Sudden--Strikes Back (A Sudden Western #1) (19 page)

His
first shot dropped Dave Haynes like a log half in, half out of the
water, and he whipped the Winchester around like a snake as Green
leaped to his feet, moving with a powerful thrusting leap towards
his saddle and the rifle in his scabbard on it. Parr’s second shot
knocked the Slash 8 foreman sideward and back into the shadow of
the tree, where he lay unmoving, curiously huddled, with one arm
outstretched and the other doubled beneath his body.

Parr let
five minutes go by. Then another five.

Neither
man moved. Haynes lay as he had fallen, and from his vantage point,
Curt Parr could see the slow stain of red darkening the water.
Green lay in black shadow but there was no hint of movement from
his body. Parr twitched the bush behind which he lay; nothing
happened. Gingerly, he raised his Stetson on the barrel of the
rifle, above the level of the bush.

‘
Cashed, the pair of ’em,’ he exulted. ‘So much for yu, Mr.
Smart Aleck Green. Yore sidekick’s hard luck: he picked the wrong
day to ride with yu.’

Parr
wormed backwards away from the ridge, working easily and without
haste towards his horse. When he was below the level of the ridge,
he levered a fresh round into the chamber of the Winchester. Then,
leading his horse, he skirted the rocks behind which he had lain,
and carefully approached the camp-site. Ahead of him, Haynes lay
where he had fallen. Parr approached the slumped form of the Slash
8 rider cautiously, his rifle at the ready. Haynes did not move,
and the pool of blood in which he lay made it obvious to the
bushwhacker that Haynes would give him no trouble. Skirting the
water’s edge, he sidled over to where Green lay, face down on the
dry brown grass which grew beneath the trees.

Leaving
the horse’s reins trailing, he poked his foot under Green’s ribs to
turn the body over. As he did so, Sudden exploded into activity.
His hand grabbed Parr’s foot and jerked it upwards, throwing the
ambusher over and back. Parr’s rifle went off but the slug whined
harmlessly into the air. He hit the ground with a bone-shaking
thud, the rifle jarred from his grasp. Above him, eyes slitted
menacingly, Sudden stood straddle-legged, the bore of his .45
poised like a rock three inches from Parr’s face. The ambusher
recoiled in horror, crying ‘Don’t shoot me!’

‘
I shore oughta,’ gritted Green savagely. ‘I oughta blow out
yore light—an’ it would pleasure me to do it—but I got a hunch
yo’re goin’ to be useful, so I’m lettin’ yu go on livin’ for the
moment.’ There was no mistaking his meaning, and Parr nodded
vehemently, offering no protest as Green quickly and efficiently
lashed Parr’s hands behind him, rolled the man on his face, and
then tied the bound hands to Parr’s ankles, so that the bushwhacker
was bent backwards like a drawn bow.

‘
Now I aim to see whether Dave is alive or dead,’ Green
told

him.
‘Yu’d better pray he’s still breathin’.’

Without
another glance at the abject form of his would-be assassin, Green
crossed quickly to where Dave lay. A hasty examination reassured
him. Parr’s bullet had hit Dave high on the shoulder blade, and tom
its way out near the collarbone. The young Slash 8 rider was going
to be weak from loss of blood, but it looked much worse than it
was. Sudden breathed a sigh of relief and set to work to clean the
wound and bandage it with strips tom from Dave’s shirt.

Half an
hour later the young man was conscious, propped up against the tree
and regarding his partner with puzzled eyes.

‘
Hell,’ he said weakly. ‘It can’t be Heaven—they wouldn’t allow
such ornery-lookin’ angels on the place.’ Then his eyes fell upon
Parr, still lying trussed where the foreman had roughly thrown him.
‘What’s Parr doin’ here?’ And when Green had told him.
‘That—sidewinder! Why for’d he bushwhack us, Jim?’

‘
He ain’t said,’ Green informed him, adding meanfully,
‘yet.’

Parr
paled as the Slash 8 duo glared at him malignantly. His coward’s
brain was busy with wild plans for escape but he knew in his heart
that he did not have the courage to try and make a break for it. He
had seen that cold-eyed devil in action, and he knew that, unless
Green were dead, he would not escape. Almost as if reading his
mind, the subject of Parr’s thoughts came over and stood looking
down at him.

