Buchanan 18
Page 12
“Be at ease,” Doña Isabel told her husband. “Our daughter is coming of age on a wonderful night. This is her last fling before marriage to Sebastian Diaz.”
“So, bella mia And did you have your fling before our wedding night?”
His wife matched his smile. “You are not Sebastian,” she said, and thought: Nor was there Buchanan.
“Ai!” Don Pedro said. “Your child is going to shake her hips again.”
“Good. Perhaps she wants to be kissed again. Where are you going, husband?”
Don Pedro had arisen. “Buchanan,” he said, “has desecrated our native dances enough. I am going to demonstrate the fandango as it is done in Madrid.” So saying he joined his daughter on the floor, to the cheers of his people, and when the dance was done it was he who was kissed. But that ended Maria’s activity for the night. The doctor had decreed a midnight curfew, and now it was an hour past that time. The girl returned to the hacienda willingly, conscious of weariness, and Felice attended her until she was in bed.
“Now whom do you go to meet?” Maria asked, and the Indian giggled.
“Oh, that Ramon!” she said. “He has been flirting with me the whole night …”
“You could not do better,” Maria said. “He is Café’s favorite and certain to succeed him.”
“I do love him, I think,” Felice said. “Only tonight I worry if it is me or the wine. Good night, señorita.”
“Good hunting, Felicita,” Maria said drowsily and the servant left to join Ramon, who waited in the kitchen.
Carbo left the horse at a safe distance and observed the fiesta from the edge of the grove. He noted the movements of Buchanan and Gomez, of Don Pedro and Juan, then skirted the lighted area and worked his way around behind the big house. He entered by a rear door, mounted the narrow servants’ stairway and let himself out on the corridor of the second floor.
Then, room by room, he made his search for the one Buchanan occupied and the money he thought would be hidden there. The fourth door he opened was Maria’s.
“Did you forget something, Felice?”
“An error,” Carbo said in Spanish. “Go to sleep.”
“Whose voice is that? I do not recognize it!”
“Be quiet!” Carbo hissed. “I leave in peace.”
But Maria was too full of her ordeal with Roy Agry. She screamed. Carbo stepped quickly to the bed, sought her throat with his hands. At his touch Maria screamed again, threw herself away from him. Then Carbo was atop her, cutting off further sound, but from beyond the room he could hear someone’s frenzied approach.
Ramon never had a chance for his life. He came into the room and halted, his body framed in the doorway by the corridor light. Carbo fired at point-blank range, drove three slugs into that defenseless target, watched it sink to the floor and then stepped over it to make his escape down the corridor. Felice had reached the top of the staircase. She and Carbo stared at each other for one terrible moment. Then the gun swung up and roared its message.
Carbo watched the girl plunge back down the stairs with an expression of vast disbelief. He had killed without reason, without reason at all. The same in the room. This was panic. He had to get himself under control, had to get out of here….
It had been one of the rare occasions when the musicians were not playing. Maria’s screams came down to those on the patio with terrifying clarity, sounds so incompatible with the general gaiety that for a brief time nearly every mind was paralyzed. The nearest entrance to the hacienda was at the rear, and Buchanan and Gomez broke for it even as the gunshots sounded inside. In pure reflex, both men slapped for guns they were not carrying this night, cursed the circumstances and kept right on coming. Buchanan opened the door and mounted the stairs three at a time. In the corridor two more shots racketed. Footsteps pounded their way, and Buchanan stepped directly into Carbo’s path.
The gun went off in his face, so close that his skin felt the heat of the muzzle blast. But the slug itself screamed past his ear, crashed into the wall behind him, and then there were the dull clicks of an empty gun being triggered. Both Buchanan and Carbo looked at the Colt, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then Carbo threw the heavy revolver at the other man and snatched the wicked-looking knife from his belt.
“Back off! I’m coming through!”
Buchanan unsheathed the dress dagger Juan had given him. As he did Carbo thrust his leg forward, caught it behind Buchanan’s calf and jerked him off balance. The blade in Carbo’s hand arched upward, passed harmlessly through the air. Two years with Campos’s ruffians had schooled Buchanan for this combat, taught him how to fall away and turn the other man’s attack against him. Before Carbo could strike again Buchanan drove the dagger hilt-deep into his belly. Carbo sighed, fell against Buchanan’s shoulder and then dropped to the floor. Gomez streaked past them toward Maria’s room.
