Buchanan 18

by Jonas Ward

  “How could I what?”

  “Admit such a thing! That you saw me—nude!”

  “Why, I didn’t give it a thought, honey.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Buchanan’s expression showed that he was completely at sea with this girl. Nothing he could think of to say could please her.

  “You were just a half-drowned little rat when I found you,” he said good-naturedly, appeasingly. “Damn fine figure of a woman, but I just plainly didn’t pay much attention—”

  He thought for a moment she was going to strike him. Instead she whirled around and swept out of the room. And just as well, for within the next minute the door opened again and there was a delegation come to visit him.

  “My parents could not wait to meet you,” Juan said, bringing Don Pedro and Doña Isabel inside. He made the introductions very formally and Buchanan acknowledged them with as much dignity as he could summon. Traveling with Campos as he had, Buchanan’s experience with the pure-blooded aristocracy of Mexico was nonexistent, and now he regarded these two with frank curiosity.

  “Señor,” Don Pedro said very simply, “how can I ever repay you?” Gomez and his wife glanced at him in surprise. There but there had been marked emotion in his voice.

  “Your boy saved my bacon last night,” Buchanan answered just as directly. “I guess that puts the score all even.” He turned to Doña Isabel. “You’ve got a fine family, ma’am.”

  “Gracias. I’m sure your people must be proud of their fine son.”

  Buchanan didn’t know about that, but her words had a good sound to them. They made him feel as though he almost belonged to someone instead of the footloose ramstam that he knew himself to be.

  “How is your wound?” Don Pedro asked solicitously.

  “A little stiff this morning,” Buchanan answered. “But I’ll be able to ride.”

  “Ride?”

  Buchanan grinned wryly. “I passed through this neck of the woods two days ago,” he said. “I’m kind of anxious to make a little better progress.”

  “You have some urgent business in the north?”

  “Not that I know of, Don Pedro, and I hope you and the lady don’t take this personal. But I’m grown a little sour on Mexico and some of the people I’ve had dealings with.”

  “The land is not at rest, señor. I apologize for anything that my countrymen have done to you.”

  Buchanan waved his big arm magnanimously. “Don’t give it a second thought,” he said. “Fact is, I’m a little more fed up with some of my own fellow citizens. The Agrytown breed, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Don Pedro said. “I would certainly not want to judge all Americans by the acts of the Agrys.”

  “Fair enough. And I won’t measure out Mexicans by that—by Campos.”

  Don Pedro smiled. “To celebrate this treaty between our two nations, then, will you stay and accept the hospitality of my house?”

  “A gran fiesta, Buchanan!” Juan said eagerly. “Well, sure! I guess I could stand a little partyin’. Thanks very much.”

  “The thanks are ours,” Don Pedro said, and he and his family left. Then, as Doña Isabel had instructed previously, servant girls arrived and began filling the tub with buckets of steaming hot water. Buchanan followed the movements of one of the girls with interest. She was a head taller than the others, slimmer, and with hair that was not the universal black but the color of burnished copper.

  Nor was she unaware of his glance, undulating her supple hips as she worked, and leaning far over the tub to give him a delightful view of her breasts from the bed.

  Nor was Gomez missing any of the flirtation. He wondered, in fact, if it might not be the means of prolonging Buchanan’s stay.

  “Lilita,” Gomez said. “Make a proper greeting to the great benefactor of your patrón and mistress.”

  The girl curtsied gracefully, seemingly unmindful of the fit of giggling that suddenly took her companions.

  “We are in your debt, señor.”

  “Glad to hear it. Tell me, have you ever been to San Javier?”

  “I was born in San Javier.”

  “Nice little town.”

  “If one likes bandits, fighting and murder,” Lilita said. “I prefer it here.”

  Gomez gave her backside a whack. “What do you know of bandits? You were not eight years old when you came to this house.”

  Lilita rubbed where it stung. “I know more than you think, Tio Café! About a lot of things.”

  He laughed. “About men?”

