by E. R. Slade
“That’s very well, but ...”
“You don’t seem to get the message. I don’t plan to die. You want to drum up some business, go talk to them Texans or Snake Ed.”
“Mr. Maxwell, how many men have you known who died when they planned to?”
“I ain’t planning when to die. I’m planning how I’m going to live. I don’t need no Last Will and Testament for that.”
Buck walked out.
He paused in the wind, letting it clear his head. Then he strode along to the Bucket of Blood Saloon.
When he reached the batwings and looked over them he saw only the barkeeper and the usual card players. No Texans. No Snake Ed. No Olinger.
With the Winchester in the crook of his arm, he stepped inside.
Card players looked up, watched him cautiously. The barkeeper’s eyes narrowed. He looked like he might be thinking about his shotgun again; but he didn’t reach for it.
“Where’s Snake Ed?” Buck asked the room at large.
There was no answer. Two of the card players let their right hands drop near their pistols. The professional gambler twisted his mustache.
“How about the Texans?” Buck asked, his gaze glinty.
Silence.
“You tell them I’m lookin’ for ’em,” he said, and left.
~*~
Buck picked out two Winchesters and two light, well-balanced .22’s, laid them on the counter. He thoroughly checked the action of a pair of Colt Peacemakers and put them next to the rifles. After a look over, two little Remington .22 derringers went into his pockets, along with several boxes of .45, .44-40, and .22 shells. He got a piece of rope and bound the rifles and Peacemakers together.
He was reluctant to leave the store unattended, but there was no help for it. He got his horse and rode south to the Parkers’ keeping an eye out for Payson, but he saw neither him nor the buggy.
It was almost noon when he arrived. Parker, just about to go into the house, turned and came off the porch when he saw Buck.
“You gettin’ up an army?” Parker asked, eyeing the bundle of firearms.
“I am. Payson been here yet?”
“Payson? Mack Payson? Haven’t seen him since early this mornin’.”
Buck told him what Payson was doing. “The more men we have the better our chances of beating them.”
Parker nodded, studying the ground. Then he looked up, some of the color going from the bristle-chinned face. “I won’t let you down this time,” he said.
“You think on what’s best for your family, not on worrying about me. If it seems more sensible to clear out for someplace peaceful, better do it. The show them Texans give at Darholm’s funeral was impressive. This ain’t going to be a fight to look forward to.”
“We heard about that.
“Mother’ll be waitin’ dinner for me. Why don’t you come in and I’ll have her set another place.”
A hulking farmhand sat at the kitchen table watching Mary Ellen getting biscuits out of the oven. When Martha Parker saw Buck she nearly dropped the bowl of beans she held. Buck leaned the bundle of firearms against the kitchen cabinets.
“Ain’t necessary to feed me if it’ll run you short,” Buck said.
“Se’down,” Allen Parker said, doing so himself.
When everybody was seated and served pork and beans, Buck said, “I ain’t come here to try to tell you what to do but just to leave off them guns and let you know what my plans are.” He again described Payson’s mission. “Be a meeting tomorrow.”
Martha Parker couldn’t keep still any longer. “This is crazy, just crazy! You’ll get everyone killed, Mr. Maxwell. What you are doing is irresponsible. Imagine! Asking men who mostly have never been in any sort of fight at all to risk their lives in a hopeless cause like this. Appealing to pride so they can’t say no and be seen doing a sensible thing like taking their families to a safe place.”
“Leave off, Martha,” Parker said. “Buck’s trying to save our town.”
“Safe, peaceful places don’t just happen,” Buck said. “They’re made. If we all fight, the cattlemen can’t win.”
Some sort of emotion flushed Mary Ellen’s face, but what the emotion was Buck couldn’t tell.
“The man is right, Mother,” Parker said. “I been thinking on this, and there ain’t no other way to look at it, really. I ain’t saying I like it much, but s’posin’ we go somewheres else, then it happens all over again? What are we going to do, leave more years of work behind? We got to put down roots and grow someplace.”