Gomez’s anguished cry echoed and re-echoed in Buchanan’s ears. He went to the room himself, found Maria unharmed but the segundo bent down over the bullet-gutted body of Ramon. Soon the room was filling with people. Don Pedro made his way to Buchanan’s side.
“What is it? What has occurred?”
“I don’t know,” Buchanan said. “I can’t understand it.”
Gomez turned his face up to them. “I charge Ramon’s death,” he said unsteadily, “to Simon Agry.”
“But why?” Don Pedro asked. “What is the purpose of this tragedy?”
Gomez got to his feet, moved between them and on out of the room.
“Gomez!” Don Pedro called. “Where are you going?”
“To repay this visit, señor. Please do not try to stop me.”
“But you have been drinking the whole night. You cannot organize yourself. You cannot ride.”
“I am sober, Don Pedro.” He looked at Buchanan. “Amigo, this is not your affair. Do you understand?”
“Yes. But you ought to wait.”
Gomez shook his head stubbornly, turned to the assembled vaqueros. “Who rides with me?” he asked, and when he walked away they followed him to a man.
Simon Agry had found it a night when sleep wouldn’t come. There were so many things that had gone wrong for him, so much to worry about and keep his mind fretfully awake. And all in one day.
Where, tonight, was the dream he had nourished of being lord and master of the vast Rancho del Rey? Where was the gold that was going to buy the great herds of cattle and horses, the same stock that he would sell to the government at such a big profit when he was in Washington to negotiate the contracts? Where was Abe Carbo? What success would he have raising gunmen? And always the big vexation: Would Buchanan actually stay in the country with all that money in his possession?
He also cursed his kin. Brother Lew for his perfidy, his stupid acts of treachery that had brought Simon to this terrible brink of disaster, and Cousin Amos for leaving town when Simon needed an outlet for his wrath.
Simon tossed and turned heavily in his bed and couldn’t induce sleep. So he finally got up and went out onto the porch, to smoke a cigar and let his self-pity and anger have its full play. Thus it was, in the almost total silence, that he heard the furious, frightening thunder of many horses to the south.
The south! Simon didn’t stop to reason why Don Pedro was sending a force against him. He returned to his room and dressed in feverish haste. Nor did he bawl orders to have his buggy rigged. Some sixth sense told him that it was safer to go off into the brush on foot, safer to keep his whereabouts a secret even from his own men.
And where were they? Not one of them stirred from the blacked-out bunkhouse, though the sound of the oncoming riders seemed almost deafening to Simon Agry. Oh, God, where was Abe Carbo? Where was Lew? He was suddenly flooded with affection for his dead brother.
Simon went away from the house and hurried toward the thick forest of scrub pine that grew some three hundred feet away.
Esteban Gomez was a grim and vengeful man as he rode at the head of his band into Agrytown. Lik
e Don Pedro and Buchanan he did not understand why they had been attacked by a lone assassin. All he did know was that Ramon and a girl servant had been wantonly killed, that Abe Carbo was Simon Agry’s man, and that his anger was full of tears.
He swept into Agry’s yard, dismounted and entered the house alone while his men surrounded the bunkhouse, firing into it and hazing the sleepy-eyed occupants outside.
A minute later Gomez reappeared on the porch. Behind him, through the windows, flame was visible and at sight of it two vaqueros disappeared into the bunkhouse. When they returned, that too was afire and they rode out. The search for Simon Agry continued in the town proper—in the hotel, the saloon, the mercantile, the bank—and each place that they failed to find him they put to the torch.
There was no shouting, no sound of victory, only the roar of the flames as the dry wooden buildings caught like so much fresh tinder. The hotel, the dominant structure, seemed to burn with a special vengeance, although Gomez and his men would never know just how disastrous a blow they were dealing Simon Agry with the destruction of that building.
It was dawn when Buchanan came through, and though a pall of smoke still lingered in the air there was nothing of any substance left in Agrytown to burn. He remembered his first impression of the place, of the impermanence of it, but not even in his most vivid imaginings would he have guessed that Agrytown would disappear in a night.
