by Jonas Ward
“Then my mission,” Gomez said, “is in vain. I will return to Don Pedro and tell him his fabulous offer has been rejected.”
“How fabulous?”
Gomez edged slightly closer. He guessed that Simon was not armed. He guessed, also, that there would be a gun in the drawer of the desk.
“What would you want from Don Pedro?” he asked.
Simon Agry had a fairly good idea of the Del Cuervo finances, but when he spoke his face was bland.
“Twenty thousand American dollars,” he said.
“For gold, señor, Don Pedro is hard pressed.” Gomez was close enough to the desk now to touch it. He kept his hands relaxed at his side.
“Two hundred horses then,” Simon said. “Blooded stock.”
“As you know, señor, many horses were stolen from Don Pedro only a year ago. It will be some time before we have two hundred thoroughbreds again.” One hard shove, Gomez thought, and then to capture the weapon in the drawer.
“No cash, no horses,” Agry said. “In that case I’ll accept the deed to Rancho del Rey—”
The door suddenly opened at Gomez’ back. He swung around to see Simon Agry’s gunman standing there, threateningly.
“Glad you’re here, Abe,” Agry said to Carbo. “I’ll need a witness to a little transaction.”
Carbo’s cold gaze never left the Mexican’s face. His eyes seemed to be inviting Gomez to do something hostile.
“Is it a deal?” Agry asked.
“Surely, señor,” Gomez said wearily, “you are not serious.”
“Me? It was you who came here with your fabulous offer.”
“I had in mind something more reasonable,” Gomez said. “I was prepared to offer you some choice objects from Doña Isabel’s jewelry, some priceless family heirlooms—”
“Priceless is right. I’m a businessman, Gomez, not a collector of Spanish junk. The old man can hand over his ranch or bury his son.”
“You are a very difficult man, Señor Simon.”
“Am I? I’m also a father who’s lost his son.”
“Have you considered why Juan del Cuervo should have done such a thing to Roy?”
“Juan confessed to murder. What’s more, a jury convicted him. He’s sentenced to hang, and by hell, it was done fairly, in open court.”
“I think you suspect,” Gomez said, “that Juan may have been justified.”
“I suspect nothing! Now take my offer or reject it.”
“I have no authority for such a thing.”
“The hell you haven’t. You’re majordomo, mister. Del Cuervo will back your word the same as he would his own.”
Gomez shrugged.
“Well?” Agry growled at him. “Is it a bargain or not?”
“It is a bargain, señor. But the necessary papers are in the vault in Mexicali. It will take several days.”
“You’ve got forty-eight hours, Gomez.”
“You will inform the sheriff of the postponement? Your brother will have his heart set on a hanging.”
“I’ll take care of Lew. You worry about getting back here in time.”
Gomez turned and left the room, walking as if he had been stunned. From the first he had known Don Pedro’s decision to ransom Juan was a perilous mistake. The don had gauged Simon Agry to be a venal man, but he had badly underestimated how ruthlessly and unreasonably greedy he was. As he mounted and rode out of Agrytown the things that had been said in the office had an aftereffect of nightmarish unreality about them. It was not conceivable that the pig of a Simon Agry was to become the owner of Rancho del Rey. Not conceivable, but a fact none the less.
God had indeed visited them all with a succession of terrible disasters.
Seven
For his own good reasons, Sheriff Lew Agry paraded the free man and the condemned man through the town square to the jail in their shackles. Moreover, two other deputies joined the processional, bleak-eyed warriors cradling rifles in their arms; rifles that tended to cover Buchanan rather than the supposedly more desperate Juan.
Buchanan knew why, and the sheriff knew that he knew, for he studiously kept himself at a distance from the other man. Then they were back in the jail, in a kind of anteroom, and under the watchful attention of the riflemen Waldo Peek removed the uncomfortable chains.
“Put the Mex in his cell,” Agry ordered, and Juan turned to Buchanan.
“Vaya con Dios, my friend,” he said.
