by Jonas Ward
Buchanan said, "Well, Colonel, here I am."
"You . . . you hired out to me, and then you crossed me."
Crane said, "And look, he already picked up with that goddam British bastard."
Fox edged his chair away from the table. "What do you want? You get nothin' from us. You showed your colors, the both of you."
"Raisin' the good town people agin us," said Bradbury. "You caused a lot of harm here tonight, Buchanan."
"With some help from me, I hope," said Trevor.
"You double crossin' sonofabitch." Crane came in a rash. "I'll take you apart."
Trevor's gun slid out. Buchanan stepped in front of him. Trevor covered the other two.
Buchanan met Crane, took hold of him with his left hand, and stopped the giant in his tracks. He said, "You sure use a lot of bad language, Crane. I know you're Crane because I been warned against that bad tongue of yours."
Crane tried to kick to the groin. Buchanan shook him once, then shoved him against the wall, so that he bounced like a rubber ball. As he rebounded, Buchanan hit him with a right hand. Crane went off his feet, staggered, sighed. Then he dropped to the floor in a heap.
Trevor said, "Now that was neat. That was quite the old neat bit. I do like that."
Buchanan addressed Bradbury. "I never signed on with you. I came up here to look around and maybe do what I could. But you never told me what was doin'. You never told me you were out to hang farmers."
“A rustler. Day was a rustler."
"You're a liar. I saw the hide, I saw the way it was planted. I saw enough to know it was a frame-up."
Fox squealed, "You better be careful who you accuse."
"Accuse? Why, mister, when I accuse someone, it'll be to his face. And he's likely to stand trial. Because I'll have proof that he's guilty. I'm tellin' you Adam Day framed and lynched. You can take it from there."
Bradbury said, "You better not butt into this, Buchanan. I'll pay your fare back to New Mexico. You better take the stage south."
Fox said, "When Morgan gets his gun, you better make yourself scarce. We got men can take care of people like you. And you, too, Trevor."
"They do run off at the mouth, now, don't they?" Buchanan asked of Trevor.
"Very often."
"You'll see," said Fox. "You'll see soon enough."
Bradbury said, "Shut up, Dealer. There's been too much talk, like Buchanan says. I didn't want it this way. But now it's come to pass, we'll do what we got to do. You better get out. This here is war."
"Uh-huh," said Buchanan. "And you used to be a right decent hombre. I mind when you was as good a man as need be. Didn't have much then. Yep, you wasn't a bad sort. Well, be seein' you."
He turned his back. Trevor's eyes were on Dealer Fox, on Crane struggling to regain his senses.
At the door, Trevor said, "Quite right. We'll be seeing you chaps. Buchanan has agreed to work for me. Toodle-oo, men."
They went out through the saloon, now nearly empty. Trevor led the way to the hotel. A wizened man with one arm greeted them warmly. His name was Weevil, and he had been a wrangler until his accident.
"Took guts to do what you folks did tonight. People's with you. But don't count on 'em. They just pore folks. They're no fighters."
"Thank you for the kind words," said Trevor. "Put us in adjoining rooms, please."
"Already got Mr. Buchanan fixed up in number nine. You can have number eight for the night, then. I'll have your hoss tended to." He reached beneath the counter. "Got a bottle of Monongahela here. Thought you might want a nightcap. Got some cold venison and cheese, too."
"Excellent notion," said Trevor. "Put it on my bill."
They went back down a narrow hall and to their rooms. Neither was ready for sleep. Weevil brought them the cold food, and they sat in Buchanan's room and ate and talked and sipped at the whiskey.
Amanda Day slumped wearily in the wagon. It had been a long ride out to the Kovacs' place, but she could not have returned home this night. She could not help remembering Adam's face, the protruding tongue, the angry neck where the rope had bitten. They had been quarreling, she had found she did not truly love him, but the sight of him burned into her memory, and she knew she would never be rid of it.
She had visited the Kovacs' house only once and knew little about it except that it resembled a blockhouse. It had been a fort, a small rallying ground of the mountain men, built of native stone against Indian raids. Kovacs had rebuilt it, adding the kitchen on the back, still using stone hauled by his workhorses, patiently putting it together with skills he had brought from the Old World. It could be depressing viewed from without, but inside, Jenny had made it comfortable. It was cool in summertime and easy to heat in the winters. For now, it was a resting place.
