Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1) (10 page)

‘
Move outa the way, there!’ he puffed
self-importantly.

‘
Stand back, now! Make room, there!’

‘
An’ plenty of it,’ jibed one bystander. ‘Shady shore ain’t no
mannykin!’

This
slighting reference to his bulk brought a flush to the sheriffs
face, but he affected to ignore it as he bustled about giving
orders which were completely ignored, and in the main merely adding
to the confusion in the already crowded street. Passers-by jostled
each other for a good view as George Tate’s body was unloaded and
borne into the saloon. The Slash 8 men followed in a close phalanx,
and ranged themselves around the trestle table upon which the old
man’s body was laid.

Brady
settled himself at a table to the left, facing the Slash 8 men,
while a hastily sworn coroner’s jury of sheepish Hanging Rock
citizens took their places in chairs immediately to his right. The
Sheriff’s piggy eyes grew narrower as he noticed the prominently
displayed weapons of the Slash 8 crew.

‘
Yu fellows aimin’ to attend an inquiry or start a war?’ he
said.

‘
Take yore pick, Shady,’ retorted Gimpy. ‘We’ll as lief have
one as the other, if yu want to start the ball.’

The
Sheriffs pasty face went a shade paler, and he resorted to
bombast.

‘
Jest sit down an’ have less to say, MacDonald,’ he bleated.
This yere’s an official inquiry, an’ we’re goin’ to do her
regular.’

‘
Yu
better
!’ was the unabashed reply.
‘Quit blatherin’ an’ get started!’

The
Sheriff rewarded this remark with a withering glance which had
absolutely no effect whatsoever upon the recipient; Brady thereupon
grabbed Dutchy’s wooden mallet and banged on the table in front of
him.

‘
This meetin’s called to order,’ he bellowed. ‘We’re here to
discover how the deceased, George Tate o’ the Slash 8, met his
death.’

‘
He was murdered!’ Sudden informed him coldly. ‘What we’re here
for is to get the facts o’ the murder on record.'

‘
Yu say he was murdered, mister,’ retorted Brady. ‘We’ve only
got yore word for it.’

A murmur
of interest arose from the watchers, but it was stilled in a moment
as Sudden, his eyes as cold as polar ice, leaned forward and asked
very quietly, ‘Yu suggestin’ I’m a liar, Sheriff?

Once
again the Sheriff’s face lost its color, resembling at this moment
nothing so much as a discarded lump of putty.

‘
I ain’t called nobody nothin’,’ he squeaked. ‘I’m only
pointin’ out that we can’t assume any fac’s until we’ve established
them here.’

‘
I think we can safely assume that Tate didn’t shoot himself in
the back.’

This
interruption came from Patches. The town doctor’s dry voice
effectively silenced anything further that Brady might have been
about to say. The doctor had been kneeling beside Tate’s body
during the exchange between Brady and Sudden; he stood now
regarding the Sheriff with studied contempt. ‘If you are quite
ready?’

‘
Let’s have it, Patches,’ snapped the lawman
impatiently.

‘
Yu’—This to a meek looking man sitting to one side—‘make
notes.’ The little man nodded emphatically, and bent over the
notebook balanced on his knees. The doctor regarded Brady without
expression. ‘What do you expect to be told? Tate has been dead
perhaps twenty but not less than twelve hours. He was shot from
above and behind—which seems to be a fairly common method of
killing people in these parts—and probably died within a few
minutes of being shot. This, in case you should have the wit to
ask, which I doubt, is established from the trajectory of the
bullet through the deceased’s body and from the degree of rigor
mortis existing in the corpse. I am no expert, but I would say that
he was killed by a rifle bullet of medium caliber. Since the bullet
hit bone inside the body it is impossible to say what make of rifle
fired the fatal shot. Here is the slug.’

With a
disdainful gesture, he tossed a misshapen piece of lead on to the
table in front of the Sheriff, and proceeded to wipe his hands upon
a large and none too clean rag, produced from one of the capacious
pockets of the rusty frock coat. He then turned his back on Brady
and the entire proceedings, and poured himself a liberal drink from
the bottle which Jake Burkhart had placed in readiness upon the
bar.

