Buchanan 21

by Jonas Ward

  “The house,” he said hoarsely. “Get to the house quick.” She tried again to break free. He swung her in front of him, pushed her to the opening in the brush and on out into the open. She stumbled, fell to her knees, only to be pulled to her feet again, dragged along irresistibly.

  Toward the house, toward home—and in the midst of all her fearfulness Ellen knew one moment of pure and terrible clarity. Let him take her right here, let her remember this nightmare as happening in this field that was like any other field. But not in the house, not home.

  She had fallen down again, been jerked erect again, but that was not what had broken her chain of thoughts. Nor could she tell if he had seen it, too—the horse and rider, still small figures in the distance, not possible to recognize.

  But you don’t always have to see something with your eyes. Your heart tells you. Ellen’s heart told her that it was Buchanan.

  All at once, and to the vast surprise of Luther Reeves, she began laughing. Great peals of laughter, joyous, unrestrained, and to look at her was even more puzzling, for she was crying at the same time.

  Reeves’ reaction to that—as to everything he didn’t understand—was brute force. He doubled Ellen’s arm behind her back, shoved her ahead of him more violently—then let loose of her altogether when he spotted the oncoming horseman for himself.

  His saddle and rifle rested atop the corral fence, and as Reeves broke in that direction Ellen made a dash for the house. Once inside she climbed immediately into the attic, went to the locker and found the small-caliber hunting pistol that had been a birthday present half-a-dozen years before. She loaded it, and even as she was descending to the floor below the sound of firing commenced in the yard.

  She ran through the house to her own room, closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed. There, with the pistol held tensely in her lap, she waited, listening to the duel being waged outside the window, distinguishing between the sure, steady crack of the powerful rifle, the less-authoritative sound of the handgun.

  Then, with a suddenness that was ominous, there was quiet. A minute passed. Another. Her straining ears heard the front door open and close, listened to a man’s boot heels coming down hard on the bare floor of the hallway. Ellen cocked the pistol, raised it from her lap and aimed it inward, directly below her wildly heaving breast.

  The doorknob turned and the door swung open.

  “Everything’s all right now,” Buchanan said and that was too much for Ellen. With a soft sighing sound the girl fell over on the bed in a faint.

  The actual fainting spell lasted only a minute or two, but Ellen passed from that into a sleep of exhaustion. When she did awake again it was quite dark in the bedroom, and for a while she had the queer feeling of not being able to remember what had happened or even why she was here. Then she did remember, and the girl got out of the bed quickly, left the room and walked through the empty, unlighted house.

  “Buchanan?” she called out uncertainly. No one answered. She brought a match then from the kitchen, got the parlor lamp glowing, and was astonished a moment later to find herself in the presence of a great deal of money—all of it the property of the bank down in Salvation. There were two gunnysacks, crammed nearly to overflowing, and Ellen was staring at them in a very disquieted manner when she heard a loose board on the porch groan under a heavy weight. The front door opened.

  “Buchanan?” she called again, this time in fear.

  “Right,” came the sound of his voice, and then the man himself appeared in the parlor entrance. The sight of him standing there, dwarfing all else around him, released a flood of memories in the girl’s mind—their sum and total being a feeling of reassurance.

  “I thought you’d gone off again,” she said, trying to speak normally, to put a checkrein on the unnormal emotions that were coming so close to the surface.

  Buchanan was studying her as well, marking what the lamplight did to the planes of her fine face, how it complimented the warm gold coloring of her hair. He looked very unhappy.

  “Do you know about your husband?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Ellen said. “Reeves killed him?”

  Buchanan nodded. “I buried them kind of close together,” he told her, a note of apology in his voice. “But I marked where he is in case you want to have him moved somewheres better.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What made you—I mean, how did you happen to come back?”

  “Damned if I—beg your pardon. Couldn’t explain, exactly,” he amended. “Guess I just put myself in Luther’s boots. Kind of a troublemaker, that one.”

