by Jonas Ward
Keegan turned to Ivy. “Christ’s sake, Corp, let them have them.”
One of the troopers chimed in anxiously.
“We can tell the major a bunch of ’Paches jumped us and run off with the prisoners.”
Warrenrode said, “That’s a fine idea, soldier. You just hold onto that thought while we take these redskins off your hands.”
Keegan had made up his mind. “I ain’t going to die today, Corp. Not on them Indians’ account.”
“You will on mine,” Ivy answered flatly, without taking his eyes off Warrenrode. “You can start the ball whenever you want, mister. But my first bullet goes in your gut.” His carbine was up, cocked and leveled.
It was in that brief, broken instant that Spoon’s six-gun snaked out and roared.
The bullet hit Corporal Ivy in the chest and knocked him backward off his feet; he never fired a shot. Falling, Ivy tumbled against one of the troopers. Keegan and the others fell back, throwing themselves into the rocks; but Buchanan wasn’t watching that. He was swinging his rifle around in a hurry, because Spoon’s gun was coming up. It was just about lined up on him when Buchanan snapped his shot past Sentos’ stovepipe hat. It knocked Spoon out of his saddle.
And then, without having to count up the odds, Buchanan knew he had to reach cover—fast.
Two
He spilled into the rocks with a dozen bullets chewing splinters out of the granite. The four Indians, roped together, clambered into cover near him. Dragging his rifle, Buchanan squeezed himself into the boulders. He heard the clatter of horses wheeling around and had a brief sight of Warrenrode riding into the boulders hunched over—with his legs strapped down, he couldn’t dismount.
Warrenrode was yelling, enraged, “You fools! I gave orders to keep those guns leathered. I’d have had him bluffed down in another minute. Good Christ, I don’t intend to get hanged for this!”
Knife’s abrasive voice rasped across the hot rocks. “Kind of late to turn around now, boss.” His voice lifted gruffly. “Never mind the soldier boys. Get those damned Indians.”
Warrenrode roared, “Trask, by God—” But nobody was paying any attention. Iron horseshoes clattered in the rocks. Buchanan levered a shell into his rifle and caught Sentos’ quiet glance; he slithered down toward the Indians.
Then a new voice came hurtling down out of the higher rocks: “My rifle’s covering the bunch of you. Leave them Indians alone.”
That set them back. Buchanan shot his head back, sweeping the cliffs with his gaze. Nobody was in sight. Trask—Knife—reared his horse back into the boulders. The gunfire died down. Buchanan slipped down towards Sentos, palming his sheath knife.
He reached a point ten feet above, and then all hell broke loose. Warrenrode’s crew let out a ragged yell, and a fusillade opened up that sounded like Vicksburg in 1862. Bullets churned up the ground. One of Sentos’ sons went down jerking, and then a second one. Sentos and the third son, tied to them, hung there helpless.
Then the newcomer, unseen on the cliff, opened up. His rifle raked the lower rocks, talking in harsh signals, driving Warrenrode’s men to cover. Trask yelled orders.
Buchanan dropped down to the Indians. His knife flashed, parting the picket rope, and without talking, he rammed his shoulder into Sentos’ chest, propelling the old man back into cover. The surviving son scrambled after them just in time; the newcomer’s rifle had gone dry, and now Trask’s guns were blasting again.
Buchanan hissed, “Get the hell out of here, both of you.”
But Sentos didn’t stir. His bleak old eyes lay on the two dead Indians behind him. A volley of bullets screamed around in the rocks, near enough to make Buchanan blink. Sentos said hoarsely, “I must bury my sons.”
“Not right now, viejo.”
“Give me your knife, Buchanan. The whites must pay for this.”
“Get out of here while you’ve got a chance,” Buchanan said. “I’m telling you, viejo. You stay to bury those two, and you’ll get buried with them.”
Sentos’ eyes shifted to his surviving son. “Cuchillo—”
Cuchillo said gently, “Vamanos y padre.”
Buchanan didn’t want to argue with the sorrow in those aged eyes, but he made himself prod Cuchillo with his rifle. “Make him listen to you. Go.”
Cuchillo’s young face was brown and hard. He nodded dismally, took his father’s arm in a viselike grip, and spoke quickly in the Apache tongue.
