Buchanan's Revenge (8 page)

He looked down at the wet stain just above his gunbelt.
"Well I'll be damned/' he said, smiling ruefully, as if he
had committed something rather foolish. She had him by the arm and was turning him around.

"Come upstairs," she said.

"What for?"

"So you can get off your feet. Mr. Price, would you
ride out to Doc's house right away?"

"You
betcha!"

"Come on," she said to Buchanan. "Up these stairs."

He held back, remembering. "This isn't anything," he
assured her.

"How do you know?" she said with the kind of anger
you use for a child.

"After a while," Buchanan explained, "you get to tell
between a little scratch and a hole. This is a scratch."

"We'll let Doc Vincent decide that," she told him firm
ly. "Until then you're going to lie down."

"Might as well do what Cristy says," said her bartender
brother. "She'll save your life if she has to hound you to
death."

"That's very funny, Steve," she replied, pulling Bu
chanan insistently toward the staircase.

"How about the other gent?" he asked in an undertone.

"What other gent?"

"Isn't there somebody up there?"

Her eyebrows shot skyward. "Up there?" she said. "In
my room? What would a man be doing in my room?"

Buchanan winced. "I just thought
...
I mean, I ..."

"Well, you can just think again!"

"Miss, I'm sorry," Buchanan apologized. "I really am."

"Let's stop talking and get you quiet until the doc gets
here," she said with finality, urging him up the steps. He
went along now, not daring to protest after making such a
jackass of himself.

Not that he didn't have a few questions about Rig Bog-
an, though. The only difference was, he wouldn't put
them to her quite so bluntly now. He had been only
briefly singed by her anger a moment ago and he was sure
he didn't want the full treatment.
She opened the door, stood aside for him to pass on
through. It was a small room with a single window, big enough to accommodate only an armchair and a table in
addition to the washstand and the single bed. The empty single bed with the crisp white sheet and pillowcase, the
light blue blanket.

"Well, at least my gent made the bed before he sneaked
out through the window," she commented.

"I said I was sorry, ma'am."

"Sorry because you were wrong? Take your shirt off and lie down."

"Just sorry," he said. "And I'm not going to mess that
bed."

"You can be stubborn, can't you?"

"Only when I'm pushed," he said and that made her
pause, give his rugged face a close study.

"Yes," she said, less brusquely. "And you've been
pushed." She reached up, began unbuttoning the shirt
herself.

"I can do that."

"You take the gunbelt off."

Buchanan did the one, she the other. After she peeled
the shirt from his shoulders he went and laid the gun
rig
across the back of the chair.

"Horrible," he heard her say and turned his head.

"Me?"

"The gun. All guns."

He smiled at her. "It started with fists," he said. "Then
clubs and spears. Now we got guns."

"And men who get paid to use them . . ." Her voice
broke off. "I imagine that includes you," she said and
Buchanan laughed.

"Earned me a drink and dinner tonight," he said.
She smiled back. "And that little scratch the whole
length of your side," she said, coming toward him with a
towel in her hand. She laid the towel over the gash, pressed
gently. "Another inch," she said, "and there'd be a bullet
in your body."
"It's a life of inches."

"It's a life of
...
You'd better lie down," she said.
"Hold the towel close and maybe the bleeding will stop a
little."

Buchanan did as he was told. He stretched out and his
legs extended the bed by six inches.

"Lordy," she laughed, "how tall are you, anyhow?"

"Too damn, sometimes." He turned his shaggy head
sideways and sniffed suspiciously.

"What's the matter?"

"Perfume in the pillow," he said. "That's a new one on
me."

"Not where I come from."

"Carolina," Buchanan said. "Or Tennessee."

"South Carolina. But how did you know?"

"My favorite pastime. Placing people by their voices."

"Is this the patient?" an old man asked from the door
way and came inside the little room. "Good gravy," Doc Vincent said, his lively eyes traveling the length of Bu
chanan. "Ought to charge you by the square foot."

"Better keep the bill under three dollars, Doc," Bu
chanan said.