“Oh, dear God,” Mrs. Parker said.
Mary Ellen’s high color had drained leaving her pale. Her eyes stayed on Buck’s face almost continuously.
“I got an old .45-70 single shot Springfield,” Parker said. “Bought it from a man back in Missouri. And I got my old double-barreled twelve gauge. I don’t know what Bob’s got.”
Mrs. Parker left the table and expressed her opinion of the proceedings by the emphatic way she worked the plunger of the butter churn.
“I got an old Henry,” the hulking farm hand said in a slow voice, as though sorting out words was hard work for him. He frowned. “But somethin’s wrong inside some’eres. It’s jammed.”
Buck reached for the bundle of guns, untied it.
“There’s a couple of Winchesters here. And a pair of .45’s. The .22’s,” Buck added, to Mary Ellen, “are for you and your mother. They don’t have much kick and don’t weigh much. They don’t have the stopping power of the Winchesters or the Colts, but they’ll still do some damage.” He fished out the derringers. “You each might want to carry one around with you.” He emptied the ammunition out of his pockets. “This ought to hold you, but there’s more if you need it.”
“How much for these?” Parker asked, picking up a Winchester and looking it over.
“Nothing. My contribution to the common defense.”
“You hear that, Mother?”
“I don’t care to hear anything except that you’ve changed you mind,” she said.
“I’ll be going,” Buck said. “Thanks for the meal.”
Mary Ellen went out with him.
“I would so like to live in peace,” she said.
“So would I.”
~*~
Buck made nine more stops, first at the little farms of the three employees, other than Payson, who remained alive. Payson had not been around to any of their places yet, so Buck filled them in on his plans and then offered sanctuary in his store for the night. But none of the three took him up on it.
As the farmer who looked after Buck’s stock put it, “If I lose this place I got nothin’, so I ain’t leavin’ it for them range hoggin’ bandits to burn down.”
Then came the most difficult stops. When he rode into the yard at Horsely’s place he found his widow and children packing to leave. They hardly knew or cared who he was and had no interest in his offer of the store as a safe place to spend the night. At Michael’s the widow and her brother were apathetic and planned to leave when the funeral was over. Tihlman’s widow’s eyes burned bright when Buck spoke of doing something about the vigilantes. She was a bantamweight woman but she had a mad steer fury roaring within.
Timmy Simms’ mother was very distraught and Buck spent some time comforting her before going on to Calderwood’s and finally Norton’s. By this time it was late afternoon and Buck was exhausted. Nevertheless he had promised to return with a wagon and pick up the bodies, so once he had reassured himself that all was secure at the store he set off.
He was starting to wonder about Payson by this time. In all his stops he had not found a single place Payson had actually been, though at both Horsely’s and Tihlman’s they knew he was supposed to be coming with guns.
Buck picked up the three bodies and returned to High Plains about dusk still not having crossed Payson’s track. He found Dunderland building coffins.
“I see you’re investing in the future of High Plains,” Buck commented as Dunderland
peered up from his work in a dim pool of lantern light.
“You’ve been the best thing for my business since the yaller fever went through here,” Dunderland said, eyeing the three bodies in the wagon. “I’ll be wanting forty apiece for those.”
“Twenty, Dunderland. I don’t mind you prospering but I won’t stand for you getting rich off this. You must have seven or eight extra coffins stacked around here over what you’ll need to bury the lynched men.”
“I got nine extra—but they won’t be extra for long. I’ll have to bury the six we got so far tomorrow or I won’t have room to work. You’d better tell the widows. And I’ll still take forty apiece.”
“Twenty,” Buck said, handing over the money. “The widows won’t want to come to town until things have quieted down. If you need room to work, bring these men over to my store as you finish with them.”
“Funerals is tomorrow, one right after the other, startin’ at noon. I’ve made up my mind. We can’t be waitin’ or we’ll git behind and never catch up. You still owe me sixty dollars.”