  Ellen smiled. “Kind of,” she agreed. “Where’s Juanita?”

  That gave Buchanan something to smile about. “On her way home,” he said. “Finally. Met the stage out of Sacramento up the trail a ways. Bound down to Monterey—with no mail stop in Salvation.”

  “Tell me—was she happy to get aboard?” Ellen asked. At the question Buchanan looked down at her suspiciously, made a tell-tale gesture of rubbing his jaw with the palm of his hand.

  “She was happy enough,” he said, recalling the objections the girl had raised before accepting the fact that they couldn’t travel together indefinitely. Then, changing the subject, he jerked a thumb toward the sacks of money.

  “Thought I’d haul that plunder back to town,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Now. Might help a few folks get a night’s rest—knowing they’re not cleaned out.”

  “But it won’t be safe for you in Salvation.”

  “I didn’t figure on holding a parade or anything,” he told her drily. “Just ride up to the banker’s back porch and drop it off.”

  Ellen nodded. “I guess you could do that. Mr. Martin lives outside town.” She paused for a moment, looking at him. “Can I come along?” she asked.

  “I was going to suggest it,” Buchanan said. “This wouldn’t be much of a place to stay tonight.”

  “Not alone,” she said, her eyes full on his face.

  “No,” he answered quietly. “Not alone. Well, I’ll get the loot in the saddlebags and then we can be off.” He picked up both sacks and went out with them. When she was alone Ellen asked herself pointblank if she felt ashamed about impulsively inviting him to spend the night with her. The answer was no. She felt regret and perhaps a sense of relief that her heart had expressed itself—that the struggle against her own conscience was over.

  Buchanan strode back into the room, carrying a metal box in his hand. She saw immediately that something had made him angry.

  “Maybe we ought to have that parade after all,” he said.

  “Why, what is it?”

  He set the box on the table beneath the lamp, pulled the lid open. “Somewhere along the line a bullet busted the lock on this thing,” he told her. “Take a look at what dropped out when I went to put it in the saddlebag.”

  Ellen looked inside the box. There was no money there, only various documents. One was a mortgage held by Cyrus Martin personally, one a promissory note, one a will—and at the bottom, where Buchanan had replaced it, an envelope bearing a curious message in a careful script.

  To whom it may concern, it read, in the event of my death by foul play.

  “Take out the note inside,” Buchanan told Ellen.

  She slid the folded paper from the envelope, began reading it in silence. As each sentence passed beneath the girl’s eyes her face became more stricken. She turned, finally, to Buchanan.

  “Can this be true?” she asked in a strained voice. “Could that terrible man possibly have done such a thing?”

  “Be important to you to find out, wouldn’t it?” Buchanan asked, taking the letter from her fingers and replacing it in the envelope.

  “Yes,” Ellen answered. “Yes, it would be very important. But what chance would Hallett ever give you?”

  “Let’s ride down into that Bible-spouter’s town and find out,” Buchanan sa
id.

  Fourteen

  At the first clamorous peal of the church bell, Sidney Hallett came to his feet with an angry, startled expression.

  “What’s that?” he demanded of the equally surprised Bull Hynman. “Who gave orders to ring the bell?”

  “Not me,” Hynman said. “The posse ain’t due to ride till before daybreak.”

  The bell kept up its strident, insistent sound, beckoning all within its hearing to gather round.

  “By God,” Hallett said, “someone had better not be changing my orders! Come with me!” His orders were for an armed group to head for Booth’s ranch and reach it at the time when they would least be expected. Enos, meanwhile, had been dispatched north to alert the law in that direction. Another man was doing the same to the south.

  “What’s up, Sheriff? They catch the crooks?” Hallett was asked now as he made the turn into Genesis Street. He gave the man no answer, observed the heavy turnout of people hurrying as he was to the church. Someone, he promised grimly, would pay for this. Enough had gone wrong already, and the man’s unruly temper was at a dangerous point.

  And still the bell tolled, as if deliberately goading him to some act of violence.

