SEVERAL UNEVENTFUL days had passed; Green had told Harris to pass the word along to his neighbors to be double careful, after the bushwhacking attempt on Susan and the youngster. Philadelphia had been constantly plaguing the cowboy with questions about his foray on to the Saber. What had he done? What had he seen? What had he found? To these and all the boy’s queries Green turned a deaf ear. ‘Yu’ll know soon enough,’ he told Philadelphia. ‘Meanwhile, yu keep yore eyes skinned for anyone pokin’ around these parts who don’t belong up here.’
Indeed, the cowboy was in no mood for questions. He was himself unable to properly explain what he had discovered on the Saber. It appeared that someone on the ranch was responsible for the attempt on Philadelphia’s life, but it seemed very unlikely that Lafe Gunnison knew about it. The man was bluff and forthright; he was not the kind of actor who could carry off a deception of such magnitude, Green was convinced. If Gunnison was ignorant of the fact that someone in his employ was responsible for the ambush, then it followed that the motive which could have been attributed to the bushwhacker – that he was working for Gunnison, trying to throw a scare into Harris in order to make the homesteader move off his land – no longer applied. That being so, what was the motive? Why had Philadelphia and the girl been fired on? These and other thoughts occupied the puncher’s mind as he went about his daily tasks until in the end he revealed them to Harris.
‘Yo’re sayin’ that Gunnison don’t know someone on his ranch tried to kill my gal?’ the homesteader asked.
Green nodded. ‘Can’t rightly rigger it out,’ he said. ‘She don’t make sense. Unless there’s some other reason for gettin’ yu off this land that ain’t got nothin’ to do with Gunnison …? ’
The old man shook his head. ‘Beats me, Jim. This land just don’t seem worth all the trouble.’
‘Tell me about when yu first come here, Jake,’ suggested Green. ‘It might just give me some ideas.’
‘Not much to tell,’ the homesteader told him. ‘Reb Johnstone an’ Stan Newley was the first to file on land up here. When I came out from Missouri it seemed a likely thing to file alongside ’em. Kitson came next, then Taylor.’
‘How long ago was all this?’ the cowboy wanted to know.
‘Gettin’ on three, four years now,’ Harris told him. ‘Reb’s been here longest: just over four years.’
‘Yu all built yore own places?’
Harris nodded. ‘No, wait a minnit,’ he corrected himself. ‘Reb Johnstone moved into an old cabin when he first come up here. His place stands where the cabin used to be. Some kind o’ line shack, I think it was.’
Green nodded again. ‘This trouble – the raids, the horse-stealin’ that Kitson mentioned: when did all that start?’
‘Oh … mebbe eighteen months ago, more or less. Difficult to say, exactly. Never took notice at first: figgered it was just wanderin’ bucks liftin’ a few o’ Terry’s hosses. On’y got wise to it when it kept on happenin’. When Reb Johnstone an’ Stan Newley had night riders on their land we knew it warn’t no accident.’
‘An’ Gunnison started complainin’ about losin’ beef around the same time?’
The homesteader looked at Green for a long moment, a light dawning in his eyes. ‘I’m beginnin’ to get yore drift, Jim,’ he said. ‘Yo’re figgerin’ mebbe the same outfit’s behind the whole thing?’
‘Could be,’ Green told him, ‘but who? If it ain’t Gunnison, an’ it ain’t any o’ yore people – who is it?’
The homesteader shook his head. ‘I keep goin’ around in the same tracks yu do, Jim, an’ I keep comin’ up with the same answer: I dunno.’
The old man poked a twig into the flickering fire and lit an old black pipe with the brand. He puffed away in silence for a while, looking reflectively into the flames.
‘Jim,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We ain’t talked much, yu an’ me.’
The puncher nodded, not speaking.
‘I got the feelin’ there’s somethin’ yu wanted to tell me,’ Harris said. ‘Yu reckon now might be a good time for it?’
Green looked at the old homesteader for a long moment and then a bitter look crossed his face. ‘Yo’re better off not knowin’,’ he said harshly.
‘Never figgered exactly why a feller like yu would want to work for a farmer,’ Harris continued imperturbably. ‘Yo’re a top hand, Jim. Yu coulda got good wages on any spread in Arizona. Yet yu come here. Why?’
