by Jonas Ward
“Notice you move awful stiff,” Fargo told him when he returned. “And you’re limpin’.”
“Got myself shot up some.”
“By the gent you buried?”
“No. That one died of over-confidence. Had me pegged for a sheepherder, or something.”
“But he had friends along?”
“I don’t know whether he had friends or what. They all belonged to some kind of organization.” He had the day’s first cigarette made and Fargo struck a match for him.
“So you didn’t have a good time at all,” the old man said, sounding as unhappy about it as if it had been himself.
Buchanan caught the note of sadness and grinned. “Had my moments, too,” he told Fargo. “Drank something called Scot’s whisky—not much kick to it.”
“I tasted some once, over in Frisco.”
“And danced with a good-lookin’ woman,” Buchanan said, watching Fargo’s face brighten.
“Well, that’s more like it! She have a bosom?”
“She had everything she ought to—and the whitest teeth you ever saw.”
“Good for her. Got to walk her home, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“How come?” Fargo asked, crestfallen again, and Buchanan wished now he’d embroidered, given the old-timer something to think about during the lonely nights.
“I would have,” he amended. “Had it all fixed in my mind to walk her home.”
“But why didn’t you?”
“Because that’s when I got plugged,” he answered apologetically.
“Damn their hides, anyhow! Say—you wasn’t even armed!”
“Borrowed as I went along.”
“What kind of town they runnin’ down there, I’d like to know,” said the outraged Fargo. “Feller comes down to put a little money into circulation and they shoot him! You weren’t drunk and disorderly, were you?”
“Hell, I didn’t have time. All I played was just one hand of draw—and you should’ve seen that, Fargo. Go in with a pair of ladies and wind up with queens full.”
“Man, I’ll bet that took the pot.”
“No.”
“No! Somebody beat a full house—full of queens?”
“That’s what the man claimed.”
“Oh,” Fargo said. “The one you buried. Now Fm beginnin’ to get the straight of it. Town’s full of tinhorns ...”
Buchanan shook his head again. “The town’s fine,” he said. “Couldn’t be friendlier. But you ever hear of a Captain Gibbons? Black Jack Gibbons?”
“That’s somehow familiar,” Fargo said, pulling at his ear reflectively. “Sure it is. Seems to me there was saloon talk around Paso last winter, just before I hooked up with you. Feller named Gibbons was recruitin’ a private army. Gonna start a new war with Mexico, or somethin’ crazy like that.”
‘What’s he got against Mexicans?”
“Don’t like chili and beans, maybe. Hell, who knows why some people always got it in for others?”
“I guess,” Buchanan said, snubbing the butt beneath his heel. “Well, I came back to mine gold. Better get at it.”
“Not in your shape,” Fargo said. “Shouldn’t even’ve come back so soon.”
“Stiff, is all,” the big man said, but Fargo noted that he hefted the pickax left-handed.
“Should be down there in a feather bed,” he said.
“You don’t know the worst of it,” Buchanan said mock-seriously. “Black Jack Gibbons run me out of town.”
“The hell he did.”
“I’m here.”
“I know why you’re here, Buchanan. Listen, I’ve had you under close watch for five hard months. Got you figured complete.”
Buchanan laughed at him. “That’s just twice the figuring I’ve done in thirty years ...”
“... and if it weren’t on account of me you’d never have climbed back up this Godforsaken mountain.”
Buchanan laughed again. “If it weren’t on account of you, you fast-talking old spellbinder, I’d still be in El Paso.”
“Doin’ what?”
“As little as the law allows.”
“Maybe you’re right at that. Maybe you don’t know half what you should about yourself.”
“No argument there. Come on, let’s get to work.”
“Forget work,” Fargo said. “If last night was Saturday then this is Sunday. And on Sunday the Lord rested. Now, if you were in El Paso do you know what you’d be doin’?”
“Resting, just like every other day “
“Like hell!”
“Then what?”
