Buchanan 21

by Jonas Ward

  Sid Hallett came out of his office to greet them, stood looking down at Buchanan incuriously, as if that were not another human being there but some captured animal. And Buchanan, for his own part, was just as expressionless.

  “So this is the notorious Luther Reeves,” the sheriff said.

  “Claims to be somebody else,” Bull Hynman said.

  “Does he?”

  “Speak your piece,” Hynman said to Buchanan, prodding the blood-smeared face with the toe of his boot.

  “My name is Buchanan,” he told them all, his gaze fixed on Hynman. “And I’m going to fix you.”

  Bull laughed, brought his boot back. Hallett stopped him with a gesture.

  “Not out here,” he said sharply. “Bring him into the jail.”

  Enos untied his ankles, Lafe and Hynman hauled him to his feet, shoved him on into the office and to the jail section. Ellen Booth looked up as they came in, grimaced in horror at the condition of their prisoner. Amazingly, he grinned at her.

  “I bruise easy,” he said and she even smiled herself, reminded of the other time he’d said that. But then Sid Hallett spoke.

  “Your husband’s accomplice,” he announced. “What do you think of him?”

  “Do you know Frank?” Ellen asked in a quiet voice and Buchanan shook his head. “Were you ever in Marysville?”

  “No.”

  She turned to Hallett. “I believe him,” she said.

  “Naturally,” Hallett said, still sublimely confident that he had made no mistake. “Lafe, take Mrs. Booth into the office while we talk to this desperado.” Jenkins unlocked the cell, held the door ajar.

  “You’re going to beat him again,” she accused.

  “No,” Hallett said. “Not if he tells the truth about himself and your husband.”

  “He has told the truth. He doesn’t know Frank …”

  Hallett motioned impatiently with his head and Lafe took Ellen into the office, closed the door behind him.

  “Now then,” Hallett said to Buchanan, casually, as if Enos hadn’t moved behind the bound man, pinioning his arms. As if Bull Hynman wasn’t smoothing a buckskin glove over his knuckles. “Now then,” Hallett said. “I say you are Luther Reeves.”

  “No,” Buchanan said and Hynman hit him in the kidney.

  “I say you came here with Frank Booth …”

  “No.” Hynman hit him in the same spot.

  “… to rob the bank,” Hallett went on. “To kill me. Reeves, where is Booth right now?”

  “Don’t know,” Buchanan said, but when he tried to ride with Hynman’s driving fist the man at his back kneed him hard.

  “Luther,” Hallett said, “this is painful to me. Especially on the Sabbath. Where is Frank Booth?”

  Buchanan found himself bleeding from within. His throat was filling with it and a thin stream trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  “Speak up, Brother,” Hallett said and Hynman punched him again, monotonously. Buchanan’s chin fell against his chest, his whole big body sagged. Enos had to let him fall.

  Hynman dropped to one knee beside him, began rifling the pockets of his trousers. He found two ten-dollar gold pieces, some silver, an uncashed draft on the bank in Sacramento and a folded envelope.

  “Let’s see that letter,” Hallett said and Hynman handed it to him, began pocketing the money for himself. The envelope had been originally addressed to ‘Tom Buchanan, Town of Alpine, West Texas,’ and someone there had forwarded it to ‘The Tucker Ranch, El Paso.’ But Buchanan had apparently moved on from that job and the third address was a rooming house in Yuma, a long five-hundred miles west. Frowning, Hallett took out the letter from the much-traveled envelope. He read:

  Dear Friend Tom:

  We are going to build a railroad up here called the Central Pacific and there is a job open for a boss trouble shooter. Believe me, you will be busy.

  The pay is $100 a month, and I can promise you a fine future in railroading providing you live through it.

  Come as soon as you can as there is a great deal of trouble to attend to. Enclosed find draft for $50.

  Your old pal,

  JACK MAGUIRE

  Hallett refolded the letter, put it back in the envelope. “Return his belongings to him,” he told Hynman in a stern voice.

  “Return ’em?”