‘
If yo’re thinkin’ of escapin’, forget it. Yo’re on borrowed
time right now. Yu an’ me is goin’ to have a little chat. I’m goin’
to ask yu some interestin’ questions, an’ yo’re goin’ to give me
some interestin’ answers.’ When Parr’s expression turned to a
sneer, Sudden grinned, and turning to Dave, he said, ‘By the way,
did I ever tell yu I was brung up by Injuns?’

The
wounded man shook his head, puzzled at this change of tack in the
conversation. ‘No, can’t say yu ever did, Jim,’ he
replied.

‘
Happened when I was right small,’ Sudden told him. ‘I was in a
wagon train attacked by Comanches. Everybody was wiped out. But
Comanches never killed boy children, so they took me with them.
After a few years with them I was traded off to the Piutes. They
pretty near brung me up.’

Dave
nodded. He had not the remotest idea what Green was leading up to,
but he was well aware that Green rarely waggled his chin just for
the exercise, so he kept his silence as Green went on, almost
dreamily.

‘
One o’ the things they did teach a man real good was how to
make prisoners talk. They was real experts. I never seen a man that
could last fifteen minutes. They either talked fast, or they never
talked no more.’

Catching
Sudden’s intent, Dave played up to it. He saw Parr’s eyes roll
white in the approaching dusk, and asked a question. ·

‘
They ever teach yu any o’ them tricks to make a man
talk?’

An
almost imperceptible nod and grin showed that Green had appreciated
Dave’s quickness of wit in divining his intention.

‘
Shore,’ he said. ‘I was just thinkin’, maybe I oughta practice
up a mite. Parr here knows a few things we need to know. Maybe
he’ll tell us about them without any persuasion, though.’ Parr spat
an obscenity.

‘
One o’ the tough ones,’ Green smiled coldly. ‘They sometimes
last about three minutes longer.’ He then went on to talk in low,
even tones, about the days of the Indian wars, of ‘

Mangas
Coloradas and Cochise, upon whose face no white man had ever looked
and lived to speak about. He described the savagery of a Comanche
raid, the tactics of the wheel attack, and spent some minutes going
into particular detail about the contributions various Southwestern
tribes had made to medical knowledge with their variations upon the
themes of torture and murder. A fleeting glance towards the huddled
form of their prisoner revealed that this was having its effect,
and at this moment, Sudden ostentatiously withdrew a Bowie knife
from. his saddle bags and thrust the long blade into the glowing
embers of the fire that he had built when tending Dave’s wounds. He
then went into the brush and rummaged around there for a few
moments, returning with a stout branch four feet in length, which
he proceeded to strip of its branches. This, he also thrust into
the coals. Parr watched this performance with eyes which had
suddenly become fear-widened and white-rimmed.

‘
What … what are yu doin’?’ he trembled out.

Green
ignored the question completely, and hunkered down beside his
partner.

‘
I better warn yu—this ain’t pretty,’ he warned
Dave.

‘
Good!’ enthused that worthy. ‘I’m hopin’ Parr’s got more guts
than I think he has, so yu can give him a real workin’ over. I’m
a-goin’ to enjoy this!’

Green
nodded, then walked over to Parr, whose bonds he then deliberately
and methodically tested. Nodding once more, he turned away from the
prisoner and withdrew the now red-hot knife from the fire. Hefting
it carefully, he turned back to the prone man, who uttered a
moaning scream and tried in vain to wriggle away from his
tormentor. Green’s face was hard and unrelenting.

‘
Parr,’ he intoned, ‘there ain’t anybody within fifty miles o’
here, an’ even if there was, I misdoubt they’d want to save yore
soul. Yo’re scum, an’ anythin’ I do to yu is piddlin’ compared with
what yu got comin’. Now: I want some information m’ I want it
fast!’ He waved the glowing blade of the knife in front of Parr’s
sweating face.

‘
Yu—yu can’t!’ Parr gasped. ‘Yu wouldn’t … yo’re a white man.
Yu wouldn’t pull an Injun trick like that .... ’

‘
I could an’ I will,’ Green said grimly, ‘unless yore jaw
loosens some. First question: who’s yore boss?’

Parr
hesitated. Then, incredibly, he shook his head. Fear of Sudden was
one thing; fear of Barclay and Linkham was another. He did not
really believe that Green would use Indian torture on
him.

‘
Yo’re a fool!’ snapped Sudden, ‘an’ I got no time for
fools.’

