Buchanan 18

by Jonas Ward

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  He was a tall son—taller than most men by a head, with a look of wildness in his battered, tough face.

  He was Tom Buchanan out of West Texas, who fought with joy and loved with gusto—who many times had gone to meet death without pause and with great good nature.

  This time he took on the whole of Agry County and the violent bandit clan that ran it. It was no fight of his—but a girl had been violated and a family’s honor tarnished.

  So Buchanan settled his gunbelt and flexed his great hands and went surging into battle like a one-man troop of cavalry.

  And, by God, in the end there was left even to burn in Agrytown

  BUCHANAN 18: THE NAME’S BUCHANAN

  By Jonas Ward

  First published by Fawcett Books in 1956

  Copyright © 1956, 2020 by Eileen Ard

  First Digital Edition: June 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  One

  It was Gomez who was first aware that something was wrong. Very wrong. He did not waste time or words to send someone else but rode off himself to intercept the riderless horse. A short and solid old man in full possession of his faculties, Gomez knew even at this distance what horse it was and whose horse it was. He had foaled the coal-black filly himself, supervised its special rearing, and been privileged by Don Pedro to present it in person to Maria on her sixteenth birthday, two years before. So he knew that horse very well; knew it, you might almost say, to speak to.

  “What is this?” he growled in Spanish when he had scooped the black’s loose reins into his fist and brought it up short. “Where do you go without the mistress?” Now he dismounted and circled the animal, looking first for a note of explanation that the young girl might have sent back, then for a message of any kind that she might have scratched onto the leather of the saddle. But there was none, and he could detect nothing in the filly’s appearance to indicate what had happened. The animal’s coat was not lathered from a hard run, nor was she wall-eyed. Even so, the realistic Gomez suspected the worst, and the worst in this part of California was that the horse had been startled by a rattler, thrown its rider and sped off. Then, with the danger behind and forgotten, it had simply wandered back to the ranch.

  Gomez remounted his own big-chested stallion and drove both horses in the direction of the sprawling hacienda that was winter headquarters of Rancho del Rey. Gomez and his men worked her the year ‘round, but Don Pedro moved his family to the seaside near Agua Caliente during the hot season. In fact, Gomez reflected absently now, it was in Caliente that Maria was going to be married this coming June. Madre Mia, where have the years flown to?

  By this time all work had stopped on the place, and the sight of the black without its familiar, vivacious rider was so disquieting that no one dared put his private fears into words. The household had been alerted, so that Don Pedro and Doña Isabel hurried out onto the terrace to meet their segundo.

  “What has happened to my daughter?” the owner asked with the stiff formality that was his chief trait.

  “Truly, señor,” Gomez answered, “I do not yet know. I would request permission to start a search.”

  “Granted,” Don Pedro said, his voice betraying no emotion. But as his wife Isabel knew, and as his friend Gomez knew, the more turmoil that stirred in the old don’s breast the colder was the front that he presented to the world. A tall and slender man, an aristocrat in the old world and a true cabellero in the new, Pedro Francisco del Cuervo lived by a code of manners and morals that made its strictest demands on himself.

  With a bow to Doña Isabel, Gomez wheeled his mount and proceeded toward the fenced corral at a trot, issuing orders as soon as the waiting men were within earshot. But his own segundo, Ramon, had anticipated him and an even dozen top vaqueros were already in the saddle awaiting directions. Gomez led them in a body down the great, curving cobblestone roadway that connected the hacienda with the many wagon trails that reached out to all parts of the ranch like spokes of a wheel. At the point in the road which formed the hub of this wheel, Gomez halted the party and then sent them off in pairs along each of the six trails, any one of which a carefree and beautiful young girl might have chosen for her daily ride.

  Gomez himself, with a great anxiety in his heart, rode the public trail that led to Agrytown, just across the border in the state of California.

  Buchanan had passed that way just half an hour before, heading in the same direction—away from Mexico. After two years, Tom Buchanan and Mexico had had enough of one another. Buchanan wanted to get away from the great hellhole that was the state of Sonora, and in particular from that lying, cheating Campos who called himself General of the People’s Army and El Libertad. All that Campos wanted to liberate was the government treasury, and Buchanan wondered again why it had taken him two long, weary years to find out what a phony revolution he had got mixed up in.

  No, he and Campos wouldn’t miss each other. Nor would the government, whose troops he had harassed and raided all those dirty months. Oh, maybe there was a chiquita here and a chiquita there who might still be able to stand the sight of him—and vice-versa, especially in San Javier. How could such a God-forsaken little town produce so many amiable women?

  Something just as incongruous as the girls of San Javier attracted Buchanan’s attention then, and as saddle-weary as he was after twelve hours’ steady riding, he became instantly alert. A horse was flying down the road toward him, going to beat hell. But it carried no rider to rake its side with spurs or quirt it.

