Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 08 - Sudden Takes The Trail(1940) by Oliver Strange Page A

he
began to construct a cigarette.
                 “He’s
gone,” he announced, and added a fervent wish as to the delinquent’s ultimate
destination. “Helped hisself to a hoss—one o’ my string, blister his hide.”
                 “ But ” both the hearers began.
                 “Listen,”
he interrupted. “I left him tied as he was, locked in a cabin with a window
less’n a foot square. When I goes to fetch him this
mornin’ the door is still fastened, but the place is empty.”
                 “Who
kept the key?”
                 “There
ain’t but one an’ the Ol’ Man had it,” Reddy replied. “An’ is he wild?”
                 “Can’t
see there’s anythin’ to be done, but we’ll come along with yu,” the marshal
decided.
                 They
found the Bar O in an unwonted state of inactivity; the men were grouped round
the bunkhouse discussing the mystery, and the owner was impatiently striding to
and fro, awaiting Reddy’s return. He welcomed the visitors with an explosive
oath:
                 “Shinin’
hell, here’s a fine kettle o’ fish. After all the trouble you an’ Dave went to,
we go an’ lose the skunk, though how he got out beats me.”
                 “Where’d
yu put him?” Sudden asked.
                 The
foreman led the way to a stout little log structure, the door of which was
secured by a padlock and staple. Sudden looked closely at the latter, slipped a
finger through it, pulled, and the staple came away in his hand.
                 “There’s
the key that was used,” he said, pointing to a rusty iron bar lying a few yards
away. “That means he had outside help. S’pose none o’ yu heard anythin’ in the
night?” A negative came from all save one, a man nearing forty, whose dark hair
and beard were patched with grey.
                 “Now
you mention it, mister, I did hear the whicker of a hoss, but I reckoned it
come from the corral,” he said. “If I’d thought it was this sneakin’ houn’
escapin’ …”
                 “Shorely,”
Sudden agreed, and to the rancher, “No sense in keepin’ yore fellas here—the
bird has flown.” Having despatched the men to their various duties, Reddy
joined the other three indoors.
                 “Well,
you’ve showed us how he got loose, but we don’t know who made it possible,”
                 Owen
said. “Any ideas ‘bout that, Jim?”
                 “ There’s on’y two answers: either his buddy trailed us an’
waited for dark, or—it was one o’ yore outfit.”
                 “You
can wipe out that last; my boys are loyal—every damn’ one o’ them,” the rancher
asserted.
                 “I
ain’t sayin’ otherwise—just statin’ facts. That hombre who heard the hoss now,
has he been with yu long?”
                 “Pinto?—they
call him that ‘count of his piebald hair—why, no, a matter o’ three-four
months, but he was the sickest of any over this getaway.”
                 “Yeah,
I noticed that,” Sudden asked.
                 “What
do you think, Reddy?” Owen asked.
                 “I
got nothin’ agin Pinto,” the foreman admitted. “He don’t quite mix in, but I
put that down to his bein’ older’n most of us. He’s no shirker on his job.”
                 “Dessay
I’m wrong,” the marshal said. “But a stranger couldn’t ‘a’ knowed he would have
a staple to deal with an’ fetched along just the thing to beat it.” Meanwhile,
a conversation was taking place not many miles distant. On the other side of
The Step, south of the fall, the plateau—by some fantastic freak of Nature—was
broken by a great fissure, narrow and steep-sided, the bottom hidden by a
seemingly impenetrable jumble of boulders, trees, and