by Jonas Ward
Went in expecting no surprises and getting none, for if Buchanan had seen this place once in his travels he had seen it a hundred times. A bar against the wall with men hunched over their beers and their whiskies. Tables with older drinkers, men who spoke occasionally to their comrades but for the most part just sat and stared into space, lost in some reverie of the past, some memory of a missed chance. And another table, larger than the rest and better lighted, where the nightly game was played. Blackjack, Hix had said, but the four men sitting around it now were dealing stud. And there was no Cristy, "the pretty gal that deals the games."
Well, Buchanan wasn't going to shine up to her. But he damn well intended to find out what Rig meant by calling this his lucky town. Buchanan figured that one look would tell him if Bogan had found himself a second Ruthie Stell, if he was so delayed getting back because he was selling Magee's cotton on his own and their wagon along with it. One look would tell him that, and then a few hard questions to find out what their plans were, where die figured to join him.
There was a stairway in the back of this saloon, nothing as wide and fancy as Queenie's, but it led directly to a room and the door to that room was shut tight.
"I'd like the steak and potatoes," Buchanan told the bartender, a fellow about his own thirty years and clean shaven. "Not too done." The order was relayed to a Chinaman in the kitchen.
"Drink while you're waiting?"
"How much is the bourbon?"
"Two bits,"
"And how big is the steak?"
"One pound."
Buchanan frowned, deliberating between his keen thirst and his voracious hunger. The bartender waited patiently, almost sympathetically.
"A double bourbon," Buchanan said. The drink was poured in an outsize glass and Buchanan looked his thanks. "Better not let the boss catch you," he said good-naturedly and the barkeep smiled.
"I'm the boss," he said.
"In that case I'm twice obliged, friend. Where do you want me to eat that steak?"
"Any table that suits you."
Buchanan took the drink to one in the rear, sat down in almost complete darkness. The cook brought the steak out within minutes, stood by during the first cut to see if it was too rare. Buchanan's big grin assured him.
"You don't fool me," the big man said.
"Please?"
"You're no restaurant cookie. You worked on a ranch."
"That right, that right. But better here now. Sleep every morning way past dawn. You own big ranch?"
"Not quite yet," Buchanan admitted, taking another cut of meat.
"But by-an'-by," the cook said.
"Oh, sure."
"Big, big ranch. Fifty thousand acre."
"At least."
"Hundred thousand cattle."
"Thereabouts."
"You want other steak now?"
Buchanan suddenly broke into laughter. "No," he said, enjoying the joke on himself. "Can't afford another steak."
The Chinaman laughed along with him. "You still get big ranch," he said and retreated to his kitchen. Buchanan went on with his meal, was draining the last of the strong black coffee when the door at the head of the stairs opened and a girl stepped from the room beyond. Just before she closed the door again he had a glimpse of a bedstead, a table with a pitcher and wash bowl on it, and through Buchanan's mind passed the half-melancholy, half-unpleasant picture of the faceless man still lying there, passed out drunk.
He looked at her now, watched her descend the rather steep stairs, and reminded himself that he was going to need but one look to tell him the answer about herself and Rig Bogan.
Well, he hedged now, she sure wasn't another Ruthie Stell. Not physically, at any rate. This time Rig had gone for the tall, blonde type, with a pale and expressionless face that was like a beautiful mask. A complete change-about from Ruthie Stell, Buchanan conceded, but what man wouldn't try to change his luck after the way that affair had worked out?
Now she was at the bottom of the stairs, turning right and walking toward the card table, and Buchanan had used up that one look by a long margin as he studied the interesting motion of her lithe body beneath the well fitting, short-skirted dress. Who, he asked himself, did she remind him of? And just as she was being seated at the table he remembered.
This girl looked and walked like a woman he had seen in San Francisco. An actress named Roxanne something-or-other. He had seen her twice. Once on the stage, as the heroine of the stupidest play that was ever written. And seen her again the very next night, entering a restaurant on the arm of Dan P. White, the richest man in California. She'd gone on a trip around the world with him, Buchanan had heard, and that was two long years ago. Funny he should have remembered that particular face and that particular walk after all this time.
A gun went off somewhere up the street. A second one, a third, probably a dozen shots in all, and Buchanan was somewhat surprised at the frightened reaction they caused here in this saloon. Couldn't they tell the sound of a .45 being fired into the air? The men at the bar had all swung around to face the swinging doors. The players at the table all held their cards as if frozen. Even the mask-like face of the girl dealer showed emotion—and it was fear. As he watched she turned her head toward the bar and Buchanan caught the anxious glance that she exchanged with the bartender.
