Buchanan 18

by Jonas Ward

  “I’m not letting his killer off scot-free, neither.”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Sure, Si. Like I said, you made a good deal out of Roy’s getting shot down like some tramp cowboy.”

  “Speaking of tramps, what became of that other one we tried this morning?”

  “I sent him out of town.”

  “With his goods?”

  “I fined him his horse and saddle for disturbing the peace,” the sheriff said.

  “Amos told me about his leather purse,” Simon said. “Nothing smaller than ten-dollar gold pieces.”

  “News to me.”

  “My barkeep says the same thing. Buy yourself a new belt, Lew?”

  Lew Agry closed his coat over the silver-buckled belt that had once belonged to Tom Buchanan.

  “Won it from a fella,” he said.

  “I hope he’s a good loser.”

  “He is.”

  “How come you sent this Buchanan out of town under two guns? What were you worried about?”

  “Anybody report what I had for breakfast this morning, Si?”

  “I thought I made a special point of setting that boy free at the trial,” Simon said. “I sure hope you didn’t buck me, Lew. That tin star on your chest ain’t anyways near permanent, you know.”

  “Meaning exactly what?”

  “That the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” Simon snarled, placing his huge hands on the arms of the chair and pushing himself to his feet. “The hanging’s temporarily postponed,” he told his brother. “If it’s on again you’ll hear from me. “Abe Carbo pulled the door open and both men left.

  When the door had closed, Lew Agry got up himself and strode to the window, stood looking out while Simon boarded the gleaming black surrey he had had freighted especially from Chicago, watched as the shadowlike Carbo mounted his dun and rode point as they traveled out toward Simon’s house.

  Del Cuervo’s land, Lew was thinking. No, it wasn’t possible. By the skin of his teeth Simon had missed the firing squad only a few years back. By being the only promoter on the scene he had staked a claim to what he called Agry County, and somehow made the claim stand up.

  Lew knew the Simon Agry story. He’d been there—the bully-boy gunman who’d made the whole country safe for Simon just as Abe Carbo protected him on a trip across the street now. Lew’s reward had been a thousand acres, the badge, and the right to scrounge and plunder across the border. But Lew was ambitious, and his ambition showed. He was also contemptuous of Simon’s airs, of Simon’s calling the shots without ever risking being shot at. And the contempt showed.

  But Rancho del Rey—parlaying his son’s death into the ownership of that! You could take Agry County and lose it in Don Pedro’s land. What was more, Simon would have it legally, whereas in Washington they would eventually get around to pricking the balloon that was Agry County and returning it to the supervision of the state.

  And what was Lew’s cut? It was the back of Simon’s hand, that’s what it was. Nor would it stop there. His brother was feeling Lew’s restiveness, he was suspiciously aware of the hardcase deputies Lew was hiring, ostensibly to secure Simon’s grip on the country, but a group whose first loyalty was to the sheriff. Simon was feeling the pressure and he was considering the ways and means of easing Lew out of the picture. Simon would figure it out to the last detail. It would be another chess puzzle, with Simon playing Abe Carbo as the attacking knight, either in a ruthless assassination, or feinting with the gunman while he maneuvered his other pieces to bring the sheriff down in a bloodless coup.

  And during these moments, with the surrey passing from sight down the dusty street, Lew Agry came to his decision. To wait for Simon to move would be to play the other man’s game. That was not Lew’s way. He was the mover, the man on the prod, and now he saw that if he were ever to get his full partnership with Simon this situation was made to order.

  “Waldo?”

  “Yeah, Lew,” said the dull voice from the corner.

  “You afraid of Abe Carbo?”

  “No.”

  “You afraid of my brother?”

  “Only if you are, Lew.”

  “I’m going to spit in his eye.”

  “He’s going to spit back.”

  “You with me?”

  “All the way.”

  “That’s about how far it’s going to go. Come night, take Hamp and Ivy over to the jail. Get the Mex kid and ride him out to old Emerson’s shanty on the river road.”

