Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (6 page)

‘
Yu got my word, Sim,’ he
managed.

‘
An’ yu got mine, little brother,’
replied Sim. ‘Bite on it.’

Art Cotton stood up and yawned. He
wandered across to the window and looked out down the street.
Mott’s house stood next to the bank, at the northern end of the
town’s curving street. From this window, the whole street was
visible.

‘
Town’s nice’n quiet,’ remarked
Art. ‘Yu reckon that kid’s nester friends’ll try to cause any
trouble?’

‘
Not if they know what’s good for
’em,’ Sim Cotton said. ‘Besides, Helm’ll have him out o’ here
tonight.’

‘
I wish yu’d let
me
take care o’ that one,’
muttered Buck Cotton.

‘
I ain’t lettin’ yu, or Art get
involved in any o’ this,’ growled Sim Cotton. ‘We’re playin’ for
bigger stakes than the satisfaction o’ gettin’ even with some
two-bit nester. When that dam goes up at Twin Peaks, this valley is
goin’ to be worth more money than yu’ve ever dreamed was printed.
This town is goin’ to boom, an’ we’re goin’ to be holdin’ all the
aces. We can put our own price on the land, on the buildin’, on
everything!’ His eyes gleamed avariciously as he allowed his
thoughts to formulate pictures before his eyes. ‘But it ain’t
certain until next month. An’ until next month we got to keep the
lid tight on this town. Any sign o’ trouble, an’ Chris Helm steps
in. Let him. If the John Laws come in, Helm’s the one caused all
the trouble.
I got a paper showin’ him
hired out to Harry Parris as a deppity for the last two years!’ He
laughed evilly. ‘We’ll be in the clear. It’ll all be ours! Every
inch o’ this rotten fleabag of a town’ll be worth its weight in
diamonds.’

For a long moment, the fever of
greed burned in his close-set eyes, then slowly died away, and he
turned to Buck Cotton.

‘
Get out o’ here,’ he said. There
was a tone of something as close to affection as Sim Cotton could
get. ‘Tell Chris Helm I want to see him.’

Buck Cotton nodded, and went out,
thankful to be released from his brother’s baleful gaze. In a few
minutes, a discreet knock at the door which led directly on to the
side alley from the room announced the arrival of the tall
gunfighter. He ducked under the door lintel and nodded.
‘Sim, Art. Ol’ Martin did a fine job o’
speechifyin’ at the Oasis. I got him out o’ there afore his tongue
got stuck in the bottle.’

Sim Cotton looked up sharply.
‘Drunken ol’ fool,’ he snapped. ‘He give yu any
trouble?’

‘
Shucks, no,’ shrugged Helm. ‘I
Just pointed him at his bed, an’ tapped him one behind the ear with
this—’ He touched the butt of one of his six-guns. ‘He’ll wake up
thinkin’ he swilled too much rotgut.’

Sim Cotton nodded. He stood up and paced the width
of the room three times before turning to face the gunfighter
again.

‘
This kid,’ he began. ‘I want yu
to take care o’ things.’

Helm nodded, his face unperturbed.

‘
Yu reckon Harry’s boys might
botch it? They ain’t yet.’

‘
I want to be shore on this, Helm.
That boy’s a firebrand. If he was to go shootin’ off his mouth, it
could do us a lot o’ harm.’

‘
I reckon was Helm’s uncritical
reply. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll see he don’t cause you no trouble,
Sim.’

Cotton nodded. Helm stood to go, then hesitated. Art
Cotton looked up at the tall gunfighter.

‘
That other feller,’ Helm began.
‘Green, he said his name was.’

‘
What about him?’

‘
I had the feelin’ I’ve seen him
someplace. Can’t put a finger on it. But … aw, hell, probably just
imagination.’

‘
No, wait,’ Sim Cotton held up a
hand. ‘Where do yu reckon yu’ve run across this jasper? Is he a
lawman?’

Helm shook his head. ‘No, I don’t
reckon so. But I got that hunch.

‘
I’ve seen him someplace. Texas,
mebbe. It’ll come to me.’

‘
It don’t matter a hell of a lot,’
Art Cotton laughed coldly. ‘He’ll be snakebait by now.’ They joined
in his mirthless laughter. Then Sim Cotton pulled out the elegant
silver watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘One-thirty,’ he announced.
‘Let’s go an’ eat.’

