Paid in Blood

by William W. Johnstone

  The men outside the shed emitted whoops of approval.

  This smattering of cheers only added to Buckhorn’s anger at himself for getting caught by such an unorthodox move. But this fueled him to recover and retaliate even quicker than he otherwise might have. Wheeling about to face Perlong once again, Buckhorn saw the burly man also re-centering himself, getting balanced and ready.

  The two charged together without hesitation, throwing a whirlwind of smashing, savage punches, some missing, more landing. The rat-a-tat-tat of fists on meat and bone was intense. Finally, Buckhorn shoved in close enough to try a head butt. Perlong jerked his face away at the last second, taking only a glancing blow on the side of his bull neck.

  Before Buckhorn could pull back, he was caught in a bear hug by his opponent’s powerful arms, pinning his own arms momentarily, threatening to crush him. Memories of the lasso loops closing around him rushed through Buckhorn’s brain, frantically urging him to do something. Not letting those arms get cinched tight, the way the lassos had, Buckhorn instantly went slack, dropping his full weight downward, managing to slip loose from Perlong’s grasping arms.

  As his knees hit the ground, Buckhorn threw two punishing hooks, first a right and then a left, into Perlong’s ribs. He heard bone and cartilage crack, and this time when the air came gushing out of Perlong there were flecks of blood in it.

  Buckhorn rolled away. He sprang back to his feet as fast as he could, knowing he hadn’t yet delivered enough punishment to keep Perlong down or make him quit. His assessment was immediately confirmed when he saw the burly man lumbering toward him, hands reaching clawlike, elbows tucked protectively close to guard his ribs.

  Buckhorn went to meet him. But he gave his opponent plenty of time to take the next swing, calculating it would come slow and somewhat restrained by the damaged ribs. When the punch sailed out—a more predictable roundhouse right this time, though still delivered with surprising zip—Buckhorn ducked under it.

  As he did, he kicked out with another leg whip, this one sweeping low and crashing into the backs of Perlong’s legs, just below the knees. The burly man buckled and toppled backward, landing heavily and driving even more weak wheezes of air out of him.

  Buckhorn was on him in a flash. He dropped a knee to Perlong’s stomach once, twice, and then took a step back and stood looking down, wanting to assure himself there was no chance the man was going to rise up again anytime soon, not without help. Buckhorn’s own breathing was coming in rapid huffs, and for a little while that was the only sound.

  And then, slowly, Buckhorn turned his head and looked all around. The men over by the shed were silent, not moving. Eve and Joey were looking on aghast. Jeff was wide eyed, appearing a bit stunned.

  When Buckhorn’s gaze came to rest on Ulysses, his field of vision also included Dan Riley, still in the doorway of the house. Ulysses’s face was stone, expressionless; the distance and the shadows blurring his countenance made Riley’s face even more unreadable.

  “You can see that Perlong can’t speak for himself right at the moment,” Buckhorn said. “But does everybody else agree I’ve come out on top in these negotiations and have the right to reclaim my property now?”

  Nobody answered right away until a voice quavering slightly with a mix of outrage and uncertainty said, “No. Aw, hell no!”

  Buckhorn looked around again, and this time his eyes fell on the one person he’d skimmed past before: Perlong’s cohort, the other lassoer from the pass. In the course of things, Buckhorn had never caught his name. But, abruptly, this got taken care of.

  “Now take it easy, Lowe,” Ulysses told the man. “You heard how I said it was gonna be. The way Boss Dan wants it. Perlong had his chance to play it different, but he chose not to. He made his call and came up short. That’s the way it is.”

  The man called Lowe shook his head.

  “No. No, that ain’t good enough. You can’t just leave it go at that. Look at poor Perlong layin’ there, busted half in two by this damn ’breed. And all you can say is ‘That’s the way it is’?”

  “What I say is the way it is,” Ulysses said flatly.

  “No, that ain’t good enough,” Lowe said again. He glanced down at the gunbelt he was holding—the one containing Buckhorn’s gun in its holster, the rig Perlong had stripped off and handed to Lowe preceding the fight.

  “Don’t even think it,” Ulysses warned.

  Lowe’s eyes went to him again.

  “But it ain’t right not to do something, Ulysses. Perlong was my best pal. He was one of us.”

  “I’m warnin’ you.”

  Lowe’s mouth curled like it was going to issue a snarl, but no sound came out. His eyes shifted back and forth between the weapon he was holding and Ulysses. In the open distance between the two men, Buckhorn’s eyes also whipped back and forth. He was too far away from Lowe to rush him if he tried to bring the Colt into play. If it came to that, Buckhorn knew he would nevertheless make the attempt. But he also knew his only real chance in that event rested with Ulysses.

  Lowe made the decision to put the question to its ultimate test. A snarling curse finally escaping through his curled lips, he seized the Colt and yanked it free even as he let the rest of the gunbelt drop down and away. But before he could bring the muzzle to bear, Ulysses drew and fired his own Colt with blinding speed and deadly accuracy.