Well, that's East Texas for you, he thought. Last night, up in Shelby, gunfire was as natural a sound as barking dogs. A couple of miles further south and the citizens act like they never heard a gun.
The swinging doors opened with a bang and three burly, hard-faced men came through single file, stopped when they were inside and stood shoulder to shoulder, thumbs hooked into their belts. Each pair of eyes looked around the room but it was as though it were one man.
"Any law on the premises?" the hardcase in the middle asked and Buchanan, as he always did, tried to place the speaker's region. A twangy-sounding voice that bit the words off sharp. Missouri, he guessed. Or maybe Kansas. "Sheriff Rivercomb is laid up," someone at the bar answered meekly, and that made the Missourian, or Kansan, laugh.
"Wynt," he said too loudly to the man on his right, "did you go and send word we was comin'?"
"Christ, no, I didn't!" Wynt answered. "You know, Prado, how I like to make these Texas sheriffs jig!"
Missouri, definitely, Buchanan decided, and made himself a little bet on the side that they hadn't come through Shelby with big talk like that.
Now they were walking toward the bar, single file again like ex-soldiers, Buchanan noted, and half a dozen men quickly gave away their places to them.
"Put the bottle on the bar and take your ugly face away," Prado told the bartender. Buchanan straightened up in his chair, his broad face expectant, pantherish. He liked this bartender, felt indebted to him for the extra measure of bourbon. Now he waited for the fellow to give these loudmouths the word—and take his own hand in the fun that would follow.
Instead, the bottle was produced and his new friend faded to the other end of the bar. Buchanan sat back, frowning. At the next table an old man was speaking to his companion, his voice a low, protesting undertone.
"What in the tarnation's goin' on around here, anyhow?" he demanded.
"Shh, Charlie! Keep your voice down!" the other one cautioned in a whisper.
"That's what I mean, dagnabit! For the last two weeks now a person can't hardly draw a free breath in this town! A regular damn parade of these hardcase bullies . . ."
"Shh, Charlie! You want them to come back here?"
"But where they comin' from? Where they goin'? Why do they have to stop in Aura? Look at them standin' there, starin' around like they was the three cocks-of-the-walk and us decent folks was dirt. Just look at their mean faces, Rob..."
"Charlie, you're gonna get us gunwhipped just like poor old John Rivercomb."
"Well, at least John stood up to them two Perrotts, or whatever their names was."
"John is paid to stand up to troublemakers," Rob whispered
back. "He asked to get elected and that's part of the job."
The man named Charlie had chanced to look over his shoulder and spot the huge, somehow formidable figure looming in the semi-darkness above the other table. He turned his head quickly, mumbled something behind his hand to Rob. Rob stiffened in fear, and it was Buchanan's impulse to get up and join them, reassure them about his own peaceful intentions. He pushed his chair back, started to rise, when the voice of the one called Prado took his and everyone else's attention.
"Well, will you looka there, boys!" he shouted nasally, his voice breaking over the other strained, hesitant sounds in the room, his beady-eyed glance directed toward the girl dealing blackjack. Now the silence was complete and every head swung to that table. Including Buchanan, who marked that she blinked her eyes once, then regained her cool composure in the next moment. She looked over the cards of the four players betting against her, made her decision and turned up the hole card.
"King, six," she announced in a clear, professional tone. "Pay seventeen!" Two of her opponents collected, two lost.
She knows the odds, Buchanan thought, and then that annoying voice sounded off from the bar again.
"Pay seventeen!" Prado called over to her in a kind of churlish mockery. "Girlie, I pay eighteen. Whatta you say?"
"Nineteen!" his friend Wynt offered. "What's your bid, Sherm?" he asked the third one.
"For that blonde?" Sherm said. "Twenty-five dollars."
Prado took two steps forward from the bar, swung around to face them.
"Who asked her first?" he said.
"You did, Prado," Wynt said. "Then wait your goddamn turn!"
"Sure, Prado, sure. You, then me, then Sherm."
"Then Big Red," Sherm said and that made them all burst out in raucous laughter.
"After us comes Big Red!" Prado bawled. "We'll take her down for a present!" More laughter.
"Well, let's go, let's go," Wynt said eagerly. Prado turned, stood again with thumbs hooked inside his belt. His gaze was leveled insolently at the girl's profile and now she gave up the pretense of dealing, swung her head to face him.
"Come on over here," Prado ordered. She said nothing, sat motionless, but a sudden rise of her breasts betrayed her fear to every man in the room. "I said to come over here," Prado said again.
