Buchanan 20

by Jonas Ward

  “You have trouble gettin’ this one to agree with anything you say?”

  “With most everything.”

  “But of course you can’t go anywhere,” Rosemarie insisted. “Not for weeks! What in the world are you doing?” What Buchanan was doing was rolling on his good shoulder and pushing himself up. The girl stepped forward and put both hands on his chest.

  “Lie back down there this instant!” she commanded. But it was as though she weren’t there as he swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

  “Lie down!” she ordered again. “You’re bad wounded!” He stood up, and even Neale watched that with open wonder. His daddy’s legends of the Territory giants of fifty years ago were coming true before his eyes.

  “Better take it easy, Buchanan,” he told him doubtfully. “Don’t push your luck.”

  “Don’t push what luck? I was in pretty fair shape till I came down here.”

  “Please, Tom, lie down,” Rosemarie asked him plaintively.

  “Man, just look at my duds,” Buchanan said, observing for the first time that half his shirt was cut away, that only one trouser leg was intact. “Town looked so peaceful, too, from the mountain.”

  “I’ll outfit you,” Neale said, bridling at the disparagement of Scots town. “But don’t blame the folks here for your troubles. It came from outsiders, just—”

  “Just what?” Buchanan asked him. “Outsiders just like myself?”

  “True, ain’t it? You’re a stranger, and all of them are strangers. You just happened to pick this town to fight it out.”

  “Billy!”

  “Well, that’s what happened, isn’t it?” Neale replied to the girl. “This is quiet, decent cattle country. Everybody works hard and takes time out Saturday night. Fist fights, sure. But a man don’t take a gun into town.” He paused, stared defiantly at Buchanan. “I’m twenty-eight years old,” he said, “and you’re the first man I ever knew that killed another—that ever even pointed a loaded gun at another.”

  “Billy—stop!” Rosemarie cried. “He did what he had to do tonight. They gave him no choice ...”

  “No,” Buchanan said, his voice calm against the charged emotion of theirs. “I had a choice. In the saloon I could have walked out, like the proddy told me to. In the dancehall I had even less excuse. I pointed a loaded gun at that son, whoever he was, for no better reason than I was sore at him.”

  “I talked without thinking, Buchanan,” Billy Neale said. “Sorry.”

  “Not as much as I am. Also much obliged, which is more important. Damned if I could have kept opening that door.”

  “You would.”

  “I don’t know,” Buchanan said. “A man likes to think he would, but I don’t know.”

  “It was a wonderful, brave thing,” Rosemarie added.

  “And I’m living proof of it,” Buchanan said. “I was there!”

  “If you’re trying to pull my stinger, mister,” Neale said, then smiled, “well, you’ve done it. I’ll go see what I can do about a shirt and pants.” He looked the big man over again and shook his head. “Going to fit damn quick, I promise you that.”

  The cowboy left, and left a silence behind him. Not a tranquil, comfortable sort of quiet, but an electric one, charged with the woman’s awareness of the bare-waisted man and his awareness of her interest.

  Rosemarie spoke into it, uneasily.

  “Even if you get another outfit,” she said, “you can’t travel anywhere. Not yet, Tom.”

  “You don’t happen to smoke, do you?” Buchanan asked..

  “Smoke?”

  “Somewhere along the line,” he said wistfully, “I lost my makings. A little tobacco would be fine right now.”

  “Would there be any in a hardware shop?” Rosemarie wondered, momentarily untracked from her main subject—as he had intended.

  “Not likely.”

  “I’ll ask for some in the Glasgow,” she offered. “You wait right here, now.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Neale returned first, bringing a rider’s work shirt of durable flannel and twill trousers with reinforced knee pads.

  “These are brand new,” Buchanan said, feeling the cloth respectfully.

  “Bought ’em this evening,” Neale admitted. “Must’ve had a premonition.”

  “How much they set you back?”

  “Bought ’em at the company store. Forget about it.”

  “Ten dollars?”

  “Not half. Where’s Rosemarie?”

  “Beggin’ me some tobacco.”

