Buchanan's Seige (5 page)

"There are rustlers. We've all lost beef. But Adam Day
was no rustler. His mistake was in mauling Pollard. You
know, one of my own men was along when they did it. I've long suspected my employees are not to be trusted."

"Then you're in real trouble, Trevor."

"Oh, yes."

"You stand to lose a lot."

"Quite."

"They didn't let you in on the plot against Day?"

"Of course not. I believe that was Pollard's revenge. I
believe Crane and Fox wanted to begin a war, and this
was the way Pollard chose."

"You tote a gun, Trevor?"

"Beneath this jacket. Snug, you see?"

"If you can get it out."

Trevor made a lightning pass. A short-barreled Smith &
Wesson .38 appeared in his hand. "Gambler fella was in
town. Broke. Staked him, fed him a bit at the ranch. Tried
to teach me the regular way, no good at all. This came
easy."

"Gambler name of Luke Post?"

"Why, right-o. You know him?"

"I know him.

"Fine chap. Taught me a lot."

"He taught you right good." They had come to the edge
of the tiny settlement. "Funny, these here people make
their livin' mostly off the big ranchers. But when the Indian gal rode in and told 'em what was up, they all come out with their torches."

"Very British, therefore very American," said Trevor.
"Your heritage lies in our nation, y' know."
- "My grandma was born in Scotland. No love for your
people. But I see what you mean."

People still talked in little shoals. They walked to the
Powder River Saloon, and Trevor looked up and down the
racks and said, "Odd. Pollard and the men are gone. But
Bradbury's horse is here. And, yes, Crane's and Fox's."

"Trouble, trouble," said Buchanan. "Let's have a palaver with the big men."

Noonan eyed them with suspicion and a bit of fear as
they went to the back room. Buchanan slammed open the
door, and Trevor followed him in. The men at the table
started back, Crane kicked over his chair.

Buchanan said, "Well, Colonel, here I am."

"You . . . you hired out to me, and then you crossed
me."

Crane said, "And look, he already picked up with that goddam British bastard."

Fox edged his chair away from the table. "What do you
want? You get nothin' from us. You showed your colors,
the both of you."

"Raisin' the good town people agin us," said Bradbury. "You caused a lot of harm here tonight, Buchanan."

"With some help from me, I hope," said Trevor.

"You double crossin' sonofabitch." Crane came in a
rash. "I'll take you apart."

Trevor's gun slid out. Buchanan stepped in front of
him. Trevor covered the other two.

Buchanan met Crane, took hold of him with his left
hand, and stopped the giant in his tracks. He said, "You
s
u
re use a lot of bad language, Crane. I know you're
Crane because I been warned against that bad tongue of
yours."

Crane tried to kick to the groin. Buchanan shook him
once, then shoved him against the wall, so that he bounced
like a rubber ball. As he rebounded, Buchanan hit him
with a right hand. Crane went off his feet, staggered,
sighed. Then he dropped to the floor in a heap.

Trevor said, "Now that was neat. That was quite the old
n
eat bit. I do like that."

Buchanan addressed Bradbury. "I never signed on with you. I came up here to look around and maybe do what I
could. But you never told me what was doin'. You never
to
l
d me you were out to hang farmers."

“
A rustler. Day was a rustler."

"You're a liar. I saw the hide, I saw the way it was
pl
anted. I saw enough to know it was a frame-up."

Fox squealed, "You better be careful who you accuse."

"Accuse? Why, mister, when I accuse someone, it'll be
to
hi
s face. And he's likely to stand trial. Because I'll have
proof that he's guilty. I'm tellin' you Adam Day
framed and lynched. You can take it from there."

Bradbury said, "You better not butt into this, Buchan
an. I'll pay your fare back to New Mexico. You better
take the stage south."

Fox said, "When Morgan gets his gun, you better make
yourself scarce. We got men can take care of people like you. And you, too, Trevor."

"They do run off at the mouth, now, don't they?" Bu
chanan asked of Trevor.

"Very often."

"You'll see," said Fox. "You'll see soon enough."

Bradbury said, "Shut up, Dealer. There's been too
much talk, like Buchanan says. I didn't want it this way.
But now it's come to pass, we'll do what we got to do. You
better get out. This here is war."

"Uh-huh," said Buchanan. "And you used to be a right
decent
hombre.
I mind when you was as good a man as
need be. Didn't have much then. Yep, you wasn't a bad
sort. Well, be seein' you."

He turned his back. Trevor's eyes were on Dealer Fox,
on Crane struggling to regain his senses.

At the door, Trevor said, "Quite right. We'll be seeing
you chaps. Buchanan has agreed to work for me. Toodle-
oo, men."

They went out through the saloon, now nearly empty. Trevor led the way to the hotel. A wizened man with one arm greeted them warmly. His name was Weevil, and he
had been a wrangler until his accident.

