by Jonas Ward
“What’s your alternative, then—just roll over and play dead?”
“Ah, you’re just making wild guesses,” Hamlin told him. “You’re worse at ringing false alarms than the boy in the meadow.”
“Good night to ye,” Mulchay said, turning his glass face-down on the bar, the classic, old-country symbol that his night’s drinking was ended.
“Where you going?” his friend asked, much concerned.
“Where Mulchay goes and what Mulchay does,” he shouted at them, “is from now on Mulchay’s business!” Something caught the fiery Scotchman’s eye and he changed direction to cross toward Leach. He bent down over the dead man, rolled him over as he would a sack of meal and exposed the ex-gunman’s once-fired .45. He picked up the weapon and jammed it deep into the pocket of his worn coat.
“Angus!” Hamlin cried. “Ye can’t go up against the lot of them. Not singlehanded!”
“The gun’s for the laddie-buck,” Mulchay said. “This is his fighting chance—and may it prove luckier for him than the last man that owned it.” With that he left the Glasgow.
“Try that place first,” Gibbons said, indicating the noisy, brilliantly lit Armston’s dancehall. He had not missed the added absence of the shapely bargirl from the saloon and now was guessing that she might have taken up with their quarry for a bit of Saturday nightlife in Scotstown. The five mounted men were afoot by this time and they formed a sort of phalanx with the other three; a tight, troublesome-looking group of eight.
“Do we take him on sight, or what?” Rig Gruber asked when they were at the foot of the dancehall steps. “You’re entitled to the first crack,” Gibbons said. “How come?”
“He shot Leach with your gun, didn’t he?”
“But this gun don’t swing just right,” Gruber said. “Too much barrel.”
“It worked all right for him.”
“Man’s got those long arms,” Gruber argued. “Makes all the difference.”
“Swing mine,” his buddy Kersh offered.
“Swing your friggin’ own.”
“Who we bucking, anyhow?” Kersh asked. “Another Texan Thompson?”
“Go on in and find out,” Gruber suggested.
“What’s gotten into you?” Gibbons demanded angrily. “I was sure you’d jump at the chance.”
“Thanks all the same, Cap’n, but I pass.”
“Then he’s yours, Kersh,” Gibbons said, but Kersh shook his head.
“I’ll brace anything that walks,” he said, “if I have to. But since we all got stakes here why don’t we all take him? Then adjourn to the oasis next door and pull the cork.”
They were thinking very much of Hamp Leach, Gibbons knew, remembering that Leach had the rep. And the ex-Ranger was learning, too, that for a situation such as this he had done his work on them too well. Gruber and Kersh had grown accustomed to the Army way, fighting as a group, and their individuality was gone.
‘We’re waiting on you, Cap,” Kersh said, but the words had a different meaning for Gibbons. They were waiting on him and his mind traveled back one year. He saw himself a Ranger again, imagined the man inside the dancehall a wanted criminal. He wouldn’t have hesitated two seconds.
“What’s it gonna be, Cap?” Kersh asked.
“Let’s go,” Gibbons said. “We’ll take him together,” and he started up the steps first, telling himself that he could still do that, at least. A year hadn’t changed him that much.
“... now doe-see-doe to the left and light—and swing your gal with all your might!”
Buchanan took the fiddler at his word, swung Rosemarie clear off the floor, round and round, effortlessly, and the girl squealed in pretended dismay as her petticoats ballooned above her shapely knees.
“... now promenade past all your friends ... salute your partner as this dance ends.”
The amiable giant made a sweeping bow to the curtseying beauty and when their glances met an infectious smile passed between them.
“Never danced with a grizzly before, did you?” he asked as they walked off the floor.
“Why, you’re as graceful as could be,” she protested, and then lowered her voice confidentially. “Only not so vigorous with the swinging, Tom. I’m sure I shocked all the ladies present.”
“And pleased all the gents, which brings you out even.”
“Evenin’, Miss MacKay,” interrupted a puncher of Buchanan’s own age, but clean-shaven, togged out in a bright new shirt and reeking of bay rum.