  “Hell, I got some. Here.”

  “Got my own, thanks.”

  “Then how come—”

  “Just hoping you’d get back first,” Buchanan explained, peeling off the remnants of the trousers with an effort, having to sit down on the cot again while he slowly put his legs through the new ones.

  “You’re really going to leave tonight?”

  “Got to.”

  “And you’re afraid she’ll hold you back?”

  Buchanan pushed himself to his feet and pulled the shirt around his shoulders. As Neale had warned, the outfit was snug. He began to button it across his chest, laboriously, when the cowboy realized there had been no answer to his question.

  “Must be tough, Buchanan—girl like Rosemarie throwing herself at you.”

  The tall man continued to dress himself, stuffed the shirttail deep into the trousers, still not answering. But then his eyes lost their preoccupied look and focused intently on Neale’s face.

  “You bet it’s tough,” he said, almost threateningly. And that was all he said, leaving the other man puzzled.

  “I’d trade places with you,” Neale said.

  “And do what different?” Buchanan asked, moving slowly across the small room to the desk where Smith kept his books. He found a marking pencil there and a sheet of yellow paper.

  “I’d take her with me,” Neale said. “Wherever I was going.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Buchanan told him without interrupting his writing. “Not if you’d ever been where I’m going.” He straightened up then, carried the paper back to Neale, and handed it to him. To Mr. B. Neale, it read. I.O.U. ten (10) dollars gold, U.S.A. currency. T. Buchanan.

  “You’re a stubborn son,” Neale told him.

  “Must be.” He held out his big hand. “So long, Billy Neale,” he said.

  Neale shook the hand. “Where’s your horse at? I’ll walk you there.”

  “Had a horse four months ago,” Buchanan said. “Traded him for a burro team—” he grinned—”and the burros died on the mountain.”

  Neale shook his head. “Man, you’re really hard up, aren’t you?”

  “Not according to my partner. He tells me I’m worth a couple of million, at least. See you in church,” he said from the doorway, and limped out.

  Scotstown was quiet now, the street deserted, and the only light still glowing came from the Glasgow. As Buchanan glanced that way the swinging doors parted and Rosemarie came onto the street, her head bent in earnest conversation with Angus Mulchay. He watched her come on for another moment, long enough to make her image indelible, and then slipped out of sight around the corner of the building. He went that way until he reached the next street, swung south and headed for the towering black mass that was the mountain.

  You bet it’s tough, he said, but nobody heard him.

  Nine

  Going to church on Sunday morning was an integral part of the life in Scotstown, and it would be safe to estimate that on this particular sunny Sunday in June some ninety per cent of the town’s three hundred-odd population were attending services in the handsome new building Malcolm Lord had been so instrumental in erecting.

  And because the rancher was such a prominent member of his congregation, the Reverend Jamieson was willing to forego his regular sermon and permit Lord the use of the pulpit for what the minister had been told was an important, though non-sacred, message. That, as a matter of fact, was what Dr. Jamies
on told the congregation by way of introduction—and Angus Mulchay, who had been settling down for the half-hour nap he always took at this time Sunday, suddenly sat up straight in his pew, eyes wary and suspicious.

  Malcolm Lord made a fine figure in the pulpit, handsome in a distinguished manner, affluent and benign, aristocratic, even, and there were few there besides Mulchay who didn’t feel prouder of themselves because this was their good neighbor, their benefactor and first vestryman.

  Lord thanked Dr. Jamieson and took a sweeping glance at the upturned faces of Scotstown.

  “My friends,” he told them in his sure, rich-toned voice, “I am going to speak to you of two matters. One of them is the unpleasantness that occurred within our peaceful community last evening. For those who may not yet have heard, there was a common gunfight in Mr. Terhune’s otherwise perfectly respectable establishment. A man, unfortunately, was shot to death—the first such casualty in our town since the board of councilmen appointed the present sheriff.

  “More unfortunately still, there was a second gunfight—brought on by the first as such things generally happen—and other casualties. No Scotstown man, I am deeply gratified to say, was involved in either fight ...”