"Took guts to do what you folks did tonight. People's with you. But don't count on 'em. They just pore folks.
They're no fighters."

"Thank you for the kind words," said Trevor. "Put us
in adjoining rooms, please."

"Already got Mr. Buchanan fixed up in number nine.
You can have number eight for the night, then. I'll have
your hoss tended to." He reached beneath the counter.
"Got a bottle of Monongahela here. Thought you might
want a nightcap. Got some cold venison and cheese, too."

"Excellent notion," said Trevor. "Put it on my bill."

They went back down a narrow hall and to their rooms. Neither was ready for sleep. Weevil brought them the cold
food, and they sat in Buchanan's room and ate and talked
and sipped at the whiskey.

Amanda Day slumped wearily in the wagon. It had
been a long ride out to the Kovacs' place, but she could
not have returned home this night. She could not help remembering Adam's face, the protruding tongue,
the angry
neck where the rope had bitten. They had been quarreling,
she had found she did not truly love him, but the sight of
him burned into her memory, and she knew she would
never be rid of it.

She had visited the Kovacs' house only once and knew little about it except that it resembled a blockhouse. It had been a fort, a small rallying ground of the mountain men,
built of native stone against Indian raids. Kovacs had re
built it, adding the kitchen on the back, still using stone
hauled by his workhorses, patiently putting it together
with skills he had brought from the Old World. It could be
depressing viewed from without, but inside, Jenny had
made it comfortable. It was cool in summertime and easy
to heat in the winters. For now, it was a resting place.

Kovacs put the horses in the stone barn. Raven worked with him, quick, efficient, smiling, looking often at Dan
Badger as he watered and fed the tall mule.

Badger said, "Man alone in these parts, he sees things. Them cattlemen, they're bringin' in gunmen. They'll be up
to deviltry."

"Is so," replied Kovacs.
;

"This man Buchanan. Hang onto him if you kin."

"Not his fight." .

"I seen his kind. He cut Adam down, he rode with you
all in the wagon. Count on him."

"Maybe so."

"This is a good place to make a fight. Put in grub. Don't
·o anywheres alone. Watch the womenfolk. Lemme do the
scouting
'. Nobody knows the country like us mountainy
men
."

"Is so."

Badger looked long at Raven. "You know what to do."

"Yes, Dan Badger." She had been rescued from a bat
tlefield and nursed back to health by the Kovacs, and the mountain man had never been far away when he might be
needed.

Badger mounted the mule and rode out. Kovacs and
Raven finished the chores together, then went into the
house.

Amanda Day was moving about as in a dream, frown
ing. Kovacs touched her arm and led her into the huge
front room of the house. The hall was baronial in height,
the furniture heavy polished oak. Large bedrooms were
off to either side. Between the kitchen and the big room,
there was a hall and two closets. It was a most unusual
house for this clime and time. There was a big fireplace
built into one wall. The windows were narrow, but Kovacs had found glass for them.

She said, "You have built a castle, Pieter."

"I talk to Adam." He ignored her compliment.

"Yes. He trusted you."

"You talk to me."

"I was coming back to him. But something had gone,
Pieter. His mind was narrow, like those windows. He had
grown hard."

"Hard country."

"For a fa
rm
er, yes. You have cattle and vegetables and
wheat. You have built well."

"No good now, mebbe."

"You're right. I saw it coming. I told Adam. He hated
me for telling."

"Because truth."

"Maybe. He drove me away. I couldn't stay away. It
was like quitting. But I didn't want to come back. I had to.
But I didn't want to."

"Is so." He lit a briar pipe and waited.

She said, "The man, Buchanan. Is that what you want
to know about?"

He nodded, puffing.

"He'll help. He's not with them."

"You sure?"

"Positive." She was surprised at her own emphasis. "He
came to take a job with Bradbury, but when he saw . . .
saw Adam
...
he whipped two men for calling us rustlers."

"Badger?"

"Why, you know Dan. Homeless, aimless now. But a
good man."

"Whelan?"

"They had nothing. They are trying to make something
for themselves. I wouldn't wonder they'd be the next tar
get, living out there, grazing on government land."

"Is so." He sighed. "You and me, we know, now. It will be very bad."

"Yes, it will be terrible."

"We must fight."

"I agree."

"You could go."

"I won't go." She drew a breath. "I see. You mean that
I did not love Adam in the end. That it was over between
us. You think I have no stake?"

"Is so."

"They hanged him," she said. "I saw him. If he were a stranger, I would hate them, want them to be punished."

He nodded. "Then we know. Buchanan, he can be of
big help. Tomorrow we will know. So quick." He looked
around at his comfortable house. "In Poland it was pogroms. Here it is the same. The world is made right, no?
But people. There is something wrong with people."

"Not all people," she insisted. "I won't believe that."

"Mebbeso." He closed his eyes.

