Buchanan's Revenge (7 page)

He looked at her now, watched her descend the rather
steep stairs, and reminded himself that he was going to
need but one look to tell him the answer about herself
and Rig Bogan.

Well, he hedged now, she sure wasn't another Ruthie
Stell. Not physically, at any rate. This time Rig had gone
for the tall, blonde type, with a pale and expressionless
face that was like a beautiful mask. A complete change-
about from Ruthie Stell, Buchanan conceded, but what
man wouldn't try to change his luck after the way that
affair had worked out?

Now she was at the bottom of the stairs, turning right
and walking toward the card table, and Buchanan had
used up that one look by a long margin as he studied the
interesting motion of her lithe body beneath the well fit
ting, short-skirted dress. Who, he asked himself, did she
remind him of? And just as she was being seated at the
table he remembered.

This girl looked and walked like a woman he had seen
in San Francisco. An actress named Roxanne something-
or-other. He had seen her twice. Once on the stage, as
the heroine of the stupidest play that was ever written.
And seen her again the very next night, entering a restaurant on the arm of Dan P. White, the richest man in
California. She'd gone on a trip around the world with him, Buchanan had heard, and that was two long years ago. Funny he should have remembered that particular
face and that particular walk after all this time.

A gun went off somewhere up the street. A second one,
a third, probably a dozen shots in all, and Buchanan was somewhat surprised at the frightened reaction they caused
here in this saloon. Couldn't they tell the sound of a .45
being fired into the air? The men at the bar had all
swung around to face the swinging doors. The players at the table all held their cards as if frozen. Even the mask-
like face of the girl dealer showed emotion
—and it was
fear. As he watched she turned her head toward the bar and Buchanan caught the anxious glance that she ex
changed with the bartender.

Well, that's East Texas for you, he thought. Last night,
up in Shelby, gunfire was as natural a sound as barking
dogs. A couple of miles further south and the citizens act
like they never heard a gun.

The swinging doors opened with a bang and three burly,
hard-faced men came through single file, stopped when
they were inside and stood shoulder to shoulder, thumbs
hooked into their belts. Each pair of eyes looked around
the room but it was as though it were one man.

"Any law on the premises?" the hardcase in the middle
asked and Buchanan, as he always did, tried to place the
speaker's region. A twangy-sounding voice that bit the
words off sharp. Missouri, he guessed. Or maybe Kansas.
"Sheriff Rivercomb is laid up," someone at the bar an
swered meekly, and that made the Missourian, or Kan
san, laugh.

"Wynt," he said too loudly to the man on his right,
"did you go and send word we was comin'?"

"Christ, no, I didn't!" Wynt answered. "You know,
Prado, how I like to make these Texas sheriffs jig!"

Missouri, definitely, Buchanan decided, and made him
self a little bet on the side that they hadn't come through
Shelby with big talk like that.

Now they were walking toward the bar, single file again
like ex-soldiers, Buchanan noted, and half a dozen men
quickly gave away their places to them.

"Put the bottle on the bar and take your ugly face
away," Prado told the bartender. Buchanan straightened
up in his chair, his broad face expectant, pantherish. He
liked this bartender, felt indebted to him for the extra
measure of bourbon. Now he waited for the fellow to give
these loudmouths the word
—and take his own hand in
the fun that would follow.

Instead, the bottle was produced and his new friend
faded to the other end of the bar. Buchanan sat back, frowning. At the next table an old man was speaking to his companion, his voice a low, protesting undertone.

"What in the tarnation's goin' on around here, any
how?" he demanded.

"Shh, Charlie! Keep your voice down!" the other one
cautioned in a whisper.

"That's what I mean, dagnabit! For the last two weeks
now a person can't hardly draw a free breath in this town!
A regular damn parade of these hardcase bullies . . ."

"Shh, Charlie! You want them to come back here?"

"But where they comin' from? Where they goin'? Why
do they have to stop in Aura? Look at them standin' there,
starin' around like they was the three cocks-of-the-walk
and us decent folks was dirt. Just look at their mean faces,
Rob..."

"Charlie, you're gonna get us gunwhipped just like poor
old John Rivercomb."

"Well, at least John stood up to them two Perrotts, or
whatever their names was."

"John is paid to stand up to troublemakers," Rob whis
pered back. "He asked to get elected and that's part of
the job."