  “Pouf! What is there to know about men?”

  “If you are so worldly-wise then, perhaps you will stay and bathe our guest?”

  Lilita swung around to Buchanan and gazed full in his face.

  “I am only a servant,” she said quietly. “What the guest of Don Pedro orders me to do, I will do.”

  Buchanan met her eyes levelly. An impish grin spread across his face.

  “Gomez,” he said, “I guess you don’t know these girls from San Javier. She’s liable to scrape the skin off my back.”

  “That is the risk you take,” Lilita told him.

  “Then go, little wildcat,” Gomez said. “Perhaps if you are lucky the señor will dance one dance with you tonight.”

  “And if he is lucky I will have one to spare.” She left with a toss of her long hair and an impudent swing of her hips, and the other girls scampered out in her wake.

  Within minutes, Maria del Cuervo was getting a full report.

  “She was without shame,” Felice said breathlessly. “And to think that my own brother Amaya pays court to such a vixen.”

  “He and every unmarried vaquero here,” Maria said. “She has a very beautiful figure.”

  “Too skinny,” said the plumpish little Indian. “What would a man want with such a scarecrow?”

  “You, yourself, said that Buchanan stared at her openly.”

  “I am talking of Mexican men, señorita. Who pays attention to Americanos?”

  “I am surprised at Gomez,” Maria said. “As majordomo he should preserve his dignity.”

  “Something has happened to him,” Felice said. “This Buchanan is a bad influence. Imagine telling her to bathe a man. An unmarried girl!”

  “But you say she would have done it?”

  “I am positive. Then the señor made some other reference to San Javier and it was over.”

  “What is so special about San Javier?”

  “I have never been there,” Felice said self-righteously. “But it must be a scandalous place.”

  “Yes,” Maria said, a little wistfully. “And Buchanan is a scandalous hombre.”

  Sixteen

  Abe Carbo had no intention of going “north aways” or of waiting a week. He was going after the money himself, and the best way he knew—alone. With a gambler’s audaciousness he packed his provisions with Simon Agry looking on, took a thousand dollars from the man as advance payment to the imaginary gun fighters he would hire, and rode out. On the outskirts of town he glanced back without regret for what he was leaving. Without the money from the bank, control of Agrytown held no particular interest.

  At the intersection he doubled back toward the border, unworried about being followed. Even if Simon didn’t trust him, it was something that Simon couldn’t dare admit. For Agry had maneuvered himself into a position where he had to depend on Carbo or go down. No money, no protection, no friends. Poor Simon.

  Carbo laughed aloud and put him out of his mind completely. What he did think about was the job at hand. He guessed that the owner of Rancho del Rey would be in a holiday mood, and that the safe return of his son without having to pay the ransom would call for a fiesta comparable to a christening or a wedding.

  Nor would they be too much concerned about a quick reprisal from Agry. Gomez knew the manpower situation as well as Carbo did. Agry simply didn’t have the guns for a frontal attack, and anything short of a U.S. cavalry troop would be cut to ribbons. A vaquero was loyal first and
last to his home ranch, and in defense of it one was worth any six raiders. That was why they made such poor soldiers. Fighting for anything so impersonal as a federal government failed to arouse them to the necessary pitch.

  But Gomez would not expect one man to attack—would not because he had no idea how jealously Abe Carbo regarded those sacks of gold. They were the big strike from which the gambler meant to launch his fortune. And Carbo also meant to use the fiesta in his own favor. Some would drink until they passed out, others would either dance themselves into exhaustion or go off into some secluded brush with a jug and a woman. Carbo knew what fiestas were like and what one sober man could get away with.

  He crossed over the border and came onto Del Cuervo land just as the sun was sinking. He made his first stop at a line camp, unconcernedly built a fire in the shack, ate his supper and lay down to nap. It would be many hours before the fiesta was at the stage Abe Carbo wanted it to be.