“Makin’ other men richer than they were, that’s what! Boy, you just don’t have the first idea about yourself. A man with some plan in his mind, some project to pull off—he sees you and you’re hired. It’s good as done.”
“Some project like axing a mountain down to sea level?”
“Sure! Or somethin’ simple, like ramroddin’ somebody’s herd to Cimarron without losin’ a head. Or ridin’ shotgun out of Nevada City ...”
“Those jobs still open?”
“They sure as hell are, and will be. And you’d’ve been sucked right into ’em, layin’ down your life to make another man rich.”
“Well, you saved me from that, old friend.”
“You’re damn right I did! You’re working for you, now, Buchanan. Every time you swing that pick you’re making your own self richer.”
“Then let’s get swinging,” Buchanan suggested.
“On the Lord’s Day? God damn it, boy, don’t you read your scripture?”
“I’ll catch up on it when I’ve made myself rich, like you just said I would.”
“All right, all right,” Fargo said, going for the small, sharp-nosed hammer he used to separate the gold-bearing veins from the blocks that Buchanan axed out of the mountainside. “But this is the day He rested, and so should we!”
They worked all day, and that night Buchanan crawled gratefully into his blankets hurting and exhausted—too weary even to consider a return visit to Scotstown. Which was exactly as he had planned it.
Eleven
In the first fifteen days of its occupation of the Big Bend’s river ranches, Gibbons’ Militia had summarily hung nine “invaders,” killed twelve “escapees” out of hand, and imprisoned twenty more in the hastily erected, barbed-wire compound on the outskirts of town. Helpfully to the campaign that Malcolm Lord kept telling his fellow citizens about, some half-dozen of the prisoners had actually been apprehended in the act of rustling four head of Angus Mulchay’s small herd. Unlike the others who had been taken before them, these Mexicans could not plead that Mulchay had invited them to take the beef. In the eyes of all Scotstown they were plainly guilty of a hanging offense—inasmuch as Mulchay had left the Big Bend two weeks before.
At Lord’s suggestion, Gibbons allowed the hapless rustlers to be tried in open court. It had all the trappings and appearances of a fair, Texas-style trial, except that Lou Kersh made a surprising appearance for the defense—as court interpreter—and he managed to “interpret” some very damaging admissions for the accused men without the jury fully realizing just who Lou Kersh was.
One of the Mexicans, to cite an example, was telling the jury, via Kersh, that if he were given a chance to go back across the border he would return dutifully to his wife and family. “Mi mujer y ninos,” he said.
With a straight face Kersh defined mujer rightfully as “woman.” And then proceeded to tell the jurors that the man had crossed the border for a woman. Another prisoner explained that he had money to pay Mulchay for the steer, but that Mulchay wasn’t at home and hunger got the best of him. “Yo tuve hambre,” he told the interpreter plaintively. “I was hungry.”
“He says he was hungry for a woman,” Kersh said in a loud, clear voice.
The jury deliberated for thirty minutes, and voted them all guilty with no recommendation for mercy. Special Judge Gibbons ordered them to be hanged at sunset—and so it appeared on
the trial record duly signed by Councilmen Lord, Butler and MacPike.
That trial—its cloak of rightness and righteousness—plus the continuing absence of Mulchay—which became a kind of admission of guilt in a conspiracy against his neighbors—persuaded Malcolm Lord to advance the timetable for his master plan to annex the riverland to his Overlord holdings. Two days later squads of Gibbons’ Militia began making official calls on the far-flung ranches of Mulchay’s friends—the Tompkins, the Alreds, the Bryans and the MacKays.
Captain Gibbons himself led six hostile-looking horsemen to the MacKay place, ordered them to stay mounted while he climbed the porch.
This was a hot, breezeless Tuesday and Rosemarie answered his knock.
“What will you have with us?” she asked through the screened door, holding a hastily-donned wrapper closed at her throat.
“May I come in?” When the man thought it was worth the effort—as he did now—Gibbons could project a very powerful, very virile personality.
“My uncle is not in the house,” the girl said. “Perhaps if you returned later ...”