“Evening, Billy,” Rosemarie answered. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Buchanan. Tom, this is Billy Neale.”
“Howdy.”
“Howdy.”
The men shook hands and Buchanan stood by patiently until Neale had gone over him from shaggy head to scuffed work shoes. Neale switched his attention to the girl.
“Thought you had to work tonight, Rosemarie?” he said pointedly.
“I’m playing truant,” she confessed. “I should be at the Glasgow now.”
“Apparently you’re more persuasive than I am,” Neale said to Buchanan.
“No,” Rosemarie answered for him. “It was I who did the persuading.”
Neale didn’t take that explanation very well at all. “Live in the Big Bend, Buchanan?” he asked.
“Nope. Just dropped down for a couple hours.”
“Dropped down? From where?”
“The mountains,” Buchanan told him vaguely. “Fact is,” he said, turning to Rosemarie, “I better be starting back.”
“Oh, no! There’re still a lot more dances.”
“My partner’ll be looking for me bright and early.”
“But we’re having such a good time! You mustn’t leave now.”
“What are you doing in the mountains?” Neale asked, more nettled-sounding each time he spoke.
“Living by the skin of my teeth.”
“So it looks. They tell me there’s supposed to be gold up there.”
“I wouldn’t say that—”
“Psst! Laddie!” a sharp voice beckoned. “Big feller over here!”
Buchanan swung to see Angus Mulchay motioning to him excitedly from a side door.
“What is it, Tom?” Rosemarie asked anxiously. “Don’t know,” he said and went to the old man. “Clear out while you can, son. Black Jack Gibbons is coming in the front door with a gang of ’em.”
“Gang of what?”
“Murderers—and you’re their meat if they corner you in this box!”
“Oh, Tom—look!” Rosemarie cried at his shoulder and Buchanan saw eight men with guns already drawn, eight pairs of eyes scanning the room. A woman spotted them and uttered a piercing scream. The fiddler’s bow stopped in mid-note, dismayingly, and then all was quiet.
“Run for it, Tom!” Rosemarie urged him. “They haven’t seen you yet.”
“Hell, they wouldn’t shoot ...”
“You’re wrong, man, wrong!” Mulchay told him. “You’re no more to that crew than a stray dog. Take this,” he said, passing over the gun, “and make a break—”
“Over there!” Rig Gruber shouted. “By the door!”
“Move away from him, girl!” Jack Gibbons commanded in a strong voice. “You, too, old man, unless you want to die beside him!”
“Hold it, mister,” Buchanan called to him. “Whatever this quarrel’s about, let’s get it outside.”
“We like you just as you stand,” Gibbons answered harshly. “Just move out from behind those skirts!”
“No!” Rosemarie cried, throwing her arms around Buchanan. “No!” she cried again, defiantly.
Gruber had been sighting the shot for ten seconds. Now he triggered it, and with the roaring crash of the six-gun Buchanan felt a jarring blow at his collarbone, a searing pain. He spun the girl out of the fire line, not gently, and with anger sparking every new move, he wheeled and drove three slugs into the crouching Gruber—fatal punishment for the cynical chance the gunman had taken with Rosemarie’s innocent life.
; “Watch the girl!” Gibbons was shouting above the awful melee, and Kersh and the man beside him opened fire heedlessly. Something burned into the flesh of Buchanan’s thigh and his right arm was suddenly turning numb.
“Run for it, man, run!” Angus Mulchay pleaded. “This way—” and Buchanan turned his broad back to the fight, made it through the doorway and staggered out into the night like some drunk. The door was slammed shut behind him and then it was very dark in the alley.
“Can ye move, lad?” Mulchay asked at his side. “Can ye make it to Ferguson’s house?”
“Take care of yourself, friend. Those sons of bitches hold life damn cheap.”
“I’m next, anyhow, so follow me now if ye can!”
It was such a frustrating thing. His mind was clear—purged by the rage that was whipping it—and his eyes made out the slender little man moving ahead of him. But nothing else responded to his will. From the shoulders down, his whole body was sluggish, tiredly disobedient—and with no warning at all his bleeding right leg buckled beneath him.
