The trail across the Badlands was at best only faintly defined, and several times, Dave found himself lost in admiration of his foreman’s uncanny skill in charting their way across the monotonous drifting sandy waste; he relieved himself of a long-drawn sigh of relief as a small clump of trees appeared on the rim of the desert, and Green, hearing the sound, straightened up in the saddle and grinned, ‘Water ahead. Yu can have a bath—an’ yu could use one.’
‘Shucks,’ replied Dave. ‘I just hope I get to the water afore yu dip yore beak in, or she’ll be plumb spoiled for drinkin’.’
With a whoop of high spirits which came as a complete surprise to Dave, Sudden whisked off his hat and slapped Dave’s horse across the ears. The young cowboy spent the next few minutes trying to control his pony, which was giving a creditable imitation of a horse trying to fly; by the time he had the animal under control once more, the Slash 8 foreman was a fast-receding figure at the head of a plume of dust arrowing towards the waterhole some miles ahead. With a mild oath, Dave pointed his still-edgy bronc after Green, and rocketed in pursuit.
‘Shore beats all the way that gent’ll look so sleepy, an’ then jus’ when yo’re lulled, he’ll pull a fool stunt like that,’ he soliloquized.
By the time he reached the waterhole, Green was already hunkered in the shade of one of the few trees, starting a fire. His horse, unsaddled, was cropping the sandy tufts of grass.
‘What kept yu?’ Green asked innocently as Dave reined up alongside. ‘No—don’t tell me. The minnit I leave yu alone for a second, yu go an’ get yoreself lost. Shore beats me how yu ever find yore way home, the way yu keep harin’ all over the landscape. O’ course, if yu could control that bone-bag yu call a hoss .... ’
He subsided into laughter as Dave’s pent-up fury threatened to burst him at the seams, and continued to smile as his companion’s choicest invective rolled like a cascade about his ears.
When Dave began to run out of adjectives and breath, Green inquired, ‘Yu want some coffee? I figgered so. In which case, whyn’t yu just toddle down to the water an’ fill this yere pot. And wash out yore mouth while yo’re at it…I ain’t never heard such scandalous talk.’
With a mock swipe at Sudden’s head, Dave took the coffee pot and proceeded down to the edge of the pool where its muddy sides were pocked by the footprints of the many animals that drank there. He caught a glimpse of the track of a mountain cat, and turned to call Green.
He never heard the shot. Parr, up on the hillside overlooking their camp, had been watching the two men ever since they arrived at the waterhole. When Haynes finally took the coffeepot down to the water’s edge, the dark-visaged ambusher had his first clear aim at the two men, and he acted almost instantly.
His first shot dropped Dave Haynes like a log half in, half out of the water, and he whipped the Winchester around like a snake as Green leaped to his feet, moving with a powerful thrusting leap towards his saddle and the rifle in his scabbard on it. Parr’s second shot knocked the Slash 8 foreman sideward and back into the shadow of the tree, where he lay unmoving, curiously huddled, with one arm outstretched and the other doubled beneath his body.
Parr let five minutes go by. Then another five.
Neither man moved. Haynes lay as he had fallen, and from his vantage point, Curt Parr could see the slow stain of red darkening the water. Green lay in black shadow but there was no hint of movement from his body. Parr twitched the bush behind which he lay; nothing happened. Gingerly, he raised his Stetson on the barrel of the rifle, above the level of the bush.
‘Cashed, the pair of ’em,’ he exulted. ‘So much for yu, Mr. Smart Aleck Green. Yore sidekick’s hard luck: he picked the wrong day to ride with yu.’
Parr wormed backwards away from the ridge, working easily and without haste towards his horse. When he was below the level of the ridge, he levered a fresh round into the chamber of the Winchester. Then, leading his horse, he skirted the rocks behind which he had lain, and carefully approached the camp-site. Ahead of him, Haynes lay where he had fallen. Parr approached the slumped form of the Slash 8 rider cautiously, his rifle at the ready. Haynes did not move, and the pool of blood in which he lay made it obvious to the bushwhacker that Haynes would give him no trouble. Skirting the water’s edge, he sidled over to where Green lay, face down on the dry brown grass which grew beneath the trees.
