One-Man Massacre (3 page)

Opportunity had to knock ever so lightly for Jack
Gibbons to heed it. With the support of the more power
ful ranchers he made the militia a permanent group,
shaving it down to a hand-picked force of fifty gunmen who worked more or less along military lines. For Gib
bons had not acted against Matamoros and Brownsville
without a long-range plan, an idea calculated not only
to make him the kind of controversial figure that satisfied
his outsize ego, but also to provide him with a way of life
he was bom for
—to command, to lead men into battle,
to create strife and taste victory. All that was in Gibbons,
as well as a pathological hatred for the Mexican people.

Malcolm Lord's neighbors had heard many things of
the man, and so when he asked them, obliquely, to dis
count the accusations of Angus Mulchay they were non
committal. Now, with glasses filled, they turned their
attention to their host, the owner of mighty Overlord
Ranch.

"Gentlemen," he began gravely, "we are facing a seri
ous problem in the Big Bend and the time has come
when those of us with the largest share of responsibility
in this country must take steps to solve it."

"Aye," James MacPike said, "the Rio is low and get
ting lower. I say wells are our only hope, expensive as
they may be . . ."

"I didn't mean the water, MacPike," Lord interrupted
testily. "Of course the river's a problem. A big one.
Without the river flooding its banks we have no graze."

"What were you referring to, then?" Arthur Butler
asked. "What's more important to us than water, Mal
colm?"

"Our freedom," Lord told him. "Our heritage. And
our duty to our women."

"How's that?"

"The Mexicans," Lord answered. "They cross our border with impunity, come and go on Texas soil just
as they please."

"Oh, hell, that's just Angus Mulchay," MacPike said.

"He gives the poor devils refuge when the federales are
nipping too close. Lets them slaughter a few head for
fifty dollars."

"And I'll take the overflow," Butler put in. "Damn steady customers, them bandits."

"But you and me ain't on the river, like Angus," Mac-
Pike countered. "We all thought the man was daft when
he claimed land ten years ago that was a foot under
water. Now look at his fine grass ..."

The conversation was running away from Malcolm
Lord's direction and he cleared his throat impatiently.

"Mulchay is giving comfort to an enemy," he said.
"He is helping the bandits survive, strengthening them
for an eventual attack . . ."

"Attack?" Thad Sims asked, speaking for the first time.

"Aye, Thaddeus. They have the run of the riverlands
now. Some night they'll strike."

"You're living in the past, Malcolm," his friend Mac-
Pike objected. "Those raids were ten years ago, and
never in the Big Bend . . ."

"And I say that's just what they hope you'll believe.
But maybe you'll wish you'd listened to wiser heads, when
it's too late and and your daughters have been ravaged
in their beds!"

"Ah, come down off it!" MacPike said angrily. "Don't
be even thinking such a thing, let alone speak it."

"Then heed the man who knows more about our
danger than any other. The man I've persuaded to come
to our remote range and help us before it's too late." He swung to Gibbons. "Captain, if you please."

"Thank you, sir," Jack Gibbons said, rising from his
chair. He held his glass of whisky aloft. "I give you the
Lone Star, gentlemen," he said. "A toast to our beloved
Texas!"

They drank to that.

"Texas for Texans," Gibbons said then. "I've lived by
that creed all my life."

"Are you a native son?" Butler inquired.

"By adoption, sir. I had the misfortune to be born in the state of Georgia. But I came here very young; my
daddy saw the opportunity, the destiny. And I fought
for the independence of the Lone Star, sir. I remember
the Alamo, and called Davy Crockett a friend ..."

Sacred names were dropping from Gibbons' mouth in
profusion, and his listeners were properly reverent.

". . . and I tell you, men, I just wonder what Jim
Bowie and Sam Houston would say to us if they could
see what we've done with this wonderful country they
handed to us."

"Even Mr. Houston couldna kept the Rio high in her
banks," MacPike said laconically.

"I'm talking of Mexicans, my friend. We fought them
a bitter war, shed our precious blood and won that war.
But to the victor belong the spoils? No sir! The govern
ment in Austin has let us down. The government in
Washington doesn't know we exist. And every God
fearing white man from El Paso to Brownsville is plagued
with the enemy he defeated. They squat on his land, raid
his herds, cheat good men out of honest labor because
they'll work for nothing but their goddam beans and
bread.

"I did what I had to do in Brownsville," Gibbons
went on, his voice rising dramatically. "This winter I was
invited to clean out Laredo, and I cleaned it out. Texas
for Texans. Let the brown papists live in their own
confines."

"Cleaned out Laredo, you say?" asked Sims. "Exactly
what do you mean?"

"Made it safe for a white woman to walk the streets,
sir. Drove the troublemakers back across the border
where they belong."

"And what do you propose to do for Scotstown?"
MacPike asked.

"Mr. Lord has invited me to do the same here," Gib
bons said, and Malcolm Lord stood up again.

"Subject, of course, to the approval of us all," the
owner of Overlord put in. "What I suggested to Captain
Gibbons is that his militia occupy Scotstown for a pe
riod of sixty days. The main body of men will patrol
the riverlands and rout the Mexicans out when they
seek to cross over."

"That could mean fighting."

"It will, James."

"But there's families living there. Mulchay and Bryan,
Tompkins, MacKay
..."

"They'll have to be evacuated."

"Evacuated? Lord, I'd like to see the day when Angus
agrees to leave his land."

"This is a common project," Lord said blandly. "If
Mulchay is a damned Mex-lover, if he gambles with the
safety of our children as well as his own, then I say it's
up to the community to protect itself. That's the demo
cratic way of it."

"It doesn't sound right, somehow," MacPike said,
remembering what Mulchay had been shouting in the |
saloon
—his accusation about Lord trying to steal the land
along the riverside. "What," he asked, "does Captain
Gibbons get out of it?"

"The opportunity to serve Texas," Gibbons said.

"Aye. But who pays your men and feeds your mounts?
Where do you get your guns and ammunition?"

"As I said, sir, Austin has let us down. This war must
be financed privately, by patriots."
*

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 risk
ing 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 interrup
tion
—the nerve-shattering thunder of gunfire—and it
came from just beyond the door.

FOUR

W
ell,"
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
l
i
vely
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 aske
d and Buchanan held her steady
gaze, then rubbed a palm across a cheek he hadn't shaved
i
n forty-eight hours
.

"Yeah," he said. "Fill 'em high"'
^!

Hamp Leach had moved back to the door, in quar
antine, and his malevolent gaze missed none of the by
play 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 re
ception 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 a
nd 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.