Buchanan 21

by Jonas Ward

  “Well,” the old man said, then shook his head. “Nothin’,” he finished lamely.

  “Dígalos,” Hallett said to the Mexican girl. “Tell them the rest.”

  “But that is the worst of it,” Juanita protested reasonably, “and they sit there and do nothing. Two of them even sleep …”

  “Then you have nothing more to say?”

  “I think this is some kind of a trick. And what have you done with Señor Buchanan?”

  “Now what’s she sayin’, Reverend?” Southworth inquired.

  “The young woman is concerned that there won’t be justice done on her behalf. She asks for the supreme penalty.”

  “Has she identified the dog?” Southworth asked and Hallett’s face became thoughtful. He had misjudged this particular senior citizen and now there was an element of risk in what should have been a cut-and-dried situation.

  “Of course she’s identified him,” he said.

  “Well, I’m no lawyer or nothin’ like that,” Southworth countered, “but I think she oughtta point him out right here in front of the jury.”

  Hallett gazed at him coldly, then turned to Bull Hynman.

  “Get the prisoner,” he said. “Lafe,” he added, “you better go along.”

  For the first quarter-hour after she had been put back in the cell, Ellen Booth could not be really sure if the man lying on the other cot was still alive. Then he groaned, deep inside his chest, and after another five minutes she saw his hand move, the long fingers closing slowly into a fist, then opening again. His enormous shoulders stirred beneath the tight shirt after that, and he raised his great shaggy head and rolled it round and round, as if testing that it was still joined to his neck.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Ellen asked gently, then was sorry she’d spoken, for now he had to change the position of his body to look at her. The effort seemed tremendous.

  “You could shoot me,” Buchanan said. “I’d thank you for that.”

  “How can men be so brutal?” she wondered aloud. “So senselessly cruel.”

  Buchanan said nothing, kept experimenting with joints and muscles.

  “Sidney Hallett is insane,” Ellen said. “He belongs in Bedlam.”

  That barber knew his business, Buchanan decided, feeling the bandage still intact after all the dragging around and manhandling. And those deputies knew theirs. Man, oh, man, what a bellyache …

  “Why did they pick on you so?” Ellen asked him.

  “Their feelings were hurt,” he said, finding that even to talk was uncomfortable.

  “Because you helped that poor girl?”

  “Or something,” Buchanan said, wanting to be polite to a fellow prisoner but wishing she would let the conversation go until another time.

  “I’ll leave you be,” Ellen said understandingly.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Talk if you want to.”

  But she fell silent, and the seconds seemed to drag on uncomfortably.

  “Talk some more,” Buchanan said at last. “You’ve got a nice voice.”

  Ellen gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Now I don’t know what to talk about,” she told him.

  “Yourself,” he suggested.

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Sure there is.”

  “It’s mostly unhappy,” she said. “You’ve got pain enough.”

  Buchanan had been working slowly to get all the way over on his back. Now he made it, and the release of pressure around his ribs made him sigh almost contentedly.

  “How many laws did you break?” he asked the girl next door.

  “None that I know about. I’m here as a kind of hostage for my husband.”

  Buchanan turned his head to look at her.

  “It’s true,” she told him. “That’s the reason I’m here.”

  Buchanan considered it, filed it in his mind with all the goings-on. “I been one place and another,” he said musingly. “Good places and bad. But I got to hand it to ’em in this town for pushiness.”

  “And nothing can be done about it.”

  He had no comment about that, nothing he wanted to put into words. He looked away from her, stared reflectively at the ceiling overhead.

  “If only I could warn Frank, somehow,” Ellen said.

  “Frank?”

  “My husband.”

  “Oh,” Buchanan said. “So that’s who Frank is.” He smiled wryly. “Feel like I know him well,” he said. “Him and his pal Luther.”

  “Don’t say that, please,” Ellen said. “Frank wouldn’t be friends with a man like that.”

  “Pretty bad actor, is he?”

