One-Man Massacre Page 9

  "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 Senor 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? Por 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 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.

  "Notice you move awful stiff," Fargo told him when lie returned. "And you're limpin'."

  "Got myself shot up some."

  "By the gent you buried?"

  "No. That one died of over-confidence. Had me pegged for a sheepherder, or something."

  "But he had friends along?"

  "I don't know whether he had friends or what. They all belonged to some kind of organization." He had the day's first cigarette made and Fargo struck a match for him.

  "So you didn't have a good time at all," the old man said, sounding as unhappy about it as if it had been himself.

  Buchanan caught the note of sadness and grinned.

  "Had my moments, too," he told Fargo. "Drank something called Scot's whisky—not much kick to it."

  "I tasted some once, over in Frisco."

  "And danced with a good-lookin' woman," Buchanan said, watching Fargo's face brighten.

  "Well, that's more like it! She have a bosom?"

  "She had everything she ought to—and the whitest teeth you ever saw."

  "Good for her. Got to walk her home, didn't you?"

  "No."

  "How come?" Fargo asked, crestfallen again, and Buchanan wished now he'd embroidered, given the old-timer something to think about during the lonely nights.

  "I would have," he amended. "Had it all fixed in my mind to walk her home."

  "But why didn't you?"

  "Because that's when I got plugged," he answered apologetically.

  "Damn their hides, anyhow! Say—you wasn't even armed!"

  "Borrowed as I went along."

  "What kind of town they runnin' down there, I'd like to know," said the outraged Fargo. "Fella comes down to put a little money into circulation and they shoot him! You weren't drunk and disorderly, were you?"

  "Hell, I didn't have time. All I played was just one hand of draw—and you should've seen that, Fargo. Go in with a pair of ladies and wind up with queens full."

  "Man, I'll bet that took the pot."

  "No."

  "No! Somebody beat a full house—full of queens?"

  "That's what the man claimed."

  "Oh," Fargo said. "The one you buried. Now I'm beginnin' to get the straight of it. Town's full of tinhorns ..."

  Buchanan shook his head again. "The town's fine," he said. "Couldn't be friendlier. But you ever hear of a Captain Gibbons? Black Jack Gibbons?"

  "That's somehow familiar," Fargo said, pulling at his eai reflectively. "Sure it is. Seems to me there was saloon talk around Paso last winter, just before I hooked up with you. Fella named Gibbons was recruitin' a private army. Gonna start a new war with Mexico, or somethin' crazy like that."

  "What's he got against Mexicans?"

  "Don't like chili and beans, maybe. Hell, who knows why some people always got it in for others?"

  "I guess," Buchanan said, snubbing the butt beneath his heel. "Well, I came back to mine gold. Better get at it.”

  "Not in your shape," Fargo said. "Shouldn't even've come back so soon."

  ''Stiff, is all," the big man said, but Fargo noted that he hefted the pickax left-handed.

  "Should be down there in a feather bed," he said.

  "You don't know the worst of it," Buchanan said mock-seriously. "Black Jack Gibbons run me out of town.”

  "The hell he did."

  “I’m here."

  "I know why you're here, Buchanan. Listen, I've had you under close watch for five hard months. Got you figured complete."

  Buchanan laughed at him. "That's just twice the figuring I've done in thirty years ..."

  ". . . and if it weren't on account of me you'd never have climbed back up this Godforsaken mountain."

  Buchanan laughed again. "If it weren't on account of you, you fast-talking old spellbinder, I'd still be in El Paso."

  "Doin' what?"

  "As little as the law allows."

  "Maybe you're right at that. Maybe you don't know half what you should about yourself."

  "No argument there. Come on, let's get to work."

  "Forget work," Fargo said. "If last night was Saturday then this is Sunday. And on Sunday the Lord rested. Now, if you were in El Paso do you know what you'd be doin'?"

  "Resting, just like every other day."

  "Like hell!"

  "Then what?"

  "Makin' other men richer than they were, that's what! Boy, you just don't have the first idea about yourself. A man with some plan in his mind, some project to pull off—he sees you and you're hired. It's good as done."

  "Some project like axing a mountain down to sea level?"

  "Sure! Or somethin' simple, like ramroddin' somebody's herd to Cimmaron without losin' a head. Or ridin' shotgun out of Nevada City . . ."

  "Those jobs still open?"

  "They sure as hell are, and will be. And you'd've been sucked right into 'em, layin' down your life to make another man rich."

  "Well, you saved me from that, old friend."

  "You're damn right I did! You're working for you, now, Buchanan. Every time you swing that pick you're making your own self richer."

  "Then let's get swinging," Buchanan suggested.

  "On the Lord's Day? God damn it, boy, don't you read your scripture?"

  "I'll catch up on it
when I've made myself rich, like you just said I would."

  "All right, all right," Fargo said, going for the small, sharp-nosed hammer he used to separate the gold-bearing veins from the blocks that Buchanan axed out of the mountainside. "But this is the day He rested, and so should we!"

  They worked all day, and that night Buchanan crawled gratefully into his blankets hurting and exhausted—too weary even to consider a return visit to Scotstown. Which was exactly as he had planned it.

  ELEVEN

  In THE first fifteen days of its occupation of the Big Bend's river ranches, Gibbons' Militia had summarily hung nine "invaders," killed twelve "escapees" out of hand, and imprisoned twenty more in the hastily erected, barbed-wire compound on the outskirts of town. Helpfully to the campaign that Malcolm Lord kept telling his fellow citizens about, some half-dozen of the prisoners had actually been apprehended in the act of rustling four lead of Angus Mulchay's small herd. Unlike the others who had been taken before them, these Mexicans could not plead that Mulchay had invited them to take the beef In the eyes of all Scotstown they were plainly guilty of a hanging offense—inasmuch as Mulchay had left the Big Bend two weeks before.

