Buchanan Says No

by Jonas Ward

  Such as Frank Power. Oh, they were partners, all right, and cordial. In the office safe was his copy of the partnership agreement, a plainly worded legal document duly signed and witnessed. The agreement read, in part: ". . . and to be in effect and inviolable during the full and natural lives of the aforesaid partners, and thereafter to their surviving heirs and/or assignees forevermore. . . ."

  "Forevermore," however, could mean tomorrow or the day after in this part of the world. Bernie Troy hoped not, because he was still vulnerable, he still needed Power to consolidate his position. And before he could himself eliminate the other man, Troy had to learn all the details of Power's sudden emergence as the big middleman in the cattle business hereabouts.

  Boyd Weston might be the key that unlocked the door. Therefore the instructions that he be informed each time Weston came around. There was also the fact that Weston was an atrocious gambler who drank in direct ratio to his losses. He drank because he lost and he lost because he drank—and the more he did of both, the uglier he got. Troy's staff couldn't handle him as they would any other bad actor for the simple reason that he was sponsored by Frank Power. That of itself was enough to keep Bernie on the premises whenever Mr. Boyd Weston was cutting loose.

  So Troy came back to the game and watched Weston's lock start off surprisingly good, then turn sour as soon as the buyer from Chicago learned he was winning at least 50 per cent of the time on pure bluff. Wilson took him down the line then, and at calling time there sat Boyd Weston with a handful of nothing.

  "You must be very lucky at love,” Wilson had commented dryly at the end of one hand, and Weston's lean head had shot up quickly.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" he'd asked in his nasal, belligerent tone, his sensuous, full-lipped mouth turned more sulky-looking than usual,

  The Chicagoan had regarded him speculatively for a long moment, his eyes hooded and thoughtful, then he had briefly smiled.

  "No offense, young fella," he'd said, "Somebody deal."

  Twice during that long day Boyd Weston left the game. On each occasion it was to visit the bank, and both times he returned with a sizable roll. Bernie Troy hadn't realized Weston's credit stood so high at the bank, but just as curious was the fact that though the total amounts he returned with were fairly substantial, it all came in bills of small denomination. And after the second trip it even included coins, silver and gold.

  Which eventually ended up in front of Wilson or one of the dozen others who took part in the game from one hour to the next. Troy, of course, was then called on to exchange the cumbersome coins and small bills for big ones, and have the trouble of carting it all back to the bank.

  It didn't make very much sense until Troy recalled that punchers almost universally preferred their pay in money that could be easily cashed in out-of-the-way places, honkytonks and brothels. He knew, too that a great many of them shared with crib girls a distrust for paper. Hard money was safe money. You couldn't burn it, tear it, or have it blow away. And to prove its worth, all you did was let it bounce on the most convenient rock,

  A payroll, then, Troy decided, for a trail crew. A meat buyer had come to town. Where was the beef? Not penned near Bella, or word of it would have been passed around as an item of interest. His thoughts went to the money again, and he went into his office to see just how much he had exchanged so far. It was seven o'clock when he did that, and the total was $8,400, with Weston still out there betting from the contents of two gunny sacks. Another thousand left, Troy guessed rather accurately. Perhaps two.

  That was some payroll, the gambler told himself. That was some trail crew. Troy would have liked very much to see that herd, and he would have liked very much to know just how particular a man Mr. Wilson was.

  He went back outside with a little more zest for the game, happy now that he had found out some things he wasn't supposed to know. The money, of course, was from his partner's private account—and obviously not entrusted to the likes of Boyd Weston for poker stakes. It was some crew's wages, plus bonuses for what must have been unusual work.

  Troy watched Weston rather carefully then, marked the increasing signs of worry as he reached into the gunny sacks each time for fresh stakes. Wilson left the game briefly for supper, and while he was gone Weston's hands improved. Three fair-sized pots in a row came to him. The anxiety vanished from his face, his eyes grew brighter, and he was the familiar arrogant young man they had all grown to dislike intensely since his arrival in Bella six months ago.

