Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (17 page)

‘My Gawd, I’m tired,’ he
confessed. ‘Shore seems like a hell of a long day.’

His companions nodded quietly in
agreement. Sudden did not feel it wise to voice his private thought
— that somehow he was sure the worst was yet to come. Such a remark
would scarcely help Davis, to whom such incessant tension was
totally alien.

His thoughts turned to the medico. Hight, too, was
unused to gun war, and so was the boy. Both of them had shown
remarkable fortitude, but that would be of little help if they did
not soon replenish their waning stocks of ammunition. He had
divided the bullets retrieved from the men in the arroyo into three
piles, each containing fourteen bullets.

‘I’m hopin’ Sim Cotton don’t plan
on rushin’ us,’ he thought. ‘Otherwise it’s goin’ to be a short
war.’

He wondered for the tenth time how the doctor was
faring.

Buck Cotton was not dead.

When Billy Hornby’s panic-stricken
horse had stampeded off the street, dragging him behind it
screaming, and helpless as a sack of flour, the half-Indian boy who
worked as a horse-wrangler for Sim Cotton had been with the
Cottonwood remuda. All of Cotton’s men had tethered their horses
behind the sheriff’s shack, the boy Pasquale posted with them to
prevent their being startled into stampeding away by the
shooting.

As the horse hurtled around the
house, Pasquale had acted almost without conscious volition, for
his life’s training had been in controlling half-wild animals. He
had leaped forward, throwing his wiry arms like steel bands around
the animals’ neck, clamping fingers like iron into the flaring
nostrils, plunging his high heels deep into the yielding, slowing
dirt, dragging the horse to a sun-fishing, snorting stop almost by
brute force. Eager hands had held the plunging, trembling animal; a
razor-edged knife had parted the lariat in one sweeping slice. And
they had pulled Buck Cotton to safety away from the murderous
hoofs, carried him into the sheriff’s rude abode, and laid him upon
the lumpy bed. There Buck Cotton lay now. His face was raw and
pulped, a mass of torn flesh; the skin of his arms and hands had
been stripped off, ripped away by the scouring dust and stones of
the street. His clothes were in tatters, ragged and blood
spattered, and his hair was matted with dirt and gore. Buck Cotton
tossed feebly on the bed, moaning, cursing with pain. Sim Cotton
stood regarding him dispassionately.

‘Pity yu wasn’t killed,’ he told
the half-conscious figure on the bed. ‘Yu shore ain’t no help to us
this way.’

Art Cotton moved across the room, his expressionless
eyes fixing those of his older brother.

‘Take it easy, Sim he said. ‘It
warn’t his fault.’

‘Not his fault?’ snarled Sim
Cotton. ‘Yu think I give a damn whether it was his fault or not?
All I know is that this whole stinkin’ town seen my kid brother
paraded in here like a ‘Pache squaw, with a rope round his neck.
Damn him! An’ damn that misfit cowboy who started all this!’ He
stalked across the room, glaring out of the window at the blank
wall of the stable across the street.

‘He was on’y doin’ what yu told
him to do remonstrated Art Cotton. ‘Tryin’ to get the kid’s
sister…’

‘An’ he made a mess of it, o’
course,’ jeered Sim. ‘That two-bit nester kid outsmarted
him.’

‘He outsmarted all of us, Sim,’
the other pointed out. ‘It was as if they knowed all along what
we’d do.’

‘Bah, pure luck!’ flung Sim
Cotton. ‘They’re fools for luck, but I ain’t through yet by a long
chalk. Not by a long chalk,’ he muttered, as if confirming his own
thoughts. He sat down heavily in a wicker chair, staring moodily at
his own boots.

Art Cotton touched his younger
brother’s shoulder.

‘Yu all right, Bucky?’ he asked,
helplessly.

A groan was his only reply. Art
looked at the half-Indian boy, who had been trying to clean Bucky’s
bloody face. Pasquale regarded him impassively.

‘Bucky hurt bad,’ he
offered.

‘I know it, damn yu!’ ground out
Art.

‘Need doctor.’ added Pasquale
imperturbably.

Sim Cotton jumped to his feet, his
brows lowered, his gaze intense, almost insane. He had no feeling
for his young brother’s hurt, and was only conscious of the deep
wound to his own pride witnessed by the town he had thought of as
his own personal property.

‘Doctor him, then!’ he thundered.
‘Quit yammerin’ about it.’

Pasquale shook his head, his expression wooden.

‘I not doctor,’ he
said.

