Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 (10 page)

‘I ain’t wanted in
Arizona,’ he told Harris. ‘An’ I never even seen the man they’re
huntin’ me for killin’ in Texas.’ His words were biting,
compelling. Harris sat in astounded silence as the black-haired
cowboy outlined the story of his past, the chain of events in which
mere chance had resulted in his becoming the legendary gun-fighter
called Sudden, and how he had come by the unenviable reputation he
owned. With only an occasional exclamation Harris heard of a boy’s
promise to a dying man, of a never-ending search for two murderers
named Peterson and Webb. In uncompromising phrases the cowboy told
his employer of the false accusation which had resulted in his
being outlawed, sent alone into the endless West, a price on his
head and every man’s hand turned against him.’ At the end of the
story Harris shook his head.

‘Jim, I never heard
anythin’ like it,’ he confessed. ‘But I’m believin’ yu right down
the line! If yo’re Sudden, then there’s been a pack o’ damned lies
told about yu!’

‘I’m obliged, seh,’ was
Green’s grateful reply. ‘I’m thinkin’ it might be better if yu keep
it to yoreself for the time bein’. No need to advertise it: it
might come back on yu, hirin’ a notorious gunfighter.’

His words were bitter, and the old man rose
and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘If there’s real trouble I
can’t think of a man I’d rather have alongside me,’ he said. ‘I’m
behind yu all the way, an’ billy-be-damned to anyone as don’t like
it. But if yu want to play her that way, what yu say goes,
Jim.’

Green smiled; his
employer’s confidence in him was a rewarding thing. ‘Yu won’t
regret it, Jake,’ he said.

‘I ain’t figgerin’ to,’
Harris rumbled. ‘Yu got any idea how to get to the bottom o’ these
troubles we been rakin’ over, Jim?’

‘One or two,’ Green told
him. ‘I’d like to disappear for a few days. Like to poke around,
ask a few questions. Would yu cover for me if anyone asks where I’m
at? Tell ’em I’ve gone up into the Yavapais to see if I can get a
line on the rustlers.’

‘Yu ain’t meanin’ our
people, too, Jim?’ Harris was shocked, but Sudden’s voice was grim
as he replied:

‘Until we know for shore
who’s behind these troubles, I ain’t shore yu oughta confide in
anyone, Jake. Let’s make her yore secret an’ mine until I’ve had a
chance to look around in peace. After that, we might have a line we
can follow.’

Harris looked dubious, but
he nodded. ‘Whatever yu say, Jim.’ He knocked out the dottle from
his pipe into the fireplace, asking, ‘When d’yu figger to
leave?’

‘First light,’ Green said.
‘An’ don’t let Philadelphia foller me. I aim to travel far an’
fast.’

With this final injunction
he bade his employer goodnight. The homesteader filled his pipe
again, lighting it by the same method as before. Leaning in his
chair, he watched the smoke drifting upwards, his face thoughtful.
Remarkable though the black-haired cowboy’s revelation had been, he
did not for a moment entertain any doubt that every word of it was
true. ‘Driftin’,’ he told himself. ‘An’ driftin’ the wrong way. I
just knowed he warn’t no ordinary puncher. I’m durned glad I ain’t
the Sheriff who’s lookin’ for him: I’d hate to find him, if he
didn’t want to be found.’

