by Jonas Ward
"He was too slick, for one," Gill replied offhandedly. "Besides, we'd been drinkin' pretty steady. That cheats took us at an unfair advantage."
"So you and the Perrotts got up next mornin' and took a vote? You voted you'd been slickered. By a freighter, not a tinhorn gambler."
"What the hell is this, Big Red? A trial or somethin'?”
"Or something Sam," Leech told him. "Now about this last thing the fella out there told Lash, about not buryin' this freight driver you bushwhacked. Is that the truth on it, Sam?"
"That's nothin' but rock and hard pan up there!" Gill protested. "Christ almighty, a man'd spend a day diggin' a hole in that land. Besides, what'd we want to bury a damn card cheat for? Leave him rot, I say, as a warnin'!"
Leech had started walking toward him ponderously. Now he stopped.
"I'm a great believer in a man's rep, Sam," he told Gill. "Right now yours is pretty low."
Gill's eyes blazed. "Low, hanh? For riddin' the world of a lousy, wise-crackin' card cheat? Wouldn't bury a goddamn rattler, would you, Big Red?"
"Me," Leech told him, "I say you got to go out there and showdown with this fella. Go get your reputation back." He swung his massive head to the others. "Anybody disagree?"
No one did.
"Sure, sure," Gill said. "Step out the door and let him plug me with that goddamn rifle. What kind of fool do you take me for?"
"He told Lash he'd meet you out by the little shack,"
Leech said. "Now, I don't know this scudder except for at rep. I say he'll be waitin' for you, Sam, where he said he would. Fair and square."
"Easy enough for you to say."
"Sam, you'll go out that door and fight him," Leech said. "Or you'll be carried out on top of that door. Toes up."
There was a stirring in the big room then. Sam Gill knew that he was a minority of one. He raised his head and a broad, confident smirk appeared on his face. His husky shoulders squared.
"All right, Big Red," he said, "I'll go out there and take him. You ever known Sam Gill to back down from a fight?"
"Never."
"Or lose one?"
"Never," Leech said again.
Gill started across the room with an air of bravado, turned in the doorway jauntily. "Be right back, boys," he said, slipping his .45 from the holster smoothly and checking the load. "Save me a bottle."
They could hear his boots descending the oak stairs to the floor below, a confident sound about them, and they watched from the windows as he walked steadily, without hesitation, across the courtyard.
"Ought to be a good fight," Frank Hancock said. "Anybody want to bet Sam don't take him?" There were no takers.
Sam Gill crossed the courtyard with the sure, icy confidence of a battle-tested veteran. The gun that rode comfortably on his hip was his living and his life, and he knew exactly how good he was with it. He knew, too, that he was going to the most important fight he had ever had. This kill would raise him head and shoulders above the rest, give him permanent stature in the gang. And erase the stigma laid on him by the bushwhacking charge. His most important fight, and Gill knew that he was up for it. He could feel it all through his body, feel every nerve alert, pitched to razor sharpness. Even the sound of his steps on the flagstone seemed magnified.
Suddenly he stopped in mid-stride and a smile of cunning appeared slowly on his lips. Why, he wondered, announce his coming? He lifted one foot, slipped the boot off, did the same with the other and set them both down very quietly. Now he began walking again, as soundless and stealthy as a cat.
Buchanan had been listening to the clicking heels, and when it stopped so abruptly he frowned, wondered if the other man had run out of nerve. Sure sounded cocky enough just a second ago.
He was standing well back from the corner of the house, unprotected by the shadows, determined to give Sam Gill the selfsame chance to kill him as he wanted. But when the silence beyond the house continued, Buchanan began to move slowly in that direction.
He moved that way, and Gill, in stocking feet, circled the little house from the other side, came up at Buchanan's back. Then they were both there, not thirty feet apart, and the only warning Buchanan ever had was the whispery creak of Gill's gun barrel clearing leather.
Two shots murdered the silence all around, close-spaced as two seconds. One of the guns roared a second time, a third. The tumbling echoes of the blasts rolled away and a taut silence descended once again.
Until a tremendous voice shattered it anew.
"Now, goddamn it," bellowed Red Leech, "are yon done back there?"
"Done," Buchanan called back softly, the Colt already holstered. He turned from the dead Sam Gill, began to walk away.
"Wait," a voice called and Lash Wall came up to him, his manner eager, his eyes bright even in that darkness. The same darkness that had led Sam Gill into a fatal mistake of judgment. "Wait," Lash Wall said. "Big Red wants to meet you. And I want to have a little more parley." He took Buchanan by the arm, turned him around persuasively, and led him back to the courtyard.
