Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 07 - Sudden Rides Again(1938) (37 page)

 
          
“Well,
damn me, if some folk ain’t got a nerve,” he said. “Hello, Mart,” Frosty
greeted. “We just dropped in.”

 
          
“Off,
yu mean,” Merry corrected. “I hope yu found all yu wanted.”

 
          
“Not
a spot,” the Double K rider told him. “Take the bottle to bed with yu?”

 
          
“No,
sir, on’y the contents,” his host laughed. “C’mon: eat first an’ talk after is
my motto. Mornin’, Jeff.”

 
          
Young
Keith entered, greeted the guests, and sat down to the excellent breakfast
provided. Not until they had done full justice to it, and lighted up, did Merry
open the conversation with the customary question.

 
          
“Well,
boys, what’s the news?”

 
          
“S’pose
yu ain’t heard o’ the 01’ Man accidentally shootin’ hisself?” Frosty began.

 
          
Sudden
saw Keith’s face become paler, but no word came from his lips. It was the
rancher who spoke.

 
          
Ken
hurt?” he cried.
“How bad?”

 
          
“The
Red Rock pill-roller reckons he’s got a fightin’ chance.”

 
          
“Then
he’ll make it—Ken’s a fighter, shore enough,” Merry said. “But how did it
happen?”

 
          
Frosty
told the story as he knew it, but the fat man shook his head.

 
          
“It
don’t
sound right to me.”

 
          
“It
ain’t right,” Sudden put in quietly. “Satan rode into Dugout, with six others,
yestiddy mornin’. He met the Colonel in Black Sam’s an’ shot him; claims he
went for a weapon.”

 
          
Keith
sprang up, his lips working, and made for the door. But the puncher was there
first and had his back to it. “Where yu goin’?” he asked.

 
          
“Hell
City, to blow that skunk to bits,” was the passionate reply.

 
          
“Fine,
yu’ll look like a million bucks to him,” Sudden said sarcastically. “Best let
it ride, for now.” Sullenly the young man returned to his seat. Frosty spoke.

 
          
“Jansen
an’
them
who fetched the 01’ Man home all had the same
tale. Why would they lie?”

 
          
“Mebbe
he told them to,” Sudden suggested. “He’s a proud man an’ wouldn’t want it
knowed that—”

 
          
“His
own son had done such a dastard deed,” the boy burst in. “Yes, that’s the sort
of thing he would do. But he believed it himself,” he finished bitterly.

 
          
“Yu
can’t blame him, Jeff,” Merry pointed out. “That damned imposter has been too
clever for all of us.” His eye caught something. “How long yu been an Imp,
Frosty?”

 
          
The
cowboy grinned as he slipped the badge into a pocket. “Forgot that, but she was
useful las’ night,” he said. “Soon as I got into Hell City I went straight to
the saloon—”

 
          
“Yu
would,” his friend interrupted.

 
          
“Knowed
it was the likeliest place to find yu,” Frosty retaliated. “
yu
wasn’t there, but I heard how the Chief—as they call him—had soured on yu, an’

 
          
“The
rest don’t signify,” Sudden said hurriedly. “I guess it does,” the rancher
decided.

 
          
So
Frosty had to tell of the battle with Roden and the subsequent ordeal, both of
which had been graphically described to him by eye-witnesses. He concluded
with, “An’ here he is, hoss an’ guns complete. How in hell
d’yu
manage
it, Jim?”

 
          
“If
I’d on’y practised steady as a kid, I’d be a good liar,” Sudden smiled, and
related the ruse by which he had escaped. “I was lucky.”

 
          
“Lucky?”
Frosty echoed whimsically. “Yu said it. I’ll bet if yu pitched head first into
the Glue-pot yu’d come up with a bag o’ gold in each paw.”

 
          
Merry
laughed. “Yu can put a `p’ in front o’ that luck, Frosty,” he said. “What was
it this brigand wanted to know, Jim?”

 
          
“The whereabouts o’ Keith here.
As I told yu, he’s the
winnin’ card. Holdin’ him, Satan takes the pot; lackin’ him, he’s liable to
lose out.”

 
          
Jeff
Keith had been listening with bent head. Now he looked up. “You went through
that rather than betray me?”

 
          
“Shucks,
I was allus a bad loser,” the puncher replied. “Besides, tellin’ him wouldn’t
‘a’
helped
me.”

 
          
“No
wonder you stopped me just now,” the young man said. “It seems I’m just the
headstrong blunderer I’ve always been. I owe you a lot, Mister Green.”

 
          
“My
friends use my first name,” Sudden told him, holding out a hand.

 
          
Keith
grasped it eagerly. “Thank you—Jim,” he replied, and then, “What are we going
to do?”

 
          
“Smash
up Hell City. Will yore fellas take a hand, Merry?”

 
          
“Will
they?” the rancher cried. “All I’m worth wouldn’t keep ‘em out of it, an’ that
goes for yore crowd, eh, Frosty?” The Double K man hesitated a moment and
Sudden answered for him. “
Shore,
an’ I’m bettin’ we
can count on help from Dugout, ‘specially when it’s knowed who downed the
Colonel. I’m wonderin’ whether the sheriff o’ Red Rock would sit
in?
”

 
          
He
was watching Keith’s face as he spoke, but if the boy felt alarm at the
suggestion he did not show it. On the contrary, he was the first to approve.