“Yeah,” Buchanan said, looking into the boy’s pale face.
“It was an honor to know you,” Juan said.
“Sure. Honor to know you, too, kid.” He rubbed his face. “They say if you get yourself drunk you never feel a thing.”
“I will consider your advice, Buchanan,” Juan told him.
Waldo Peek took him away. Then men in the anteroom could hear the oaken door slam shut, could hear the bolt slide home. They could also hear the sound of their own breathing. Peek returned, took up a position to one side of Buchanan that completed the ring around him.
“There’s a horse out back,” Lew Agry said into the silence. “You’ll be escorted north a ways.”
“A horse?”
“Yours has been confiscated by the state militia.”
“I hope he throws you.”
“Nothing throws me.”
“Except your big brother. And then he stomps all over you.”
Lew Agry said, “Waldo,” and Peek belted Buchanan in the mouth. The big man’s arm cocked to swing back and a rifle barrel slammed down on his wrist.
“Ask for it, mister, and you’re sure gonna get it,” Lew Agry said. “It’ll be like last night was a picnic.”
“Go, Buchanan,” came Juan’s voice anxiously from the cell. “For God’s sake, amigo, you cannot stand another beating!”
“All right,” Buchanan said to Agry. “I got a horse. I also had a rifle and two Colt handguns.”
“State militia,” Agry said.
Buchanan’s great chest heaved and he took a deep breath.
“And now we come to it,” he said. “I want my gold.”
“What gold?”
“The purse,” Buchanan said very patiently. “The purse with ten thousand gold dollars.”
Waldo Peek looked sharply at Lew Agry. Behind Buchanan the riflemen stirred.
“Don’t get sucked in, Waldo,” Lew Agry said, his voice tight. “You couldn’t get ten thousand in that purse.”
“Who counted it, Waldo?” Buchanan asked.
“You like to get worked on, don’t you?” Lew Agry asked. “You really like it.”
“Please, Buchanan, go!” Juan shouted again. “See my father. He will give you money!”
“Don’t worry about me, Johnny,” Buchanan called back. “I’m going.”
“But not south,” Agry said. “North.”
If Buchanan knew one thing it was that he would have to get away from this hombre very soon or do something suicidal. He didn’t know that he could feel this much hate for a man, this much black desire to hurt and keep hurting.
He turned from Agry and his thoughts, brushing the rifle aside negligently as he strode to the door. He opened it and paused for a moment. “So long, Johnny,” he called, not looking back. His escort followed him out to the back of the jail, where a sorry excuse for a horse awaited him. He threw a leg over the cracked, mildewed saddle and when the other two were mounted they headed away from Agrytown.
They rode in complete silence, with the guards hanging to the rear, their manner almost deferential. They had seen Buchanan beaten by Lew Agry, beaten and robbed and humiliated. But they had also witnessed the raw clash of personalities, of character, and out of that Buchanan had earned their hard, unspoken respect.
Even had he known, Tom Buchanan couldn’t have cared less. Nothing that they could have thought of him, nothing they could have said to him would have mattered. His bitterness numbed him, his disillusionment all but choked him. The homecoming he had dreamed about for two long years, the ret
urn of the prodigal; what the hell was this to come home to? Were these who raped, bullied and cheated, his fellow Americans, his brothers? It was hard to take, hard to have the dream shattered so completely.
The trio rode on in silence, and when his escorts realized that Buchanan was oblivious to both the time consumed in the saddle and the jarring gait of his short-winded horse, one of them came forward and touched his arm.
“What do you say to a smoke, friend?”
Buchanan said nothing, only pulled off the trail toward a shaded area, dismounted listlessly and lay full length on the ground. Agry’s deputies followed him there, climbed down gratefully and sat with their backs braced against two trees.
“Make one for you?” asked the one who had suggested the break in the journey.
Buchanan shut his eyes. Tobacco, he thought. How he dearly loved a smoke. How he had missed it all these long hours. “No,” he said. “Make your own.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Go to hell.”
Silence.