"That's been taken care of," he said, leaning down and pulling the towel away. He spent the next five minutes
cleaning the wound and bandaging it. "Better stay off
your feet for a couple of days. Give it a chance to scab."

"You bet, Doc. Much obliged."

"Glad I could help. 'Night, mister. 'Night, Cristine."
He went out, and as soon as the door closed Buchanan
was swinging his legs to the floor.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

He stood up, reached out for his shirt. Her hand got to
it first, snatched it behind her back.

"You," she said, "are going to lie down, and I'm going to
wash this shirt. And take that stubborn look off your
face."

Buchanan looked down at her for a long moment.

"Let's have that talk about Rig Bogan," he said.

"You mentioned him before," she said. "Is he the fel
low who drove the red wagon through town last week?"

"That all you know about him?"

"Yes," she said. "That's all I know about any fellow
who comes through."
-

"He told the liveryman this was his lucky town. He
thinks he means on account of you're here."

She began to shake her head puzzledly. Then her face brightened. "He means the game that night he was here,"
she said. "And I'll say he was lucky. He broke the bank
and everyone else playing." She smiled. "Sat there grin
ning and turning up blackjack three times out of every
five."

"How much did he win?"

"Well, there was a hundred in the bank. That's my limit
and he won it all. And he must have taken those three toughs for another hundred apiece."

"What toughs?"

"Three just like the ones that came in tonight. Two of
them were brothers."

"And Rig busted them?"

She nodded. "Then he left. That was when they started
drinking and turned surly. Poor Sheriff Rivercomb tried
to quiet them and they beat him with their guns."

"They bother you?"

"I got out and drove to my brother's house. Why all
these questions?"

"I'm looking for Rig Bogan," Buchanan said. "We're
partners in that red wagon he was driving."

"So you're the famous partner," she said. "Every time
he'd win a pot he'd say, 'Boy, if only old Buchanan could
see me now!' I thought he'd drive me crazy."

"I wish old Buchanan could see him now."

"Is something wrong?"

He told her what was wrong. Even told her about his
suspicions concerning Bogan and herself.

"You came in here tonight with a lot of ideas about
me," she said.

"All of them wrong."

"But intriguing, though," she said with a sad smile.
"More intriguing than this existence."

"You don't like what you're doing?"

"Like
it? I hate every minute of it."

“
How'd you come to leave Carolina?"
59

She took a deep breath, walked over to the window.
"My husband was killed in a duel," she said very quietly.
"It was all very gallant."

"What was the duel about?"

"It seems that another gentleman made a remark about
me, about my
—virtue—before David married me. David
challenged him to a duel and this other man put a bullet
in his heart." She swung around. "That's why all guns are
horrible," she said.

"A man," Buchanan said, "sees it different from a
woman. Me, I don't know what else your husband could
have done."

"David's mother says I could have stopped him."

"How?"

She looked across the dimly lit room steadily. Beneath
the bodice of the dress her breasts rose and fell emotional
l
y-

"David's mother said I should have told him that what the man had said about me was the truth," she said slow
ly. "She pointed out that we'd only been married a month,
that we really hadn't formed any deep attachment. I
should have sacrificed our marriage, his mother said, to
save his life."

"That lady was wrong," Buchanan said.

The blonde girl's head came up in surprise. "You think
so? You really think she was wrong?"

"She'd have been wrong if you were my wife," Bu
chanan answered her. "I'd have looked up this jasper re
gardless."

The smile that came to her lips seemed grateful. "For some reason you make me feel better," she told him. "As
if I couldn't have changed anything that happened. Thank
you." She came away from the window, still holding his
shirt. "I'm going to take this down to the kitchen and
wash it out," she said. "At least lie down for that little
time."

"All right."

She went past him and out of the room. Buchanan
looked down at the bed thoughtfully, unable for the mo
ment not to think of the little story he had just been told.