Leaving the horse’s reins trailing, he poked his foot under Green’s ribs to turn the body over. As he did so, Sudden exploded into activity. His hand grabbed Parr’s foot and jerked it upwards, throwing the ambusher over and back. Parr’s rifle went off but the slug whined harmlessly into the air. He hit the ground with a bone-shaking thud, the rifle jarred from his grasp. Above him, eyes slitted menacingly, Sudden stood straddle-legged, the bore of his .45 poised like a rock three inches from Parr’s face. The ambusher recoiled in horror, crying ‘Don’t shoot me!’
‘I shore oughta,’ gritted Green savagely. ‘I oughta blow out yore light—an’ it would pleasure me to do it—but I got a hunch yo’re goin’ to be useful, so I’m lettin’ yu go on livin’ for the moment.’ There was no mistaking his meaning, and Parr nodded vehemently, offering no protest as Green quickly and efficiently lashed Parr’s hands behind him, rolled the man on his face, and then tied the bound hands to Parr’s ankles, so that the bushwhacker was bent backwards like a drawn bow.
‘Now I aim to see whether Dave is alive or dead,’ Green told
him. ‘Yu’d better pray he’s still breathin’.’
Without another glance at the abject form of his would-be assassin, Green crossed quickly to where Dave lay. A hasty examination reassured him. Parr’s bullet had hit Dave high on the shoulder blade, and tom its way out near the collarbone. The young Slash 8 rider was going to be weak from loss of blood, but it looked much worse than it was. Sudden breathed a sigh of relief and set to work to clean the wound and bandage it with strips tom from Dave’s shirt.
Half an hour later the young man was conscious, propped up against the tree and regarding his partner with puzzled eyes.
‘Hell,’ he said weakly. ‘It can’t be Heaven—they wouldn’t allow such ornery-lookin’ angels on the place.’ Then his eyes fell upon Parr, still lying trussed where the foreman had roughly thrown him. ‘What’s Parr doin’ here?’ And when Green had told him. ‘That—sidewinder! Why for’d he bushwhack us, Jim?’
‘He ain’t said,’ Green informed him, adding meanfully, ‘yet.’
Parr paled as the Slash 8 duo glared at him malignantly. His coward’s brain was busy with wild plans for escape but he knew in his heart that he did not have the courage to try and make a break for it. He had seen that cold-eyed devil in action, and he knew that, unless Green were dead, he would not escape. Almost as if reading his mind, the subject of Parr’s thoughts came over and stood looking down at him.
‘If yo’re thinkin’ of escapin’, forget it. Yo’re on borrowed time right now. Yu an’ me is goin’ to have a little chat. I’m goin’ to ask yu some interestin’ questions, an’ yo’re goin’ to give me some interestin’ answers.’ When Parr’s expression turned to a sneer, Sudden grinned, and turning to Dave, he said, ‘By the way, did I ever tell yu I was brung up by Injuns?’
The wounded man shook his head, puzzled at this change of tack in the conversation. ‘No, can’t say yu ever did, Jim,’ he replied.
‘Happened when I was right small,’ Sudden told him. ‘I was in a wagon train attacked by Comanches. Everybody was wiped out. But Comanches never killed boy children, so they took me with them. After a few years with them I was traded off to the Piutes. They pretty near brung me up.’
Dave nodded. He had not the remotest idea what Green was leading up to, but he was well aware that Green rarely waggled his chin just for the exercise, so he kept his silence as Green went on, almost dreamily.
‘One o’ the things they did teach a man real good was how to make prisoners talk. They was real experts. I never seen a man that could last fifteen minutes. They either talked fast, or they never talked no more.’