Then: “Here, Buchanan.” A rough-rolled cigarillo was pushed between his lips, lit from the one the deputy already had smoking.
Another silence.
“Thanks,” Buchanan said.
“I figured you for a smoking man,” the deputy said. “Saw how your fingers was stained.”
“You packed this one real good.”
“Glad you think so.”
“Like it fine. How much farther you taking me?”
“To the river. Couple more hours.”
“Gonna kill me there?”
“Supposed to.”
Buchanan took a deep drag, exhaled the smoke luxuriantly. “Why not here?” he asked.
“Lew wants you out of his county.”
“Scared of his brother,” Buchanan said.
“Scared of you, too. Funny I never figured Lew Agry to be scared of anything.”
“People fool you.”
“Yeah. Guess we better get going, Buchanan.”
“Be obliged to have it done here, Deputy. That’s a misbegotten animal I’m forking.”
“Lew wants us to shoot him at the river, too,” the deputy said.
They rode on, but now there was a change in the formation. The one who had provided him with tobacco rode abreast of Buchanan, stirrup to stirrup. His partner, however, held back. An hour later they pulled up again, this time for a meal of cold salted meat and brown bread. It was washed down with a leather sack of red Mexican wine that was passed around from man to man, and topped off by another smoke.
“Was there really ten thousand in your poke?” the deputy asked, breaking the silence at last.
“Nope.”
“Five?”
“About. What was your cut?”
“Agry give us each a fifty-dollar piece. Fifty more when we get back.”
“Fair enough,” Buchanan said with a mocking smile. “Lew supplies the brains.”
“So he keeps reminding us. How’d you get that stake?”
“Helping one Mex fight another Mex.”
“They tell me that’s hard work.”
“They didn’t tell you the half of it.”
The other deputy spoke for the first time. “Let’s ride,” he said disagreeably, and they began the last stage of the trip to the river. Buchanan held no personal grudge against his guards and suspected that they were just as neutral toward him. This was a rough country, and though there were certain hard and fast rules of conduct there was not yet the same degree of importance about life and death that existed in gentler, more highly civilized regions. And though Buchanan’s predicament could be laid directly to the sheriff of Agrytown, the general consensus would be that his luck simply ran out.
But regardless of the time, place or circumstance, a man still carried a strong will to survive. It’s his instinct, and now the feeling of resignation with which Buchanan had begun this ride was giving way with each passing mile to a kind of angry regret. He began to think of the good things in this life—of tobacco, of the girls in San Javier, of the lifelong friendships that are made during a roundup. He recalled the deputy making that smoke for him and camaraderie welled up in his chest.
At that moment the deputy drew alongside and touched his arm. “I been parleyin’ with my partner about you,” he said glumly. “I’m all for leavin’ you at the river and just shootin’ the horse. But Lafe’s too worried about Lew Agry, and he’s got a girl back in town and all. Just wanted you to know, Buchanan.”
“Thanks, friend. Mighty white of you.”
“Wish it could be better tidings,” the deputy said and dropped back again.
The river appeared up ahead, quite abruptly. The main trail veered off to the right, making a crossing, Buchanan guessed, at some narrower place. A side trail led left and down the embankment, and now the friendly deputy put his horse ahead of Buchanan’s and all three went to the left. The trail began to narrow very soon, with heavy growth on either side. The pace slowed to a walk and Buchanan was conscious of almost nothing else but Lafe’s rifle trained on his back.
And what was he going to do about it? Even if he had an alert horse under him there was no possible room to maneuver. He was in a box, and all that remained was for Lafe to close the lid.
“Far enough,” the surly voice from behind told him. “Get down slow, mister.”
Buchanan swung to the ground, stood looking into the chill, emotionless face of the man on horseback.
“You’ll die easier on your knees,” Lafe said.
“How would you know how I’ll die?”
With a shrug, Lafe primed the rifle.
“No, God damn it—no!” the other deputy cried out, the words sounding wrenched from him. Lafe looked up briefly to find himself in his partner’s own gun sights.
