One-Man Massacre (8 page)

"Stop Black Jack and we
’
ve stopped 'em all."

"Sure."

"He's got the milk-colored Stetson," Mulchay mur
mured. "Do you think you can spot him when he climbs up
the stairs?"

"Sure."

"Then shoot straight and true. It's the best chance we
have."

"Can't."

"What?"

"Can't shoot. No more ammo. Left the gun downstairs."

"Good grief!"

"Here's a gun on the floor, Cap!" shouted a voice be
low, a triumphant echo to Mulchay's melancholy voice.
"Empty! He's all shot out!"

Gibbons' burst of laughter betrayed his relief. Four
of his best had gone today
—he would sorely miss the
Leach-Gruber team—and his thoughts on entering this
blacked-out house had been that if he didn't lead the
attack up those stairs, no one would. What an un-Caesar-
like end that would have been for Jack Gibbons—death
from a stranger in another stranger's home. But the Lady
called Luck hadn't deserted him yet.

"He's all mine," Gibbons said quietly, moving with
confidence to the staircase, starting to mount the steps.

Mulchay tugged Buchanan along the upper corridor
and led him into a kind of storeroom in a makeshift
attic. He went to the single window, unclasped the shut
ters and pushed them outward.

"Can ye get your good leg over the sill?" he asked.
"There's a thin cornice and a sloped roof."

"We both can't make it," Buchanan said in a weaken
ing voice. "Go on, and good luck."

"If it's as far as you can go," Mulchay announced, "it's
as far as I can go." They both could hear the steady fall
of Gibbons' boot heels ascending the stairs.

"Well, so long," Mulchay said, "whatever your name
is."

"Buchanan."

"My pleasure, lad, to know ye briefly and to go out of this life by your side."

"The window," Buchanan said wearily, feeling that he
was being blackmailed into moving. "Let's go."

He went through the opening somehow, somehow
steadied both legs on the ten-inch cornice while he leaned
against the shingled roof and edged slowly toward the
outline of the building next to this one. Angus got out there, too, and quietly reclosed the shutters.

The old man began inching his way along, not daring
to look down at the street below. He knew without look
ing that there were two men guarding the front door,
a scant twenty feet down, and the slightest sound that at
tracted their attention up here signed his death war
rant.

Then his foot dislodged a pebble, and he choked back
a gasp as the small stone rolled over the cornice. Mulchay
heard it strike the wooden sidewalk and bounce. A
lon
g, long second went by. Another. But there was no
roar from a gun, no bone-shattering bullet
—and Mulchay
foun
d he was almost bursting his lungs from the breath
h
e still held.

He resumed following Buchanan, inches at a time. The
bui
lding adjoining Ferguson's house was Smith's hard
w
are store, some four feet lower than the home, but
fl
at-roofed. Buchanan lowered himself to it and helped
M
u
lchay down.

"Pray for us now," Angus whispered, moving to a metal
door that was set into the roof itself. "Pray that my friend
Tom Smith is a careless man." He bent down, grabbed
tie handle and tugged at it. The door held fast.

"He's not careless," Mulchay said, defeated.

Buchanan pulled at the stout handle, hard, but the iron
bolt on the other side yielded not at all.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Now we've had it," Angus told him. "There's no other
way down from here."

It seemed to Rosemarie MacKay that terror was piled
upon terror. Buchanan was gone, but she could still see
his blood-soaked shoulder, the wound in his leg, felt
herself being flung away from him and out of danger.
He had fled to safety himself, but his attackers, like wild
dogs, charged to the pursuit.

"Rosemarie, are you all right?" Billy Neale asked her
anxiously. "Were you hit?"

"We've got to help him!" the girl cried. "Somebody has
to help!"

"Who is the fellow? What's he wanted for?"

"He fought a bully in the Glasgow. Shot him fair . . ."

"But aren't they law officers?" Neale asked, incredu
lous.

"No! They're hired killers, and the one in charge was
brought here by your own boss!"

Neale shook his head. "Mr. Lord has no need for gunmen," the cowboy said loyally. "Why, he's a town coun
cilman."

"I know what I see and what I hear," Rosemarie told
him. And then the firing commenced again in the alley.
"They've found him! Oh, God, won't somebody help?"
And she would have run out there herself if Neale and an
other man hadn't held her fast.