A marriage that had lasted one brief month. He had a pic
ture in his mind of a beautiful young bride riding in an
open carriage with a handsome, smiling yo
un
g fellow who
cut a dashing figure in a long jacket and rakish beaver
hat. Then some drunk at a bar has to open his dirty
mouth. Buchanan could even imagine him as a beau who
had lost out. She must have had beaux like a flame has
moths. And
the sonofabitch was probably a
dead shot
with one of those tricky dueling pistols. It would be one
of those strictly formal affairs, at-dawn, with everybody being so goddamn polite to each other. "Take six paces,
gentlemen, then turn and fire." A wedding and a funeral
in one short month.

And this lonely bed in this little room.

Buchanan lay down on it again, smelling the perfume in
the pillow, staring at the crack in the ceiling just as she
must stare at it one long night afte
r
another.

Bogan. Think about Rig. Stop looking at the ceiling.
Bogan, he told himself again. Bogan winning money from
what she called "those three toughs." What was the name
in the ledger
—Perrott? Two brothers named Fred and
Jules Perrott. And a third man named Sam Gill. They'd
lost their money and turned surly, taken it out on some
old sheriff. And topped off their stay by running out on a
lousy one-dollar feed bill.

What was he trying to remember now? A conversation.
The codger at the table downstairs had wondered at the
steady parade of noisy guns through town. Some recruit
ing going on around here? Somebody stirring the pot?

Lost a hundred dollars apiece, she'd said. Lost it to a
grinning freighter who probably wasn't even packing a pm. Had the brothers and their friend ridden south that
morning, the same direction as Rig?

Buchanan closed his eyes. His great hands folded slow
ly into fists, unfolded again and lay still beside him. He
w
ould be on the trail himself. Right now. He smothered
a yawn. Tomorrow he'd be riding, all day, south to Browns
ville
and Matamoros.
Buchanan closed his eyes, and when he opened them
again there was a faint gray light coming into the room
beneath the drawn shade. It was coming on dawn am
he had slept the hours away in her bed. But then he
called her mentioning her brother's house and he felt
little better. Until he turned his head and found h
er
curled up in the chair, and then he felt terrible.

And worse when he realized that the blanket had been
thrown over him, that his boots had been removed. Him;
the ranny that slept with one eye open and both ears
cocked, that could hear a rattler sigh at three hundred
feet.

His shirt, washed and ironed, hung-above the door. Oh,
Buchanan, you horse's ass! he growled at himself. What a
performance! He came out of the bed scowling, let go
with a self-disgusted sigh, then walked softly in his stock
inged feet to where she slept, looking somehow bo
th
cramped and comfortable with her knees drawn up against,
her chest, her head pillowed on her forearm.

Easy, now, he cautioned, bending over the chair, lift
ed
her effortlessly in his arms and settling her into the b
ed.
Now he returned the favor, covered her to the chin wi
th
the blanket, went and got the fresh-smelling shirt and p
ut
it on. He picked up the boots from the floor, carried them
out of the room and on down the stairs. Buchanan lef
t
the saloon via the kitchen door, walked back down Mat
Street to the stable.

This, he reflected, would have been about the time t
hat
Rig would have departed Aura seven mornings ago
the
other three would have slept off their drunk till mid-mo
rn
ing, ridden out of town at a defiant, hung
over gallop.

Five

T
he country
south of Aura was stark and rugged, sparse
ly settled, and Buchanan traveled through it at a pace
that was deceptively casual. He was trying to put himself
in Rig Bogan's place a week ago, to think the other man's thoughts as he hit the trail again after a pleasant night of
leisure and winning at cards. I'd be feeling pretty good
about now, Buchanan mused. That money I won would
have a comforting feel inside my shirt and I'd be telling
those mules that it took some talent to break the bank at
blackjack.

But would I give a thought to my back
trail? Buchanan w
on
dered. Every so often would I give a look over my
shoulder to see if I was having company along this lonely
stretch? Buchanan glanced back himself, saw nothing but
empty flatland, and decided that even a man half-cautious would be hard to surprise here.

But within the hour the terrain changed, became hilly, and a few miles further south there was a junction in the
trail. A rider had a choice of turning almost due east along
level
ground or ascending a long, sharp incline if he was
determined to continue south. What did a freight driver
do
here? What was Rig's choice? Did the flat trail even
tually work its way southward again? Did the route up
the face of this small mountain lose a man time or gain it?

