Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 (11 page)

‘Ah’m shoah Mr. Smith heah
didn’t come to talk about me,’ said Fontaine. His voice changed,
became businesslike and sharp. ‘Who told yu to come here,
Smith?’

Sudden smiled grimly to
himself at the disappearance of Fontaine’s pose, although no trace
of his satisfaction appeared on his face, which was, to the
watchers, a study in confusion and nervousness.

‘Why … I … yu … I was told
…’ he stuttered, apparently almost frightened out of his
wits.

‘Who told yu, Smith?’
snarled the fat man, leaning forward. In the same moment Sudden
felt a solid poke in the ribs, and knew that the fat man had drawn
his gun under the concealment of his huge midriff, and that the
barrel was now flush against his, Sudden’s, heart.

‘Yu … yu gents got me …
heh, heh … all wrong,’ he managed. ‘I done heard a feller could
offload a few head … down here. Nobody mentioned no names. I just …
I just heard it. In a saloon … Tyler’s, I think it was
called.’

‘Where’d yu get the
cattle?’ snapped the fat man. His
former
bumbling appearance had dropped away. Green mentally saluted him
for his acting ability; he imagined very few people in Riverton
paid more than passing attention to this perspiring fat man, yet it
was plain to see he was as dangerous as a cornered
pack-rat.

‘Picked … picked ’em up in
a canyon up in the Yavapais,’ he said. ‘I was … I was just
prospectin’ up there, tryin’ to raise a few ounces o’ dust. Hoss
broke his hobbles an’ I … had to track him down. Found him in this
box canyon.’

‘Where d’yu say this was?’
the fat man demanded.

‘Up in the Yavapais,
northeast o’ Apache Canyon,’ Green told them.

‘An’ yu say yu found the
cattle in this canyon?’

‘Yeah,’ Green told them.
‘Couldn’t unnerstand it. Nobody around. No riders. Yet these cows
all bunched in the one canyon. I figgered somebody had rounded ’em
up … mighty kind, heh, heh, I figgered. I hazed ’em along the
river-bank, movin’ at night. Never seen a soul the whole time I was
in that country.’

The fat man looked at his
colleague, and that worthy jerked his head. ‘Stay put,’ the fat man
told Green, and rose to walk off a few yards away from the table.
Green covertly watched their expressions. The tall man was telling
the shorter one that there was something peculiar about the story
they had been told; the fat man kept shaking his head and
sneering.

‘Ranee Fontaine b’lieves my
story the way I b’lieve his,’ Green told himself. ‘Let’s hope Fatty
there persuades him.’ It seemed as though his hopes were to be
realized, for a moment later the two men returned to the
table.

‘Where’s the herd, Smith?’
asked the fat man.

‘In a safe place,’ replied
Sudden, putting a fatuous smile on his face. ‘I got ’em cached
tight.’

They dickered for a few
moments about prices, and agreed on a figure. The tall Fontaine
stood up. ‘Vince here’ll make arrangements about payin’ yu,’ he
said. He turned on his heel and walked away without another
word.

‘He … ain’t too perlite,’
said Green surlily, playing his part. Vince’s smile was anything
but warm.

‘He don’t have to be,’ he
told Green. ‘Now where’d yu say yu got yore camp?’

Green gave him directions for getting to a
watering hole that he had passed, north of town, and told him he
would wait for him there.

‘I’ll be along at
nightfall,’ Vince promised him. ‘Yu be keerful with that shootin’
arm o’ yourn, Smith. I don’t aim to get shot by no nervous
cow-thief.’

Sudden nodded, maintaining
his nervous pose until the fat man finally bade him farewell and
left the saloon. The man from the Mesquites moved apparently
carelessly across the room as Vince crossed the street. Through a
window he was able to pinpoint the man’s path and notice that he
disappeared up an alley farther up the street. Green nodded once
and then shuffled out of the back door of the saloon. Behind one of
the houses he had tethered Midnight, and in his saddlebags were
stowed his own clothes and guns. Dousing himself quickly with water
from a nearby trough, Green removed the dirt and grime from his
hair and face. A few minutes later, the identity of Smith
completely shed, he emerged once more into the street of Riverton,
his hat pulled low over his face to avoid the million-to-one chance
that someone in the town would know him.

