Buchanan's Revenge (18 page)

"They'll turn tail and run on you," Buchanan said.
"Then they'll hide and pester you all night with snipe-
fire."

"And what the hell would you do about it?"

"Seein' as we're over here, Leech, I'd go on back up
there right now and hit 'em from behind."

"The three of us?"

"We could sound like a lot if we kept moving around,"
Buchanan said. "And who knows? We might get you a
horse for the one you just lost."

"The boys," Lash Wall said, "might appreciate a little
assist from the rear."

"Well let's don't sit here gabbin' about it!" Leech
bawled, climbing up behind Wall. "Let's go!"

There was nothing lacking in the courage of Sergeant Gomez. Three factors, though, worked against him. Num
ber one, he was never meant to command other men. His nature was too easy-going. Number two, he did not share
the customs money with General Cueva and Governor
Diaz. Sergeant Gomez soldiered for twenty pesos a month.
Number three, as a sixteen-year-old recruit he had wit
nessed the charge of the First Texas Volunteers across the
plain at Monterrey during the war. It had made a lasting
impression.

And though this wasn't the open fields in the blaze of noon, the black banks of the Rio could be just as unset
tling even to a man of courage. On top of which, what
had looked to be nothing more than a three-man foray
across the river had suddenly burst into a full-blown as
sault. The shooting, the wild shouting, the relentless ad
vance of the crazy gringos brought back memories.

Gomez was about to give the order to retreat when he
suddenly found himself surrounded. Or so it seemed, as
Leech, Wall and Buchanan laid a withering fire on his
flanks.

"Sargento.' SargentoJ" Corporal Aguirrez cried. "What
do we do?"

"How do I know?" Gomez shouted back. "Do whatever you want to!"

"But you are the sergeant!"

"I resign! Aguirrez, you are the sergeant!"

"Then I surrender!" the other man said immediately.
"Bas
t
a
.
" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Basta
.
"

"Hold it," Buchanan said to Lash Wall. "Somebody's
giving up."

"Givin' up?" Big Red said, disappointed. "Hell, we just
got here! Come on, let's lay it on 'em."
Buchanan reached out, tipped Leech's carbine skyward.
"Why not give 'em a break?" he suggested. "The poor
bastards probably don't even know what the shootin's all about."

"They started it, didn't they? Plugged a good horse
right from under me! Take your goddamn hands offen
that rifle."

"Hell, Big Red," Wall the peacemaker put in, "where's
the profit in shooting some soldiers? We got a big load of freight to be moved."

"You and this ranny seem to agree on most everything,
don't you?" Leech demanded suspiciously.

"Big Red," Wall said, "I agree with anything that gets us closer to the end of this work and nearer the payoff."

"All right," Leech said grudgingly. "We'll let the bug
gers give up."

The terms of the surrender were short and sweet.
Throw the guns in a pile, tether the horses, and start
walking due south. Leech promised that a patrol would be
sent to check them within two hours. Any stragglers would be shot.

The Mexicans buried their six dead, took off with their
wounded toward Matamoros. Leech had lost one man
and his own horse in the half-an-hour skirmish. Word went back across the river to start moving the wagons
and the smuggling was officially underway.

"That was a good stunt, Big Red," Sherm Moore told
the leader while the escort waited for the flatboats.
"What was?"

"Slippin' in behind them. Man, you sure took the pres
sure off us boys in the water."

“
Th
e
head man's supposed to do the thinkin'," Leech
said, his voice low and out of Buchanan's hearing. "Thafs
why he takes the extra cut. You didn't tote a jug across*
by any chance, Sherm?"

"Hell, no, I didn't!" Moore laughed. "But I'll scout you
up one. That was a real good stunt, Big Red."

The convoy was finally assembled on Mexican soil and
the trek began inland toward the first of the pre-arranged
rendezvous outside San Fernidino. There a representative
of the Brownsville merchants would be waiting with the
Mexican buyer to check the delivery of the contraband.

And in his headquarters at Rio Rico, General Cueva
was impatiently awaiting a report on what the firing was
about downriver. No report came and so the general sent Captain Luis Maximo to investigate with a full company.

Maximo was the pride of the general's staff, a young
man with a great career ahead of him in the military.
Why, in Strategics-and-Tactics in the military academy,
Maximo had scored an unprecedented one hundred per
cent. He knew by heart all of Julius Caesar's campaigns in
Gaul, could trace the great battles fought by Alexander, Hannibal, Napoleon. And, in a much-discussed treatise
down in Mexico City, the brilliant tactician had proved
on paper how Santa Ana could have defeated Zachary
Taylor by simply positioning one regiment differently and
making better use of his cannons and mortars. It was ti
tled: "How I Would Have Won At Buena Vista."

Captain Maximo knew just about everything there was to know about military warfare, and if Big Red Leech had
only read the same books the outcome would never
have been in doubt. Unluckily for Maximo, however, the ex-U.S. Army cavalry sergeant from Missouri had never
read a book about anything. Leech's strategy in a battle
was to kill you before you killed him, kill you any
damn way he could manage it and no holds barred.

The two forces made their first contact about midnight,
somewhere north of San Fernidino. A Mexican patrol, led
by Sergeant Esteban Zapata, sighted the convoy and re
ported immediately to Captain Maximo. Zapata was three-
quarters Indian, also unschooled and uninterested in the
science of maneuvers. He merely reported what he had
observed on the trail
—some fifty-odd wagons in a train
that was escorted by an armed guard spread out hap
hazardly every thirty or forty yards on either side.

