it figured out to yore satisfaction?” Rogue asked.

 
          
The
man shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t need any figurin’,” he replied. “Eden hands
over the herd an’ gits his gal back; that’s all there is to it.”

 
          
The
outlaw leader folded his arms, his eyes flinty.

 
          
“The
girl goes back to her father, now, an’ without conditions,” he said
deliberately. “I don’t war with women.” The decision stunned them to silence
for a moment and then babel broke out. Above the protesting voices that of
Navajo made itself heard:

 
          
“See
here, Rogue, we all got a say in this,” he cried. “
yu
ain’t the on’y one.”

 
          
“I’ve
said it,” the outlaw told him. “As long as I’m boss o’ this band I run things
my own way.” His baleful, bloodshot eyes travelled to the half-breed. “Navajo,
yu got ambitions to fill my shoes. Step out an’ pull yore gun; we’ll settle it
here an’ now.”

 
          
The
other men watched the half-breed curiously. Any one of them might have shot
down the challenger but it would have meant a battle, for not all of them were
disloyal to Rogue. Also, there was that lean-limbed cowboy, of whose ability to
use his gun there was no doubt. Navajo was not the stuff to stand an acid test.

 
          
“Yu
got me all wrong, Rogue,” he protested. “I ain’t makin’ trouble, an’ I reckon
the boys don’t want none neither. Gittin’ the herd is all that matters. It
seemed an easy way, but if yu got it fixed different, we ain’t carin’.”

 
          
Having
gained his end, Rogue was too astute to overplay his hand. He knew the men,
understood that self-interest was the only factor which governed their crude
natures. Once satisfied that they would not lose, they would be tractable
enough.

 
          
“I
want them cattle as bad as yu do—got to have ‘em, in fact,” he said quickly.
“So yu needn’t to worry ‘bout that.”

 
          
Boldly
turning his back on them, he walked to the tree-trunk. Sudden stepped after
him.

 
          
The
tempest of emotion which had raged through him seemed to have weakened the
outlaw physically; he looked tired and his face was drawn.

 
          
“Rogue,
yu acted like a white man an’ I’m rememberin’ it,” Sudden told him.

 
          
“I
acted like a damn fool an’ I’m forgettin’ it,”
came
the sardonic reply. He was silent awhile, pondering. “How in hell am I to get
that gal back to her of man?
It’s
most of ten mile.
Can’t use any o’ the boys, an’ I dursn’t leave ‘em just now.”

 
          
“Send
Sandy,
an’ yu can have my word, an’ his, that he’ll
come back—alone,” Sudden suggested. “yu can tell him that my life depends on
his doin’ that, though there’s no need.”

 
          
“Yu
trust him that much?” the outlaw asked, almost a wistful note in his voice, and
when Sudden nodded, “Well, it ‘pears to be the on’y trail out.”

 
          
He
walked over to where the girl and her companion were waiting, anxiously. Carol,
born of fighting stock, faced the famous desperado fearlessly. With scarcely a
glance at her, Rogue said roughly:

 
          
“I
don’t want yu here. This fella”—he gestured to Sandy —“will take yu back to
yore camp; it ain’t so far.”

 
          
“Thank
you,” the girl said. “I am sure my father”

 
          
“Don’t
get any fool notions,” he interrupted harshly. “Tell Eden I can win without
usin’ women.” He beckoned Sandy aside. “The herd lies due west—yu can’t miss
it. Now, I want yore word that’yu’ll come back—alone. If yu don’t show up, or
bring company, it will go hard with Jim.
Yu sabe?”

 
          
“I’ll
be back—if the war-whoops don’t get me,” the young man promised. “An’ Rogue, I
wanta say thisa mighty han’some act”

 
          
“Aw,
go to hell,” the outlaw retorted. “She interferes, an’ that’s all there is to
it. Get agoin’.”

 
          
Furtive
glances followed the pair as they rode away, but there was no protest, and the
inevitable ribald remarks were uttered in undertones. Sudden had waved a
cheerful paw but purposely did not go near them; he had no desire to invent
explanations. When they had gone, Rogue came to him.

 
          
“What
about them guns o’ yores, Jim?”

 
          
“I’ve
pledged myself to stay here till Sandy returns. Don’t yu reckon it would be
wiser to let me wear ‘em till then?
”
The other
considered the proposition; in the event of more trouble with the men, the
prisoner would necessarily be on his side.

 
          
“Mebbe
yo’re right,” he decided.

 
          
Meanwhile
the girl and her escort were slowly making their way in the direction they
believed the S E camp to
lie
, slowly because, there
being no trail, they had to pick a path for themselves in the wilderness.

 
          
Despite
the necessity for constant caution, Sandy stole an occasional glance at the
girl riding beside him. She had courage, and if the slim, straight figure now
drooped slightly in the saddle, it was only to be expected after the
nerve-wracking ordeal of the last forty-eight hours.

 
          
Her
first words, after they had ridden a mile in silence, took him by surprise:

 
          
“Some
of those men seemed to know you.”

 
          
“We’d
met ‘em,” Sandy admitted. “
yu
run up against all sorts
when yo’re driftin round.”

 
          
She
did not speak for some moments, and then, “Why did that man let me go? He could
have made his own terms with my father.”

 
          
“It’s
got me guessin’,” the boy told her, truthfully enough. “Mebbe Jim struck some
sort o’ bargain, seein’ he stayed behind.”

 
          
Carol
shook her head. “He could have kept all of us,” she pointed out. “He was
disputing with his men when the shooting occurred. Was anyone hurt?”

 
          
“I
expect so,” Sandy replied. “That’s a tough team an’ it takes a hard man to
handle ‘em. Rogue’s all o’ that.”

 
          
“Somehow
I wasn’t afraid of him,” Carol said reflectively. “Though I believe he had just
killed or maimed a fellow-creature.”

 
          
IN
the S E Camp, anxiety at the absence of their young mistress deepened when
neither Sandy nor Sudden put in an appearance. A search-party was sent out but
owing to the redskins’ use of dividing their forces, was led astray and lost
the trail completely on a wide strip of stony ground. Its return with-Jut Carol
reduced the invalid to a state of blasphemous despair; he cursed everything and
everybody, including himself for exposing her to such a peril. Aunt Judy, who
had spent all her life among rough-tongued men, fled before the torrent of
vituperation, and her husband, nursing a sore head, listened with awe. As he
afterwards confessed to the outfit:

 
          
“For
comprehensive cussin’ I never heard the beat of it; the ol’ man shorely covered
the ground. I reckon he musta bin a mule-skinner one time.”

 
          
But
bad language, however “good” it may be, gets one nowhere and morning broke upon
a helpless, and wellnigh hopeless community. The cattleman, propped up by the
fire, looked at his foreman in sullen misery.