  Wilson returned, eyed the increased pile of chips before Weston, and rubbed his palms together expectantly. He sat down, the dealer announced a free-betting hand of seven-card stud, and Lady Luck promptly deserted Boyd Weston for her old friend from Chicago. Wilson took great chunks out of the pile and Weston was soon buying a fresh stack from the dwindling gunny sacks.

  Nine o'clock came, and then ten, and Bernie Troy waited impatiently for the big hand that would clean Weston out. A plan had formed in his mind hours before, a scheme to turn Weston's rather serious troubles to his own advantage. . . .

  The door to the private room opened and one of the housemen motioned to him. Sam Kersey had just been shot across the street. No? not from behind. Straight on, and his gun clear of the holster. And no, Marv Bowen had been no help. Bowen was out cold.

  "Where the hell's Fred Grieve?"

  'The marshal braced them, Mr. Troy, and nobody else had any hankerin' to help him. But the two that done it just walked away from him and went on inside Bella House."

  "What did they look like?"

  "Bums," the houseman said, "A medium-sized bum and a very big bum. And they didn't give two damns about the deadline."

  "You actually saw them go in the hotel?"

  "Just as natural as sin."

  "Is Frank Power in town?"

  "Arrived an hour ago. What do you want we should do, Mr. Troy?"

  Troy's mind had been clicking throughout the interview, gathering in stray bits of information, adding them, totaling a sum. In his office and on the poker table was what he had decided was a payroll. But since Weston had gambled it away here all day, someone obviously hadn't got paid. Two bums hit town, bums possessed of some fine skills, but strangers to Bella, or they wouldn't have gone up against Kersey and Bowen just like that. They cross the deadline but they don't come to the gambling saloon, the natural lure. Instead they go for the sedate, almost forbidding Bella House.

  Why? Because they have no money, that's why. Boyd Weston has their wages, and by asking they can learn that Mrs. Boyd Weston, at any rate, is at the hotel. What's more natural than to look for a husband where his wife is?

  "What do you want we should do?" the houseman asked.

  Bernie Troy was smiling, and he was imagining what might very well be happening in Mrs. Weston's room at this moment.

  "We?" he asked innocently. "What business is it of ours if Frank Power's gunmen take a licking? Teach ‘em a little humility." He went back inside, more pleased than before. Now he had information about this affair that not even Boyd Weston had. Things, he thought, were shaping up nicely, but he could still use that shave and a change of linen. Funny, though, how he wasn't so tired any more. Or particularly anxious to give Weston a hand up. Let the poor sucker get himself out of the jam.

  Troy found the pace of the game slowed, found Weston almost desperately hoarding his last funds and still trying to win a pot. Wilson bet against him relentlessly, crowded him to the exclusion of every other player. Troy watched that and wondered about it, knowing the meat buyer to be a smarter gambler than that, asking himself why the man backed poor hands himself for no other purpose than to see the both of them lose.

  The game inched along. Weston had to take an occasional pot, and he did, dragging the inevitable to an almost boring climax. When the gunny sacks were empty, Troy had decided long before, that would be it for Weston. No IOU’s, no credit from the house.

  He drifted back outside, restlessly, and looked over the play and t
he drinking in the public room. He took the watch from his vest pocket, checked the time, and decided to wait out here a while longer.

  She arrived exactly on time, her red hair shooting its own lights back at the chandeliers, her free-gaited, hip swinging figure charming every eye, and just by the confident, purposeful look of her discouraging anything beyond a wistful, prayerful sort of thought.

  But speech was free, and those who called to her as she passed by were rewarded with a provisional smile, an easy wave of the hand. A group broke from the bar and headed for places at her table; others purposely held back to enjoy the wonderful view from the rear.

  'It's hard on a man to go home after seein' that,” said one mischievously.

  "Aye," agreed his friend, "It's labor enough even to catch your fair breath."

