by Jonas Ward
Leach swung at his head and Buchanan picked off the blow with his left hand, forcing the gunman’s arm up.
“What’s biting on you, anyhow?” he asked him in a conversational tone, peering inquisitively into the taut, white-with-rage face of the other man. With all his strength Hamp Leach jerked to free his arm. Buchanan held fast, then twisted the gun out of Leach’s fist and sent it skidding the length of the bar with a lazy motion. He turned to Rosemarie for the third time.
“Now, ma’am—how about that drink?”
The girl blinked her eyes and swallowed. “What—what would you like?”
“Anything at all, so long as it’s made in Kentucky and a hundred proof.”
“I’m buyin’!” Angus Mulchay sang out, reaching up to give Buchanan a resounding thump on the back. “But did you never taste real Scot’s whisky, lad?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah, I wish I had that treat in store. My private bottle,” he told Rosemarie grandly, stepping back to survey his guest. “Where’d you come from?” he asked wonderingly.
“No place in particular.”
“Is that a fact? And where you bound?”
“Same place.”
“You must like it there.”
“I like it best wherever I am.”
Rosemarie set down the bottle and two tumblers and began to fill them, her eyes never leaving Buchanan’s face.
And Hamp Leach was left to stand there, not just ignored by the three of them, but forgotten. To be shamed like this was a brand-new experience, and though he felt a need for some kind of direct action, the gunman plainly didn’t know what was expected of him. His Colt was in full view at the end of the bar—no one there had the nerve to touch it—but to walk down and get it was to lose even more face. To take on the sonofabitch bare fisted was another way, except that he remembered very vividly how the sonofabitch had manhandled him just now.
Rig Gruber came to stand at his elbow.
“Let it lay, Hamp,” he advised in a low voice, easing the man aside. “Remember what Gibbons said. We ain’t set here yet.”
“Let it lay? What he did?”
“Just one of them things,” Gruber said philosophically. “This ain’t your night.”
“You wait and see whose night it is. For crissake, look at the raggedy-pants tramp! No gun on him, don’t even own boots! Just a goddam, sheepherdin’ saddlebum!”
Gruber had noted the same things—the lack of a weapon, the flat-heeled work shoes, the worn clothes and beard stubble.
“But he’s been around,” Gruber said. “He didn’t break his nose or pick up that knife scar herdin’ any sheep.”
“A friggin’ fist fighter,” Leach said with all the contempt a gunman has for brawlers. “Riffraff.”
“I’d let it lay, Hamp.”
“But you’re not me, and that’s the big difference. Listen—move on down there, casual-like, and get me the Colt.”
“You know what Gibbons said ...”
“Get the Colt, Rig.”
For five years Gruber had armied with Leach in one form or another. And from the beginning Leach had bossed him. The habit was hard to break and he moved off now to get the gun.
Three
Malcolm Lord was still smarting from the tongue-lashing he had received from Angus Mulchay as he sat with his five guests at the round table in the Glasgow’s private parlor. He was also apprehensive about the effect of such talk on Captain Gibbons.
“My deepest apologies for the unpleasantness out there, Captain,” he said, and it was clear that Lord was not a man called on to apologize very often.
Gibbons waved the subject away.
“I always consider the source, sir,” he replied, looking around at the other faces. “I hope you gentlemen have done the same.”
The gentlemen returned his gaze levelly and were noncommittal. So far as Messrs. Butler, Watson, Sims and MacPike were concerned this was Malcolm Lord’s party. They were his neighbors in the Big Bend, they were here at his invitation, and beyond a vague suspicion about the purpose of this meeting they were content to have it all explained.
But they all had heard the same things about Black Jack Gibbons that Mulchay had spoken outside. As a former officer in the war against Mexico, and captain in the Rangers, the man had spent the last twenty years of his life in the very thick of the never-ending trouble along the vast border. And until a year ago he had been one of the more dashing and admired lesser heroes of the Texas Rebellion, a “typical” Ranger who commanded respect for the badge and the authority by their singular courage, their penchant for enforcing the law almost singlehanded.