Also, Zapata reported, there was a huge man with a
voice that boomed like a cannon and he seemed to be in
charge. Moreover, the armed escort seemed to be well
supplied with liquor.

The capitan smiled. This was going to be nothing more than a simple textbook problem, something the Romans
had devised against Hannibal two thousand years ago; The
enemy's
convoy
should be approached as individual units
and destroyed piecemeal, attacking the rear units first
and working forward, causing great consternation in the mind of the enemy's commander because he is naturally
loath
to
leave his forward units unguarded in the event
of a secondary attack there.

A simple problem, Maximo decided, and issued the
proper orders to his three platoon leaders. The company, half mounted, half on foot, went forward with confidence
in their commander.

Except that Sergeant Zapata's reconnaissance patrol had
itself been spotted by three of Leech's outriders and their
presence in the neighborhood relayed to Big Red.

"Ride up the line, Hancock!" he ordered. "Pull the boys
back here
.
" He spoke without a moment's consternation,
no worry at all about leaving his forward wagons exposed.
"I know them backbiters," he said to Buchanan. "Try to
take us- tail-end first."

"More'n likely," Buchanan agreed.

"Well, say now! Don't tell me I'm actually doin' some
thin' you ain't got no goddamn complaints about?"

"Still don't know what you find to holler about so
mu
ch," Buchanan told him. "I ain't in the next county,
yo
u
know."

He was grinning across his saddle as he spoke, but the
other big man couldn't tell that in the darkness.

""By Jesus," Leech thundered, "come down offen that
and let's settle this thing once and for all! I don't
take sass from nobody!"

"You're goin' to take a Mex slug in the seat of your
britches," Buchanan told him mildly, "unless you attend
to business."

"Come on, Big Red," the ever-present Lash Wall said,
"let's get back there in case any trouble pops."

"It's comin', bucko!" Leech told Buchanan. "You and
me are gonna tangle!" He looked around at the gathering forms of his gunfighters. "Company expected down the
line!" he told them. "Spread yourselves, but don't let a
goddamn thing through!"

They didn't. Captain Maximo led his column toward
the wagon train expecting to find two, possibly three men
riding rear point. Led the company with the bland assurance that he was the attacker, that he had the advan
tage of surprise. All at once he found himself in the mid
dle of hell's hottest acre, overwhelmed by gunfire from
everywhere at once, and the oddest thing about it was
that in the first few seconds of the unorthodox assault, Luis Maximo truly became a soldier. Even as he was
driven from the saddle with a shoulder wound his mind was clearly and coldly rejecting everything he had ever
read or been taught on the subject of war and battle. And
that paper he'd written on Buena Vista. These gringos
had changed things completely.

The captain went down and his company was routed,
one hundred and twenty men thoroughly drubbed by
thirty. Some got away in the night, some picked up perma
nent mementos of the fight, the rest just gave up. Bu
chanan, who had marked Maximo heading the column
and winged him, now brought the officer to Big Red
Leech. Maximo, who was considered a tall Mexican, looked from one of his captors to the other and felt that
he must be standing in a deep hole.

"How many boys you got along the border, anyhow?"
Leech demanded.

"I am not required," Maximo answered stiffly, "to give
you any information." Leech stared down as
if
he had
come across a puzzling bug.

"And I ain't required to waste time!" he shouted, turn
ing to Sherm Moore. "Sherm, take this jimdandy and
turn him into a good injun, will you?"

"Sure will," Moore said, taking Maximo in one hand,
unholstering his .45 and hammering it back with the
other. "Walk over here a ways, general," he told him per
suasively.

"Wait!" Maximo protested, almost in disbelief. "I am a
prisoner of war! You are not permitted to shoot me."

"Hell, mister, this ain't war!" Leech roared. "This is
strictly business! Go on, Sherm."

Buchanan leaned close to Maximo's ear. "Better speak
your piece," he advised. "The man ain't foolin'."

"Que diablos
.
" the captain muttered, shaken.

"Come on, brother, come on!" Leech insisted. "How
many in your army and where they posted?"

Luis Maximo named numbers and places. Lash Wall
copied them down, fired an occasional question as a test
for the truth. The answers were the same as the original
statement.

"Well, this is going to help," Wall said happily. "We
can raise hell where they are and slip across where they
ain't. Ought to save us a good week's work."

"That's for me, brother!" Big Red said. "All right,
Sherm, go shoot him!"

"Hold it, hold it," Buchanan put in, a Little wearily. "A
deal's a deal, Leech."

"What deal?"

"He traded you information, that's what deal."

"So now I just send him back to headquarters, that
what you're sayin'?"

"Pack him along with us," Buchanan said. "When we
get back across the river, lock him up till the job's done."

"The hell with that! Sherm ..."

"I thought it was a deal, too, Big Red," Moore said.

"I guess we all did," Lash Wall added.
"Say, what's goin' o
n
in this outfit, anyhow?" Leech
f
um
ed hotly. "Am I runnin' things, by damn, or ain't
1? And if I ain't, then let's see the boyo who thinks he
on walk in my boots!"

""Sure, you're running the show, Big Red," Wall assured
"But you've also got a rep for the fair and square."