Sentos protested vigorously. Buchanan, with his broad back against a boulder, slid around for a look past the rocks. It was about a dozen guns against two, which by any man’s reckoning was unhealthy. His unseen partner up on the cliff was shooting sporadically at targets out of Buchanan’s view. Everybody had taken to cover. It was, obviously, a mere question of time before Trask and the others would worm their way through the rocks and catch him in a cross fire. He said tautly to the Indians, “If you two light out of here, maybe I’ll have a chance to talk some peace with Warrenrode. Otherwise we’ll be laying the bodies out in stacks.”
Sentos was stubborn by nature, but beyond that he was grieved and bitterly full of hate. You didn’t talk a man like that out of anything. It wasn’t Buchanan’s words that finally decided the old Indian but something in Buchanan’s icy eyes. Sentos finally nodded his head bleakly. The stovepipe hat wobbled. Cuchillo spoke softly, and the two Indians faded back. With amazing quickness they were swallowed by the rocks.
Buchanan threaded his way through the boulders, not wanting to get caught like a sitting duck in a place where the enemy knew him to be. The volleying had settled down to sporadic bursts of fire.
Then he called out. “Trask! Warrenrode! Hear me?”
He got no answer; he needed none. He called, “The Indians are long gone. Nobody left but me and the fellow upstairs. You want to call it off, or do we have a blood bath?”
Trask’s voice shot back at him: “You think we’re going to leave you alive to talk about this, you’re plum out of your gourd, pilgrim.”
But Mike Warrenrode came out of the rocks on his horse then. “Hold your fire,” he said in disgust. “Damn-it, I never bargained for this. Trask, come on out before you get somebody else killed.”
“To hell with that!” Trask bellowed. His rifle boomed defiantly.
That was when a single, cool-placed shot from the hidden newcomer came cranging down off the cliff, hit Warrenrode’s horse, and knocked the horse down. Before the horse stopped kicking, the newcomer’s voice was rocketing down the echoing canyon.
“I’ve got a bead on your boss, Trask, and ain’t no way for you to get him out of there. Come out and throw away your guns, or I’ll start takin’ him apart an inch at a time.”
In punctuation, his rifle cracked. It laid bare a wicked white scar along the rock not ten inches from Warrenrode’s head.
Warrenrode lay helpless, tied to the downed horse. One of his legs was under the weight of the horse, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain. He said in a tone of powerful contempt, “How about it, Trask? You want to let this hairpin shoot me to pieces?”
There was a general shuffling, pebbles clattering, and men appeared hesitantly. Buchanan waited for all of them to come out of the rocks and walk into the open. He counted heads. Finally he stood up warily, his rifle at the ready.
Trask’s baleful blade of a face watched him critically. “You ain’t through with me, bucko.”
“But you’re through with me,” Warrenrode said angrily. “All through. That’s the last time you disobey my orders.”
Emboldened when Buchanan didn’t start shooting, a group of hands hurried to Warrenrode, cut loose his lashings, and levered the horse up to pull him out. They propped him to a sitting position against a boulder. “You hurt, boss?”
“I don’t know. That leg look busted to you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then, I guess I’m all right.”
The four troopers, none of them having fired a shot, materialized tentatively from their hidi
ng places. All of them looked sheepish. Buchanan walked down toward the road. On his way down he stopped to look at the two dead Indians. Sentos’ sons. Then he went on down.
Keegan said, “Those two Indians hurt, Buchanan?”
“Not hurt much,” Buchanan said. “Just dead.”
“I didn’t plan it that way,” said Warrenrode, “But I won’t pretend I’m sorry.”
“I guess not. You’d have shot the four of them if you’d had the chance.”
“I would,” Warrenrode agreed. “But that amounts to exterminating vermin. I didn’t bargain on the corporal and one of my own men going down. Just the same, maybe that makes the score even.”
“It don’t make us even for Lacy,” said Trask. Lacy must have been Spoon, the round-faced one over there with Buchanan’s bullet in him.
Warrenrode was squinting toward the higher cliff. “Tell your friend to show himself.”
“That’s up to him,” Buchanan said. “You boys ready to ride out in peace?”