RIVERTON,
THE next town south of Yavapai on the trail to
Tucson, was almost a carbon copy of its northern neighbor. The dirt
street, the straggle of buildings of timber, ’dobe, or mixtures of
both were different only in the signs on them. In Riverton’s street
the dust was hock-deep, and a stiff westerly breeze tossed handfuls
of it into the eyes of pedestrians hurrying about their business.
Unlike Yavapai, Riverton boasted no bank, and its only eating place
was a hash-house run by a wooden-legged ex-cowboy named Casey, who
had been trampled in a stampede many years earlier and, after a few
years as a trail cook, had decided to go into business for himself.
His food was eatable; nothing more. The lack of competition kept
him busy, and at around one o’clock in the afternoon he was usually
able to stand with his greasy hands on his ample hips and count a
satisfactory full house. He was doing this very thing when the
stranger came in, and he bent his full attention upon the newcomer.
Tall, but stooped as though his shoulders bore some heavy weight,
the man was dressed in cheap Levi’s, a woolen shirt that looked as
if it had been cast off in the War Between the States, and cracked,
battered boots without spurs. He wore no gun belt, but Casey could
see the butt of what looked like an old cap and ball revolver
protruding from the man’s trouser waistband. The man removed a
grease-stained old sombrero from his head, revealing hair matted
with dirt and sand, and whose color might once have been dark brown
or black. Steel-rimmed eyeglasses and a heavy stubble of beard
adorned the face, and when the newcomer smiled sheepishly at him
and took a seat at a table Casey noted that the man’s teeth were
stained and yellow. Casey was a great one for taking note of his
customers’ personal appearance. He had several times, when he first
opened for business, made the mistake of serving panhandlers like
this one only to find, after they had consumed his food, that they
had no money. He had extracted his price from their faces with his
own meaty fists, but it wasn’t the same. He had vowed therefore to
make sure which of his customers could pay before he served them.
Casey stumped over to where the man had taken his seat, and the man
cringed at his approach.

‘Good … good day to you,
sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d … I’d like …’

‘Afore yu tell me what yu’d
like, let’s see the color of yer money,’ Casey told him
peremptorily. ‘This ain’t no charity I’m runnin!’

One or two of his regular
customers grinned. Casey’s preference for cash on the barrel was
well known in Riverton; they watched, half hoping that the
nondescript newcomer would have no money, for Casey would
surely thereupon provide an entertaining few
minutes before the penurious one was thrown into the dusty street.
They were disappointed, however; the man produced a greasy buckskin
sack, and showed Casey a dollar bill-creased and battered almost
beyond recognition, but a dollar it surely was. Casey nodded and,
returning to his kitchen, dished up the meal. He thereupon forgot
about the man, as customers finished their meals, and paid; others
entered and ordered. Around the middle of the day was always busy,
and it was not until about two-thirty that the wooden-legged
hash-slinger noticed that the stranger who’d paid with the ragged
dollar bill was still in his chair, smoking a vile-smelling cigar.
He stumped across the room, now empty except for the smoking one,
and stood facing him, arms akimbo.

‘Yu’ve finished.’ It was
not a question, and the man nodded nervously. ‘Yu’ll be leavin’,
then.’ The man nodded again.

He rose to go, and then
hesitantly stuttered, ‘Mi-might I ask yore help,
mister?’

‘If it’s money yu want, the
answer’s no,’ Casey told him flatly.

The stranger shook his
matted head. ‘No … heh, heh … not money, got plenty o’ money. Well
… as good as money.’ He tapped the side of his nose and winked at
Casey knowingly, while that worthy maintained his outward air of
puzzled indifference.

‘What’s yore name, mister?’
Casey barked.

‘Name’s Smith,’ the man
told him. ‘John Smith.’ His cracked smile was evil, and the stink
of liquor on his breath was strong enough to cut with a carving
knife. ‘Yu reckon I could find me a buyer for some cows I
got?’

‘How many head?’ Casey
wanted to know. ‘An’ what’s the brand?’

‘Fifty,’ replied the man
who had called himself Smith. ‘As to the brand … heh, heh, heh …
it’s the Variable brand … heh, the Variable.’ He spluttered and
wheezed as though these words were mountainously funny, while Casey
regarded him stonily.

‘What makes yu think I can
help yu find a buyer?’ he snapped. ‘I ain’t in the cattle
business.’

‘Never said yu was,’
cackled Smith. ‘If yu don’t know
nobody, no
harm done I’ll be off to the saloon,
then.’

Casey watched the man leave
his premises, and waited until Smith had loped across the street
and into Buckmaster’s Long Branch saloon. Then, with surprising
speed, the hash-handler doffed his apron, clapped a Stetson on his
bald pate, and quit his establishment, following a route which led
him around the back of the houses on the east side of the street to
an alley shaded by a tall cottonwood. He knocked on a heavy timber
door, and a cold voice said, ‘Who is it?’

‘Casey,’ puffed the old
man, winded by his effort in the afternoon sun. The door opened,
and a cold-eyed man in a dark suit bade him enter.

