Inside the livery stable the beleaguered quartet were holding a council of war. Sudden had been talking steadily, his voice level as he outlined a plan. To the others, it seemed little short of suicidal, and Hight said as much.
‘Jim, this is madness!’ he gasped. ‘I refuse to let you do it.’
‘Can yu think of any other way?’ was the grim rejoinder.
‘Hell, Jim we don’t even know how many men they got out there,’ Davis interpolated. ‘Yu’d be takin’ a mighty big chance.’
Sudden’s grin was wintery. ‘I know it,’ he told them. ‘I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to enjoy doin’ her none. But there ain’t no alternative. If we sit here until we run out o’ cartridges, they’ll overrun us worse’n Crazy Horse hit Custer.’
‘How about lettin’ me go instead, Jim?’ put in Billy.
‘Shore,’ Sudden said, friendly scorn in his voice. ‘Yu’d be fine, shootin’ left-handed agin paid guns.’
Billy’s face was crestfallen and the puncher clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m shore grateful for the offer, though,’ he told the boy. ‘But look at the fac’s. If Doc can get to his house, he can grab some cartridges. That’ll mean someone’s got to keep those jaspers in the front occupied, an’ we want plenty o’ lead flyin’ around their heads if they try to get across the street an’ cover their boys. Yu an’ Bob can manage that atween yu. Bob shore ain’t built for sprintin’, an’ yu’ve been winged — which leaves yores truly. Now let’s quit arguin’ about it an’ start some doin’.’
Hight nodded reluctantly. ‘Jim’s right, boys,’ he told them. Davis and the younger man were forced to agree.
‘Yu shore yu got it straight, now?’ asked Sudden of the medico.
‘I reckon,’ was Hight’s reply. ‘Yu slide out and distract these jaspers in the arroyo. As soon as I hear shooting…’
‘No matter what it sounds like…’ Green prompted.
‘No matter what it sounds like — I make my move and get across to my house.’
‘By the time yo’re ready to go, I’ll be either comin’ out o’ that arroyo — or not, as the case might be,’ Sudden warned him. ‘Yu be on yore way afore then. If I don’t come out, Bob an’ Billy’ll be makin’ their own break after yu. It’ll be each man for hisself,’ he told them flatly. ‘Don’t nobody make no fool play on my account.’
The three men nodded miserably in agreement. Hight went on:
‘If I get there unseen, I grab some cartridges and get back to the stable whenever I can. That it?’
‘That’s it,’ confirmed Sudden. ‘Don’t try to get back until it’s all clear. I’ll be back to cover yu — I hope — an’ there won’t be no guns on yu from the back. If I ain’t — yu’ll just have to play her by ear.’
Sudden slid his guns from their holsters in a smooth movement, and carefully checked the action and the loads. He thrust the revolvers back and straightened up. His face was set, and his frame tense with the anticipation of forthcoming action. He knew there was no other way to tackle their desperate situation, but neither was he foolhardy enough to believe that he was not taking a very long chance.
‘I’m ready,’ he announced. He looked over his shoulder towards Billy Hornby. ‘Anyone in sight out there?’
‘Not a soul, Jim.’
‘Okay. Be ready to cover the street. The minnit anyone shows his mug, blast away at him — it don’t matter none whether yu hit anythin’ or not. Just discourage ’em from peepin’. Yu ready?’
Billy nodded. He cocked his weapon and laid the barrel along the sill of the window, his slitted eyes sweeping the entire street. At the other window, Davis followed the younger man’s example.
‘Wal, here goes,’ breathed Sudden. ‘Don’t wait up for me, mother.’
Drawing a deep breath, Sudden stepped swiftly into action, moving in one lithe bound towards the shattered window facing the street. Drawing one gun as he moved, he placed his left hand on the sill and vaulted smoothly out into the street, landing catlike, half-crouched, the cocked gun menacingly aimed ahead. He held this position for perhaps a second, and then straightened, wheeling in the same movement into a swerving run to the left, pounding flat out for the side of the building and the alley between the stable and Doc Hight’s house.
A yell issued from the jailhouse, then a shot.
‘They’re makin’ a break!’ screeched someone’s voice, half-drowned in the staccato roar of firing as Billy Hornby and Bob Davis fanned their .45’s into the windows and doorway of the jailhouse. More yells followed.
A bullet whined past Sudden’s head as he reached the corner of the stable and then he was around it, lungs tortured for breath, running as fast as he could drive his legs.
Again the staccato roar of shots boomed from the stable windows and he heard someone shout: ‘Get down, get down!’ as the well-aimed barrage from his friends burned across the street. Now he was in the deep shade of the stable, slowing to a sliding walk. Dashing the perspiration from his eyes, he fell prone to the ground, moving on elbows and knees through the deep dust towards the picket fence which surrounded the back of Doc Hight’s house. He wormed behind it, edging belly-flat across the sundried kitchen garden. His progress seemed maddeningly slow, but within a few more moments he was within yards of the sloping edge of the arroyo which he had — was it only hours ago? — utilized to come up to the medico’s house unobserved. His slitted eyes scanned the empty ground ahead of him; his ears were alert for the sound of running feet, but nothing moved.
Behind him gunfire boomed. He paused a second, listening. The Cottons were firing now.
