by Jonas Ward
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
It was hot enough to burn rawhide, and lizards were frying on flat rocks. It was, Buchanan decided, just about two degrees fiercer than hell, and if he could keep going for another half an hour he’d allow himself a drink from his canteen.
He was in a mood for comfort, so naturally he got trouble.
He came on the troop of cavalry conducting an army prison wagon, and in the wagon he discovered his old friend, the Apache chief, Sentos, with three of his braves. It was well over a hundred and twenty degrees in the wagon. “What happened, viejo?” Buchanan asked Sentos.
“I was stupid,” the Apache said, “I trusted a blueleg warrior, and he betrayed my flag of white. Now they wish to hang me.”
Buchanan looked at the troopers and sighed. He couldn’t let them hang a friend.
BUCHANAN 17: BUCHANAN’S GUN
By Jonas Ward
First published by Fawcett Books in 1968
Copyright © 1968, 2020 by Brian Garfield
First Digital Edition: May 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 Agent.
One
It was hot enough to burn rawhide. The big horseman halted his horse and eased his frame forward, standing in the stirrups to cool his seat. He cuffed back his battered hat to drag a dusty sleeve across
his forehead and twisted around to look down his back-trail.
The solitary rider was still back there, a mile or so away, coming forward patiently. Not in any particular hurry. Might be just about anybody—might have any one of a dozen reasons to be there. But it was a sudden kind of country; and Buchanan tested the ease with which the Winchester slipped in and out of the scabbard before his knee. With Apaches and scalp-hunters, Army deserters and outlaws all running on the loose, this hot Border country was a dangerous place for any man traveling alone.
It was just about two degrees hotter than hell. With a mind for the horse, Buchanan put it down the road at an easy gait. He glanced at the canteen and thought, Maybe I’ll have a drink in another half hour.
The country stretched away flat in three directions, so flat that he judged the haze-blue ranges on the horizons to be a good forty miles away. Big enough to match Tom Buchanan—six feet plus of gentle, hard-rock muscle, with a dust-caked scab healing along his right cheek. In time it would pale into scar tissue and blend into the battle-scarred fabric of his tough, candid face. A two-hundred-pound Mexican with a chair-sized fist had laid that one open. Buchanan’s slow-to-anger hands had left the Mexican giant asprawl, but the affront had been the final indignity. They could have their pint-sized revolutions, and welcome to them. All Buchanan wanted was peace and quiet.
He might find it up ahead there beyond the creosote sand-wastes. It looked promising. The road lanced due north, right up against the serrated mountain range. It ought to be cool and green in the high country. A crystal trickle of water, a grass meadow, some good fishing, and an antelope haunch now and then. Put some meat on the gaunted horse for a change. Maybe even put some meat on Buchanan’s own slab-sided ribs. He was a big man, big as they came, but not an ounce of it was easy flesh.
He had no grudges to settle, no appointments to keep. Free to drift, he could discover the far side of the hills, and as far as Buchanan was concerned, that was what a man was made for.
An easygoing smile rested on his battered face; but just the same, habit wouldn’t let him forget that rider a mile back. Buchanan took his time climbing into the foothills, and it was almost an hour before he reached a minor summit, where he could look back and command the district behind him. When he got there, he turned the horse around and had a look.
The rider was still on the road, turning through the foothills on his way up. He hadn’t gained any ground; he seemed to be letting the horse choose its own pace in the heat. Didn’t seem to be much danger there. Buchanan breathed the horse, took a sparing sip from the canteen, and rode on.
It was a heat wave to mark down in memory. Even here, two thousand feet above the desert floor, the mountains wilted under the blasting sun. Buchanan curled in and out of climbing canyons until sometime around noon, he heard a faint distant racket ahead of him. It sounded like the bump and squeak of a wagon.
Before long he caught up. From a hundred yards back, coming up around a cliff-sided bend, he spotted the rig and recognized it: an Army prison wagon with an escort of four troopers.