  “The hell he says!” Mulchay whispered indignantly and irreverently, earning for himself a dozen hostile glares.

  “... although one of Overlord’s young men, Billy Neale, was instrumental in ending the disturbance. Now, you may wonder why I asked Dr. Jamieson to speak of last night’s trouble to you all on this, the day of prayer. The reason, my friends, is that some of the men who did take part in the shootings were in Scotstown at my own personal instigation. Therefore, I take full responsibility for everything that happened, and will make complete restitution for all property damage that occurred.

  “Now who were these men? They are Texas soldiers—cavalry troopers, to be exact—and they are members of that elite and courageous corps known as Gibbons’ Militia. This group, formed a year ago by the famous Ranger Captain, John Gibbons, are becoming famed far and wide for the great and valorous service they perform along our strife-torn border.

  “These few, the cream of Texas manhood, have stepped into the breech where our do-nothing state and federal governments have left us to defend ourselves against another Mexican invasion ...”

  “Invasion!” echoed a startled lady in the rear.

  “Ay, invasion, Mrs. Watkins. Did you think they had given up just because a treaty was signed? Did you believe they wouldn’t really make a try to conquer Texas again, put us under the rule of a foreigner? My friends, in this house of holy worship I will not say more of what: an invasion will mean—I will not conjure up pictures in your minds of what the invaders will do to our fair sex when all the men have been tortured and killed.

  “But we are in imminent peril of being attacked. Their advance patrols already come and go across the border with impunity. These scouts spy us out, choose their future victims for the main attack ...”

  “Merciful heavens!” Mrs. Watkins said, and there were other ladies now to join her in voicing fear.

  “But be assured,” Lord went on, his voice rising. “You will be saved! Captain Gibbons and his militia are taking up defensive positions along the river this very minute—”

  “What’s that?” Mulchay demanded, not whispering.

  “Even as I speak to you,” Lord went on, “the protectors of Scotstown are routing out the advance patrols, driving the transgressors back to their own land ...”

  “Wait a minute, Malcolm Lord!” Mulchay shouted, on his feet now. “Do you mean to stand there and say you’ve sent Black Jack Gibbons down to my property? To MacKay’s?”

  “The militia is here for the safety and protection of us all, Angus Mulchay! If you are providing Mexican raiders a route by which Scotstown will be sacked—then I accuse you of endangering the lives of every man, woman and child among us!”

  “So say we all!” somebody cried in emotional support.

  “Ay!” chimed in others. “Ay!”

  “Mulchay would have us all slaughtered!”

  But Mulchay was already hurrying out of the church, leaving Malcolm Lord a clear victory in his campaign for public opinion.

  The invading hordes totaled eight happy-go-lucky bandidos whose total armament was three rifles, four handguns, and eating knives all around. Their leader was a fierce-looking fat man named Ramon, whom none of them obeyed but who was jefe nevertheless because he owned the best rifle—a Remington that Mulchay had sold him two years before.

  They were thieves by occupation, just as their fathers and grandfathers had been—too proud to beg, too childlike to work—and most skilled in the allied arts of lying, lovemaking and consuming vino. Angus Mulchay thought the thing they did best of all was sleep; sleep a minimum of ten hours in any twenty-four, sleep the clock around, sleep in the middle of a conversation.

  And they were sleeping this Sunday morning, all over the lush grass that constituted the yard behind Mulchay’s six-room ranch house, but they had earned their rest, having spent almost the entire night in the saddle eluding the federales chasing them from San Carlos. It had been a hard ride for poor profit, the state of Chihuahua becoming more and more policed, less and less a freebooter’s paradise, but they had reached their yanqui sanctuary safely and even if they had no gold this time, Señor Angus would be good for a handout.

  The advance patrol of Gibbons’ Militia damned near ran over them.

  “For crissake, are they dead?”

  “Trooper” Glines asked “Sergeant” Lou Kersh, reining his mount sharply.