 
          
“Dealtry’s
a good man to have at your back,” he said, adding with a ghost of a smile,
“that is, unless
he’s wanting
you.”

 
          
“He
struck me as square,” the puncher went on. “I’ll ride over an’ have a talk with
him. Meantime, we gotta keep mighty silent, an’ Jeff, yu must stay
holed-up—they won’t look for yu here.”

 
          
The
young man’s face fell; he had been hoping to meet Joan again, but he made no
demur. The others sensed a change in him; the bitter, rebellious attitude had
disappeared, leaving a quiet determination. They put it down to the infamous
attempt upon his father’s life, never guessing at a still more potent factor.

 
          
“We’re
takin’ on a man-sized job an’ can’t afford to overlook bets,” was Sudden’s
final warning.

 
          
Satan’s
fury, when he learned that his victim had escaped sent Silver, who brought the
news, cowering to a corner, whence he watched, terrified. Never before had he
seen his dreaded master so completely lose control of himself. Striding to and
fro, uttering fearful blasphemies, he poured vitriolic curses upon the unknown
person who had robbed him of revenge, and promised punishment which turned the
timorous listener’s blood to ice.

 
          
Presently,
at the end of another wild tirade, he snatched out his revolvers and Silver
thought his last moment had come. But the madman fired at the picture of the
gunman, bullet after bullet, until the face was no more than tattered fragments
of canvas. Only when the weapons were empty did he fling them to the floor and
sink, panting with passion, into a seat. Silence ensued, and this, to the
solitary spectator of the weird scene, seemed even more dreadful. Fascinated,
he could not look away from the blood-red mask, out of which the rage-glazed
eyes stared into space. Suddenly bandit stood up; the paroxysm had passed.

 
          
“What
are you doing there, you coward?” he growled. “Go, make enquiries, find out
something,
blast
you. And send me a boy—one who can
ride.”

 
          
When
the fellow had scuttled out, he sat down and wrote a note, slowly, carefully.
The result appeared to satisfy him, for after studying it critically, he
nodded.

 
          
“That
will bring her, and she will bring him,” he reflected aloud. “With the old man
dead, I shall hold all the cards.”

 
          
At
the Double K ranch-house, Joan had just relinquished her duties in the
sick-room, leaving the patient in the capable hands of Mandy, who had hurried
to the bedside of her old master as soon as she heard the news.

 
          
“Go
foh a ride, honey,” the
negress
said. “Yo is all
tuckered out. We-all suah hab yo on our
han’s
mighty
soon, an’ 01’ Massa tak’ de hide off’n mah back when he git well.” So the girl
got her horse and had just mounted when the foreman approached. He was not in a
happy frame of mind these days; the “accident” to his employer had jarred him.
Recalling Satan’s enquiries as to the Colonel’s visits to Dugout, he could not
credit the current story. On the other hand, he found it just as difficult to
believe that a son, however unjustly treated, could deliberately endeavour to
slay his father, and coarse-natured as he was, the possibility sickened him. If
Jeff had indeed sunk to that level … The unfinished thought prompted him to
give the girl a warning.

 
          
“Shouldn’t go far, Miss Joan.
Queer things
is
happenin’ an’ the country is a heap unsettled.”

 
          
“Thank
you, Steve,” she smiled. “I’ll be careful.”

 
          
His
gaze followed her as she shot away, trim figure swaying easily with the
movement of the beast beneath her, a picture to take and hold the eye of any
horseman.

 
          
“Hell,
that boy must ‘a’ bin loco,” was his comment.

 
          
It
was only after she had ridden a mile or more that Joan awoke to the fact that
she was travelling in the direction of the Glue-pot.

 
          
“Sugar,
you must be a mind-reader,” she told her mount laughingly. “It’s a good thing
you haven’t the gift of speech, too, or you might betray secrets.”

 
          
She
pulled up as she saw a rider approaching, a mere lad of eleven or twelve,
astride the back of an unkempt, shaggy pony. He stopped when he reached her and
dragged off his wreck of a hat. He was not prepossessing, his thin features
having a crafty expression out of keeping with his age. “I reckon yo’re Miss
Joan Keith,” he said.

 
          
“Your
reckoning is correct,” she smiled. “And where do you come from?”

 
          
“Way
over,” he replied, jerking a thumb to the northward, and she knew that was all
she would learn. “I got a letter for you —a stranger asked me to fetch it; said
for me to give it to yoreself.”

 
          
He
dived into the pocket of his ragged overalls. Joan took the envelope and one
glance at the superscription quickened the beating of her heart. But she would
not open it yet.

 
          
“What
was he like, this stranger?”

 
          
“Dressed
like a cow-wrastler, with blue eyes an’ a mark on his chin,” the boy replied.
“He gimme four bits.”
The girl’s face was flushed, her eyes
sparkling. She had been sure before—the writing had told her, but she could not
resist the desire to prolong her pleasure. “So if I give you
another
four you
will have a whole dollar,” she said.

 
          
“Betcha
life,” he agreed, and putting the coins carefully away, banged his heels
against the ribs of his steed and scampered off. Only then did she open the
envelope.