by E. R. Slade
Buck pressed his advantage, wild in his fury, and battered Olinger with a blizzard of punishing blows. Olinger stumbled back against the bar and braced himself there breathing heavily, apparently having trouble seeing.
The barkeeper had a shotgun, was starting to aim it. Buck leveled his Colt.
“You stay out of this or you’re a dead man,” Buck told him.
The shotgun landed on the bar with a clatter. Buck picked it up in his left hand, tossed it over the batwings into the mud of the street.
Olinger looked sick, holding his belly. Blood ran out of his nose, dripped down the front of his vest.
“You going to do something about them lynchin’ bastards?” A muscle twitched in Buck’s cheek.
Olinger felt of his bloody nose gingerly, still catching his breath.
“Well?” said Buck.
Olinger just stared at him with fiery, mean little eyes.
Buck reached out, grabbed Olinger by the front of his vest and yanked. As Olinger stumbled forward, Buck stepped behind him, gave him a kick, propelling Olinger through the batwings into the street.
Buck looked coldly around at the silent patrons, the barkeeper.
“Anybody else want some?” he asked. “Better take it now if you do, while I’m in a good mood.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Dunderland was there when Buck returned.
“I’ll give you twenty dollars apiece for these men,” Buck said as he strode up. “And you better take it if you don’t want to ride to boot hill inside the hearse instead of outside.”
Dunderland eyed him speculatively.
“There can be no livery horses for that price,” he said.
“Don’t want ’em. But don’t want no damn pigs, either. Nor dogs.” Buck whipped out a twenty-dollar gold piece, flipped it to Dunderland. “I’m deducting forty dollars,” he said, “because I didn’t get what I paid for the last time.”
Dunderland’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t control every cur dog and hog in High Plains,” he said. “And I can’t control Snake Ed or the Texans. The damned livery horses was your idea.”
Buck took Dunderland by the shirtfront, glared at him.
But he thought: bad judgment got me here. No right to take it out on somebody else, even Dunderland.
He let go and realized his hand hurt from the hardness of Olinger’s face.
“All right,” he said carefully. He gave Dunderland the other forty and Dunderland made haste to get out of reach.
“You men can go home to your families,” Buck said. “Be here at six to unload.”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Except for Payson.
“You brace Olinger?” he asked.
“Kicked his butt into the mud.”
“Well, that’s something. See Snake Ed or the Texans?”
“No.”
“You want to go hunt them right now, I’ll side you.”
“You’re a good man, Payson. But we want to be rested up before we tackle them. Won’t be like knocking down those two back in Casper, you know.”
Payson shrugged. “Got to do it sometime.”
“Check on your family and get some sleep.”
~*~
Buck got up Friday morning tired and sore. He’d been awake most of the night. In his mind the lynched farmers still swung against the evening sky. Several times he’d gone out to check the premises, and the barn always made him pause. The bodies were gone, and he’d burned the ropes, but the deaths remained.
“Let us out,” they’d said.
And him foolish enough to hope playing by the rules would be better for them and for himself.
Buck cooked bacon and eggs, but didn’t eat much. At six thirty the farmer who looked after the stock arrived.
“Seen Payson or anybody else headed this way?” Buck asked.
“Nope.” The man wouldn’t look at him.
“They’re late.”
“Yep.” The farmer went about his chores in a hurry and was gone by seven.
Nobody else had shown up.
Buck knew he should go find out what the trouble was, but kept putting it off. He looked down the street every few minutes thinking up good excuses for their absence—trying to ignore the hard knot forming in the pit of his stomach.
Then came a rider cantering in from the south.
When he realized it was Mary Ellen the knot yanked tight. He pictured their house and barn burning, Allen and Martha Parker shot dead ...
She pulled her little pinto mare to the hitch rail in front of the store and jumped down flushed and breathless.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She caught her breath, then said, “I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Did somebody tell you I wasn’t?”
“No, but ...” She swallowed, beginning to look uncertain.
When she didn’t say anything more, he said, “Why don’t you come inside, Miss Parker,” and opened the door.
She went in, hesitant, and looked around as though for reassurance.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked. “I can get a couple of chairs.”
“Oh. No. I mustn’t stay long.” She turned to him, in earnest. “I have very bad news,” she said. “The vigilantes hanged three men last night. One of them was our neighbor. They pinned a note to each of them that said, ‘warning to rustlers.’ Lots of people are packing up and leaving. I’m so glad to see you are all right, Mr. Maxwell. I was afraid that ...”
Buck thought he should ask who the men were. Instead he told her about Horsely, Michael and Tihlman—how they’d shot Smithly, been arrested, then lynched.
“We heard about them being arrested, but I didn’t know they had been lynched.” Mary Ellen was overwhelmed. “People say ... Did Timmy Simms or Jake Calderwood or Warren Norton work for you?”
Buck closed his eyes momentarily. “They all did.”
“Oh, Mr. Maxwell ...” She sat forward as though she wanted to reach out to him. But her hands clasped each other in her lap. “They were the ones,” she said. “Timmy Simms was our neighbor. His poor mother ...”