Warrenrode said, “You going to tell the Army what happened here? By God, Trask, I won’t take the blame. I gave express orders not to fire a shot, and every man of you heard me loud and clear. Lacy opened up this beehive and he’s dead. You followed his lead, Trask, and you’re fired.” His hooded eyes came back to Buchanan. “What about it, cowboy?”
Buchanan had to consider it. Trooper Keegan kicked dust with his boot heel and said, “I guess maybe a bunch of renegade Apaches jumped us. Killed Corp Ivy and busted the prisoners loose.”
“Maybe they did,” Warrenrode said, but he was still watching Buchanan.
Buchanan said judiciously, “We’ve got four head here, and that’s enough. I’ve got peace in my heart, Warrenrode, and for the sake of keeping the peace, I recollect I had dust in my eye and didn’t see a thing.”
“All right,” Warrenrode said. He swung his finger up at Buchanan. “But like the Book says, Cowboy, ‘He who is not with me is against me.’ You’ve got a free ticket out of this country, but it’s a one-way ticket. I ever see you on my land, I’ll set the dogs on you. And tell that to your redskin friends.”
Buchanan’s only answer was a nod toward Spoon’s corpse. “You can take that with you when you go.”
Buchanan had kept his rifle cocked until now, when all of them were gone from the canyon. He’d watched Trask angrily bat his hat against his leg, mount up, and spur away. That parting glance of Trask’s had given Buchanan an inkling he hadn’t seen the last of Knife. Trask wasn’t a man who’d let a grudge die easy.
He’d watched them throw Spoon face-down over a horse, watched them put Warrenrode a-saddle and ride up canyon. And he’d watched the troopers pour Ivy and the two dead Indians into their wagon and depart with a squeal of axles. Ivy had been a good man, for all his bluster.
Now that all of them had faded from earshot, Buchanan threw back his head to survey the cliff. “You can come on down.”
“On my way,” replied the hidden man. Presently a long-legged redhead appeared in the rocks and climbed down, grinning. His lanky frame was cased in buckskins. One look at his boot heels was enough to tell Buchanan that the man was down on his luck.
The redhead swept off his hat and rubbed his face. The startling shock of bright red hair stuck up like a curry brush. He said, “Ten against one. You won’t get old that way, friend.”
“You’re the one that’s been on my back-trail all morning.”
“Am I?” An innocent grin flashed across the redhead’s bony face.
“I’m obliged to you,” Buchanan said.
“I always hate to see that kind of odds. They call me Johnny Reo.”
Buchanan spoke his name and took the redhead’s quick, firm handshake. He said slowly, “I’m still obliged, but I’ve never been a man to shoot horses.”
“Saved your bacon, didn’t it? Besides, I grew up in a Mimbreno camp. Apaches figure a horse is just something to eat when you get tired riding it.” He chuckled. “I’ll tell you the truth, Buchanan, I was fixin’ to make off with your horse tonight after you camped. But now I get a closer look at him, he don’t seem much better fed than the spavined nag I was going to leave in trade.” Reo’s eyes were the color of rusty iron. He said, “You think I look like a horse thief? Ordinarily I ain’t, but a man comes on hard times. A faro shark in Lochiel tapped me out. You see before you a fallen man, Buchanan. Say, ain’t it just about time to eat lunch? You got any grub with you?”
While he built the fire, Buchanan considered his erstwhile savior. Johnny Reo was an irreverent young gent with a devil-may-care flash to his grin. Not the sort of fellow you’d want to trust with your best girl. Still, his laughter was contagious. Buchanan felt the rise of the short hairs on the back of his neck. He wheeled in time to see Johnny Reo withdrawing his hand nimbly from Buchanan’s saddlebags.
Buchanan said mildly, “Nothing in there worth stealing.”
“How was I to know that?”
“You might’ve asked.”
Reo laughed, came across to the fire, and hunkered down. “Nice-looking six-gun you got packed away there. How come you don’t wear it?”
“Too much weight to carry. I’m a peaceable man.”
“Sure you are. You moved like a wildcat back there when the shooting started. Good reflexes. You really ought to settle down to a life of crime, Buchanan. How good are you with your fists?”
