One-Man Massacre (13 page)

Gibbons heard, whirled furiously from the writhing, twisting Rosemarie, and crossed to the door. The animal
look was still strong in his face, but as he watched the determined approach of the two horsemen he brought his
thoughts to heel.

"Spread yourselves," he ordered. "Get off the porch and
fan out around the yard." The bright sun made the pupils of his eyes contract swiftly, and now he could make out
one of the riders. The missing old man, Mulchay
—and
in the moment of recognition he thought he knew where
the troublemaker had been and what he was up to.

"Stand fast," Gibbons called to his deploying men. "And
by God be ready to fight!" He turned back into the room
for a moment then, just as the bitterly sobbing girl ran
into her own bedroom. The door slammed shut.

"A good idea, if you stay there," Gibbons said warn
ingly. "If you don't, there may be a life on your hands." He went out of the house to stand at the top of the short
flight of stairs, his face and the set of his body defiant.

Angus Mulchay wheeled to a stop below him.

"What are ye doin' here?" the old man asked sus
piciously. "Where's the lass?"

"Not at home to callers," Gibbons said, but all his; attention was on the other horseman, a grim-visaged
character with the look of winter in his eyes and the
small silver badge of the Rangers pinned to his shirt front
The man himself was noting the number and disposition
of the force spread out in a semicircle around the yard.

"I'll have a word with the lass," Mulchay announced.

"You'll wheel right around, if you know what's bes
t
for you," Gibbons said.

"Your day is done on the Big Bend," Mulchay a
n
swered, continuing to dismount. "Ranger Keroon ha
s
your warrant in his pocket."

Seth Keroon and Jack Gibbons had known each oth
er
nearly twenty years, but the men they were seeing no
w
were like two strangers. Mulchay hitched his horse t
o
the porch rail and started up the steps. Gibbons raised
his booted foot, shoved it against Mulchay's chest, and sent him sprawling in the dust.

"I'm all the law that's needed in the Big Bend," Gib
bons said, speaking directly to Keroon. The Ranger squared
his shoulders, as if he could feel the weight of the eyes
staring intently at his back, the position of his gun hand.

'The governor sent me to bring you up to Austin," he
said calmly.

"Sam Bradford's a traitor to Texas," Gibbons answered.
"He's betrayed the men who died to free us from Mexico."

"Don't waste that kind of talk on me, Jack," Keroon
told him. "You and I understand what you're trying to
do down here."

"If you understand that, Seth, you won't try to serve
a
n
y piece of paper on me."

"But you know I'm going to . . ."

"Come back here, you old fool!" Gibbons shouted to
Mu
lchay, diverted by the man's attempt to circle to the
door of the house.

"I mean to see the lass," Angus shouted back. "Some
thing
tells me she's had trouble with ye!"

"Apgar!" Gibbons called, and the man nearest to Mul
cha
y drew his gun and stood across the old man's path.

"Let him pass," Seth Keroon ordered in his quiet voice,
and Apgar's glance went nervously to the famous badge,
Then
to Gibbons' face for
reassurance. He stayed in Mulch
a
y’
s way.

Tm all the law that's needed," Gibbons repeated to
the
Ranger. "Ride out."

""No," Keroon said, then swung so that he faced the
expectant men behind him."I'm here to arrest
c Gibbons," he told them. "Him alone. If your orders
to interfere, then I rescind them
—and I speak for the
State
of Texas!"

The six of them shifted uneasily. Then one of them
said,
"Ride out like you were told to mist
er
. Rangers ain't
no special breed to Gibbons' Militia."
Keroon sighed, turned back to Gibbons. "I arrest you in the name of the people of Texas," he
said and reached for the warrant. Some gunman thought
he was going for a breast gun. He drew and fired, the
slug catching the lawman in the small of the back. Four
more times he was hit in that many seconds, the bullets
driving him lifeless from the saddle.

"You foul cowards!" Mulchay cried at them. "You
miserable butchers
—" Apgar raised his gun high, brought
it down with sickening force on the man's head. Mulchay
went to his knees, fell head down and lay there.

The door at Gibbons' back swung open and Rosemarie
stepped onto the porch, dressed again and wide-eyed with
terror. Her glance took in the murdered man and the
crumpled figure of Mulchay, but when she would have
gone to him, Gibbons' arm circled her waist and held
her back.

"What have you done?" she demanded brokenly.
"What have you done?"

"Get your things together, missy. We're traveling
fast . . ."

"No! I won't go with you!"

"You will
—or you can stand here and watch Mulcha
y
take a bullet in the back of his head!"
"You wouldn't!"

"Apgar, at the count of three finish the old meddler
One! Two
—" The stolid Apgar thumbed the hamm
er
back.

"No, no!"

"Get packed in three minutes," Gibbons ordered, and
the girl reentered the house. Gibbons then had the dead
man and the unconscious one tied across their saddles
Rosemarie came down the steps, carrying a small duffl
e
bag, and a horse from the small remuda was made read
y
for her. Leaving one man behind to take Lauren
into custody, the strange party rode off.

TWELVE

I
t was
Angus Mulchay's nature to speak and to act im
petuously—and on the morning that he had taken it into
his mind to ride off to Austin for help, the man had done
so without informing any of his friends what he was up
to. Naturally, those cronies wondered about him—it was
all they talked about during the first few days of his disap
pearance—but when two weeks had passed without a word, Hamlin, Macintosh were of the opinion that
a delegation of Gibbons' hardcase army had put the fear
of God into him and packed him off.

"He'll be back in the country soon," they told each
other confidently.