  Three times Amos Agry had slipped away to the attic, staying only long enough to count a small portion of the money and hide it among the beams and beneath floorboards. And each time he had come back to the desk with the same nagging problem: What was he going to do with it? How was he going to get it safely out of town? His plans for the gold were neither as rapacious as his cousin Lew’s had been, nor as ambitious as Carbo’s. Amos saw himself returning to Kentucky in style, of buying into a hotel, perhaps raising some thoroughbreds to race on Sunday afternoons in Lexington. He could feel the silk dress shirt he would wear in the evenings, the tweed suit imported from Scotland. Amos’s palms fairly itched to start spending his hoard.

  He had heard Simon’s conversation with Carbo last night and he’d seen the gunman ride off today in search of fighters. Suppose they did capture Buchanan but didn’t find the money? Buchanan would say that he left the saddlebags in the room with Lew. Then Simon would realize that there was only one man who’d had both the time and the opportunity to take them out of there. And Amos didn’t doubt for an instant that his cousin would hang him to the nearest tree.

  A neat problem, but not without its even neater solution. If, for instance, Buchanan had warning that Simon and Carbo were coming after him; if he were told that they meant to kill him on sight as repayment for Lew’s death—then Buchanan would either leave the country or ambush Simon and kill him. Amos would have the freedom of the money and all the leisure he needed to get back to Kentucky.

  At sundown he saddled a horse and rode for Rancho del Rey.

  On four different occasions that day four different vaqueros had found some urgent business that called them to the hacienda. And while there each had found time to search out Lilita and upbraid her for her actions in the Americano’s bedroom. To each the girl replied that none of them was married to her yet and whatever she did—if she did anything—was not his concern.

  The consensus was that she had bathed Buchanan, and, busily soaping and scrubbing her own body that evening, Lilita told herself angrily, she rather wished that she had. Why not? It was quite clear to the girl, after an entire day spent examining her thoughts on the matter, that she was very seriously in love with Buchanan.

  She had suspected that her feelings were a great deal more than coquettish during that almost frightening moment when he had looked deep into her heart and discovered her secret. And what secret would a lowly servant girl from San Javier harbor? Simply that she recognized no man’s privilege to order her to do anything. For that heresy men would whip her with the lash, drag her naked through the streets, call down God’s vengeance and make her do penance for the rest of her life. The men of Rancho del Rey would. But Buchanan had accepted it without question. For that she loved him, and womanlike, would do anything he ordered her to.

  She had also been guided by the prediction. Two years before, when Lilita was sixteen, Juanita the gypsy woman had passed through and read her palm. The wise old gypsy, taking note of the lithe, developing young body, the fluid, amorous eyes, had been on safe ground when she predicted that the girl’s life among the stolid, hardworking people of Rancho del Rey would be a stormy one. Only a strong man, a big man with the same adventurous spirit, would be able to keep her content. The gypsy had set the date of his arrival two years ahead, knowing full well that things would have to reach a climax by that time.

  So to walk in there and find Buchanan, with his easy acceptance of her rebellious ideas, his tremendous physical attraction, his appreciation of San Javier—all that was too much for such a girl of passion to resist. The thing now was to get him in the same frame of mind, and to that end she opened the bottle of perfume the gypsy had given her and dressed with great care.

  And in another part of the house Maria del Cuervo dressed with Buchanan in mind. Her brief conversation with him this morning had thrown her badly off balance, made her question the very fundamentals of her moral convictions. Was modesty in a woman a virtue or an affectation? Should she feel mortally embarrassed in Buchanan’s presence, or treat the incident as carelessly as he did? He had made her feel like a foolish child, and what struck at her pride was that he obviously hadn’t intended to.

  Felice came in with the newly pressed gown that Maria had chosen. She had worn it once before, as a bridesmaid at her cousin Julia’s wedding one year ago, and though it was the most decorous costume in her wardrobe—high-necked and long-sleeved—the twelve months that the girl had spent maturing gave the dress some very prominent and eye-catching curves that the dressmaker had never intended.

  “I think maybe the doña should inspect you,” Felice said nervously.

