Sudden--At Bay (A Sudden Western #2) (21 page)

‘How’s she goin’?’ Ricky said,
easing over to the window. A coarse laugh escaped his lips as he
surveyed the result of his handiwork. ‘Pretty good he continued.
‘Like a house on fire, yu might say.’

Sim Cotton nodded but did not
speak. He moved again to the window and peered out, his eyes
reflecting the mad, dancing flames roaring now, crackling as they
greedily bit into the desiccated wood of the stable. A half-insane
chuckle gurgled in Sim Cotton’s throat, freezing the blood in
Ricky’s veins, hardened though the man was. There was gloating
triumph in Sim Cotton’s voice when he spoke, when he hissed
out:

‘Burn, damn yu, burn!’ The insane
laughter swelled. ‘Fry the bastards!’

‘Fire!’
yelled Billy Hornby. ‘They’ve fired the stable.’ He started to
scramble down from his post by the window as the first heavy black
plumes of smoke surged into the building and the dull crackle of
the flames made itself heard.

‘Stay where yu are!’ rapped
Sudden. ‘Keep yore eyes on that street — I ain’t pinin’ to be
rushed.’

He vaulted down to the floor, and
as he did so, Billy’s gun spoke twice.

‘Right again, Jim,’ he crowed.
‘One o’ them just stuck his head up for a look-see. I reckon he’s
plumb discouraged. How is it?’

Sudden had grabbed a bucket full of
water which had been left in one of the stalls ready for the horses
and sloshed it on to the rapidly charring timbers. Already the
sound of the flames was a steady, solid roar, and the smoke grew
ever thicker. The water seemed to check the flames for a brief
moment, and then they surged forward again. Sudden sloshed the
bucket into the half-full water barrel, and again, and again,
hurling the water into the inferno which was now spreading through,
and along, the entire wall of the stable. Each time he did so, the
flames hissed, spluttered, retreated momentarily; by the time the
bucket was refilled they had once more advanced. Sweat streamed off
Sudden in the intense heat, and the flames licked out towards him
hungrily, singeing his hair and eyebrows, scorching his shirt.
Flickering sparks, tiny burning pieces of wood floated in the
dusty, smoke-filled air as the puncher labored mightily to stem the
flames. There was hardly any water left in the barrel now, although
he had the feeling that he was containing the blaze. The flames had
hardly advanced at all in the last few minutes and for a second,
hope flared in the punchers’ heart. Again he dashed the water into
the flames. Was it just imagination? Or were the flames not
spreading any further?

He threw the bucket into the barrel once more. It
clunked leadenly against the bottom. A quick inspection revealed
that there was only an inch or so of water left in the barrel, and
Sudden cursed silently at this reversal.

With a lithe spring he was behind Billy, who watched
the street with eyes narrowed against the coiling smoke.

‘Is it out?’ asked the boy,
without turning.

‘Like hell,’ gritted Sudden.
‘We’re out o’ water.’

They looked at each other silently.

‘No chance, then?’ Billy said
finally.

‘We could try spittin’ on it,’
proposed the puncher. The boy tried a smile but it fell
apart.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he
muttered.

Now the smoke thickened, laying a
level of darkness across the stable floor. The licking flames,
quelled for a while in their inexorable march, now began to advance
again, moving slowly at first and then more quickly as they caught
dry wood once more. Unhampered now by the brief attempt to quell
it, the fire crept steadily and surely up the wall, flickering
along a beam in the roof, and then another, and upwards into the
slatted roof itself. The stink of scorching leather laced their
nostrils as the fire, fanned by a faint breeze from the west, moved
along the entire length of the northern wall and reached fiery
ringers across the back wall. The roof beams were now firmly
alight, charring rapidly. Great chunks of wood slithered downwards,
flaming, sending up showers of angry sparks which smoldered and
caught, caught and burned. The flames licked across the door at the
rear, dancing lightly, delicately, almost beautiful. Sudden watched
them for a moment, then shrugged. Within only a few more minutes
the place would be an inferno. It was already unbearably hot; both
men were bathed in sweat, their clothes sticking to them like
second skins. Once the flames reached the stacked straw bales ...
Sudden’s mind retreated from the pictures his imagination conjured
up. There was only one way out left: the front way. The way covered
by the waiting guns of Sim Cotton’s killers. His mind worked
furiously. To make a run for it would be suicidal. Surrender? Billy
would surely never agree to such a humiliation. He would want to
die fighting. Sudden planned, discarded, planned again, his brain
plotting move and countermove furiously. Billy was down on the
floor again, beating at the flickering sparks in the straw with his
jacket. Beneath its sooty mask the boy’s face was
strained.