  A single .45 slug screamed through the night air and slammed into Lowe’s chest, just to the left of his sternum. He fell back against the rickety corral rails, hung there for a moment, then collapsed the rest of the way to the ground, Buckhorn’s gun slipping unfired from his grasp.

  Buckhorn was still standing there. Ulysses strode past him and walked straight to the fallen Lowe. He stood over the body, once again stone faced as he gazed down upon it. Then, holstering his Colt, he turned away.

  “Obliged,” Buckhorn said.

  Ulysses glared at him.

  “I don’t want your damn ‘obliged.’ Two of my men are down—one of them permanent—because of you. Nothing you can say is gonna fix that.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Hell I didn’t. Wasn’t time not to. Besides, I won’t have somebody who can’t take orders.”

  From the doorway of the house, Riley called, “Is Lowe dead?”

  “Afraid so, sir. Couldn’t be helped,” Ulysses responded. Then he added, “It’s not over, though. There’s more I have to do.”

  So saying, he pivoted sharply and lashed out, swinging his fist in a whistling backhand that caught Buckhorn flush on the side of the jaw. The punch was so unexpected and powerful that it sent Buckhorn once more to the ground.

  He jackknifed quickly to a sitting position and sleeved a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, scowling fiercely up at Ulysses as he watched the black man shrug out of his bandolier and begin unbuckling his gunbelt. “What the hell’s the idea?” Buckhorn wanted to know.

  Ulysses leaned over and placed his gear on the ground, also pulling the knife from his moccasin boot and adding it to the pile. Straightening up, he said, “Just like I won’t have somebody who can’t take orders, neither will I have somebody who thinks they can operate outside the rules. So I’ll have to finish the job that Perlong started but wasn’t able to get done.”

  “In other words,” said Buckhorn, climbing back to his feet, “what you’re really worried about is maintaining your notch at the top of the pecking order.”

  “Say it however you want. Point is, I got to make sure that everybody”—Ulysses’s eyes darted meaningfully toward the men over in front of the shed, then back again—“is clear on who’s the he-goose callin’ the shots around here. I lose that, I got nothing.”

  “You force me to break you in half like I did Perlong,” Buckhorn pointed out, “you’ll make it a certainty.”

  Ulysses smiled a thin, cold smile.

  “Guess I’ll have to be sure I don’t get busted in half then, won’t I?”

  CHAPTER
36

  The two men slammed together like a pair of warring buffalo bulls—the bare-chested, heavily muscled black and the leaner, more sleekly muscled half-breed. Eyes fierce, teeth bared, all the skills and instincts of two warriors tested and tempered by many previous battles were fully in evidence. Punches were thrown and blocked, kicks were deflected, attempts to clamp and hold were slipped.

  But they fought on relentlessly, knowing it was just a matter of time before somebody wore down or made a mistake and there would be an opening.

  Even in the cool, damp night air, Buckhorn felt the sweat start to flow freely down his face. He saw it shine on the face and bulging shoulders of Ulysses, too.

  Back and forth they went. Slugging and shoving, grabbing, twisting, ducking, until their breathing began to chug like a set of steam engines.

  When Buckhorn’s foot slipped and he nearly sagged to one knee, Ulysses lunged close and tried to clamp on a headlock. Buckhorn’s sweat-slick hair and quick pulling-away action saved him from getting caught securely by the hold.

  As he jerked back, he took advantage of the way their bodies were momentarily positioned and drilled two hard punches into Ulysses’s left kidney area. The big man’s grunts of pain and the feel of each impact told Buckhorn he had scored solidly.

  He got a little too eager and tried to close again less cautiously than he should have, wanting to take further advantage of the first real damage he’d been able to score. For his trouble, he caught a vicious backward-thrusting elbow smash to the mouth that rocked him in his tracks.

  Ulysses wheeled around, exhibiting some over-eagerness of his own as he sought to take advantage of the damage he had caused. Buckhorn was waiting to make him pay for his eagerness. Leaving himself wide open for a fraction of a second in the midst of his turn, Ulysses’s solar plexus became the target for a perfectly timed and placed left hook. The nerve-numbing blow immediately took him to his knees.

  Buckhorn dropped his right shoulder and launched himself straight into the black man’s middle. The thud of their bodies colliding was like the sound of distant thunder. Ulysses was bowled over backward and Buckhorn went with him, the two of them rolling into a tangle.

  A lesser man than Ulysses would have been finished at that point. But even though Buckhorn landed on top, when he tried to pull free he felt the fingers of Ulysses’s left hand clutching his hair, trying to hold his head still while the black man’s right fist clubbed against the side of his face.

  The blow didn’t have a lot of force behind it now, though. Buckhorn blocked a second attempted punch and jerked his hair free with a curse. He raised his own right fist high and was ready to bring it crashing down, ready to end this once and for all.