Dunderland turned out to be unbudgable on the scheduling of the funerals, Buck on the price, so they wound up with twenty-dollar funerals scheduled for the next day. Buck took the wagon back to the livery.
“Seen Payson?” he asked the liveryman.
“Nope.”
“I’d best go look for him.”
Buck saddled up and spread the word about the funerals, asking after Payson as he went. He couldn’t find anybody who had actually seen him. Since it was dark there was no prospect of following tracks, so Buck finally gave it up and returned to town.
It was hours after dark and Buck could hardly stay awake long enough to take care of his horse, find out from the liveryman that Payson had still not shown up, and stumble back to his store.
Thinking he would get up later and have another look for Payson, he leaned the Winchester against the wall within reach and lay down on his back with his Colt under his hand.
He was asleep on a matter of seconds ...
The next thing he knew the dazzling light of a lantern was hurting his eyes, beyond it were the shadowy forms of men with guns.
He felt for his Colt, for the Winchester.
Gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Several hands grabbed the front of his shirt, yanked him to his feet. At almost the same time something landed on his shoulders and the rough bristliness of hemp tightened around his neck.
He started to go into action, but stopped when three pistol barrels looked him in the face at a range of a foot and a half. His wrists were bound behind his back.
The lantern on the floor lit faces weirdly from underneath. How had all these men gotten in without waking him up?
Snake Ed moved in front of him, grinning. “You was lookin’ for us?”
Buck said nothing, still trying to see where his guns had gotten to, thinking of the knives under the counter out in the store.
“You sure are a big talker,” Snake Ed said, almost amiably. “Warnin’ and threatenin’ and kickin’ Olinger out of the saloon. Sorry I missed that. Would have been the best entertainment I’ve had in a while.”
Snake’s brow furrowed. “Storekeeper, there ain’t no more time for entertainment. We got to clear the land of sodbusters. So you got to go. They say you really was a ramrod—some little outfit in the mountains. You ought to be able to see why we cain’t have rustlers movin’ in on us. Come on, boys.”
They jerked the rope, and Buck stumbled after them out of his quarters, through the rear door—unlocked because he’d forgotten it again. They took him under a barn beam and threw the free end of the rope over. Four Texans, looking eager, got hold and gave a pull, until Buck was on his toes gasping for breath.
Mary Ellen had tried to get him to leave; Thompson had tried to get him to make out a will. Now it was too late for either of those things.
Snake Ed reached up to test the tension on the rope.
“I could snap your neck this way,” he said conversationally, working the taut rope from side to side. “Unless you got a tough neck. Then I’d just punch in your Adam’s apple. Did that with one of them others. He pissed his pants.”
Buck couldn’t have replied if he’d wanted to. He was concentrating on keeping his balance.
“Now, you listen, Maxwell,” Snake Ed said in a sudden hard tone. “Tomorrow you get on your horse, you put your tail between your legs, and you ride out of the Territory. If you’re still in town after dark, you’ll dangle. If you’re ever seen again inside Wyoming we’ll haul you up to dry.” He yanked on the rope and Buck staggered, near blacking out, his heart pounding, his palms sweating.
“Got that?” Snake demanded, his face six inches from Buck’s. “You’re gittin’ the courtesy of a warnin’ because you was once a cattleman. You won’t git no more warnin’s. Next time it’s up the rope.”
Buck was losing consciousness. When the Texans let go he collapsed on the ground in an awkward heap, breathing hoarsely.
He began to shiver. When the cold became intolerable he rolled over, found his hands were free and the rope gone from his neck. He struggled shakily to his feet, stumbled into his quarters.
There in his bunk lay Payson. Cold, stiff, bloody, riddled with bullet holes.
~*~
Two hours later he was sitting in his office drinking coffee, still trying to get his hands to stop shaking. He had his pistol on the desk, loaded again, and his Winchester next to it, also loaded again. But they were no defense at all against Mack Payson’s body lying under a blanket at the far end of the store.
