One-Man Massacre (11 page)

"Even as I speak to you," Lord went on, "the pro
tectors of Scotstown are routing out the advance patrols,
driving the transgressors back to their own land . . ."

"Wait a minute, Malcolm Lord!" Mulchay shouted,
on his feet now. "Do you mean to stand there and say
you've sent Black Jack Gibbons down to my property? To
MacKay's?"

"The militia is here for the safety and protection of
us all, Angus Mulchay! If you are providing Mexican
raiders a route by which Scotstown will be sacked
—then I
accuse you of endangering the lives of every man, woman
and child among us!"

"So say we all!" somebody cried in emotional support.

"Ay!" chimed in others. "Ay!"

"Mulchay would have us all slaughtered!"

But Mulchay was already hurrying out of the church,
leaving Malcolm Lord a clear victory in his campaign for
public opinion.

The invading hordes totaled eight happy-go-lucky ban
didos whose total armament was three rifles, four hand-
guns, and eating knives all around. Their leader was a
fierce-looking fat man named Ramon, whom none of
them obeyed but who was jefe nevertheless because he
owned the best rifle
—a Remington that Mulchay had
sold him two years before.

They were thieves by occupation, just as their fathers
and grandfathers had been
—too proud to beg, too child
like to work—and most skilled in the allied arts of lying,
lovemaking and consuming vino. Angus Mulchay thought
the thing they did best of all was sleep; sleep a minimum of ten hours in any twenty-four, sleep the clock around, sleep in the middle of a conversation.

And they were sleeping this Sunday morning, all over the lush grass that constituted the yard behind Mulchay's
six-room ranch house, but they had earned thei
r
rest,
having spent almost the entire night in the saddle eluding
the federales chasing them from San Carlos. It had been
a hard ride for poor profit, the state of Chihuahua be
coming more and more policed, less and less a freebooter's
paradise, but they had reached their yanqui sanctuary
safely and even if they had no gold this time, Se
n
or Angus
would be good for a handout.

The advance patrol of Gibbons' Militia damned near
ran over them.

"For crissake, are they dead?" "Trooper" Glines asked
"Sergeant" Lou Kersh, reining his mount sharply.

"Let's see," Kersh said, sliding the .45 into his fist,
pumping three booming shots into the ground beside
the sombrero-shaded head of Ramon. The fat man came
awake as quickly as it was possible for him
—some several
seconds later than Mario and Jose', who slept nearby. Within another half-minute all eight were rubbing their
eyes sleepily, struggling to sitting positions.

"Qu
e
pasa?
Qu
e
pasa?" began the bewildered chorus.
"What the hell goes on?"

Kersh answered gutturally, "Get up, you sorry bastards!
On your miserable feet!"

The command, accompanied by the hard faces of the
mounted men all around them, the drawn guns, made no
sense at all but had a great deal of meaning. They got up, hands above heads.

"You make a mistake, amigo," Ramon said, addressing
himself to his opposite number. "We are invitados
—
guests of the Se
n
or Angus."

"Line up!" Kersh ordered, swinging his .45 with a
negligent menace. "Get in next to the fat one. A
l
lado
del gordo.'" he repeated in his border-Mexican, and they
formed a ragged line beside Ramon.

At the sound of the staccato gunfire Black Jack Gib
bons had sunk spurs into his horse almost involuntarily,
and swung the animal's head in the direction of Mulchay's
place with an expectant kind of excitement running
through him.

He raced toward the house, some three hundred yards
away, and watched with satisfaction as Kersh herded the
quarry together. He was happy that Kersh had flushed
the first of them. A tonic for the man's morale after last night's sorry business.

"Well, Sergeant, what've we got here?" he asked, pull
ing his horse close in beside Kersh's, raking the hapless
Ramon and his band with a contemptuous glance.

"Murderers and rapists, from the looks of 'em," Kersh
said, staring directly at Ramon.

"But no, amigo! No," Ramon said. "Such things we
have never done. The Senor Angus, he will tell you we are guests. We come for peace and quiet . . ."

"We got witnesses," Kersh said. "We know all about
you. Fat man, you're gonna hang for your sins."

"Hang? Por Dios, why? What have I done here?"

"That one, too," Gibbons said, having picked out an
other brown-skinned face that displeased him, pointing
to nineteen-year-old Mario.

"No, amigos, no!" Ramon cried out again. "Surely you
are joking?"

"How about him?" Kersh asked, pointing his own arm at a stiletto-slim figure who was a man named Gio Al
avarez.

"And him," Gibbons said, singling out a fourth can
didate. "We'll take the other four into town."

At a wave of Kersh's head the six mounted men of his
squad moved their horses forward, crowded in on the
four who had been condemned, suddenly dropped nooses
over their heads, and tightened them brutally.