“My business concerns both of you,” Gibbons said, blandly opening the door. “But what’s needed even more urgently is some water. May my men use the well?”
Rosemarie had stepped back into the room, against her will. “Yes, they may,” she said in answer to the question.
“Draw yourselves some water,” Gibbons called over his shoulder, then crossed the threshold in the casual manner of a familiar visitor. “Ah, it’s cool in here,” he said. “Very comfortable.” He looked at her, wondered what, if anything, she wore beneath the thin cotton robe.
“I have a great many things to do, Captain Gibbons.. If you’ll come back in the afternoon I’m sure my uncle will be here.”
“Does it unsettle you so much—a strange man in your house?”
“I’ll not pretend you’re welcome here, if that’s what you mean.”
Gibbons laughed. “Well, that’s playing the cards face up,” he said lightly, then proceeded to lower himself onto the sofa. “And why am I unwelcome to you?” he asked.
“Because you are an evil man,” Rosemarie told him bluntly. “And I want you to leave at once.”
Instead of leaving, Gibbons crossed his legs, took a long cigar from a pocket inside his riding coat.
“Either you leave or I do!” the girl said with heat in her voice. Gibbons lit the cigar carefully, let his glance roam over her face and figure at will.
“I wouldn’t walk out into that yard, miss,” he said. “If my men thought you were no longer under my special protection ...”
“I was never under your protection, special or otherwise!”
“Ah, but you are. And so far it’s kept you from becoming—how should I say—common property.”
Her hand went to her face, as if he had struck her. “What a horrible, horrible thing for a man to say ...”
“It wasn’t my intention to shock you, girl, but to acquaint you with a fact. Regardless of all the good they’re accomplishing here, my men are still soldiers. Any woman would attract them, but with your—ah—endowments ...”
“Stop it!” Rosemarie cried at him. “Get out of this house without speaking another indecent word!”
“You’re very excitable, aren’t you?” Gibbons asked, his studied mildness like a goad. “Even more than I’d imagined you’d be.”
“I don’t want you to imagine anything about me! I don’t want you to think of me in any way, ever!”
“It would be easier to quit breathing altogether.”
“Get out!” she ordered him again. “Get away from me!”
No man of Gibbons’ ego could take such open reproach indefinitely. Now he climbed to his feet, and the look of mock-amiability dropped from his face, revealing the naked desire that had been there from the moment he had stood in the doorway.
“Another woman in your place,” he told her severely, “would be grateful.”
“Grateful? If I had a whip in my hands I’d show you my gratitude!”
The words, the scorn, the total rejection—all of it came together against the man’s own conceit, and snapped what little was left of his reserve. With a kind of grunting noise deep in his throat he moved toward the girl, reaching out swiftly with both hands. But his eyes had signaled the attack and she stepped backward, swung away from him and broke for the nearby kitchen. Gibbons’ grasping fingers caught in a fold of the loose wrapper, closed tight over the light material and wrenched it furiously. The gown, hand sewn, was ripped apart, baring the twisting, struggling girl from hip to shoulder. The man held fast, tried to tear it away entirely, and then the girl turned back against him, swung with her considerable strength and caught him flush on the cheekbone with the heel of her open palm.
Gibbons fell back, dazed for that moment, and Rosemarie lashed out at him again. Better to have run, for half the victory in the first blow was its very surprise. Gibbons all but invited the next one, the better to imprison both her arms, to close her half-naked, unyielding body against him.
“Fight me,” he said raggedly, his lips pressed to her ear. “The harder you make it, the sweeter the victory ...”
The girl intended to make it as sweet as she possibly could. Both hands clawed at her tormentor’s face, left their mark in his flesh. At the same time she kicked at him, then brought the hands up again, into his hair, tried to pull it loose by the very roots.
Gibbons, in his passion, was immune to pain or indignity. He stripped the robe completely away and bore her back to the divan with a relentlessness that was overpowering.