  “You’ve made a mistake, Bull. This man isn’t Luther Reeves.”

  Hynman started to set the record straight on that, but the look in Hallett’s face warned him to let it ride.

  “Even if he ain’t Reeves,” he did say, “that don’t change what he did over on River Street. Not gonna let him get away with that, are you?”

  Sid Hallett, for once, didn’t know what he was going to do. Everyone in this part of the country knew of Jack Maguire and the new railroad, of the influence Maguire wielded in the capital city. Hallett had run things in Salvation without interference from Sacramento, but if Maguire started to check his friend’s back trail there could be trouble aplenty.

  On the other hand—and this was what bothered him—how could he blithely send the fellow on his way, pretend nothing had happened to him? Damn Hynman anyhow for creating this problem when he had the real Luther Reeves and Frank Booth to worry about.

  “Take that rope from his wrists,” he ordered irritably. “Then lay him down in the other cell. We’ll keep him here until I’ve figured out what to do about this blunder you led me into.”

  “Ah, he don’t count for nobody,” Hynman protested. “Let’s try him for somethin’ and hang the bastard.”

  “You’re a fool!” Hallett told him in a scathing voice. “I never realized until now how big a fool you really are.”

  “Now wait a minute, Sid—”

  “‘Sid’?” Hallett exploded. “To you I am ‘Sheriff.’ Sheriff Hallett. Pick that fellow up and put him on the cot, as I told you to.”

  Hynman and Enos obeyed, struggling with their outsize burden. Even as they did, and despite his annoyance, Hallett wondered if his deputy’s solution might not be the best. Try this Buchanan for some crime, something heinous, and hang him….

  Why not? An offense so dishonorable that the railroad would want to wash its hands of the man completely….

  “Where is the Mexican girl now?” he asked Hynman. “With Maude?”

  “Not yet,” Hynman said, still smarting from the brief tongue-lashing he’d gotten. “I think Birdy Warren’s hiding her out in his place.”

  “Go get her. Bring her back here.”

  “Here?”

  “I’m holding court,” Hallett said, blandly assuming the idea for his own. “The girl is the complaining witness.”

  “She don’t savvy no English.”

  “I know that. And on your way out tell Lafe to bring Mrs. Booth inside.” Hynman left the jail and a moment later Jenkins and Ellen Booth re-entered it. Her eyes went immediately to the cell next to her own, lingered pityingly on the body sprawled lifeless-looking along the narrow cot.

  “Did you get your truth?” she asked Hallett contemptuously.

  “You seem quick to defend the man,” Hallett replied. “Is it that you find yourself attracted to every scoundrel who comes along?”

  “You accuse him,” Ellen said. “That doesn’t make it so.”

  “He confessed.”

  She eyed the gaunt man warily. “Confessed to what?”

  “Abduction and lewd assault,” Hallett said without a change in expression. “He took a Mexican girl from lawful custody …”

  “You mean Juanita?” Ellen interrupted.

  “What do you know of her?”

  “I know that he got her out of that—that house,” Ellen told him. “And he had to fight that ugly deputy of yours to do it.”

  “So that’s the River Street version, is it? Well, this time justice will be done. He has confessed before witnesses.”

  “The same deputy? Is he one of the witnesses?”

  “Put her in the cell,” Hallett told Jenkin
s. “Then come to the office.” He walked out and was seated behind the desk, writing names on a sheet of paper, when Jenkins joined him. “Do you know these six men, Lafe?” he asked, handing him the list. Jenkins studied it, nodded his head.

  “The oldest gaffers in town,” he said.

  “I’d call them our senior citizens,” Hallett said. “Venerable and respected.”

  Lafe shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Call ’em anything.”

  “Tell me—do any of those six speak or understand Spanish?”

  Lafe looked it over again. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. A couple of ’em, Davis and Clark, don’t understand much of anything anymore.”

  “Responsible men, though. God-fearing. I want you to round them up, bring them to the church. Those who, ah, can’t ride I want you to transport in the buggy.”

