Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (16 page)

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?’

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
cat
like, 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 com
rades 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.