‘Pasquale’s right Sim,’
Art
Cotton added. ‘He
needs a real medico.’

Sim Cotton took a deep, deep breath, then released
it as a growl of exasperation.

‘Art, yu goin’ soft in yore old
age?’ he grated. ‘So the kid needs a medico. Yu can’t be so stupid
that yu don’t know there’s only
one
medico in this fleabag of a town, an’ yu been
tradin’ slugs with him for nigh on an hour. Yu fixin’ to amble over
to that stable an’ ask him real nicely to come out an’ tend to
Bucky?’ He laughed; an ugly, mirthless sound. ‘He’d spit in yore
face, an’ so would I in his place.’ He went on, larding his voice
with heavy, cutting scorn. ‘But don’t let me stop yu. Go on over
an’ try it. Yu’ll get a slug in yore gizzard, but it’s yore
gizzard. Go ahead — fly at it. There’s the door — go fetch the
doc.’

He made an expansive bow, and gestured towards the
door. Art Cotton looked at him, flat, expressionless, for a long
moment.

‘Don’t yu care none about Bucky?’
he asked eventually.

‘Not much,’ was the callous reply.
‘Not any more. He got hisself into this. Come to think of it, he
got all of us into it.’

Pasquale stood up. A man better
schooled in observing men than Sim Cotton might have seen the
disgust behind the boy’s impassive expression, but not the owner of
the Cottonwood, consumed as he was with hatred.

‘Could get into doctor house,’ he
offered. ‘Get to river. Arroyo on other side of bridge lead to
doctor house. Mebbe get med’cine.’

Art Cotton stood up as the Indian
boy delivered himself of this, for him, unheard-of
colloquy.

‘Pasquale’s right, Sim,’ he said.
‘A man could edge down to the river bottom, then work up the
arroyo. Jackson an’ the others’d be coverin’ the stable. It could
work.’

His brother nodded, his mind occupied with other
thoughts.

‘Go ahead if yu want to,’ he said
unfeelingly. ‘I don’t reckon it matters much whether yo’re here or
not. Yu ain’t been worth a dime since that drifter whipped
yu.’

His voice had suddenly turned cutting and cold, and
he turned to face his brother once more.

‘I allus figgered that when the
chips was down I’d be left to do the real fightin’ on my own,’ he
went on. ‘Bucky never was worth a damn, an’ yu — yu was only muscle
at the best o’ times. When there’s brainwork to be done, the Cotton
family ain’t up to much. Go on,’ he sneered. ‘Get some ointment for
yore ickle brudder. Damn if I don’t put yu in skirts when yu come
back.’ His voice rose to a thunder. ‘Get out, get out o’ here!
Damned nester kid’s got more guts than all o’ yu put
together!’

Without a word, Art Cotton got up
and went out of the back door. His mind was black with hatred of
his older brother. For all these years he had mindlessly obeyed
Sim’s commands, carried out without question the orders to oppress,
to beat, to harass, and even to murder, never expecting to hear
praise, doing it simply because Sim was Sim, and you no more
questioned Sim Cotton’s commands than anyone had ever questioned
while he was alive the orders of Zeke, their father. And now this
casual, slow-talking drifter had blown Sim Cotton’s world apart and
Sim himself was teetering on the edge of madness. Art considered
for a moment. Supposing … the thought was frightening, then the
whiplash words his brother had just spoken stiffened his resolve.
He pursued the thought which had insinuated itself into his head.
Just suppose … suppose that Sim did go over the edge? Suppose that
something happened to him — something else? Something fatal, or
even for that matter something crippling. Who then would lead the
Cottonwood men? Who would reap the rich, fat rewards for which Sim
Cotton had planned all these years? A wolfish grin turned Art
Cotton’s thin lips downwards. Yes, he thought, who? Would Bucky
back Sim, if he knew how Sim had dismissed him, consigned him to
death without a thought? No, Bucky would not. Would any of the
Cottonwood men care who led them? Those who were left would follow
the strong man, the man who could pay their gunfighter’s wage. Yes.
And yes again. If this rebellion of the town was crushed, then he,
Art Cotton, would assume control. Providing something happened to
Sim. It might happen anyway. Sim looked ragged at the edges now. It
wouldn’t take much more.

And if he survived?

‘He won’t,’ grated Art Cotton,
unaware that he had spoken aloud as he stood in the shadow of the
house, his brow lowered in thought.

‘He won’t what, Art?’ asked one of
the riders, a thickset, heavy-mustached fellow called Whitey. Art
recovered himself rapidly.