A year ago Captain Gibbons had been dispatched to Brownsville to settle a dispute about a beef tally. A group of ranchers insisted that some of their stock had drifted onto the Matamoros range and had been incorporated into Mexican herds. The Mexicans insisted just as stoutly that they had choused the Texas cattle back across the border. What the Texans wanted was free access through Matamoros and the right to inspect the herds for themselves. The Mexicans, feeling that their honor was being challenged and their sovereignty threatened, refused. They would, however, allow the Ranger to come by himself when the roundup was completed and see for himself that there were no American brands present.
His superiors in Austin never got a clear answer from Gibbons as to why he didn’t accept this peaceful and reasonable solution. All they knew was that the captain told the Mexicans he would consider the plan, and that during the next six weeks he diligently recruited every ex-cavalryman and jobless rider in the region and formed them into a thoroughly unofficial but quite formidable militia of a hundred expert gunmen. Then, without warning, he hurled that band at Matamoros, and for seventy-two bloody hours they slaughtered all the livestock in sight over a radius of nearly twenty miles.
That was only the beginning. Gibbons led his lawless militia back into Brownsville, where those of Mexican birth exceeded the native Texan population nearly five to one. For ten days the terror lasted—midnight raids, mass trials, mass executions, individual murders—and when it was done there were five hundred less Mexicans in Brownsville.
At his court-martial Gibbons blandly testified that he had uncovered a secret plot to invade Texas: a Mexican army of two thousand was being raised, its arms and men financed by the sale of cattle, most of them stolen from Texas ranches. So he had first struck at the roots of the invasion, killing the herds before they could be marketed. The second part of the plot, according to the accused Ranger, was to be an uprising in Brownsville when the invasion began, “Every Texan,” the trial transcript read, “man, woman and child, was to be killed. The only ones to be spared were unmarried women between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. They were to be transported to Matamoros and handed over to the bandit general, Campos.”
So ran Gibbons’ defense of his actions around Brownsville. His judges, shocked and disgusted, kicked him out of the service “without honor” and Governor Tatum offered an indemnity of one hundred thousand dollars to the Mexican government. But even with this official condemnation of his act, and the new nickname “Black Jack,” there was a large and rather influential number living largely along the border who chose to believe Gibbons’ account of his actions at Brownsville and raised their voices in his defense. What the man had done became less and less discussed. It was why he had acted to “save” Brownsville, and they especially admired his saving the flower of Texas womanhood from the bandit chief.
Opportunity had to knock ever so lightly for Jack Gibbons to heed it. With the support of the more powerful ranchers he made the militia a permanent group, shaving it down to a hand-picked force of fifty gunmen who worked more or less along military lines. For Gibbons had not acted against Matamoros and Brownsville without a long-range plan, an idea calculated not only to make him the kind of controversial figure that satisfied his outsize ego, but also to provide him with a way of life he was born for—to command, to lead men into battle, to create strife and taste vic
tory. All that was in Gibbons, as well as a pathological hatred for the Mexican people.
Malcolm Lord’s neighbors had heard many things of the man, and so when he asked them, obliquely, to discount the accusations of Angus Mulchay they were noncommittal. Now, with glasses filled, they turned their attention to their host, the owner of mighty Overlord Ranch.
“Gentlemen,” he began gravely, “we are facing a serious problem in the Big Bend and the time has come when those of us with the largest share of responsibility in this country must take steps to solve it.”
“Aye,” James MacPike said, “the Rio is low and getting lower. I say wells are our only hope, expensive as they may be ...”
“I didn’t mean the water, MacPike,” Lord interrupted testily. “Of course the river’s a problem. A big one. Without the river flooding its banks we have no graze.”
“What were you referring to, then?” Arthur Butler asked. “What’s more important to us than water, Malcolm?”
“Our freedom,” Lord told him. “Our heritage. And our duty to our women.”
