by Jonas Ward
“Remember passing it a week or so ago," the fellow said, “Going south with a load of cotton. That the one?"
That was the one all right. Shadows grew longer, dusk fell, and a disappointed Buchanan bought himself a quart of bourbon and took it to the bar at the San Antonio Hotel. The bottle was some two fingers lighter when company arrived.
"I see you're buying the first drink," Honest John Magee said pointedly.
"Help yourself, mister," Buchanan told him glumly. "He'll be here tomorrow, sure."
"Will he?"
"Bright and early. He knows he's expected."
Magee downed his drink, raised his eyes to Buchanan's face. "Bogan ever tell you about working for the Argus Express Company?" the broker asked in a careful voice.
"Sure he did. Why?"
"Ever say why he was fired?"
"On account of the trouble he got into—killing that fellow in Hondo . . ."
Magee was shaking his head. "He was fired a month before that happened," he said. "For stealing."
Buchanan studied the speaker. "I hope you can back that up," he said quietly.
"The law was never brought into it," Magee answered. "It was settled quietly by Amos Ferguson, who owned Argus, and Bogan. Seemed that Amos knew Bogan's father from someplace. A sheriff, isn't he?"
Buchanan nodded. "What was Rig accused of stealing?"
"A shipment of axes. A wagonload of them. His story was that he was jumped by agents between here and Hondo. A story that didn't hold up so far as old Amos was concerned."
"Why not?"
Magee poured them both a drink. "A fellow comes to you with patches in his britches and you give him a job for seven dollars a week. His room and board are five, and he buys himself some boots and work clothes. Then a load he's delivering gets hijacked. Axes. Easy to get rid of and impossible to identify."
"So?"
"So you happen to be over in Hondo one Saturday night. Sitting at a dark table in the back of this saloon is this seven-a-week driver of yours. He's sitting with this married woman and the/re drinking good whisky, not beer. And instead of those work pants and worn boots he's sporting an outfit that must have cost sixty dollars. And when he leaves the place he and the woman drive off in a brand new shiny rig. Well, what would you think happened to those axes?"
Buchanan seemed absorbed in the three interlocking circles his finger was tracing on the bar top. But Magee hadn't invented any story about Rig. Why should he? And "the little he had seen of Ruthie Stell was enough to know that she was the woman men like Bogan turn bad over. Buchanan met the other man's gaze, looked deep into it.
"You figure your cotton is gone?" he asked him.
"It was worth ten thousand in gold to my customer in Matamoros," Magee replied. "That's an awful lot of temptation for the wrong man."
Buchanan set his empty glass down, swung away.
"Where you going?" Magee called after him.
"South, mister. To Matamoros. But I will be back."
"I know you will," the broker said.
Buchanan rode out of San Antone within twenty minutes. On his hip rode a Colt. In the saddle boot was a Winchester. Marshal Grieve watched him go with satisfaction.
That," he said aloud, "is more natural."
Three
IN A COUNTRY of big men, they called this one Big Red. In a fierce society where only the strongest had the right to lead, no man of his band ever challenged the rule of Big Red Leech. And it had been that way for three years now, ever since the end of the war when Leech, with customary boldness, declared that his personal spoils of victory was the deserted mission near El Indio. Rechristened Fort Leech, fortified with cannon and manned by ten hand-picked veterans of the First Missouri Cavalry, Leech sallied forth from this stronghold to pillage, rob, rape and kidnap the Mexican population for fifty miles around. Those who could move out of the region did so in terror. Those who couldn't, and wanted to survive, made arrangements with Leech to pay him a regular tribute, a tax, and for that enjoyed "protection," both from the Leech Gang and the roving Mexican bandits. There were a few towns, though, that resisted. These he leveled, ruthlessly, and when the Governor of the State of Coahuila sent his personal army against Fort Leech, the ex-Missouri cavalryman leveled that, too.
For three years he took everything he wanted—their money, their food, their wine, their women—and withstood every effort to drive him out or capture him. The gang, however, changed personnel from time to time and for various reasons. Some got themselves killed, either by Mexicans or by a fellow bandit. Some grew weary of the hot, humid climate and crossed over into Texas and headed north. Some even fell out with Big Red and either just did get away or filled a fresh grave. Others, like the Perrott brothers and Sam Gill, left the gang for brief periods—leaves of absence—and went to raise hell elsewhere.
All this was known about Leech to the delegation of four merchants who had chartered a stage in Brownsville and were journeying to see him. They had gotten word to Fort Leech that they had a proposition for him and Leech, curious, not only guaranteed them safe entry and return but had them personally escorted across the Rio.