Thus callously did the lord of the
valley dismiss from his thoughts the murderous deeds which had
sprung from his dark plotter’s mind. He had just condemned Billy
Hornby to death. In the fate of the other man, Green, he had no
further interest. As Art Cotton had said, Green was already
snakebait.

‘
This’ll do. Get down,
Green.’

Dan’s command, when it came, was
almost a relief after the endless tension of the miles they had
ridden from town. Green turned to see the other deputy, Norris,
unstrapping from behind his saddle a small folding shovel, such as
the United States Cavalry carried on field expeditions.

‘
Get down, I said!’ The repeated
command was emphasized by a gesture with the shotgun. Green
shrugged, and lifted his leg over the saddle horn, sliding down to
the ground effortlessly despite his bound hands. As he did so, Dan
covered him without dismounting, while Norris dismounted, dropped
the shovel on the ground, and walking in a wide half-circle, never
coming between the two men, sidled up behind Green.

‘
Stick yore arms out behind yu,’
he ordered, and when Green complied, slashed the puncher’s bonds
apart with two deft strokes of the knife. Green stood kneading the
cramped muscles of his arms as Norris unhurriedly stepped
backwards, away from him, as unhurriedly unhitched the shotgun from
where it hung on the saddle horn by a leather loop, and covered
Green as Dan dismounted.

Dan motioned towards the shovel.
‘Start diggin’,’ he told Green.

‘
My arms is mighty cramped, boys,’
Green remonstrated. ‘Give me a minnit to get ’em workin’
again.’

‘
Start diggin’,’ snapped Norris.
‘That oughta do it.’ He smiled evilly at his companion, who grinned
back.

Green stretched his arms to their fullest extent.
Then he placed his hands on his hips and faced his captors.

‘
Yu boys aimin’ to kill me in cold
blood?’

‘
Dig!’ Again the gesture with the
shotgun.

‘
I’d as lief not bother,’ snapped
Green. ‘If yo’re aimin’ to
perforate me,
I’m shore as hell not goin’ to dig my own grave.’

The man called Dan looked at his
fellow deputy and put on a resigned expression.

‘
Why do we allus get the
argumentary ones?’ he asked.

‘
Beats me,’ admitted
Norris.

‘
Yu reckon we can talk him out o’
his bad mood?’

Norris grinned evilly. ‘We could
shore try. What yu wanta do? Shall I hold him, or will
yu?’

Dan grinned. His thick, stubbled
chin dropped, revealing broken teeth, and Green realized that the
man was one of those bar room toughs who relished nothing more than
beating a defenseless man, or a weaker one, into a bloody,
whimpering pulp.

‘
Just keep that cannon pointed at
him, an’ move to the side a bit,’ grinned Dan. ‘I’ll see if I can’t
talk him out o’ this bad mood he’s in. Make him a mite more
co-operative.’

‘
Yeah, yu do that. On’y leave some
for me, Dan. Don’t go breakin’ his leg or nothin’.’

‘
Shore, Jerry, shore,’ mumbled the
deputy. He laid down his shotgun, while Green’s mind raced. The
reference that Norris had just made: could it be that this was the
man who had crippled the doctor, the one that Billy had told him
about? His eyes narrowed; he had no time to think any more about
it, for Dan was shambling forward.

‘
C’mon, cowboy,’ he mouthed. ‘Give
me an argyment.’

‘
Shore,’ Green replied. ‘Let me
just get my bearin’s.’ Gauging his distances carefully, the puncher
took three rapid steps, bringing himself almost directly between
Dan and Norris. With a curse, Norris dropped his indolent pose and
skipped hastily to one side, trying to get a clear aim at Green,
and yelling ‘Dan! Hit the floor, Dan!’ But even as the words left
his lips, Green was moving forward, fast and hard and low, flinging
himself directly into the arms of the lumbering Dan, who reacted
exactly as Green had figured he would, by wrapping his huge arms
about the body of the puncher and exerting a bone-cracking bear
hug, designed to snap his enemy’s spine. An evil growl escaped his
corded throat, and he was oblivious to his companions’
yells.

‘
Drop him, Danny,’ yelled Norris.
‘Let him go, yu dumb ape! Let me get a shot at him.’