“How’s that?”
“The Mexicans,” Lord answered. “They cross our border with impunity, come and go on Texas soil just as they please.”
“Oh, hell, that’s just Angus Mulchay,” MacPike said.
“He gives the poor devils refuge when the federales are nipping too close. Lets them slaughter a few head for fifty dollars.”
“And I’ll take the overflow,” Butler put in. “Damn steady customers, them bandits.”
“But you and me ain’t on the river, like Angus,” MacPike countered. “We all thought the man was daft when he claimed land ten years ago that was a foot underwater. Now look at his fine grass ...”
The conversation was running away from Malcolm Lord’s direction and he cleared his throat impatiently.
“Mulchay is giving comfort to an enemy,” he said. “He is helping the bandits survive, strengthening them for an eventual attack ...”
“Attack?” Thad Sims asked, speaking for the first time.
“Aye, Thaddeus. They have the run of the riverlands now. Some night they’ll strike.”
“You’re living in the past, Malcolm,” his friend MacPike objected. “Those raids were ten years ago, and never in the Big Bend ...”
“And I say that’s just what they hope you’ll believe. But maybe you’ll wish you’d listened to wiser heads, when it’s too late and your daughters have been ravaged in their beds!”
“Ah, come down off it!” MacPike said angrily. “Don’t be even thinking such a thing, let alone speak it.”
“Then heed the man who knows more about our danger than any other. The man I’ve persuaded to come to our remote range and help us before it’s too late.” He swung to Gibbons. “Captain, if you please.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jack Gibbons said, rising from his chair. He held his glass of whisky aloft. “I give you the Lone Star, gentlemen,” he said. “A toast to our beloved Texas!”
They drank to that.
“Texas for Texans,” Gibbons said then. “I’ve lived by that creed all my life.”
“Are you a native son?” Butler inquired.
“By adoption, sir. I had the misfortune to be born in the state of Georgia. But I came here very young; my daddy saw the opportunity, the destiny. And I fought for the independence of the Lone Star, sir. I remember the Alamo, and called Davy Crockett a friend ...”
Sacred names were dropping from Gibbons’ mouth in profusion, and his listeners were properly reverent.
“... and I tell you, men, I just wonder what Jim Bowie and Sam Houston would say to us if they could see what we’ve done with this wonderful country they handed to us.”
“Even Mr. Houston couldna kept the Rio high in her banks,” MacPike said laconically.
“I’m talking of Mexicans, my friend. We fought them a bitter war, shed our precious blood and won that war. But to the victor belong the spoils? No sir! The government in Austin has let us down. The government in Washington doesn’t know we exist. And every God-fearing white man from El Paso to Brownsville is plagued with the enemy he defeated. They squat on his land, raid his herds, cheat good men out of honest labor because they’ll work for nothing but their goddam beans and bread.
“I did what I had to do in Brownsville,” Gibbons went on, his voice rising dramatically. “This winter I was invited to clean out Laredo, and I cleaned it out. Texas for Texans. Let the brown papists live in their own confines.”
“Cleaned out Laredo, you say?” asked Sims. “Exactly what do you mean?”
“Made it safe for a white woman to walk the streets, sir. Drove the troublemakers back across the border where they belong.”
“And what do you propose to do for Scotstown?” MacPike asked.
“Mr. Lord has invited me to do the same here,” Gibbons said, and Malcolm Lord stood up again.
“Subject, of course, to the approval of us all,” the owner of Overlord put in. “What I suggested to Captain Gibbons is that his militia occupy Scotstown for a period of sixty days. The main body of men will patrol the riverlands and rout the Mexicans out when they seek to cross over.”
“That could mean fighting.”
“It will, James.”
“But there’s families living there. Mulchay and Bryan, Tompkins, MacKay ...”
“They’ll have to be evacuated.”
“Evacuated? Lord, I’d like to see the day when Angus agrees to leave his land.”