It was not a silent struggle, and the sounds of it drew the militiamen from their labors at the well to the porch of the house. Not one of them felt any compulsion to interfere. They had all seen the beautiful girl who worked at the Glasgow, and made the same snap judgment as Hamp Leach. That made what was happening to her now a kind of sport—a soldier’s pastime—and they envied the man involved.
But one of them, a man named Apgar, chanced to look around, and spotted the two riders bearing down on the place. Two coming on with an unmistakable urgency, and neither one belonging to Gibbons’ Militia.
“Look sharp!” Apgar shouted the alarm. “May be trouble!”
“Who the hell are they?”
“May be trouble,” Apgar warned again. “Hey Cap—Cap’n Gibbons! Two riders out here!”
Gibbons heard, whirled furiously from the writhing, twisting Rosemarie, and crossed to the door. The animal look was still strong in his face, but as he watched the determined approach of the two horsemen he brought his thoughts to heel.
“Spread yourselves,” he ordered. “Get off the porch and fan out around the yard.” The bright sun made the pupils of his eyes contract swiftly, and now he could make out one of the riders. The missing old man, Mulchay—and in the moment of recognition he thought he knew where the troublemaker had been and what he was up to.
“Stand fast,” Gibbons called to his deploying men. “And by God be ready to fight!” He turned back into the room for a moment then, just as the bitterly sobbing girl ran into her own bedroom. The door slammed shut.
“A good idea, if you stay there,” Gibbons said warningly. “If you don’t, there may be a life on your hands.” He went out of the house to stand at the top of the short flight of stairs, his face and the set of his body defiant.
Angus Mulchay wheeled to a stop below him.
“What are ye doin’ here?” the old man asked suspiciously. “Where’s the lass?”
“Not at home to callers,” Gibbons said, but all his attention was on the other horseman, a grim-visaged character with the look of winter in his eyes and the small silver badge of the Rangers pinned to his shirt front. The man himself was noting the number and disposition of the force spread out in a semicircle around the yard.
“I’ll have a word with the lass,” Mulchay announced.
“You’ll wheel right around, if you know what’s best for you,�
�� Gibbons said.
“Your day is done on the Big Bend,” Mulchay answered, continuing to dismount. “Ranger Keroon has your warrant in his pocket.”
Seth Keroon and Jack Gibbons had known each other nearly twenty years, but the men they were seeing now were like two strangers. Mulchay hitched his horse to the porch rail and started up the steps. Gibbons raised his booted foot, shoved it against Mulchay’s chest, and sent him sprawling in the dust.
“I’m all the law that’s needed in the Big Bend,” Gibbons said, speaking directly to Keroon. The Ranger squared his shoulders, as if he could feel the weight of the eyes staring intently at his back, the position of his gun hand.
“The governor sent me to bring you up to Austin,” he said calmly.
“Sam Bradford’s a traitor to Texas,” Gibbons answered. “He’s betrayed the men who died to free us from Mexico.”
“Don’t waste that kind of talk on me, Jack,” Keroon told him. “You and I understand what you’re trying to do down here.”
“If you understand that, Seth, you won’t try to serve any piece of paper on me.”
“But you know I’m going to ...”
“Come back here, you old fool!” Gibbons shouted to Mulchay, diverted by the man’s attempt to circle to the rear door of the house.
“I mean to see the lass,” Angus shouted back. “Somethin’ tells me she’s had trouble with ye!”
“Apgar!” Gibbons called, and the man nearest to Mulchay drew his gun and stood across the old man’s path.
“Let him pass,” Seth Keroon ordered in his quiet voice, and Apgar’s glance went nervously to the famous badge, then to Gibbons’ face for reassurance. He stayed in Mulchay’s way.
“I’m all the law that’s needed,” Gibbons repeated to the Ranger. “Ride out.”
“No,” Keroon said, then swung so that he faced the tense, expectant men behind him. “I’m here to arrest Jack Gibbons,” he told them. “Him alone. If your orders are to interfere, then I rescind them—and I speak for the State of Texas!”
The six of them shifted uneasily. Then one of them spoke.