John Smith sat in the rear
of Buckmaster’s saloon nursing his drink. From beneath the
forward-tilted brim of his battered Stetson he watched the flow of
customers in and out of the saloon with keen eyes. At this time of
day there were not many faces to watch, but he kept on guard none
the less. A faint smile, completely out of character with the
cackling, dirty character who had spoken to Casey, crossed his
face. ‘If Philadelphia seen me now,’ he murmured, ‘he’d probably
say I was loco – an’ I ain’t shore but he’d be right.’ Sudden – for
such was the identity of the itinerant who had so completely foxed
the hash-handler – saw no signs that his very broad hints of stolen
cattle for disposal had been directed at the right man, but it
seemed obvious that someone who had contact with practically every
visitor to the town would know what Green wanted to know. This was
his reason for coming to Riverton. He had asked Harris for some old
and battered clothes, ignoring the older man’s curious stare, and,
shortly prior to entering Riverton, had rubbed sand and earth
sparingly into his hair to give it a tangled, matted effect.
Unshaven jaws had also been rubbed with earth to heighten the look
of unvarnished scruffiness, and as a finishing touch Green had
found the steel-rimmed glasses in the Harris house just before he
had left. The result, when he altered his height by stooping,
stained his teeth by chewing tobacco, and swilling
whisky round his mouth to make his breath stink of
liquor, and changed his normally lithe walk by replacing
it with
a lop-sided loping
gait, was a complete transformation of his appearance.

‘Mightn’t be necessary
a-tall,’ he had told himself. ‘But it’d be a mite unfortunate if
anyone in Riverton reckernised me.’

As he sat at the table
thinking, he saw two men come in, and his eyes narrowed. They let
their gaze wander, apparently with only the mildest interest, about
the saloon, not remaining on him any longer than anyone else there.
One of the two men was a tall, cadaverous-looking individual with a
wide-brimmed, flat-crowned white hat such as those worn by
plantation owners. The appearance of a rich Southern landowner was
heightened by the dark suit, the brocaded waistcoat, and the
shining knee-boots, worn without spurs. The man was trimming a long
panatela cigar, and Sudden heard him order bourbon whisky with
branch water. ‘Riverboat gambler,’ was Green’s guess as he bent his
attention upon the man’s crony. This one was almost uncomfortably
fat, and perspiration lay upon his face like melting lard. The man
stood no more than five feet high, and was almost as wide across
the middle. He wore only white linen shirt and trousers, and a pair
of flat-heeled half-boots. Around his enormous middle hung a gun
belt. As far as the cow-puncher could see, the gambler was unarmed,
but he bet himself the man would have a hideaway gun somewhere on
his person.

‘Shore looks the type,’ he
told himself. ‘Wal, here goes!’

So saying, he rose to his feet, assuming
once more the half-crouched gait of the John Smith whose role he
was playing, and approached the bar. He ordered beer, and stood
next to the tall gambler to drink it.

‘Mighty hot today, ain’t
it?’ offered the fat man, mopping his face with a large white
bandanna. Sudden nodded, smiling weakly.

‘Kind o’ weather makes a
man wish he didn’t have to work for a livin’,’ pursued the fat
man.

‘Know … know what yu mean,’
grinned Green
fatuously. ‘Feel the same
way. Yu gents care to set down, jine me fer a snort?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’
agreed the fat man. ‘Ranee?’ He turned to his companion, who
affected to notice ‘John Smith’ for the first time.

‘Ah beg yo’
pardon?’

‘This gent’s invitin’ yu to
jine him,’ the fat man said.

‘Ah don’t b’lieve Ah’ve had
the pleasure, suh?’ the man named Ranee said to Green. Green
introduced himself as John Smith, and the man nodded and, dusting
the seat with a handkerchief, sat down at the table.

‘What business yu in, Mr.
Smith?’ asked the fat man.

‘Heh … this ‘n’ that,’
Green mumbled. ‘Sellin’ an’ buyin’.’

‘An’ what brings yu-all to
Riverton, Mr. Smith,’ asked the gambler silkily, ‘buyin’ or
sellin’?’

Green smiled. ‘S-sell …
say: yu boys ain’t the Law, or anythin’? I mean …’

The fat man held up a
deprecating hand. ‘My dear feller,’ he said. ‘Thisyere is Ranee
Fontaine. He’s one o’ the biggest businessmen in these parts. Runs
a ranch up north o’ here.’