The soldiers watched him close the distance. They didn’t seem particularly friendly. The rear guardsman rode twisted in his saddle with the carbine across his haunch, pointed in Buchanan’s general direction. The wagon threw up a stinging pall of dust.
Buchanan had no fight with the Army and no great love for them either. He was a West Texas man, and that part of the country’s experience with the Army hadn’t been a happy one. Just the same, these particular dragoons hadn’t done him any harm, and Buchanan was a peaceful man. He lifted the reins in both hands, showing the troopers that he wasn’t wearing a belt-gun and had no intention of reaching for the rifle.
If it reassured the dragoons, they made no sign of it. One of them spoke, and the wagon stopped. The driver poked his head around the side to look back.
Buchanan let the horse carry him alongside. “Afternoon.” The corporal on the wagon seat grunted. Buchanan made his voice sound amiable. “What you got inside?”
“Indians. Any business of yours?”
“I guess not. Didn’t mean to spook you gents.”
“Ain’t nobody spooked,” said the corporal. “Who are you?”
“The name’s Buchanan.”
“Lance Corporal Ivy. K Troop, Fifth Cavalry. Now, if that satisfies your curiosity, you can—”
He was cut off by a commotion within the closed wagon. A fist pounded on the wood; a voice called out. It made a thoughtful frown descend across Buchanan’s face. The ice-blue eyes narrowed down, and he said in a more careful tone, “Just who’ve you got in there, Ivy?”
“Four renegade Apaches,” the corporal said. He turned and yelled at one of the troopers. “Quiet them down in there, Keegan.”
Keegan lifted his Springfield and banged the barrel against the wagon. “Shut up, you bastards.”
There was another burst of talk inside, and Buchanan caught one word of it—his own name. It made him swing his horse across the road. “You got Sentos in there, Corporal?”
“What’s it to you?”
“The old chief used to be a friend of mine.”
“You some kind of Indian lover?”
Buchanan ignored the jibe. “Mind if I have a word with him?”
“You’re goddamn right I mind, pilgrim. Now, you just turn your horse around and get the hell out of here. You’ve caused enough of a ruction already.”
One of the troopers rode forward and said mildly, “We ain’t going to make that hill, Corp.”
“What?”
“Look for yourself.” The trooper poked his jaw toward the road ahead. It swung up a steep incline to the ridge top, stiff and precarious. The trooper said, “We’ll never get this hearse up there with them four deadweight Indians inside. Maybe we ought to—”
“Shut up and let
me think,” Ivy said. Forgetting Buchanan momentarily, he frowned at the hill, as if that could make it go away or at least flatten out some.
Buchanan took advantage of the interruption by easing his horse back toward the tailgate. There was a small window high up in the van. It has to be at least a hundred and twenty-five degrees in there, Buchanan thought. When he was close, he said, “Sentos?”
A dark, square face appeared in the window, topped by a dusty stovepipe hat. “Buchanan. Sheekasay.”
“How’re you makin’ it, viejo?”
“Good and hot in here,” the old Apache said.
Trooper Keegan spurred his horse forward. “That’s about enough, mister. No talking to the prisoners.”
Buchanan hipped around for comfort. Up front Ivy and the trooper were discussing the hill ahead. Ivy’s arms rode up and down, injecting impatience into his talk.
Buchanan said conversationally, “Where you taking them?”
“Fort Lowell,” Keegan said.
“What for?”
“Throw them in irons, prob’ly. I wish they’d hang ’em. That ragtag bunch of old Sentos’ been raising hell all over Arizona the last two years. Lucky as hell we got our hands on him and those three wildcat sons of his. And this time the Army don’t intend lettin’ him loose again.”
The creased, weathered old face grinned at Buchanan through the little window. Buchanan said, “He always seemed like a peaceable old fellow to me.”
“You sure we’re talking about the same Indian?”
Corporal Ivy got down from the driver’s seat and tramped back alongside the wagon. He seemed surprised to see Buchanan. “You still here?”
