Buchanan's Revenge (16 page)

That was Buchanan's pure luck, not design. In fact, he
could have stayed in the neighborhood indefinitely, but
now he changed direction, went south to the riverfront,
slid down the black, sloping bank of the Rio and caught himself a second breath. He could hear Leech and company thrashing around in the night, making a great commotion, but no one came within three hundred feet of his
hiding place.

Then the noises died down, the pursuit was abandoned,
and a frustrated, bad-tempered Red Leech turned his crew back to the hacienda. Lash Wall, his own temper simmer
ing close to the surface, pulled abreast of the massive,
bearded man.

"Well?" Wall asked curtly, "what did this night accom
plish?"

Leech, stung, swung his head sharply.
"We give that high-and-mighty sheriff a lickin', didn't
we?" he demanded. "Showed him what we can do, by
damn!"

"And lost Fred Perro
tt, which we couldn't afford.”

"Why the hell don't you whistle another tune?" Leech
snarled at him.

Wall lapsed into silence, retreated into the fortress of
his mind. He was, he knew, dangerously close to an open
breach with Big Red. For a long time now the other man's
l
o
u
d voice and high-handed manner had chafed, made his resentment grow. And with each passing day it was be
coming more and more clear to Lash Wall that Red
Leech had neither the ability nor the ambition to realize
what
could be done in this raw, disorganized country
wit
h a private army such as this one.

This raid on the jail tonight was a case in point. Wall
had
given a lot of quiet thought to the setup John Lime
h
ad in Brownsville. He had also c
ome to the conclusion that
at the proper time, Lime could be taken. But not to
night
. Tonight they should have stayed at the headquar
ters,
saved their energy and their enthusiasm for the big unit tomorrow. As it stood now they had accomplished
—nothi
ng with this raid except to be one valuable gun shy
for
the operation. And if Lime had not chosen to coop
hi
mse
lf
up in that building they would surely have lost
more. Just as serious, Lime was on his guard now. The
sheriff would be waiting for them next time, in force, and
the price for taking over rich Brownsville would be ten
times as expensive.

All because this big blowhard riding next to him had to
protect his reputation. Which he hadn't, because the
man they had come to town for was still on the loose.
Still loose, and apparently with some score still to be settle with Sam Gill.

What the hell was that all about, anyhow? He pulled
his horse up, let Leech move ahead, and when he spotted
Gill's blocky, stolid-looking 6gure among the body of
riders, he eased in beside the man.
"How you feeling, Sam?"

"I could use a drink," Gill answered gruffly. He didn't
like Lash Wall especially and the feeling was mutual. Sam
Gill didn't like a great many men, and that was mutual,
too.

"Tough break for Fred tonight," Wall said.

"Yeah."

"Bad night for Perrotts all around."

"Yeah."

"What's this gent so burry about, Sam? What'd you
and Fred and Jules do to him?"

Gill looked at Wall for the first time.

"Ask Fred and
Jules," he said. "Me, I wouldn't know."

"Some husband, maybe? A brother?"
said Lash,

“
I wouldn't know."

"You have any trouble like that up in Uvalde?" Wa
ll
persisted.

"What the hell is it
to you what we had in Uvalde?”

"I'll tell you what it is to me, Sam," Wall said calmly.
"I pulled this crew together very carefully, handpicke
d
every man for the biggest job that ever came our way. As
of tonight I count three dead and one who can't
wield
his gun. One man did all that, Sam, and I'd like to k
no
w
what's biting him."

"I wouldn't know," Gill said again.

"But you do know you're on his list?"

"If I'm on anybody's list," Gill said, "I'll take care of
it
myself. Don't you worry about me."

"I'm not, Sam," Lash Wall told him. "It's your gun I'm
worried about." He parted company from the truculent
man, pushed on up to the front of the pack.

What was it all about? he wondered still. What had
Sam Gill and the Perrotts done?

Sam Gill, Buchanan was thinking at that very mo
ment. He had climbed up from the riverbank, duly grateful
for the refuge it had given him but feeling unnatural in his
mind just the same for having been chased into hiding.

Sam Gill, he thought as he traced his way back past
the slaughterh
ouse and reached the scene of th
e lopsided battle at the jail. There was activity of another kind there
now, of mercy and sorrow. An ambulance and several
other wagons were drawn up before the battered building
;
half-a-hundred citizens of Brownsville milled around in
t
h
e bright light of as many torches.

Buchanan borrowed one, went looking for his horse
and came upon her grazing imperturbably in a field a
quarter mile away. He checked the filly carefully, found her unmarked, lifted himself onto her back and took her
back to the jail.