“Get up, boy! Try! Can’t ye hear them coming around the front?”
Buchanan used the side of the wall to regain his feet again, used it once more to make his way forward.
“He’s in there!” shouted a voice that was becoming raggedly familiar. “This time,” Gibbons ordered, “get him!” Buchanan shifted the gun to his left hand, pumped two roaring welcomes into the alley’s narrow mouth, heard two anguished groans. But Buchanan took little heart from that, for he had pulled the trigger three times—there was no more argument left in Hamp Leach’s Colt.
Mulchay was supporting him and pulling him at the same time, his eyes closed, body rigid as he waited for the sniping bullet with his name on it. But Buchanan’s last volley had written caution into the hearts of Gibbons & Co. and they answered it with snap shots, an uneven fusillade that passed high and wide of the two fugitives. At last they came to a door in the side of a house—only sixty feet from where they had started the journey, but an eternity in time—and Mulchay turned the knob in his hand.
“We’re forsaken, son,” he moaned. “Ferguson’s is locked against us.”
Buchanan didn’t have much left, but he gave it all in a grunting lunge against the jamb. The wood splintered and the lock sprung, the door flew open and Buchanan went on inside with it.
“Be damned and you’re the man for me!” little Angus congratulated him. “But ye got to get up, son. They’re not likely to stay put out there for long.”
“You go ahead, dad,” Buchanan told him peacefully. “I think I’ll wait for them here.”
“If you wait, I wait,” Mulchay said definitely. “We’ll go out together.”
Buchanan made no sense out of that, so he made the struggle to stand another time. Helpful old coot, but loco, he thought irrelevantly. Wonder if he knows Fargo?
“You know Fargo?”
“Town in the Dakotas. What about it?”
“This is a feller. Funny little guy. Talked me into busting my back against a goddam mountain.”
“Godsakes, lad, this is no time for pleasant memories! If we’re going, we got to get!” The house was darkened, vacant because Ferguson and his family were visiting, but Mulchay led Buchanan through it familiarly. They crossed the kitchen, the parlor, started up a flight of steps.
“I’m leaking blood all over the carpet,” Buchanan said.
“I’ll pay Andy Ferguson for all damages. Oh, Harry—here they come again!”
Gibbons had convinced his warriors that the alley was safe by venturing into it himself, and now they were at the sprung door, noisily cautious.
“Kersh, you and Mills get around to the front. Boland and Milton follow me in here. Everybody ready?”
Angus and his big friends were on the landing by this time, but the words of Gibbons came to them loud and clear, taunting them.
‘I’ve got another plan,” Angus whispered desperately.
“Anything you say,” Buchanan answered, feeling lightheaded from the loss of blood.
“Stop Black Jack and we’ve stopped ’em all.”
“Sure.”
“He’s got the milk-colored Stetson,” Mulchay murmured. “Do you think you can spot him when he climbs up the stairs?”
“Sure.”
“Then shoot straight and true. It’s the best chance we have.”
“Can’t.”
“What?”
“Can’t shoot. No more ammo. Left the gun downstairs.”
“Good grief!”
“Here’s a gun on the floor, Cap!” shouted a voice below, a triumphant echo to Mulchay’s melancholy voice. “Empty! He’s all shot out!”
Gibbons’ burst of laughter betrayed his relief. Four of his best had gone today—he would sorely miss the Leach-Gruber team—and his thoughts on entering this blacked-out house had been that if he didn’t lead the attack up those stairs, no one would. What an un-Caesar-like end that would have been for Jack Gibbons—death from a stranger in another stranger’s home. But the Lady called Luck hadn’t deserted him yet.
“He’s all mine,” Gibbons said quietly, moving with confidence to the staircase, starting to mount the steps.
Mulchay tugged Buchanan along the upper corridor and led him into a kind of storeroom in a makeshift attic. He went to the single window, unclasped the shutters and pushed them outward.
“Can ye get your good leg over the sill?” he asked. “There’s a thin cornice and a sloped roof.”
