When Sudden whirled to face the man who had caught him unaware, he found himself looking down the barrel of a Remington held in the rock steady hands of a hulking, broken-nosed brute of a man whom he recognized immediately as Bull Pardoe, the leader of the gang which had tried to hang George Tate that fateful night at the Slash 8. Pardoe evidently recognized his prisoner, too, for an evil smile of satisfaction creased his face.
‘Well, well,’ he sneered, ‘if it ain’t the two-gun hero himself. So you sneaked past Smitty! What brings yu up thisaway, hero?’
‘Snake-huntin’,’ was the laconic reply, ‘an’ I reckon I’ve found a real nest of ’em.’
‘Yo’re probably goin’ to wind up gettin’ bit, too,’ was the sharp retort. ‘I’ been hopin’ to get the chance o’ salivatin’ yu, hero, an’ dammed if now ain’t just as good a time as any .... ’
So saying, Pardoe’s finger tightened on the trigger of the repeating rifle. Before he could add the extra ounce of pressure his prisoner, who still stood as though it were he who held the gun, remarked quietly,
‘Don’t yu reckon yu’d better wait until yore boss sees me?’
‘He ain’t—’
‘Here—I know. It ain’t no use lookin' dumb, I know yu ain’t the ramrod o’ this cozy li’l group,’ interjected Sudden. ‘Yu ain’t I got the brain.’
‘Yu better shut yore yap,’ growled the big man, ‘afore I shut it. I got half a mind −’
‘An’ that’s about all,’ snapped Sudden. ‘Ain’t yu given a thought yet to how I found this place?’
Confusion pursued puzzlement across Pardoe’s face, and the Slash 8 man pressed home his advantage.
‘Curt Parr talked,’ he told his captor. ‘I’ve passed the word on, so it don’t make no never-mind what happens to me. My advice to yu is to start thinkin’ o’ skippin’ out o’ this neck o’ the woods. Yo’re goin’ to be up to yore navel in law mighty soon.’
‘Yo’re bluffin’,’ growled Pardoe uneasily.
‘In which case, yu got nothin’ to worry about,’ said Sudden airily. ‘Go on an’ shoot.’ He watched his man carefully. Pardoe regained his composure very quickly, and, moving without warning, he swept the barrel of the rifle up and across, catching Sudden a glancing blow on the temple. Had the Slash 8 man not been ready for such a move, the blow might have been more damaging; as it was, he dropped to his knees, shaking his head and giving every appearance of being half-stunned. Anything which might make Pardoe relax his guard slightly was a good thing. Pardoe did not make the mistake of coming any closer, though. Instead, he jeered, ‘Come on, hero, tell me some more. Yo’re bluffin’, an’ I nearly swallered it. Git on yore feet.’
Sudden got up, acting as though it was a painful struggle. In truth, his head was throbbing from the blow he had received. Pardoe gestured with the rifle. ‘Shuck yore gun belt. Drop it an’ step away from it.’ Sudden complied with the order and Pardoe rasped, ‘Now march! Lead the way to the cabin, an’ don’t try no tricks or I’ll beef yu shore.’
With Pardoe four paces behind, the rifle cocked and ready, Sudden had no choice but to comply with the order. As they neared the cabin the men Sudden had been watching came towards them.
‘Look what I found snoopin’ around,’ announced Pardoe. ‘Our two-gun friend from the Slash 8—only he don’t look so tough without his guns.’ The others gathered around in a circle, and Sudden noted that one of them sported a purple bruise on his cheekbone and jaw.
‘Hello, Ray,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Bump into a door?’
The man addressed allowed his face to twist into ugly rage, and he took a step towards the Slash 8 man, fist upraised. A word from Pardoe stopped him.
‘We all owe him,’ Pardoe snapped. ‘I got his mark on me, same as you others.’ He touched the bullet burn along his ear-lobe. ‘An’ then there’s Morley.’
‘Oh, which one was Morley?’ asked Sudden brightly. ‘The one who took the slug in Thunder Ravine?’