John
Lime
, his own arm in a makeshift bandage and
sl
i
n
g, was directing the removal of his men. Boyd and another deputy were badly wounded but still alive. The
ot
her two were fatalities of Leech's raid.-

"Anything I can help with, Sheriff?" Buchanan asked
and Lime looked up at the mounted man with a surprised
smile.

“I
had word they'd caught you," he said. "Down by the
river.”

"Not yet they didn't. How's the wing?"

"Damned annoying," Lime said, gazing at Buchanan
inten
tly. "I have something I want to ask you," he said

"It may sound rather strange in view of other
that have occurred tonight."

“Ask it.”

"How
would you like a job? An important one?"

“Doin
g
what?"

"B
e
i
ng my chief deputy," Lime said and now it was
Buchanan’s
turn to be surprised.

"Strange is right, Sheriff."

"Well, man, how about it?"

Buchanan shook his head. "That's out of my line," he
said. "Sitting around an office all day playing checkers,
pulling in drunks and stopping fights all night."

"There's a lot more to law enforcement than that,"
Lime said, his voice indignant. "And in Brownsville
there's a great future for my chief deputy."

"Thanks for the offer," Buchanan said, "but it's not for
me."

"Will you do this
—will you think it over tonight? Give
me your final answer in the morning?"

"All right, Sheriff, if you'll do me a little favor."

"Name it."

"Tell me where the old Wagon Road is from here."

"The Wagon Road? Why, that runs out that way, due
west. What do you want
—" He broke off, frowning.
"You're not seriously thinking of going out there after
them?"

"Just one," Buchanan answered. "Name of Gill."

"I see. And you'll simply knock on the front door and
tell them to send Gill out."

"Something like that."
' 1

"And Gill, of course, will just hand himself over to you."

"No," Buchanan said. "I expect he'll argue some."

"You're damn well told he will! And he'll have every
one of his hardcase friends to back him up."

"Excepting two," Buchanan said, smiling as he swung the filly around. "Hasta," he called back to the other man
as he rode away west.

Rode steadily but unhurriedly, reminding himself that
there was no special rush now. Sam Gill would be wait
ing for him.

The hacienda loomed large and graceful and was ablaze
with light. Buchanan took a full turn around the pla
ce
studying the physical layout, observing the act
i
vity with
in
the walls. There were men moving around on the secon
d
floor, talking and drinking, and others were gathered
in
a big room below, some playing poker, some watching.

Just a bunch of boys in a bunkhouse, Buchanan thought,
then chuckled aloud. Some fancy bunkhouse.

In the right wing of the second floor he saw two men seated at a table in earnest conversation. One had a thick
beard and a long mane of hair, reddish-hued even from out
here in the dark, and he had his big hand wrapped around
a whisky bottle. One moment he gesticulated with it, shook it in the other man's face, and the next he pulled
at the neck. The other man was slender and clean
shaven
—and listening.

Red Leech, Buchanan decided, dismounting. He slid the
Winchester from its boot, levered the rifle and then settled
down to a prone position behind a small hillock, shifting
his hips and elbows into the soft ground until he was comfortable.

Then he blasted the bottle out of Red Leech's fingers.

All they could do
—Leech and Lash Wall—was stare at
the jagged glass, its top half still dripping whisky onto
the floor. Wall recovered first.

"It's him," he said.

"What?"

"Him," Wall repeated, unshocked enough to turn
down the wick in the lantern, uncertain about dimming
the light across the room. "He's after Sam Gill."

Red Leech flung the neck of the whisky bottle back
t
hrough the shattered window, stood up furiously.

"Well, goddamn it, I ain't Sam Gill!" he roared out into
the night. And dropped to all fours as the rifle out there
all
but parted his hair.

"Sonofabitch," Red Leech said from the floor, chas
tened. "We got to put a stop to that mutt."

"It'll cost us before we do," Lash Wall pointed out.

Down below, the crack of the first shot had caused
confusion among the poker players. The second sent
them
scurrying for guns and cover. One man, Frank Han
ack, had just drawn a third queen to a full house and his
anger
at the interruption outweighed his discretion. He polled open the window, raised his .44, and was promptly
brou
ght to his senses by a pair of screaming 30-30 slugs
past
either ear.

Some of the besieged inmates got off angry answering shots from various parts of the big house, but by and large
Buchanan kept objections down with his pinpoint fire.
Their disadvantage, he well knew, was in trying to de
cide whether they were escaping death by luck or if the
sniper was missing on purpose.

He watched with interest as the room on the first floor emptied out and a conference began to take place on the
floor above. One would-be hero didn't attend the meet
ing, tried to sneak out of the house. The 30-30 kicked up
dust at his boots, drove him back inside again.