The man named Charlie had chanced to look over his shoulder and spot the huge, somehow formidable figure looming in the semi-darkness above the other table. He turned his head quickly, mumbled something behind his hand to Rob. Rob stiffened in fear, and it was Buchanan's impulse to get up and join them, reassure them about his
own peaceful intentions. He pushed his chair back, started
to rise, when the voice of the one called Prado took his
and everyone else's attention.

"Well, will you looka there, boys!" he shouted nasally,
his voice breaking over the other strained, hesitant sounds
in the room, his beady-eyed glance directed toward the
girl dealing blackjack. Now the silence was complete and
every head swung to that table. Including Buchanan, who marked that she blinked her eyes once, then regained her
cool composure in the next moment. She looked over the
cards of the four players betting against her, made her decision and turned up the hole card.

"King, six," she announced in a clear, professional tone.
"Pay seventeen!" Two of her opponents collected, two
lost.

She knows the odds, Buchanan thought, and then that
annoying voice sounded off from the bar again.

"Pay seventeen!" Prado called over to her in a kind of
churlish mockery. "Girlie, I pay eighteen. Whatta you
say?"

"Nineteen!" his friend Wynt offered. "What's your bid,
Sherm?" he asked the third one.

"For that blonde?" Sherm said. "Twenty-five dollars."

Prado took two steps forward from the bar, swung
around to face them.

"Who asked her first?" he said.

"You did, Prado," Wynt said.
"Then wait your goddamn turn!"

"Sure, Prado, sure. You, then me, then Sherm."

"Then Big Red," Sherm said and that made them all
burst out in raucous laughter.

"After us comes Big Red!" Prado bawled. "We'll take
her down for a present!" More laughter.

"Well, let's go, let's go," Wynt said eagerly. Prado
turned, stood again with thumbs hooked inside his belt.
His gaze was leveled insolently at the girl's profile and now
she gave up the pretense of dealing, swung her head to
face him.

"Come on over here," Prado ordered. She said nothing,
sat motionless, but a sudden rise of her breasts betrayed
her fear to every man in the room. "I said to come over
here," Prado said again.

Wynt laughed, goadingly. "You ain't doin' so hot, Pra
do," he taunted.

"We'll see, by damn!" He started forward, his bullneck
bowed.

"Leave her be!" the bartender shouted raggedly and in
his hands was a double-barrelled shotgun. The man's face
was white and the weapon trembled uncontrollably in his
grasp. Prado had stopped and now he looked back over his shoulder.

"Get out!" the barman said wildly. "Get out of here,
the three of you!"

"Sure," Prado said, his own voice ominously controlled.
"We'll get out if you say so." As he spoke he began a si
dling movement to his left. The shotgun barrel swung
with him, as if drawn by a magnet, kept swinging until
the barman could no longer observe Wynt. That one's
hairy hand reached out for the bottle, furtively. His fin
gers wrapped themselves around the neck.

"We'll get out," Prado was still saying. "We'll do what
ever you say, buddy."

Several things happened then, so closely spaced they
seemed all of one piece.

Wynt's arm flashed overhead, the bottle held like a club.

The girl tried to scream a warning.

From the dark corner in the back of the room a Colt
.45 jumped and roared. Wynt was suddenly holding noth
ing over his head but his fist, which he stared at won
deringly.

Things continued to happen. The bartender whirled around and Prado closed in, tore the shotgun loose from
his grip and flung it aside. Now he gave his full attention
to the tall figure looming above the table in the corner.

"Fan out, boys!" he snapped, taking a backward step
himself, his body in a tight crouch, his gaze as unwaver
ing as a cobra's. Sherm moved away from him, further
down the bar. Wynt glided in the opposite direction and
now they had their opponent ringed with a wall at his
back.

Slick crew, Buchanan thought, revising his estimate of
Missouri gunfighters upwards.

The Colt's thundering voice demolished the silence and
its big slug took Prado squarely in the middle, slammed
him to his knees.

Well, don't look at me like that, brother. You called this
tune and now you pay the fiddler.

"Jesus!" Wynt yelled piercingly and Buchanan gave it
to him up high, at the collarbone. Wynt turned with his
wound and stumbled like a drunken man toward the
street, his simple mind unable to cope with the swift and
bewildering turn of events.

