It came about half an hour later.
Billy Hornby had eased himself carefully upwards to peer out from his vantage point at the window. As his eyes swept the empty street, he straightened quickly, gun cocked and ready. Noting the boy’s reaction, Sudden was already rising swiftly and moving to his own window as the boy hissed excitedly, ‘They’re wavin’ some kind o’ flag out o’ the jailhouse window.’
A glance confirmed to Sudden that a disembodied arm was indeed waving a dirty white rag tied to the end of a stick from the window across the street.
‘Flag o’ truce?’ he muttered. ‘What the devil—?’
Even as the words left his lips, the figure of a man stumbled out of the jailhouse door, faltering on the threshold as though unwilling to move further. Obviously someone had ordered him to go out into the silent, unwelcoming street, and was now insisting that the man proceed, however reluctantly. There was no mistaking the furtive stance, the unshaven visage, the stained and disreputable clothes.
‘Kilpatrick!’ breathed Billy. ‘An’ he shore ain’t keen on his work.’
The decrepit old lawyer stepped tentatively towards the street, the sagging banner raised high in one hand.
‘Parley!’ he called hoarsely. ‘Flag o’ truce!’
‘Looks like they wanta palaver,’ suggested Billy. ‘If that ol’ goat can make hisself heard over the noise o’ his knees knockin’.’
Sudden smiled. ‘He looks a mite nervous,’ he allowed, then raising his voice, called ‘Come ahead, Judge — but come careful!’
‘I ain’t heeled!’ screeched Kilpatrick, stopping in mid-stride in the center of the dusty street. ‘Don’t shoot! I ain’t heeled!’
‘Yu better not be!’ rapped Sudden. ‘Come ahead an’ say yore piece — but yore friends better not get any ideas: I’m tetchy jest now, an’ if anyone makes me jump I’d just nacherly shoot yu right through the gullet.’
Kilpatrick’s scrawny Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed deeply. Billy Hornby squinted along the barrel of his gun laid steady on the sill of the window. ‘Shore is a real temptin’ target,’ he suggested.
‘It is at that,’ agreed Sudden, ‘but yu couldn’t pull the trigger any more’n I could.’
Billy sighed. ‘Yo’re right, o’ course. I’m thinkin’ I may regret it, just the same, afore tomorrow.’
Kilpatrick stood stock still in the street. Sweat trickled down his wrinkled jowls, glistening on his stubbled cheeks, soaking his shirt. It was clear to those watching that he was even having trouble holding the flag steady.
‘Nerves playin’ yu up, Judge?’ called Sudden, sardonically. ‘Yu wasn’t so shaky this mornin’.’
A fleeting expression of hatred twisted Kilpatrick’s face, to be quickly concealed. But Sudden had seen the look and knew his jibing words had found their mark.
‘I ain’t shaky now, damn yu!’ snapped Kilpatrick, a vestige of his old asperity returning to his voice. ‘I’m offerin’ yu a chance to ride out o’ this town afore it’s too late.’
‘Yo’re offerin’ us a chance?’ Sudden’s voice was stiletto cold.
‘Sim Cotton is willing to let you ride out of here and no hard feelings,’ continued the old man.
‘Mighty generous o’ him,’ retorted the puncher. ‘What’s the catch — there’s gotta be one.’
‘The terms are simple, Green. Turn the boy over to Sim and you ride out of here alive. Refuse, and you’ll be carried out dead — both of you.’
The old voice was dry with venom. Kilpatrick squinted up at the blank windows of the stable. ‘You hear me, Green?’
‘I hear yu,’ came Sudden’s flat reply. ‘Now yu hear me, yu mangy ol’ goat. Get back off the street afore I put a slug in yore worthless hide, an’ tell yore boss I’d sooner make a deal with Satan!’
Kilpatrick made one more attempt, his voice quavering.
‘Yo’re making a mistake, Green!’
Sudden’s reply was not in words. Without seeming to aim, he planted a shot within an inch of Kilpatrick’s right toe, the bullet chunking a gout of dust upwards. The old man leaped as though stung, his eyes bugging, a shrill screech issuing from his throat as he broke in voiceless terror, dropping the grubby flag of truce and scuttling back towards the jailhouse like a frightened rabbit. A ragged rattle of covering fire spattered into the walls of the stable as the two men ducked down.
Sudden grinned across at Billy, who grinned back. Then Billy’s face turned serious.
‘Jim, I’m thankin’ yu again,’ he essayed. ‘Yu coulda rid out o’ here.’
‘Shucks, I wouldn’t get twenty yards afore I got a slug in the back, an’ yu know it,’ Sudden said, ‘so don’t bother thankin’ me none. I’m allus inclined to play things safe.’