  “Let’s see,” Kersh said, sliding the .45 into his fist, pumping three booming shots into the ground beside the sombrero-shaded head of Ramon. The fat man came awake as quickly as it was possible for him—some several seconds later than Mario and José, who slept nearby. Within another half-minute all eight were rubbing their eyes sleepily, struggling to sitting positions.

  “Que pasa? Que pasa?” began the bewildered chorus. “What the hell goes on?”

  Kersh answered gutturally, “Get up, you sorry bastards! On your miserable feet!”

  The command, accompanied by the hard faces of the mounted men all around them, the drawn guns, made no sense at all but had a great deal of meaning. They got up, hands above heads.

  “You make a mistake, amigo,” Ramon said, addressing himself to his opposite number. “We are invitados—guests of the Señor Angus.”

  “Line up!” Kersh ordered, swinging his .45 with a negligent menace. “Get in next to the fat one. Al lado del gordo!” he repeated in his border-Mexican, and they formed a ragged line beside Ramon.

  At the sound of the staccato gunfire Black Jack Gibbons had sunk spurs into his horse almost involuntarily, and swung the animal’s head in the direction of Mulchay’s place with an expectant kind of excitement running through him.

  He raced toward the house, some three hundred yards away, and watched with satisfaction as Kersh herded the quarry together. He was happy that Kersh had flushed the first of them. A tonic for the man’s morale after last night’s sorry business.

  “Well, Sergeant, what’ve we got here?” he asked, pulling his horse close in beside Kersh’s, raking the hapless Ramon and his band with a contemptuous glance.

  “Murderers and rapists, from the looks of ’em,” Kersh said, staring directly at Ramon.

  “But no, amigo! No,” Ramon said. “Such things we have never done. The Señor Angus, he will tell you we are guests. We come for peace and quiet ...”

  “We got witnesses,” Kersh said. “We know all about you. Fat man, you’re gonna hang for your sins.”

  “Hang? For Dios, why? What have I done here?”

  “That one, too,” Gibbons said, having picked out another brown-skinned face that displeased him, pointing to nineteen-year-old Mario.

  “No, amigos, no!” Ramon cried out again. “Surely you are joking?”

  “How about him?” Kersh asked, pointing his own
arm at a stiletto-slim figure who was a man named Gio Alavarez.

  “And him,” Gibbons said, singling out a fourth candidate. “We’ll take the other four into town.”

  At a wave of Kersh’s head the six mounted men of his squad moved their horses forward, crowded in on the four who had been condemned, suddenly dropped nooses over their heads, and tightened them brutally.

  “No, no!” Ramon shrieked at them. “This cannot be—” A jerk of the rope around his neck cut short the protest.

  “Where?” Kersh asked Gibbons. “The cottonwoods by the river?”

  “They’d do,” Gibbons said. “But this is the loudmouth’s range—Mr. Mulchay’s. Let’s make it a little more personal, Kersh. String ’em up under those eaves.”

  And that was what the old man found when he reached home-four friends hanging dead by their necks on the front porch of his house. One by one he cut them down, and spent the whole long afternoon digging graves in the earth and burying them decently. Then, far into the night, he carved a common headboard into a thick strip of oak. Under here, it read, Lie Ramon, Mario, Gio and Carlos. Murdered this Sunday, the 13th day of June, 1857, by The Butcher of Brownsville.

  Ten

  “Well, say!” Fargo said, waking that morning to find Buchanan in camp. “When did you get back up here?”

  “Along about dawn.”

  “Have yourself a real time?”

  “So-so.”

  “Live little town, is it?”

  “Live enough. Fargo, I don’t have your tobacco.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Nor your bottle.”

  “Well, hell—so long as you had some fun with the money ...”

  “Had to bury a man with it,” Buchanan told him.

  “No foolin’? How’d he come to die?”

  “One of those things. How about some breakfast?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Breakfast was bacon and potatoes, washed down with powerful Mexican coffee brewed from beans they roasted themselves. The partners ate in silence, and when they were done Buchanan took the tin plates and cups to clean them in the spring just below the camp.