“Don’t fight me, Pecos.”
“Lafe, I got no other choice. Now set that weapon down and let’s talk on it some more.”
“Talk, hell!” Lafe said, and his agitation gave Buchanan the only chance he had. He moved and the gun roared down at him. The second gun fired in practically that same moment and the slug lifted Lafe bodily out of the saddle. The stirrups held and he toppled lifelessly forward across his horse’s neck. The spooked animal tried to throw off the unnatural rider but Buchanan steadied it with a firm jerk of the reins.
Pecos came up on foot, and between them they got Lafe to the ground and laid him out. Buchanan tore the already blood-soaked shirt front away, and beside him Pecos groaned.
“Godamighty,” he said with sorrow. “Clean through the heart.”
Buchanan moved away, saying nothing. This was a delicate moment, a private moment, and he was the intruder. He was also the reason that the man’s partner was dead, and because Pecos seemed to be an unpredictable type, Buchanan prudently retrieved the fallen rifle and awaited developments.
But he had overrated the friendship between the two, for Pecos recovered from his bereavement with a very practical question.
“What in hell am I gonna do now?” he asked.
“You got anything holding you in Agrytown?”
“Just a bill at Simon’s saloon.”
“Then why not pick up some of that gold dust up north a ways?”
“You goin’ there?”
“That’s my destination,” Buchanan said. “Prospectin’s expensive, hear them tell about it.”
“Yeah.”
Buchanan’s glance wandered idly to the dead body of Lafe. When he looked back at Pecos he found his own idea kindling in the other man’s face.
“Why not?” Pecos asked softly. “Lew Agry ain’t God.”
“You’ll do, Pecos,” Buchanan told him warmly. “Let’s ride.”
“Could we first say a few words over Lafe here?”
There were no tools with which to dig a grave so they carried the man into the deep foliage and covered him with leaves and branches. Pecos doffed his slouch hat, revealing himself to be a much younger man than Buchanan had thought
, and spoke in a clear, forthright voice.
“Lafe, you and me worked for Lew Agry near onto a year, though I don’t guess we were ever buddies. But I’m sorry it was me that stopped your clock. You had your good side, Lafe, like us all, and you could be mean when the liquor was in you. Nobody’s gonna hold that against you. I’m even callin’ it bygones about your everlastin’ cheatin’ at stud and for stealin’ that Spanish saddle the time we raided Don Pedro. I guess,” Pecos said, “that the reason we never cottoned up was your bein’ part Apache and me bein’ all Texan. Well, Lafe, I got me a West Texan for a partner now and when it came to choosin’ between you I hope you know I did what I had to do. So long, Lafe. You died real good.”
Pecos replaced his hat.
“You put a lot of store in being Texan,” Buchanan said casually.
“A man’s got to be loyal to where he was born.”
“How come you’re in California?”
“Fiddle-footed,” Pecos answered. “This country’s so damn big a man itches to move around in it. One day I got tired of watchin’ the sun go west and just followed it out here. Next I’m gonna trail it clear across the ocean.”
“The sun’ll just lead you back to Texas.”
“Where I’ll die happy. What do you say we get movin’, Buchanan?”
“Sure.”
“First take these,” Pecos said. He extended his hand and in the palm were two fifty-dollar gold pieces. “Lafe don’t need his where he’s goin’,” he said, “and I don’t want nothin’ of yours I stole.”
Buchanan lifted one of the coins and dropped it into his pocket.
“Fifty-fifty,” he said. “Share and share alike.”
Eight
“That’s a good deal you made, Si,” Lew Agry said to his brother. “A real smart deal. For you.”
“Your whining,” Simon said, “gets harder and harder on my ears. That and your biggedy ideas of your own importance.” He flicked a cigar ash on the rug of the sheriff’s office.
“This town is growing,” Lew said. “I’m trying to keep it from busting the seams.”
“You didn’t keep Roy from getting killed. With all these new gunmen you’re hiring, you didn’t stop that.”
