It was Doc Hight. Behind him. Bob Davis stood, his eyes sweeping the bare plot behind the stable, gun cocked and ready to deal with any movement, any threat. Hight’s face fell as he saw Sudden’s leveled revolver.
‘Hell, Jim, don’t shoot!’ he managed.
‘I shore wasn’t expectin’ company,’ Sudden told him. ‘How did yu get here without bein’ spotted?’
‘We built us a little fire in the saloon,’ Davis explained. ‘Throwed a few cart’idges into it, then skedaddled out the back way. Them Cotton boys out in the street ducked for cover again when the bullets exploded; and then they poured it in again, thinkin’ there was still someone there.’
‘By which time we was in the arroyo that runs in back o’ here,’ Hight continued. ‘An’ here we are. How’s the boy?’
‘Yu better see for yoreself,’ Sudden told him, still smiling at the ingenious method of escape the two men had used.
Hight crossed the stable and knelt down beside the youngster. Billy opened his eyes briefly and managed a grin.
‘Hi, Doc,’ he whispered. ‘Shore sorry to bring yu out on a night like this.’
‘Save your strength, son,’ Hight advised him. ‘You can do your joking when I’m through with you.’
He peeled the compress expertly from Billy’s shoulder. An exclamation escaped his lips which brought Sudden and Davis quickly over.
‘What in the name of Hades did you put on this wound, Jim?’ asked the doctor. ‘It looks like mud.’
‘Cobwebs,’ explained Sudden. ‘Old Injun remedy. On’y thing I could think of.’
‘Wal, it might be all right for old Injuns,’ allowed Hight, ‘but don’t be offended if I wash it off and disinfect it, will you?’
Green shook his head. ‘Yo’re the doctor he smiled disarmingly.
‘I’m not so shore, now that I look closer,’ mumbled Hight, his fingers gently probing the wound. ‘Those cobwebs have shore stopped the bleeding. You’re a lucky young man,’ he told Billy. ‘Let’s see … no bones broken. Loss of blood. Shock. You ought to be as right as rain in about a week, ten days.’
‘Allus supposin’ Sim Cotton don’t decide to finish off what he started,’ pointed out Davis. He was standing by the window, keeping an eye on the empty street.
‘Hold still now,’ Hight advised Billy. ‘This is the part that nobody likes.’ He poured some fluid from a bottle he had taken from his pocket on to a cloth, soaking it. He then slapped the cloth swiftly on to the wound. Billy’s face drained of what little color was left in it, although he allowed no sound to escape his clenched lips.
‘Hell … Doc…’ he gritted eventually. ‘Wh … what was that? Sheep dip?’
‘Alcohol,’ was the smiling reply.
Billy shook his head. ‘I reckon that’s takin’ a drink the hard way.’
Hight bound the wound up again, and fashioned a sling from the youngster’s bandanna.
‘Keep that arm as still as you can,’ he warned Billy. ‘You’ll start the bleeding again if you jump around too much.’
‘Hell, Doc,’ protested the boy. ‘If I don’t jump around some, I’m likely to get perforated again! An’ I shore can’t shoot left-handed.’
‘Yu’ll never have a better chance to learn,’ interposed Sudden. He nodded towards the street from his position to the side of the window. Hight and the boy sidled over to join him.
‘What’s going on?’ asked the medico.
‘I can’t make it out,’ Davis said. ‘Hammerin’? What would they be hammerin’ on?’
Glancing outside, the doctor saw a group of men at the far end of the street, well beyond effective pistol range, clustered around something which he could not see. The sound of hammering carried clearly on the silent air.
Billy narrowed his eyes, straining to see what it was that they were doing. ‘It … it looks like some kind o’ big table,’ he offered.
‘O’ course!’ breathed Sudden. He moved away from the window. ‘Bob, Doc, Billy, keep that street covered the whole time. Don’t take yore eyes off it. An’ Billy — yu give me a runnin’ account o’ what’s goin’ on.’
Sudden rummaged about at the back of the stable, eventually finding what he was looking for, a short, wicked-looking leather knife. He snapped the blade off this, and laid it on one side. The thin clink of the breaking steel caused Billy to glance around.
‘What yu up to, Jim?’ he asked.
‘Keep yore eyes on that street,’ Sudden told him. ‘What’s happenin’ out there?’
‘Looks like they’ve finished hammerin’,’ was the reply. ‘They’re pickin’ up the table, or whatever it is. Movin’ back o’ the store.’
‘They’ll be headin’ for the rear o’ the jail. Throw a couple of shots at them if they show theirselves, but don’t waste no bullets!’
Sudden was hacking away now at the willow slats which, woven together formed the separating walls for the horse stalls in the stable. He found one almost six feet in length, and pulled this out, then a thinner, smaller one.
Billy, unable to contain his curiosity, took another peek at his friend’s activities.
‘What in tarnation? Yu aimin’ to fight ’em off with sticks, Jim?’