‘Bucky,’ he told the rider. ‘He
won’t live. Unless we get some stuff for his wounds. Yu better back
me, Whitey. Yu, too, Nick,’ he said to a second rider who was
keeping a watchful eye on the stable from his post at the corner of
the house.

‘What’s up, Art?’ asked the
latter.

‘Bucky,’ explained Art Cotton.
‘He’s bad hurt. I aim to slide over an’ get some medicine an’ stuff
from Hight’s place. Yu boys’re comin’ with me. I’ll be needin’
someone to cover me. Hight’s in the stable with the puncher an’ the
kid, so I ain’t expecting’ no trouble at the house but — I might
need some cover fire if they spot me. I ain’t plannin’ on gettin’
boxed in there.’

Whitey and Nick nodded. Theirs was
not to question the wisdom of Art Cotton’s plan — they were paid to
do his bidding and no questions asked. Exposing themselves to
danger was part of that. They fell in alongside him, and together
the three of them moved cautiously back behind the house, using the
jail building as further cover as they edged down towards the
river. They reached the brush-speckled, shelving bank without
incident and Art Cotton led the way down, sliding a little on the
clay-slick earth, half crouching, sloshing ahead of his two riders
towards the bridge carrying the road out of town which lay on their
left.

‘Jackson an’ Platt is up there
behind the stable with Caldecott,’ Art told them. ‘But they won’t
see us from where they’re cached.’

‘Yu better be right,’ mumbled
Whitey grimly. ‘I ain’t hankerin’ after bein’ cut down by one o’ my
own sidekicks, an’ that’s whatever.’

Art Cotton half turned, his face contemptuous.

‘Cold feet, Whitey?’ he
jibed.

‘It ain’t cold feet to be careful
about gettin’ a slug in yore belly,’ retorted Whitey
unabashed.

‘Hell,’ scoffed Nick, whistling
past the graveyard, ‘They got more sense’n that,
shorely?’

‘I allus reckoned Bill Hickok had
more sense than enough,’ Whitey recalled, ‘but he still managed to
shoot down his own deppity in Abilene one time.’

‘Keep quiet!’ hissed Art Cotton.
‘Yu fools jabber worse’n two kids on a picnic!’

The two riders lapsed sullenly into
silence as Art sloshed out of the riverbed and, bending low,
scurried up the bank and dived face forward to the ground in the
shallow arroyo. He wormed forward, Whitey and Nick close behind
him. Presently they were opposite the rear of Hight’s house. The
open space between their shelter and the back door of the house
gaped before them. Art Cotton surveyed it warily.

‘Can’t see the boys none,’ he
muttered. ‘An’ them jaspers in the stable ain’t advertizin’ which
window they’re at, neither.’ He lay on the sloping arroyo wall,
whipping his nerve.

‘Hell,’ he decided aloud. ‘They
can’t see us none.’ He got to his knees, crouching low. ‘Come
on!’

He clambered up over the arroyo
edge, scuttling forward over the dusty open ground towards Hight’s
house. The two Cottonwood riders, after a moment’s hesitation,
darted after him. They reached the house in a bunch, panting, sweat
drenching them. No shots broke the silence.

‘Told yu so!’ gasped Art Cotton.
‘Come on.’

Within another minute they were in
the house. It was hot and close inside, for the blinds had not been
drawn and the sun’s fierce rays had inexorably raised the
temperature in the building.

‘Keep yore eyes skinned,’ Art
Cotton ordered his men. ‘Yu, Whitey, take the front window. Nick,
yu watch the back. No shootin’ unless yu got to. Yu hear me? I’m
goin’ to see if I can find anythin’ that’ll help Bucky.’

He barged into the small room which
Hight used as a study and for seeing his patients. In it were only
a desk, a small leather-covered table, a swivel chair and two
wooden upright chairs by the window. Against the wall stood a
glass-fronted cupboard. In it were some simple surgical
instruments, an array of bottles and boxes. Art Cotton slid over to
it, careful to avoid showing himself at the uncovered
window.

‘Ought to be somethin’ in here,’
he muttered. A swift blow from his pistol barrel shattered the pane
of glass fronting the cupboard, obviating the necessity of finding
a key for the small padlock on the door hasp. A vicious curse
escaped Cotton’s lips. His gaze revealed that the labels were all
incomprehensibly inscribed in some unreadable scrawled language.
Had he been able to, Art Cotton might have recognized it as Latin,
but as it was, his reaction was simply to clumsily grab whichever
of them looked as if it might contain what he needed. He began to
thrust them into the deep pockets of his chaps.