Buchanan slowed the big white stallion to a walk, for up ahead, squarely across his route, stood the lone figure of Simon Agry. Agry was hatless, and his hair was wild and disheveled. He wore a faded old shirt, and farmer’s overalls, and Buchanan stared, thinking of the proud and arrogant figure in the campaign poster, the formidable judge looking down at everyone from his lofty bench.
“Hard times, mister,” Buchanan said, stopping. And though Agry’s lips moved no sound came immediately.
“My—my money,” he finally managed to say. “A part of it. Give me just enough for a stake.”
“I have nothing of yours,” Buchanan told him.
“My money,” Agry repeated tonelessly, his eyes dull in his face. “You took it—took it from my brother.”
Buchanan shook his head, jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the ashen ruin that had been the hotel.
“I got my purse back,” he said. “The rest was in the saddlebags. I couldn’t have dragged them with me if I’d wanted to.”
Agry was hearing the truth and enough of it was getting through to his shocked mind. “My cousin,” he said haltingly. “Amos took it …”
“Amos is dead,” Buchanan said. “So is Carbo. Neither of them had your money.” He turned his head around and glanced curiously at the hotel site, suspecting what had happened. Then he reached into his purse, grabbed a handful of coins at random and handed them down.
“All I can spare, mister,” he said. “I sweated blood for every dollar of it.”
Agry grasped at the gold without a word of thanks. Buchanan shrugged and rode on, washing his hands of the whole trouble. Along the trail, however, there was a steady succession of reminders. Emerson’s shack, the places where they had paused on the way to the river, the river itself. It was midday when he reached there and stopped to water the horse and eat his meal. He pushed on then along the road that skirted the river and crossed it via a bridge, riding marveling at the simple fact that he was actually putting distance between himself and Mexico.
Free, that’s what he was, but somehow his freedom wasn’t everything he had hoped it would be. There was something missing. Buchanan rode on, and the sun that had started with him over his right shoulder now cast long shadows from the left. He pulled off the trail and found a suitable camp for the night. Soon his cook-fire was the only light there was, and after his supper he sat with his smoke and gazed thoughtfully into the embers.
“What do you see?” asked a soft voice and Buchanan thought he had been mesmerized by the fire. But the hand that lay on his shoulder was real enough.
Buchanan’s fingers closed over the slim wrist and pulled the copper-haired girl down across his knees.
“Lilita, you’re as loco as I am.”
“I know, Buchanan.”
“Had anything to eat?” he asked and she smiled up at him lazily.
“Hombre,” she said. “I did not come all this way to eat.”
About the Author
William Ard was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 8 1922. After studying at Dartmouth College, he enlisted in the Marines. Released back into civilian life in his late twenties, he decided to devote himself to writing, and his first novel, The Perfect Frame, appeared in 1951. It marked the debut of his continuing character of Timothy Dane, a New York private investigator who would go on to appear in a further nine novels.
In 1953, Ard moved to Clearwater, Florida, and it is here where he wrote most of his 30 novels. In 1959, he created two new characters, Danny Fontaine and Lou Largo (Largo was also a private investigator based in New York). Ard also completed two Lou Largo novels; the remainder were written by Lawrence Block and John Jakes.
Under the pseudonym ‘Jonas Ward’, the author wrote six novels in the BUCHANAN western series, the last, Buchanan on the Prod, completed after his death on March 12 1960, by Robert Silverberg. The series was later continued by Brian Garfield and William R. Cox, and are all available through Piccadilly Publishing.
The Buchanan Series
By Jonas Ward
Buchanan’s War
Trap for Buchanan
Buchanan’s Gamble
Buchanan’s Siege
Buchanan on the Run
Get Buchanan
Buchanan Takes Over
Buchanan Calls the Shots
Buchanan’s Big Showdown
Buchanan’s Texas Treasure
Buchanan’s Stolen Railway
Buchanan’s Manhunt
Buchanan’s Range War
Buchanan’s Big Fight
Buchanan’s Black Sheep
Buchanan’s Stage Line
Buchanan’s Gun
The Name’s Buchanan
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