Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 09 - Sudden Makes War(1942) (15 page)

 
          
“That’s
certainly odd, Yorky; it ain’t like cow-hands to run off from a dance—they
don’t get so many. Hello, Bill, wantin’ me?”

 
          
“Hunch
is outside—Jim sent him; sez there’s trouble,” the foreman said.

 
          
“Round
up the boys, an’ we’ll be goin’.”

 
          
In
ten minutes they had left Rainbow behind and were riding for the Circle Dot.
Silently, and with eyes alert, they pressed on through the still, dark night.
When, at length, they reached the ranch, all seemed as usual. Then Sudden’s
voice challenged:

 
          
“Who’s
there?”

 
          
Dover
replied, and a shaft of light appeared as the door opened; the puncher, gun in
hand, stepped out.

 
          
“Sorry
to have busted in on yore fun, boys,” he said. “The excitement’s all over, I
guess, but when I sent Hunch I didn’t know what was afoot.” Dan asked a
question.
“Rustlers.
I downed a hors. They didn’t get
any steers.”

 
          
“Durn
the luck, it would ‘a’ bin a good finish to have a run in with cow-thieves,”
Tiny grumbled. “Jim had the best of it after all.”

 
          
When
Dover and the foreman followed Sudden into the living-room they got a shock,
and had to be told the rest of the story. Dan’s face fell when he saw the empty
secret drawer.

 
          
“So
they got it,” he said dejectedly.

 
          
Sudden
grinned, reached down the file and stripped off the bills until he came to the
letter. “Like hell they did,” he replied. “I had a feelin’ someone might know
o’ that hidey-hole an’ come for it, so I put it in the least likely place for
anythin’ o’ value. Now we’ll make shore; three of us know the contents o’ that
bit o’ paper, so we’ll—burn it.”

 
          
“Yo’re
right, Jim, an’ I
don’t
know how to thank you,” Dan
said. “It was a smart move.”

 
          
“Shucks,”
the puncher replied, and dropped the document in the fire.

 
          
“Settles
that,” Burke remarked. “How did you get on to their plans, Jim?”

 
          
“I
didn’t, but I got to wonderin’ why Trenton was keen on an affair which would
leave the Circle Dot wide open. Some o’ his fellas could show theirselves, ride
here, an’ get back before the dance finished; no one could prove they hadn’t
been in town all the time.”

 
          
“Which
is how it was planned,” Dan said, and told of Yorky’s discovery. “The raid on
the cattle was a fake?”

 
          
“Yeah.
When Trenton learned I wasn’t comin’—he had a list,
yu know—they had to get me away from the ranch-house. Why, they even fired a
gun in case I didn’t hear ‘em. Havin’ played safe with the paper, I went along;
yu see, there was just a chance someone was after the cows.”

 
          
“I
guess you’ve got the straight of it,” the foreman said. “Mebbe that dead
hoss’ll tell us somethin’ in the mornin’.”

 
          
But
this hope proved futile; on the left hip of the animal a square patch of skin
had been stripped off. The marauders had not overlooked any bets, as they
believed.

 
          
Yorky
was the proudest member of the outfit. Not only had he eclipsed them all by
partnering the peerless Miss Trenton, but promotion had come to him.

 
          
“That
kid was the on’y one of us to notice that
them
Wagon-wheel outcasts had sneaked away from the show,” Dan told his foreman. “He
goes on the pay-roll at twenty a month, an’ it’s up to him to make it more.”

 
          
To
the surprise of the bunkhouse, the usually precocious youth accepted his good
fortune modestly. “It’s mighty good o’ Dan,” he said. “I ain’t wort’ a dime to
him, but I’m aimin’ ter be.”

 
          
“That
rich uncle—” Slow began.

 
          
“Aw,
go an’ fry snowballs,” Yorky grinned.

 
          
“Honest,
I’m glad, Yorky,” Blister put in. “I was scared we’d lose you as well as Tiny.”

 
          
“Lose
me?” the boy queried. “An’ where’s Tiny goin’?”

 
          
“Well,
I figured las’ night you’d soon be ridin’ for the Wagon-wheel,” was the reply.
“An’ Tiny’s fixed to marry the school-marm an’ help lam the kids.”

 
          
The
big puncher addressed the company. “Blister ain’t a natural liar; it’s just
that his tongue gits ahead o’ his thoughts.”

 
          
When
Yorky appeared for the morning excursion, Sudden noticed, with inward
satisfaction, a coiled lasso hanging from his saddle-horn.

 
          
“Ain’t
proposin’ to hang yoreself, are yu, son?” he asked. The boy was used to his
friend’s sardonic humour. “Naw,” he replied. “Guessed yer might larn me to
t’row it.
C’n yer rope?”

 
          
“Well,
I’m not as good as some, but I expect I can give yu some pointers,” the puncher
admitted.

 
          
When
they reached the pool, and had enjoyed their swim, Yorky was instructed in the
rudiments of roping, which he found to be a much more difficult art than he had
imagined. Also, he was treated to an expert exhibition which caused his eyes to
bulge, and filled him with an ambition to do the like. In the puncher’s hands,
the lariat seemed to become a live thing, obeying every twitch of the deft
wrist.

 
          
“Gawd,
I’d give a lot ter handle a rope like that,” Yorky said admiringly.

