Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 02 - Sudden(1933) by Oliver Strange Page B

was no more than in it when I thought
they’d fell on me. Dunno how long I was out, but the sun warn’t much lower when
I come to. My belt was gone an’ my head felt like someone had parted my hair
with an axe.”
                 “An’
I’m tellin’ yu, Goldy warn’t on’y sore in the head,” continued the citizen who
had supplied Sudden with the news. “He’s lost a hefty stake, but there’s a
chance he’ll git it back.”
                 “Did
he see the fella?” the foreman asked.
                 “Reckon
so,” was the reply. “Goldy staggered along through the gully, an’ when he
reaches the open, he sees a chap on a grey hoss ridin’ lickety-split for town.
He was over a mile away, but Goldy says it was Luce Burdette. Him an’ the marshal is up at the hotel now.”
                 “Guess
I’ll trail along an’ see what’s doin ’,” Sudden said
casually.
                 In
the parlour of the hotel he found Luce, Slype, a red-faced, angry-looking
fellow whose head was bandaged, and a crowd of curious onlookers. The accused
man was glaring at them defiantly. On the table lay his six-shooter, a small
doe-skin bag, and various other articles.
                 Evidently
he had been disarmed and searched.
                 “I
ain’t denyin’ I was up that way this afternoon, an’ I dessay it was me Evans
saw,” Luce was saying as Sudden elbowed his way into the room.
                 “What
was yu doin’ around there?” Slype asked.
                 “Mindin’
my own business,” snapped the boy.
                 “How’d
yu git that dust?” growled Evans, pointing to the bag on the table.
                 “Worked
for it,” Luce replied. “I’ve been diggin’ myself.”
                 “Yeah,
in my belt,” sneered the miner. “An’ I s’pose yu got a hole in the ground all
ready to show us?”
                 “I
reckon it’s an open an’ shut case, Luce,” the marshal said. “Better come clean
an’ tell us where yu cached the rest o’ the plunder.”
                 “I
tell yu I never had it—that dust is mine,” the youth said savagely.
                 “Yo’re
sayin’ so don’t prove nothin’,” the officer retorted. “I’m a-goin’ to take yu
in.”
                 “Hold
on, marshal,” Sudden interposed, and turned to Evans. “Did all the dust in yore
belt come outa the claim yo’re workin’?”
                 The
man nodded sullenly.
                 “Got
any more of it on yu?” the cowpuncher continued.
                 Goldy
dug down into his pocket and produced a little leathern sack—his “poke”. “What
I took out today—kept it for spendin’,” he explained, and with an ugly look at
Luce, “Yu missed that, didn’t yu?”
                 “What’s
the big idea?” Slype inquired.
                 “Just
this, marshal,” the C P foreman replied. “I’ve heard old miners say that gold
dust varies considerable, even when it comes from the same locality. P’raps
there’s someone here who can speak to that?”
                 A
shrivelled, bent man of over sixty, dressed in patched, nondescript garments,
thrust through the crowd. Out of his lined, leathery face the small eyes still
gleamed brightly. In a high, cracked voice which was not improved by the quid
of tobacco he was chewing, he corroborated the puncher’s statement.
                 “I
c’n see what the young fella’s drivin’ at, an’ he’s dead right, marshal; any
old
                 `Forty-niner’
could tell yu as much. If the dust in them two pokes ain’t exactly sim’lar,
Luce didn’t slug Evans, an’ yu c’n bet a stack on it. Lemme look at ‘em.”
                 The
marshal scowled, but he could not refuse the test. Two sheets