They were men of strength in their own right, these four. That they were still survivors of the jungle that was Brownsville proved that. But the nearer they got to Fort Leech the more their apprehensions grew, the more they doubted the wisdom of the long trip to this rattler's nest. Supposing he didn't accept their proposition and decided instead to hold them all for ransom. Ezra Owens could just see his partner back in Brownsville laughing uproariously at such a demand. Bert Bronsen thought about being held, too, but he was even more concerned about the tales of Leech's monumental drinking bouts, drunks that were reputed to last for weeks on end, and when the fog of whisky finally cleared there was carnage al around. Leech, it was said reliably, had personally killed a hundred men in the past three years. Even in Brownsville, Bronsen knew, life wasn't that cheap a commodity. Not even their legendary sheriff, John Lime, slaughtered in that style. The other two businessmen in the delegation, Ed Boone and Brad Hagood, told themselves they would be happy to be on their way back.
Then they were entering the converted mission itself, staring out at the up-to-date fortifications, the ready-looking array of cannons and U.S. Army-stolen equipment, and it was too late now to be worrying about being in the hands of Big Red Leech. The coach was driven into a court yard, where a few men lounged in the shade, some still wearing remnants of the uniform they had fought the war in, but for every male present there were at least half dozen girls in evidence—Mexican, Indian, even African and the envoys wondered if Leech was experimenting along the lines of that Brigham Young fellow over in Utah.■<
A light-skinned, sloe-eyed Negress, in fact, opened the massive door to the main house to them, startling them with the uninhibited casualness of her bared torso. Nor could she be wearing much more below than the bright-flowered skirt, they decided, as the girl led them down the corridor. She stopped at a pair of double doors and knocked softly.
"Come on in!" a voice bellowed from the room beyond and she threw the doors open. Their first view of Red Leech made the descriptions of him seem pale and inadequate. From the place where his great booted feet were planted on the tile floor the red-bearded, green-eyed behemoth appeared to rise until it almost seemed that his great thatch of red hair brushed the ceiling. In one freckled fist he held a demijohn of wine by its throat, in the other a tortilla that had been baked to his own proportions. There were two other men in the room, mere six-foot, two-hundred pounders, and the same ratio and intermixture of females they had seen outdoors. In Matamoros, Bert Bronsen recalled strangely, there was an old recluse who kept cats. Scores and scores of cats. Cats wherever your glance happened to fall. Leech kept women. Every size and shape and coloring—and each one naked to the waist.
"Help yourself, boys!" Leech roared, pointing with the tortilla to a marble-topped table containing more jugs, quarts of white corn and dark bourbon. "Help yourself
to anything!" he added with ear-shattering hospitality, waving the tortilla around with nice indiscrimination at his assortment of women.
"I, ah, could do with a little drink," Ezra Owens said, crossing the threshold of the big, airy room. "Been a long, hot trip."
"You said it, brother! Well, come on in, boys! Nobody gonna eat you!" A wolfish grin parted the red beard. "Not yet!" he added, then laughed with a kind of uproarious ominousness.
"We don't eat 'em, do we, Lash?" he asked one of his lazily reclining lieutenants.
"Sure don't, Big Red," Lash Wall answered. "Not till you give the word." As he spoke his sardonic gaze was on Branson, measuringly.
"We respect your word, Leech," the merchant said. "We know we'll come to no harm here."
"You said it, brother! Safe as church in Fort Leech!" "Then he laughed again, disturbingly."Which is just what it used to be!" he boomed. Leech ordered two of the girls to make drinks, which they served in sterling silver cups that had once graced a hacienda in San Carlos. The delegates from Brownsville took them, tried not to stare at the jutting breasts. All but Bronsen were regulars of Maude's on Harbor Street, men of the world, but there was a somewhat exotic difference about the nudity here that made them feel inadequate, shy as schoolboys. Ed couldn't shake the weird sensation that he had stepped from the stagecoach into a tale from the Arabian Nights.
"Comin' on siesta time!"Leech said in his powerful, blasting voice. "What's the deal—a bank?"
“A bank?" Bronsen repeated.
"That was the proposition down in Laredo," Leech said, Jasper wanted me to rob the bank." He roared a laugh. “Sent Lash down to nose around. Y'know what? It was the damn jasper's own bank. He'd picked it clean and wanted me to pull his iron out of the fire."
"Did you?" Ezra Owens asked.
“Like hell, brother! But we touched the jasper up some. How much, Lash?"
