One-Man Massacre Page 3

  Thad Sim's head popped up.

  "You mean us patriots?" he asked. "We are to pay for this business?"

  "A nominal sum," Malcolm Lord assured him. "We'll be assessed according to our holdings."

  "That would put the lion's burden on yourself," Sims pointed out.

  "There are five of us here," Lord said. "Overlord will underwrite fifty per cent of the expense."

  "And what will the total be?"

  "Not more than twenty thousand dollars," Gibbons said, and four of his listeners were shocked to the roots of their Scotch-Presbyterianism.

  "Twenty thousand dollars?" Butler repeated hollowly.

  "Fifty men for sixty days," Gibbons said. "And risking their lives every hour of it."

  "Fifty crackerjack cavalrymen," Malcolm Lord added. "An elite corps of Texas fighters who'll rid the Big Bend of the Mexican danger . . ."

  Arthur Butler was about to put another question to Gibbons, but he never asked it. There was an interruption—the nerve-shattering thunder of gunfire—and it came from just beyond the door.

  FOUR

  WELL," Angus Mulchay had asked, "how do you like Scot's whisky?"

  Buchanan finished his drink and ran his tongue around his lips judiciously. "Not bad," he said. "Not bad."

  "Try another," Mulchay said. "Pour, lass."

  The girl hesitated.

  "I wouldn't go at it too quick," she said to Buchanan direct. "Not the first time."

  "Hah!" Mulchay said. "And you're the Queen's own taster, are you?"

  "I've not tasted the stuff," she said, still not talking to anyone but Buchanan. "But I've sniffed at it once or twice and ifs powerful."

  "What stuff should I drink?" Buchanan asked.

  "They serve a punch up at Armston's," she said.

  "Where?"

  The Dance Palace," she told him, smiling. "Oh, it's a lively place..."

  Mulchay's laughter broke over her voice.

  "Dancing, she says! For a braehammer the likes of him, with the thirst on him—dancing/ And sweet lemon punch!"

  Buchanan had been called many things in thirty years, but braehammer was a new one. He guessed, though, that it was close to the mark, if not right on it. An outsized, aimless drifter, fit enough company in a saloon but too rough for any social function. He was thinking that and just across the bar the dark-haired girl was smiling at him.

  "Pour us a drink," Mulchay said.

  "Shall I?" she asked and Buchanan held her steady gaze, then rubbed a palm across a cheek he hadn't shaved in forty-eight hours.

  "Yeah," he said. "Fill 'em high"' !

  Hamp Leach had moved back to the door, in quarantine, and his malevolent gaze missed none of the byplay at the bar, the animation in the girl's face, the open flirtation she was carrying on with the no-account who had humiliated him. The contrast between that and the reception he had gotten gnawed on him murderously.

  He had the gun back now, riding his hip in its old familiar place. The gun was and always had been the great § equalizer between Leach and any other man, and as he looked at the tall figure of Buchanan he fairly itched to feel the butt against his palm, the forefinger triggering humility and death.

  Rig Gruber seemed able to read the man's mind.

  "Let it lay," he said again.

  "Like hell I will."

  "What're you gonna do, shoot him in the back?"

  "I'll position him, don't worry about that."

  "Fill 'em high," Buchanan said. "And pay for them out of this," he added, digging the pouch from his faded denims and tossing it negligently onto the bar.

  The girl looked at it and raised her eyes again to his face.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Gold," Buchanan said. "About two ounces' worth, but I'll take your measure."

  "My measure for what?"

  "Fifty dollars."

  Rosemarie laughed at him. "You're fooling," she said. "You're pulling my leg."

  "Hold out your hand," Buchanan told her and she laid it meekly inside his huge one. He tipped the pouch and the gleaming, glistening grains of sand-like metal made a conical, two-inch mound in her palm.

  Mulchay bent low, eyes wide, and inspected the stuff.

  "By God, it is," he said. "Hamlin, Macintosh—come have a look at this!"

  His friends came and had their look, rubbed it expertly between the tips of their fingers.

  "Ay," said Hamlin, "it's the McCoy. The root of evil."

  "Convinced?" Buchanan asked the girl, but apparently she wasn't.

  "Better wait until Mr. Terhune comes in," she said. "I wouldn't dare give you fifty dollars for that—that stuff."

