Buchanan's Revenge Page 3

  "How much would you make?" Buchanan asked again.

  "A living," Bogan answered. "In a year or two you'd be doing real good."

  "A year or two?" Buchanan echoed gloomily. "What about a three-team wagon?"

  "Six mules? Why, man, that's where the big money is. You take a load of cotton, and hoes, and axes—everything they're yammering for down there—and you clean up. Course," he added, "you got to slip past the damn customs."

  "How come?"

  "How come? Because those thieving Mex politicians and generals want their cut. Just about wipes out your profit before you make final delivery of the shipment."

  "A little smuggling on the side, that it?"

  Bogan shrugged. "Everybody does it," he said. "Sometimes you get caught and sometimes you don't."

  "And if you do?"

  "Well, first they fine you. Take your wagon and your goods. Then they shoot you."

  Buchanan, who probably knew as much about smuggling as any man on either side of the Rio Grande, was not asking his questions to seek information. He was listening to Bogan's tone of enthusiasm, studying the younger fellow's sincerity.

  "Sounds chancey to me, Rig," he told him now.

  "Sure, and that's why the payoff's so big. But what the hell difference does it make? I can't even make the down payment on a wheel, let alone a team of mules."

  "Forget those one-team wagons," Buchanan said. "Takes too long. How much is six mules and a wagon?"

  "Why?"

  "Because you and me got a thousand to invest."

  "You and me—a thousand?"

  "If you want to go into the freight business, and I guess it's as good as any."

  "You mean we'll buy a wagon?"

  "Start at the top," Buchanan grinned, "and work our way down."

  He told Rig Bogan the story of the money then, of the meeting with old Jessie back in Alpine, and in the morning they rode down out of the Plateau and started their almost futile search for a loan that would put them in business.

  And this morning they had their wagon, a thing of beauty to Rig and painted about the reddest red Buchanan had ever seen. DOUBLE-B FAST FREIGHT, it said on either side in bold white letters. T. BUCHANAN— R. BOGAN—OWNERS. WAGON NO. 1.

  "Ain't she the prettiest thing ever?" Rig wanted to know, running his hand over the smooth panel. "Sure gonna break my heart the first mud we slosh through."

  "Mr. Penney won't mind, though," Buchanan said.

  “Look yonder, Tom," Bogan said, his voice urgent. "I think I see our first customer."

  Buchanan turned to find a portly, prosperous-looking gent making his way into the yard. "You know him, Rig?"

  "Honest John Magee," Bogan told him. "Biggest cotton broker in the market. Better let me do the negotiatin', partner."

  "Help yourself, only don't drive too hard a bargain the first time."

  Honest John Magee came up to them and surveyed each man silently from head to toe.

  "My name is Magee," he said then, curtly, speaking directly to Buchanan. "When can you leave for Matamoros?”

  “Mr. Bogan handles those details," Buchanan said.

  "I know all about Mr. Bogan," the broker said. "I'm asking you. When can you take my cotton to Matamoros?”

  "Well, about five minutes, I guess. That right, Rig?"

  ""There's a few other matters to discuss first." Rig said importantly. "Do you want this cotton shipped on a commission basis?"

  “I pay a dollar a mile," Magee told Buchanan. "Take it or leave it"

  Buchanan looked at Bogan. Rig said, "Do we take this through customs at Matamoros or slip across the river at Olmito?"

  "Honest John Magee isn't in the smuggling trade. He pays the legal tariff."

  "In that case, Mr. Magee," Rig said, "we'd prefer to take this on a ten per cent commission."

  "A dollar a mile," Magee snapped at Buchanan. "Take it or leave it!"

  "Payable when?"

  "Half now, half when I see the invoices signed by Manuel Gomez of Matamoros."

  "Rig?"

  Bogan shrugged.

  "You got a deal, Magee," Buchanan told him. "Where do we pick up the goods?"

  "At my warehouse. Good day to you." The rich broker strode away, full of his own importance, and the two partners watched his exit with a kind of embarrassed silence between them.

  Buchanan spoke into it.

  "Makes a lot of noise, don't he?"

  "Yeh."

  "Didn't rile you, did he?"

  "Some," Bogan admitted, his voice subdued. "Guess I got a lot more atoning to do in this town."

  "To hell with that, boy," Buchanan told him. "You can strut the yard like any rooster present."

  "No I can't. If it'd been Bogan's Fast Freight old Magee wouldn't've trusted me to deliver an old sow to Austin."

