Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 03 - The Marshal of Lawless(1933) (3 page)

 
          
“She’s
certainly soothin’ to the sight,” the prostrate puncher murmured. “An’ it looks
like yu may be lucky, Mister Man, whoever yu are. She’ll be Miss Antonia Sarel,
o’ course.”

 
          
The
door of the saloon opened, the posse from Sweetwater came out, and, humorously
bewailing their fate, took saddle again. The sheriff followed their example,
after one contemptuous glance at the hunched-up figure on the sidewalk. The
latter watched until the visitors, with a shrill cowboy yell, vanished in a
cloud of dust.

 
          
“Good
huntin’, sheriff,” he muttered, for through the open window of the saloon he
had heard the story of the stage robbery. “Wonder what yu’d ‘a’ said if I’d
claimed to be Sudden?

 
          
Called
me a liar, I betcha, seein’ I was in the Red Ace when the hold-up happened. But
it would ‘a’ been the sober truth alla-same, though I ain’t the man yo’re
lookin’ for; he’s Sudden the Second, an’ I’m hopin’ to meet him my own self.”
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, staggered round the corner of the building,
and straightened up. “Guess I got this burg thinkin’ what I want it to, but
We’ll
play the hand right out,” he continued. “Mebbe that
jasper is still hankerin’ for my hoss.”

 
          
Dropping
his shoulders, he lurched away to the corral behind the saloon. Here he found a
short, stocky rancher saddling a horse, and studying the other animals in the
enclosure. One of them, a big, rangy, black mustang seemed to get most of his
attention. He looked up as the cowpuncher approached.

 
          
“Changed
yore mind ‘bout sellin’?” he asked, with a twinkle in his good-humoured eyes.

 
          
“Nope,
but I’ll gamble with yu,” the puncher replied. “Yu put up fifty bucks agin the
hoss an’ we’ll cut the cards—highest wins. What yu say?”

 
          
The
rancher considered the proposition for a moment. He was a lover of horses, and
he wanted the animal, but Andrew Bordene, of the Box B ranch, was a man of slow
decisions.

 
          
Cheap
as good horseflesh was, he knew the black was worth twice the figure named. To
give himself time, he asked a question:

 
          
“I
don’t know the brand. Where’d yu get him?”

 
          
“From a fella who catched him in Texas.
I took him wild,
broke him myself, an’ branded him J. G.—my name bein’ James Green,” the
cowpuncher told him. “Nigger is a good hoss.”

 
          
He
whistled, and the black came trotting to the corral bars and rubbed his velvety
muzzle against his master’s outstretched hand. Bordene hesitated no longer; he
liked a gamble, and this was all in his favour. Still, if the puncher wanted
the money…

 
          
“I’ll
go yu,” he said, and diving into a pocket, produced a pack of cards.

 
          
The
puncher shuffled them carelessly and held them out for his opponent to cut.

 
          
Bordene’s
card was the knave of diamonds; Green cut the ten of hearts.

 
          
“I
lose,” he said, with a cheerful grin. “Say, I got a saddle an’ bridle that set
me back a hundred and twenty in Tucson not too long ago. I’ll put ‘em up
against the hoss if you’re willin’?”

 
          
The
rancher nodded, shuffled, and proffered the pack. A look of relief appeared on
the puncher’s face when he turned up the queen of spades, only to vanish again
when Bordene showed the king of diamonds. Nevertheless, he laughed.

 
          
“That
busts me wide open,” he said, and then, “No, it don’t, mebbe. See here, the
round-up’ll be comin’ along an’ yu’ll want more help. I’ll stake two months o’
my time against the saddle an’ bridle. I know cattle.”

 
          
Bordene
looked at him in surprise, almost suspecting a jest; but though the puncher was
grinning he was quite in earnest. Somehow, the rancher’s heart warmed to this
gay loser.

 
          
“I’m
trustin’ yu—like yu did me,” he responded. “That deck might ‘a’ been phony.”

 
          
“Shucks!”
was the reply. “I know a white man when I see one.”

 
          
The
play was resumed. The puncher won the first cut, lost the next, and then won
the two following, thus regaining both saddle and horse. He looked quizzically
at his opponent.

 
          
“We
ain’t got
nowhere
,” he remarked. “One more
flip
, fifty cash against the hoss, to finish it.”

 
          
He
cut and displayed the three of spades.

 
          
“Poor
luck, friend,” said the older man. “I’m thinkin’ yu’ve lost yore mount.”

 
          
With
a grin of commiseration and confident of success he exposed his own card. His
face changed with ludicrous rapidity as he saw it: he had cut the two of
spades.

 
          
“Well,
may I be teetotally damned if yu don’t win!” he cried regretfully, and then his
eyes twinkled.
“No matter.
I like the way yu play, an’
if yo’re huntin’ a job in these parts come an’ see me at the Box B.”

 
          
“I
certainly will, seh,” the cowpuncher smiled. “I like the way yu lose.”

 
          
He
took the money the other tendered and waved a farewell as the rancher swung
into the saddle and loped for the trail. Then he smiled contentedly. He knew
the story would get around, and that he would be regarded as a stray puncher,
who, having overdone his
spree,
had to risk losing his
horse to rehabilitate himself.

 
          
“Reckon
that will blind my tracks aplenty,” he muttered, and made his way to the Red
Ace.

