Buchanan 21

by Jonas Ward

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  The armed deputy prodded Buchanan out of the cell. ‘We’re taking care of scudders like you who try to buck the law. We’re putting you on trial. A judge, a jury, the whole shebang.’

  And the whole shebang was a frame-up. The self-appointed judge was a madman, part-time sadistic sheriff and part-time lunatic preacher. And the jury he’d appointed was made up of doddering old men either too drunk or too deaf to hear the ‘evidence.’

  'You know what the jury’s going to do to you?’ the deputy sneered at Buchanan. ‘That jury is going to hang you. Hang you by the neck.’

  BUCHANAN 21: BUCHANAN GETS MAD

  By Jonas Ward

  First published by Fawcett Books in 1958

  Copyright © 1958, 2020 by Eileen Ard

  First Digital Edition: September 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  One

  A pebble. A pebble no bigger than a damn pea.

  Buchanan suspected that something might be bothering the horse from the moment he got a leg up early that morning. She was half-wild to begin with, Mexican-bred and willful, and his own mind was so determined to make it to Sacramento by nightfall that he kept pushing the little mustang, asking her for more. The job was waiting for him—troubleshooting for the new railroad—but Maguire’s letter had reached him so late that now time was a big factor.

  So all morning he urged her on. But where she had been so swift and tireless all the long way from the border, now she fought him, kept tossing her head and at last broke stride completely.

  A pebble no bigger than a pea, but the filly had pounded it so deep into the hoof of her right foreleg that it made the man sick to think of the agony he’d put her through. Nor was she having any part of his probing for it with a dull-pointed jackknife. It was either shoot her now or get her to a vet. Since he would have shot himself first there wasn’t any alternative but to walk her back to the fork in the trail, to the curious signpost he had glanced at in passing. They reached the spot and he read it again:

  BROTHER, THIS IS SALVATION

  CALIFORNIA STATE

  WE ARE GOD-FEARING AND LAW-ABIDING

  IF YOU ARE NOT, KEEP OUT OF THIS TOWN

  Sidney Hallett, High Sheriff

  It had a sour look, that sign, and Buchanan regarded it warily. But where else was there in this vast and lonesome tract if you needed help? There was no place. He led the limping horse up the new trail until it became a street—Genesis Street—and then he noticed something strange about that. For it was coming on noon, the middle of the day, and yet there was not another human being in sight. Nothing stirred, not a speck of dust was raised, and so complete was the stillness that it gave the man an eerie feeling.

  Where the hell is everybody? he wondered. Then suddenly that stillness was torn asunder. It was a voice, but what a voice, and it thundered with an awful majesty from the stark-white building that was the church.

  It’s Sunday, Buchanan realized, grinning as if a joke had been played on him. Three weeks on the open road and a man lost track of each day’s identity. It got so he didn’t give a damn so long as he had another fifty miles behind him when he hit the blankets at night.

  Now he had come abreast of the church. So arresting was the voice coming from within that he stopped in the center of the empty street and listened.

  “… AND THE LORD SAID UNTO MOSES—THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY! ANOTHER MAN SHALL NOT KNOW THY NAKEDNESS! ANOTHER MAN SHALL NOT HAVE CARNAL KNOWLEDGE OF THY FLESH …!”

  The devil’s taking his lumps in there, Buchanan thought idly. However, having his own problems to attend to he moved on, unaware of the stupefying effect the preacher’s tirade was having on the audience jam-packed inside that airless, oven-like church. During the previous forty minutes the tall, gray-faced, black-suited man in the pulpit had spoken to them in generalities, of sin as an abstraction that didn’t necessarily apply to those present. There was mention of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he likened to San Francisco and Sacramento. He preached to them in his sonorous tones of wickedness, loose women and Lot’s daughters. The general theme of the sermon, if anyone had been able to track it down in all this heat, was the danger to a community—to the town of Salvation—of an immodest woman, an “indecent” woman. Just one, he said. All it took was a single free-and-easy female to send the whole shebang into eternal hellfire.

