by Jonas Ward
Now speed was everything, and he was a blur of motion as he swung on Numbers one and two, wrapped his great lands around their thick necks and brought their skulls crashing together with a sickening sound that carried loud and clear to the gawking, open-mouthed spectator in the balcony seat
Buchanan let them drop, turned leisurely, expectantly to Number five. But that one had seen enough and he wasn't having any. Not for any forty a month. He backed off, hands upraised before him as though Buchanan carried two guns rather than fists, almost tripped over one of his unconscious friends, then whirled and broke into full retreat.
From the bar came a loud, warm-sounding cheer and Buchanan waved a greeting. "Drink 'er down, boys," he invited. "I got six hundred dollars coming!" But as he turned to collect the bet the smile faded from his face and the blue eyes grew dangerously chill. The slim houseman had drawn a two-barrelled Derringer, had it leveled at Buchanan’s heart.
"You ain’t won a thing, cowboy," he said tensely. "Get out or get killed."
A six-gun roared three times, and three times the man's body jerked convulsively. He was dead as he fell to the floor. A dark-bearded, heavy-set individual stepped from his place at the bar, holstering the Colt as he came.
"Obliged to von," Buchanan said.
"Hell, fun is fun," that one growled, rolling the dead man on his back with the toe of his boot "What'd you say the snake owed you?" "That debt's paid, friend."
"Anything else you need?"
"Yeah," Buchanan said, "an introduction to Ruth Stell."
His new friend looked around at the silently staring crowd, pointed his arm at a brunette woman who had been dancing. "Step over here, Ruthie," he commanded, "and meet a man for a change."
Ruth Stell hesitated, looked to the balcony for instructions. But Queenie, white-faced, kept her own gaze riveted on Buchanan.
"Come on, Ruthie," the bearded man shouted. "Since when are you so bashful?" The brunette moved from her companion, came toward them with an expression of defiance and a confident sway of hips that was obviously feigned.
"You lookin' for me?" she asked tartly. Buchanan found a kind of prettiness in her face, but hardness, too, and a whore's calculating eyes. Her best attraction was her figure, but the tall man doubted if it was worth a hitch in Huntsville.
"You seen enough?" she snapped, a hand on her hip.
Buchanan nodded. "Where can I find Rig Bogan?" he asked.
Suspicion flooded her. "What's Rig to you?"
"A kid I used to know."
"Well, he ain't no kid now."
"So I hear. Where can I find him?"
"He don't want to see anybody."
"He'll want to see me," Buchanan said. "I got something for him."
"What?"
"Money," he said, and smiled at the magic change that worked.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" she said in an entirely new voice. "Come on, I'll take you to him."
She had attached herself to his arm like an eager leech, but Buchanan held back for another moment, extended his hand to the bearded man.
"The name's Buchanan," he told him, "and I hope I can return the favor."
Tm Jeb Wilson," the man said in his gruff way, "and you can do yourself a favor by staying away from that Bogan maverick. Nothin' but a drunk and a deadbeat."
Of all the estimates of Jess Bogan's boy that Buchanan had heard, this one from Jeb Wilson counted the hardest. Rig was more even than a fellow West Texan. He was Big Bend, born and raised, and Buchanan's best recollection of him was a friendly, gangling, freckle-faced kid that his own bunch, two and three years older, let tag along on whatever business they were about. He was the sheriff's son and that gave him a certain standing, but to hear what he had made of himself was a real discouragement.
"There's going to be a change in Rig Bogan," Buchanan told Jeb Wilson. "You'll be proud to know him, one day soon."
"Could be," Wilson said, gazing around the floor at the wreckage of Queenie's feared riot squad. "I saw something else happen tonight that I didn't believe possible."
Buchanan bid him good-by, tipped his Stetson toward lie balcony in a good-natured gesture of peace, and let Ruthie Stell lead him out. When they reached the street he quite expected they would turn uptown, but they went left, instead, deeper into the dark and unpromising heart of La Villita. They came, finally, to a shabby gray frame house—a sagging shack, really—and she started inside.
"He lives here?" Buchanan asked, wondering how any Alpine son could choose this when he had the whole Toss sky for a roof.
“I live here," the girl said. "Rig sort of boards, but I never see no rent money." She pushed the creaking door capes and Buchanan followed her into the musty-smelling room. He made out the outline of a table in the darkness, two chairs.