Kovacs put the horses in the stone barn. Raven worked with him, quick, efficient, smiling, looking often at Dan Badger as he watered and fed the tall mule.
Badger said, "Man alone in these parts, he sees things. Them cattlemen, they're bringin' in gunmen. They'll be up to deviltry."
"Is so," replied Kovacs. ;
"This man Buchanan. Hang onto him if you kin."
"Not his fight." .
"I seen his kind. He cut Adam down, he rode with you all in the wagon. Count on him."
"Maybe so."
"This is a good place to make a fight. Put in grub. Don't ·o anywheres alone. Watch the womenfolk. Lemme do the scouting'. Nobody knows the country like us mountainy men."
"Is so."
Badger looked long at Raven. "You know what to do."
"Yes, Dan Badger." She had been rescued from a battlefield and nursed back to health by the Kovacs, and the mountain man had never been far away when he might be needed.
Badger mounted the mule and rode out. Kovacs and Raven finished the chores together, then went into the house.
Amanda Day was moving about as in a dream, frowning. Kovacs touched her arm and led her into the huge front room of the house. The hall was baronial in height, the furniture heavy polished oak. Large bedrooms were off to either side. Between the kitchen and the big room, there was a hall and two closets. It was a most unusual house for this clime and time. There was a big fireplace built into one wall. The windows were narrow, but Kovacs had found glass for them.
She said, "You have built a castle, Pieter."
"I talk to Adam." He ignored her compliment.
"Yes. He trusted you."
"You talk to me."
"I was coming back to him. But something had gone, Pieter. His mind was narrow, like those windows. He had grown hard."
"Hard country."
"For a farmer, yes. You have cattle and vegetables and wheat. You have built well."
"No good now, mebbe."
"You're right. I saw it coming. I told Adam. He hated me for telling."
"Because truth."
"Maybe. He drove me away. I couldn't stay away. It was like quitting. But I didn't want to come back. I had to. But I didn't want to."
"Is so." He lit a briar pipe and waited.
She said, "The man, Buchanan. Is that what you want to know about?"
He nodded, puffing.
"He'll help. He's not with them."
"You sure?"
"Positive." She was surprised at her own emphasis. "He came to take a job with Bradbury, but when he saw . . . saw Adam ... he whipped two men for calling us rustlers."
"Badger?"
"Why, you know Dan. Homeless, aimless now. But a good man."
"Whelan?"
"They had nothing. They are trying to make something for themselves. I wouldn't wonder they'd be the next target, living out there, grazing on government land."
"Is so." He sighed. "You and me, we know, now. It will be very bad."
"Yes, it will be terrible."
"We must fight."
"I agree."
"You could go."
"I won't go." She drew a breath. "I see. You mean that I did not love Adam in the end. That it
was over between us. You think I have no stake?"
"Is so."
"They hanged him," she said. "I saw him. If he were a stranger, I would hate them, want them to be punished."
He nodded. "Then we know. Buchanan, he can be of big help. Tomorrow we will know. So quick." He looked around at his comfortable house. "In Poland it was pogroms. Here it is the same. The world is made right, no? But people. There is something wrong with people."
"Not all people," she insisted. "I won't believe that."
"Mebbeso." He closed his eyes.
She thought of Buchanan and how he had been so quickly brutal against the two gunmen and so kind when they were alone. More men like Buchanan, she prayed, spare these good folk, spare them please God.
The F-Bar ranch was small; it was in the open country of the high plain. The Whelan’s ran only a couple of hundred head, but in the couple of years they had been in Wyoming, that small herd had been bred up to sturdiness and solid flesh. Their house was small but tight, sparsely furnished. They had lived low on the hog since departing the Texas border.
They sat on the top rail of the corral in the night. All was quiet and peaceful, there were trees nearby, a creek ran close to the homestead. They sat close together without actually touching elbows.
He bore scars; he had been a gunner in his day. Scarcely thirty, he had lived three lifetimes, a part of which had been behind bars. He knew many things he did not need to know and a few things he did. He had been a kid on the trails, and he had been a faro dealer in gambling halls. His nose was dented and slightly awry, his eyes deep-set, his skin rough with the outdoor labors that had occupied him since he and Fay had finally shaken loose from the past.