A stentorian yell from outside cut through the heavy
crackle of the flames.

‘Green! Can yu hear me?’ It was
Sim Cotton’s bull voice, coming from the jailhouse.

‘I hear yu!’ shouted Sudden.
Billy’s soot-speckled face was stiff.

‘Yu better surrender, Green! Yu
ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell. That place is goin’ to fall
in on yore head in about ten minnits. Yu ain’t got a prayer — an’
yu know it!’

The refusal sprang to Sudden’s
lips, but even as it did, he saw the bright fresh blood on Billy’s
shoulder. The frantic attempt to beat back the flames had again
opened the wound, and he knew Billy was in no condition to make a
run for it.

‘Okay, Cotton!’ he shouted. ‘Yu
win! We’re comin’ out!’

‘No, Jim!’ exploded Billy.
‘They’ll cut us down like dawgs!’ Green made no reply, but gestured
at the vivid, tumbling flames which crawled ever nearer to them.
Even as he did, a huge roof beam crashed to the floor, shattering
into a thousand pieces of flying flame, starting flickering tongues
of moving light dancing upon the tiers of straw bales all around
them.

‘Billy, we got about five minnits
an’ we’re goin’ to be dead, anyway,’ Sudden gritted. He put a
nervous tone in his words. His voice was thick with smoke but Billy
could sense the bitterness underlying the words.

‘Throw yore guns out ahead o’ yu!’
came the shouted command from across the street. ‘Then come out
with yore han’s up.’

‘Do what he says, kid,’ Sudden
told the boy.

For a long moment, Billy Hornby hesitated. He looked
at the gun in his hand. He looked, almost wistfully, across the
street. Divining his thoughts, Sudden made his voice quaver.

‘Throw yore gun out, Billy,’ he
ordered. He emphasized the words by cocking his own revolver and
aiming it at the boy. Billy’s eyes widened in astonishment, then
disgust spread across his face.

‘I never thought yu’d chicken out,
Jim,’ he rasped bitterly.

‘I ain’t about to be no dead
hero,’ grated Sudden. ‘Throw it!’

With a curse, Billy tossed his
pistol out of the window into the dust. He scrambled down from the
window and stood by the door as Sudden followed his example,
sending the two .45’s spinning far out to land half buried in the
sandy street. The flames touched the two men as they edged past the
smoldering bales of straw, their arms shielding their faces from
the murderous heat. Coughing, retching, eyes streaming, Sudden
threw back the heavy bar across the door and flung it wide. The new
draught fanned the flames back for a moment, and then they surged
forward as though in pursuit of the reeling, staggering figures who
stumbled out into the street, their clothes dotted with tiny burns,
gulping huge deep breaths of clean air into their laboring
lungs.

As their vision cleared, they saw
before them the hulking figure of Sim Cotton. Cradled in his meaty
paws was a long rifle with an unusual, octagonal barrel and an
old-fashioned hammer of the flintlock style. The receiver and stock
were heavily chased with silver which caught the light of the
roaring flames behind them.

‘Hoist yore paws, yu vermin!’
exulted Sim Cotton. ‘I’m goin’ to enjoy this!’

‘Yu brung enough guns,’ was
Sudden’s remark as he obeyed the Cottonwood owner’s snarled order.
‘That’s a Sharp’s buffler rifle, ain’t it?’

Behind them there was a rumbling, roaring crash. The
roof of the stable was sagging inwards. It would fall at any
moment.

‘Yu better let us step away a
mite, less’n yore aimin’ to fry, too,’ Sudden told his
captor.

For a moment the mad light in
Cotton’s eyes flared brighter, but then he nodded. He stepped back
a few yards, beckoning the two silent men away from the blazing
stable, the reaching flames lighting the twilit street with a red
and gruesome cast. Billy Hornby said nothing. He did not even look
at his companion.

‘Sharp’s buffler gun is right,’
agreed Sim Cotton as he settled himself again in front of them.
‘Throws a fifty-caliber slug. I seen one o’ these knock a man down
a half a mile off. Allus wondered what it’d do close
to.’