‘Hopin’ to make the boys duck down, so they can send someone out after me,’ he muttered. ‘Keep ’em pinned down, Billy!’ The rolling boom of twin six-shooters joined in, and he smiled briefly to himself. Billy and Bob were still in business. He rolled over the edge of the arroyo. It was no more than four or five feet deep, and he had both guns out and ready as he came to a stop. Now he crouched down, moving slowly forward, using only his knees and elbows, utilizing every rock, every sparse shrub for cover. The ground was broken, and sharp stones tore at his unprotected hands and arms. Ignoring the pain, his face as impassive as that of a hunting Comanche, he edged northward up the arroyo. Presently it bore sharply to the left. He eased up against the left-hand wall.
‘About level with the stable now,’ he breathed. ‘If I’m right, them jaspers oughta be just around this corner.’
As if in reply to his thought, he heard a cough. Metal chinked thinly; there was a shuffling sound. Someone moving his position, the puncher told himself.
‘What the hell’s goin’ on out there?’ he heard a voice mutter, very close. ‘I heard yellin’.’
‘Never mind what yu heard,’ snapped another voice. ‘Jest keep that door covered like yu was told.’
Green’s brow furrowed. Two men had spoken. Was there a third? There was no way to tell, and only one way to find out. He straightened and stepped out into the open.
‘Drop yore guns!’ he snapped.
The scene before him erupted into action. The three men who had been lying on the sloping face of the arroyo under the shade of a thinly-leafed shrub tree whirled about, trying desperately to bring their Winchesters to bear upon this unexpected intruder. But Sudden had foreseen the reflex action and his guns were already blazing. The first shot whipped a big, bearded man backwards, erasing forever his astonished look. The second knocked down his companion, a runty individual wearing a blue shirt, hurling him flat and hard against the further wall of the arroyo, where he slid down in a slither of stones.
The third man was Jackson, the erstwhile jailer whom Sudden had last seen bound and gagged in the jailhouse. Jackson was moving fast even as Sudden’s first shots were smashing his comrades to the ground, and he levered off a shot which tugged gently at the sleeve of the puncher’s shirt. Sudden, too, was moving, dropping to one knee to confuse Jackson’s aim, firing as he did so. His bullet hit the man high in the chest, tearing him off his feet. Jackson fell, rolling, a groaned curse of pain forcing its way from his lips, but clawing for the gun at his side.
‘Don’t do it, Jackson!’ yelled Sudden. His guns were leveled and for a fraction of a second, Jackson hesitated, his darting eyes filled with pain. Then, in one movement, he grabbed for the revolver and tried to roll heavily to one side. The move might have confused another man, but Sudden’s .45 blasted again, and Jackson fell back; a leg twitched, and he was dead.
Within a few more minutes, Sudden had gathered together the cartridge belts of the dead men. His lips turned in disappointment when he saw how sparsely filled were the belt loops. ‘
‘Still, any’s better’n none,’ he consoled himself, and then scrambled up the shelving slope of the arroyo wall, and moved rapidly across the open ground towards the stable. Doc Hight, he saw, had already moved out, and was poised now at the corner of the stable, peering around it, ready to break across the open space. Sudden waved the doctor on as he moved towards the door and heard the two men inside lay down their covering fire across the street.
Hight moved away towards his house and Sudden watched in a fever of suspense as the doctor negotiated the open space between the stable and his own house. No shots sought him, however, and in a few moments he was within a few paces of his own back porch. Sudden heaved a sigh of relief: it looked as if Hight had made it. The medico lifted a hand. Then he turned towards the door of his house.
Sudden turned now, slamming shut the rear door and dropping the heavy bar once more into place. Billy Hornby turned to face him from his post at the window, his face grimy with powder stains. His teeth gleamed whitely.
‘Enjoy yore trip?’ he asked whimsically. ‘Yu wasn’t gone long.5
‘Seemed long enough to me,’ retorted Sudden. ‘I suppose it would depend on where yu was sittin’.’
Davis watched them. Their casual acceptance of danger, their ability to joke about it, was incomprehensible.
‘How many o’ them was out there, Jim?’ he asked.
‘Three,’ was the grim rejoinder. ‘They won’t draw their pay.’
A chill ran through Davis’s veins. Although he knew that the point of no return was long past, and that now it was kill or be killed. Green’s icy words brought home the reality as so far nothing else had done. His mind lingered for a moment upon the possibilities of what Sim Cotton might do to them should Doc Hight not bring back the extra ammunition they needed. He swallowed deeply. Seeing this, Sudden sought to divert Davis’ thoughts. Fear was beginning to touch the man like some corrosive acid. Maybe conversation would delay it a little.
‘What’s happenin’ out there in the street, Bob?’ he asked.
‘Nothin’,’ mumbled Davis. ‘They’re keepin’ their heads down.’
‘Right smart o’ them,’ growled Billy. ‘Although they was quite keen to come out an’ see what yu was up to, Jim.’ He smiled again. ‘We kinda convinced ’em it warn’t healthy.’
Sudden grinned. ‘I’m bettin’ yu did, too. Thanks just the same.’
‘No thanks needed,’ said Billy jauntily. ‘It was purely a pleasure.’
Davis shifted uncomfortably at his post and Sudden regarded the storekeeper with narrowed eyes. Davis was living on his nerves, the puncher surmised. A faint twitch at the corner of one eye revealed the pressure the man was under, and his words confirmed it.
‘What’s keepin’ Hight?’ he muttered. ‘He’s been gone long enough, ain’t he?’
‘Give him a chance,’ Sudden told the storeman. ‘He ain’t loiterin’ none, yu can bet.’
Davis nodded, but his face was still set. He passed a hand over his eyes.
‘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.