  "Then Terhune is standing the drinks," Buchanan told her, wondering if female bartenders were such a good idea after all. "This gold of mine you're holding is all I've got"

  “I’ll stand you," Rosemarie said and the man named Hamlin cleared his throat.

  "No need of that," he said. "I'll buy it from you."

  "Sold," Buchanan said.

  "Forty dollars," Hamlin said.

  Buchanan looked at him. "Fifty," he said.

  "Split the difference, laddie. Forty-five."

  Buchanan dipped his free hand into the pile inside Rosemarie's palm, pinched an insignificant few grains and scattered them to the floor.

  "Now you've got forty-five," he said and Hamlin nodded, appreciating the fine principle of the transaction. He took a billfold from his pocket and laid out four tens and a five-dollar gold piece.

  "Careful now," he cautioned, and Buchanan guided the dust from the girl's hand into the pouch again.

  "Where—ah—did you come across the gold?" Macintosh inquired innocently.

  "Won it in a poker game."

  "Poker?" Hamlin inquired amiably. "You like the relaxation of the game?"

  "That's my roll," Buchanan told him, "less what I owe the lady."

  "Then let's have at it," Hamlin said, and six of them proceeded to the nearest table. Cards were produced, everyone anted, and the deal began. Buchanan watched the cards fall, face down, and a grin that was tugging at the corners of his mouth burst full bloom before he picked them up.

  "If you've got a new joke," Mulchay said, "let us all hear it."

  "No," the big man said, tilting his chair back and looking around at each friendly face with a kind of gratitude on his own. "Just feel real good," he explained.

  They all lifted their cards, and under the pretense of studying them, Hamlin stole a long glance at the stranger and was reminded of a loneliness he had known once.

  "How can you play poker without a smoke?" he asked, extending a long cigar across the table.

  "Well, thanks," Buchanan said, accepting it. Macintosh lit it and Buchanan inhaled deeply. Life, he decided, was wonderful.

  "Deal me in," a truculent voice ordered and Hamp Leach lowered himself into the last vacant chair, his gaze full on Buchanan's face.

  "Next hand," Buchanan said when the dealer seemed not to know the way of it.

  "This hand."

  Buchanan looked again to the dealer of the game. It was that man's business to set the thing straight, not his, and then he saw all the others had turned to mute statues behind their cards.

  "This hand's already been dealt," he said reasonably. Leach felt the tenseness around the table acutely, the fear, and with a lazy smile he swung his head to the dealer.

  "Deal me in," he said and that one gave him five cards. Buchanan debated the Tightness of it in his mind, decided that he was having much too good a time, that if they did things that way in Scotstown he was no one to object, and opened the betting with a conservative one dollar.

  "Raise you five," Leach said, not even looking at the hand dealt him. Stranger still, he neither had money in front of him nor produced the six he had bet.

  The others threw in their hands, quickly, one after the other.

  Buchanan cocked an eye at his pair of queens, looked into Leach's unwavering glance and grinned.

&n
bsp; "Yours," he said, "and five more," laying his money on the line.

  "And five more," Leach said, still not picking up his cards, still not showing any money.

  "Cards?" the dealer asked in a small voice and Buchanan asked for three.

  "Play these," Leach said.

  Buchanan could hardly believe what he had drawn. Another queen and a pair of treys. He suddenly wished that Fargo were standing behind his chair, that his partner could see how many easier ways there were to make money besides mining a Big Bend mountain.

  "You opened," Hamp Leach said, "now bet." It was not a reminder but a hard challenge and Buchanan looked at him, at the cards still lying face down on the table, at the prominent gun butt in the cutaway holster, at the unblinking gaze.

  "Before you make a play, brother, you better check your hand," he advised him.

  "My hand is pat. Bet your own." "These little darlin's are worth five dollars," Buchanan said affectionately. Mulchay stole a look at the full house and his eyebrows lifted.

  "Raise you ten," Leach said.

  "All I'm going to do is call," Buchanan told him then. "But first I want to see your money in the middle next to mine."

  "I don't need money. I got four queens."

  Buchanan laughed. "Only four?" he asked. .

  "You heard me."

  "Added to my three, that makes a strange deck." He put his arm out, turned over Leach's first card. It was a six of hearts.

  "Let 'em be," the gunman said, squatting his hand down over the remaining four. "I've got four queens."

  Buchanan laid out his full house.

  "Now how many do you have?"