  “Go up in the tower,” he told Hynman furiously, “and haul that damn fool down here by the scruff of the neck!”

  Hynman hurried on ahead to obey, shouldering the men and women of Salvation aside as he went. Jesus, he thought, I never knew how loud that bell was. It never occurred to him to wonder what size man it would take to produce such a prodigious loudness. It still didn’t as he mounted the steep flight of stairs to the belfry, climbed closer to the marvelous din. Then he was standing in the tower itself, staring at the two silhouetted forms in the place with him. One was unmistakably Ellen Booth. There could be no doubt of it. And the other, both hands engaged with the bell-rope …!

  Bull Hynman knew he had him. Had him with an easy draw, a straight shot—but he didn’t have Ellen, whose warning scream went unheard, who shoved Buchanan with all her might. Hynman’s gun blast shattered the darkness and the bullet found some scant opening between the bodies of the man and girl across the way. Rattled, he fired again. Buchanan’s gun came up. The first slug doubled Hynman in two. The second and third drove all life out of him.

  “Ellen!” Buchanan said hoarsely, bending to the girl who lay face down on the flooring. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Are you?”

  “I think so,” he told her. “You sure are some handy in a pinch.”

  “You’re some handy yourself, mister.”

  “Some stupid,” he said, “not to have an eye out for company. Didn’t expect to get such a fast response out of them.” He lifted the girl to her feet.

  “HYNMAN!” Hallett shouted from down below. “What’s going on up there?”

  “You’re yelling in the wrong direction, Sheriff, if you want your deputy,” Buchanan called back.

  “You!”

  “Me, and I’m coming down. Stand clear.”

  Buchanan started the descent unhesitatingly, Ellen close behind, shielded by his body. At the foot of the steps Hallett was paying strict attention to the unwavering gun in Buchanan’s big hand. Now he started to back away from it, into the circle of people gathered in the church foyer.

  Then Buchanan was standing before them all.

  “Glad to see such a nice turnout, folks,” he told them. “If you’ll go inside and make yourselves comfortable there’s something I think you ought to hear.”

  “Hold on!” Sid Hallett said, stepping forward, turning his back to Buchanan and speaking with his familiar authority. “Return to your homes,” he told the sizable assemblage. “This man is a killer and worse. He’ll not give orders while I’m still the law in Salvation.”

  A hand came down irreverently on his shoulder, turning him around.

  “That’s one of the subjects on the agenda, Sheriff,” Buchanan informed him. “Lead the way inside.”

  Hallett looked up into the other man’s face as if he might defy the flat command. Then, with an angry grimace, he pushed Buchanan’s hand from his shoulder and walked on inside the church proper with the air of someone still very much in command. His steps carried him to the pulpit, and he mounted it familiarly. Buchanan walked with Ellen to the other side, stood on the same spot that Juanita had during the farcical trial two nights before. He raised his long arm for quiet.

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “First off, is Cyrus Martin among the present?”

  “Yes,” a voice answered and the banker stood up in his regular pew. “What do you want of me?”

  “Mrs. Booth found some money that belongs to your bank.”

  “What?” Martin asked, raising his voice above the instant murmuring. “You have the stolen funds?”

  “A gent named Pete Nabor is keeping an eye on them over at the rooming house.”

  A happy cry went up from the spectators. Buchanan asked for silence again. Then, from his shirtfront, he took the envelope.

  “Mr. Martin,” he said, “three years ago you wrote a letter. I’d like you to stand up in that pulpit alongside the sheriff and read it to these folks.”

  “A letter …?”

  “It was in the strongbox that was taken from the bank today. If you don’t want to read it, I will.”

  Martin looked dazed, stood there shaking his head from side to side. Buchanan crossed over to the pulpit.

  “Stand down, preacher man,” he told Hallett. “There’s a sinner wants to get something off his chest.”

  Hallett looked down at Buchanan, then over to Cyrus Martin, his face wary.