‘I heard down in Tucson that there was some tough hombres gatherin’ in these parts,’ Green told him. ‘I figgered mebbe the men I’m lookin’ for might be in Yavapai.’ Harris looked his interest, and the cowboy continued, ‘Their names is Webb an’ Peterson. Yu ever run across them?’
‘Can’t say I have,’ Harris admitted. ‘What yu want ’em for?’
‘They’ve lived too long,’ Green said, and there was a deadly coldness in his words that sent a chill across the rancher’s heart.
‘Yu ain’t on the dodge, Jim?’
Green shook his head. ‘Yu better hear the whole story, Jake,’ he told his employer. ‘Yu know me as Jim Green, but back in Texas they call me Sudden.’
Sudden! Jake Harris looked as if for the first time at this quietly spoken man who sat beside him. So this was the daredevil whose exploits were a legend, the man whose speed with a six-gun was talked about with bated breath wherever men spoke low over a game of cards or a drink. Sudden, who had cleaned out Hell City!’ Harris had heard about his lightning speed on the draw, his amazing adventures. And a chord in his memory told him that Sudden was wanted for murder. ‘Yu said yu wasn’t on the dodge,’ he pointed out. His voice was mild, but Green did not miss the reproachful note.
‘I ain’t wanted in Arizona,’ he told Harris. ‘An’ I never even seen the man they’re huntin’ me for killin’ in Texas.’ His words were biting, compelling. Harris sat in astounded silence as the black-haired cowboy outlined the story of his past, the chain of events in which mere chance had resulted in his becoming the legendary gun-fighter called Sudden, and how he had come by the unenviable reputation he owned. With only an occasional exclamation Harris heard of a boy’s promise to a dying man, of a never-ending search for two murderers named Peterson and Webb. In uncompromising phrases the cowboy told his employer of the false accusation which had resulted in his being outlawed, sent alone into the endless West, a price on his head and every man’s hand turned against him.’ At the end of the story Harris shook his head.
‘Jim, I never heard anythin’ like it,’ he confessed. ‘But I’m believin’ yu right down the line! If yo’re Sudden, then there’s been a pack o’ damned lies told about yu!’
‘I’m obliged, seh,’ was Green’s grateful reply. ‘I’m thinkin’ it might be better if yu keep it to yoreself for the time bein’. No need to advertise it: it might come back on yu, hirin’ a notorious gunfighter.’
His words were bitter, and the old man rose and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘If there’s real trouble I can’t think of a man I’d rather have alongside me,’ he said. ‘I’m behind yu all the way, an’ billy-be-damned to anyone as don’t like it. But if yu want to play her that way, what yu say goes, Jim.’
Green smiled; his employer’s confidence in him was a rewarding thing. ‘Yu won’t regret it, Jake,’ he said.
‘I ain’t figgerin’ to,’ Harris rumbled. ‘Yu got any idea how to get to the bottom o’ these troubles we been rakin’ over, Jim?’
‘One or two,’ Green told him. ‘I’d like to disappear for a few days. Like to poke around, ask a few questions. Would yu cover for me if anyone asks where I’m at? Tell ’em I’ve gone up into the Yavapais to see if I can get a line on the rustlers.’
‘Yu ain’t meanin’ our people, too, Jim?’ Harris was shocked, but Sudden’s voice was grim as he replied:
‘Until we know for shore who’s behind these troubles, I ain’t shore yu oughta confide in anyone, Jake. Let’s make her yore secret an’ mine until I’ve had a chance to look around in peace. After that, we might have a line we can follow.’
Harris looked dubious, but he nodded. ‘Whatever yu say, Jim.’ He knocked out the dottle from his pipe into the fireplace, asking, ‘When d’yu figger to leave?’
‘First light,’ Green said. ‘An’ don’t let Philadelphia foller me. I aim to travel far an’ fast.’
With this final injunction he bade his employer goodnight. The homesteader filled his pipe again, lighting it by the same method as before. Leaning in his chair, he watched the smoke drifting upwards, his face thoughtful. Remarkable though the black-haired cowboy’s revelation had been, he did not for a moment entertain any doubt that every word of it was true. ‘Driftin’,’ he told himself. ‘An’ driftin’ the wrong way. I just knowed he warn’t no ordinary puncher. I’m durned glad I ain’t the Sheriff who’s lookin’ for him: I’d hate to find him, if he didn’t want to be found.’