On silent feet he slipped
up the alleyway he had marked as Vince’s route. The sound of hearty
laughter emerging from a slightly open window drew him near;
crouching, he edged to a position below the sill of the window. The
voices were those of the two men he had met in the
saloon.

‘ …
money from home,’ Vince
was saying, to the accompaniment of gusts of laughter from
Fontaine. ‘The old geezer tells me where he’s got the cows. I ride
out there to pay him an’ he hands the cows over to me.’

‘On’y yu pay him in lead,
‘stead o’ silver,’ said Fontaine. ‘It’s easy pickin’s.’

‘Ol’ fool musta been born
yestiddy,’ laughed Vince. ‘He shore oughta be put away, anyways. If
Jim Dancy gets ahold o’ him he’ll salt his tail shore!’

‘Yu don’t reckon …’ Once
again Fontaine burst out laughing. ‘Yu mean … this ol’ soak found
Dancy’s canyon?’

‘It’s gotta be, Ranee,’
hooted Vince. ‘There couldn’t be two that close to Apache
Canyon.’

The two men laughed again,
and the listening puncher smiled grimly to himself. His ruse had
worked like a charm, better than he had dared hope. If Jim Dancy
was selling these two cattle, as their conversation indicated, then
he was stealing them from either Saber or from the homesteaders. If
Dancy was behind the rustling, then someone else was behind Dancy
and it wasn’t Lafe Gunnison, who would hardly be likely to steal
his own cattle. Sudden’s half-smile changed to a grim one; it
looked like he was overdue a long chat with Mr. Dancy. He edged
back from his listening post and swiftly walked the few yards to
where he had hitched Midnight.

The idea of arranging a
reception for the fat man when he went to the waterhole that night
intending to kill poor, defenseless ‘John Smith’ occurred to him,
and caused a frosty smile to play around his eyes, but he dismissed
the temptation.

‘There’s more important
things to do,’ he told himself. ‘I’d best head back for the
Mesquites. Jake’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’

FOR
THE tenth time that evening Jake Harris said, ‘I shore as hell
wish I knew where Jim was!’

Susan Harris stamped her
foot with suppressed rage as her father uttered these words. ‘Oh,
Daddy, if you say that again I’ll scream. Jim’s being here wouldn’t
have made any difference. What happened, happened; I suppose it is
as well that it was no worse.’

Harris shook his head. Indeed, his daughter
might be unwittingly right. If Green had been around this morning,
then there might have been even worse to think about than what had
happened.

He had been out in the corral when the sound
of hoofs along the trail to the south had warned them of the
approach of a lone rider. Accustomed now to the precautions
instilled in her by her father, and also by Green, Susan Harris
came to the door to meet him, his shotgun in her hands. She gave
him the gun and with a worried look on her pretty face asked him
where Philadelphia was.

‘He’s over at Taylor’s,’
her father told her. ‘I sent him to borrow an ax from Alex. Don’t
fret yoreself, girl!’

Susan nodded and moved back into the shadow
of the house as her father, the rifle cradled across his arm,
turned to face the oncoming rider, who could now be seen loping up
the trail towards the ranch.

Harris descried a man of
medium height riding a very fine bay stallion. The man’s saddle was
lavishly ornamented with silver conchos and buckles. The man
himself was a complete stranger, but Harris did not miss the
peculiarly cut gun holster; this was no passer-by, he told himself.
The shotgun remained at port across his arm.

The stranger reined in his
horse and sat in the saddle in the center of the yard, surveying
the house and the smaller outbuildings with a sneer.

‘What’s yore business,
mister?’ called Harris. The newcomer completely ignored his
challenge and continued with his disdainful survey of the place. He
spat, then kneed his horse forward as Harris repeated his
question.

‘Yo’re Harris?’

‘I am. What do yu want? Who
are yu?’

‘Just wanted to see yu,
Harris,’ the man said. ‘Heard a lot about yu. Yu ast my name: it’s
Cameron. Wes Cameron. I expect yu’ve heard about me,
too.’

‘That I have,’ snapped
Harris, ‘an’ none of it good.’

‘Watch yore tongue, yu ol’
goat!’ snapped Cameron. ‘I’m just admirin’ yore place, but yu push
me hard an’ I might alter the look of it some.’