  The first prize—that was what Bernie Troy called her to himself. A conquest. His had been a life, was still a life, in which women had played a more than usually important part. Most had been the round-heeled sorority sisters of Ruby Weston, and the one thing he had learned from them was that a Frank Power could take a dozen Mrs. Westons and never know what it was to bed a single Carrie James.

  Exactly what it was that made one woman soar above the rest, Troy couldn't say. But when he saw it he knew it and this particular redhead had it to burn. Now he cut his way through the crowd, intercepted her smoothly before she took her seat.

  "Dinner tonight, Carrie?" he asked in a voice made husky merely by the nearness of her pinkish-white voluptuousness.

  "In your rooms?" she said, her expressive eyes very wide.

  "Yes."

  "With the candle on the table again? The burgundy?"

  "Cold and sparkling."

  "I guess not, Mr. Troy. That one time was for all time.” The smile softened it, made it seem almost that the invitation had been accepted rather than flatly declined.

  "You're a good girl, Carrie," Troy told her with dryness. "Nearly too good to be true."

  "It's too true, worse luck.” the girl told him, mocking his tone with a pretended sadness. "I get so bored with myself,”

  "We could put an end to your boredom." Troy suggested.

  "But that's all I have left to imagine about.” Carrie said, "Then I'd be more bored than ever,”

  Troy's thin-lipped mouth was touched briefly by a smile.

  "Quite a dilemma,” he said,

  "No solution to it at all,”

  "I'll think of something,” he promised her. He held the dealer's chair for her, and when she was seated he let his hands rest on her bare shoulders and squeeze them briefly. From the girl’s face it would be hard to say whether the little embrace had affected her at all

  Troy returned to the private poker game then, to find Boyd Weston grimly hanging on to his last stakes. Thanks to the arrival of two other players just as inept as he was, Wilson was having difficulty lowering the boom. Troy sat in the game for several hands hoping to maneuver Weston between himself and the meat buyer for the decisive blow, but somehow Weston eluded them and kept his small pile of chips intact.

  Troy's boredom was just reaching high water when a rumpus started outside. He slipped out of his chair, vastly surprised, for the sound of trouble was rarely heard in Troy's, thanks to Moose Miller's forbidding presence. He opened the door and entered the public room, his surprise graduating to stupefaction as he witnessed the utter explosion of a myth that he had come to believe in as much as any man in Bella. But there went Moose Miller, down; down so hard that the glass spangles in the chandelier overhead shook, the candles flickered in their sockets.

  "Get that bastard!" Bernie Troy shouted, and Miller's helpers, used mostly to clearing up after the bouncer, awoke from their shock and laid into Buchanan with a vengeance. Carrie James, as already noted, was the only one in the place with the presence of mind or the inclination to stop it short of murder.

  Chapter Six

  "Buchanan?"

  It was a plaintive sound in the utter darkness of that place, also fretful, touched by both discomfort and a kind of disillusion.

  "Over here, kid.” Buchanan answered,

  "Don't call me kid?" Mike Sandoe said automatically. “Where the hell am I, anyhow?"

  “Jugged."

  There was a pause, "What’d I do?"

  "Nothin' much."

  Another pause. "What’d you do?"

  ''Slugged a gent,"

  "Then why'd they jail me?"

  "Search me."

  "You sure I wasn't the gent you slugged?" Sandoe asked then, querulously.

  "You caught a beaut," Buchanan admitted, "but not from me. Recall anything about a place called the Happy Times?"

  "Sure I do. Bought a bottle there. Dead place."

  "How about Troy7s?"

  "Troy's? Oh? yeah. Yeah, sure. Girl with red hair. What the hell was she doing, Buchanan?"

  "Dealin'. Just sittin' there and dealin’”

  "Jesus!" Sandoe said suddenly, his voice like a whip crack in that small black cell. "That big fat son of a bitch. Bigger'n you. . . ."

  "All my fault, Mike. Couldn't get loose of you fast enough to give you a chance,”

  "Took you, too, huh?"

  "No."

  "No? You mean you got him?”

  "Then the roof hit me. Man, you can buy this head real cheap."