  "Tell you what we'll do, pard," Buchanan said. "We'll let old Honest John deliver his own damn cotton to Matamoros. We don't need him."

  "Yes we do, Tom. That's a three-hundred-dollar job. And if he don't fill the wagon I can maybe wangle a couple or three small shipments extra. Another fifty dollars, maybe, not to mention a full load coming back up from Brownsville and Corpus Christi. We need Magee real bad."

  Buchanan grinned, slapped him on the back. Talk like that was music to the big man's ears, reassured him of Bogan's new hold on life, meant that the time was coming soon when he himself could fade out of the picture, leave this dull freighting business and resume his natural life again.

  "Well," he said happily, "let's go pick up the damn cotton then. And whatever else these mules are gonna haul to Mexico."

  "One thing first, though, Tom."

  "What's that?"

  "I'd admire to handle our first job myself."

  "Why don't we both take the trip?"

  That ain't good business," Bogan said. "When one partner's on the road the other one's busy at headquarter lining up more jobs."

  "Well, if that's the way it's done. But I'd be glad to flip yoa for the chore."

  "I don't look on it like a chore, Tom. I know you don't really have much heart for freighting ..."

  "Sure I do!"

  "You ain't foolin' me none," Rig said. "Business matters don't suit you. Sittin' on a highboard behind six slow mules ain't your style."

  "Boy, you don't know some of the work I've done. Not by half ..."

  "But I like freighting," Bogan went on. "Sounds strange from Jessie Bogan's son, but I'd rather pull freight from one place to another than anything else I can think of."

  That’s fine, Rig. That's great!"

  "Then there's no objection to my driving this shipment?"

  "Not from this hoss," Buchanan said and a smile of relief came over his face. "Truth be known, Rig, I was dreadin' the prospect."

  They drove together to load Magee's cotton, and Buchanan rode along while Rig made a tour of the depots, talking fast and picking up consignments of odds and ends that crammed every last square inch of the red wagon. They returned to the little office of the Double-B Fast Freight Company then and had a drink for a smooth journey.

  "Don't see how you can miss, Rig," Buchanan told him warmly. "You've got the stuff."

  "Thanks to a couple of gents," Bogan said. "You and my Pa."

  "Ever write to him?"

  "Going to," he said. "Enclosing a draft on Mr. Penney's bank for one thousand dollars, signed by R. Bogan. Never wrote one. Have you?"

  "Hell, no, I haven't," Buchanan laughed. "NOR cashed one. I ain't even used to these gold certificates."

  "Can't beat hard money," Bogan agreed, setting down his glass on a filing cabinet. "Well, partner," he said then, "I got to go see Senor Manuel Gomez, Matamoros, Mexico." He extended his hand and Buchanan's enveloped it.

  "Sure you don't want company?"

  "Positive. You just line up a payload for the Double-B and have it ready to go in about eight days from now."

  "That's when you'll be back?"

  "Approximate," Bogan said. "With t
he wagon jam-packed."

  Buchanan saw him off, watched until the red wagon was just a speck in the distance, then walked back into the office, feeling strange and restless, looking all about himself and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. He looked at the shiny new desk with a perplexed expression, approached it warily and then, just to see what it felt like, carefully lowered his six-and-a-half-foot frame into the chair.

  How? he marveled. How do they do it? He could hear old Penney—"I'll be getting back to my desk"—-and sitting behind this one he wondered how a man could do it. Yet they were everywhere, in every town he'd ever visited. Hundreds and hundreds of them, thousands and thousands—living, breathing men who spent their entire lives trapped in a chair like this one, staring at four white walls and a ceiling, not knowing what it was to be your own man in this big, wonderful country. And free.

  Buchanan got himself out of that chair, quick, and was on his way clear out of the office when the door burst open and flushed, angry-eyed Honest John Magee confronted him.

  "So, by God, it is true!" the man roared. Buchanan frowned, cocked his head quizzically. "I thought I made it clear," Magee raged, "that my cotton was consigned to you!" He pointed a finger accusingly at Buchanan's eyes. "You!" he repeated. "Not that shiftless, double-dealing ex-convict you've taken up with." The loud voice trailed away and some protective sixth sense warned it to hold still. The threatening finger, an effective weapon everywhere else in San Antonio, was meekly withdrawn. For there had once been a night, around a poker table in Dodge, and Honest John had seen a man look at another the way this tall man was looking down at him. Something about the way the cards were dealt, Magee recalled very vividly now, and violence had followed swiftly.

  "Began," Magee said in a subdued, conciliatory tone, has a poor reputation in this town."