Catching Sudden’s intent, Dave played up to it. He saw Parr’s eyes roll white in the approaching dusk, and asked a question. ·
‘They ever teach yu any o’ them tricks to make a man talk?’
An almost imperceptible nod and grin showed that Green had appreciated Dave’s quickness of wit in divining his intention.
‘Shore,’ he said. ‘I was just thinkin’, maybe I oughta practice up a mite. Parr here knows a few things we need to know. Maybe he’ll tell us about them without any persuasion, though.’ Parr spat an obscenity.
‘One o’ the tough ones,’ Green smiled coldly. ‘They sometimes last about three minutes longer.’ He then went on to talk in low, even tones, about the days of the Indian wars, of ‘
Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, upon whose face no white man had ever looked and lived to speak about. He described the savagery of a Comanche raid, the tactics of the wheel attack, and spent some minutes going into particular detail about the contributions various Southwestern tribes had made to medical knowledge with their variations upon the themes of torture and murder. A fleeting glance towards the huddled form of their prisoner revealed that this was having its effect, and at this moment, Sudden ostentatiously withdrew a Bowie knife from. his saddle bags and thrust the long blade into the glowing embers of the fire that he had built when tending Dave’s wounds. He then went into the brush and rummaged around there for a few moments, returning with a stout branch four feet in length, which he proceeded to strip of its branches. This, he also thrust into the coals. Parr watched this performance with eyes which had suddenly become fear-widened and white-rimmed.
‘What … what are yu doin’?’ he trembled out.
Green ignored the question completely, and hunkered down beside his partner.
‘I better warn yu—this ain’t pretty,’ he warned Dave.
‘Good!’ enthused that worthy. ‘I’m hopin’ Parr’s got more guts than I think he has, so yu can give him a real workin’ over. I’m a-goin’ to enjoy this!’
Green nodded, then walked over to Parr, whose bonds he then deliberately and methodically tested. Nodding once more, he turned away from the prisoner and withdrew the now red-hot knife from the fire. Hefting it carefully, he turned back to the prone man, who uttered a moaning scream and tried in vain to wriggle away from his tormentor. Green’s face was hard and unrelenting.
‘Parr,’ he intoned, ‘there ain’t anybody within fifty miles o’ here, an’ even if there was, I misdoubt they’d want to save yore soul. Yo’re scum, an’ anythin’ I do to yu is piddlin’ compared with what yu got comin’. Now: I want some information m’ I want it fast!’ He waved the glowing blade of the knife in front of Parr’s sweating face.
‘Yu—yu can’t!’ Parr gasped. ‘Yu wouldn’t … yo’re a white man. Yu wouldn’t pull an Injun trick like that .... ’
‘I could an’ I will,’ Green said grimly, ‘unless yore jaw loosens some. First question: who’s yore boss?’
Parr hesitated. Then, incredibly, he shook his head. Fear of Sudden was one thing; fear of Barclay and Linkham was another. He did not really believe that Green would use Indian torture on him.
‘Yo’re a fool!’ snapped Sudden, ‘an’ I got no time for fools.’
He bent and ripped away the front of Parr’s shirt. Holding Parr’s shoulder in a grip like steel, he brought the glowing knife blade inexorably closer to the shrinking skin. Writhing, sobbing, Parr tried to move away from the growing sear of the blade, but without success. When it was within half an inch of his body, he broke, and sobbed wildly, ‘Barclay! Barclay hired me! Damn it! Yu, put that thing away!’
‘Barclay hired yu personal? Sudden insisted.
‘No, not personal. Linkham did all the hirin’, but he’s Barclay’s foreman. It’s the same thing.’
‘Yu reported to Linkham, then, not Barclay?
‘Yes, yes, I told yu, yes! Put that damned knife down .... ’
‘Right, full marks so far. Now the big question, Parr: who ramrods the Shadows?’
Parr’s face tightened. ‘I can’t tell yu that—they’d kill me fer shore!’