  The usual thing. Generalities. What the congregation more or less expected from stern and unyielding Sidney Hallett. Then, without any warning, he spoke of something they did know about. Birdy’s Place—the saloon and gambling house over on River Street. Birdy Warren was the devil’s agent, Hallett said. He led good men astray with whisky, took their hard-earned money away with poker tables and roulette wheels. And now this Satan’s disciple had added a new temptation. He’d put a young woman to work in his den of iniquity, dressed her in a shameless costume. By this time every head was craning for a look at Ellen Booth, a blonde-haired girl who had been sitting demurely in a side pew near the center. But now, with Hallett’s long, accusing arm pointing directly at her, Ellen Booth looked as though someone had driven a fist into her stomach. Her pretty face turned pale, then color rushed into it as mortification overcame her. Still the man in black kept pointing at her and quoting from the Book of Numbers that he knew by heart.

  “SINNER, COME FORWARD!” Hallett commanded.

  But the girl didn’t move—or couldn’t move—and she sat there staring up at him in shocked disbelief.

  “COME FORWARD!”

  Still she didn’t budge. Then two husky men came down the aisles, converged on her from either side. They each took an arm, pulled her erect and hustled her to the pulpit. Hallett stepped down, hovered over her menacingly.

  “Kneel before me, wanton,” he said and the two men forced her to her knees. Hallett undid the ribbon of her bonnet, took it from her head. Then, using both hands, he unbound the girl’s long hair, let it fall in waves that reached nearly to her slim waist.

  “Let that be the mark of your sin,” he told her sternly. “Let all decent men and women know you for what you are.” He raised her up, ungently. “Now go from our sight. You are hereby banished from Salvation!” With that he turned the girl around, started her on the longest walk of her life—the fifty feet to the doors at the rear of the church.

  The congregation watched her, some taking the minister’s accusation at face value, some wondering if Hallett had any real knowledge of misconduct. The fact was, she did work at Birdy’s place—and she did have a husband, Frank, who was away in prison these past three years. Three years is a long, long time….

  Buchanan, while this was going on, had reached the end of Genesis Street, where it spilled into Sinai. He now stood looking up and down the main business section of Salvation. Directly opposite was the bank, a squat, adobe building, and stretching out on either side were all the conventional stores that served the community—all of them shuttered now because it was Sunday. But look as he might, Buchanan discovered no veterinary’s shingle. Nor a saloon.

  What kind of town had he wandered into? he asked himself a little worriedly. Then a vo
ice called to him and he swung to see an old-timer seated in a rocking chair on the porch of a place called Renton’s Hotel.

  “Who you lookin’ for, big feller?” the codger asked.

  “The vet, first,” Buchanan told him. “Then maybe a dust cutter.”

  “Find ’em both at Birdy’s,” the man said, sending a stream of tobacco juice expertly over the porch railing. “But you’re too late in the day for Doc Allen,” he added. “Got to catch him early, before Birdy opens up.”

  “Where’s Birdy, then?”

  “In Damnation,” was the unexpected answer, and at Buchanan’s quizzical expression the old man cackled. “That’s just a name,” he explained. “Damnation is what you might call the sportin’ section of town, where the trail crews take their fun.” He eyed Buchanan appraisingly. “You on the dodge, son,” he asked, “or just driftin’?”

  “Neither, pop,” Buchanan said with patience. “Where’s this Damnation located?”

  “Go on out Sinai about a quarter mile, then take a right on River Street. You’ll know where you are then—” He broke off speaking to stare at the figure of Ellen Booth hurrying toward them from the church. “Now what’s that damn scudder done?” the old man demanded, so vehemently that Buchanan glanced to where the old-timer was looking. The girl made a strange sight with her blonde hair all undone, forlorn-looking, and he could read the agitation in her face. When she was close enough the man on the porch spoke again. “What’s wrong, Ellen? What’s happened to you?” But the girl only shook her head, went past Buchanan without a glance and started up the steps of the rooming house. “I want to help you, Ellie,” the old man insisted. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

  She stopped on the porch, turned to face him.