  "Trade you even,” Sandoe said, then lapsed into silence. "What's that fella's name, Buchanan?" he asked a long minute later.

  "Why?"

  "Gonna spill his guts," came the positive answer. "First thing after they bust me out of this calaboose."

  "Sure," Buchanan said drowsily, humping himself in the narrow cot, hoping that sleep would dull the banging inside his skull, hoping that his collarbone was merely bruised and not broken, hoping he would stop seeing that bed and soft mattress in his room at the Green Lantern.

  Sleep came, like a drug, but after three short hours of it someone was beating a sawed-off ax handle against the soles of his boots and the hot, blinding sun was assaulting his eyes.

  "Come on and meet the judge,” a wizened sixty-year-old jailer told him nasally.

  Buchanan rolled to a sitting position and regarded the man with the ax handle thoughtfully. "Gently does it, old-timer," he said,

  "Don't tell me my business, ranny!"

  "I'll tell you something else. Don't lay that stick to my roomie. He ain't got my even nature."

  The old man's eyes glittered snappishly, but when he crossed to Sandoe he woke him with a shake of the shoulder, then stepped back,

  "Whatta you want?" Mike growled at him.

  "I want you, that's what. You're keeping the judge waiting."

  "Tell the judge to go-"

  Come on, Mike,” Buchanan said, more and more bored by the other man's truculence.

  They followed the bailiff out of the cell, down a corridor past the tank with its collection of overnight guests, and through a doorway into a courtroom of sorts. The judge was not waiting, nor had Buchanan ever heard of one who was, but the section set aside for witnesses and spectators was filled to capacity.

  A murmuring spread through the place.

  "There he is!" said a voice from the rear. "That's the one did it!"

  'Don't look so tough now,” said another voice belittlingly.

  "Tough enough,” answered the first.

  Buchanan stood looking around, and his glance fell inescapably on the massive figure of Moose Miller on the front bench. Miller hunched forward menacingly and fixed Buchanan with a scowl that worked wonders in Troy's. Buchanan grinned at him.

  "Over here,” said Marshal Grieve, coming up with a worried expression on his face. He led them to an enclosure and closed the gate. "I've deputized half a dozen men,” he told both of them in a low voice. "Start any more trouble and you'll get it."

  Sandoe stirred and Buchanan gave him a cautioning poke with his elbow.

  "Everybody rise!" the bailiff shouted then, and the judge entered from a side door and mounted to th
e bench. "This here court now in session!" The judge sat down, and so did everyone else. "First case, Your Honor,” the bailiff went on in a quieter tone, "is the town against them two miscreants yonder, identities unknown. Charged with breaking the peace, damaging private property, trespassing where they got no business, and grievous assault on a town resident."

  The judge, a bald-headed man with rimless spectacles, heard the charges impassively and swung to Buchanan and Sandoe.

  "You two can have a jury if you really want one.” he said, plainly indicating that he would look upon any impaneling as a waste of his valuable time.

  "Whatever you say, Judge,” Buchanan said amiably.

  "No jury. And you can have a lawyer if you think you won't get justice from me."

  "No lawyer,” Buchanan said.

  The judge turned back to his bailiff. "Get a witness on the stand," he said.

  "Moose Miller to the stand!" the court official bawled, though Miller sat less than six feet away. The man lumbered up off the bench, seeming to cast a shadow on the immediate vicinity, and moved to the chair set directly below the bench.

  "Moose, you swear to tell the truth here?" the bailiff asked, holding the Bible outstretched in a negligent way.

  "Yeah,” Miller said, and for the benefit of the room he gave Buchanan another ominous glare before seating himself,

  "What happened last night, Moose?" the judge asked him.

  "I got bush-hammered in the performance of my duty for Mr. Troy,” he said sullenly. "Them two bas—Them two there insulted a lady and broke the peace, like Jenkins said."

  The judge looked toward the prisoners. "Any questions?"

  Once again Buchanan quieted Sandoe. "Nope,” he said for them both.