“Am I supposed to be somewhere?”
“You’re supposed to be making dust,” Ivy said. “But long as you’re still here, lend us a hand. Run your rope onto that wagon tongue and help haul us over the ridge.”
Buchanan’s drawl was unamused. “You telling me or asking me, Corporal?”
“Any way you like it,” Ivy snapped, and turned to his men. “You boys get down and open up back here. Tie them four thievin’ savages on a short picket line and unlock their leg irons. They’ll have to walk up the hill under their own steam. We’re going to have trouble enough draggin’ this van over the top empty. And if one of these bucks lets out a sneeze, I want them dead. Got that?”
Ivy looked around. “You. Buchanan. Either pitch in or dust. Take your choice, but don’t just sit there.”
“What’s your hurry, Ivy? Fort Lowell will still be there tomorrow.”
But he was agreeable by nature, so he rode ahead, hitched his line abound the wagon tongue, and dallied to his horn. Engaged in this activity, he had time to puzzle over the imprisonment of old Sentos, suffering the indignity of his shackles with his three sons. Buchanan watched the four squat Indians climb stiffly down from the wagon. Sentos stood stoically while Keegan bent cautiously to unlock his ankle cuffs. The old chief’s face was so creased that he looked as if he’d slept with his cheeks pressed against a rabbit-wire screen.
Keegan roped Sentos’ hands together and moved to the next Indian. Ivy kept his carbine leveled.
Buchanan spoke to the chief. “How come you got into this fix, viejo?”
“Because I am stupid,” the old man grunted. “Because I trusted the word of a blueleg officer and because I expected him to honor my flag of white.”
“You don’t shut that mouth,” Ivy grated, “I’ll close it for you with the butt strap of this here Springfield. And that goes for you too, pilgrim. Stay shet of these savages.”
Keegan had the four of them roped by then, wrists bound to a common rope like four horses on a close picket line. Keegan was bending down to unshackle the youngest son—he looked about seventeen—when a new sound diverted Buchanan’s attention: the clattering drum of a crowd of advancing horses.
When he looked over his shoulder, he saw a dozen riders breast the head of the slope. They stopped briefly, milling around. The leader was a barrel-chested man with iron-gray hair. Both legs were roped down around his horse, as if to hold him in.
Corporal Ivy’s sharp warning reached Buchanan’s ears. “Heads up. That’s Mike Warrenrode and his crew.”
He didn’t have to say more than that. The troopers fanned out in a ragged skirmish line. Ivy said dryly, “If you value your hide, you’ll step out of the line of fire, Buchanan.”
Buchanan knew good advice when he heard it. He let his rope loose and gigged the horse off the road, circling down by the Indians. His practiced glance took in the nearby cover, which was plentiful; the slope was littered with big boulders.
Centering the Apaches, they waited in a loose knot while the Warrenrode bunch cantered downslope in a determined line. Buchanan gave them each a brief scrutiny. Most of them were run-of-the-range cowboys, but two or three had the look of hardcases. Buchanan slipped his rifle out of the scabbard. If it came to a fight, he had no cause to take the Army’s side, but he’d be damned if he’d get caught cold-turkey in the middle of a battle that was none of his making.
As they lunged closer he had a better look at the gray-haired leader. Mike Warrenrode, he supposed. The name didn’t mean anything to him, but that wasn’t surprising. Warrenrode had the face of a man to whom giving orders came naturally. Buchanan wondered again about those legs, too scrawny for the rest of Warrenrode’s bulk, strapped down to the horse as if they had no strength of their own to grip the saddle.
The riders pitched to a halt in a spew of flung dust. Buchanan casually reined his horse closer to old Sentos’ stovepipe hat.
Ivy took a pace forward, beside the wagon. “The major told me I might have to expect you.”
Warrenrode’s voice was a rolling basso profundo. “What else did he tell you?”
