One-Man Massacre

by Jonas Ward

"Live in the Big Bend, Buchanan?" he asked.

  "Nope. Just dropped down for a couple hours."

  "Dropped down? From where?"

  "The mountains," Buchanan told him vaguely. "Fact is," he said, turning to Rosemarie, "I better be starting back."

  "Oh, no! There're still a lot more dances."

  "My partner'll be looking for me bright and early."

  "But we're having such a good time! You mustn't leave now."

  "What are you doing in the mountains?" Neale asked, more nettled-sounding each time he spoke. "Living by the skin of my teeth."

  "So it looks. They tell me there's supposed to be gold up there."

  "I wouldn't say that—"

  "Psst! Laddie!" a sharp voice beckoned. "Big fella-over here!"

  Buchanan swung to see Angus Mulchay motioning to him excitedly from a side door.

  "What is it, Tom?" Rosemarie asked anxiously.

  "Don't know," he said and went to the old man.

  "Clear out while you can, son. Black Jack Gibbons is coming in the front door with a gang of 'em."

  "Gang of what?"

  "Murderers—and you're their meat if they corner you in this box!"

  "Oh, Tom—look!" Rosemarie cried*at his shoulder and Buchanan saw eight men with guns already drawn, eight pairs of eyes scanning the room. A woman spotted them and uttered a piercing scream. The fiddler's bow stopped in mid-note, dismayingly, and then all was quiet.

  "Run for it, Tom!" Rosemarie urged him. "They haven't seen you yet."

  "Hell, they wouldn't shoot . . ."

  "You're wrong, man, wrong!" Mulchay told him. "You're no more to that crew than a stray dog. Take this," he said, passing over the gun, "and make a break—"

  "Over there!" Rig Gruber shouted. "By the door!"

  "Move away from him, girl!" Jack Gibbons commanded in a strong voice. "You, too, old man, unless you want to die beside him!"

  "Hold it, mister," Buchanan called to him. "Whatever this quarrel's about, let's get it outside."

  "We like you just as you stand," Gibbons answered harshly. "Just move out from behind those skirts!"

  "No!" Rosemarie cried, throwing her arms around Buchanan. "No!" she cried again, defiantly.

  Gruber had been sighting the shot for ten seconds. Now he triggered it, and with the roaring crash of the six-gun Buchanan felt a jarring blow at his collarbone, a searing pain. He spun the girl out of the fire line, not gently, and with anger sparking every new move, he wheeled and drove three slugs into the crouching Gruber —fatal punishment for the cynical chance the gunman had taken with Rosemarie's innocent life.

  "Watch the girl!" Gibbons was shouting above the awful melee, and Kersh and the man beside him opened fee heedlessly. Something burned into the flesh of Buchanan's thigh and his right arm was suddenly turning numb.

  "Run for it, man, run!" Angus Mulchay pleaded. "This way—" and Buchanan turned his broad back to the fight, made it through the doorway and staggered out into the night like some drunk. The door was slammed shut behind him and then it was very dark in the alley.

  "Can ye move, lad?" Mulchay asked at his side. "Can ye make it to Ferguson's house?"

  "Take care of yourself, friend. Those sons of bitches hold life damn cheap."

  "I'm next, anyhow, so follow me now if ye can!"

  It was such a frustrating thing. His mind was clear-purged by the rage that was whipping it—and his eyes made out the slender little man moving ahead of him. But nothing else responded to his will. From the shoulders down, his whole body was sluggish, tiredly disobedient—and with no warning at all his bleeding right leg buckled beneath him.

  "Get up, boy! Try! Can't ye hear them coming around the front?"

  Buchanan used the side of the wall to regain his feet again, used it once more to make his way forward.

  "He's in there!" shouted a voice that was becoming raggedly familiar. "This time," Gibbons ordered, "get him!"

  Buchanan shifted the gun to his left hand, pumped two roaring welcomes into the alley's narrow mouth, heard two anguished groans. But Buchanan took little heart from that, for he had pulled the trigger three times —there was no more argument left in Hamp Leach's Colt.

  Mulchay was supporting him and pulling him at the same time, his eyes closed, body rigid as he waited for the sniping bullet with his name on it. But Buchanan's last volley had written caution into the hearts of Gibbons & Co. and they answered it with snap shots, an uneven fusillade that passed high and wide of the two fugitives. At last they came to a door in the side of a house—only sixty feet from where they had started the journey, but an eternity in time—and Mulchay turned the knob in his hand.

  "We're forsaken, son," he moaned. "Ferguson's is locked against us."

  Buchanan didn't have much left, but he gave it all in a grunting lunge against the jamb. The wood splintered and the lock sprung, the door flew open and Buchanan went on inside with it.