  “He called me an—adulteress,” she said tonelessly. “I have to leave Salvation.”

  “Hallett?” the old man cried. “Hallett called you that?”

  The girl nodded, biting her lip, and her eyes fell on Buchanan. Formidable, was her first reaction. Violent, crude. And big. Above all he was big. What she was really looking at was a puzzled man of great good-nature, a stranger trying to preserve his neutrality. But she mistook the expression on his battle-scarred face for tough indifference and that crumbled her last defense against the tears welling behind her eyes. She swung away swiftly, averting her face, and dashed inside the building.

  “Now what’d you do that for?” the old fellow scolded and Buchanan frowned at him. Plainly, he wanted to get involved no further in the queer goings-on in the town of Salvation.

  “So long,” he told the man, touching the brim of his battered hat. “Thanks for the information.”

  The old man watched them from the porch—the limping, restless-looking bronc, the loose-gaited, slope-shouldered giant. A couple of wild ones, he decided, wishing that he were walking along with them.

  Mild as milk, both of us, Buchanan would have assured him as they covered the prescribed quarter-mile along Sinai Street. Salvation looked not-so-sure of itself down this way. It began to remind him of border towns, and when he had turned into River Street he saw that he had come into a different place altogether. This was a stop along the trail, sure enough, with a gaudy-fronted saloon dominating the surroundings. There was also a down-hearted eating place, a livery, a gunsmith’s, a barber’s—and if the two-story building trying to hide itself behind tightly closed shutters at the end of the street wasn’t a crib house then Tom Buchanan was seeing his first one. Why did they always look so sad? he wondered again. Like the last place in the world a man could expect a good time?

  But his business was at Birdy’s Place, if the old man’s information was right. With a comforting pat on the filly’s lean rump he tied her at the rail and went inside. There wasn’t much character to Birdy’s, merely one sixty-foot room partitioned haphazardly into two. Gambling was on the left. A roulette wheel, keno, birdcage and poker tables. On the right, drinking; at a scarred mahogany bar, with brass rail and ample spittoons, plus a smattering of tables for those who wanted privacy.

  Buchanan let the doors swing shut against his back, stood there for a long moment inhaling the fragrance of beer, whisky and tobacco while a home-again grin spread across his face. A half-dozen drinkers were already there, all watching him, and behind the bar a moon-faced, mustachioed bartender whose hand dropped instinctively to the sawed-off shotgun beneath the shelf. Like most, the man felt intimidated by the size of him, the reckless look, the certain knowledge that he didn’t come by that scar at his cheekbone from shaving. Now the newcomer was stepping away from the doors, moving toward him, and the bartender noted that the big Colt rode on his hip as if it were part of him.

  “What’ll it be, friend?” he asked nervously.

  “I’m looking for Doc Allen.”

  “Why?” he said, speaking so sharply that Buchanan leaned toward him in puzzled surprise, took in his features.

  “Because my horse is hurting, that’s why,” he told the man.

  “You don’t mean him no harm?”

  “Hell, no. What’s everybody so proddy about?” He straightened up, looked over the others at the bar. “I came into this town for one thing,” he said. “A vet. Is he here or isn’t he?”

  “Doc’s in the back room,” the bartender told him then. “With Birdy.”

  Buchanan strode off to the closed door of the private room, knocked on it.

  “What do you want?” asked a man’s high-pitched voice.

  “Got a patient for the vet,” Buchanan said and after a moment the door was opened to him by a small man wearing a striped shirt and string tie. His eyes widened at the size of what was filling the doorway and he might have closed it but for Buchanan’s restraining arm.

  “Don’t bring me trouble,” the small man said.

  Buchanan sighed wearily. “Are you the doc?”

  “I’m Birdy Warren. That’s Doc Allen.” He jerked his thumb to a bearded man slumped on a chair, eyes half-closed. On the table were two empty glasses and a half-gone quart of whisky. “Better come see him tomorrow,” Birdy Warren advised.

