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

Green shrugged. ‘On the
face of it, it looks like yo’re right, then. Gunnison is just plain
greedy.’

The talk turned to other
things, and Susan Harris replenished their coffee cups. As she went
around the room, Green covertly surveyed the assembled men. The
meeting was a friendly affair, and it was plain to see that all
these men were good friends, a close-knit group of individuals who
accepted each other’s weaknesses and strengths. ‘Not a bad apple in
the whole barrel,’ Green
thought as he
watched them joshing Philadelphia, to whom for some reason Jake
Harris had taken an inordinate liking. It was easy to see how they
remained so determined in the face of Gunnison’s
hostility.

The sound of a horse’s
hoofs pounding up the trail put an instant stop to the
conversation. Like well-drilled troops, Harris and his friends
moved quickly around the room. Sue dimmed the big light, and Kitson
moved a tall cast-iron screen in front of the fireplace, concealing
the flicker of the flames. All of the men moved near windows, their
ever-ready guns in their hands. The organization impressed Green
and he said as much in an undertone to Harris.

‘
We worked this drill out
about two months ago,’ Harris told him. ‘Do her automatically now.
If Gunnison decided to catch us all in one place we’d be sittin’
ducks. Figgered it might be wise to surprise him if he tried it.
We’re nigh on eager to try her out.’

‘
Let’s hope yu don’t have
to,’ Green said. A quick glance about the room showed him
Philadelphia standing guard over the crouched form of Susan Harris,
who had knelt down behind the big sofa. Despite the tenseness of
the moment Green smiled to himself.

A hail from outside brought
a noticeable relaxation of the tension. ‘That’s Tom Appleby, ain’t
it?’ said Peters.

‘
Sounds like him,’ agreed
Harris. He stepped near the door and shouted, ‘That yu,
Appleby?’

‘
Hello, Jake. Shore it’s
me. Open up!’

‘
Put up the lights,’ Harris
ordered, swinging the bar back from the door and opening it. ‘Come
on in, Tom.’

The slim figure of the town
Marshal entered after a moment on the doorstep spent beating the
dust from his clothes. For the first time Green noted the fact that
the Marshal wore a tied-down holster on his left hip. ‘Southpaw,’
Green told himself, ‘an’ no slouch, either, by the look o’
him.’

‘
Gents, good evenin’,’
Appleby nodded. ‘Sorry to barge in.’

‘
What brings yu this far
north, Tom?’ asked Kitson.

‘
Just doin’ my rounds,
Terry,’ was the cool reply. ‘I wanted to check whether our friends
found yu all right.’

‘
Yu mean,
to see whether we’re workin’ here or on the
Saber!’ blurted Philadelphia. The Marshal favored
him with a sour look.

‘
I knowed yu didn’t go to
the Saber,’ he said. ‘I just come from there.’

‘
How’s Dancy?’ asked Jack
Scott. ‘Sicker’n hell, I hope.’

‘
He’ll survive,’ Appleby
told him. ‘He won’t look so purty without his front teeth, is
all.’

Fred Peters chortled with
delight, and danced over to pump Green’s hand. ‘Jim, yu shore done
us a good turn comin’ to Yavapai. That rooster’s been needin’ his
comb trimmed for a while now.’

Green smiled. ‘I would’ve
thought that was more in the Marshal’s line. Ain’t yu ever had
occasion to pacify Dancy, Marshal?’

Appleby looked at Green sharply, but the
puncher was smiling disarmingly. The Marshal shrugged.

‘
Green, yo’re a stranger in
these parts, so forgive me if I sound a mite on the pompous side.
Normally, Dancy just gets loud; then he goes away someplace an’
sleeps it off. Now an’ then he gets in a brawl. Someone loses a few
teeth or gets an arm broke – never anythin’ that Dancy can’t walk
away from.’

‘
He was shapin’ to drill
me!’ cut in Philadelphia.

‘
Wal, maybe, maybe not,’
Appleby said. ‘Be that as it may, Dancy’s the foreman o’ the Saber,
an’ I have to bear that in mind when I tangle with him. It ain’t’
He held up a hand to stop the remark that Green was about to make.
‘It ain’t a question o’ playin’ favorites. It’s plain fact: if I
ride the Saber too hard, an’ Gunnison decided to take his trade to
Riverton, about fifteen miles upriver, Yavapai’d dry up an’ blow
away. Jake here’ll tell yu I try to give everyone a fair shake. My
job is to keep the peace in Yavapai. Outside town all I can do is
try to help as much as possible.’