"Shake hands with Buchanan, Big Red," he said.
The two men locked palms, took each other's measure.
"By damn, you are as big as me!" Leech exclaimed. "Almost! You wanna wrestle, brother?"
Buchanan laughed. "No, brother," he told him, "not tonight."
"Tomorra then!" Leech urged. "Man, I ain't tried my bear hug on a fittin' opponent in near a year or more."
"Ought to keep a few bears handy," Buchanan suggested. Lash Wall stepped closer.
"In case it slipped your mind, Big Red," he said dryly, "tomorrow's when this crew goes back to work."
"Now ain't that hell? All right, brother, we'll lock horns when the job's done! How's that?"
"Occurred to me," Wall said then, "that Buchanan might want to come along and make himself a pile."
Big Red beamed, landed Buchanan a whack on the back that would have driven another man into the ground.
"Great!" Leech roared happily. "Great idea, Lash!"
"Wish I could, boys," Buchanan said. "But I got other plans."
"What other plans?" Leech demanded.
"Going to New Orleans," Buchanan said, speaking as though he really meant it.
"You can go to New Orleans any time, Buchanan," Wall said smoothly. "But you won't fall into a deal like this one very often."
Buchanan shook his head. "Thanks, though, for the offer."
"Don't you think you owe us something?" Wall said.
"Owe you?"
"Why, sure," Leech said, scowling fiercely. "You kilt Prado, didn't ya, and laid old Wynt up with a busted collarbone?"
'Plus the Perrotts and Sam Gill," Wall put in.
"That's five good guns I can't use," Leech accused. "Thanks to you!"
Tm sorry about that," Buchanan said, "but not very."
"Tell you what," Lash Wall said then. "We'll take the one of you for the five of them, pay you full shares on each. That, in case you're curious, comes to fifteen thousand gold dollars."
Buchanan looked down into the man's smiling face, thought about Honest John Magee back up in San Antone. And Banker Penney. And a thousand dollars Rig had wanted to send back to Alpine. Chances were those three men would never get the straight story on what happened to Rig Bogan. The Double-B Fast Freight Company, in fact, would always be a sorry memory to them, under a cloud.
"What do you say?" Wall prodded at him and Buchanan smiled back.
"Suppose," he said, "I was to plug a couple more of your boys. Could you raise the ante then to twenty thousand?"
"Plug a couple more—" Red Leech roared, then got the joke and laughed boisterously. He gave Buchanan another tremendous thump on the back. "Twenty it is, brother!" he said generously. "I'll cut the rest out of Lash's share!"
And Lash Wall made no protest about that, nor the rip-roaring party that followed the hasty, irreverent burial of Sam Gill. Wall had a hunch that the new addition to the Leech army was the difference between success a
nd failure of the operation. Besides which, he would be handling all the money that came from the merchants and Big Red would never know whose share had been shaved to pay the recruit.
Eleven
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS later the three of them sat their horses on the Texas bank of the Rio Grande. Ranged out behind them were the wagonloads of contraband that were to be convoyed duty-free into Mexico—a first night's shipment of more than seventy-five thousand dollars in cotton and tools. The flatboats were in the water, the ramps were being laid for boarding, and in a matter of minutes the initial crossing would be attempted.
"Looks quiet enough over in the State of Tamaulipas," Buchanan commented.
"Too damn quiet!" Red Leech bawled.
"Won't be for long, you yellin' like that," Buchanan said.
"You got some objection, brother?"
"He was only fooling," Lash Wall put in quickly.
"He better be!" Leech said. "And he better remember who's runnin' this shebang!"
"Wouldn't want to be accused of it myself," Buchanan said.
"What?" Leech demanded.
"Where the hell's your patrol?" Buchanan demanded right back. "Ought to've had men over there for the past two nights, getting the lay of the land, giving you some idea of what to expect when those flatboats get across."
'"Don't you tell me my goddamn business!" Leech thundered. "I been fightin' the Mex for five years and never been licked yet!"
"Not at shoutin', anyhow," Buchanan said.
"What'd you say?"
Buchanan looked past him to Lash Wall. "All the same to you," he said, "I think I'll swim across and have a look-see.
"Good idea. I'll go with you."
"We'll all go!" Leech ordered. "Follow me!" He put his horse down the bank and into the river. Buchanan and Wall trailed along behind, not so noisily, and they both wished that the red-headed man wouldn't urge his mount toward the other side at the top of his voice.