‘Morley’s dead, damn yore eyes,’ snarled Pardoe, ‘but yo’re goin’ to be meetin’ him shortly?
‘Don’t lose yore temper, Bull,’ Sudden advised, coolly. ‘Remember that Linkham will want to decide what do with me.’
‘I reckon Linkham will decide to blow yore head off, which is what I aim to do anyway,’ snapped Pardoe. ‘What do yu say, boys?’
A chorus of agreement arose from the outlaws.
‘Why waste a bullet on him,’ hissed Ray. ‘String him up. Give him a dose o’ what Tate was goin’ to get.’
‘Good idea,’ enjoined a lanky man on the right. ‘Get a rope.’
The subject of these deliberations stood unmoved by the threatening atmosphere about him, not a muscle of his face betraying the churning thoughts flashing through his mind. Mentally he put names to the men in front of him. Ray he knew. The guard, Pardoe had revealed, had been Smith. The tall lanky man, with the slight Irish burr in his voice would be Callaghan. Morley was dead. That meant the short, bearded man in the center and the fourth man, the one with the horse were Roberts and MacAlmon. Which of these was which Pardoe resolved with his next words, addressed to the man with the horse.
‘Mac,’ he grated. ‘Give me yore rope.’ Once again he prodded Sudden with the rifle barrel. ‘Mebbe yu won’t act so cool when yu start dancin’ on air, hero!’ he jeered. Prod. ‘What-d’yu say, hero?’
‘I say that tryin’ to hang an old man an’ hidin’ behind a gun are about all yo’re fit for, Pardoe. No wonder yu didn’t have the guts to face George Tate. Bushwackin’s more in yore line.’
Pardoe smiled a slow, evil smile. ‘Wrong again, hero!’ he said. ‘It don’t hurt to tell yu now. Linkham beefed the old man, but he was really after yore scalp. In fact, he used this Remington. That’s why I’m so shore he ain’t gonna mind if we have a little fun with yu, since yu’ve been so charmin’ as to come an’ see us alone. Eh, hero?’ Once again he poked the rifle barrel into Sudden’s ribs, but this time Sudden was ready. Imperceptibly he had been shifting his position, inch by inch, during Pardoe’s diatribe, and now, with a fluid, lightning movement, he grabbed the rifle barrel and yanked it forward, pulling Pardoe off balance towards him. With a curse, Pardoe lurched forward, and Sudden locked an arm like iron about the outlaw’s bull neck, and in the same movement whipped Pardoe’s six-gun from it’s a holster. Before any of the others had time to even move, they were ‘covered by the unwavering bore of the .45, and they had looked into those deadly slitted eyes once before. They froze.
‘That’s better, gents,’ said Sudden. His voice was like shifting ice in some polar sea. ‘Now—suppose yu all very gently unbuckle yore gun belts an’ step away from them.’
During this speech he did not relax one ounce of the pressure of the arm locked about Pardoe’s neck, but kept the wheezing outlaw bent backwards like a bow, the pig eyes bulging as the man struggled for air. The four outlaws faced Sudden, and for a moment they hesitated; then an imperious flick of the revolver in Green’s hand convinced them that hesitation might prove fatal, and their hands flew to their belt buckles. It was in this moment that Pardoe acted.
Without warning, the big outlaw simply let his entire body go slack, and folded his knees. His weight slumped against Sudden and for a moment pulled Sudden slightly off balance. In the same second, Pardoe struck blindly backwards at the Slash 8 man with his elbows and roared, ‘Get him, boys!’
Sudden, pulled forward into the wicked blows of Pardoe’s ham-like arms, reeled to one side as the broken-nosed outlaw rolled clear of him to allow his fellows an unimpeded shot. He was immediately sent spinning by Sudden’s first shot, which caught him high on the left shoulder and knocked him into a sitting position against the porch of the cabin, half-unconscious, but still able to see the unbelievable tableau before him.