"What can you do?" Neale shouted at her. "What can
anyone do? None of us come here armed, not even the deputy."

"Let me go," she demanded. "Let me go! He has to
have somebody!"

But Neale moved her toward the front of the hall,
away from the sound of gunfire. The crowd in here was
of three minds. One group clustered around the body of
Rig Gruber, while Deputy Crane
—a white-faced, shocked-
looking young man—searched in vain for some sign of life.
Another bunch huddled along the farthest wall, asking
each other what had happened. A third had started to
stream out of the place, then quickly came back inside when the shooting recommenced.

"Please take me out of here," Rosemarie pleaded, too
spent to resist the firm hold he had on her. "Please."

That, in fact, struck the cowboy as not a bad idea. If
they had him cornered in the alley the fellow might very
well duck back in here again. So he led the distraught
girl out onto the street, unaware that at the same moment
Buchanan and Mulchay were working their way to Fer
guson's across the alley. Now there was a pause in the
firing, but the voice of the man in the white hat came
to them.

"He's in there," it said. "This time, get him!"

"He's still alive, then!" Rosemarie cried hopefully.
"There's still a chance for him!"

Neale hustled her quickly across the street, but when he would have moved her to even further safety she
struggled against him.

"No, no! I won't leave. There's still a chance!"

"A chance for what? What can you do for him?"

"I don't know. I just don't know . . ." Her voice broke off at the sight of two gunmen emerging from the alley.

"What are they doing, Billy?"

"Sealing off the front of the house," Neale told her.

"It's so uneven
—all of them, and all he did was de
fend himself against that troublemaker."

Her words stirred an uneasiness in Neale's mind. He
saw now that his first conclusion
—that they were lawmen
hunting a desperado—didn't stand up. Not only had
Buchanan been plainly unarmed when he arrived at the
dance, but no peace officer in Texas would have fired at him across the floor with Rosemarie obscuring his shot.
But wanting to help was one thing. Actually helping was
another. Gunplay—even if he had a weapon with him—
was foreign to Billy Neale's character. He was born and
raised for nothing else but ranching, the peaceable, workaday life of raising cattle and sending them to market. He
owned a Colt's repeater, but damned if he could hit any
thing with it beyond ten feet. That was what shocked
him about the shot fired so close to the girl, and amazed
him that the Buchanan fellow could have returned it so
unerringly.

"There's a shotgun behind the bar at the Glasgow,"
Rosemarie said, as if reading his mind. "Run and get it,
Billy."

"You come with me."

"No. I've got to stay here. It's
—I've just got to."

The cowboy went off to the saloon, not understanding
the female mind, the fundamental need to keep a vigil,
the belief that her personal presence lent weight to the
prayer she offered up.

And hardly had Neale left her side but the girl saw the
shutter open in the upstairs window. Then, with her heart
beating trip
hammer blows against her breast, Buchanan
appeared there and proceeded to step out on the decora
tive cornice. She noticed at once how woodenly he
moved, like a man walking in his sleep, and she was cer
tain that with his next step he would lose his balance
and fall to the street.

That dire thought reminded her of the two gunmen
directly below. They must not look up.
It they did . . .

Now Mr. Mulchay was out of the window, closing the
shutters, leaning awkwardly against the slanted roof and
edging along. Something made the man suddenly stop
and she saw his small body freeze with terrible anticipa
tion. What caused it she could not tell.

For twenty seconds she stood there and watched the
two of them cross. Twenty years. Twenty eons. But then Buchanan was stepping down to the roof of Smith's store,
and Mr. Mulchay made it. Not out of danger yet, not
nearly, but worlds safer than they had been from the
moment the gunmen had entered the dancehall.

What now? she wondered. In back of the hardware
store was a small yard, beyond that the lumber yard and
Donhegan's stable. The stable! Horses!

Almost without realizing it, the girl was crossing the
street, taking a diagonal route that would precede Buchanan to Donhegan's. The practical thought was to pre
pare a mount for him, have it saddled and ready to fly.
In the back of her mind was a wild notion
—to make two
horses ready and ride away with him.

