Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (13 page)

He glanced over towards the Oasis.
‘I reckon I could use a drink,’ he announced, and without another
word strode purposefully across the street, while his four allies
watched him with amazed expressions.

Billy Hornby broke the silence.
‘Chris Helm in front o’ him an’ three paid guns ridin’ him down
from behind, an’ he allows they might’ve given him a
bad moment.’
He shook his
head. ‘Gents, I aim to take a drink with a
man
— the first real man to hit this
town in a long time.’

He followed Green towards the saloon. After a
moment, Hight looked at the other two.

‘
Damned if he ain’t right,’ he
told them.

Sim Cotton was worried. He was not
normally a worrying man, but the events of the past half-dozen
hours had played havoc with his carefully wrought plans. Not for
the first time, he silently cursed the rebel boy who had
precipitated this debacle and the brother whose thoughtless, stupid
act had started it all. Twenty minutes before, a startled shout had
brought him to his feet in the big room of the Cottonwood ranch,
and he had gone outside to see one of his riders running towards
the house, a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

‘
It was Helm’s hoss,’ the man
gasped. ‘An’ this was pinned on to the saddle.’ He handed the note
to his employer.

Cotton snatched the paper out of
the man’s hand and read it. It was brief and to the
point.

‘
Your move’ he read. He crumpled
the paper into a ball and hurled it to the ground. ‘Damn the man!
He musta got Helm! But how? There wasn’t a man in this territory
fast enough to beat Chris!’

‘
Mebbe they bushwhacked him,’
suggested the rider.

‘
Get back to yore work!’ snapped
Cotton, turning and stamping back into the house. He hurled himself
into an armchair and lit a black cigar, clamping his teeth into it
and smoking furiously, his brows knit. What had happened in
Cottontown? How many men had this Green rallied around him? Had
Helm been ambushed? If so, how had the plan they had concocted
fared? What was Parris doing? He recalled the remark the cowpuncher
had made about a U.S. Marshal. Had Green been bluffing? Or was the
Federal lawman on his way? If so, he would arrive within the next
twenty-four hours. Sim Cotton got to his feet, paced forward and
back across the stone floor of the Cottonwood ranch living room. He
was still pacing when his brother came in, having been told of the
news.

‘
Sim!’ Art’s disbelieving voice
stopped his brother in mid-stride. ‘They didn’t get
Helm?’

Sim looked at Art, saying nothing, just looking at
him.

Art’s stare fell, and he slumped
into a chair. ‘My Gawd!’ he breathed.

‘
Who
is
this feller Green?’

‘
He ain’t no driftin’ cowboy,
that’s for shore,’ muttered Buck Cotton.

‘
I don’t care if he’s Abraham
Lincoln!’ snapped Sim Cotton. ‘We got to root him out o’ there. As
long as he’s alive, we ain’t controllin’ Cottontown, an’ if we
ain’t controlling Cottontown then we ain’t controlling anythin’ in
these parts. They’ll build that dam, passel out the land to
nesters, an’ we’ll be left with the land this ranch stands on an’
not one lousy acre more. We’ll be bust flat, an’ I ain’t sittin’
here lettin’ that happen.’ Art looked up at his brother, his lack
luster eyes shining with interest from beneath his puffed, bruised
brows.

‘
What yu aimin’ to do, Sim?’ he
asked.

‘
Do we ride in an’ wipe ’em out?’
added Buck eagerly.

‘
Shore,’ the older man agreed with
massive scorn. ‘That’s real bright thinkin’. That’s makin’ it easy
for them. We all ride in nice an’ bunched, an’ they lay for us on
the rooftops. They’d cut us to pieces afore we got past the bank.
If we ride into that town, we got to stay there. The question is:
was that puncher bluffln’ about the U.S. Marshal?’

‘
He shore don’t give the
impression o’ bein’ much on bluff,’ said Buck. ‘As Art here can
testify.’ He flinched as his brother laid a glowering glance of
hatred upon him. The beating he had taken at Green’s hands had left
deep scars on Art Cotton, and not all of them showed.

‘
Hell’s teeth!’ cursed Sim Cotton.
Everything had been doing so well. His influence in the town had
been unassailable. All had
been ready for
the final coup
—
and now, this. What was the answer?