‘Yu think I’m likely to give yu a medal?’ snapped Green harshly. He brought the knife back in front of Parr’s eyes. ‘Talk, damn yu!’
‘Linkham! Linkham runs the Shadows?
‘Yo’re shore?’
E Parr nodded vehemently. ‘There’s eight of them: Morley, Smith, Callaghan, Roberts, MacAlmon, a fellow called Ray, an’ Bull Pardoe. He’s in charge when Linkham ain’t there, which is most o’ the time.’
‘Is he the big broken-nosed fellow?’
Parr nodded, eager to please now, his resistance gone completely. ‘Bull don’t give no orders, though. They only do what Link tells them. The rest of the time they hole up.’
‘Where?’
‘There’s a canyon I could take yu there,’ Parr said. A fleeting expression of cunning momentarily lighting his foxy eyes.
‘Yu ain’t goin’ anyplace, Parr,’ Sudden told him coldly, ‘so don’t strain yore tiny little brain. Yu just tell me where they hole up—an’ don’t lie to me. I’d take exception to it.’ He gestured with the knife again.
‘A canyon, I told yu,’ Parr blurted hastily. ‘I’m tellin’ yu the truth. Yu head up northwest through the Badlands along the bases o’ these hills until yu come to a canyon. Yu’ll know it ’cause they’s some rocks that look like a lizard. The canyon looks like a blind draw, but it opens into a little valley. There’s a shack there. That’s where they hole up.’
Green looked dubious. He regarded the prisoner for a moment, and then said, ‘Parr, I think yo’re lyin’—’
‘No!’ screeched Parr, ‘I ain’t! Yu got to believe me!’
Green shook his head and thrust the Bowie knife back into the fire.
‘Green, yu can’t!’ screamed Parr. ‘I’ve been there. It’s the truth. I’ve told yu the truth. The truth!’
Sudden, his back towards Parr, smiled to himself. Then, nodding as if coming to a decision, he turned and faced the prisoner.
‘I’ll take a look.’ He turned back to Dave. ‘Can yu get back to the Slash 8 on yore own?’
Dave’s face turned sullen. ‘Hell, Jim, I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Let me come with yu.’
‘No, Dave. If yu can get back to the ranch, I want yu there. I’m goin’ to mosey up an’ take a look for this shack. If I ain’t back inside o’ forty-eight hours, get over to Judge Pringle at South Bend an’ tell him what happened. He’ll know what to do. Now don’t argue with me, Dave. I got a feelin’ yo’re goin’ to be needed at the ranch, an’ yu got to get that shoulder looked after.’
Dave grumbled mightily, but he knew in his heart that Green was right; in this condition, he would be a hindrance to the foreman.
Sudden turned now to Parr. ‘I’m turnin’ yu loose, Parr,’ he told the wide-eyed prisoner. ‘I’d guess from the look o’ yore face that yore old bosses have given yu marchin’ orders. I’m reinforcin’ whatever they told yu. Get outa this country, pronto. If I hear o’ yore bein’ seen around here, I’ll take after yu personally.’ He bent and whispered something to Parr, who recoiled and looked at him in amazement. ·
‘Yo’re—’
‘Yes, I am!’ Sudden interrupted, ‘so yu know I ain’t just talkin’.’ He slashed the man’s bonds, and pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Git!’ he told the battered Parr. Stumbling, uncertain, terrified, the bandit mounted his horse and disappeared into the darkness.
‘Yu reckon that was wise, Jim?’ Dave asked; ‘He might go straight to warn them yo’re comin’.’
‘No,’ Sudden told him. ‘Parr is finished, an’ he knows it. He ain’t worth the price of a bullet. Let him go—we got bigger fish to fry.’
Shortly afterwards, the two men mounted their horses. Dave shook hands soberly with his friend.
‘Good luck, Jim,’ he said. Sudden smiled and moved off, leaving his friend watching as the tall, spare form of the man who had become his friend disappeared on the black horse into the blacker night.