 
          
“Yu’ll
have to—a lot o’ time,” Sudden told him. “Practice, son, just practice, an’ a
leetle savvy—that’s all yu need.” As the teacher was preparing to leave, the
pupil asked, “What will a gun cost me, Jim?”

 
          
“Probably
yore life,” was the grim reply. “Yu got enough to keep yu busy with ropin’,
hawg-tyin’, an’ learnin’ to ride somethin’ a bit more uncertain than Shuteye
yonder.”

 
          
“I
ureter carry a gat.”

 
          
“The
devil yu did? An’ what was yore other name—Bill Hickok?”

 
          
“Oh,
I ain’t no sharp-shooter, but I was in with a hard bunch,” Yorky replied
airily. “I knows which end of a gun
th
’ trouble comes
out of.”

 
          
“It’s
the trouble that
comes
outa the other fella’s yu gotta
keep in mind,” Sudden warned.

 
          
“Yu
leave shootin’ be for a spell; get a grip o’ them other things first.”

 
          
And
because of his faith in this man who had done so much for him, Yorky pushed
into the background his most cherished ambition, and contentedly applied
himself to the task of mastering his lariat. As Sudden had hoped, the fresh,
bracing air, new interests, and the revival of hope, were working wonders, and
“li’l of Noo York” was fast becoming a less glamorous memory.

 
          
It
was some days later that Yorky went in search of adventure, and found it. He
had not yet been raised to the dignity of being assigned a definite job, and
time was
more or less his own
.

 
          
He
knew nothing of the country round, and determined to find out something about
it.

 
          
Particularly
he wanted to see the Wagon-wheel ranch-house, perhaps cherishing a hope of
getting a glimpse of the girl who had been kind to him at the dance—kindness,
until he had come
West
, was a rare experience. So,
when Sudden had left him, he set out. Casual questions in the bunkhouse had
given him the route.

 
          
“Foller
th’ creek, ford her at
th
’ white stone, an’ bear
right,” he repeated. “Sounds dead easy, Shuteye, but we gotta watch out—them
Wagon-wheelers
is
mebbe feelin’ sore.”

 
          
Like
the rest of the outfit, Yorky believed that a raid on the cattle had been
attempted.

 
          
Paddy
had been sworn to silence, explaining the bump on his cranium by an invented
fall over a chair in the dark, a solution which evoked ribald reflections on
his sobriety.

 
          
He
crossed the stream, and then headed north-east over an expanse of grass-land
plentifully besprinkled with brush, which enabled him to keep under cover for
the most part. The necessity for this was soon apparent, for he had gone less
than a mile when a horseman swung into an aisle he was about to enter. Just in
time he forced Shuteye headlong into a thicket of thorn—to the discomfort of
both of them—and waited while the rider went by.

 
          
“Flint!”
the boy breathed. “That’s onct I’m lucky.”

 
          
When
the man disappeared he resumed his journey, and presently, in the distance, saw
what he knew must be the place he sought. The ground about it was too open to
conceal a horseman, so he hid his mount in a clump of brush, dropping the reins
over its head as Sudden had told him, and advanced on foot, keeping to the
right, stooping and running swiftly from one bush to another.

 
          
He
had got within a hundred yards of the house when two men emerged and, to his
dismay, walked directly towards the tree behind which he was hiding. He looked
round, but there was no cover he could hope to reach without being seen. His
eyes went upward; the tree was a cottonwood, thickly foliaged. With a bound he
managed to grasp the lowest branch and, panting with the unusual exertion,
climbed to the crotch above. Since he could only see below through one small
opening, he judged he was safe so long as he stayed quiet.

 
          
“If
I bark, I’m a goner,” he murmured, and instantly a violent desire to do this
very thing assailed him. Smothering it, he bent down to listen, for they had
stopped beneath him. Garstone opened the conversation.

 
          
“Well,
Bundy, why have you brought me out here?”

 
          
“Because
it’s quiet, an’ to ask you one plain question: Are you at the Wagon-wheel to
help Trenton, or to help yoreself?”

 
          
“What
the hell do you mean? How dare you— “Easy, Mister Garstone,” the foreman cut
in. “Puttin’ on frills ain’t apt to pay in these parts where “one man is as
good as another, ‘cept with a six-shooter. Now mebbe yo’re fast with a gun—I
don’t know—but I’m tellin’ you that I am—damned fast.”

 
          
“Are
you trying to pick a quarrel with me?” Garstone asked.

 
          
“No,
I want you to talk to me as man to man, an’ not as a boss to a dawg who works
for him,” Bundy returned sourly.

 
          
“I
am here to help Trenton, and in doing so, I hope for some advantage to myself.
Does that satisfy you?”

 
          
“It’s
a law-sharp’s answer. I’ll put it plainer: are you prepared to sit in at a game
what’ll help you, but not Trenton?” Yorky, easing a cramped leg, made a slight
rustling. Apparently the foreman must have glanced up, for the trembling boy
heard Garstone say, “Birds,” and add with a laugh, “Hope they don’t forget
their manners.” After a moment’s pause, he answered the question. “It would
depend, of course, on what the game meant—to me.”

 
          
“Half
the Circle Dot, or around twenty-five thousand bucks, as we might decide,”
Bundy said coolly.

 
          
“You
may deal me a hand,” the big man replied. “If I like the cards, I’ll play; if
not, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”