Harris hitched the shotgun significantly
forward, but the cold-eyed Cameron feigned not to notice.

‘I’d guess yu was thinkin’
o’ leavin’ these parts,’ he said, as if to no one in particular.
‘Wise decision. This high country looks plumb unhealthy to me for a
man yore age.’

‘Damn’ yore eyes!’ rumbled
Harris. ‘Yu got-yore gall, mister! I’m guessin’ yo’re about to roll
yore tail afore I perforate it.’

Cameron smiled. It was a cold, mirthless
smile, and it did not touch the eyes. He dismounted and started to
walk towards Jake Harris, who covered the menacing figure with the
shotgun.

‘Hold it right there!’ he
told Cameron. The gunman took no notice of the words.

In a voice that could
almost have been described as teasing he said, ‘Yu aim to blow me
apart with that scattergun in front o’ yore daughter, Harris? Yu
know what a man looks like that’s been shot close-to with one o’
those things? Yu want yore daughter to see that?’

Jake Harris hesitated for a
fateful moment, and in that moment the gunman’s hand moved like a
striking snake, knocking the barrel of the shotgun aside. His right
hand swept to the cut-away holster and came up holding the
pearl-handled six-shooter. It rose and fell, and Jake Harris
dropped senseless to his knees, blood pouring from the cut behind
his ear made by the viciously wielded gun-barrel. Susan Harris,
seeing the murderous expression on Cameron’s face as the gun-barrel
was raised to strike yet again, swept back the door and threw
herself at the man, her hands outstretched, fingernails reaching
for the twisted face.

Cameron caught her hands easily, his grip
like steel, and twisted them backwards until he held her, panting,
her face only inches from his own.

‘Well, now,’ he leered. ‘If
yu ain’t the wildcat! Purty, too! How about a li’l kiss,
honey?
^’

He bent his head towards
her, and the girl, struggling helplessly, tried desperately to
prevent his beastly caress; half fainting, powerless in his clasp,
she closed her eyes as his snarling face came nearer – Suddenly his
grip was loosed, and she collapsed, falling alongside her father.
Looking up, she saw Cameron stumbling backwards as Philadelphia,
who had ridden into the yard unseen and come up behind the man,
yanked at Cameron’s shirt collar, pulling the man backwards off
balance, his arms flailing – Philadelphia turned the man half
around, still off balance, and with all his strength drove a wicked
uppercut to the gunman’s jaw. Cameron cartwheeled backwards,
sprawling in the dust of the yard. Cursing, spitting blood from his
gashed mouth, he struggled to sit
upright,
shaking his head to clear it. Philadelphia stepped forward as
Cameron got groggily to his feet and again hit the man, this time
on the side of the head. Cameron went down like a pole-axed steer.
The boy turned and raced to help Susan Harris, who was struggling
to her feet.

Philadelphia knelt down to
lift Jake Harris’s head as the old man stirred, moaning feebly.
Susan ran into the house and emerged with a bowl of water.
Philadelphia poured it unceremoniously over the old man’s face, and
spluttering, Jake Harris sat up. In a few moments the light was
back in his eyes, as Philadelphia assured him that Susan was
perfectly safe. The girl went back into the house for more water.
None of them paid any attention to the prone form of Cameron. Had
they been doing so they would have seen him stir, then carefully
roll his head to see where they were. A rictus of hatred contorted
the man’s face, and with a smooth movement, cursing as pain shot
through his bruised jaw, Cameron was on his feet. At the same
moment that Cameron regained his feet Susan Harris appeared in the
doorway of the house, and her mouth opened in astonishment as she
saw the crouched, menacing figure behind her father and
Philadelphia.

Philadelphia wheeled, then
halted as he saw Cameron. The gunman’s smile was as inviting as
death.

‘Yo’re careless, boy,’ he
told Philadelphia. ‘Never turn yore back on a man ‘less’n yo’re
shore yu’ve put him down for good.’

The boy’s face was a study
in self-disgust. He took a step forward, but Jake Harris laid a
detaining hand on his arm.

‘No, Philly,’ he said
firmly. ‘That’s Wes Cameron – he’s a paid killer an’ mighty fast.
Don’t yu go up agin him.’