Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (5 page)

‘
You say that the prisoner here
intended to kill Buck Cotton’? asked Kilpatrick.

‘
He was shoutin’ it all over town,
Martin,’ replied the sheriff. ‘I can produce a dozen
witnesses—–’

‘
No need, no need,’ Kilpatrick
waved an airy hand. ‘Nobody doubts your veracity, Harry.’ He turned
to the jury again. ‘Did any of you men see or hear Hornby
threatening to kill Buck Cotton?’ Several of the jurymen nodded.
One of them stood up, a roughly dressed man with a broken nose. ‘I
shore as hell did, Judge,’ he called. Kilpatrick nodded, as if
these words were all the proof that was needed.

‘
It would seem to be an open and
shut case. The accused was heard to threaten the life of an unarmed
man. He threatened him with a gun, and was heard to say that he
would kill him. Only the timely intervention of the sheriff
prevented murder. As it was, shots were fired; the sheriff was
wounded.’ He turned towards Billy, frowning. ‘I will ask the jury
for its verdict unless you have something to say, prisoner. I warn
you, however, that it had better not be anything insulting to this
court.’

‘
I misdoubt I could think of
anything which would insult this court,’ was Billy’s cold reply,
but his irony was completely lost
upon the
elephant hide of the old judge, who was leaning back in
his chair, confident that his task was completed.
But Billy was not
finished. ‘If I was out
o’ here, I’d take after that polecat again!’ Kilpatrick leaned
forward sharply.

‘
Then perhaps we shall have to
ensure that you are prevented
from doing
so, won’t we?’ There was malignant evil lurking deep
in his reddened eyes, and a message passed between
him and the
older Cotton, unspoken but
explicit.

‘
Jury, have you heard
enough?’

The broken-nosed man who had spoken
earlier stood up.

‘
We shore have, Judge. We don’t
need to waste any more time
considerin’ any
verdict. That young hellion’s guilty as hell!’
Billy’s lips tightened at these words, but he made no other
motion.
An excited buzz of conversation
swept through the room now, and the spectators craned to get a
better view of the condemned
man.
Kilpatrick cleared his throat, and banged upon the table for
silence.

‘
Hornby, you’ve been found guilty.
It now becomes my painful
duty to pronounce
sentence on you.’

A hush descended upon the listening
audience. For the first
time, Art Cotton
leaned forward, his flat eyes watching the pro
ceedings with something like interest. His brother leaned back
in
his chair, arms spread wide along the
backs of his own and his
brother’s seats,
his legs crossed, a long cigar in his thick lips. He
looked as if he was enjoying himself in his own
parlor.

‘
The sentence of this court is
that you be taken to the Territorial prison, by the sheriff of this
town, and delivered there to
serve a
sentence often years hard labor for the willful and
deliber
ate attempt at assassination you
have perpetrated today. Sheriff,
see to it
that my sentence is carried out!’ He banged once upon the table
with his hammer and stood up. With a last baleful
glance at his victims, he shuffled off down to the
other end of the
room, where the bartender
had set up a bottle of whisky and a
glass.
Kilpatrick gulped a large dose down like water, and splashed
another into the glass in the time it took Parris
and his deputies to prod Green to his feet and precede Billy
through the jeering crowd of spectators out into the street and
towards the jail. As they crossed the street, Green heard Sim
Cotton’s bull voice shouting ‘Set
’em
up for everyone, Blass!’ and heard
the ragged cheer which followed this command.

‘
That’ll make him popular,’
commented Billy bitterly. ‘In a few hours they’ll be thankin’ him
for treatin’ them like dawgs.’

‘
Yu shut yore yap, Hornby!’
snapped Parris. ‘No more talkin’.’

‘
I’ll talk when I please, yu fat
tub o’ lard,’ retorted Billy. ‘I ain’t takin’ orders from yu, an’
that’s whatever.’

‘
Yu’ll take ’em when we step out
for Santa Fe,’ Parris reminded him. They clumped into the little
office, and the deputy called Norris motioned Green to sit down.
Billy was shoved through the heavy door leading into the corridor
where the cells lay, and in a moment the puncher heard the heavy
door bang shut, and the grating sound of the metal bolt being shot.
Parris and his other deputy came back into the office.