"Rig?" she called aloud into the opening of the other "Company come to call, Rig!" There was no answer beyond. "I’ll go wake him if I can," she said. "What'd you say your name was?"
"Tell him if s Tom Buchanan. From old Alpine."
She went in there and he could hear her talking to him, urgently, saying "Tom Buchanan" and "Alpine" and "Got money for you, baby." And a voice he had to assume was Rig Bogan's was murmuring groggily, unintelligibly. She kept at him with persistence, and after another full minute a man's form appeared in the doorway. Not so tall as Buchanan, but taller than most men, and Buchanan tried to associate it with the tagalong kid of other, more carefree days.
"Hello, Rig," Buchanan said, his voice sounding especially deep and resonant in this small dark place.
"What the hell do you want with me?" Bogan answered, the drink and sleep making his own voice furry.
"Come on and take a walk outside," Buchanan said, deciding that now was not the time to tell the other man his mission in San Antone.
"Ruthie said you had money for me ..."
"Let's walk a while."
"Walk, hell! I walked for two straight years in Huntsville. Or ain't you heard about that?"
"I heard, Rig."
"Yeah? Who told you?"
"Your daddy told me."
"Pa?" he said, stricken-sounding. "Oh, Jesus, how'd Pa hear it?"
"Lawmen write back and forth. That's what you should have done ..."
"Let's get to the money," Ruthie said, lighting one candle and then a second. Buchanan stared unhappily at what he saw of Rig Bogan now and what he remembered of some ten years ago. Unshaven, haggard-eyed, gone slack around the mouth. He even had to lean against the door frame for support. And the clothes on his back looked as though they hadn't been washed or aired for a month.
"Rig," Buchanan said with his natural candor, "you look like hell."
"Who asked you anyhow?"
"Just give him his money," Ruthie said, "and leave him be. I know how to take care of him."
Buchanan's glance was sardonic. "Don't do me the same favor, ma'am," he requested.
""Give Rig his money," she repeated.
"There is no money," Buchanan told her.
"You said there was!"
"I figured that would make you cooperate some. Come on, Rig, let's get some fresh air."
"Oh, no you don't!" the girl said angrily. "You give him that money right here where I can see it . . ."
"You didn't marry this boy, did you?"
"No, I’m not married to him. But I been keeping him since he got out of prison and I'm entitled to my share.”
"You do any share of his two years at Huntsville?"
“What?"
"Story I heard," the big man said quietly, "Rig did his time on your account. Maybe you owe him a lot of keeping.”
“I don't owe him a goddamn thing! Was it my fault that stingy old man got back from Abilene a night earlier? Did I put the knife in Rig's hand and tell him to use it?"
"I wasn't there, ma'am," Buchanan said. "Come on, Rig.”
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Bogan said, straightening his body and taking a step toward Ruthie. "What the do you mean, you didn't pu
t the knife in my hand?"
“I didn’t!”
Bogan's liquored eyes widened. "By Christ, you believe it, don’t you? You believe the story we made up . . ."
“Nothing was made up! You had me on the bed and Sam came in! He said some mean, nasty things and you killed him.”
“He said for you to take the dress you got married in and get out of his house," Rig told her in a monotone. "I was drunk but I remember that. Next thing I knew I had a knife, and you were screaming your head off and pushing me toward the old man…”
“Lies, lies "* she screamed now and Buchanan had his own opinion of how it could have been that wild night.
“You're a dirty, lying sonofabitch!"
An animal sound broke from Bogan's throat, but before he could get at her Buchanan's arm encircled his chest, held him off.
"How about that fresh air, old buddy?" he asked him.
“Yeah," Rig said. "It suddenly sounds real good."
"Go on, get out!" Ruthie screeched furiously. "And don't think you're ever coming back! Not if you crawl to me on your knees!"
"Don't hold your breath till that happens, ma'am," Buchanan advised her. "This boy don't know the meaning of the word." He took Bogan out of there, with her voice following them clear up the street, and then it was gratefully silent, with a comfortable silence between the two men. Finally Rig broke it.
"Crazy," he said.
"What is?"
"Ruthie. Ruthie believing that story about the knife. Hell, she made it up her own self that very night."
"Forget it, Rig. You're square with the law and you're square with her. Startin' a clean slate."
Bogan laughed, sounding for a moment like the one he knew in the Big Bend. "The warden said something like that the day I left," he said. "It sounds different coming from you."