The conference looked to Buchanan to be a personal argument between Leech and the other fellow. Finally a
vote was taken, on something, and the cleanshaven man
seemed to have won his point by an overwhelming show
of hands. A minute later the main door was opened and a
flag of truce appeared.

"How about a parley, friend?" Lash Wall called out into the dark.

"Sure, friend," Buchanan answered genially.

"I'm leaving my gun inside," Wall promised. "I'm com
ing out without it."

"Come any damn way you please," Buchanan advised
him.

Wall stepped from the big house and his heels clicked
sharply as he crossed the flagstone courtyard, seemed extra
loud because it was the only sound the
re
was. Watchful
faces began to appear in the windows behind him.

"This way," Buchanan said, getting up slowly, keeping a
prudent eye out for any treachery from some other direc
tion. Not too worried, though. There had been a note of
sincerity in the voice of the man approaching him. Then
he and Lash Wall were facing each other.

"Wall's my name."

"I'm Buchanan."

"And damned handy with that rifle," Lash said dryly.

"She's a Winchester," Buchanan said, as if that ex
plained his shooting.

"Well," Wall said, putting an end to the brief ameni
ties, "what can we do for you, Buchanan?"

“
I've come for Sam Gill," Buchanan said. "Send him out
here."

"Come clear from Uvalde, did you?"

"Uvalde? No."

"You're some kind of law, then? A marshal?"

"No," Buchanan said again. "Not even collecting boun
ty for the skunk, though I reckon there's some along his
back trail."

"Where's your profit, then? What do you want with
Gill?"

"Satisfaction, friend. Now go send him out here to me."

"Satisfaction for what? What did Sam and the Perrott
brothers do to you, anyhow?"

Buchanan hesitated for a moment, took a deep, trou
bled sigh and began to speak very quietly. "Them three
bastards," he said, "dropped some money in a game of
blackjack one night. Next morning they followed the win
ner out of town. They rode up behind him and shot him
in the back. They killed this boy, robbed him, destroyed
his goods and didn't even have the decency to bury him. Send Sam Gill out here."

Now it was Lash Wall who sighed, whose voice shook
when he spoke again.

"This boy was your brother?"

"Just as close to me as one. Rig Bogan was my partner. Now let's cut the damn palaver. Tell Gill I'll be waiting for
him over yonder, back of the caretaker's place."

"A
ll
right," Wall said, "I'll tell him." He turned, paused,
an
d looked back for another moment. "Watch yourself
r
eal careful, Buchanan," he said. "I hear you spotted
Jul
es Perrott a shot tonight. You can't do that with Sam
Gill.”

"Thanks for the warning
," Buchanan said, and as Wall m
ade his way back to the hacienda the tall man slid the
Winchester back in its boot, walked leisurely toward the
dar
k, squat shape of the caretaker's house and the equip
ment shed adjoining it.

Lash Wall stood before the entire gang assembled up-
and repeated Buchanan's grievance. He spoke as
neutrally as he could manage to, and when he was done he
stepped aside. There was a long embarrassed silence.
Red Leech, himself, broke it.

"You been called a bushwhacker, Sam. What do you
have
to say for yourself?" The voice, for Leech, was strangely-
subdued.

Gill looked around at the familiar faces, his own ex
pression contemptuous, settled his gaze defiantly on
Red.

"Me and Fred and Jules," he said slowly, "decided
we had
been cheated by this freight driver. What we give
was just what every card shark deserves in this country.'*

"How come you waited till mornin'?" Leech ask
e
d
.
"How come you didn't know you was bein' cheated at the
time, Sam?"

"He was too slick, for one," Gill replied offhandedl
y
.
"Besides, we'd been drinkin' pretty steady. That cheats
took us at an unfair advantage."

"So you and the Perrotts got up next mornin' and took
a
vote? You voted you'd been slickered. By a freighter, not
a tinhorn gambler."

"What the hell is this, Big Red? A trial or somethin'?
”

"Or something Sam," Leech told him. "Now about this
last thing the fella out there told Lash, about not buryin'
this freight driver you bushwhacked. Is that the truth on
it, Sam?"

"That's nothin' but rock and hard pan up there!" Gill
protested. "Christ almighty, a man'd spend a day diggin' a hole in that land. Besides, what'd we want to bury a damn
card cheat for? Leave him rot, I say, as a warnin'!"

Leech had started walking toward him ponderously.
Now he stopped.

"I'm a great believer in a man's rep, Sam," he told Gil
l.
"Right now yours is pretty low."

Gill's eyes blazed. "Low, hanh? For riddin' the world
of a lousy, wise-crackin' card cheat? Wouldn't bury a
goddamn rattler, would you, Big Red?"

"Me," Leech told him, "I say you got to go out there and showdown with this fella. Go get your reputation
back." He swung his massive head to the others. "Anybody
disagree?"