‘
Yo’re movin’ on, Green,’ the
sheriff told the puncher levelly. ‘An’ yu better keep on movin’ if
yu’ve got the sense God gave ants. Yu show yore head in this town
again, an’ someone’ll shoot it off. Dan!’ This to the shorter of
the two deputies. ‘Yu an’ Jerry ride a ways with Mr. Green here.
Make shore he takes the right road.’ He looked meaningfully at the
deputy, who nodded.

‘
I got yu, Harry,’ he said. ‘We’ll
take care of it.’

Green had not missed the inflexions in their voices,
and he recalled what Billy had told him earlier in the jail.

‘
Can I see the kid afore I go?’ he
asked.

‘
Yu can talk to him through the
door,’ Parris allowed. ‘One minute. Go with him, Dan. An’ keep him
covered the whole time.’

Green stood up and preceded the
deputy into the dark, cool corridor. He stopped outside the heavy
door. It was closed by two heavy metal bolts, one at the top and
one at the bottom.There was no padlock.

‘
Billy!’ he called. ‘Yu hear
me?’

‘
I hear yu, Jim,’ came the boy’s
voice, muffled by the thickness of the cell door. ‘Yu watch out.
Remember what I told yu.’

‘
Keep yore chin up,’ Green
shouted. ‘Don’t quit yet.’

‘
I ain’t about to. Watch yoreself,
Jim.’

‘
Yu, too, kid.’

‘
Come on, that’s a-plenty,’
growled Dan. ‘Yu had yore minnit.’

He hustled Green back into the
outer office. Parris looked up expectantly. ‘What did they say?’ he
asked cunningly.

Dan reported the conversation, and Parris
nodded.

‘
I thought yu might have some idea
o’ comin’ back to help the kid,’ he said, peering at Green
shrewdly.

‘
Hell, ain’t nothin’ I could do
now,’ Green said, a bland look on his face. ‘I’m shore regrettin’ I
ever come near this place.’

‘
Now yo’re thinkin’ straight,’
Parris told him. ‘Get goin’,boys.’

‘
Don’t I get my guns back?’ asked
the puncher.

‘
Where yo’re headin’ yu won’t need
yore guns,’ was the chilling reply. ‘Besides, we don’t want yu
changin’ yore mind, do we?’ He grinned evilly. ‘Dan, Jerry, get
this saddletramp out o’ here. I got work to do.’

The deputy called Jerry grabbed
Green’s arms and hustled him out into the street. The two men
helped the bound puncher on to his horse and motioned him to lead
the way up the street, almost completely deserted except for a few
loungers on the porch of the saloon who watched incuriously as the
three-man procession headed out of the town. They headed south,
across the wooden bridge which spanned the Bonito, and out into the
rolling, gully-creased foothills which lay to the south of
Cottontown. Once they were clear of the town, the two deputies,
their shotguns cradled in their arms, lagged about three yards
behind Green, keeping their distance constant, never coming near
enough for him to make any move against them, never falling behind
sufficiently to allow him to contemplate making a dash for freedom.
The skin on Green’s back crawled. He knew the old Mexican
ley del fuego
—-the
unwritten law under which prisoners were shot down “trying to
escape” in order to relieve their captors of the necessity of
guarding them. When a man was wanted dead or alive the easiest way
to bring him in was across a saddle. The infamous bounty hunters
had made this law their own, covering their foul actions with the
thin coating of legality.

‘
Shore wouldn’t pay to make a run
for it he told himself. ‘That’s just what they’d like me to do. But
if I don’t, I’m a goner anyway.’ They descended a narrow defile,
the weather-scoured rock walls of which were bare, relieved only in
a few places by scattered clumps of brush clinging precariously
where an earth-filled crevice afforded root-hold, huge rocks and
thickets of prickly pear making detours inevitable and progress
slow.

From time to time, as they rode along, Green tested
his bonds, but they had been expertly tied. Indeed, he reflected,
his silent guards were just as professional. Not once had either of
them spoken, and yet their moves were as if planned. Neither of
them had once come within striking distance, yet neither had ever
been more than a few yards away from the prisoner at any time.