Buck could see him clutching his rifle, standing guard after the shoot-out in Casper. Always with a ready laugh, willing to work. Had wanted to make enough money to buy a pair of mules to work the little claim he and his mother and two sisters were trying to hang onto after his father died of a fever.
And Calderwood’s wife was sick. Norton had been trying to run his own place, help out Calderwood, and get some credit at the store all at the same time.
“Mr. Maxwell?” The anxiety in her tone brought him out of his thoughts.
“Any others?” he asked. “What about Mack Payson?”
“I saw him this morning at the Simms.”
“He keeps turning out to be right. Last night he was ready to go after Snake and them Texans. I said it was time to get some rest.”
Mary Ellen straightened. “Mr. Maxwell, it’s not your fault.”
Buck couldn’t sit still and went to stand at the window. He wanted to act, accomplish something, but he needed to know what Mary Ellen thought.
He started to talk, told Mary Ellen everything, even about Laurie.
When he got to that part, she came and stood next to him. Emotions ran in and out of her face. He went on headlong like a man in the middle of bulldogging a steer.
Then there was no more to say and he stood looking out the window afraid to glance at her.
“What you have done is amazing,” she said. “You are a very remarkable man, Mr. Maxwell. But do you really think staying here is worth so much killing?”
“I wondered that all night. But there’s another question. What do I owe the families of the seven good men who have died?”
She lowered her head, troubled; then her chin lifted as she looked out the window. There was something about the gesture which drove emotion up his throat.
“Mr. Maxwell, there are places in the world where good people live in peace.”
>
“Why shouldn’t this be one of them?”
“Oh, Mr. Maxwell ...” Tears started in her eyes.
“Miss Parker, I have made some costly mistakes. I should have dealt with Snake Ed right off. I’ve worried too much about the Church Committee and what people think of me.”
“But nobody can do anything about him. Sometimes you have to know when to quit. Sometimes the other side has too much power and the only thing left is to escape while it’s still possible. The big cattlemen are rich and they run the whole Territory. You can’t fight everybody, Buck, that’s only common sense.”
“If the people of this town will stand their ground, it’s the cattlemen who can’t win.”
Mary Ellen turned away. Then back, fighting tears. “If you don’t give up you will get us all killed,” she blurted out. She went to the door, where she paused. “Papa won’t leave if you don’t. He says he owes it to you.”
“Owes what to me?” Buck asked, startled. “He don’t owe me nothing.”
“Because he thought you were on the other side. He says he won’t let you down again.”
They just looked at each other for a few seconds.
Then she came back toward him from the door, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, Mr. Maxwell. I shouldn’t have come at all. It’s just that Mama and I are so frightened. I was hoping you would leave so Papa would, and so that nothing would happen to ... But I have no business asking anything at all of you. I really must go now. I hope you can accept my apologies.”
“So nothing would happen to what?”
She became flustered.
“You,” she said in a strange voice.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was outside before he reacted.
“If you’ll let me get my horse I’ll see you home,” he said.
“That’s not necessary, Mr. Maxwell. Thank you.”
“I’d feel better knowing you got there safely.”
“Mr. Maxwell, I’m afraid I’ve given the wrong impression. I’ve handled things very poorly. I hope you will believe I did not come to ask you to take responsibility for me or for my family. That would not be fair. I had only hoped that ...” Again her eyes began to well with tears. “Goodbye, Mr. Maxwell.”
She got on her pony and he watched her out of sight.
Goodbye, Mr. Maxwell. What did it mean this time?
A few minutes after Buck had gone back into the store, automatically turning the sign to read “open,” Payson came in, his mouth a tight hard line.
“I heard,” Buck said.
“Ready to ride?”
“Where to?”
“Lazy L—where else?”
“We walk into that bunkhouse and start shooting we’ll be hauled back here feet first—if we ain’t just dumped out for the coyotes to work over. Want to think about what’ll happen to your family after that?”
Payson’s face pruned up. “We can’t just let it go on.”
“We ain’t. How many’s leaving?”
“Some. Plenty is staying.”
“They won’t likely have much for guns. Go rent a buggy and load up some rifles and pistols, give ’em to anybody who needs ’em. Find out how many are willing to side us. Tell ’em we’ll have a meeting tomorrow. I got things to do but I ought to be around by the time you get back.”
“Right,” Payson said, and for once he seemed to approve.
~*~
Buck checked the load in his Colt, then took the Winchester from under the counter, made sure it was fully loaded and the action free. He turned the sign on the door to read “closed,” shifted his Stetson forward against the bright sun, and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
The wind whistled and moaned its way through the little town, swinging saloon batwings, gusting trash down the street, banging a loose shutter somewhere.
Buck pressed his hat on harder to make it stay put and looked carefully in both directions before locking the front door. There was hardly a soul on the street.
He went to Hastings’ Dry Goods.
“Why, Mr. Maxwell!” said Hastings, coming out of his office to greet him. There were only Hastings and his two clerks in the store, all of them looking nervous. They eyed Buck’s rifle with concern.