Fay Delehanty's real name was something now hazy in her mind. She had been born in Kansas City to a mother who had, to say the least, been careless. Her father could have been any one of many, none worth remembering. Her childhood had been spent in various houses of prostitution between Kansas and Texas.
Somehow a spark had kindled in the girl; somehow she wanted that which she did not have. It was no great ambition, looking at frontier wives, but it was in her and it remained her goal through thick and thin, mostly thin. She longed for a small spread, a house which was a home, and a man with the guts to make it all come true.
It had all come together in El Paso. She was working in the Ace-Deuce Saloon. Rob, two years out of the penitentiary, had scrabbled together a few head of cattle, had come to look for a drink and a woman before heading northward where he was unknown, where the grass was high, where he could get the fresh start, which was the holy privilege of everyone on the western frontier.
They looked at each other. She was red-haired, rouged, attired in a tawdry short skirt. He was saddleworn and scarred. Each liked what was there, inside the other person. Each had been around long enough to look beneath the surface of a person.
There was a gambler, Cat Bundy, who had long been trying to get Fay to work for him, bragging about his connections with the elite, promising her a house of her own. When he saw them together, heads close, murmuring, he took umbrage. He grabbed Rob and yanked him away from the girl.
Rob knew his lesson in this situation: take it easy, give the other man first shot, do anything to stay inside the law. He allowed himself to be pushed against the bar. He allowed himself to be upbraided for stealing another man's woman. His hand did not go near his Colt.
Marshal Spencer came into the Ace-Deuce. He listened. Fay ran to him, knowing him for a decent human being. He went to Cat Bundy, who was of the opposite political faction, and turned him away from Rob.
Bundy went for his hidey gun. Rob hit him once with his fist and once with the muzzle of the long-barreled .45, which he produced with lightning speed.
Bundy fell down and died of a fractured skull. Marshal Spencer helped Fay pack her few belongings. In a few hours, the couple were married by a preacher known to the marshal and on their way to camp and the little herd and eventually Wyoming. And now they sat on the rail and wondered.
She said, "So quiet-like."
"Huh-huh. Good country."
"Best country I ever seen," she said. "Almost made it here, didn't we?"
"Almost."
"People. The land's beautiful. The people are manure."
"You shouldn't speak like o' that, Fay," he said. "We promised not to talk like o' that no more."
"Sure, we did. And kept our promise. Now . .. what the hell's the use?"
"We ain't dead yet."
"After what we been through, who's a-scared of dyin'?" she demanded. She waved an arm. "It's the place, here. It's what we was buildin' here. You know that's gone."
"I know. I been on that side of it, their side," he admitted. "But we ... you and me ... we ain't finished."
"Ho! How do we start over, if we live?"
"We made friends," he said. "Wrong side, but the Kovacses and them."
She softened. "Never had friends before. Adam ... he was a kinda friend. Honest and square and all."
"They were onto us," he said. "When they brought in the first gunnies they got onto us. Thing is, Kovacs and them, they didn't turn their backs."
"Uh-huh. And what about Buchanan?"
"I dunno."
"Where'd you get to know him?"
"Texas way. Long ago, afore I got into the pen. I was ridin' . . . you know. He wasn't wearin' a badge or nothin'. Just helpin' out a friend, a rancher."
"He fought agin you?"
"Wasn't much of a scrap. We run away. Two of our boys went over. Buchanan, he's tough and you know what I mean. Tougher'n two boots."
"You think he may be one of ... them?"
"Cattle Association? No, I don't believe so."
"But he could be a spy?"
"Ain't his dish. But we got to watch him."
"Don't trust nobody, nohow, no time," she said tightly. "We got this far, we can't let down no rails."
"Right," said her husband.
"And what about Trevor?"
"Never did know any Britisher afore."
"He sure talks funny."
"Yea, he ain't got the language down good. But he never was like Crane nor Fox. Different breed of cat."
"Him a bachelor, he never did make no grabs for me," she said. "You noted?"
"I noted."
She grinned and leaned a shoulder against his and said huskily, "I never did nothin' to deserve a man like you."
"Huh. Reckon I was the lucky one."
"Gettin' late, honey. Can't we go to bed?"
He returned the pressure of her shoulder. "You bet, baby. I'll attend the stable."