  At Lord's suggestion, Gibbons allowed the hapless rustlers to be tried in open court. It had all the trappings and appearances of a fair, Texas-style trial, except that Lou Kersh made a surprising appearance for the defense —as court interpreter—and he managed to "interpret" some very damaging admissions for the accused men without the jury fully realizing just who Lou Kersh was.

  One of the Mexicans, to cite an example, was telling the jury, via Kersh, that if he were given a chance to go back across the border he would return dutifully to his wife and family. "Mi mujer y ninos," he said.

  With a straight face Kersh denned mujer rightfully as "woman." And then proceeded to tell the jurors that the man had crossed the border for a woman. Another prisoner explained that he had money to pay Mulchay for the steer, but that Mulchay wasn't at home and hunger got the best of him. "Yo tuve hambre," he told the interpreter plaintively. "I was hungry."

  "He says he was hungry for a woman," Kersh said in a loud, clear voice.

  The jury deliberated for thirty minutes, and voted them all guilty with no recommendation for mercy. Special Judge Gibbons ordered them to be hanged at sunset— and so it appeared on the trial record duly signed by Councilmen Lord, Butler and MacPike.

  That trial—its cloak of rightness and righteousness-plus the continuing absence of Mulchay—which became a kind of admission of guilt in a conspiracy against his neighbors—persuaded Malcolm Lord to advance the timetable for his master plan to annex the riverland to his Overlord holdings. Two days later squads of Gibbons' Militia began making official calls on the farflung ranches of Mulchay's friends—the Tompkins, the Alreds, the Bryans and the MacKays.

  Captain Gibbons himself led six hostile-looking horsemen to the MacKay place, ordered them to stay mounted while he climbed the porch.

  This was a hot, breezeless Tuesday and Rosemarie answered his knock.

  "What will you have with us?" she asked through the screened door, holding a hastily-donned wrapper closed at her throat.

  80

  "May I come in?" When the man thought it was worth the effort—as he did now—Gibbons could project a very powerful, very virile personality.

  "My uncle is not in the house," the girl said. "Perhaps if you returned later ..."

  "My business concerns both of you," Gibbons said, blandly opening the door. "But what's needed even more urgently is some water. May my men use the well?"

  Rosemarie had stepped back into the room, against her will. "Yes, they may," she said in answer to the question.

  "Draw yourselves some water," Gibbons called over his shoulder, then crossed the threshold in the casual manner of a familiar visitor. "Ah, it's cool in here," he said. "Very comfortable." He looked at her, wondered what, if anything, she wore beneath the thin cotton robe.

  "I have a great many things to do, Captain Gibbons. If you'll come back in the afternoon I'm sure my uncle will be here."

  “Does it unsettle you so much—a strange man in your house?"

  “I’ll not pretend you're welcome here, if that's what you mean."

  Gibbons laughed. "Well, that's playing the cards face up." he said lightly, then proceeded to lower himself onto the sofa. "And why am I unwelcome to you?" he asked.

  "Because you are an evil man," Rosemarie told him bluntly. "And I want you to leave at once."

  Instead of leaving, Gibbons crossed his legs, took a inns cigar from a pocket inside his riding coat.

  "Either you leave or I do!" the girl said with heat in her voice. Gibbons lit the cigar carefully, let his glance roam over her face and figure at will.

  “I wouldn't walk out into that yard, miss," he said. "If my men thought you were no longer under my special protection."

  “I was never under your protection, special or otherwise.”

  "Ah, but you are. And so far it's kept you from becoming—how should I say—common property."

  Her hand went to her face, as if he had struck her.

  "What a horrible, horrible thing for a man to say..."

  "It wasn't my intention to shock you, girl, but to acquaint you with a fact. Regardless of all the good they're accomplishing here, my men are still soldiers. Any woman would attract them, but with your—ah—endowments . . ."

  "Stop it!" Rosemarie cried at him. "Get out of this house without speaking another indecent word!"

  "You're very excitable, aren't you?" Gibbons asked, his studied mildness like a goad. "Even more than I'd imagined you'd be."

  "I don't want you to imagine anything about me! I don't want you to think of me in any way, ever!"

  "It would be easier to quit breathing altogether."

  "Get out!" she ordered him again. "Get away from me!"

  No man of Gibbons' ego could take such open reproach indefinitely. Now he climbed to his feet, and the look of mock-amiability dropped from his face, revealing the naked desire that had been there from the moment he had stood in the doorway.

  "Another woman in your place," he told her severely, "would be grateful."

  "Grateful? If I had a whip in my hands I'd show you my gratitude!"

  The words, the scorn, the total rejection—all of it came together against the man's own conceit, and snapped what little was left of his reserve. With a kind of grunting noise deep in his throat he moved toward the girl, reaching out swiftly with both hands. But his eyes had signaled the attack and she stepped backward, swung away from him and broke for the nearby kitchen. Gibbons' grasping fingers caught in a fold of the loose wrapper, closed tight over the light material and wrenched it furiously. The gown, handsewn, was ripped apart, baring the twisting, struggling girl from hip to shoulder. The man held fast, tried to tear it away entirely, and then the girl turned back against him, swung with her considerable strength and caught him flush on the cheekbone with the heel of her open palm.