“See business is as slow here as it is at Wyoming Hardware,” Buck said.
“There were lynchings last night.” Hastings’ brow looked damp. “Did you hear about them?”
“I did. Brings it to seven, counting Darholm. I think it’s time Snake Ed and his boys were run off or shot down. What do you think?”
“Mr. Maxwell, I’ve long made it a policy not to take part in such things as this. It is not good for business. The Committee had expected you to install the same policy.”
“All seven men worked for me. They are dead because they worked for me. I intend to put a stop to it.”
“I admire your pluck,” Hastings said. “But I hope you are not here to ask my involvement.”
“I’m here for two reasons. First, to tell you that if you or either of your clerks needs a rifle I’ve got them and I ain’t charging for them. Second, I want you to take in two women while this is going on—they are decent women, in case you’re wondering.”
Hastings frowned, stepped from one foot to the other. “I doubt my wife would approve of any such arrangement. And as I said, I’m not interested in becoming involved in this situation.”
“Hastings, it’s your customers that’s being thinned. The settlers get drove off and there won’t be hardly any town left for you to do business in. What’ll your investment be worth then?”
“Aren’t you somewhat overstating the case, Mr. Maxwell? These kinds of affairs happen from time to time on the frontier. In any event I am not a gunfighter, I am a businessman. I shall leave the shooting to others.”
“And you won’t give shelter to two unprotected women.”
“As I have already said, I really can’t imagine my wife would allow it. I have a responsibility to avoid putting my household at risk.”
Buck lost his temper.
“Call yourself a Christian. Chairman of a committee to build a church. And you won’t even offer help to a pair of decent women in danger?”
Hastings blinked; then his brow lowered. “I’m not obliged to justify myself to you, Maxwell,” he said. “I’m not the one who punched Sheriff Markham, and then shot him over a few cows. Nor did I beat up Marshal Olinger, the duly appointed officer of the law in this town. I’m the man who helped keep you from losing your life savings. I would say you have some distance to go before judging whether or not I am a Christian.”
“Guess I took you for a better man than you are,” Buck said, and turned away. Then he turned back. “You’ll want to know I’m through trading cattle until my brand’s back in the book.”
Hastings, now beginning to lose his temper also, pointed a manicured forefinger at Buck. “By killing Markham you have set off this whole round of lynchings. The Committee expected you to avoid being provocative to prevent just such things from happening. Now you have brought havoc upon this town. I had expected better from you, Maxwell. No, Maxwell, you will not stop trading in cattle, you will stop provoking the cattlemen.”
“Dealing outlaw brand cattle is about the best way to provoke ’em there is,” Buck said, smarting from the blows Hastings had so accurately placed. “And trying to make me deal with rustlers is the best way to provoke me.”
“I need your promise that you will honor your agreement. Or I will be obliged to call a meeting of the Committee.”
“Committee. The lot of you couldn’t drive a milk cow out of a garden plot.”
Buck went out into the blustering wind.
Did most people in town see his actions the way Hastings did?
“Hastings is an idiot,” he muttered, and turned into the stairway leading up to Thompson’s office.
Dirk Thompson looked over his glasses at Buck.
“You’ve been a busy boy,” he said. “Come to make
out your Last Will and Testament?”
That threw Buck for a moment.
“Not really,” he said. “I guess you’ve heard at least some of what’s been going on in this town and elsewhere. I just dropped by to see if you need a rifle. I’m handing them out free to anybody who wants to protect himself.”
“That’s kind of you. Actually, I have a rifle. From the days when I practiced my profession in a town preoccupied with a feud. Most of the business I could drum up had to with representing one side against both their enemies and the law. It was a touchy affair and resulted in a number of altercations. My rifle turned out to be a necessary prerequisite to staying in business. But you should think about a Last Will and Testament. You are not immortal, and the odds are strongly in favor of your becoming intimate with this fact quite soon.”
“If that’s a long-winded way of saying you think they’ll kill me, save your breath. They won’t kill me. I ain’t in the mood for it.”
Thompson’s eyebrows went up.
“Not in the mood for it? That’s an interesting attitude. Your Last Will and Testament needn’t be terribly expensive. And it will ensure that whatever you own will go to the person or persons you wish it to.”
Buck tried to consider that, but his mind wouldn’t work on it.
“If I die whatever I own won’t be worth a piss hole in the snow. So I don’t plan to die.”
“I’ve heard that you have become quite friendly with the Parker girl,” Thompson said. “And ...”
“How the hell did you ever hear that?”
“Word travels fast in a small town. Now, as I was saying, I feel it incumbent upon me to look out not only for your interests but for the interests of those you love ...”
“I think you’d better leave off with that kind of talk. It ain’t any of your affair.”
“I’m only trying to see to it that after you die your estate goes where you want it to—instead of becoming the property of the Territory and turned over to some friend of the Stock Growers’ Association to be used for their benefit.”
“By the time I’m through the Stock Growers’ Association is going to know who to meddle with.”