Buchanan holstered the busy Colt, took two leisurely
steps into the brighter light.

"You," he said to Sherm, "get to draw. Let's go."

Sherm filled his barrel chest with a deep breath, licked
his dry lips.

"Some other time, brother," he said hollowly. "You're
a little too anxious."

"Then pick up the ladies' man and be on your way."

Sherm glanced briefly at the unmoving Prado. "He looks
dead to me," he said.

"Bury him then."

Sherm obviously didn't like that, but the alternative had
even less appeal. He got Prado under the armpits, dragged him unceremoniously across the saloon floor, through the
doors. They swung back and forth on their leather hinges
and the soft creaking seemed to be the last sound left in
the world. And then Buchanan's heels clicked on the
boards as he walked toward the bar. The tall man fished
into his pocket, brought out two of his three hard-earned
silver dollars and set them down. The barkeep stared at
the money then raised his eyes to Buchanan's face. He
looked to be in a state of shock.

"What," he asked, "is that for?"

"Double bourbon and a steak dinner. Damn fine cook
you got, too. Hang on to him."

The laughter started deep in the bartender's stomach,
came bubbling up and overflowed as a geyser of joyous re
lief. Came from him and was echoed by the next man, the next, spread through that room like nothing else but
a prairie fire. Buchanan gazed around at them, heard his
simple statement repeated in gleeful tones, and told him
self a second time tonight that East Texans were a curious
breed.

Now a perfect stranger had hold of his hand and was
pumping it like he was trying to raise water. His back was
being whacked with great gusto, his forearms squeezed,
and into his ears poured a torrent of praise that was not
only damn foolish but plain embarrassing. Hell's holy bells,
in this town they'd give you a medal for shooting fish in
a barrel.

There was a hand suddenly resting in his huge palm that
was neither calloused nor broad nor sweating. It was
smooth and slim and coolly impersonal. Buchanan looked
down, but not too far, into a pair of coppery-brown,
frankly appraising eyes. The blonde Rig Bogan had taken
a shine to. That everyone off the trail took a shine to.
Including the recently departed Prado.

Their meeting seemed to cause a hush over the crowd.
The other voices trailed away.

"I want to thank you for helping my brother," she
said, with a certain emphasis on the word brother, Bu
chanan thought, to make it crystal clear that she'd needed
no particular help for herself. She could have handled
Prado, Wynt, Sherm and the entire male species. With a well placed word, no doubt. Then she smiled, revealing
rows of teeth that were as white and strong-looking as
high-polished ivory. "And I'm sure," she added, "that the
drink and the dinner are on the house."

The cool hand was withdrawn. The audience with the
queen of Aura was concluded. But Buchanan, apparently,
hadn't been dazzled in the fashion to which she was ac
customed for she paused for an extra moment.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked.

"I want to have a talk with you," he said. Her eyelids
went down, like a shade, and when they opened again the
eyes were ten degrees colder.

"About Rig," Buchanan said.

"Who?"

"Rig Bogan." He gave her a sudden, violent shove away
from him, one brief instant before the gun aimed at them
above the doors blazed its vicious fury. Shoved the girl
and ducked low himself as the assassin outside kept firing.

Buchanan cleared the Colt, aimed guessingly at the top of the door and threw out a reply. A second and a third.
Then the hammer clicked once on the empty casing that had blown the bottle out of Wynt's fist, again on the one
that had taken Prado to eternity.

But the three live slugs had driven the sniper's gun to
cover and the silence now was golden. Buchanan's eye fell
on the discarded shotgun nearby. He cradled it in his
hands and moved swiftly toward the doors, shouldered one
of them open and stepped into the street. Fifty yards to
the south a single rider was running away, a man whose
body tilted curiously in the saddle. Wynt, Buchanan
guessed, who had to favor that busted collarbone. The
shotgun might carry to him, but what the hell?

He turned, instead, and re-entered the saloon, laid the
shotgun
atop the bar and made his way to where the girl was
seated after being helped from her rude fall.

"You all right?"

She nodded her head, managed a smile. "You move
quickly when you have to," she said.

"Didn't mean to shove that hard. What's the matter?"

One moment she was staring at his middle and the
next she had sprung to her feet. "You're wounded," she
told him. "You're bleeding!"