by Jonas Ward
“I told you—”
“All right, all right,” the disappointed Dolly said petulantly. “But what about afterward? When you’ve taken care of Bart Malvaise?”
“I allow I’ll be on my way again.”
“You’ll take me with you, won’t you?” she asked eagerly.
“Sure wouldn’t mind it. But first I’ve got to get out of tomorrow’s fracas in one piece.”
“You will. You always do, Buchanan. You’ve got a charmed life.”
“Charms don’t last forever.”
“Well, yours will. And you’ll take me to San Francisco, won’t you? Just you, and not all those others?”
“Well, Pecos and Billy seemed interested in going along. I couldn’t rightly dispute them, being as they knew you before I did.”
“I don’t want them to go along! Just us, you and me. And when we get to ‘Frisco, I’ll show you a good time. Take you to all the high spots. Montgomery Street—”
Buchanan nodded impatiently. He was eager to get on. “All right,” he promised. “I don’t know how I’ll explain it to Pecos and Billy. But I’ll take you safe to ‘Frisco, if that’s what you want. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you let me go about my business right now. Otherwise won’t none of us live to get out of Indian Rocks.”
“Go ahead, then. But—Buchanan?”
“Ma’am?”
“Won’t you let me give you a good-luck kiss?”
Buchanan hesitated. “Just so it doesn’t lead to nothing else right now.”
“I promise.”
“All right.”
She was out of the bed in a flash, drifting across the darkened room like a pale ghost. Then she was up against Buchanan, pressing her firm breasts against his barrel of a chest. He put his massive arms around her and let her lips touch his. After a moment, he released her.
“Good luck, Buchanan,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Most likely I’m gonna need it.”
And he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. He was smiling. She was a right smartly turned out little filly, Buchanan told himself. Whatever else you could say against Bart Malvaise, you couldn’t deny he had a keen eye for womanly beauty. Buchanan wasn’t exactly keen on conducting a frail girl across bleak Arizona into California, and through Indian country all the way to the coast, but he could see that traveling with Dolly would have its compensating advantages.
First, though, he had to get out of Pasco County alive. Which might not be the easiest thing in the world to do, judging by the way Malvaise had it in for him.
He pushed open the next bedroom door, far at the end of the hall. It was Matt Patton’s room. Buchanan hesitated a moment, then shook the owner of the Spread Eagle into wakefulness.
Patton was instantly alert. “What—oh, you, Buchanan. Is there trouble?”
“Not yet. But I figured it was high time we started making some.”
“What time is it?”
“Around four, maybe. Or half-past. Time to get things moving. Where can I find Frank Riker?”
“He sleeps in the bunkhouse with the boys.”
Buchanan nodded. “Okay, Mr. Patton. I’ll get over there and wake them up. We ought to get on the move.”
“What do you want me to do?” Patton asked.
“You might get the cook to start shaping up breakfast for everybody.”
“Right. How hungry are you?”
“Not much,” Buchanan said. He smiled. “I don’t think I can hold much more than two pounds of steak, Mr. Patton. And maybe this much bourbon.” He held up thumb and forefinger, with a gap of about five inches between them. Matt Patton’s eyes widened. Then he nodded his head and said, “I’ll take care of it.”
Buchanan turned and went out, down the stairs, out into the cool, misty pre-dawn darkness. The moon was still high in the sky, and the stars were sharp and hard beyond the lowlying fog. Buchanan walked quickly across to the bunkhouse and shoved the door open.
He went to the bunks on the left first. Pecos was snoring away in the first lower. Buchanan thrust a booted foot in and prodded the gunslinger, while reaching into the upper at the same time to arouse Billy Rowe. They sat up at the same time, going for their guns.
“Buchanan!” Pecos Riley exclaimed.
“Time to get up,” Buchanan said mildly. “And get these other lunkers moving too.”
“It ain’t but four o’clock,” Billy Rowe protested.
“And gettin’ later every minute,” Buchanan replied. “We got work to do. Pecos, go roust up the ramrod. Billy, you help me get these lunkers awake.”
‘What’s the damn hurry?” Billy muttered.