“We both can’t make it,” Buchanan said in a weakening voice. “Go on, and good luck.”
“If it’s as far as you can go,” Mulchay announced, “it’s as far as I can go.” They both could hear the steady fall of Gibbons’ boot heels ascending the stairs.
“Well, so long,” Mulchay said, “whatever your name is.”
“Buchanan.”
“My pleasure, lad, to know ye briefly and to go out of this life by your side.”
“The window,” Buchanan said wearily, feeling that he was being blackmailed into moving. “Let’s go.”
He went through the opening somehow, somehow steadied both legs on the ten-inch cornice while he leaned against the shingled roof and edged slowly toward the outline of the building next to this one. Angus got out there, too, and quietly reclosed the shutters.
The old man began inching his way along, not daring to look down at the street below. He knew without looking that there were two men guarding the front door, a scant twenty feet down, and the slightest sound that attracted their attention up here signed his death warrant.
Then his foot dislodged a pebble, and he choked back a gasp as the small stone rolled over the cornice. Mulchay heard it strike the wooden sidewalk and bounce. A long, long second went by. Another. But there was no roar from a gun, no bone-shattering bullet—and Mulchay found he was almost bursting his lungs from the breath he still held.
He resumed following Buchanan, inches at a time. The building adjoining Ferguson’s house was Smith’s hardware store, some four feet lower than the home, but flat-roofed. Buchanan lowered himself to it and helped Mulchay down.
“Pray for us now,” Angus whispered, moving to a metal door that was set into the roof itself. “Pray that my friend Tom Smith is a careless man.” He bent down, grabbed the handle and tugged at it. The door held fast.
“He’s not careless,” Mulchay said, defeated.
Buchanan pulled at the stout handle, hard, but the iron bolt on the other side yielded not at all.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now we’ve had it,” Angus told him. “There’s no other way down from here.”
It seemed to Rosemarie MacKay that terror was piled upon terror. Buchanan was gone, but she could still see his blood-soaked shoulder, the wound in his leg, felt herself being flung away from him and out of danger. He had fled to safety himself, but his attackers, like wild dogs, charged to the pursuit.
“Rosemarie, are you all right?” Billy Neale asked her an
xiously. “Were you hit?”
“We’ve got to help him!” the girl cried. “Somebody has to help!”
“Who is the fellow? What’s he wanted for?”
“He fought a bully in the Glasgow. Shot him fair ...”
“But aren’t they law officers?” Neale asked, incredulous.
“No! They’re hired killers, and the one in charge was brought here by your own boss!”
Neale shook his head. “Mr. Lord has no need for gunmen,” the cowboy said loyally. “Why, he’s a town councilman.”
“I know what I see and what I hear,” Rosemarie told him. And then the firing commenced again in the alley. “They’ve found him! Oh, God, won’t somebody help?” And she would have run out there herself if Neale and another man hadn’t held her fast.
“What can you do?” Neale shouted at her. “What can anyone do? None of us come here armed, not even the deputy.”
“Let me go,” she demanded. “Let me go! He has to have somebody!”
But Neale moved her toward the front of the hall, away from the sound of gunfire. The crowd in here was of three minds. One group clustered around the body of Rig Gruber, while Deputy Crane—a white-faced, shocked-looking young man—searched in vain for some sign of life. Another bunch huddled along the farthest wall, asking each other what had happened. A third had started to stream out of the place, then quickly came back inside when the shooting recommenced.
“Please take me out of here,” Rosemarie pleaded, too spent to resist the firm hold he had on her. “Please.” That, in fact, struck the cowboy as not a bad idea. If they had him cornered in the alley the fellow might very well duck back in here again. So he led the distraught girl out onto the street, unaware that at the same moment: Buchanan and Mulchay were working their way to Ferguson’s across the alley. Now there was a pause in the firing, but the voice of the man in the white hat came to them.
“He’s in there,” it said. “This time, get him!”
“He’s still alive, then!” Rosemarie cried hopefully. “There’s still a chance for him!”
Neale hustled her quickly across the street, but when he would have moved her to even further safety she struggled against him.