  “Got to see him right now,” Buchanan said, moving across the threshold and coming to stand above the drunken veterinary. He put his hand on the shoulder of the man’s ragged coat and shook him gently. “I need help, Doc,” he told him. “How about it?” Allen grunted, blinked his eyes and reached for the bottle. Buchanan eased it beyond his fingers. “What do you say, Doc?” he asked him again.

  “Next week,” Allen murmured groggily. “Goin’ back to work next week for sure.”

  “This is a lot of horse,” Buchanan insisted. “She needs tending.”

  “He can’t help you,” Birdy Warren put in then, his voice sympathetic. “Not today.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He lives here,” the saloonkeeper said, laughing without humor. “Sleeps it off wherever he falls down.”

  “You got a tub?”

  “No.”

  “Where’ll I find one?”

  “Down to Maude’s, most likely. Too early to get into her place, though.”

  Buchanan bent down, got his shoulder against the vet’s midsection and lifted him as another man might handle a child. “I’ll have him at the livery in an hour,” he said to Birdy. “Be much obliged if somebody would walk my horse down there to meet us.”

  “Do it myself,” Birdy offered, then stood aside as Buchanan walked out of the room with his slack burden.

  Two

  When he had finished his rather thoroughgoing job on Ellen Booth, Reverend Hallett gave the deacons the signal to take up the collection—a sizable one—and with that holy services ended. The congregation trooped out, perspiring, exhausted physically and emotionally, and there was Hallett to greet them at the top of the steps. Everyone exchanged some kind of salutation with the man, and even if it was no more than a nod there was deference in it. As many as possible stopped for a personal word, to shake his hand and mouth congratulations for his fine sermon this mo
rning.

  Hallett seemed to take their homage as no more than his due as their self-appointed guardian of righteousness. His message to all was that they must remain ever vigilant, that evil must not be given a foothold in Salvation.

  Then the last parishioner had gone and the minister made his way back inside the church, to the long table where the deacons were counting out the money. Watching over them was a hard-faced, misshapen hulk of a man whose mouth seemed to be set in a permanent leer. His head and body were formed in gigantic proportions, but the powerful torso rested on legs that were foreshortened, bowed from the uneven weight they supported. He was known to everyone as Bull Hynman, Hallett’s right hand.

  “What did we take in?” Hallett asked him now in an undertone. “Four hundred?”

  Hynman smiled, grotesquely. “That much easy, Sid. Maybe five.”

  Hallett nodded. “I’ll wait for you at the office,” he said, taking a flat-crowned black hat from a hook on the wall, setting it squarely on his head and sauntering out into the dazzling sunlight. He walked down the very center of Genesis Street, his figure ramrod straight, and with a certain swinging self-confidence—as if every yard that passed beneath his gleaming black boots belonged to him personally.

  At the intersection with Sinai he stopped, almost on the spot where Buchanan had halted fifteen minutes before, and there he stood with an expression of satisfaction etched on his hawk like, coldly handsome face. Then the expression abruptly changed, became disapproving as his glance locked with Pete Nabor’s, the arthritic old man in the rocker who had given Buchanan directions. Nabor seemed to bear up under the look directed at him. In fact, there was disapproval of Sidney Hallett in Pete Nabor’s lively eyes.

  But no word passed between them and now the black-suited man moved on down Sinai until he came to the office he had mentioned to Bull Hynman. SHERIFF it read in gold leaf on the heavily curtained window. Hallett let himself in with a key It was a sizable room, rectangular in shape, and lying beyond it was the two-cell jail. There was a desk at one end, and a high-backed chair, and atop the desk was a bright, impressive, solid silver star. Beside the star lay a black leather gunbelt with a new pearl-handled Remington .44 jutting from the holster. Hallett picked up the badge, rubbed it affectionately on the lapel of his coat and then pinned it over his heart. He strapped on the gunbelt and that completed the transformation from churchman to lawman.