  Buchanan put his own tired animal squarely across the trail, pulled his battered hat from his head and flagged the oncoming black first to a trot and then to a halt. As Gomez was to do a little later, Buchanan inspected the filly carefully, also looking for a message of some kind, but inspecting horseflesh as well. This was somebody’s fine property, he thought, and for a moment the temptation was in him. Then, with a hard slap at the filly’s rump, he sent her on her way again and wondered how much influence El Libertad had had on him to make him even consider horse stealing.

  It’s you for the States, Buchanan, he told himself fiercely, and never leave them again. Even so, the incident of meeting the horse troubled him and his eyes searched this way and that as he resumed his traveling. There was a fork up ahead and Buchanan took the more northerly of the roads.

  It was a mile beyond the fork that his glance caught a gleam of something white off the trail. He halted and dismounted, leaving the horse while he made his way on foot through the heavy brush. The stuff was thick, but it appeared as though someone had recently come through here from the opposite direction, bending it all toward him. Then he reached the thing he had seen, a piece of torn white lace—good Spanish lace if Buchanan was any judge—caught on a bramble. He left it there and pushed further on. Abruptly the sharp and thorny foliage ended and he was on the bank of a stream. Directly in front of him a girl was lying face down in the water, her black hair spread out like a great fan, and the whole of her body looking ill-used and lifeless.

  Buchanan lifted her onto the bank, saw that at least she had not yet swallowed her tongue and located a fai
nt beat beneath her breast. He went to work at what he knew fundamentally was the way to force the water out of her lungs. For fifteen minutes he labored over her, pushing and squeezing beneath her exposed ribs, and almost a cupful of water came out of her before his ears were rewarded with a moaning sound from deep in her chest. In another five minutes she was breathing in almost regular fashion, but she did not regain consciousness and Buchanan knew that was because of the bloody gash someone had opened at the base of her skull.

  What else had been done to her here could only be guessed at from the evidence of her torn clothing, as well as the signs of struggle in the uprooted grass and the very piece of lace that had led him here. That, he guessed, had been carried away unknowingly by her attacker and then been caught in passing by the bramble.

  If he wasn’t sure that Luis Campos was four hundred miles to the south of here—Buchanan broke off the thought, telling himself bitterly that there were other scum in this world besides Campos.

  Now the problem was to get her warm. He went away and returned with his own blanket, an item as faded and threadbare as the clothes on his back, wrapped her in it snugly and lifted her in his arms. Such a wisp of a thing, Buchanan thought. And a good strong face. He would have to call her something more than just pretty … Buchanan looked up to find himself staring down the unwavering barrel of a handgun. The gun was an American Colt, like the pair hanging at his own hips, but the toter was a Mexican—a capable-looking old man with gray-black mustachios and the appearance of great strength in his face.

  “Hombre,” Gomez said in Spanish, “what are you doing with that girl?”

  Buchanan considered his answer carefully, marking well the deep emotion in the old man’s voice.

  “Padre,” he said in Spanish, “this one has had trouble. But I am a stranger to it.”

  Gomez believed him, just like that. But he believed him because he had spoken just as he had, with the same sorrow, for to come upon the Señorita Maria in the arms of such a formidable character as this was to suspect the worst. He was tall, taller by a head than Don Pedro, with the look of a wild animal in his battered, unshaven face. An ominous type to meet on the trail, Gomez thought. Even now he is still recovering from what must have been an almost fatal beating.

  Gomez reholstered the gun, nevertheless. “I will part the bushes for you, señor,” he said and led the way back.

  Buchanan followed, grateful for the help and noting that the man now addressed him as señor instead of hombre. “Is this girl your daughter?” he asked.

  “She is like my daughter,” Gomez answered. “She is Maria del Cuervo. I am segundo to her father.”

  “Some man has been very cruel with her,” Buchanan said.

  Gomez turned to look up into Buchanan’s face. They gazed at each other for a long moment and then Gomez resumed the journey to where their horses waited. Buchanan thought, This is the kind of man I’ve been making life miserable for these past two years—a nice, decent guy wanting nothing but peace. “Can you ride with her?”

  Buchanan nodded. “If you will hold her while I mount.” Gomez took the blanketed form in his arms, returned it when Buchanan was in his saddle. Then Gomez lifted the reins over the horse’s head, mounted his own and led the slow procession back toward the hacienda. They were met, however, just beyond the fork in the road, by a party of horsemen and one who drove a team and wagon.

  “You have found her!” shouted a young man among them, one who was dressed better and who sat his horse straighter than the others. He was Juan del Cuervo, Maria’s brother, and he rode directly to Buchanan.

  “How is she? Is she all right?”

  “She’s alive,” Buchanan said.

  “The horse threw her? She struck her head?”

  Buchanan glanced at Gomez, who shook his head, Buchanan shrugged his shoulders in answer to the question. He handed the girl down to two men who carried her very tenderly to the wagon. Juan del Cuervo handed his reins to someone else and climbed in beside his sister. The trip was resumed.

  It was when they were on the cobblestone entranceway that Gomez thought to ask the stranger his name and an account of his finding the señorita so that all could be related properly to Don Pedro and Doña Isabel. But, unaccountably, Buchanan was no longer with them.