“I take a dislike to fighting,” said Buchanan, without mentioning the saloons his fists had laid awaste.
While they shared Buchanan’s meager victuals, Reo kept up a running fire of talk. It was happy-go-lucky and amusing, but whatever lay inside the man was effectively concealed. Reo used his talk as a smoke screen to cover his feelings; and by the time he went up into the rocks to get his horse, Buchanan knew nothing about the man that he hadn’t known at first glance.
Reo brought his horse down—a spavined roan—and they mounted up. Reo said, “I’m headed for Signal town. How about you?”
“Just going up the road.”
“May as well ride together, then.”
Buchanan tugged his hat down. “Go ahead.”
“You first,” Reo said cheerfully. Buchanan only shook his head with a tiny smile. Reo complained, “If I didn’t know you better, Buchanan, I’d say a man could get shot that way.”
“One of us has to take that chance.”
Reo nodded briefly, grinned, and put his horse into the road.
Buchanan followed along, wiping his face. It sure was hot as hell.
Three
Steve Quick came down out of the west pastures with an angry frown wrinkling his face. He stopped the horse just outside the Pitchfork ranch yard and lifted his canteen, downed two swallows of neat whisky, and corked the canteen. Then he rode on down past the corrals into the deserted yard.
Steve Quick had fair hair and a round boy’s face that made him look a decade younger than his thirty-one years. His waxed threadbare mustache failed to give him the refined appearance it was intended to provide. He looked around the empty yard, disgusted and slit-eyed angry because old Warrenrode was out somewhere with the crew, and hadn’t seen fit to cut Steve Quick in on it. It was a hell of a fine way for a man to treat his Western Division segundo and future son-in-law.
He dismounted and led his sweat-damp horse into the barn. Unsaddling, he let the horse loose into the cavvy corral without bothering to rub it down. The barn was hot and close with the stink of hay and manure. He tramped outside and stopped when he hit the open air, waiting for it to revive him. It didn’t do much good; there was no wind. The sluggish heat blistered the earth.
With the shirt sweat-pasted to his back, he slammed across the yard to the long adobe ranch house and climbed onto the porch. A clay olla hung under the porch roof in a net of rope; he dipped the tin cup into the olla, filled it with water, and dumped the water over his matted hair. He put the tin cup away and shook his head like a half-drowned shaggy dog. Water splattered the door. He combed his hair b
ack with his fingers, scraped a palm across his dripping face, exhaled a blast of air, and went inside.
The yard-thick adobe walls kept the interior a good fifteen degrees cooler than the outside. He had to stop just within the door to let his eyes accustom themselves to the dimness of the wide, low-ceilinged room; it was lit only by a half dozen tiny windows tunneled high in the walls.
Mike Warrenrode wasn’t here, but his presence was in the room just the same. The massive furniture, the heavy patterned Zuni rugs, the hairy buffalo head over the fireplace, and Warrenrode’s wheelchair—all of them carried the sound and the touch and the smell of Mike Warrenrode.
Steve Quick cursed under his breath.
He lunged across the room and went down the dim hallway to Antonia’s room. Without bothering to knock, he latched the door open and threw it back.
She was in her corset. Her dark eyes flashed at him. “You’re always so polite, Steve.” He walked in and slammed the door behind him. A sort of smile twisted his sensual lips.
Antonia said, “You’re drunk.”
“Not very.” He tossed his hat on the bed, and his eyes gave her a hungry appraisal. Above the black lace her brown flesh bubbled when she moved; her shoulders were smooth and dark, half hidden by the cascade of raven-black hair. She was a tall girl with big actress eyes and good bones, running just a little toward plumpness. Her waist was small, but her arms were heavy. She had phenomenal breasts. She reached for her robe, but before she could get it off the peg, he had crossed the small room. He dragged her toward him with a grunt—and stopped short with his cheek stinging from her slap.
“Goddamnit,” he roared.
She slipped away from him, twisted into the robe, and tied its belt around her waist. Quick said, “Quit looking at me like some kind of stranger.”
“Sometimes I think that’s what you are.”
He started to give chase, but his eyes lighted on the glint of metal on the bureau. He wheeled that way.