Two
BUCHANAN HAD TAKEN a room at the San Antonio Hotel, but for a reason he didn't bother to explain to himself that night he bought an extra blanket, rented a horse for Rig, loaded supplies on a pack mule and took off for the Plateau. Bogan didn't protest the trip, asked no questions, and though he slept fitfully beneath the stars, he was up at dawn when the aroma of fresh eggs, bacon, and strong coffee revived old memories of camping out.
They spent the morning fishing trout out of the cold mountain stream, hunted in the afternoon. Rig had the Winchester at the start, but when he missed his first four chances he traded the rifle for Buchanan's Colt. He couldn't hit with Old Reliable, either.
"What I wouldn't give for a drink," he said shakily.
"Here," Buchanan said, offering his canteen.
"Who the hell wants water, man?"
"Not me," Buchanan grinned. "That’s why I filled this with straight Kentucky bourbon." Bogan took the canteen, sniffed it suspiciously, then drank.
"Had you figured wrong, Buchanan," he said then. "Figured you took me up here for the holy roll."
"Pass the jug, boy, to a thirsty man," Buchanan told him, taking the canteen and tilting it in direct proportion to his size.
"You drink regular?" Bogan asked.
"Every chance I get."
"Don't seem to bother you none. Not—not like some fellas."
"Well, I learned me a good trick about whisky."
"A trick?"
"Don't ever drink whisky when things are going bad," Buchanan said sagely. "A beer, maybe, just to cut the dust. But the red eye only when the going is good."
"Yeah," Bogan said thoughtfully, "but how do you keep things going good?" and Buchanan laughed uproariously.
"That," he said with glee, "is another trick altogether."
That brought Bogan into the little joke, and Buchanan noted with satisfaction that his laughter was genuine, unrestrained. It sounded like it might have been a long time since the other man had had a reason to laugh. They passed the canteen back and forth until it was dry, rode back to their campsite, ate a huge supper and were asleep in their blankets before eight o'clock.
They lived in the mountains for the next forty-five days, took their survival from the land when Buchanan's supplies gave out, and the change in Rig Bogan was marvelous. At least Buchanan thought so, though not a direct word on the subject passed his lips.
On the morning, for instance, that his "patient" decided on his own hook to shave, Buchanan commented that seeing the freckles again was the first time he was sure that this was the bona fide Rig Bogan and not an imposter. That was the same morning Rig washed his clothes, went about the camp stark naked until they dried and earned himself the nickname "Apollo" for the next week.
And when Bogan's nerves steadied down, when he could sight and fire the rifle and the revolver with some semblance of his Big Bend learning, ride out alone and return with his share of the next day's food—even then Buchanan's praise was on the light side and wryly humorous, never indicative of the deep pride he felt in the other man's rehabilitation.
He considered his own role in the affair as of relatively small importance, as a happy chain of events that reunited two boyhood chums again, for Buchanan sincerely believed that, sooner or later, Rig Bogan would have halted his downhill slide on his own and made the same physical and mental recovery that he'd achieved during these, past six weeks.
But even though he declined any credit, Buchanan still thought it wiser not to tell Rig he was worth a thousand dollars. He thought so because he was afraid Rig would misjudge his present poverty against the thousand and think he had a lot of money. Which he didn't. It was only good for what Mr. Jess had said, to get him settled down into some honest work.
So Buchanan kept mum and waited hopefully. And on the forty-fourth day his hopes were answered.
"Jezuz," Rig said during dinner. "Jezuz, I wish I had me a little money."
"What would you do with money?" Buchanan joshed.
"I'd buy me a wagon, that's what. And mules."
"You? Driving a wagon?"
"It's a damn good business," Bogan said with some warmth. "Especially out of San Antone, with all that Mexican trade."
"Yeh?" Buchanan asked doubtfully.
"I know what I'm talking about," Bogan insisted. "That's what I was doing when I met Ruthie, driving a wagon. Full load down and a full load back."
"Your own wagon?"
Bogan shook his head. "The Argus Express Company," he said. "But I was starting to save up for my own. Not a big one or anything fancy. Just a little old wagon, painted bright red." His face saddened. "Then I met Ruthie on the Hondo run. Seems like everything went bad from then on."
"How much does a wagon cost?"
"Oh, five or six hundred. Another hundred for mules."
"How much would you make on a trip?"
"Well, you wouldn't want to take a little wagon clear down into Mexico," Bogan explained. "You'd run a kind of shuttle service."