“Shut up and listen to Buchanan!” Pecos told his buddy sharply. “You want to sleep or you want to fight Bart Malvaise?”
“Well—”
“Anybody who ain’t up to it can just get back to sleep,” Buchanan said equitably.
Pecos grinned. “Maybe Billy here wants to sleep, him being all tired out from yesterday and all.”
“Keep shut,” Billy said. “I’m as fresh as you are.” He turned to Buchanan. “When’s breakfast?”
• • •
BART MALVAISE HADN’T been able to sleep. He’d been up past midnight drinking and wishing he had Dolly—or anyone built like her—here to comfort him. Then he had undressed and tried to get some rest, but sleep wouldn’t come. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw faces.
Faces. The face of John Malvaise, coldly accusing. The face of Sheriff George Boyd. The faces of his dead gunslingers. And above all others, the face of Buchanan, with its steady, unwavering, contemptuous gaze.
After lying in bed for three hours waiting for sleep, Malvaise gave up. He rose and dressed and paced around the big empty house until the imported grandfather clock in the downstairs hall said the time was five minutes to five in the morning.
Malvaise buckled on his .45’s and left the house. The first pinkness of dawn was starting to cut through the gray sky as he walked across the yard, over to the second bunkhouse where the remnants of the Big M’s squad of gunmen were sacked out. Heaven help any of them, Malvaise vowed, if they were still asleep.
He threw the screened door open and stepped inside. A couple of lanterns were burning. A dozen men sat about, fully-dressed, cleaning their guns. Their expressions weren’t cheerful. They looked like it was five in the morning, which wasn’t surprising at all.
“I’m glad to see you’re all awake,” Malvaise growled. “Larson!”
Stix looked up. “What is it, boss?”
“Have all these men eaten?”
Larson nodded. “We’re all set, boss.”
Malvaise smiled. “Well, for the first time since the day before yesterday you fellows are on the ball.” He looked around at his men. They were the second string, only now they were his first line of offense. The real first-string men were underground rotting this morning.
“Boss?” Lou Nash asked.
“What is it, Nash?”
“Stix said something last night about us getting to have some fun with Miss Dolly. Was he just raspberryin’ us along, or do you mean it?”
“You think Stix would lie to you?” Malvaise asked.
Nash furrowed his brow. “Well, no. But I sort of thought he might be just telling us that to work our dander up about fightin’ so early in the mornin’.”
“Well,” Malvaise said, “what Stix told you is true. That lying little slut cost us six men yesterday, and when we get her today we’re gonna work her over. First Stix, then all the rest of you. And if there’s anything left of her by the time you men are through, we’ll slit her belly and leave her for the coyotes.” Malvaise grinned unpleasantly. “How do you men like that idea?”
“Fine,” Mike Grimes said.
“Sure do,” Lou Nash put in. “There ain’t a man of us who wouldn’t mind ridin’ that filly!”
“Well, today you’ll get
your chance!” Malvaise boomed. “Because we’re gonna ride over to the Spread Eagle and show ’em who runs this county. We’ll wipe ’em off the map! We’ll kill every man!”
“What about this Buchanan feller?” Mike Grimes asked.
Malvaise turned on him. “A hundred dollars in gold to the man who plugs him!” He jingled coins in his pocket. “Ten shiny eagles, you hear that? Paid in cash the minute I see his dead body!” He pulled out his pocket watch. “Okay. It’s ten after five. They’re probably still asleep over there. We’ll ride right in the front door before they know what’s happening to them.”
The man known as the Deacon rose slowly. He was long and lean and slab jawed, and right now he looked more mournful than ever. “You can count me out, boss.”
“Did I hear you say something, Deacon?”
“I said you could count me out. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just take my pay now and cut loose.”
“It ain’t all the same to me!” Malvaise stormed. “What kind of a gunslinger are you, anyway? What do you mean, count you out, you scum?”
The Deacon shrugged. “Boss, I just don’t like the feel of this job any more. Whoever this Buchanan is, I don’t want no more of him. He ain’t human. What he did to Biggie and Ruppert and the rest yesterday—well, I don’t want to be on the side opposite the side that guy’s on. I’ll just ride north and see if I can find something safer to do, if you don’t object.”