Me, Buchanan decided, I'd take the hills as they came,
prov
ided I was still headed in the right direction. He put
th
e undaunted filly to the steep climb. When he reached the top, though, he wasn't so sure. The trail up here was
narr
ower, hemmed in by heavy brush, and didn't look as
used
as the one below. He followed it slowly, his mind
nagged by the certainty that he would eventually have to
turn back, start all over again down at the junction. Twen
ty minutes later he reined in, started to swing the animal
around, when the blazing morning sun caught the patch of bright red paint and made it glisten in his eye.

Buchanan kneed the horse to the edge of the trail,
peered straight down. There, lying on its side at the bot
tom of the gorge, was the forlorn wreckage of the wagon.
The words DOUBLE-B FAST FREIGHT appeared to mock Buchanan's gaze. He dismounted, started to work
his way down the steep, jagged side, hoping against hope
that there was no more to the story than the toppled
wagon. But there was more. Rig Bogan's lifeless, bullet-
riddled body lay fifty feet from his beloved red wagon
;
half-hidden by the jutting boulder that had arrested his plunge from the trail above, and Buchanan's examination
of it was expressionless, unemotional. Six times he had
been shot, from the back of the head to the base of the
spine, and it was not likely, Buchanan thought, that he
had lived long enough to even realize what had happened to him.

A deep, pent-up sigh escaped the tall man's cavernous
chest and he turned away from his murdered partner, walked slowly to the ruins of their venture. The mules
had been freed from their harness before the wagon was
sent plunging into the gorge and Buchanan reflected
briefly on the nice difference the bushwhackers placed on
animal life and human. Nor had they considered Honest
John Magee's cotton to be worth much. A few bales of
the shipment still lay in the truck, the rest were scattered
over the ground. Scattered, too, was the odd cargo that
Rig had scouted up in San Antone and taken on consign
ment. As Buchanan retrieved a shiny new shovel he could
hear Rig's eager voice again, making the deal with the
shipper, assuring the man of safe delivery and a good
profit.

He carried the shovel to a secluded, semi-shaded spot
near the wall of the canyon and began the hard, unhappy
chore of digging a decent resting place. The rocky ground
yielded very slowly and the sun was in the middle of the
cloudless sky before the grave was ready. Buchanan laid
Rig Bogan into it with a tarpaulin for a shroud. He picked
up a shovelful of dirt.

"Fred Perrott," he said aloud and poured the dirt back
into the grave. "Jules Perrott," he said with the second
shovelful. "And Sam Gill," he said with the third, passing
judgment equally on all three. It was spoken tonelessly,
matter-of-factly, and had anyone heard the deep voice
they would have known there was no appeal from the sen
tence.

Buchanan finished his work quickly, as if anxious to be
gone, and walked away from the grave without a backward glance. But as he was starting to cl
i
mb the gorge
again he glanced up to find a mounted figure watching him
from the trail. It was the girl, Cristy, and how long she
had been there Buchanan neither wondered nor cared.
When he reached the top again he noted that she was
dressed in levis and a shirt, that the blue blanket from
her bed was now rolled behind her saddle. He went to his
own horse, threw a leg up.

"Was that your partner down there?" Cristy asked him.

"The big winner," Buchanan said. She studied him,
marked the cold detachment of his voice and manner.

"It wasn't
—an accident?" she asked.

Buchanan shook his head curtly. "They didn't give him
a chance," he said, and started off.

"Wait!" she called out, impulsively.

He looked around. "I did my waiting back in San An
tone," he said.

"But where are you going now? What are you going to
do?"

His smile was bleak and cheerless. "Going to collect
some damages," he said.

"Do you know where they went?"

"I'm betting they continued south."

She had ridden up to him. Now her eyes were full on his face. "Can I go along," she asked, "as far as Browns
ville?”

Buchanan frowned, then shrugged. "Why not?" he re
plied.