He wanted to get his horse and ride. Anywhere. Never come back.
That would please Mary Ellen and her mother. Probably Parker would be relieved to have an excuse to leave.
But where could you go to escape responsibility for your own bad judgment?
~*~
When the sun came up it threw fresh spring light across the land, but a shadow of terror across his soul. The time had come to get Dunderland; and after that there would be the ride out to Payson’s little ranch to break the news to the widow.
And he was still so shaken he wasn’t sure he could face going out of the building.
He eyed the weapons on the desk, thought of all the gunfights he’d been in over the years. He’d never been afraid of any of them. Until the brand inspector and Markham he’d never even been particularly angry. Rustlers and Indians were obstacles, and part of his job was to clear such obstacles out of the way.
But now ...
The sun was rising higher. Payson’s family needed to know. There was only one thing to do.
Buck put the pistol in its holster. Then he picked up the rifle, ran a hand along the stock hoping to draw confidence from it; but there wasn’t any. He went uncertainly to the front door.
He was several minutes finding the courage to unlock it and go out.
The street was empty, not even a horse at a hitch rack.
Buck consciously relaxed his grip on the rifle and started along the sidewalk.
Dunderland was picking over a pile of lumber looking for choice coffin boards.
“I have another body for you,” Buck said, his voice unsteady enough to cause Dunderland to peer at him more closely. “In the store.”
Unreasoning panic seemed to take him by the throat. He made a beeline for Wyoming Hardware, shut and locked the door after himself.
He spent several minutes mopping sweat and wondering vaguely what had happened to him.
When Dunderland pounded on the door, Buck’s sweat came cold.
“He’ll be sixty-five dollars,” Dunderland said after a look at Payson—and a shrewd look at Buck. “On account of the mess. Funeral can’t be for at least a couple of days.”
“Sixty-five dollars?” Buck could hardly concentrate.
“Sixty-five dollars,” Dunderland said firmly.
Buck’s eyes strayed to Payson. Nose shot off. Bullet holes in the arms, legs, chest.
All had bled. The bastards had wanted Payson to know he was dying.
And wanted to scare Buck.
Buck looked at Dunderland, something of himself coming back, though from a long distance.
“Twenty dollars was enough for the others, it’s enough for Payson.”
“Not hardly. You want the widow to have to look at that nose? Building a nose is tricky work.”
“Forty-five dollars worth?”
“And then some. I ought to charge seventy-five.”
“I’ll give you twenty for the funeral and twenty for the nose. That’s all.” Buck counted it out.
“You want Mrs. Payson to have to look at a twenty-dollar nose?” Dunderland said as though wondering at Buck’s penny pinching.
“Twenty, Dunderland. Or I’ll whittle a nose myself.”
When Dunderland left, with forty dollars, the body, and a sour outlook on the day, Buck felt recovered enough to go feed what stock he still had—the farmer had not shown up. Then he made himself some breakfast.
He had another bad moment when the time came to set off for Payson’s. He got the shakes and couldn’t even go near the door for twenty minutes.
When he finally did make it outside he sidled along to the livery fighting panic all the way.
“That hoss come back with the buggy,” the liveryman said. “Middle of the night. But no Payson.”
Buck was too shaky to speak, so he nodded, went to get his horse.
“You going to look for him?”
Buck shook his head.
“You ought to. I’ll bet they got ’im, them bastards. I seen him drivin’ off with a lot of guns, but they wa’n’t a one in the buggy when it showed up here.”
That was most of his stock of weapons. Now in the hands of Snake Ed.
“Payson’s at Dunderland’s,” he managed to say. “They got him all right.”
~*~
Beth Payson took the news with her chin up, her two small daughters held firmly to her sides.
“Several men have spent the night trying to find him,” she said. “I’ve been expecting to hear something like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Buck said. “Your husband was a good man.”
“He said the same of you,” she said. “Have you had any breakfast?”