‘
It’s true enough, Jim,’
Reb Johnstone said. ‘Tom heah does the best he can, all things
considered.’

Appleby’s smile was open
and friendly, and it grew even wider as Susan Harris came into the
room with the cup of coffee she had gone to make when the visitor’s
identity was established.

‘
Wal,
now, I reckon this was worth the ride – a cup o’ cawfee from the
purtiest gal this side o’ Tucson,’ grinned
the Marshal. ‘How are you, Miss Susan?’

Sue Harris blushed and
smiled. ‘Well, thank you, Tom. We haven’t seen you for a
while.’

Green risked a sly glance at Philadelphia.
The youngster was glowering at the Marshal, and the puncher smiled
to himself.

‘
Got to admit it,’ Appleby
was saying. ‘Been powerful busy tryin’ to get a line on this lost
Saber stock.’

‘
Gunnison’s lost more
beef?’ A worried frown appeared on Jacob Harris’s face.

‘
A few head here, a few
there. Nothin’ big,’ Appleby told them. ‘Just enough to be noticed.
Any o’ yu boys seen any loose stock up in the hills?’

No one spoke; Scott and Peters shook their
heads.

‘
Didn’t expect yu
would’ve,’ Appleby said. ‘Beats me. Yu can’t even find tracks. It’s
as if someone was flyin’ off with them.’

‘
Mighty peculiar. Yu ain’t
thinkin’ …? ’ said Kitson.

‘
Hell, no, Terry. Yu boys
give me yore word yu wasn’t lifting Saber beef an’ I believe yu.
But Gunnison’s losin’ ’em just the same, an’ yu can’t blame him for
feelin’ hot about it. He swears it has to be yu boys. I keep
tellin’ him it ain’t. It’s deadlock.’

‘
Ol’ goat,’ muttered Jack
Scott. ‘He’s slapped his brand on enough mavericks in his
time.’

‘
I’m just tellin’ yu what
he said,’ Appleby remarked. ‘Ain’t sayin’ I agree. I’m just hopin’
I can find sumthin’ out afore Lafe takes it into his head to go on
the warpath.’

‘
He better come dressed fo’
a buryin’,’ Johnstone snapped. ‘He’ll sho’ be participatin’ in one
if he comes up heah with a war party.’

‘
Let’s hope it don’t come
to that,’ said Appleby. ‘I wouldn’t take much pleasure in standin’
in the middle tryin’ to keep yu boys an’ the Saber crew apart. In
the meantime, if anybody has to go to town, mebbe it wouldn’t be a
bad idea to leave yore guns at home.’

‘
Fat
chance o’ that,’ snorted Johnstone. ‘No damn Yankees are goin’ to
scare me into shuckin’
mah
shootin’
arm.’

‘
Just
friendly advice, Reb.’ The Marshal rose and picked up his
wide-brimmed black hat. ‘Miss Susan,
thank yu for the cawfee. I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ yu in
town right soon. Maybe I can return the compliment: Mrs. Robinson’s
restaurant serves a fair cup o’ cawfee these days.’

‘
Yu’ll have to stand in
line, Tom,’ laughed Fred Peters. ‘There’s about seventeen guys just
waitin’ for the chance.’

Appleby smiled. ‘Shore,’ he
agreed, ‘but how many o’ them live in Yavapai?’

Bidding all those present goodnight, he went
out, and they watched him mount and ride up the trail into the
timber.

‘
Well, Jim,’ asked Taylor
when Appleby was out of sight. ‘What d’ye think of our
Marshal?’

‘
Pretty cool customer,’
commented Green.

‘
I don’t like the look o’
him,’ added Philadelphia.

‘
Hell, Philly, yo’re a mite
biased,’ grinned Jack Scott, and Jake Harris roared with laughter
as the boy flushed.

‘
Cool is about the right
word,’ Terry Kitson said to Green. ‘He’s pretty fast with that gun
when he has to be. He runs a clean town an’ he’s tough. Even if he
has to bend over backwards to stay in the middle o’ the
road.’

‘
Sounds
durned uncomfortable to me,’ was Philadelphia’s comment, to which
Jake roared out, ‘Jumpin’ jehosophat, Philly, don’t yu fret none.
Susie don’t go to town
that
often!’

‘
Oh, Father!’ snapped
Susan, ‘stop talking about me as if I weren’t in the room. Tom
Appleby is a gentleman, and don’t you forget it.’