  “From his prison record,” she said, “he must be terrible.”

  “Sure got the High Sheriff nerved-up something fierce,” Buchanan said, idly massaging his tender stomach muscles. “Is your husband due to arrive real soon?”

  “No,” Ellen said with some warmth. “That’s another of Hallett’s weird guesses. Frank wrote and told me to meet him in San Francisco. I guess he wants to start all over again in a new place.”

  “He get in trouble here?”

  She nodded. “At the bank,” she said sadly.

  “Held it up, did he?”

  “No,” she said. “He—misused some funds.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it, Buchanan saw, and the subject was none of his business. But he still couldn’t keep his mind from wondering if the sheriff might not be right in expecting company.

  “Are you married?” Ellen asked him, so unexpectedly that a laugh burst from his throat. “Is it so funny for a man to have a wife?” she asked then.

  “It wouldn’t be funny for this man’s wife, I tell you,” he assured her. “It’d be real sad.”

  “Oh, maybe not,” she said. “If you took some care of yourself you’d be presentable.”

  Buchanan’s grin was mischievous. “I got to watch that pretty careful,” he said.

  “Watch what—being presentable?”

  “Tried it down in ‘Paso, just a couple of months ago. Got ahead a few dollars and bought myself the whole outfit. Silk shirt, string tie, frock coat, striped pants—” He broke off into an expansive sigh at the memory.

  “You must have looked real nice,” Ellen told him seriously.

  “Nearly got myself killed, that’s how nice.”

  “Killed?”

  “Just did beat ’em out of town.”

  “Who?”

  “The Vigilantes. Husbands, every last one of ’em.” He shook his head. “I learned my lesson about being presentable,” he said.

  “You made the whole thing up,” Ellen told him, smiling herself.

  “Half, anyhow.”

  “Which half?” she said, and now there was mischief in her.

  “Well, I did own the silk shirt,” he admitted.

  “What happened to it?”

  “You ever hear of a thing called ‘baccarat’?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” Buchanan said. “But I moved over from ‘Paso to Yuma and there was a little feller there from New Orleans. French feller name of Andre that liked to have drunk me under the table.” He stopped, looked at her. “You bored?” he asked.

  She returned the glance, shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m not bored, but I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

  “Oh, this happened,” he said regretfully. “What I did was, I packed my dude outfit real careful and drug it clear to Yuma. Figured the silk shirt and all might come in useful when I got to San Francisco …”

  “You’re going there, too?”

  “Someday,” Buchanan said. “I keep starting out for ‘Frisco, but something keeps happening.”

  “What happened in Yuma?” Ellen asked.

  “Baccarat,” he answered simply. “That damn—beg your pardon …”

  “It’s all right.”

  “A man gets on the trail by himself,” Buchanan apologized, “and his manners get shot to hell—
” He caught himself up abruptly and in the sudden silence they both laughed spontaneously.

  The door to the jail burst open and the guard Enos stood there with an astonished expression.

  “What’s goin’ on in here?” he demanded suspiciously. “What you two up to?”

  His entrance killed the lightheartedness in the room as surely as a wet blanket over a campfire. Buchanan raised his head from the cot, stared at the face of the man in the doorway as if he wanted to be sure not to ever forget a single feature.

  Enos looked uncertain, brushed the butt of his gun with his hand, and then seemed to realize that he was in no danger at all. With that he hunched his shoulders, strode forward truculently and stopped at the barred cell.

  “You got something to say, say it,” he said.

  Buchanan smiled at him, cheerlessly. Enos’ own face hardened.

  “Ain’t had enough yet, have you?” he asked.

  Buchanan’s smile became wintrier still.

  “Well, you listen then,” Enos said, relishing what he had to tell him. “You listen to this. The sheriff’s fixin’ your wagon good. Oh, Jesus, are you gettin’ it!”

  The goading had no effect on the intended victim at all. The one it did get to was Ellen Booth.