Brady
meanwhile examined the bullet carefully, as though he were
appraising a diamond, turning it over in his hands, squinting at
it. ‘Patches is right,’ was his verdict. ‘Prob’ly a forty-four, an’
purty near every gun in the Territory is the same. I’m guessin’
this won’t give us no leads.’ He passed the bullet across to the
jurors who examined it closely, shaking their heads. Brady called
Sudden forward.

‘
Yu was the last man to see George Tate alive. Suppose yu give
us yore version o’ what happened.’

Sudden
thereupon recounted once again the bare details of the
bushwhacking, the search he had made, and the arrival of the Slash
8 men. The only thing he left out was the discovery of the
cartridge case. When he had finished Brady stood up and faced
him.

‘
Yu get a look at the killer, Green?’

Sudden
shook his head, and Brady, clasping his hands behind him, prowled
up and down in front of the Slash 8 man. In a moment, he stopped,
and pointing at Green, shot out a question.

‘
Yu say the last thing George Tate said was that yu should take
care o’ the ranch an’ his daughter, Grace?’

‘
That’s right,’ Sudden told him.

‘
Yet yu’ve on’y been here a few days yorself, Green. How come
Tate put so much trust in yu?’

‘
He needed someone to keep the ranch runnin’ until his daughter
can get here from the East. I’ll stay in charge until she’s
twenty-one. That’s what Tate told me.’

A murmur
of surprise ran around the room at this revelation, and Brady’s pig
eyes gleamed. .

‘
Yu shore got yore hands on a good ranch, one way or the
other,’ he leered.

‘
What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sudden asked coldly.

‘
Never mind that. What caliber are them guns o’
yourn?’

‘
Forty-fives,’ was the reply. ‘So’s my saddle gun. Why? Yu
tryin’ to hint that I shot George Tate?’

‘
All I’m sayin’ is yu had a motive for killin’ the old man,’
was the heavy reply.

‘
Yu fat fool,’ Sudden snapped. ‘If I was lookin’ for pickin’s,
I shore wouldn’t have picked a ranch loaded with a mortgage that’s
liable to be foreclosed in ten days time.’ A guffaw escaped several
of the onlookers.

‘
Yu could have other reasons,’ shot back the nettled
lawman.

‘
I could be George Washington, but I ain’t,’ retorted
Sudden.

‘
These are fool questions, Brady an’ yu know it. Two men were
at the scene o’ the murder a couple o’ minutes after it
happened.’

‘
Hell, that don’t prove nothin’,’ muttered Brady. ‘Yu could all
be in cahoots to get the ranch.’

‘
What the devil for?’ interposed a biting voice. Brady wheeled
to discover Patches regarding him with cold eyes, elbows propped
behind him on the bar. ‘Assuming that Green killed Tate—which only
a complete fool would believe for a second—what would he want the
ranch for?’

Brady’s
eyes rolled around the room, seeking some kind of support, for in
truth, he had no idea how to answer the question his nemesis had
posed.

‘
How in ’ell do I know?’ he squealed. “This feller had a
motive, an’ for all I know, seein’ he was alone with Tate, bumped
him off, intendin’ to sell the ranch . . .’ His voice tapered off
as the stupidity of what he was saying seeped through his muddled
brain.

‘
That’s right—
think
!’ came the jeering voice from
the bar.

‘
Green just told us the place is mortgaged. Do you know
anyone—apart from a congenital idiot like yourself—who would be
willing to buy a mortgaged ranch, Sheriff?’

‘
Well . . .’ Brady realized the untenable position he was in,
and retreated from it in a cloud of bluster. ‘I got to ask
questions, haven’t I? How else are we gonna rind out the
truth?’

‘
Yu figger we ever will, Shady?’ came the cutting question from
Gimpy.

‘
If yu’ll quit yore yawpin’, we might,’ barked the thoroughly
confused Sheriff. ‘Yu—Green. About that business of yu bein’
involved in Tate’s murder: I’ve changed my mind—’

‘
Glad to hear that, Sheriff; said Sudden, mildly. ‘The one yu
was usin’ shore wasn’t much good.’