 
          
The
saloon was empty, save for the bartender, whose face at once assumed a surly
expression when he recognized the visitor. Green walked to the bar, slammed
down a twenty-dollar gold piece, and said sharply:

 
          
“Gimme my guns.”

 
          
With
some uneasiness of mind, Jude produced the pawned weapons—two forty-fives, the
almost black walnut butts of which showed signs of much use.

 
          
“Whisky,”
came
the next order, as the cowboy, examining the guns
to make sure they were still loaded, thrust them into his holsters.

 
          
Jude
pushed forward bottle and glass, concealing his satisfaction. The fellow would
get soaked again and the guns would soon return behind the bar. He knew these
range-riders; if they had a taste for liquor they would spend their last peso
to satisfy it. With a saturnine smile he watched the customer pour his drink
and raise the glass to his nose. Then the spirit was coolly tipped out on the sanded
floor.

 
          
“Hey,
yu, what’s the matter with my whisky?” asked the astonished and outraged
supplier of the drink.

 
          
“Didn’t
you take for it?” asked the customer; and when the other sullenly nodded, “then
that makes it my whisky, don’t it?—an’ shorely a fella can do what he likes
with his own.”

 
          
The
barkeeper could not refute the argument; this cold-eyed, firm-jawed person was
a very different proposition from the limp, drink-sodden bum he had so
unceremoniously flung out a few hours before. Pushing forward a coin from the
change lying before him, the cowboy poured himself another dose. This he also
smelt,
then
took a mouthful, rolling the liquor around
his tongue before finally spitting it out.

 
          
“You
see, fella, it can be did,” he remarked to the astounded Jude. “Of Man Booze
can be beat. Yu wanta get yore think-box workin’ an’ reorganize yore ideas
some.
Sabe?”

 
          
He
strolled casually out of the saloon, leaving an almost petrified bartender
giving a lifelike impersonation of a newly-caught codfish. After a visit to the
barber, Green purchased a new shirt and kerchief, which he donned in the room
behind the store, and emerged looking and feeling a very different individual.
There were still some hours of daylight remaining, and having nothing else to
do, he sauntered along to the eastern end of the town, which was also the
Mexican quarter. Passing a dumpy adobe building, which he rightly guessed to be
a drinking dive, he heard his own tongue.

 
          
“Well,
yu got me fixed. Go ahead an’ finish it, yu scum.”

 
          
Noiselessly
pushing open the swing-door he saw a curious sight.
In the
centre of the earthen floor a short, stout cowpuncher was standing, his gun
out.
In front of him, right and left, were two Mexicans with drawn
knives. Behind him, leaning over the rough wooden bar, was another, an older
man, who had a shotgun trained on the cowboy’s back. Green entered just in time
to see the hand of the fellow on the left flash up, and promptly fired. The
bullet, shattering the thrower’s elbow, spoiled his aim and sent the knife
thudding into the front of the bar, where it quivered, winking wickedly in the
sunlight.

 
          
“Drop
it,” Green said sharply to the other knife expert, and when the weapon tinkled
on the floor and its owner had frozen into immobility, he turned to the man at
the bar. “Push that gun over an’ hoist yore paws, pronto!”

 
          
The
command was obeyed with ludicrous promptitude. Green looked at the puncher.

 
          
“What’s
the trouble?” he asked.

 
          
“Friend,
yo’re as welcome as a fourth ace—these skunks shore had me cold,” was the
reply. “I was in here yestiddy, an’ I don’t just remember what happened. S’pose
they hocussed my liquor. This mornin’ I
wakes
up with
a head like a balloon, way out on the desert under a mesquite, an’ my roll was
missin’. I
walks
in, an’ nacherally calls to enquire.
Bein’ hoppin’ mad, I don’t look at my gun first; o’ course, they’d drawed the
shells an’ if yu hadn’t happened along I reckon I’d be tryin’ to twang a harp
about now. An’ I never had no ear for music,” he finished whimsically.

 
          
“Which
of ‘em, would yu say, has yore mazuma?
” Green asked.

 
          
“They
was
all here, but I’m guessin’ the old piker has
it—he’s the boss, the other two are just relations,” the puncher explained.

 
          
Green
looked at the proprietor. “Ante up,” he said. “If
this hombre
don’t
get his roll, I’ll have to ask yore widow about it.”

 
          
“‘To
be or not to be,’ amigo,” grinned the little puncher, busy stuffing cartridges
into his gun.

 
          
Green
looked at him in surprise and then chuckled inwardly. The Mexican, his beady
eyes full of hate, reached into a drawer beneath the bar and threw out a roll
of bills secured by a rubber band, the while he jabbered a string of excuses.
The senor had been seized with illness; he had taken care of the money lest the
senor be robbed; it would have been returned in due course; it was only a joke…

 
          
“Yore
brand o’ humour’ll get yu fitted with a wooden suit one o’ these fine days,”
Green grimly warned him, as he backed out of the door the puncher was holding
ajar. They stood without for a moment, waiting, but there was no demonstration
from the dive. As they turned up the street the rescued man said quietly:

 
          
“I’m
obliged to yu.”

 
          
“Shucks!
Nothin’ to that,” Green returned hastily. “I’m bettin’ that, like myself, yo’re
a stranger hereabouts.”

 
          
“Yeah,
drifted in coupla days back—just moseyin’ round the country,” explained the
other.