‘
We got to go in,’ he decided
finally. ‘We got to take that town back.’ He smashed his fist into
his palm. ‘There’s too much at stake to back out now. We got to
take that town. An’ I want to watch that drifter dance at the end
of a rope!’

Art Cotton rose to his feet.

‘
Now yo’re talkin’, Sim!’ he
enthused. ‘We’ll roll them tender-feet up like a
carpet!’

‘
No!’
Sim
Cotton thundered. ‘We play our cards very careful. We filter into
town quiet-like. No noise. Take over the place. Pull in a man, two
men. First thing we got to do is find out how many men Green’s got
with him, afore we make our move.’ His face was now suffused with a
look of pure animal cunning. He turned to his younger
brother.

‘
Now, Bucky, yu get yore chance to
do somethin’ towards puttin’ this mess right. Yu better do it
properly. I won’t give yu no second chance, yu hear?’

Buck Cotton nodded eagerly, his
face white, anxious to please this frowning man who seemed suddenly
to be a deadly stranger and not his forgiving older brother. ‘Shore
Sim,’ he managed. ‘Just name it, an’ it’s done.’

Sim Cotton nodded. ‘They got the
town. We want it. But we ain’t got anythin’ to offer them for it.
Now Bucky here knows where there’s somethin’ that’ll bring that
nester kid out into the open like a bee-stung porkypine,’ he
grinned evilly. ‘Yu followin’ me, Bucky?’

The younger man’s face was puzzled
for a moment, and then understanding dawned, bringing a wolf-like
grin to his features.

‘
The girl!’ he breathed. ‘O’
course. They’ll come out like sheep if we got the girl! Sim, yo’re
a genius! Why didn’t I think o’ that?’

‘
I wonder,’ Art said sourly, his
lip curled.

‘
Yu boys ain’t got time for this
kid scrappin,’ snapped Sim. ‘Bucky, get on yore way. Bring the gal
to Mott’s house. That’s where we’ll be. An’ don’t make no slips,
boy. Mind me, now! Don’t make no slips, or yo’re
finished!’

Buck Cotton nodded, chastened out
of his delight at Sim’s idea of kidnapping the Hornby girl. He
slammed out of the house and saddled up his horse, muttering to
himself.

‘
Shore must think I’m dumb,’ he
mumbled. ‘I’ll show him. When he’s got this town in his paw again,
he better remember me.’ He leapt into the saddle and spurred off
across the scrubland, heading southeast towards the Lazy H, and as
he rode he thought again about the girl, and as he thought about
her his eyes shone wildly.

The Lazy H lay in a small hollow, a
neat, low-slung stone house of five rooms, L-shaped and compact
beneath the shading oak and elm trees watered by the river which
burbled by on its course towards the Rio Grande, its banks not
fifty yards from the house itself. Buck Cotton pulled his horse to
a stop on the top of the slope, and dismounted, scanning the area
in front of the house and the corral off on the southern side.
There was no sign of a horse, no sign of movement. He nodded to
himself, an eager smile playing around his lips.

‘
I wonder where the Mex woman
is?’
As if in answer to his question, a
woman emerged from the house
carrying a tub
fall of washing which she hefted towards the pump in the yard,
proceeding to energetically splash water upon the clothes in the
tub.

Moving cautiously, Buck got to
within a few yards of her before the woman looked up with startled
eyes into the gaping barrel of Buck’s six-gun. Buck had a finger on
his lips.

‘
Don’t make a sound,’ he hissed
‘or…’He gestured with the
gun.
‘Comprende?’
The woman
nodded, her eyes wide with fear.
‘A donde
es la señorita?’
Buck asked her. ‘Where’s
the girl?’

The woman pointed towards the
house.
‘En la casa,’
she said.

‘
She alone?’

Another nod.