She thought of Buchanan and how he had been so
quickly brutal against the two gunmen and so kind when
they were alone. More men like Buchanan, she prayed,
spare these good folk, spare them please God.

The F-Bar ranch was
small;
it was in the open country
of the high plain. The
Whelan’s
ran only a couple of
hundred head, but in the couple of years they had been in
Wyoming, that small herd had been bred up to sturdiness
and solid flesh. Their house was small but tight, sparsely
furnished. They had lived low on the hog since departing
the Texas border.

They sat on the top rail of the corral in the night. All
was quiet and peaceful, there were trees nearby, a creek
ran close to the homestead. They sat close together with
out actually touching elbows.

He bore
scars;
he had been a gunner in his day. Scarce
ly thirty, he had lived three lifetimes, a part of which had been behind bars. He knew many things he did not need to
know and a few things he did. He had been a kid on the
trails, and he had been a faro dealer in gambling halls. His
nose was dented and slightly awry, his eyes deep-set, his skin rough with the outdoor labors that had occupied him
since he and Fay had finally shaken loose from the past.

Fay Delehanty's real name was something now hazy in
her mind. She had been born in Kansas City to a mother
who had, to say the least, been careless. Her father could
have been any one of many, none worth remembering.
Her childhood had been spent in various houses of prosti
tution between Kansas and Texas.

Somehow a spark had kindled in the
girl;
somehow she
wanted that which she did not have. It was no great ambition, looking at frontier wives, but it was in her and it re
mained her goal through thick and thin, mostly thin. She
longed for a small spread, a house which was a home, and
a man with the guts to make it all come true.

It had all come together in El Paso. She was working in
the Ace-Deuce Saloon. Rob, two years out of the peniten
tiary, had scrabbled together a few head of cattle, had
come to look for a drink and a woman before heading
northward where he was unknown, where the grass was
high, where he could get the fresh start, which was the
holy privilege of everyone on the western frontier.

They looked at each other. She was red-haired, rouged,
attired in a tawdry short skirt. He was saddleworn and scarred. Each liked what was there, inside the other per
son. Each had been around long enough to look beneath
the surface of a person.

There was a gambler, Cat Bundy, who had long been
trying to get Fay to work for him, bragging about his con
nections with the elite, promising her a house of her own.
When he saw them together, heads close, murmuring, he
took umbrage. He grabbed Rob and yanked him away
from the girl.

Rob knew his lesson in this situation: take it easy, give
the other man first shot, do anything to stay inside the law.
He allowed himself to be pushed against the bar. He al
lowed himself to be upbraided for stealing another man's woman. His hand did not go near his Colt.

Marshal Spencer came into the Ace-Deuce. He listened.
Fay ran to him, knowing him for a decent human being.
He went to Cat Bundy, who was of the opposite political
faction, and turned him away from Rob.

Bundy went for his hidey gun. Rob hit him once with
his fist and once with the muzzle of the long-barreled .45, which he produced with lightning speed.

Bundy fell down and died of a fractured skull. Marshal
Spencer helped Fay pack her few belongings. In a few
hours, the couple were married by a preacher known to
the marshal and on their way to camp and the little herd
and eventually Wyoming. And now they sat on the rail
and wondered.

She said, "So quiet
-
like."

"Huh-huh. Good country."

"Best country I ever seen," she said. "Almost made it
here, didn't we?"

"Almost."

"People. The land's beautiful. The people are manure."

"You shouldn't speak like o' that, Fay," he said. "We promised not to talk like o' that no more."

"Sure, we did. And kept our promise. Now . .. what the hell's the use?"

"We ain't dead yet."

"After what we been through, who's a-scared of dyin'?"
she demanded. She waved an arm. "It's the place, here.
It's what we was buildin' here. You know that's gone."

"I know. I been on that side of it, their side," he admit
ted. "But we ... you and me
...
we ain't finished."

"Ho! How do we start over, if we live?"

"We made friends," he said. "Wrong side, but the Ko
vacses and them."

She softened. "Never had friends before. Adam
...
he
was a kinda friend. Honest and square and all."

"They were onto us," he said. "When they brought in
the first gunnies they got onto us. Thing is, Kovacs and
them, they didn't turn their backs."

"Uh-huh. And what about Buchanan?"

"I dunno."

"Where'd you get to know him?"

"Texas way. Long ago, afore I got into the pen. I was
ridin' . . . you know. He wasn't wearin' a badge or nothin'.
Just helpin' out a friend, a rancher."

"He fought agin you?"

"Wasn't much of a scrap. We run away. Two of our
boys went over. Buchanan, he's tough and you know what
I mean. Tougher'n two boots."

"You think he may be one of
...
them?"

"Cattle Association? No, I don't believe so."

"But he could be a spy?"

"Ain't his dish. But we got to watch him."

"Don't trust nobody, nohow, no time," she said tightly. "We got this far, we can't let down no rails."