"Ay, and denyin' that Gibbons was the cause." And when they gathered at the Glasgow this hot Tues
day evening they had no idea that Mulchay had, indeed,
come back. But there were other things to talk about to
night, for the families of the Tompkins, the Alreds and
t
h
e Bryans were in town lock, stock and barrel, and the three heads of those families were hopping mad about it.
" 'Load up your wagon, you're moving,' this dirty-faced
g
u
nman tells me," Jock Bryan reported to the assemblage
ii the saloon. " 'And why am I moving?' I asks him. 'Be
c
au
se you're in a battle zone,' he tells me in that surly
voic
e. Imagine! The land I've ranched for twenty-five
yea
rs is a battle zone!"

"The same as they did to me," Cy Tompkins added.
"Only I was told it was for the safety of my family. So I
s
a
id I'd decide about the safety of my family, as I've al
ways
done—and he says, no, Captain Gibbons does all the
deciding in the Big Bend for everyone."

"Well?" the big-chested Alex Aired demanded. "What
are we going to do about Captain High-and-Mighty
Gibbons?"

"Turn him and his rascals out!" shouted the usually
retiring Bryan. "I'm a Godfearing man, and violence of
fends me
—but there comes a first time for everyone!"

"Ay!"

"Gibbons has gone too far! I say we elect a captain of
our own. My vote goes to Cy Tompkins."

Alex A
l
red was the last speaker, and it was not until
he had made his nomination that he was aware he was
talking into a dead silence. All the excited clamor in the
big room had vanished into thin air, and the puzzled man
turned slowly around to stare at a trio of militiamen in
side the doorway.

"Who is Cy Tompkins?" Lou Kersh asked A
l
red.;
"Trot him out here."
[

"This is a private meeting," Ken Hamlin said.
"It's going to be, as soon as every Mex-lover in the
place pulls stakes."

"We're getting a little tired of that," Hamlin coun
tered. "All opposed to Gibbons get tarred with the same
old brush."

"As soon as every Mex-lover pulls stakes," Kersh said
again, as if the other man hadn't spoken. "Clears out
of
the country. Now, which one is Cy Tompkins?"

There was a pause, then the man cleared his throa
t
nervously and stepped forward. "My name is Tompkins,! he said.

"Do you accept the nomination?"

"What?"

"For captain of the home guard, mister. Are
yo
u
number one here?"

"Give the fellow some peace," Hamlin
s
po
k
e "You've already done enough for one day."

"You're the big talker," Kersh told him. "Maybe yo
u’re
the one they want to rep them."
"Hamlin is not concerned in this. It's my ranch
you’ve
moved on to." Tompkins walked three strides closer to
the three gunmen. "If my friends want me," he said,
"I'm their captain."

"All his friends raise their hands," Kersh said, and they
all did. Kersh laughed. "Some friends," he said to the
other pair and they laughed, too. "All right, Tompkins,
let's go."

"Go where?"

"To the calabozo! Where the hell did you think? As of
sundown this town's under martial law, and you're look
ing at the provost marshal."

"But what's Tompkins done?" demanded Macintosh,
outraged.

"What hasn't he done? Aiding and abetting an enemy
of the State of Texas, inciting to riot, illegal assembly
—
Tompkins, you're a dangerous character to be running
around loose. Let's go!"

The other two shifted position, gave each other arm
room, and there was something not quite sane in the face of Lou Kersh, at least. He wanted them to force his hand.

"I'll go with you," Cy Tompkins said.

"Then take me as well," Jock Bryan volunteered. Alex
A
l
red came forward at the same time.

Kersh shook his head.

"Just one criminal at a time," he said. "But if you're
still here rabble-rousing when we get back, the rest will be accommodated."

The three of them left with Tompkins between them.

THIRTEEN

J
ack Gibbons'
strong point was his talent for improvising. Where another man might have been badly rattled
by
the unexpected and thoroughly unwanted turn of
events at the MacKay ranch, Gibbons had a resilience of
mind, a military man's inborn ability to go ice-calm in
moments of stress, to think on the spot and by the very
confidence he felt in himself quell the fears of others.

For there had been fear there in MacKay's yard, a
real anxiety in the hearts of all those who had helped
kill a Ranger. Gibbons had sensed it, and reacted with
precision and poise. His somewhat remarkable decision
was to pretend that the whole thing had never happened,
that he and the men had never ridden this way; he had
not so much as laid eyes on the girl; Mulchay had never
arrived and there was no such person as Seth Keroon.

So he cleared them all out and headed the party west
to Mulchay's range, for the same thought process that
produced this solution also included the basic proposition
that here was the land Malcolm Lord had hired him to
usurp.

And always
—in all ways—he had the threat of the
Mexican invaders.

At Mulchay's house his riders continued to obey his
crisply spoken orders, though they had no idea what the
purpose was. First they strung up the bullet-riddled
body to the same eaves where the four Mexicans had been
lynched fifteen days ago. Then the paint Gibbons wanted was found, and he himself got down on hands and knees
and swashed the single word on the porch floor beneath
the hanging man.

Venganza! it read, each letter crudely stroked, foreign-
looking. Revenge
.
Even the dull-witted Harley could
spell that out, get the inference that he hadn't pumped
a bullet into the Ranger at all. It was those damn Mexi
cans. But some others, like Apgar, wondered about the
eyewitnesses to the actual affair. What was their fast-
thinking boss going to do about the unconscious, but still
alive Mulchay? And the girl?

Jack Gibbons knew that a little explanation, like
knowledge, was a dangerous thing. So he told them what
to do.