  "You're calling me a liar?"

  Buchanan cocked his head at the man. "Who put the burr in your pants, anyhow?" he asked him.

  Leach's chair scraped against the floor and he came out of it threateningly. Now his eyes went to Buchanan's hip, scornfully.

  "You think because you're naked," he said, "that you got some kind of protection?"

  "Man doesn't need a gun to be right," Buchanan said.

  "You're wrong, jasper. You need one bad, and you better go get it."

  The words evoked an improbable image in Buchanan's mind, a picture of himself reclimbing the mountain for his gun, coming all the way back down here with it. He smiled.

  "What do you think is funny?"

  "Nothing tonight, I guess," Buchanan admitted and stood up. He turned his broad back to Leach and started walking away from the table.

  "Running, riffraff?" Leach asked harshly. "Had your bluff called?"

  Buchanan stopped, looked over his shoulder. "I'm not running," he told him. "I'm going to borrow a gun."

  "No!" Rosemarie protested from behind the bar. "Don't anybody lend him one!"

  "Walk out, fella, and keep walking," Angus Mulchay told him shrilly. "You're playing his game!"

  Buchanan stood before one of the few armed men at the bar.

  "How about yours, friend?"

  "Don't give it to him, Mr. White," Rosemarie pleaded. "Don't anyone!"

  White shook his head, so did the others.

  "He's a gunny on the prod," someone murmured to Buchanan. "Walk away from him like Mulchay says."

  "Rig," Hamp Leach called out then. "The riffraff needs your Colt. Give it to him."

  Rig Gruber stepped forward, unbuckling his gunbelt.

  "Much obliged," Buchanan said, taking it and adjusting the buckle. Then he hefted the .45, checked the fully loaded cylinder. "This your special, mister?" he inquired conversationally.

  "Never owned one better."

  "With all the weight up front?"

  "What's he doin', Rig?" Leach asked loudly. "Tryin' to crawl out?"

  The gun suits me," Gruber said to Buchanan.

  "Then I guess it'll have to suit me, too," Buchanan replied. Gruber looked up into his face and an impulse he didn't understand caused him to move directly into Leach's line of fire.

  "You don't know what you're in, ranny," he said. "That's Hamp Leach."

  "Is it?"

  "Bodyguard to Black Jack Gibbons."

  "Fancy job," Buchanan agreed. "Better get out of the way now." Gruber did, and then Buchanan swung to face Leach. "This fight ain't necessary," he said across the thirty feet that separated them.

  "If you're gonna crawl," Leach rasped, "get down on your belly."

  "Just pay up your losses and we'll call it square," Buchanan suggested, and it finally got through to Leach that the drifter opposite wasn't begging for an out at all.

  "I owe you nothin'," he said. "And no man can call me a liar."

  "I do."

  "Then draw!" .

  That was what broke up Malcolm Lord's conference. They heard the shattering explosions but missed the sight of two tall men braced against each other in deadly combat, two hands flashing, two guns exposed and roaring blue-orange flame. All of that in two seconds' time, and with the sound still racketing from the walls and ceiling Hamp Leach sunk to his knees in astonished surprise, and fell dead. It had been a very brief moment of truth for the man, sad in its peculiar way, but no one there was sadder about it than Tom Buchanan. He carried the borrowed Colt to Rig Gruber, who took it from him automatically, his eyes riveted on the improbable sight of Leach's forever unmoving body.

  "Slick shooter, mister," Buchanan told him, "but you ought to lighten the barrel. Doesn't swing up as quick as it might."

  "Who's responsible for this?" demanded the authoritative voice of Malcolm Lord then. Buchanan swung to the sound, took in the prosperous-looking group at the doorway.

  "If you're the law," he answered Lord, "I guess you mean me."

  "I stand for law and order in Scotstown," the rancher said. "What happened here?"

  "Thing explains itself," Buchanan said patiently. "Me and him had an argument."

  "We all of us saw it, Mr. Lord," the man Hamlin put in. "There was no crime committed."

  "Prevention of one," Angus Mulchay announced, surprised that he could speak through his excitement. He whacked Buchanan between the shoulder blades. "Every man in this room owes you a drink, lad, and let Mulchay be the first to treat."

  "Me next," Macintosh cried, and from that and the general murmur of approval Malcolm Lord was satisfied that the fight had been conducted according to the standards of the country.