  “Emerson?”

  “The old man can hardly move around,” Lew Agry said. “Hear he’s half blind. Just take some grub and a bottle out to him and he won’t know enough to ask questions. It’s the last place Simon will look for the kid, and he’s only got forty-eight hours to do all his looking.”

  “With the three of us gone,” Peek said, “you won’t have nobody much left in town to side you.”

  “Pecos and Lafe’ll be back. You might even meet ’em on the way.”

  “If so, how about tradin’ jobs with Pecos? Rather be here when the trouble starts.”

  Lew Agry slapped the man on the back.

  “One half bull,” he said, “and the other half tiger. You just cotton natural to a fight, don’t you?”

  “I reckon,” Waldo said, thinking that what Agry said was partly true. No need to tell the boss how primed he’d been all day to have another go at the Apache girl.

  “Sure, Waldo. If you run across the Texan leave him take charge of the kid.”

  Peek nodded. There wasn’t going to be any if about it.

  Nine

  “My home for my son,” Don Pedro said stoically. “So be it, Gomez.”

  “It was as though I were dealing with el diablo himself,” Gomez said. “It was not an agreement between two human beings, señor.”

  “Nevertheless, it will be honored.” Don Pedro rose from the high-backed armchair in the candlelit room and moved slowly to the writing table. He has aged, Gomez thought. The Don walks slowly, almost hesitantly, and he is not ramrod stiff. Off to one side sat Doña Isabel, saying nothing in this moment of crisis, holding a simple black rosary in her deceptively fragile-looking hands. By her very silence she communicated strength, and Gomez, who had asked himself over the years who possessed the greater fortitude of these two aristocrats, now thought he knew.

  “It will not be necessary to leave my son in Simon Agry’s hands another forty-eight hours,” Don Pedro said, setting himself down at the table with a piece of his official paper and pen. “The so-called deed in the vaults at Mexicali is a royal grant. It is not transferable.”

  “Then Agry cannot hold title?” Gomez asked hopefully.

  “He will have this signed paper from me,” Don Pedro said, “that will relinquish my claims in his favor. It will be binding on me and my heirs, but I cannot answer for the federal government. I am certain that Simon Agry will find the ways and means.”

  “Sí,” Gomez said worriedly. “He may even use any opposition as an excuse to call the American army. Our country has been invaded for less cause.”

  “The war is over, Gomez. If our two nationalities cannot live side by side, at least the two governments have had enough of the fighting.”

  There was only the scratching of the pen on parchment then, as Don Pedro wrote the necessary legal terms. He signed his name very deliberately and added the date.

  “Let Ramon take some men and go to Agrytown,” he said. “You have ridden far too long this one day.”

  Gomez shook his iron-gray head stubbornly. “It is my duty, señor. This one time I must insist.”

  “As you will. And, Gomez—you realize that this is your last mission as major-domo. We are no longer patrón and vaquero. El Rancho del Rey is gone.”

  Gomez realized that. He had considered the thing so thoroughly that now it was an accepted fact.

  “Gomez,” Doña Isabel said softly, “you had better leave. I am anxious to see Juan again.”

 
Gomez left the hacienda, signaled to the waiting Ramon and two riders, and all four went back along the road to the border.

  Maria del Cuervo heard the urgent sound of the departing horses and sat upright in the bathtub.

  “Felice! See what it is!”

  The Indian servant had been standing with a warm towel. Now she ran to the window.

  “It is Gomez and Ramon, señorita. And two vaqueros. They go like the wind.”

  “Something important is happening,” Maria said. The girl had been told nothing about her brother. She had asked for Juan as soon as the doctor had left this morning, asked for him to verify whether she had dreamed a brief conversation with him or whether it had actually occurred. But she was told Juan was on spring roundup, and though that was a reasonable explanation there was the air of secrecy in Tia Rosa’s voice that made her anxious. The entire household was under a strain, for that matter, and it was not wholly connected with what had befallen her.