  “Stand down or I’ll pull you out of that pulpit,” Buchanan said. Hallett climbed down and Buchanan replaced him.

  “This is a letter, folks,” he announced to the crowd. “It’s written ‘to whom it may concern’—and I think it concerns everybody here, myself included.” He unfolded the note and began reading:

  “‘I live in constant fear of injury and even death at the hands of Sydney A. Hallett, the High Sheriff of Salvation. For that reason I am writing this document as a last means of defense against Hallett. If it fails in that, at least I will have had some measure of retribution from the grave.’”

  Buchanan looked up briefly. “You sure you don’t want to read this yourself, Martin?” he asked. The banker, staring at Hallett, shook his head. Buchanan began again.

  “‘Three months ago,’” the letter continued, “‘a young teller in the Salvation Bank was convicted of embezzling five thousand dollars of the bank’s funds. His name is Frank Booth and of that crime he is completely innocent—”

  The stirring among the audience caused him to pause.

  “‘Completely innocent,’” he repeated when it was quiet once more. “‘There was no embezzlement and no money is unaccounted for. Frank Booth’s ring, which was used as damaging evidence against him, was appropriated by me when Booth laid it aside in the washroom. A man identified as a U.S. Marshal was actually a former prisoner employed by Sidney Hallett for the trial and paid another sum to return east. There is no such woman living in San Francisco named Ruby Fowler. She was created by Sidney Hallett …’”

  That was as far as Buchanan got. Two shots exploded over his voice. The first, fired from a Derringer pistol, struck Cyrus Martin in the chest. The second, fired into his own brain, killed Sidney Hallett.

  The throng crowded around the body—curious, shocked, angry, above all, disillusioned. Buchanan came down from the pulpit and slipped out of the church unnoticed.

  Except for Ellen, who caught up with him in the street.

  “You’re leaving alone?” she asked.

  “You got no reason not to stay here now,” he said.

  “No, I can live here now,” she agreed. “But if you asked me, I’d go with you.”

  “I’m not your style, Ellen. Too rootless.”

  “You’re that,” she admitted in her frank way. “But you’ll als
o sink roots someday.”

  “Someday. Not tomorrow, though. Going to work for the railroad tomorrow.”

  Ellen held out her slim hand and he took it in his.

  “I’m not even going to say thank you again, Buchanan. Just goodbye.”

  “Goodbye to you, Ellen. It’s been a pleasure to know a real lady.”

  She smiled at that, enigmatically, and as he rode off down Genesis Street he was left to wonder if he had said the right thing to her or not. Then he was abreast of the hotel and Pete Nabor hailed him from his all-but-permanent station.

  “Get the job done, big feller?”

  “Well, the job of sheriff is open. Interested?”

  “Hell no! But why don’t you stay around and keep the peace?”

  Buchanan laughed. “Keep the peace? Me? Old man, I can’t even keep a date in Sacramento.”

  “That where you bound?”

  “Yessir. And I’m going to get there if I have to tote this horse on my back. See you, Pete!”

  “Hasta luego!” Nabor shouted after him.

  About the Author

  William Ard was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 8 1922. After studying at Dartmouth College, he enlisted in the Marines. Released back into civilian life in his late twenties, he decided to devote himself to writing, and his first novel, The Perfect Frame, appeared in 1951. It marked the debut of his continuing character of Timothy Dane, a New York private investigator who would go on to appear in a further nine novels.

  In 1953, Ard moved to Clearwater, Florida, and it is here where he wrote most of his 30 novels. In 1959, he created two new characters, Danny Fontaine and Lou Largo (Largo was also a private investigator based in New York). Ard also completed two Lou Largo novels; the remainder were written by Lawrence Block and John Jakes.

  Under the pseudonym ‘Jonas Ward’, the author wrote six novels in the BUCHANAN western series, the last, Buchanan on the Prod, completed after his death on March 12 1960, by Robert Silverberg. The series was later continued by Brian Garfield and William R. Cox, and are all available through Piccadilly Publishing.