Wynt laughed, goadingly. "You ain't doin' so hot, Prado," he taunted.
"We'll see, by damn!" He started forward, his bullneck bowed.
"Leave her be!" the bartender shouted raggedly and in his hands was a double-barrelled shotgun. The man's face was white and the weapon trembled uncontrollably in his grasp. Prado had stopped and now he looked back over his shoulder.
"Get out!" the barman said wildly. "Get out of here, the three of you!"
"Sure," Prado said, his own voice ominously controlled. "We'll get out if you say so." As he spoke he began a sidling movement to his left. The shotgun barrel swung with him, as if drawn by a magnet, kept swinging until the barman could no longer observe Wynt. That one's hairy hand reached out for the bottle, furtively. His fingers wrapped themselves around the neck.
"We'll get out," Prado was still saying. "We'll do whatever you say, buddy."
Several things happened then, so closely spaced they seemed all of one piece.
Wynt's arm flashed overhead, the bottle held like a club.
The girl tried to scream a warning.
From the dark corner in the back of the room a Colt .45 jumped and roared. Wynt was suddenly holding nothing over his head but his fist, which he stared at wonderingly.
Things continued to happen. The bartender whirled around and Prado closed in, tore the shotgun loose from his grip and flung it aside. Now he gave his full attention to the tall figure looming above the table in the corner.
"Fan out, boys!" he snapped, taking a backward step himself, his body in a tight crouch, his gaze as unwavering as a cobra's. Sherm moved away from him, further down the bar. Wynt glided in the opposite direction and now they had their opponent ringed with a wall at his back.
Slick crew, Buchanan thought, revising his estimate of Missouri gunfighters upwards.
The Colt's thundering voice demolished the silence and its big slug took Prado squarely in the middle, slammed him to his knees.
Well, don't look at me like that, brother. You called this tune and now you pay the fiddler.
"Jesus!" Wynt yelled piercingly and Buchanan gave it to him up high, at the collarbone. Wynt turned with his wound and stumbled like a drunken man toward the street, his simple mind unable to cope with the swift and bewildering turn of events.
Buchanan holstered the busy Colt, took two leisurely steps into the brighter light.
"You," he said to Sherm, "get to draw. Let's go."
Sherm filled his barrel chest with a deep breath, licked his dry lips.
"Some other time, brother," he said hollowly. "You're a little too anxious."
"Then pick up the ladies' man and be on your way."
Sherm glanced briefly at the unmoving Prado. "He looks dead to me," he said.
"Bury him then."
Sherm obviously didn't like that, but the alternative had even less appeal. He got Prado under the armpits, dragged him unceremoniously across the saloon floor, through the doors. They swung back and forth on their leather hinges and the soft creaking seemed to be the last sound left in the world. And then Buchanan's heels clicked on the boards as he walked toward the bar. The tall man fished into his pocket, brought out two of his three hard-earned silver dollars and set them down. The barkeep stared at the money then raised his eyes to Buchanan's face. He looked to be in a state of shock.
"What," he asked, "is that for?"
"Double bourbon and a steak dinner. Damn fine cook you got, too. Hang on to him."
The laughter started deep in the bartender's stomach, came bubbling up and overflowed as a geyser of joyous relief. Came from him and was echoed by the next man, the next, spread through that room like nothing else but a prairie fire. Buchanan gazed around at them, heard his simple statement repeated in gleeful tones, and told himself a second time tonight that East Texans were a curious breed.
Now a perfect stranger had hold of his hand and was pumping it like he was trying to raise water. His back was being whacked with great gusto, his forearms squeezed, and into his ears poured a torrent of praise that was not only damn foolish but plain embarrassing. Hell's holy bells, in this town they'd give you a medal for shooting fish in a barrel.
There was a hand suddenly resting in his huge palm that was neither calloused nor broad nor sweating. It was smooth and slim and coolly impersonal. Buchanan looked down, but not too far, into a pair of coppery-brown, frankly appraising eyes. The blonde Rig Bogan had taken a shine to. That everyone off the trail took a shine to. Including the recently departed Prado.
Their meeting seemed to cause a hush over the crowd. The other voices trailed away.
"I want to thank you for helping my brother," she said, with a certain emphasis on the word brother, Buchanan thought, to make it crystal clear that she'd needed no particular help for herself. She could have handled Prado, Wynt, Sherm and the entire male species. With a well placed word, no doubt. Then she smiled, revealing rows of teeth that were as white and strong-looking as high-polished ivory. "And I'm sure," she added, "that the drink and the dinner are on the house."