secret spring and the locket flew open, disclosing a miniature of a young and pretty woman. One glance and the old man dropped into his chair as though shot.
`My God !' he groaned, and sat gazing at the portrait in his hand. Then he looked at the puncher, and said, `I'm askin' how yu come by this?'
`I've allus had it--long as I can remember. I kept it hidden, even Bill Evesham never saw it. The Piute squaw who brought me up guessed it was a picture o' my mother.'
`An' o' my wife,' said Old Simon. `Our baby, Donald, was wearin' it the day he disappeared.' He held out his hands to the man in the bed. `Son, son, can yu ever forgive me? If it hadn't been for Norry, I'd have handed yu over to the hangman.'
The old man's voice shook with emotion and Green saw that in his weakened state he was perilously near to breaking down. Shaken to the depths himself by the revelation, he thrust aside his own feelings, and called up one of his whimsical smiles.
`Why as to that, seh,' he said softly, `I reckon we break even; I came here to shoot yu.'
Leeming saw the puncher's object and promptly backed him up. `But yu didn't, an' yu wouldn't have,' he said cheerily. `Somethin' would've stopped yu. Providence is shore mysterious. Why, Simon, don't yu recollect tellin' me yu couldn't help likin' this feller, even when yu thought he was stealin' yore cows?'
`I did, an' I couldn't understand it,' Simon admitted. `An' his face at times seemed familiar, though I couldn't place it, but he favours his mother--yu can all see it now.'
They could; looking from the portrait to the invalid it was easy to trace the likeness. The cowpuncher told the story of his youth as he knew it. His early wanderings over the country with the Indian horse-dealer and his band of ponies, of his adoption by Evesham and life on his ranch, until the treachery of Webb robbed his benefactor of everything and practically killed him. Of his vow of vengeance and the troubled trail it forced him to follow. Finally, how Governor Bleke, hearing of the rustling,had sent him to Hatchett's Folly. When the story was ended, Old Simon rose and clasped the teller by the hand.
`Son, I'm feelin' plumb ashamed,' he said. `If yu had shot me it would've been only just, but I reckon if what the preachers tell us is right, Bill Evesham knows the truth now an' understands. To think it should have been him that found yu. I can't never forgive myself.'
His voice trembled and broke, and both Noreen and Leeming saw that the events of the last hour had shaken him to the core. They exchanged a meaning glance, and then Job said : `Come along, old friend, I reckon the patient has had all the excitement he can stand for the present. Yu an' me'll go down an' tell the boys, an' we'll all drink the health of yore son, Donald.'
`An' my daughter,' Simon added, with a fond look at the girl. `It ain't goin' to make any difference, Norry, is it?'
She flung her arms round his neck. `Of course not, you dear old silly,' she replied brightly. `Now you run along or I shall have two of you on my hands again.'
She bustled them out of the room and returned to her place at the head of the bed. Her patient, leaning back against the pillows, appeared to be thinking deeply. Presently he spoke, with the slow drawl she had come to associate with his whimsical moods.
`This findin' o' parents is a right upsettin' business,' he stated. `Larry will smile--he christened me Don-- claimed I was a born disturber o' yore sex; but he was wrong there, I never had any time for women.'
`Except the Pretty Lady, of course,' the girl ventured.
The puncher smiled. `Now who could have told yu about her?' he questioned.
`Yu told me yourself when you were feverish,' she replied, blushing under the scrutiny he gave her.
`I guess I talked a lot o' nonsense--a man is apt to at them times,' he reflected, and when she did not rise to the bait he went off at a tangent. `Tarman would 'a' finished me if yu hadn't made yore hoss jump; he wasn't shore.'
Before she could reply, a burst of cheering and a volley of pistol shots shattered the air. The girl started up in alarm, but the patient was smiling.
`He has told the boys, an' I reckon they're pleased,' he said. `I wish he had waited.'
`But why?' she asked, unable to follow this new line of thought.
`It'll make it harder when I go,' he replied, and when she stared at him in bewilderment, he added almost fiercely, Did yu figure I'd stay here an' rob yu o' yore inheritance--yu who have been a real daughter to him all these years? Why, I'd be near as bad as Tarman.'
`But it would break his heart to lose you again,' she cried, conscious that she was fighting too for her own happiness. `He had been the kindest of fathers to me, but always he has grieved for the boy who should have been here to follow him.'
The puncher lay silent for a while, thinking, but watching the thin, set face, the girl knew that her pleading had not succeeded; he had solved the problem according to his own idea of right and wrong. When he spoke again she knew she had read him correctly.
`It shore is tough, but I can't stay here an' take yore ranch,' he said dully. `I gotta go--it's the on'y trail out.'
Noreen had come to a decision. Smiling tremulously, she laid a hand on his, and whispered :
`Are you sure--Don? Couldn't we stop talking of my ranch, your ranch, and agree to think of it as--ours?'
For a moment he did not comprehend, and then his hand closed over hers, and before the light in his eyes she hid her rosy face in his shoulder.
`Girl,' he whispered huskily, `do yu mean it?' Then, though he got no answer, his arms stole round her, and he muttered : `This shore has got me beat.'
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About Sudden
James Green aka Sudden is a fictional character created by the author Oliver Strange and after his death carried on by Frederick H. Christian. The books are centred around a gunfighter in the American Wild West era, who is in search of two men who cheated his foster father. Jim the young man promises his dying father that he will find the two and take revenge. He gives the name James Green to himself and in time gets accused of a robbery himself and becomes an outlaw.
The books were first published around the late 1920s and the early 1930s. They featured vivid descriptions of the western American landscape, rare in an author at that time. These books have been out of print for a very long time, and are currently available for purchase only in paper format, after being owned by one of more people.
Oliver Strange wrote 10 Sudden books (in order of storyline, below)
Sudden--Outlawed (1935)
Sudden (1933)
Sudden--Gold Seeker (1937)
Sudden Rides Again (1938)
Sudden Makes War (1942)
Sudden Takes the Trail (1940)
Sudden Plays a Hand (1950)
The Marshal of Lawless (1933)
The Range Robbers (1930)
The Law o' the Lariat (1931)