  The doctor, for instance, declared in a very strong voice that she was not injured, that she was strong as a tiger. Her own deep relief, though, had been only partially mirrored in the faces of her parents. Her father and mother had stayed on in the room, reassuring her that everything was going to be all right, strengthening her morale. But when they were gone it came to her that not once had she been asked about Roy Agry. Was it of no importance, then? Maria knew better. So it had to be the other reason. They hadn’t asked the name of her attacker because they already knew.

  And the comings and goings of Gomez. All through the day he had arrived at the hacienda and departed, always with a clouded face, always with an air of doom.

  Felice told her as much as she knew, as much as she could learn herself and from the other servants. Gomez, for instance, had discovered her body—but there was some sort of mystery about that, too….

  Maria’s eyes had widened.

  “You mean—it may have been some other man who came upon me? One of the vaqueros?”

  “Señorita,” Felice said, “it is the account of the thing that the segundo found you. But my brother Amaya, who rode with the searchers, told me of another man who was carrying you in his arms.”

  “What man?”

  “A stranger to my brother, señorita. Amaya describes him as formidable.”

  Maria shivered. “Formidable?”

  “A giant, Amaya says.”

  “But Amaya is so small.”

  “Even so, Amaya says he had a fierce look on him.”

  “But if he—if this stranger rescued me, carried me in his arms … How was I dressed, Felice?” she asked quickly.

  Felice shook her head, following her mistress’s thinking with a female understanding. “I was not there, señorita.”

  “I am sure it was Tio Café who found me,” Maria announced resolutely. “That is the way of it.”

  “I am sure, also,” Felice agreed.

  “And of the other, the one who attacked me? What do they ask about him?”

  “Nothing, señorita.”

  “Nothing? Doesn’t my father or my brother care?”

  “Of course they care. But the man is known to them. The son of Señor Simon.”

  “How? How could they know?”

  The Indian shrugged her shoulders. “It is just that they know,” she explained.

  Now Maria had the added puzzle of Gomez rushing from the ranch with three others. Something important was happening, something that was being kept from her. She stood up and stepped from the tub, a flawless figure of a girl with her father’s angular face and straight shoulders. She was raven-haired, olive-skinned and surprisingly curved and firm-breasted. Felice wrapped her in the big towel and she stood braced while the Indian’s powerful hands dried her vigorously.

  She remembered again how she had fought against the insane brutality of Roy Agry. As she had resisted him until he had been forced to beat her unconscious. And today, with the resilience that was her mother’s heritage, she bore no more spiritual scar from the incident that when the rattlesnake had attacked her as a child of ten. Gomez—her Tio Café—had been there that time, too, to slit open the wound on her forearm and suck the venom out of the bloodstream.

  That had given her a respect for rattlesnakes, and a healthy caution. But she was not afraid to ride among them. Nor was she afraid to ride among men, either. She would just be on guard, that was all. If a Roy Agry met her on the trail she would not treat him with the complete trust that she had. The next man who tried to force her into the brush would find a stiletto in his ribs.

  With that thought in her active mind, Maria dressed in one of the dozens of frilly, feminine gowns from her wardrobe. At supper tonight she must try to make her parents more cheerful.

  Ten

  Though a priest would have been a comfort to the young man in these last hours, Juan had found peace within himself and with his God by the time they came for him. He was calm when the door was unbolted and thrown open; much more so than Waldo Peek, who had fully expected that he and the two deputies with him would have to drag the youth from his cell. Instead, Juan submitted to having his wrists bound and walked out between the men of his own free will.

  Juan did wonder about two things. For one, Señor Simon had set the time of his hanging for an hour before sunset. Why had they waited until now, when it was almost pitch-dark on a moonless night? And he wondered why his guards were so tense, why they led him from the jail so furtively, their hands actually resting on gun butts. Were his father and Gomez planning a desperate rescue? He hoped not, but in any event he must be alert to help if and when the situation presented itself.