A violent movement up above made her look to the
Ferguson window. The man called Gibbons had slammed
the shutters open and was glancing all around.

"Kersh! Didn't you see him?" '

"Hell, no."

"Damn it, he must have gone this way! Passed right
over you!" With that, Gibbons stepped out onto the
ledge and started moving purposefully in the same direc
tion his quarry had.

SEVEN

“Y
e hear
what I hear?" Angus asked. The little man
had been walking around, restless as a bird. The big
one was stretched out below him, the thumb of his left
hand plugged into the hole the bullet had made. It was
surprisingly effective in staunching the outgo of his life's
blood.

"Did ye hear?" Mulchay asked again.

Buchanan nodded. "Always that same damn voice."

"We'll be hearing more than his voice in another
minute."

"Not you, oldtimer."

"The hell ye say! It's two birds with one stone tonight
for Black Jack Gibbons."

"What did you ever do to him?"

"Claimed bottomland when the Rio was at high flood,
that's what."

"Can't shoot you for that."

"Can if it benefits Malcolm Lord
—can, and will!"

"Well, in case it doesn't," Buchanan said
—obviously
not believing that anyone would kill old Mulchay
—"in
case it doesn't I want to will you my goods."

"We're goin' out together, lad! That's a fact."

"Consistin' just about entirely of a one-half claim in
the Lucky Monday Mine
—"

"Will ye quit jabberin'? It's Last Saturday for the both
of us!"

". . . can't give you any positive location, except it's in
the Negras and you take the trail west by two peaks of
Big Chisos. Then just keep climbin' until somebody takes
a potshot at you. That'll be Fargo, but he can't shoot
worth a Mex dollar."

"Here he comes!" Mulchay said, dropping to one knee.
"Ah, lad, if ye had your health. If ye had a gun . . ."

Gibbons stepped cautiously to the flat roof of the
hardware store, stood there waiting until he was joined
there by the two he had detailed to follow him.

"Can you see them?"

"Black as tar pitch, Cap'n. You sure he ain't armed?"

"Positive."

"But he'll have a knife. Don't want a gutful of that."

Gibbons hadn't considered a blade. As a Ranger he'd
never carried one, figured it as Mexican. But Texas
Thompson had, one Jim Bowie had made for him, and so had others who worked the border.

"We'll each take a corner," Gibbons said, his bravado tempered. "Work toward the center, and keep talking. Anything else that moves, shoot it." They went where he
told them to go. "Start," he commanded and all three be
gan converging toward the door in the middle of the roof.

Buchanan and Mulchay had heard it all.

"Ye don't, do ye?" Angus whispered.

"No knife," Buchanan answered, and that was that.
Each man lapsed into silence, thinking his own thoughts,
but the will to live was still with them, for the silence
was absolute and their assassins would get no help in
their work.

Buchanan gave his personal attention to Gibbons, gaug
ing the direction he would come from, listening closely to each footfall. When he thought it was time he pulled
his thumb from the wound and flexed all the fingers
of that good hand. His last request wasn't outlandish-
only the chance to use that hand on Gibbons to leave
the man something to remember him by.

They were both listening so hard to death that neither
heard the bolt being slid back from the door. Then the door moved beneath Mulchay's arm and the old man
shouted out loud.

Three guns exploded a startled, fearsome reply, thun
dered another time, again
—and nine murderous slugs crisscrossed all about the heads and legs of the two prone
men, so close they could smell them and all but taste
the scorching lead.

And in the midst of everything that was happening,
Buchanan marveled at the single
minded courage of who
ever it was who kept pushing that door wider.

"Down here, down here," Mulchay was yelling at him,
and then Mulchay was abruptly gone, pulled to safety
by an unseen hand. Buchanan crawled into the dark open
ing, was also tugged head first down the stairway. The
heavy door slammed closed above him.

"Good work, Billy," said a voice he recognized as
Hamlin's, from the saloon. "That took sand."

Second the motion, Buchanan tried to say, but the ef
fort just to speak seemed too much now. Very quietly the
big man passed into unconsciousness.

EIGHT

T
HERE was no truce in the private war between Gib
bons' Militia and Tom Buchanan—only a ceasefire, and that arranged by Malcolm Lord.