In the
laughter which followed this remark, Brady struggled visibly to
regain his composure. Looking around the room, his eyes fell upon
the banker, de Witt, who was standing inconspicuously at the
rear.

‘
Mr. de Witt,’ called the Sheriff. ‘Can yu confirm that the
deceased’s ranch was mortgaged the way this feller says?’ The
banker’s dry voice was flat and unemotional. ‘He had a mortgage.
The amount of it is of no concern here, I think. I have one
suggestion to make to this inquiry, however.’

Every
head in the room turned towards him.

‘
Has it occurred to anyone that these bandits in the mountains
might be responsible for George Tate’s death?’

‘
The Shadows?’ Brady’s voice was high pitched. ‘Why should they
want to kill George Tate?’

‘
I understand that he had been threatened by some masked men,
and that he and Green had run them off his ranch. They may have
decided to take their revenge by bushwhacking both men. I
congratulate you, Mr. Green, on your escape.’

Brady
pounced upon this idea like a terrier upon a rat. ‘It’s shore a
possibility; he said. ‘I didn’t know yu’d had a run-in with the
Shadows, Green. Why wasn’t it reported to me?’

Sudden
lounged back against the table, a faint smile on his
face.

‘
Well, to tell yu the truth, Sheriff, yu was so busy chasin’
the Shadows for robbin’ the bank, it hardly seemed worthwhile me
tryin’ to get them arrested for threatenin’ the Slash
8.’

Again
the unfortunate lawman suffered the torment of laughter at his
expense, but he banged on the table with his mallet and finally
achieved order. ‘This puts a new light on this yere killin’,’ he
announced. ‘I’m wagerin’ that these jurymen here are goin’ to agree
that George Tate prob’ly met his death by ambush at the han’s o’
one or more o’ the Shadows, an’ that the motive for the murder was
revenge.’

He
turned to the men behind him, and held a whispered colloquy with a
lanky citizen evidently serving as jury foreman. Then, ‘Unless
anyone has any new evidence to present, this jury finds-—as I
expected—that George Tate was prob’ly murdered by the
Shadows.’

He
looked about him with an air of triumph, as though he had
accomplished something tremendously difficult. His
self-satisfaction evaporated like a flash when from behind him came
the voice of the town doctor.

‘
Now that we’re all agreed on that, what are you going to do
about it, Shady?’

The
Sheriff looked around him, bewildered. ‘Do about it? What d’yu
expect me to do about it? This feller here’—he jerked a thumb at
Sudden—‘already told us he couldn’t find no trail, an’ he never got
a sight o’ who done the shootin’. What am I supposed to do-—go out
there an’ invent some clues?’

‘
It wouldn’t be the first time,’ was the meaningful reply. ‘Yu
told us that it was probably the Shadows. Why don’t you raise a
posse and go out and scour the Badlands until you find this
gang?

The old
doctor’s suggestion met with a roar of approval from the watchers.
There were cries of ‘Yeah!’ and ‘I’m ready to go, Shady!’ from one
or two of the less sober citizens.

‘
Yu know that’s impossible!’ snorted Brady. ‘Them mountains is
plumb full o’ hidey-holes. A posse could spend months out there an’
still not find a thing.’ He whirled to face the Slash 8 contingent.
‘Yu fellers are the most concerned in this: do yu disagree with the
findin’s o’ this jury?’

‘
Let’s put her this way,’ Green said coldly. ‘She’s the only
verdict we got. Personally, I wouldn’t take yore jury’s word for
what time it was.’

A babel
of conversation now boiled forth from the pent-up watchers. Many
were the arguments that raged hither and thither as men who had
known George Tate discussed the circumstances of his killing and
the activities of the outlaw band in the hills. Many sidelong
glances were cast at the saturnine figure of the new Slash 8
ramrod, who, if he noticed them, gave no indication of it.
Meanwhile, Brady pounded the table with his mallet, and when a
small lull in the babble of talk came, he yelled, ‘Unless anyone’s
got further evidence to offer, this hearin’s officially
closed.’

He laid
down his hammer and crossed the room to where Sudden was standing
talking to Gimpy and Dave.

‘
Green, I want a word with yu,’ he snapped.

Sudden
turned to face him. ‘Fire away,’ he invited.