  "Be damned and you're the man for me!" little Angus congratulated him. "But ye got to get up, son. They're not likely to stay put out there for long."

  "You go ahead, dad," Buchanan told him peacefully. "I think I'll wait for them here."

  "If you wait, I wait," Mulchay said definitely. "We'll go out together."

  Buchanan made no sense out of that, so he made the struggle to stand another time. Helpful old coot, but loco, he thought irrelevantly. Wonder if he knows Fargo?

  "You know Fargo?"

  “Town in the Dakotas. What about it?"

  "This is a fella. Funny little guy. Talked me into busting my back against a goddam mountain."

  "Godsakes, lad, this is no time for pleasant memories! If we're going, we got to get!" The house was darkened, vacant because Ferguson and his family were visiting, but Mulchay led Buchanan through it familiarly. They crossed the kitchen, the parlor, started up a flight of steps.

  “I’m leaking blood all over the carpet," Buchanan said.

  "I’ll pay Andy Ferguson for all damages. Oh, Harry-here they come again!"

  Gibbons had convinced his warriors that the alley was safe by venturing into it himself, and now they were at the sprung door, noisily cautious.

  "Kerch, you and Mills get around to the front. Bo-iand and Milton follow me in here. Everybody ready?"

  Angus and his big friends were on the landing by this time, but the words of Gibbons came to them loud and dear, taunting them.

  "I've got another plan," Angus whispered desperately.

  "Anything you say," Buchanan answered, feeling lightheaded from the loss of blood.

  "Stop Black Jack and we’ve stopped 'em all."

  "Sure."

  "He's got the milk-colored Stetson," Mulchay murmured. "Do you think you can spot him when he climbs up the stairs?"

  "Sure."

  "Then shoot straight and true. It's the best chance we have."

  "Can't."

  "What?"

  "Can't shoot. No more ammo. Left the gun downstairs."

  "Good grief!"

  "Here's a gun on the floor, Cap!" shouted a voice below, a triumphant echo to Mulchay's melancholy voice. "Empty! He's all shot out!"

  Gibbons' burst of laughter betrayed his relief. Four of his best had gone today—he would sorely miss the Leach-Gruber team—and his thoughts on entering this blacked-out house had been that if he didn't lead the attack up those stairs, no one would. What an un-Caesar-like end that would have been for Jack Gibbons—death from a stranger in another stranger's home. But the Lady called Luck hadn't deserted him yet.

  "He's all mine," Gibbons said quietly, moving with confidence to the staircase, starting to mount the steps.

  Mulchay tugged Buchanan along the upper corridor and led him into a kind of storeroom in a makeshift attic. He went to the single window, unclasped the shutters and pushed them outward.

  "Can ye get your good leg over the sill?" he asked. "There's a thin cornice and a sloped roof."

  "We both can't make it," Buchanan said in a weakening voice. "G
o on, and good luck."

  "If it's as far as you can go," Mulchay announced, "it's as far as I can go." They both could hear the steady fall of Gibbons' boot heels ascending the stairs.

  "Well, so long," Mulchay said, "whatever your name is."

  "Buchanan."

  "My pleasure, lad, to know ye briefly and to go out of this life by your side."

  "The window," Buchanan said wearily, feeling that he was being blackmailed into moving. "Let's go."

  He went through the opening somehow, somehow steadied both legs on the ten-inch cornice while he leaned against the shingled roof and edged slowly toward the outline of the building next to this one. Angus got out there, too, and quietly reclosed the shutters.

  The old man began inching his way along, not daring to look down at the street below. He knew without looking that there were two men guarding the front door, a scant twenty feet down, and the slightest sound that attracted their attention up here signed his death warrant.

  Then his foot dislodged a pebble, and he choked back a gasp as the small stone rolled over the cornice. Mulchay heard it strike the wooden sidewalk and bounce. A long, long second went by. Another. But there was no roar from a gun, no bone-shattering bullet—and Mulchay found he was almost bursting his lungs from the breath he still held.

  He resumed following Buchanan, inches at a time. The building adjoining Ferguson's house was Smith's hardware store, some four feet lower than the home, but flat-roofed. Buchanan lowered himself to it and helped Mulchay down.

  "Pray for us now," Angus whispered, moving to a metal door that was set into the roof itself. "Pray that my friend Tom Smith is a careless man." He bent down, grabbed tie handle and tugged at it. The door held fast.

  "He's not careless," Mulchay said, defeated.

  Buchanan pulled at the stout handle, hard, but the iron bolt on the other side yielded not at all.

  "Now what?" he asked.