For the first time since their surrender, Billy
Hornby spoke.

‘If yo’re aimin’ to kill us, get
on with it. Cotton!’ he rasped. ‘Yo’re gloatin’ makes me
sick.’

Sim Cotton smiled, a satisfied, evil smile.

‘Yu don’t get off that light,
boy,’ he rumbled. ‘I’m goin’ to make an example o’ yu in front o’
this whole town. Take a look!’ He gestured with his head and the
prisoners turned to see the remaining two Cottonwood riders herding
a crowd of hesitant, nervous townspeople forward, pushing them down
the street like cattle ahead of their drawn guns.

‘Cottontown is goin’ to watch
this,’ gloated Sim Cotton,
‘an’
remember. They’re goin’ to watch yu die. An’
they’re goin’ to see it every time they even dream about crossin’
me again. This was my town afore yu come along. It’s still my town!
It’s allus goin’ to be my town! Mine, yu hear?’ His voice had risen
to a scream, and the milling crowd a yard or so away, held in check
by the guns of Ricky and the burly Rolfe, held their breath in awe
at his outburst. Sudden watched Sim Cotton from beneath veiled
eyes. The man was quite insane now. There was a chance … a faint
chance.

‘Yu … yu wouldn’t cut us down in
cold blood, Mr Cotton?’ he quavered, ignoring the look of utter
contempt that Billy shot at him. ‘Yu wouldn’t just … we was only
defendin’ ourselves.’

Sim Cotton threw back his head and laughed. He
turned to the crowd, dominating the street like a mad animal,
making those in front edge backwards.

‘Yu see him crawlin’?’ he roared.
‘Yu see how tough he is, now he can’t bushwhack my men an’ hide in
a barn? Yu see what happens when yu cross a man like Sim Cotton?’
He made a gesture with his left hand. ‘I snap yu — like this!’ He
snapped his fingers contemptuously and in that moment, that
half-unguarded moment while his left hand was in mid-air and the
huge buffalo rifle wavered in his right, Sudden moved. His right
arm shot sideways, jarring Billy Hornby off his feet, staggering
aside with a look of astonishment crossing his face as his legs
crossed and he fell, and saw, as he was falling, the man he had
contemptuously called a coward dropping to his left, headlong and
rolling, his hand moving towards the glinting metal of the gun
which lay half buried in the dirt where he had thrown it from the
blazing stable.

In the same half-second, with Sim
Cotton’s grandiose contempt freezing into astonishment as Ricky
yelled ‘Sim! Watch out!’ and the townspeople scattered like a flock
of quail out of the line of
fire, men
screeching in panic, bowling Rolfe off his feet. Sim Cotton
wheeled, his left hand fanning back the eared
hammer of the huge rifle, slanting the barrel down towards the
snaking figure of Sudden now rising into a half-crouch with the
Colt level and deadly in his hand. With a howl of rage and hatred
Sim Cotton pulled the trigger of the long rifle, its dull boom
smashing across the panicked shouts, drowning the lighter roar of
the .45 in Sudden’s hand. But Sim Cotton was dead on his feet when
he pulled the trigger, a neat hole drilled between his rage–knitted
brows by Sudden’s unerring shot. Sim Cotton tottered,
lurched,
fell forward, folding like a
broken grass stalk, slamming into the dusty street of the town that
had once been his.

The big caliber bullet
whanged
off the wall of
the saloon as Ricky laid his fire over the scrambling form of Billy
Hornby, whipping the dust up as Sudden wheeled in one movement
after firing the shot which had downed Sim Cotton, the gun in his
hand roaring in a stuttering roll, slashing Ricky backwards with
two bullets driven through his heart. In these blurring moments,
Rolfe had regained his feet and was now rushing forward as Sudden
whirled once more left, but Rolfe’s gun was blazing, and Sudden was
momentarily off guard. The breathless watchers saw Green flinch
slightly, staggering a pace backwards, his guns blazing even as he
did, drilling his remaining two bullets into the running Cottonwood
man, one in the heart, one in the head. Rolfe’s screamed curse was
cut in two and his gun fired by reflex action as he stopped in his
running tracks, hurled back, down, by the smashing impact of the
bullets. He tumbled slewed into a broken shape in the
dust.