He bent
and ripped away the front of Parr’s shirt. Holding Parr’s shoulder
in a grip like steel, he brought the glowing knife blade inexorably
closer to the shrinking skin. Writhing, sobbing, Parr tried to move
away from the growing sear of the blade, but without success. When
it was within half an inch of his body, he broke, and sobbed
wildly, ‘Barclay! Barclay hired me! Damn it! Yu, put that thing
away!’

‘
Barclay hired yu personal? Sudden insisted.

‘
No, not personal. Linkham did all the hirin’, but he’s
Barclay’s foreman. It’s the same thing.’

‘
Yu reported to Linkham, then, not Barclay?

‘
Yes, yes, I told yu, yes! Put that damned knife down ....
’

‘
Right, full marks so far. Now the big question, Parr: who
ramrods the Shadows?’

Parr’s
face tightened. ‘I can’t tell yu that—they’d kill me fer
shore!’

‘
Yu think I’m likely to give yu a medal?’ snapped Green
harshly. He brought the knife back in front of Parr’s eyes. ‘Talk,
damn yu!’

‘
Linkham! Linkham runs the Shadows?

‘
Yo’re shore?’

E Parr
nodded vehemently. ‘There’s eight of them: Morley, Smith,
Callaghan, Roberts, MacAlmon, a fellow called Ray, an’ Bull Pardoe.
He’s in charge when Linkham ain’t there, which is most o’ the
time.’

‘
Is he the big broken-nosed fellow?’

Parr
nodded, eager to please now, his resistance gone completely. ‘Bull
don’t give no orders, though. They only do what Link tells them.
The rest of the time they hole up.’

‘
Where?’

‘
There’s a canyon I could take yu there,’ Parr said. A fleeting
expression of cunning momentarily lighting his foxy
eyes.

‘
Yu ain’t goin’ anyplace, Parr,’ Sudden told him coldly, ‘so
don’t strain yore tiny little brain. Yu just tell me where they
hole up—an’ don’t lie to me. I’d take exception to it.’ He gestured
with the knife again.

‘
A canyon, I told yu,’ Parr blurted hastily. ‘I’m tellin’ yu
the truth. Yu head up northwest through the Badlands along the
bases o’ these hills until yu come to a canyon. Yu’ll know it
’cause they’s some rocks that look like a lizard. The canyon looks
like a blind draw, but it opens into a little valley. There’s a
shack there. That’s where they hole up.’

Green
looked dubious. He regarded the prisoner for a moment, and then
said, ‘Parr, I think yo’re lyin’—’

‘
No!’ screeched Parr, ‘I ain’t! Yu got to believe
me!’

Green
shook his head and thrust the Bowie knife back into the
fire.

‘
Green, yu can’t!’ screamed Parr. ‘I’ve been there. It’s the
truth. I’ve told yu the truth. The truth!’

Sudden,
his back towards Parr, smiled to himself. Then, nodding as if
coming to a decision, he turned and faced the prisoner.

‘
I’ll take a look.’ He turned back to Dave. ‘Can yu get back to
the Slash 8 on yore own?’

Dave’s
face turned sullen. ‘Hell, Jim, I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Let me come
with yu.’

‘
No, Dave. If yu can get back to the ranch, I want yu there.
I’m goin’ to mosey up an’ take a look for this shack. If I ain’t
back inside o’ forty-eight hours, get over to Judge Pringle at
South Bend an’ tell him what happened. He’ll know what to do. Now
don’t argue with me, Dave. I got a feelin’ yo’re goin’ to be needed
at the ranch, an’ yu got to get that shoulder looked
after.’

Dave
grumbled mightily, but he knew in his heart that Green was right;
in this condition, he would be a hindrance to the
foreman.

Sudden
turned now to Parr. ‘I’m turnin’ yu loose, Parr,’ he told the
wide-eyed prisoner. ‘I’d guess from the look o’ yore face that yore
old bosses have given yu marchin’ orders. I’m reinforcin’ whatever
they told yu. Get outa this country, pronto. If I hear o’ yore
bein’ seen around here, I’ll take after yu personally.’ He bent and
whispered something to Parr, who recoiled and looked at him in
amazement. ·

‘
Yo’re—’

‘
Yes, I am!’ Sudden interrupted, ‘so yu know I ain’t just
talkin’.’ He slashed the man’s bonds, and pulled him roughly to his
feet. ‘Git!’ he told the battered Parr. Stumbling, uncertain,
terrified, the bandit mounted his horse and disappeared into the
darkness.