  "Now we've had it," Angus told him. "There's no other way down from here."

  It seemed to Rosemarie MacKay that terror was piled upon terror. Buchanan was gone, but she could still see his blood-soaked shoulder, the wound in his leg, felt herself being flung away from him and out of danger. He had fled to safety himself, but his attackers, like wild dogs, charged to the pursuit.

  "Rosemarie, are you all right?" Billy Neale asked her anxiously. "Were you hit?"

  "We've got to help him!" the girl cried. "Somebody has to help!"

  "Who is the fellow? What's he wanted for?"

  "He fought a bully in the Glasgow. Shot him fair . . ."

  "But aren't they law officers?" Neale asked, incredulous.

  "No! They're hired killers, and the one in charge was brought here by your own boss!"

  Neale shook his head. "Mr. Lord has no need for gunmen," the cowboy said loyally. "Why, he's a town councilman."

  "I know what I see and what I hear," Rosemarie told him. And then the firing commenced again in the alley. "They've found him! Oh, God, won't somebody help?" And she would have run out there herself if Neale and another man hadn't held her fast.

  "What can you do?" Neale shouted at her. "What can anyone do? None of us come here armed, not even the deputy."

  "Let me go," she demanded. "Let me go! He has to have somebody!"

  But Neale moved her toward the front of the hall, away from the sound of gunfire. The crowd in here was of three minds. One group clustered around the body of Rig Gruber, while Deputy Crane—a white-faced, shocked-looking young man—searched in vain for some sign of life. Another bunch huddled along the farthest wall, asking each other what had happened. A third had started to stream out of the place, then quickly came back inside when the shooting recommenced.

  "Please take me out of here," Rosemarie pleaded, too spent to resist the firm hold he had on her. "Please."

  That, in fact, struck the cowboy as not a bad idea. If they had him cornered in the alley the fellow might very well duck back in here again. So he led the distraught girl out onto the street, unaware that at the same moment Buchanan and Mulchay were working their way to Ferguson's across the alley. Now there was a pause in the firing, but the voice of the man in the white hat came to them.

  "He's in there," it said. "This time, get him!"

  "He's still alive, then!" Rosemarie cried hopefully. "There's still a chance for him!"

  Neale hustled her quickly across the street, but when he would have moved her to even further safety she struggled against him.

  "No, no! I won't leave. There's still a chance!"

  "A chance for what? What can you do for him?"

  "I don't know. I just don't know . . ." Her voice broke off at the sight of two gunmen emerging from the alley.

  "What are they doing, Billy?"

  "Sealing off the front of the house," Neale told her.

  "It's so uneven—all of them, and all he did was defend himself against that troublemaker."

  Her words stirred an uneasiness in Neale's mind. He saw now that his first conclusion—that they were lawmen hunting a desperado—didn't stand up. Not only had Buchanan been plainly unarmed when he arrived at the dance, but no peace officer in Texas would have fired at him across the floor with Rosemarie obscuring his shot. But wanting to help was one thing. Actually helping was another. Gunplay—even if he had a weapon with him— was foreign to Billy Neale's character. He was born and raised for nothing else but ranching, the peaceable, workaday life of raising cattle and sending them to market. He owned a Colt's repeater, but damned if he could hit anything with it beyond ten feet. That was what shocked him about the shot fired so close to the girl, and amazed him that the Buchanan fellow could have returned it so unerringly.

  "There's a shotgun behind the bar at the Glasgow," Rosemarie said, as if reading his mind. "Run and get it, Billy."

  "You come with me."

  "No. I've got to stay here. It's—I've just got to."

  The cowboy went off to the saloon, not understanding the female mind, the fundamental need to keep a vigil, the belief that her personal presence lent weight to the prayer she offered up.

  And hardly had Neale left her side but the girl saw the shutter open in the upstairs window. Then, with her heart beating trip hammer blows against her breast, Buchanan appeared there and proceeded to step out on the decorative cornice. She noticed at once how woodenly he moved, like a man walking in his sleep, and she was certain that with his next step he would lose his balance and fall to the street.

  That dire thought reminded her of the two gunmen directly below. They must not look up. It they did . . .

  Now Mr. Mulchay was out of the window, closing the shutters, leaning awkwardly against the slanted roof and edging along. Something made the man suddenly stop and she saw his small body freeze with terrible anticipation. What caused it she could not tell.

  For twenty seconds she stood there and watched the two of them cross. Twenty years. Twenty eons. But then Buchanan was stepping down to the roof of Smith's store, and Mr. Mulchay made it. Not out of danger yet, not nearly, but worlds safer than they had been from the moment the gunmen had entered the dancehall.