‘
I won’t,’ chortled her
parent, unabashed. ‘Don’t yu forget, neither: a gentleman is only
fifty per cent gentle; all the rest is man.’

To which remark Susan, having no adequate
reply, tossed her head and flounced out of the room.

SUSAN HARRIS
pulled her horse to a stop, and Philadelphia
reined in his own animal, dismounting to tether the two beasts to a
nearby tree. Sue’s face was flushed and shining from the gallop,
and her dark hair was disarrayed prettily. The little glade in
which they had stopped offered a welcome oasis of shade on the open
prairie, and a small brook babbled cheerfully on its way down to
the Yavapai river.

‘
Oh, I did enjoy that,’ she
told Philadelphia, ‘didn’t you, Philly?’

‘
Shore, did, ma’am,’ was
his enthusiastic reply. ‘This is a mighty purty
country.’

She looked at her companion
quizzically. ‘You sound more like Jim Green every day, do you know
that?’

The youngster flushed.
‘He’s a fine man, Miss Susan.’

‘
He must have impressed you
greatly to inspire such devotion.’

‘
He saved my life,’
Philadelphia told her simply.

‘
Yes, I know,’ replied the
girl thoughtfully. ‘I still cannot imagine why that awful man Dancy
picked on you.’

‘
Just lucky, I guess,’ said
the boy, whimsically. ‘It wouldn’t be so one-sided if he tried it
now.’

‘
Oh, Philly, really. You
mustn’t think that practicing with that silly gun is going to keep
you out of trouble. In the end guns only make things
worse.’

‘
That
ain’t true, Miss Susan,’ he said. ‘There’s
some
men yu can only
convince that way.’

‘
Philly,’ she said,
appalled at this statement, ‘yu can’t really believe
that!’

‘
Can, an’ do,’ the
youngster assured her. ‘An’ I aim to keep on practicin’ in case I
meet any o’ them.’

She looked at his set face
and knew that he was not joking. ‘No one would ever believe that
you have only been out West a few weeks, Philly. You already sound
like a Westerner.’ She smiled. ‘You even look the part.’

The compliment pleased the
young man mightily. In truth, the days spent in the open, the hard
work, and the simple fare had greatly changed the
pasty-faced
youngster who had been bullied
in Tyler’s
by the Saber foreman. The
clothes, once raw and new were already faded by the bleaching
Arizona sun, and the pallor of the city streets had been replaced
by a healthy tan. Philadelphia’s whole bearing was different, and
his hitherto slight frame had filled out.

The girl asked another question.

‘
Why did you come to
Arizona, Philly?’

‘
I guess I allus wanted
to,’ he told her. ‘My ol’ man was a cowboy, down Prescott
way.’

‘
Really? You never told me
that.’

‘
Never talked about it
much. Yu see, I never knew him.’

‘
Oh, I’m sorry,’ the girl
said contritely, ‘I shouldn’t pry.’

‘
He – heck, ma’am, that’s
all right,’ he reassured her. ‘My mother was born in Philadelphia,
yu see, an’ she ran away from home to marry my Pa. They met when
she was visiting some folks in Phoenix. He was just an ordinary
cowpuncher, thinkin’ o’ startin’ up on his own. When they got
married her family disowned her.”

The girl made no reply, but her downcast
eyes encouraged him to continue.

‘
She must have had a tough
life,’ Philadelphia continued. ‘It was pretty hard in them days.
When I was born she was so ill that my Pa sent her back to her
family, an’ she took me with her, leaving my brother an’ my Pa in
Prescott.’

‘
And she never went back?’
Susan asked, aghast.

‘
I don’t know exac’ly what
happened,’ the young man confessed. ‘She never would talk much
about it. I allus figgered the family just wouldn’t let her go
back, an’ my Pa never come to fetch her. All I recall about him was
that he was a tall man with long black hair, an’ big gentle hands.
I suppose he’s dead.’

‘
Didn’t you try to find him
when you came to Arizona?’

‘
Shore I
tried,’ Henry exclaimed, ‘but I didn’t have much to go on. My
mother would never talk about my Pa, an’ I had no one else to ask.
All I knew was that he called the ranch the Lazy L. When
Mother
died
,
I found some letters, but they was
just signed “yore lovin’
husband”, which
warn’t much help. Nobody down
in
that part o’ the country remembered any Lazy L
ranch run by a big black-haired man with a son about ten. It was
hopeless. Like I said, I reckon he’s dead.’