“I do object,” Malvaise said. “But we can get along without you. Clear out of here, if that’s what you want to do, you yellowbellied bastard!”
“I’m owed a hundred dollars,” the Deacon said quietly.
“You’re owed nothing! Clear out!”
For a long moment the Deacon stared sadly at his former employer. Then he looked around slowly at the guncrew. Stix Larson glowered at him, trying to copy the icy stare of Bart Malvaise. The Deacon’s shoulders slumped a little, and the fight went out of him.
“Okay,” he muttered. “I’m goin’.”
He scooped up his gear and started for the door. The moment he pulled it open, a rifle bullet came screamining into the room from outside, burying itself with terrific impact deep in the opposite wall. The Deacon leaped back. Buchanan’s pealing laughter sounded from outside.
The big drifter was safely under cover, having arrived on the Big M premises some five minutes earlier, accompanied by Pecos and Billy Rowe. He watched with amusement as the twenty men in the bunkhouse scurried for cover. Grinning, Buchanan stuck his Winchester into the open again and squeezed off another shot. It whistled through the bunkhouse and the satisfying sound of shattering glass told Buchanan that he had splintered the window and then blasted a mirror.
“Out the back!” came Malvaise’s hoarse yell. “Get him! Get the miserable bastard! A hundred fifty bucks for his corpse!”
The back door of the bunkhouse opened and Mike Grimes came out, gun in hand. But Pecos was waiting there. His trigger-finger tightened and Grimes went rolling in the dust, clutching his belly and staring in surprise at the bright red spurts of blood. Two other men made it safely out of the bunkhouse’s back door and, huddling down behind a wagon standing in the yard, began to concentrate their fire on Pecos. Pecos hunkered down, answering fire for fire, while Billy guarded the side door and Buchanan the front.
For a couple of minutes the firing was so heavy that Buchanan could hardly see a thing but gunsmoke. He nipped a man as he bolted from the bunkhouse, but two more got outside at the same time. Buchanan pursed his lips in annoyance and stopped to reload, while Pecos and Billy continued to pepper away.
Then Buchanan looked up. Somebody was climbing out of the upstairs window of the besieged bunkhouse—somebody long and lean, waving a white shirt. Buchanan recognized him as one of Malvaise’s gunslingers, one of the ones who had escaped the ambush the night before.
“Hey, Buchanan!” the man was calling. “I’m neutral! I quite Malvaise five minutes ago! Let me get out of here, will you?”
Buchanan smiled. The thin man was up on the roof now, waving his white shirt hard as he could. “Okay,” Buchanan rumbled loudly. “Throw your guns away and get down from there. I’ll let you clear out.”
“Thanks, Buchanan. I’ll remember that,” the Deacon called. Two Colts hit the ground with thuds. A moment later, the Deacon himself was dangling from the bunkhouse eaves, then let himself drop down to the ground. He staggered a moment as he hit the hard soil, then started to run as hard as he could for the gate.
Buchanan held his fire, letting the man go. But the Deacon had covered no more than twenty yards when a shot came crackling out of the bunkhouse and caught the fleeing man square between the shoulders. The Deacon’s momentum carried him on for three more steps. Then he stumbled forward and fell. He twitched once and was still.
Buchanan spat in disgust. There was only one man in that bunkhouse capable of a low stunt like shooting a man in the back, and it was Bart Malvaise. Sore through and through, Buchanan pumped three shots in quick succession into the bunkhouse. There was a gratifying howl of pain after the third shot.
But now practically all of Malvaise’s men had made it safely out of the bunkhouse, a trickle at a time, and they were deploying themselves in a wide circle around the three attackers from the Spread Eagle. The odds had started off at seven to one, and though they had been narrowed some there were still at least fifteen of Malvaise’s men in circulation, and they were defending on their home territory, which made it all the tougher for the intruders.
There was nothing to do but shoot and load, shoot and load. Buchanan began to sweat. The stitched wound was throbbing a little, not enough to annoy him but enough so he knew it was there. He kept his eyes peeled for Malvaise, and flicked the sweat out of his eyes as he looked.