  “What do you mean, he’s ‘getting it’?” she demanded stridently. “All he ever did to you was knock you down—and you deserved that, if you ask me …”

  “Nobody is, sister. Nobody’s askin’ you about anything.”

  “Bullies,” she told him. “Just a gang of bullies.”

  “We’re keepin’ the law,” Enos said. He swung his head to Buchanan again. “We’re takin’ care of the scudders who try to buck the law.”

  “How?” the girl said angrily. “What are you going to do to him?”

  Enos leered down into Buchanan’s face, made a giggling sound. “You’re on trial,” he said, trying to contain his mirth. “A judge, a jury, the whole shebang. And you know what that jury’s goin’ to do to you?” He waited, but no one else spoke. “That jury,” Enos said, “is goin’ to hang you. Hang you by the neck.” He paused again, and then his eyes flickered impatiently at the lack of response from Buchanan. He turned away, walked back to the doorway and turned again.

  “So keep right on smilin’!” the deputy fairly shouted across the space. “I wanna see that look on your face when that rope hits your goddamn neck!” He went out, slamming the door behind him.

  And leaving a quiet that lasted some five seconds.

  “Well, anyhow,” Buchanan said conversationally, “this little French feller cleaned me out. My money, my tack, that fancy shirt …”

  “Didn’t you hear what he said?” Ellen asked brokenly. “Hallett is going to hang you!”

  Buchanan shrugged.

  “But they can’t! You haven’t done a thing yet that was wrong.”

  “Haven’t hung me yet, either,” Buchanan pointed out.

  The blonde girl had no ready answer to that, and as she looked at him her thoughts became very confused. A telltale flush spread into her cheeks. It was very unseemly, she told herself, to show such concern. As a married woman she had a code of behavior to follow, a strict one, and regardless of what she felt about any injustices done it hardly became her to associate on familiar terms with a man who was, after all, a total stranger. In this new frame of mind she began to magnify the words they had spoken, found something to be almost ashamed about in the easy laughter that had passed between them, the defense she had put up for him. And she was worried that he might have gotten a mistaken idea about her sense of what was proper.

  “You’d have liked that Frenchman,” Buchanan happened to say then, his own mind still full of his misadventures in the town of Yuma. “Started dealing that baccarat and left me about as naked as the day I was born—” He broke off at the look in her face. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we should talk like this,” Ellen said stiffly.

  “Like what?” he asked in surprise.

  “Oh, so free and easy like,” she told him. “Your stories might not be fit for a married lady’s hearing.”

  Buchanan was puzzled to hear that for he had been careful to avoid mention of the girls he and Andre had met during that memorable two weeks of their friendship. And he had only spoken in the first place to help take her mind off her own troubles.

  Probably just as well, though, he thought, not to get too friendly under the circumstances. They lived in two different worlds, had two different problems, and it might be high time to start thinking seriously about getting himself out of this rat-trap jail.

  So he thought about it, not too successfully, and conversation lapsed between them. Then Hynman and Lafe Jenkins arrived.

  “On your feet, bum,” Buchanan was told, and after some deliberation he decided to get up from the cot, if for no other reason than to test his health. He stood there unsteadily, arms limp at his sides. Hynman seemed to be gauging him before he finally fished the key from his pocket and opened the cell door.

  “Come on outta there,” Hynman said and the tall man stepped forward. Not yet, he had decided. You’re not loose enough to make your play just yet.

  “Better tie his wrists, Bull,” Lafe advised.

  “What the hell for?” Hynman replied jeeringly.

  “So’s he don’t try nothing,” Lafe said.

  “Well I hope, by Jesus, he does!”

  “That ain’t what Sid sent us for,” Lafe pointed out then and that gave Hynman a moment’s pause. From a nail on the wall he took a length of rope and fastened Buchanan’s hands behind his back. Lafe held the connecting door open and Buchanan started for it.

