Free Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 03 - The Marshal of Lawless(1933) by Oliver Strange Page B

and before he could recover, the marshal
was on his way to the corral. Pete watched him saddle the big black, swing
lightly to the saddle, and lope away. He grinned ruefully.
                 “Ain’t
he the aggravatin’ cuss?” he asked himself. “An’ I can’t get mad at him
neither—not real mad. I hope to Gawd the sheriff don’t recognize him—for the
sheriff’s sake.”
                 Pete’s
fear was due to be realized, though the consequences were not serious. To
Strade, the tall man who walked into his office and, giving his name, announced
himself as the new marshal of Lawless, seemed faintly familiar.
                 “Ain’t
I seen yu afore some place?” he asked.
                 “Yeah,
lying outside the Red Ace,” Green smiled. “Mebbe I wasn’t as bad as yu figured.
                 Yu
savvy, sheriff, a drunken man’ll get more information in two days than a sober
one in that number o’ weeks; folks take it he’s too ‘blind’ to see or hear
anythin’.”
                 “Yu
was layin’ for the marshal’s job then?” Strade queried.
                 Green
grinned at him. “Yeah, I went to Lawless to get it; I’m after the fella who
calls hisself Sudden.”
                 There
was emphasis on the concluding words and Strade straightened up with a jerk,
“Yu tellin’ me that it ain’t the real Sudden pirootin’ round in these parts?”
he asked.
                 “Just
that,” the visitor replied, and anticipating the inevitable question, he added,
“Take a squint at this.”
                 From
his vest pocket he produced a folded paper. The sheriff saw that it was a printed
bill, offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the capture of one
“Sudden.” A somewhat vague description followed: “Young, dark hair and
moustache, grey-blue eyes, dressed as a cowboy, wears two guns, and rides a
black horse with a white blaze on face and white stocking on off foreleg.” The
bill had been issued by the sheriff of Fourways, Texas.
                 Strade
looked up and nodded. “That agrees with what we got,” he said. “Neither Sands
nor Eames could say much about the man—him bein’ masked—but they got the hoss
to a dot.”
                 “They
couldn’t both be wrong, an’ Eames—a hoss-user—certainly wouldn’t be.”
                 The
sheriff looked puzzled. “What’s yore point?”
                 “Accordin’
to this”—Green tapped the printed notice—“the real Sudden’s hoss has a white
stockin’ on the off fore, but both yore men say the near. Ain’t that so?”
                 Strade
reached some papers from a drawer and referred to them. “Yo’re right,” he
admitted. “Funny I didn’t spot that. Somebody’s made a mistake.”
                 “Yeah,
an’ it’s Mister Bushwhacker,” Green said. “He’s
painted the wrong leg of his bronc.”
                 The
Sweetwater sheriff scratched his head. “It does shorely look like yu’ve hit the
mark,” he said. “We’ve bin searchin’ for a stranger, but it might be anybody—”
                 He
broke off suddenly and his eyes narrowed as they rested on the black horse
hitched outside. Green saw the look and laughed.
                 “No
use, ol’-timer,” he said. “I was in the Red Ace when the stage was held up.”
                 The
sheriff laughed too. “Sorry, Green,” he apologized. “This damn job makes a
fella suspect hisself a’most. Yu stayin’ over?”
                 “I
was aimin’ to.”
                 “Good,
then yu’ll dig in with me. Bachelor quarters, but I reckon yu’ll prefer ‘em.
The hotel here stuffs its mattresses with rocks.”
                 “Bein’
rocked to sleep don’t appeal to me,” the visitor grinned, and then