‘
Probably done this enough times
to have it off pat he reflected grimly. He glanced at the sun. One
o’clock or thereabouts. Sooner or later they were going to act. How
would it come? A blasting sound, a tearing pain, blackness? No
warning of the fatal moment, or the perhaps worse experience of
facing the two men and waiting those eternal seconds as their
fingers tightened on the triggers? Despite the heat of the sun a
chill entered his veins. How far had they come? Five miles, seven
maybe. Despite his iron control, Green felt an instinctive desire
to break the menacing, nerve-shattering silence.

‘
Shore could do with a drink,’ he
said aloud.

‘
Yu’ll get one when we’re ready,’
Norris told him from behind. ‘Keep movin’, cowboy.’

The stillness of the wide, rolling
country wrapped around them again like a shroud. The blazing sun
hung in a dome of cloudless blue. Nothing moved. No bird, no lizard
darting among the rocks, nothing —-.Nature seemed to have deserted
this desolation, leaving a silence like that of the tomb. They rode
in this silence for perhaps another mile. Then the one called Dan
said:

‘
This’ll do. Get down,
Green.’

‘
Yu stupid fool!’

The flat, sharp sound of an
open-handed slap echoed around the spare room of the house owned by
Fred Mott, Sim Cotton’s cousin, the town banker. It was a small
room, containing only a table with an oil lamp, a few chairs, a
bunk and a roll top desk. Mott, a thin, balding, bespectacled man,
used it for a ‘study’, but whenever Sim Cotton needed a bed in
town, he utilized this room, snoring on the rough bunk which filled
one wall.

It was against this now that Buck
Cotton sprawled, a trickle of blood emerging from the split lip
caused by his older brother’s contemptuous blow.

‘
But Sim…’ he began.

‘ “
But Sim!” ‘ mimicked the bigger
man in a squeaking voice. ‘ “It was all in fun, Sim.” Yu
thick-headed oaf! How many times’ve I told yu to steer clear o’
them nesters? How many times? Tell me, yu pup!’

‘
Yu’ve told me plenty o’ times,
Sim,’ confessed Buck Cotton, miserably.

‘
Yet yu still go an’ raise a
ruckus with one o’ their women,’ was the biting retort. ‘I reckon
Paw forgot to send for brains when yu was born.’

He turned to Art Cotton, who was sitting straddling
a chair, his arms folded along its back, watching the scene with
impassive eyes.

‘
What did the doctor say,
Art?’

Art Cotton shrugged.

‘
Said the gal’d had a shock.
Nothin’ serious wrong with her. He’d love to’ve spit in my eye.
Think he’s smitten hisself. Yu shore picked a wrong ‘un there,
Bucky. Next time, yu’d better go down to the ol’ Fort if yo’re
hankerin’ after a leetle romancin’.’

‘
Yu hanker after any more
romancin’ an’ I’ll hang yore hide on
the
livery stable wall for the whole town to see!’ swore Sim Cotton.
‘This is our town. We got it like that.’ He held out his open hand
and clenched it like a fist. ‘All we got to do is get them nesters
riled up enough to send for the John Laws an’ we’ll have more
trouble than the Apaches ever gave Paw in a lifetime

‘
Hell, Sim, we could take care o’
any Johnny Law that showed his nose in this valley,
an’
make it look good,’
protested Art.

‘
Shore,’ said Sim Cotton, with
heavy scorn. ‘That’s smart thinkin’, ain’t it? They send in a John
Law an’ yu want to burn him down. What happens then, Brains? What’s
the next thing happens? I’ll tell yu: they send in another. And
another, or two, or three. An’ then the whole thing is shot. I
ain’t about to lose this valley now, not when the whole thing is
going to pay off, after all these years. I ain’t goin’ to lose it,
yu hear me? Not for some wet-nosed nester’s brat who ain’t even got
blood in her veins.’ He looked threateningly at Buck Cotton. ‘If yu
ever set foot on Lazy H land again, without my say-so, boy,
I’ll
make yu regret it.’

The spaced, evenly measured lack of
violence in his words turned Buck Cotton’s face pale, and he
nodded.