“Five thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars," Lash answered boredly. "Heard later he hung himself."
“The wages of sin, boys! Is it a bank job?"
"Certainly not," Bronsen answered stiffly. "Everyone of us has shares in the Bank of Brownsville. We built it from nothing.”
“Then you want the law took off your back?" Leech said. "Like we done two years ago up to Del Rio for the gamblers.”
“I heard rumors about that," Ed Boone said hollowly. “Was that when you killed Sheriff Genova and his two deputies?”
"For how much?" Leech asked his man.
"A thousand a man," Lash answered in the same indifferent voice.
"With satisfaction guaranteed, boys," Leech said, "or it don't cost a red cent. That your problem—too much law?"
"No," Bronsen said. "It's much bigger than that, Leech. Bigger stakes, I wager, than anything you've been offered."
"Then spill it, brother! This is when I siesta!"
"Could we, ah, have a little more privacy? It's hard to speak freely with such, ah, distractions."
"You said it, brother! Everybody vamoose. Out!"
The girls and the other man left immediately. Lash Wall stayed as he was, sat a little straighter, perhaps, with the six-gun easier to get at. The visitors from Brownsville found seats for themselves and Bronsen began talking.
"What do you know about the Mexican trade, Leech?"
"That it's boomin' down your way, brother."
"Do you know any figures—say for the past two months?"
"Hell, that ain't my line!"
"One hundred thousand dollars," Bronsen said, "in cotton alone."
"Say, that's all right!" Leech said, exchanging a sly glance with Lash Wall that made Ezra Owens' heart skip a beat.
"No, Leech, it isn't all right at all," Bronsen told him. "Of that hundred thousand we realized less than half. The rest went to the Mexican officials—the governor, the politicians, the generals—every man who could get his hand in our pocket."
"Why, the dirty jackals!" Leech protested piously.
"Yes," Bronsen agreed, "and we've decided that it’s high time we had a free trade over the border. We want to be able to ship our goods and make our fair profit."
"That's my motto, brother! Get your fair share every time. So what are you gonna do about it?"
"Our plan is twofold," Bronsen said. "First, we declare an embargo . . ."
“How's that?"
"We ship nothing at all across the river. Let's say for a period of sixty days. And then," Bronsen added, "we send everything across. For two weeks, day and night, we move our goods to our customers. That, Leech, is where you come in. We want to hire you and your men to convoy those goods."
Leech looked at the merchant, scowling. "For how much, brother?"
"For ten cents on every dollar received."
"Ten cents?" the outlaw roared. "What kind of piker you take Red Leech to be? Ten cents!"
"We plan to sell a million dollars worth," Bronsen replied quietly. "Your ten cents add up to one hundred dollars."
The bright green eyes sparkled. "Well, brother, that’s more like it!" He swung to Lash Wall. "How's that sound. boy?"
"We’ll be working for our money, Big Red," the other one drawled. "And we're going to have to import a lot more gunslingers than we got at the fort now."
"How many men have you got here?" Bronsen asked.
"Seven, eight, ten," Leech said. "They come and go."
“Ten?" Bronsen echoed. "I was under the impression your band was much larger than that."
"What for?" Leech said. "Mister, you collect yourself fane live hundred Mexican soldiers like the governor did a year back. Give me Lash here, and maybe two others. Then you come and try to move us out of my fort. You try!”
"But this operation's different, Big Red," Lash pointed out. “They want us to get their goods across the Rio. We'll be working two hundred miles from Fort Leech, out in the open.”
Leech rubbed his beard. "Well, we'll send for boys then. Get me about thirty good ones."
“At least," Lash said.
“How long will it take to assemble them?"
"Hard to judge, brother. They're pretty spread out."
"A month?"
"Could be. Yeah, a month."
"And how long to get them to Brownsville?"
"Three, four days."
"Well, that ought to work into our plans perfectly," Bronsen said. "Do we have a deal?"
"A deal is what you got," Leech said, suddenly yawning. "See you in Brownsville."
The delegation left the room, climbed back into their stage and rode out of Fort Leech.
Big Red was already sprawled out on the oversized divan for siesta.
"Who all do you want to send for?" Lash asked.
"Make out a list. We'll go over it tonight."
"Sure thing."
"Be certain to put the Perrott brothers down. And Sam Gill."
"They were cuttin' up around Uvalde last I heard. Want me to start Pecos ridin' right now?"
"Anything you say, Lash. Only let me sleep till dark."
"Who gets to wake you?"
"Conchita, I think. Or Marie. Hell, I can't keep track."