Pardoe saw Ray yank his gun from its holster as the other three dived for cover, clutching their guns. He saw Sudden through a cloud of dust as the Slash 8 man hit the dirt and kept rolling, heard Ray’s gun boom, saw Ray suddenly wilt as Green’s second shot took the outlaw clean between the eyes; saw Callaghan plucked off his feet, while still running, by Green’s third shot; saw MacAlmon stop, turn, and fire at Green, missing him. Green’s fourth shot drove MacAlmon back against the rails of the corral, where he lay unmoving, and Green was now out of sight behind a water trough in the yard. Pardoe cursed and tried to move, but the pain in his shattered shoulder kept him pinned where he was like a collector’s butterfly. And he watched in agonized disbelief as Bob Roberts, who had skittered into the barn, came thrashing out on horseback, firing as he came, driving diagonally away from Green’s hiding place and trying to pin the Slash 8 man down until he was out of range.
Green remained unmoving behind the stone trough as Roberts’ bullets whined off it and thunked huge sprays of water upwards. Within a few moments Roberts was clear of the yard and heading for the trail. Pardoe cursed again, feebly, watching impotently as Green vaulted nimbly over the trough, scooped up the Remington which Pardoe had dropped, and in one movement swept it to the shoulder and fired. Pardoe watched Roberts tumble from the saddle as though reluctant; there was a small pull of dust as the man’s body hit the ground. The riderless horse careered on for a few yards and then stopped, ground hitched by the trailing reins.
Pardoe shrank back against the porch steps as the dust-smeared, slit-eyed Slash 8 man came across the yard and stood looking down at him in disgust.
‘All right Pardoe—yore war’s over!’ he grated.
Pardoe tried to speak, but found that his voice was gone. He had been around most of the trail towns of the West, and he had seen some good men with a gun. What could he say to this ice-cold devil, whose six-gun wizardry had in one unbelievably fast battle left him the only man out of six still on his feet? Pardoe looked vainly for some indication that Green had been hit, and finding none, resorted finally to a weak round of cursing. His self-indulgence was interrupted rudely by a kick in the ribs that set whorls of pain-fire dancing before his eyes.
‘Pardoe, yo’re faced with a choice: I want some information. If yu give it to me, I’ll promise yu a fair trial. If yu don’t, I’ll kill yu now. An’ I ain’t shore that killin’ yu wouldn’t be the best thing.’
Pardoe nodded; he did not dare argue with this menacing figure.
‘I want to know where Linkham is, and when he’s due here again.’
‘What time is it?’ Pardoe asked, weakly.
‘About six o’clock.’
‘Link oughta be on his way here now, in that case.’
Sudden smiled, a cold smile that sent no answering warmth into Pardoe’s face; he looks like a wolf thinkin’ o’ deer meat, was the outlaw’s unspoken thought. ·
‘Then let’s wait for him,’ said Sudden cheerfully. ‘Maybe he’s got good news for yu.’
Without seeming effort, he bent, pulled Pardoe’s good arm around his neck, and half dragged, half lifted that worthy into the house. When he got the burly outlaw inside, he threw him down on one of the rough straw mattresses in the bunks that lined the wall. Pardoe fell like a sack of potatoes.
‘Out like a light,’ Sudden told himself. ‘He shore ain’t as tough as he thinks he is.’
So saying, he tore Pardoe’s shirt open, and using strips from it, bound the man’s wound roughly. Having made the man comfortable, he then proceeded to bind and gag Pardoe efficiently in the bunk. Pardoe lay unconscious, a slight snore escaping his slack lips.
‘Sleepin’ beauty,’ commented Sudden. ‘One day yore prince will ride up on his charger. I’m bettin’ he don’t kiss yu.’
So saying, he hurried out into the yard to the gory task of removing the huddled bodies lying there. Having dragged the bodies into the bam, he returned to the cabin and settled by one of the windows. Cradling the Remington across his knees, he settled down to watch the trail.