He danced to one side, the twin
hammers of the shotgun fully cocked, as deadly as a barracuda. His
shouts penetrated his sidekick’s murder-addled brain, and Dan shook
his head angrily,
realizing the trick that
the puncher, now writhing in his punishing grip, had played on him.
He loosened his grasp slightly, confused by Norris’ shouts, unsure
of whether he had been tricked or not, and in that moment of
loosening pressure, Green acted.

With every ounce of strength he
could muster, he heaved upwards with his right hand cupped, the
heel of his palm catching the deputy flush beneath his bearded jaw,
racking his head back with a huge jolt, stunning even that great
bear of a man and sending him flailing backwards, while Green fell
away and sideways out of his grip, nicking Dan’s revolver out of
the holster at his side, firing almost beneath Dan’s arm at the
menacing figure of Jerry Norris. His shot took the deputy between
the eyes, blasting the man backwards dead on his feet as Green hit
the ground. Norris’ fingers tightened in muscular spasm on the twin
triggers of the shotgun as he fell backwards, and the huge
boom!
of the twin
cartridges was shocking in the silence of the badlands.

The shot from both barrels took Dan off his feet
like a puppet thrown from a train, and he went over sidewards in a
tattered heap, smashing into a pile of tumbled rocks and going over
them in a welter of arms and legs.

Green picked himself warily up, the .45 cocked and
ready in his hand. A quick glance at Norris showed that the man was
dead, and Green moved carefully over to where Dan had tumbled
across the rocks. The man lay in a shattered heap where he had
fallen. Green shook his head.

‘
Never thought yu’d fall for that
one, boys,’ he managed. He picked up Norris’ shotgun and reloaded
it, gathered up the other shotgun, stripped the gun belt from the
fallen Norris, and strapped it on his own waist. The second .45 he
stuck into his waistband.

‘
Ain’t quite like havin’ my own
guns,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘But it shore is an
improvement over an hour ago.’ He walked over to where the horses
stood, eyes still rolling in fear from the explosions, blessing the
training which had kept them ground-hitched despite their terror,
by the trailing reins. In another moment he was mounted. His gaze
fell upon the shovel, lying upon the ground, and then rose to the
black, wheeling dots already circling in the sky. The buzzards
always knew.

He hesitated for a long moment. Then he shook his
head.

‘
Yu boys knew what yu was gettin’
into,’ he said aloud. ‘I shore hate to do it, but…’

With a shrug he caught up the reins of his horse and
thundered off without a backward glance, heading north. Behind him
the buzzards floated down and settled in a live oak tree to wait in
their eternal patience for the silence to return.

The afternoon sun beat down on
Cottontown. Along the curve of the street the sidewalks were
deserted. A small gray dog lay panting in the shade thrown by the
awning of the livery stable, but otherwise no sound nor movement
disturbed the stillness. In appearance, Cottontown was typical of a
hundred other Western settlements. Along its single street
straggled a variety of squat, unlovely buildings, some of them
slightly more imposing than others. They faced each other across a
wide strip of wheel-rutted, hoof- pocked dust, the absence of paint
remedied by the gray-white alkali dust which covered everything,
and the rubble of refuse which hemmed in each habitation forming a
sordid substitute for vegetation.

Looking north along Cottonwood’s
street, the largest building on the left was the wide, low-built
jail, with the sheriff’s house just to the north of it, and beyond
that the frame shack which housed Judge Kilpatrick. Opposite the
jail was the livery stable, while the Oasis, with its peeling false
front and grimy windows, directly faced the sheriff’s house, a fact
which had not escaped the notice of some of Cottonwood’s more
daring wits. The banker, Mott, lived on the northern end of the
town, between the bank, which stood next to the saloon, and
opposite the general store. His bank, in fact, was the most
substantial building in the town. Apart from these larger
buildings, only a straggle of houses, ’dobes, even one or two
dugouts, housed the remainder of Cottontown’s population, while the
spaces between were littered with tin cans, bottles, even the odd
tumbleweed which had lodged against a building.

Green surveyed the scene from a
vantage point in cool shadow, beneath the trestles of the wooden
bridge spanning the Bonito. ‘An’ only man is vile,’ he quoted.
‘Shore ain’t no oil paintin’. His horse nickered and he clamped a
firm hand across its nostrils.