  “Sure,” Lafe said. “You having a special service tonight?”

  “A trial,” Hallett explained. “That’s the jury.”

  Jenkins smiled knowingly and went to get the six old men who didn’t speak Spanish.

  Eight

  Out of the clear blue sky of a summer Sunday a man named Buchanan had walked into the little world of little Birdy Warren—and Birdy had thought him invincible. But now, if he closed his eyes, Birdy saw his nonpareil being trussed hand and foot, dragged through the dust like a common thief. And without even giving them a fight for it. That was what dismayed Birdy, the recreation in his mind of that shameful moment when Buchanan’s reckless courage had deserted him and he’d surrendered.

  “Don’t take it to heart so, boss,” his bartender Sam told him. “That feller was just an odds-player is all.”

  “What?”

  “What I mean is, he braced Bull Hynman and didn’t get kilt. Then he braces Lafe and Enos and still don’t get kilt. This time he must’ve figured it was their turn to win a pot so he throws in his hand …”

  “Pull that shirt down from over the mirror,” Birdy said. “Pull it down and burn it.”

  “Sure, boss,” Sam said, taking Buchanan’s blood-stained shirt from its place of honor and tossing it negligently into the trash barrel with the cigar butts and empty whisky bottles. “You ain’t forgot that Hynman’s comin’ back to pay a visit?”

  “I ain’t forgot.”

  “What you plannin’ to do?”

  “Spit in his eye, that’s what,” Birdy said and filled his glass for the third time in the past thirty minutes.

  “I’d give that idea some careful thought,” the chubby bartender advised. “I wouldn’t buy myself no grief from that hombre.”

  “A goddam bully-boy. He ain’t so much.”

  “Enough to drag that feller out by his heels,” Sam reminded him. “You ought to play the percentages, too.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Hell, boss, she’s only a Mex …”

  “And what’re you? What am I? Because she don’t talk our lingo, you think she don’t feel? You got a sweet little daughter: you want her thrown into Maude’s?”

  “Simmer down, boss …”

  “Simmer down, hell! Besides that, I made a promise to look out for her.”

  “Look out for yourself, I always say,” Sam said and then his voice trailed away as the doors parted and a fiercely glowering Bull Hynman entered the place. Birdy, cued by his bartender’s frightened face, took the dutch courage in his glass and swung around. Hynman bore down on him as relentlessly as a storm cloud.

  “I come for the woman,” he said, “and I got no time for palaver. Where is she?”

  “Gone,” Birdy answered unevenly, fighting to keep his voice unafraid. “Gone to Salinas like I said.”

  “Just one more time, little man. Where is she?”

  “Gone to—” Hynman’s fingers went around his slender neck, choking all sound.

  “This is the day,” Hynman said, “when we teach you boys about the law in Salvation.” His grip tightened and Birdy’s eyes looked sick. “Where is she?” Hynman asked.

  “Salinas,” Birdy said in a strangling voice. Hynman pulled back his other fist to smash the helpless face below him.

  “She’s in the cellar!” Sam shouted. “Down here!” He pointed frantically at the trap door beneath the bar, reached down to pull it open. Hynman thrust Birdy Warren away from him, walked around behind the bar. Crouched in the storage cellar, her face a study in terror, was Juanita. She had recognized Hynman’s deep voice, and at sight of him she screamed.

  It sounded pitiful to everyone but Bull Hynman, who laughed.

  “Ain’t forgot me, huh?” he asked her, then motioned with his hand. “Come on up, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s have a look at ya.”

  She knew what he meant but she cowered there, petrified. Hynman went down the short flight of steps, pulled her out by the arm. Birdy was with them then, trying to intervene, and Hynman knocked him down with a backhanded sweep. There was no other opposition in the saloon and the deputy left the place.