  “Nonsense. I am practically a married woman.”

  “I wish you were officially one, señorita. In this gown you are likely to give drinking men ideas that are not so good for them.”

  “The more you say, Felicita, the more you encourage me. Perhaps I shall have all my clothes taken in here and there.”

  “Señorita—you are going to marry the young Señor Diaz?”

  “Of course.”

  “You love him very much?”

  “Of course.”

  “And this Buchanan? You feel nothing for him?”

  “Don’t be absurd!” Maria laughed. “What could I feel for anyone so gauche as that?”

  Despite her young mistress’s assurances, Felice found time soon after that to have a private audience with Doña Isabel. And Isabel, whose Castilian blood fairly oozed romantic intrigue, considered the Indian girl’s report and went straight to the room where Buchanan was staying.

  Buchanan had trouble enough. An hour before he had been visited by a gaunt, hollow-eyed old man carrying lathered soap, a rusted straight razor and bandages. He introduced himself as Silvio, said that Gomez had sent him and ordered Buchanan to lie down on the bed and not move. Especially not move.

  Thus the shaving operation had begun, the first for Buchanan since the big run-in with Campos—how long ago? Ten days? Two weeks? And though the skin of his face had healed over some and was not so blood-raw, Silvio’s dull, nicked blade not only opened the old wounds but dug fresh pieces out of him.

  “Por favor—do not move!”

  “Man, I got a pocketknife would shave me smoother than that thing.”

  “Please. No talking, no moving.”

  “You ought to open up a store next to the undertaker,” Buchanan growled at him, and the old man found that a funny remark. “I am the undertaker,” he said. “Por favor, lie still.”

  That ordeal ended, the old man proceeded to cut off handfuls of Buchanan’s hair, comb out the loose ends and cut again. All this, with his customer prone and without consultation. When Buchanan was permitted to stand, feeling strangely like a man emerging from his own coffin, he was handed a mirror.

  “Good Godamighty! What’ve you been doing to me, anyhow?”

  “Merely a shave and a haircut,” Silvio answered.

  “You got me all Spanished up, hombre. What am I doing with these sideburns and chin whiskers?”

  “The goatee,
señor, is most fashionable.”

  “Not in West Texas. Hand over those clippers.” Buchanan snipped away the rather distinguished-looking little beard, then cut the sideburns from his cheeks until the hair was level with the lobes of his ears. Silvio looked on in somber disapproval, picked up his tools and left.

  Gomez himself came in next, carrying an armload of clothing.

  “So that is what you look like, amigo mio.”

  “Take it or leave it, ramrod. What’s all that fancy stuff?”

  “What you will wear at the fiesta.”

  “Hell, I’ll put on my regular duds.”

  “Impossible. They were burned last night.”

  “Burned?”

  “By my orders. Caramba, even the dogs put their tails between their legs and slinked away when they scented you last night.”

  “Then they’re afraid of good honest sweat. I laid out forty gold dollars for that outfit in Sonora.”

  “Two years ago, perhaps. The boots I kept out and had polished. The cobbler says it is their baptism.”

  “Campos,” Buchanan said, “didn’t run any spit-and-polish outfit.”

  “You sound bitter, amigo, whenever you mention the famous liberator of Mexico.”

  “Bitter? Not me, old partner. I shook the bastard’s hand and came away with all five fingers intact. Me and Campos are like brothers.

  Gomez enjoyed this natural man and his laughter came full and unbridled. “Get yourself dressed, Buchanan. There is nothing so ridiculous as an angry man who is also naked.”

  Scowling, the big man put his legs through the one-piece, knee-length linen underwear, shrugged into the white, ruffled silk shirtwaist which Gomez tied behind him. The deep-napped, luxuriant felt trousers came next, trousers that hung loose at the calf but hugged his thighs and hips snugly.

  “Where’d these come from?” Buchanan asked.

  “Believe it or not, Don Pedro had them cut from cloth by the tailor this morning and made in one day. A miracle, if you knew José the tailor.”