“Told me not to talk too much,” Ivy said. “But I can talk this much. You pull any stunts, and you’ll get the whole Fifth Cavalry down on you like a stampede. And ain’t no big ranch nor big money can buy your way out of that.”
Warrenrode lifted a burly arm, pointing at Sentos. “I want him. I’ve got no quarrel with the rest of you.”
“Reckon I can’t let you do that.”
“Do I have to spell it out in blood for you?”
“I’ve got my duty,” Ivy said stubbornly. Right then he went up a few notches in Buchanan’s estimation.
But that didn’t make Buchanan’s place any easier to be in. His eyes made another rapid survey of the mounted men, and he singled out two of them as possible tanglers; his mind dubbed them automatically: Spoon and Knife. Spoon was round in the face and round in the belly, while Knife was thin-bladed from flanks to nose. But they both had smoky eyes and too-smooth hands, and their guns hung where they could reach them without waste motion.
Warrenrode said in a no-nonsense tone, “I want Sentos’ hide on a spit, soldier.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Ivy said. “But I got my orders, and my orders say I got to get him to Fort Lowell alive to stand trial.”
“Seems to me your orders are outgunned,” Warrenrode observed.
About that time Buchanan decided that since he couldn’t get out of this, the next best thing was to open his mouth. He put his horse forward, laying his rifle down across the pommel in a gesture of peace. “Mind telling me what this is all about, Warrenrode?”
“If you don’t know, then you’ve got no business here, cowboy.”
Corporal Ivy had a dry way of talking. “Warrenrode thinks Government justice is too risky.”
Warrenrode spread his hands reasonably. “You know as well as I do what’ll happen if the old bastard goes on trial. He’ll get some fast-talking lawyer from the Indian Bureau, full of hogwash about noble savages and busted treaties. Before you know it, they’ll turn him loose on the Reservation. And after that it’ll take him just about two whoops and a holler to bust out all over the Territory again with a pack of young hot-bloods. Raid every ranch south of Tucson and kill another twenty cowhands and run off another five thou
sand head of prime stock just for the hell-and-be-damned of it.”
Warrenrode didn’t look like the type of fellow who ordinarily wasted his breath explaining things to drifters and Cavalry noncoms. Right then it occurred to Buchanan that Warrenrode was running a bluff. Warrenrode didn’t have any intention of bringing the wrath of the whole United States Army down on his gray head. He had too much sense. You could see that much in his level, shrewd eyes.
But Spoon and Knife were a different breed from the crusty, crippled old cattleman. Those two, from the look of them, would just as soon have Ivy and the rest of them for lunch as spit. So deciding, Buchanan stirred his heels and allowed his horse to drift casually over to the side of the road, where the tilt of his rifle could lie vaguely against Spoon and Knife. Knife didn’t miss that quiet maneuver; his eyes glittered, and the thin lips peeled back from his teeth in a cold, challenging grin.
Corporal Ivy had been talking. “You do your arguing with Regimental headquarters, Warrenrode. Not with me. I ain’t impressed none. Like I said, I got my orders.”
“You’ve got my orders now, Corporal. And I say turn them over to me before you people get yourselves hurt.”
“You’ll have a hard time making it stick,” Buchanan put in.
“What’s your piece of this?” Warrenrode demanded.
“I just hate to see the peace disturbed. It’s too hot for a fight,” Buchanan answered. “Besides, you don’t want to get hung on account of four worthless Indians, do you?”
Old Sentos stiffened, but Buchanan shook his head at the chief. Trooper Keegan said nervously, “Corp, maybe the man’s got a point. I don’t aim to get killed stickin’ up for these no-account redskins. Too many Indians taken shots at me for me to do them any favors.”
Sentos was looking right at Buchanan, and it was plain enough what was in his mind. You and I used to be friends, Buchanan. Will you betray me too?
Knife’s grin hardened, like a trap abruptly sprung. “Boss, we’re wasting time.”
“Maybe we are,” Warrenrode said. “Last warning, soldier. It’s up to you.”