  He was boosted to the saddle of a strange horse, not the fine animal he had arrived on, and was taken out of town by the back road.

  Buchanan and Pecos, riding the same trail from the opposite direction, measured their pace in consideration of how far their mounts had already traveled and what hard riding possibly lay ahead. Their plan was a simple one and had been decided briefly along the way. Pecos would search out Lew Agry, on the natural pretext of reporting Buchanan’s death at the river, and then Buchanan himself would make his appearance. Pecos expected opposition, but he doubted very much whether Agry was the man to hold out on Buchanan, all things considered.

  “What’s that light over there?” Buchanan asked.

  “Old man Emerson’s place.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “So-so. Thinkin’ about some grub?”

  “That,” Buchanan said, “and some feed for these horses. Man, we’ve been pushing right along today.”

  Pecos nodded and slowed until he found the wagon-wide path that led to the adobe shanty a quarter of a mile away. A hundred feet short of the place he halted, Buchanan beside him.

  “Emerson!” he called between his cupped hands. “Hey, old man!”

  “Git the hell off my land!” came a mean, crackling voice.

  “This is the law!” Pecos shouted back sternly. “Now lay up the rifle. We’re comin’ in peaceable.” Even so, Pecos hesitated.

  “Well, come if you’re comin’!” called the irascible voice then. The two horsemen guided their mounts carefully toward the house, and moments later Buchanan made out the shaggy-haired form of a small, almost impossibly thin old man who stood in the gathering darkness with an ancient rifle cradled in his arm.

  “Which of Lew Agry’s thieves be you?” Emerson asked with belligerence.

  “I’m Pecos. We met.”

  “Who’s the other?”

  “You know Lafe?”

  “No.”

  “Well, this is Lafe then.” Pecos dismounted. “We dropped by for a little hospitality, old man.”

  “Ain’t got none to give away.”

  “In that case we’ll either buy it,” Pecos said, “or help ourselves. Which will it be?”

  “This ain’t no mission stop,” Emerson said. “You’ll pay for what you get.”

  “Fair enough. We’ll provide for the horses and you rustle
up some steak and spuds.”

  “Tonight’s menu,” Emerson snapped, “is chili and beans. Take it or ride on.”

  “Heat it up then,” Pecos said. He and Buchanan led their mounts to the old Spanish watering trough and then Pecos pitched two piles of dried-out hay. They returned to the little house and squatted on the earthen floor with their bowls of chili.

  Campos, Buchanan thought, would have hung this old man by his thumbs for setting out such a flat-tasting mess—but then Campos rarely let such a long time go between meals. Fantastic how that man could endure anything without a murmur—except the slightest pang of hunger. Then you could hear him bellow clear to Chihuahua …

  “What shenanigans your boss up to these days?” Emerson was asking Pecos.

  “Enforcin’ the law as usual,” Pecos said, and when Emerson cackled derisively the Texan made no comment.

  “Those stogies for sale, mister?” Buchanan asked, indicating the black Spanish cigars on the shelf above the fireplace.

  “A dollar apiece.”

  Pecos choked. “Those ropes cost you two for a jit!”

  “In Agrytown where I got ’em. The extra is the shippin’ charges.”

  Buchanan strode to the shelf. “I’ll take five,” he said. “How much for the chili?”

  “Five dollars each bowl. Coffee’s free.”

  “Old man,” Pecos said, “you’ve finally gone loco out here all by yourself! You’ll take a paper dollar and thank us.”

  “You agreed to pay my prices—”

  “Hold it!” Buchanan said suddenly, his powerful voice commanding an instant silence. Then, from outside, came the sound of someone else calling to the house as Pecos had.

  “Who is it?” Buchanan asked.

  “Don’t know. Go see, Emerson.”

  The old man’s lively eyes danced from one face to the other. Trouble was an ancient acquaintance of his, and from the very tone of their voices he knew that something was not right. He moved to the door and opened it.

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Sheriffs men, Emerson! Don’t get trigger happy!”