  Lafe Jenkins, meantime, was out beating the bushes for Hallett’s ‘blue ribbon’ jury. Everywhere he went he was greeted with trepidation and misunderstanding. Seventy-year-old Cy Taylor thought the sheriff’s man was here to foreclose, it having slipped his tired mind that he had clear title to the homestead for the past five years. Ab Davis and Josh Clark, both crowding eighty, let themselves be put into the buckboard under the vague impression that they were under arrest. The three other jurors, none of whom could see too well or hear too well, made it to the church under their own power.

  Hallett greeted them there, grave of mien, solemn of voice, and escorted each to a seat on the front bench. Then, using the Holy Bible as a prop in the farce he was about to perpetrate, he had them all swear an oath ‘to see that justice was done, without fear or favor, so help him God.’

  “What all’s happened, Reverend?” old Andy Southworth asked in a wavering voice, using Hallett’s alternate title because of the surroundings.

  “There’s been a shocking crime committed in our midst today, Brother,” Hallett answered him. “A crime against a defenseless young woman …”

  “You caught the critter?”

  “We have him in custody.”

  “Then let’s stretch his neck and go home.”

  “No, Brother,” Hallett said. “Not until this sworn jury has heard the evidence and judged his guilt. A fair trial for all in Salvation.”

  “What’d he say?” Ab Davis asked his neighbor.

  “There’s gonna be a trial.”

  “What?”

  “A trial.”

  Hallett moved to where Davis sat, leaned over the railing.

  “Brother Davis,” he asked in a strong voice, “do you speak Mexican?”

  The old man looked at him blankly for a moment, then shook his head. Hallett glanced up and down the panel.

  “Anybody speak or understand Mexican?” he asked. None of them did and Hallett turned to the side, where Hynman stood with Juanita. “Bring the accusing witness in,” he called and Hynman pushed the bewildered, doe-eyed girl before him, halted her before a straight-backed chair that had been placed a long twenty feet from the jurors.

  “Brothers,” Hallett intoned, “this is the poor unfortunate female who was dishonored over on River Street.”

  “She looks scared to death,” Juror South worth observed.

  “Ay,” Hallett said smoothly, “her trust in all men has been shaken. Would you believe it—she’s even afraid of me?”

  “Don’t you worry none, missy,” Southworth tried to tell her. “You got nothin’ to fear now …”

  “She speaks no English, Brother,” Hallett said. “I’ll translate what you told her.” He turned to Juanita, who took an involuntary step backward. “These men are judges,” he said in her own language. “They are going to help you.”

  Her face showed that she plainly didn’t believe him.

  “You want to go home, don’t you?” Hallett said then.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said
very quietly.

  “Siéntese,” Hallett told her. “Over there. And when I ask a question you will answer me. ¿Comprende usted?”

  “Sí,” Juanita said, not understanding what was going on at all in this living nightmare that had begun at noon. Now the evil man who was the cause of everything bad had turned to the old ones he called the judges and was speaking to them in the Yanqui tongue.

  “She understands now that you are here to see that justice is done,” Hallett was saying to them, taking note that Josh Clark was dozing. “I’ll have her tell what happened in her own words.”

  “But we can’t understand a word,” Southworth said.

  “I’ll explain, Brother, as we go along,” Hallett assured him, swinging around to Juanita. “Dígalos que pasa,” he said. “From the beginning.”

  “¿Todo?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  Juanita, looking surprised, told them everything. She began by pointing at Hallett and describing him as the worst man in the world. Un diablo.

  “She says that I have been a great help to her,” Hallett translated.

  Juanita told them about the character of Bull Hynman then, about him taking her to the bordello for a sinful purpose.

  “She’s grateful to Deputy Hynman, too,” Hallett explained to the jury. Now Ab Davis had fallen asleep.

  Juanita came to Buchanan, raised her arm toward the high ceiling. Tall as a cypress, he was, and strong as oak. But a man of honor, and kind. He saved her from Hynman.

  “She was attacked by a hulking brute,” Hallett translated. “His name is Buchanan. Deputy Hynman captured the scoundrel …”

  “Is that what she just said?” Andy Southward asked doubtfully.

  “That is what she just said,” Hallett told him. “What did you think she said, Brother?”