Green smiled, without once stopping what he was doing, paring the bark away from the smaller shaft. ‘Yu may just be right.’
Billy shrugged, and looked at Hight and Davis with his eyebrows raised. Hight shrugged by way of reply. ‘Beats me, too,’ Davis said. In that moment, several of the Cottonwood riders scuttled across the open space separating the jail and the sheriff’s house. Hight threw one quick shot at them without effect. It drew no return fire.
‘They’re behind the jail, Jim,’ Billy called. ‘They’re gettin’ ready.’
‘So’m I,’ was the uninformative reply. Hight turned now, and saw Sudden busily pouring a stream of gunpowder out of a dozen cartridge cases from which he had extracted the slugs. There was already a small black pile of it on a piece of waxed paper that lay on the floor. What in the name of the devil was the man up to?
‘They’re shapin’ up for somethin’, Jim,’ called Billy.
‘Tell me what’s happenin’.’
‘They’re pushin’ somethin’ out — it looks like one o’ the tables from the saloon. Looks heavy. It ain’t movin’ easy. Got two men pushing I’d say.’
‘It’ll be heavy enough,’ Green said. ‘It’s an old trick. Yu nail three tabletops together, use them as a shield. Ain’t many guns can put a slug through three inches o’ timber. Tell me how far they’ve got.’
‘About level with the front o’ the jail. They’re findin’ it hard work. She’s stickin’ in the sand a mite more’n somewhat.’
‘Give ’em a couple of shots,’ called Sudden. ‘See what happens.’ Billy nodded to the doctor, and leveled the gun in his left hand. His shot whined off target, kicking up a gout of sand perhaps six feet to left of the moving wooden shield.
‘Damn!’ he exploded. ‘I ain’t even likely to hit New Mexico shootin’ left handed.’
‘Rest yore gun on the windowsill,’ Sudden called. ‘Squeeze yore shots off, gentle like!’
Billy did as he was bid, and this time his shot thwacked into the table-shield, which was now perhaps a quarter of the way across the street. Hight put another two shots into it. Slivers of wood whirred away into the air, but the bullets obviously had not penetrated. The shield continued to make inexorable forward progress, propelled by the men behind it. A veritable barrage of shots exploded from the jail and to the rear of the late Sheriff Parris’ house, forcing the men at the windows to duck hastily below the level of the sills. Bullets whined through the gaping window frames, smacking into saddles that were slung on the rafters. One shot hit a metal bit dangling from a hook on the wall, and whisked the bit across the stable with a dissonant jangle of metal. The continuous thunder of shots went on, making it doubly dangerous to look out into the street, and impossible to return the fire. Hight must have dared the former however, for he said tensely, ‘They’re about halfway, Jim!’
‘I’m nigh on ready,’ was the terse reply. ‘Let ’em come a mite nearer.’ He was packing the waxed paper parcel into a tack box which he had found on the blacksmith’s workbench. Sudden then straightened up, eyeing the bales of straw stacked against the south wall of the stable. He gauged its height in relationship to the windows and nodded.
‘Billy, Doc! Get away from that window!’
The two men moved rapidly away from the window, their widening gaze of astonishment fixed on Sudden. The puncher had fashioned from the willow branches which he had cut from the stalls a makeshift bow and an arrow. To the arrow was fastened the tack box full of powder. Around it was a sheaf of straw. The arrowhead was a broken knife blade.
‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Hight.
Sudden grinned mirthlessly. ‘Yu both better start prayin’ this thing works he told them. ‘I ain’t used a bow an’ arrow since I was about fifteen. I’m hopin’ I recall how it goes. If I get it wrong, I’m begin’ yore pardon in advance. We won’t be around afterwards if it lands in here.’ He clambered up on top of the pile of straw bales.
Billy, unwilling to reveal his ignorance and unable to contain his curiosity, whispered a question to the doctor.
‘It’s an Injun fire arrow, an’ then some,’ Hight said. ‘Watch!’
Sudden struck a match and touched it to the bundle of straw. The flame flickered, then blazed up, and as it did, in one smooth, sweet, sure movement Sudden pulled back the bowstring to its fullest extent and released it.
The burning arrow described a line of light from Sudden’s position on top of the bales of straw, thrumming through the window and imbedding itself into the still-advancing wooden shield, low on one side, near the ground.
For perhaps half a second there was a silence, then a thunderous, flashing roar which hurled a cloud of smoke and sand and stones high into the air, spattering the stable walls, pattering down on the roof. Billy thought he had heard a scream but couldn’t be sure.
‘Put some shots into that smoke!’ yelled Green. ‘Pile it on!’ The four of them sent a seeking hail of bullets into the thinning cloud of oily smoke which hung on the afternoon air. Gradually, it sifted sideways, swaying in a faint breeze, clearing slowly, thinning, disappearing.