"Get up there!" he shouted. "Swim, you four-legged bastard!" The far bank suddenly blazed with rifle fire. It was a detachment under the command of Sgt. Miguel Gomez, one of the thirty strung out along the river between the bridges at Matamoros and Rio Rico. General Antonio Cueva, commander-in-chief of the Army of Tamaulipas, had known for weeks that the gringos were preparing to smuggle goods past his lucrative customs. But where would they try to ford the river? The treasury, fortunately, was full, and so Governor Diaz was able to give him the three hundred extra men and horses he needed to guard the border from invasion. The General, a brave man and a good tactician, had placed his troops in the best strategic spots—and waited.
Now the waiting was over. Red Leech's raucous entry into the water had alerted the sentries. They gave the word to Sergeant Gomez, and the sergeant ordered the open-fire. "Red's hit!" Lash Wall yelled and he and Buchanan urged their horses forward. But it was the gang leader's mount that had taken the bullet, fatally, and now Big Red was thrashing wildly in the muddy brown water. Another volley roared at them. Twenty rifles.
"Goddamn it, I can't swim." Red Leech bellowed furiously.
Buchanan got to him, reached down with his arm. "Grab on!" he said. "Climb up!"
"I'm too big!" Leech shouted from the water. "I'll pull us both under!"
"Climb up!" Buchanan ordered. Leech took the outstretched hand put his other around Buchanan's forearm. "Heave!" Buchanan shouted and lifted the other man clear out of the water and across the horse's rump. "You on?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Be damned if I ain't, brother!"
A third volley erupted from the other bank. Buchanan was carrying the Winchester bandido fashion. Now he unslung the rifle from his back, levered it and pumped. Levered and pumped. Off to his right Lash Wall threw hot lead at the opposition.
"Cut this way!" Buchanan yelled to Wall. "Come on downstream!" He swung the filly left, with the current, kept up a steady oblique fire as he went. The next barrage from the Mexicans was less organized, raggedy and confused. Then guns joined the argument from the Texas side. Frank Hancock and Sherm Moore had led a dozen men into the river as soon as the trouble started, but they had to hold their fire until they were sure they weren't going to hit their own people in the darkness. Now they were sure, and they let go with a pent-up vengeance.
Buchanan and Wall worked their horses on a gradual diagonal course to the opposite bank, scrambled up onto dry land. Big Red gave Buchanan a hearty pound on the back.
"Sure obliged for the lift, brother!" he told him. "Save your bacon sometime, let me know."
"You can save this animal of mine from goin' sway-back," Buchanan said, "by buddyin'-up on that stallion of Wall's."
"Sure, brother, sure!" Leech said, getting down. "But you know somethin'? You got a peculiar way of sayin' things. Like you still ain't got it clear who gives the orders and who takes 'em."
"What order you got to issue right now?" Buchanan asked him. The sound of firing continued upstream with-oot letup.
"What do you mean?" Leech demanded. "Well, here we are in Mexico. And a quarter-mile away are some Mexicans. What are you going to do about it, mister?"
"*Why, I'm gonna wait till the rest of the boys get here!" Leech shouted. "Then I'm gonna take them Mexicans apart!"
"They'll turn tail and run on you," Buchanan said. "Then they'll hide and pester you all night with snipe-fire."
"And what the hell would you do about it?"
"Seein' as we're over here, Leech, I'd go on back up there right now and hit 'em from behind."
"The three of us?"
"We could sound like a lot if we kept moving around," Buchanan said. "And who knows? We might get you a horse for the one you just lost."
"The boys," Lash Wall said, "might appreciate a little assist from the rear."
"Well let's don't sit here gabbin' about it!" Leech bawled, climbing up behind Wall. "Let's go!"
There was nothing lacking in the courage of Sergeant Gomez. Three factors, though, worked against him. Number one, he was never meant to command other men. His nature was too easy-going. Number two, he did not share the customs money with General Cueva and Governor Diaz. Sergeant Gomez soldiered for twenty pesos a month. Number three, as a sixteen-year-old recruit he had witnessed the charge of the First Texas Volunteers across the plain at Monterrey during the war. It had made a lasting impression.
And though this wasn't the open fields in the blaze of noon, the black banks of the Rio could be just as unsettling even to a man of courage. On top of which, what had looked to be nothing more than a three-man foray across the river had suddenly burst into a full-blown assault. The shooting, the wild shouting, the relentless advance of the crazy gringos brought back memories.
Gomez was about to give the order to retreat when he suddenly found himself surrounded. Or so it seemed, as Leech, Wall and Buchanan laid a withering fire on his flanks.
"Sargento.' SargentoJ" Corporal Aguirrez cried. "What do we do?"
"How do I know?" Gomez shouted back. "Do whatever you want to!"