“This is a common project,” Lord said blandly. “If Mulchay is a damned Mex-lover, if he gambles with the safety of our children as well as his own, then I say it’s up to the community to protect itself. That’s the democratic way of it.”
“It doesn’t sound right, somehow,” MacPike said, remembering what Mulchay had been shouting in the saloon—his accusation about Lord trying to steal the land along the riverside. “What,” he asked, “does Captain Gibbons get out of it?”
“The opportunity to serve Texas,” Gibbons said. “Aye. But who pays your men and feeds your mounts? Where do you get your guns and ammunition?”
“As I said, sir, Austin has let us down. This war must be financed privately, by patriots.”
Thad Sim’s head popped up.
“You mean us patriots?” he asked. “We are to pay for this business?”
“A nominal sum,” Malcolm Lord assured him. “We’ll be assessed according to our holdings.”
“That would put the lion’s burden on yourself,” Sims pointed out.
“There are five of us here,” Lord said. “Overlord will underwrite fifty per cent of the expense.”
“And what will the total be?”
“Not more than twenty thousand dollars,” Gibbons said, and four of his listeners were shocked to the roots of their Scotch-Presbyterianism.
“Twenty thousand dollars?” Butler repeated hollowly. “Fifty men for sixty days,” Gibbons said. “And risking their lives every hour of it.”
“Fifty crackerjack cavalrymen,” Malcolm Lord added. “An elite corps of Texas fighters who’ll rid the Big Bend of the Mexican danger ...”
Arthur Butler was about to put another question to Gibbons, but he never asked it. There was an interruption—the nerve-shattering thunder of gunfire—and it came from just beyond the door.
Four
“Well,” Angus Mulchay had asked, “how do you like Scot’s whisky?”
Buchanan finished his drink and ran his tongue around his lips judiciously. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad.”
“Try another,” Mulchay said. “Pour, lass.”
The girl hesitated.
“I wouldn’t go at it too quick,” she said to Buchanan direct. “Not the first time.”
“Hah!” Mulchay said. “And you’re the Queen’s own taster, are you?”
“I’ve not tasted the stuff,” she said, still not talking to anyone but Buchanan. “But I’ve sniffed at it once or twice and it’s powerful.”
�
�What stuff should I drink?” Buchanan asked.
“They serve a punch up at Armston’s,” she said.
“Where?”
“The Dance Palace,” she told him, smiling. “Oh, it’s a lively place ...”
Mulchay’s laughter broke over her voice.
“Dancing, she says! For a braehammer the likes of him, with the thirst on him—dancing! And sweet lemon punch!”
Buchanan had been called many things in thirty years, but braehammer was a new one. He guessed, though, that it was close to the mark, if not right on it. An outsized, aimless drifter, fit enough company in a saloon but too rough for any social function. He was thinking that and just across the bar the dark-haired girl was smiling at him.
“Pour us a drink,” Mulchay said.
“Shall I?” she asked and Buchanan held her steady gaze, then rubbed a palm across a cheek he hadn’t shaved in forty-eight hours.
“Yeah,” he said. “Fill ’em high.”
Hamp Leach had moved back to the door, in quarantine, and his malevolent gaze missed none of the byplay at the bar, the animation in the girl’s face, the open flirtation she was carrying on with the no-account who had humiliated him. The contrast between that and the reception he had gotten gnawed on him murderously.
He had the gun back now, riding his hip in its old familiar place. The gun was and always had been the great equalizer between Leach and any other man, and as he looked at the tall figure of Buchanan he fairly itched to feel the butt against his palm, the forefinger triggering humility and death.
Rig Gruber seemed able to read the man’s mind.
“Let it lay,” he said again.
“Like hell I will.”
“What’re you gonna do, shoot him in the back?”
“I’ll position him, don’t worry about that.”
“Fill ’em high,” Buchanan said. “And pay for them out of this,” he added, digging the pouch from his faded denims and tossing it negligently onto the bar.
The girl looked at it and raised her eyes again to his face.
“What is it?” she asked.