There was a shallow, black-edged hole in the street. The wooden shield lay ten yards away, split into three pieces. Some smaller shards of wood lay scattered about. Between the stable and the still smoking crater lay two broken, sprawled bodies.
‘My Gawd in Heaven!’ breathed Davis in an awed voice.
‘They never knew what hit them,’ commented Hight.
Sudden vaulted down from his platform of straw bales. Outside, the street was still again. Nothing moved. It was as if Cotton’s men were stunned by the complete demolition of the wooden shield, by the murderous blast which had torn their two comrades apart. Green scanned the street as well as he could without exposing himself to a seeking sniper.
‘Where’s everybody gone?’ he muttered. ‘They ought to be hoppin’ wild! They ain’t that afraid o’ four men … unless…’
‘Unless what, Jim?’ Billy’s question was eager.
‘Unless they ain’t got many men left themselves!’ Sudden told him.
‘Let’s reckon it up. How many men did yu tell me Sim Cotton had out at the Cottonwood? Fifteen, was it?’
‘Somethin’ like that Billy confirmed.
‘Not more?’
‘Hell, no. A dozen hard cases was plenty to keep this town in line,’ Davis told him with a self-critical smile.
‘Yu’ve proved Cotton wrong about more than that today,’ Sudden told him. ‘An’ if my reckonin’s correct, yore Mr Cotton is a mighty worried hombre. He ain’t a-tall shore whether there’s a U.S. Marshal comin’ here or not. We know there ain’t, but Cotton can’t take the chance that I wasn’t bluffin’. He’s lost some o’ his men, includin’ his top gun. I’d say, all things bein’ equal, that Sim Cotton must be what them novelists call thinkin’ furiously.’
‘Yeah, shore,’ interposed Davis, ‘but he ain’t exactly short o’ manpower. I make it he’s still got mebbe seven or eight men left.’
‘Odds o’ two to one,’ muttered Billy. ‘We can do it.’
‘We can,’ Green told him grimly, ‘as long as we don’t use no more ammunition than we got to. I’m pretty low: how about yu men?’
The others checked their cartridge belts quickly, dismay spreading on their faces as they realized how many shots they must have fired during the course of the last few hours.
‘Hell’s teeth, Jim!’ gritted Billy. ‘We can’t give up now, when we’ve gone this far. We got to get some more ca’tridges.’
Sudden nodded. ‘I know it. Doc — yu got any in yore house?’ Hight answered affirmatively, his face setting into serious lines as he realized the import of the puncher’s question. He stepped forward and laid a hand on Sudden’s arm.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he protested. ‘You’re not going to try to get across there and back for cartridges. You’d get your ears shot off.’
‘If I don’t get some ammo, they’ll be shot off anyways,’ was Green’s laconic reply. ‘I’d as lief be shootin’ back when it’s tried.’
Hight shook his head. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he announced. Green looked surprised, and the medico continued, ‘Think for a minute, Jim. Who knows I’m here? Only Sim Cotton — right?’
Sudden nodded. ‘I reckon. Providin’ he ain’t spread the news.’
‘So as long as I can make it across to my house unseen, nobody but him would think it amiss if they saw me in there: right?’
‘Yu mean, they’d think yu’d been there all the time?’ asked Billy.
‘Precisely,’ said Hight. ‘If I slide out of the back door, I can easily get across to my place — you can lay down some covering fire to make them duck down while I’m on open ground — and get the ammunition. Coming back would be the same thing in reverse. And we’d be out of the woods.’
Sudden demurred. ‘Hell, doc, I could do that — better than yu, in fact. Just tell me where the slugs are, an’ I’ll go an’ fetch ’em.’
‘Jim,’ argued Hight patiently. ‘You must see the sense of what I’ve been saying. If any of Cotton’s men see me moving around in my own house, that’s one thing. If they spotted you, that would be quite another. And once you were cut off, none of us would have much chance. As it is, I’m expendable. You are most decidedly not.’
The other two concurred with this latter statement so vehemently that Sudden was forced to admit the logic of what Hight had said.
‘Yo’re takin’ a big chance, Doc,’ he pointed out, relenting.
‘Nothing like the chance I’ll be taking if I don’t go,’ Hight told him. ‘Now less speeches and more action. Let me get on my way.’
Sudden smiled, the first real smile that had crossed his features all that day. He touched Hight’s shoulder.
‘Yu’ll do,’ was all he said, but Hight beamed.
Sudden eased the bar from the back door and started to swing it back. The door was open no more than a few inches when a bullet tore into the doorframe, slicing a huge chunk of wood away. The wood went whirring upwards, gashing Hight’s cheekbone as Sudden slammed the door back into place and a veritable hail of shots thundered into the door, slapping into the wooden walls, chasing dull echoes around the stable.
‘There goes another good idea,’ the doctor breathed, mopping away the trickle of blood from his cheek. ‘They’ve got the back covered. Now what, Jim?’