There was a sudden shout of grief from Buchanan’s left. A moment later came Billy’s cry: “They got Pecos!”
“Bad?”
“Reckon so,” Billy called back.
Buchanan made no reply. Two against fifteen, now. It was only a matter of time before they picked off Billy, and then they would get him, and that would be it. Where in tarnation were Riker and his chousers? What was holding them up? If they didn’t get here in another five minutes or so, it would be too late to do him any good.
He fired again. Answering fire came from a hayrick to his right. He bore around, shot back, and a fusillade of slugs raked past him on the left. Breathing hard, now, Buchanan loaded and shot, loaded and shot. He forgot that he was a human being. He was just a machine for pulling triggers on other machines. The routine became mechanical. Shot after shot after shot.
He was still at it, spraying lead all over the Big M’s yard, when the herd arrived. Buchanan was so busy he didn’t even hear the herd approaching. Didn’t hear the thunder of beating hooves, didn’t hear the wild yells of the Spread Eagle’s punchers, didn’t hear the squeals of fright that were going up from Malvaise’s bunch as the Spread Eagle herd, five hundred strong, topped the rise and descended on the scene in wild and frightened confusion.
Then Buchanan saw. His booming roar of delight rang out, most likely audible as far east as St. Louis. The plan had worked. Buchanan and Pecos and Billy had held the Malvaise bunch at bay while Riker’s cowboys, doing the thing they knew best, had herded the Spread Eagle steers into the Big M’s grounds.
The animals came on like a solid wall of flesh and horns, the rhythm of their hooves making the ground shake. Buchanan saw the Malvaise men running in wild panicky circles as the herd swept down into the Big M. They didn’t know where to go. Neither did the cattle. Turned loose, they milled and stomped every which way, at top speed. Buchanan stepped into the clear, and as half a dozen head came cruising his way he fired his Colt into the air, diverting their charge. But the Malvaise men weren’t so quick thinking. Buchanan watched four of them disappear under the beating hooves, to the accompaniment of a chorus of whoops from Riker’s cowboys. Two other Malvaise men were streaking to safety, up the
rise and off into the countryside. The rest were huddled together in complete panic, ducking the threatening horns and forgetting all about defending themselves against attack by human beings.
Grinning broadly, Buchanan looked around for Malvaise. At first there was no sign of the man. Buchanan wondered if the rancher had been trampled, or if he had fled away at the first sight of the Spread Eagle herd.
Neither. He was still around, lurking back of the bunkhouse. Buchanan hesitated only a fraction of a second. He saw Malvaise take off, heading out the back way in hopes of averting capture. Buchanan took off after him.
For a big man, Malvaise moved fast. But Buchanan was a bigger one, and he moved fast, too. He narrowed the gap between himself and Malvaise to fifty yards. Malvaise looked back and fired at Buchanan without aiming. The shot kicked up a tuft of dirt twenty feet behind Buchanan. Cursing, Malvaise pulled the trigger again, heard the click of an empty chamber, and with a look of disgust on his face hurled the useless .45 at Buchanan and ran on.
Buchanan holstered his own gun and stepped up his loping pace until he was only a few steps behind Malvaise. With a sudden lunge, Buchanan shot out a hand, caught Malvaise, and stopped him dead in his tracks, spinning him around.
Panting, Malvaise said, “Don’t kill me! I’m unarmed!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Buchanan said easily. “Wouldn’t sit right with my conscience to shoot you down in cold blood. Even a sonofabitch like you, Malvaise. March, mister. We come running all this distance, and now we’re gonna walk all the way back.”
• • •
BY THE TIME Buchanan and his prisoner returned to the main yard of the Big M, Riker’s cowboys had rounded up most of the cattle, and were busily getting the remaining mavericks under control. In the middle of the yard lay six battered things that had been gunslingers half an hour back. There wasn’t much left to them now that they had been tromped on by half a thousand head of cattle. Nobody was looking at the corpses.
Another half-dozen of Malvaise’s men were lined up against the wall of the bunkhouse, their hands in the air. Billy Rowe held them at bay easily enough. But there was a grim look on Billy’s face that belied the jubilation of the moment.