  “Mister,” Ellen Booth called and he looked back over his shoulder at her. “I—I want to wish you luck,” she said.

  “And the same to you.”

  “Now ain’t that touchin’,” Hynman said and shoved Buchanan through the doorway, with such vehemence that Buchanan wondered about it. Damned if this ape didn’t act like he had some interest in the girl. If he did she would probably need something more than luck.

  He was taken out into the street, where it was twilight now, and loaded onto the rear of the buckboard with Jenkins for a guard. The wagon rolled along Sinai, took the turn up Genesis and pulled in before the church.

  He was led inside the darkening building. The first person he saw was Juanita, with the menacing form of Hallett close beside her.

  Ah, hell, Buchanan thought dismally.

  Juanita gave a cry of recognition, would have come toward him but for Hallett’s restraining hold on her arm.

  “This is what I wanted to avoid,” he told the jurymen. “The sight of him upsets her badly.”

  Andy Southworth peered up at the mauled prisoner and winced involuntarily. For a moment there he had thought the Mexican was glad to see him, but he knew now that no young girl in her right mind could possibly be happy to see the likes of that.

  “Let’s get the identifyin’ over and done with quick,” he suggested.

  “Very well,” Hallett said. “You two deputies stand on either side of the accused. I’ll ask the witness to point out the man who attacked her.” With that he turned to Juanita. “Tenga cuidado,” he cautioned her. “This is very important. Point to the man who helped you this afternoon.”

  Juanita seemed frightened and undecided.

  “Do you want to help him?” Hallett asked sternly.

  “Sí,” she said. “Muy mucho.”

  “Then point to him so the judges will know which one he is.”

  Juanita’s arm came up very slowly and she pointed her finger squarely at Buchanan.

  “That’s enough for me,” Southworth announced. “Let the jury vote.”

  Buchanan looked at the old man who had spoken, at the line of even older men in the bench alongside him, and wondered what kind of foolishness they thought they were about. He watched as three of them were awaked from sound sleep and began conferring all around. The
n they were quiet.

  “Have you reached your verdict?” Hallett asked.

  “We sure have, Reverend. He’s guilty as charged and ought to be strung up at the crack of dawn.”

  “Hold on there,” Buchanan protested. “Who’s guilty as charged?”

  “You are, you damn dirty skunk!” Southworth shouted at him.

  “Wait a minute, old-timer. You and your friends’ve been flimflammed in here—” Hallett was bearing down on him, waving his arms, and Hynman was swinging the familiar gun with the same hard accuracy. Buchanan would have taken still another fall except that both deputies were holding him erect, turning him around and dragging him away.

  And in the unexpected diversion Juanita saw her chance and made a break for it, out the back door of the church and into the gathering gloom of Genesis Street.

  Nine

  It was not possible, Hallett kept telling his harassed deputies that night, for a good-looking Mexican girl in a distinctive black dress to disappear within the precincts of Salvation. The search for her had been instituted as soon as Buchanan had been remanded to his cell, with all three deputies fanning out over the countryside, questioning everyone they met, returning empty-handed.

  She had not had time to reach River Street, not on foot, but Bull Hynman had ridden there immediately. He had taken Birdy’s place apart, he reported, and she was not hiding there. He had searched the livery with a lantern from top to bottom, gone through the other stores—even made a wild room-to-room search of Maude’s in the hope that the girl might have returned to the very place she was trying so desperately to escape.

  Lafe and Enos had gone over Sinai and Genesis Streets as carefully as they knew how, gone out of town over every possible trail she might have followed, returned to the office of the stormy-faced sheriff to report no sign of her.

  Hallett had gone out himself, in the gleaming black buggy, for he took it as a personal affront that Salvation, the town he owned, could dare to hold any secret from him. Three times that night he drove past Renton House, oblivious to the old man who rocked back and forth on the porch—old, arthritic, ineffectual Pete Nabor who had made Juanita disappear right under the sheriff’s hawkish nose.