‘
Right! Lead on inside,’ he told
her, pointing with the gun.
‘
Vamos!
’
Looking fearfully over her shoulder,
the woman shuffled towards the door. She went inside, turning
sharply right as she did so, and Buck came in smoothly after her,
blinking to adjust his eyes to the sudden gloom of the interior. He
hardly saw the blur of movement; the chopping descent of the gun
barrel wielded by Billy Hornby which cracked his wrist-bone like a
dried twig, slashing the gun from his numb fingers. Buck Cotton’s
reflexes were good, even so. He tried to move fast out of the way
but stumbled backwards out into the sunlit yard, sprawling in the
dirt, unable to help break the fall with his injured arm, and
looked up to see Billy Hornby standing over him spraddle-legged,
the heavy .45 cocked in his hand, only his thumb holding back the
hammer, and a terrible fear possessed Buck Cotton. For the look on
Hornby’s face was one of insane rage. Buck watched for perhaps ten
endless seconds as Billy Hornby tried to force himself to release
the hammer of the gun and kill the hated thing at his feet, but the
boy could not do it. With something like a sigh, Billy’s tenseness
abated, and the light came back into his eyes. Buck Cotton,
sweating on the ground, knew that for the moment he would live. He
tried to get up, but Billy lined the gun on him again.

‘
Stay in the dirt where yu belong,
yu sidewinder!’ he grated. ‘I still ain’t shore I didn’t ought to
salivate yu.’

Buck lay still. Any argument with
this fury-filled young man was useless. One wrong move and Billy
would kill him.

‘
Green figgered yu’d try somethin’
like this,’ Billy told him. ‘He said he had some trouble tryin’ to
think like a rat, but once he got the hang of it, it was easy to
guess what yore play’d be. I sent Jenny down to Fort Lane afore all
this started, Bucky-boy. Which turns the tables a mite. That’s the
on’y reason yu ain’t buzzard-bait already.’

Buck Cotton frowned up at his
captor. ‘What yu ravin’ about, Hornby?’ he said.

‘
Hell, I knew yu was dumb, Buck,
but if yu can’t see it!’ Billy shook his head. ‘I do reckon yu
can’t, at that. Yu was comin’ out here to try to kidnap Jenny, an’
use her as a hostage, right?’

Cotton shook his head. ‘I don’t
know what yo’re talkin’ about,’ he mumbled.

‘
Sez yu,’ was the impolite retort.
‘But now, instead o’ Jenny bein’ yore brother’s ace in the hole,
it’s the other way round. Yo’re ours. It’ll be interestin’ to see
how tough he gets with yu in our han’s.’

Fear struck at Buck Cotton’s
vitals. Sim had warned him that if he failed to bring in the girl,
he was finished. Knowing his brother, Buck was well aware that Sim
would never bargain — he had said as much at the ranch.

‘
Yo’re crazy!’ he cried, hoarsely.
‘Sim won’t do no deals with yu!’

‘
We’ll have to see about that,’
replied Billy grimly. ‘Either way,
yu lose.
Cotton. Yu ought to’ve stayed home with yore head down.’

The other stood up, trembling, his mind a seething
mass of wild ideas. How could he break away from this menacing
youth and get word to Sim without being killed? Would Sim accept
that he had no way of bringing in the girl? A thought occurred to
him and he voiced it.

‘
How was yu so shore we wouldn’t
all ride over here?’ he asked.

‘
Wasn’t,’ Billy retorted
succinctly. ‘If Manuela had seen more’n one man she was goin’ to
give me the word. She woulda just told yu that Jenny wasn’t here. I
woulda laid low till yu was gone. As it was, yu come alone. An’ now
I’ve got yu, yu sonofabitch. I hope yo’re feelin’ fit.’

Buck Cotton frowned at this last
remark. What had his fitness to do with anything? Seeing his
captive’s puzzlement, Billy Hornby laughed aloud.

‘
Yo’re wonderin’ why I said that?’
he grinned. ‘Shucks, that’s easy, Bucky-boy. Yo’re walkin’ to
town.’

‘
Walkin’!’ Buck Cotton’s face was
horror-stricken. To have to walk more than fifty feet was something
the average Westerner avoided like the plague — he would rather
mount a horse to cross the street than cross it on foot. The
high-heeled boots so practical for the man in the saddle were
hardly designed for hiking, and the mere thought of the tramp into
town filled Buck Cotton with anguish.

‘
Yu wouldn’t … yu couldn’t make a
man walk all that way!’ he gasped.

‘
A man, mebbe not,’ was Billy’s
sardonic retort. ‘Yu, that’s somethin’ else. Yu hardly qualify as a
man in my books.’ He lifted the lariat from Buck’s horse, and shook
the noose free. This he placed about the Cottonwood man’s
neck.

‘
Don’t go gettin’ any ideas about
slidin’ off,’ Billy warned him. ‘Or yo’re likely to get that
choked-up feelin’.’