  That was strange behavior, Gomez thought and then he gave the matter more consideration. Perhaps it was just as well, the old man told himself. The stranger was most probably un hombre muy malo, and Don Pedro being the caballero that he was, he would most certainly feel a lifetime debt. It was not natural that gentlemen should be obliged to rogues, Gomez decided. Nor should a gentleman’s highborn daughter be discomforted by a wayfarer’s intimate knowledge of her misfortune. It was better for everyone that the man was gone from their lives as quickly as he had entered them.

  Two

  Tia Rosa, the midwife, made the first examination of the unconscious girl, cut the matted hair from the deep scalp wound, bandaged it and held her own counsel until Dr. Alvarez arrived from the town. When the doctor was finished he agreed with the midwife’s findings and Don Pedro was summoned.

  “Please, my friend, seat yourself,” the doctor said.

  “I will stand, Alfredo. Is my daughter gravely injured?”

  “Physically,” Dr. Alvarez began slowly, “Maria will have a full recovery. She has the strength of her father.”

  “We are only what God makes us.”

  “Very true. But there is another thing, another injury suffered by your daughter. It is something that may have damaged her spirit, something that will make her require your guidance and understanding as never before….”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The girl has been violated, Don Pedro,” Alvarez told him gently, and there was a long and stunning silence.

  “My daughter?” the proud father said icily. “Such a thing is unthinkable.”

  “But, unfortunately, a fact.”

  “You have, of course, informed no one else of this?”

  “Only yourself.”

  “And you two—I have your pledge of secrecy?”

  The doctor and the frightened midwife nodded.

  “Time,” Alvarez said, “heals all wounds. What I prescribe for Maria is gentleness and understanding.”

  Don Pedro silenced him with a gesture. “Thank you, Alfredo,” he said. “You will call on your patient regularly?”

  “I will be here the first thing tomorrow morning.” The doctor left the hacienda then and returned to town. Don Pedro went to his study, and after an hour had passed he called his wife and son into the room.

  “Our name has been dishonored,” he told them. “Against her will, a man has had carnal knowledge of our beloved Maria.”

  A sob broke spontaneously from Doña Isabel. Juan del Cuervo went white beneath his tanned complexion.

  “I will kill him very slowly,” Juan said.

  “You will kill whom, my son?”

  “I will find him out, never fear.”

  “And you will then announce your reasons for killing him?”

  “I—” The young man’s voice broke off abruptly. He shook his head. “My sister must be avenged.”

  “In good time, Juan,” his father said. “In good time.”

  “Immediately! He cannot live a minute longer than I can manage his death.”

  “No,” Doña Isabel said, brushing away her tears. “This is a very delicate matter. Your sister intends to be married in a few short months.” She looked at her husband. “I, personally, have never given my full approval to young Sebastian, nor to the Diaz family. But Maria is apparently fond of him, and the alliance is advantageous—”

  “Sebastian Diaz is Maria’s choice,” Don Pedro said angrily. “I am not bargaining with my daughter’s happiness.”

  “Of course not, dear husband.” The woman turned to her son. “But you know Sebastian very well, Juan. We have all seen him grow from a rather willful little boy to one of the wealthi
est young men in all of Mexico—”

  “But what has this to do with Maria’s betrayer?” the young man interrupted impetuously.

  “A great deal,” Isabel said, “if your sister truly loves Sebastian. Sebastian is used to having everything come to him new, firsthand.” She glanced down into her lap and the rosary interlaced in her fingers. “Wrong or right,” she said, “Sebastian would demand that he bring a maiden to the wedding bed.”

  “But Maria is!”

  “In her heart, yes. In God’s knowledge. But should Sebastian learn of this terrible incident of today—I am not so certain of his sympathy, of his understanding.”

  “To hell with Sebastian!” Juan shouted. “Let Maria find a man of heart—”

  “You are young,” Don Pedro told him sternly. “Your blood runs hot in your veins and needs cooling.”

  “Your father speaks truly,” Doña Isabel said gently. “You are twenty years old, you are not thinking of marriage. When you do, you will see how your thinking has been disciplined to the customs of our time.”

  “I would never hold—rape—against my bride’s honor.”

  “Then you would be one man in a thousand in Mexico,” his mother said.

  Juan sat down then, and seemed to subside.

  Don Pedro said, “We will, in time, learn the man’s identity. Then, with Maria married, and without her knowledge, we will do what must be done.”

  Juan raised his head, was about to speak out, then closed his lips in a tight line.

  “Maria,” Don Pedro continued, “is still not conscious. Tia Rosa will attend her, and Juan, I desire that you and Gomez stand alternate watch outside the door. The girl may suffer delirium and no one must hear her outcries under any circumstances. Do you understand, my son?”

  Juan nodded, got up and left his parents alone to discuss the thing further. He climbed to the floor above and took up his station outside the door of his sister’s room. Three hours later Gomez arrived to spell him.