  "Bogan's my partner," Buchanan answered. "His rep is mine."

  “I’d still feel better if you were delivering my cotton."

  "Mister," Buchanan told him, "Bogan will be back in in eight days. And you've got the privilege of buying the first drink."

  “Is that what he said, eight days?"

  "Right."

  "I wish I had your confidence in him," Magee said.

  "Just have the cork out of the bottle," Buchanan replied and the worried broker turned and walked out.

  That next week was a drag. Buchanan came to the Aright yard each morning at seven, entered the office and ■ft there for as long as he could stand it. Then he would prowl the streets of San Antone, restlessly, without purpose and the sight of the huge, shoulder-swinging figure made many an onlooker think uneasily of a brooding lion let loose among them.

  Buchanan was also of some concern to the local law, Marshal Grieve. Like most good peace officers in a melting pot of a town like this one, Fred Grieve was a reformed drifter and border rider himself. He could spot the type at a glance, that wildness, the easy bravado, and he had alerted his twelve constables for something special in the way of trouble half an hour after the big man rode in and began asking for Rig Bogan. Buchanan had made a true prophet of the lawman by his performance in Queenie's over in Spanish town. That was as special as you could ask for, even in San Antone, and Grieve had called in his off-duty force, waited for the twister to really rip.

  But then the perplexing things had happened, the contradictions that disturbed the marshal deeply. Instead of leading the fractious Bogan into real trouble, the drifter had taken the ex-convict out of town altogether, up into the Plateau, his two trailers reported. Waiting for the rest to gather, Grieve decided, and waited himself for a raid on one of the banks. But no. Six weeks go by and the two friends return—Bogan so tanned and fit he was almost unrecognizable—and though they visited the banks, and other merchants, there was nothing against the law in trying to borrow money.

  Then surprise number two. The Double-B Fast Freight, red wagon, yard, office and all. If Fred Grieve was a betting man, and if he had a hundred dollars, you would have gotten long odds that no breed of tomcat like this Buchanan from West Texas would ever get mired down in the freight business. But, by the harry, he was—and with no less than Honest John Magee for a customer.

  Last of the contradictions about Buchanan, and probably the most unsettling to a plain-thinking, plain-speaking man like the marshal, was that he had yet to see the other man packing the tool of his trade. Grieve admitted, only to himself, that he could have made a few minor errors in judgment about Buchanan's purposes in coming to San Antone. But not about Buchanan being a gunfighter. He couldn't be wrong about that.

  So the marshal asked him, stopped him in the middle 6f State Street and put it to him pointblank. This was the afternoon of the fourth day that Rig Bogan had driven out with the wagon.

  "What's your game, bucko?" Grieve asked, and Buchanan looked from the silver badge to the leathery face in surprise. A moment before being accosted his mind had been full of thoughts about New Orleans, the prospect of busy days and busier nights, a life where a man had something to occupy himself. Not, by God, this owning a damn freight business.

  "My game?" he said to the marshal.

  "You own a gun, don't you?" .

  “Yeh."

  "And you know how to use it, don't you?"

  Buchanan nodded.

  "And if someone needed that gun real bad," Grieve west on, "they could hire it, couldn't they?"

  "You mean to say with all those constables of yours ..."

  "Hell, I ain't talking about me hiring it."

  Then what are you talking about?"

  “About you," the marshal said. "You might have sold Magee and Penney on you being a freighter, bucko, but you don't fool me for two minutes."

  ""What do you figure I'm up to, marshal?"

  "It’ll develop soon, I expect. Your kind don't play the waiting game for long. But when it happens," Grieve told him, “I’ll be right there to take a hand. Remember it."

  Buchanan smiled. "Fair enough," he said. "Thanks for the advance notice."

  "Welcome. And you can start packing that shooter anytime. Get your cards out where folks can see them." Grieve left Buchanan standing in the middle of State Street, walked away with the feeling that he had scored some victory over the big man. Buchanan shrugged off the conversation and continued his restless tour.

  The fifth day passed. The sixth. The seventh. Buchanan was at the yard and waiting as dawn appeared on the morning of the eighth day. In his mind he went over the little speech he had prepared for Rig, the one in which it he turned over the business and wished him luck. Rig would protest some, try to give him some money, but to no avail. Then Rig would understand that the best thing he could do for him was to let him be on his way.

  Mid-morning came, passed into afternoon, and there was no sign of Rig. The northbound stage pulled in but the driver had seen nothing of a red freight wagon.