"No, no!" Ramon shrieked at them. "This cannot be
—"
A jerk of the rope around his neck cut short the protest.

"Where?" Kersh asked Gibbons. "The cottonwoods
by the river?"

"They'd do," Gibbons said. "But this is the loudmouth's range
—Mr. Mulchay's. Let's make it a little
more personal, Kersh. String 'em up under those eaves."

And that was what the old man found when he reached
home
—four friends hanging dead by their necks on the
front porch of his house. One by one he cut them down
,
and spent the whole long afternoon digging graves in the
earth and burying them decently. Then, far into the night,
he carved a common headboard into a thick strip of oak.
Under here, it read,
Lie
Ramon, Mario, Gio and Carlos.
Murdered
this
Sunday,
the 13th of June, 1857,
by The
Butcher
of Bro
wnsville
.

TEN

W
ell,
say!" Fargo said, waking that morning to find
Buchanan in camp. "When did you get back up
here?"

"Along about dawn."

"Have yourself a real time?"

"So-so."

"Live little town, is it?"

"Live enough. Fargo, I don't have your tobacco."

"You don't?"

"Nor your bottle."

"Well, hell
—so long as you had some fun with the
money . . ."

"Had to bury a man with it," Buchanan told him.

"No foolin'? How'd he come to die?"

"One of those things. How about some breakfast?"

"Sure thing."

Breakfast was bacon and potatoes, washed down with
powerful Mexican coffee brewed from beans they roasted
themselves. The partners ate in silence, and when they
we
re done Buchanan took the tin plates and cups to clean
them in the spring just below the camp.

"Notice you move awful stiff," Fargo told him when lie returned. "And you're limpin'."

"Got myself shot up some."

"By the gent you buried?"

"No. That one died of over-confidence. Had me pegged
for a sheepherder, or something."

"But he had friends along?"

"I don't know whether he had friends or what. They
all belonged to some kind of organization." He had the
day's first cigarette made and Fargo struck a match for
him.

"So you didn't have a good time at all," the old man
said, sounding as unhappy about it as if it had been him
self.

Buchanan caught the note of sadness and grinned.

"Had my moments, too," he told Fargo. "Drank some
thing called Scot's whisky
—not much kick to it."

"I tasted some once, over in Frisco."

"And danced with a good-lookin' woman," Buchanan said, watching Fargo's face brighten.

"Well, that's more like it! She have a bosom?"

"She had everything she ought to
—and the whitest
teeth you ever saw."

"Good for her. Got to walk her home, didn't you?"

"No."

"How come?" Fargo asked, crestfallen again, and Bu
chanan wished now he'd embroidered, given the old-
timer something to think about during the lonely nights.

"I would have," he amended. "Had it all fixed in my
mind to walk her home."

"But why didn't you?"

"Because that's when I got plugged," he answered
apologetically.

"Damn their hides, anyhow! Say
—you wasn't even
armed!"

"Borrowed as I went along."

"What kind of town they runnin' down there, I'd like
to know," said the outraged Fargo. "Fella comes down to
put a little money into circulation and they shoot him!
You weren't drunk and disorderly, were you?"

"Hell, I didn't have time. All I played was just one hand of draw
—and you should've seen that, Fargo. Go
in with a pair of ladies and wind up with queens full."

"Man, I'll bet that took the pot."

"No."

"No! Somebody beat a full house
—full of queens?"

"That's what the man claimed."

"Oh," Fargo said. "The one you buried. Now I'm
beginnin' to get the straight of it. Town's full of tin
horns ..."

Buchanan shook his head again. "The town's fine," he
said. "Couldn't be friendlier. But you ever hear of a
Captain Gibbons? Black Jack Gibbons?"

"That's somehow familiar," Fargo said, pulling at his
eai reflectively. "Sure it is. Seems to me there was saloon
talk around Paso last winter, just before I hooked up with
you.
Fella named Gibbons was recruitin' a private army.
Gonna start a new war with Mexico, or somethin' crazy
li
ke that."

"What's he got against Mexicans?"

"Don't like chili and beans, maybe. Hell, who knows why some people always got it in for others?"

"I guess," Buchanan said, snubbing the butt beneath
hi
s heel. "Well, I came back to mine gold. Better get at
it.”

"Not in your shape," Fargo said. "Shouldn't even've
c
ome back so soon."

''Stiff, is all," the big man said, but Fargo noted that
h
e hefted the pickax left-handed.

"Should be down there in a feather bed," he said.

"You don't know the worst of it," Buchanan said
mock
-seriously. "Black Jack Gibbons run me
out
of
town.”

"The hell he did."

“I’
m here."

"I know why you're here, Buchanan. Listen, I've had
you u
nder close watch for five hard months. Got you
figu
red complete."

B
u
c
h
anan laughed at him. "That's just twice the fig
urin
g I've done in thirty years ..."