‘Shore,’ Billy said, mock scorn in his voice. ‘Yu play things safe. An’ I’m Ulysses S. Grant.’
The puncher’s smile widened. ‘Thought yu looked familiar,’ he said. ‘Must be the beard.’ Then before the boy could suitably reply he went on, ‘Sim Cotton must be gettin’ worried to try somethin’ like that. What yu reckon he’s up to?’
‘Search me,’ said Billy, ‘but whatever it is, it ain’t no good.’ It was not to be many minutes before the two men were to discover the truth of this statement.
While Kilpatrick had distracted the attention of the two men in the livery stable, Sim Cotton’s men had been busy. Two of them had sneaked up to the northern end of the town, using the houses as cover. One of them was the man called Ricky, a dirty bandanna tied around the lacerated scalp which had been the result of his earlier collision with the puncher. The other Cottonwood man, a burly fellow named Rolfe, lumbered along behind. They entered the vacant general store, where Rolfe appropriated two large metal drums of kerosene. Then they scuttled across the empty street, out of sight of the two men in the stable, and worked their way down behind the bank, then the saloon, until they were close to the blind northern wall of the stable. They could see Kilpatrick in the street, and hear his exchange with the puncher.
Rolfe, the kerosene drums swinging at his side, looked questioningly at Ricky, who was piling refuse, dried leaves, bits of brushwood and any other rubbish which he could lay his hands upon, against the wall of the stable. When Ricky at last nodded, Rolfe swung the drums to the ground. Tearing the cap off one, he sloshed its contents heedlessly upon the pile of refuse. Ricky, following suit, splashed the contents of the second drum up against the walls, soaking the dusty timber and the ground around the bonfire. The canister, now half empty, he laid upon the top of the pile, and then and then stood back, hands on hips, surveying the results of their efforts.
‘Yu think it’ll work?’ whispered Rolfe hoarsely.
‘It better,’ his companion told him grimly, ‘or Sim Cotton’s finished, an’ so are we.’
Rolfe nodded. Sim Cotton’s plan had been murderously simple: to distract the men in the stable with a phony parley while giving his men the opportunity to prepare this last-ditch attempt at forcing the besieged men into the open.
Ricky raised a hand as a signal, and then with a gesture to Rolfe to move out, struck a match and tossed it on to the kerosene-drenched pile. The kerosene ignited with a slight whoomp and then the seeking flames bit deeply into the pile of rubbish and brushwood. Within a few seconds, long hungry tongues of questing flame were reaching up the side of the livery stable, blistering the ancient paintwork, feasting joyously upon the bleached wood of the building, as Sudden’s contemptuous shot put Martin Kilpatrick to flight, and the two Cottonwood men faded back and headed by their circuitous route towards the jailhouse.
Sim Cotton, from his vantage point in the jailhouse, had watched the developments in the street with a cold and pitiless smile. Kilpatrick’s discomfiture — he did not deign to turn as the old man stumbled in from the street, fighting for breath and rigid with fear — was a tiny price to pay for the chance to lay these two rebels by the heels. Sim Cotton’s mind had callously totaled the odds and found them wanting. Somehow, incredibly, this sardonic drifter and a dirt-poor youth had broken his hold on this valley, had cut his crew down until now there was only himself and two riders. His lip curled: he knew exactly how long he would have the loyalty of the remaining two if this last, desperate gambit failed.
‘Dawgs,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Yeller dawgs. They figger if I win they’ll get a bigger cut, an’ if I lose they can crawfish out.’ His black brain planned, twisted, discarded, appraised. The cowboy, Green, had he sent for the U.S. Marshal? Was he bluffing or not? Sim Cotton shook his head. He could not take that chance. If a U.S. Marshal was on his way, then Green and the boy must be dead before he arrived.
He glanced contemptuously at the huddled figure of Martin Kilpatrick, wheezing still in the darkened corner of the room.
‘Old fool,’ he thought, callously. ‘Pity that slug didn’t put him out o’ his misery.’
At this moment the rear door opened, and Ricky and Rolfe came in. Cotton lowered his quickly-cocked gun.
‘How’s she goin’?’ Ricky said, easing over to the window. A coarse laugh escaped his lips as he surveyed the result of his handiwork. ‘Pretty good he continued. ‘Like a house on fire, yu might say.’
Sim Cotton nodded but did not speak. He moved again to the window and peered out, his eyes reflecting the mad, dancing flames roaring now, crackling as they greedily bit into the desiccated wood of the stable. A half-insane chuckle gurgled in Sim Cotton’s throat, freezing the blood in Ricky’s veins, hardened though the man was. There was gloating triumph in Sim Cotton’s voice when he spoke, when he hissed out:
‘Burn, damn yu, burn!’ The insane laughter swelled. ‘Fry the bastards!’