  This time the cannon-like boom was much closer and more directly related to firepower. All eyes snapped around and locked on the sight of Dan Riley, having taken two or three steps outside the doorway of the house, one of his Navy Colts pointed skyward. With everybody looking on now, he fired a second shot, yellow flame and another crash of sound erupting from the muzzle.

  “Enough!” Dan hollered. “Stop it, Buckhorn! Stop it, for God’s sake. You’ve made your point; enough damage has been done. Let it be finished.”

  Buckhorn had frozen at the sound of the first gunshot. Like everybody else, his attention was on Riley. Now, as the man finished speaking, Buckhorn realized he was still holding a balled fist over the pain-etched face of Ulysses. He slowly lowered the fist.

  When he attempted to push away and stand up, he discovered his legs were as weak and unsupportive as two pieces of string. Instead of standing, he edged off to one side and rolled over onto his back.

  I’ll just lay here a minute and catch my breath, he told himself...

  * * *

  More than an hour had passed.

  Lowe’s body was wrapped in a canvas tarp and temporarily placed in a wagon along with his personal gear. Since he had no kin that anybody knew of, it was planned for him to be buried here in this valley at first light. Dan would read over him, as he’d done for others in the past.

  Perlong and Ulysses were brought into the house, and their wounds—mostly bruises and cuts once they got their breath back—were tended to by Eve and Joey. Perlong’s cracked ribs amounted to the most serious of the injuries. The women tightly wrapped his middle in a wide bandage to control his breathing, and then some of the other men helped him back to the bunk shed where he’d announced to one and all his plans to further medicate with a bottle of whiskey.

  Buckhorn, having sustained the least damage, was the last to receive attention. He’d already done some tending to himself, washing up at a watering trough outside and putting his vest and jacket back on—along with his gunbelt and holstered Colt, which did more than anything to make him feel healed and whole again.

  He insisted nothing more was really necessary, but Joey wouldn’t hear of it. She plopped him on a chair before a basin of hot, sudsy water on the kitchen table and began dabbing at the cuts around his mouth with a damp cloth. Eve, seeing there was no need for her to lend a hand, excused herself to go check on her father, who’d returned to his room. Jeff trailed after her.

  “Lord, your skin is like leather,” Joey muttered as she worked. “It’s a wonder it could be split open with anything short of a bayonet.”

  “Well, I thankfully didn’t see any bayonets flashing at me out there. But I guess one of those boys still managed to get the job done anyway.”

  From the kitchen doorway, a voice said, “Yeah, I only wish I woulda had a bayonet . . . and maybe a line of infantrymen to go with it. Then maybe I wouldn’t be standin’ here now feelin’ like I was the one who got trampled over by ’em.”

  Buckhorn and Joey both looked around to see Ulysses Mason leaning wearily against the door frame, a crooked half smile on his face.

  “You two aren’t going to start up all over again, are you?” Joey said anxiously.

  “Heck, no. Leastways I hope not,” Ulysses assured her. “My arms feel like they weigh a young ton each, and if I didn’t have this door frame to lean against I wouldn’t be standin’ here upright.”

  Buckhorn nodded.

  “That’s good to hear. I made it far enough to drop down in this chair, but I’m sure not in any hurry to push back up off it.”

  Ulysses’s expression sobered.

  “You’re a fightin’ sumbitch, Buckhorn . . . pardon my language, ma’am.” The last he included as a quick aside to Joey, then continued addressing Buckhorn: “For whatever it’s worth, I wanted you to hear that from me. I’d be proud to ride with any outfit you’re a part of.”

  Buckhorn regarded him, accepting the words. Then he said, “But what about Lowe?”

  “Lowe was a weak link. I’d seen it and known for some time he was gonna have to be dealt with. He wouldn’t’ve lasted as long as he did if not for ridin’ on Perlong’s coattails. Tonight just brought to a head what was bound to happen anyway.”

  “And the rest of the men, after all that happened tonight?”

  “They saw how it went down. They got no problem havin’ you in the outfit.”

  “Even though I’m a half-breed?”

  “We got men of a lot of different stripes and from all kinds of backgrounds here. Hell, in case you ain’t noticed, I’m a black man. They been ridin’ behind me. If Boss Dan calls it that way after tonight, they’ll ride behind you.”

  Buckhorn shook his head.

  “Ain’t gonna be like that. Be too crowded. You’re the top notch around here; they’re gonna stay ridin’ behind you.”

  Ulysses held his eyes for a long moment before saying, “Obliged for that.” Then, the crooked half smile returning, he added, “And I hope you’re smarter at acceptin’ obliges than I was a little while ago.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Ulysses straightened up in the doorway, jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

  “When you’re finished there, Boss Dan wants a word with you.”

  * * * />
  “I see you got your gun back.”

  Buckhorn nodded.

  “Along with the rest of my gear.”

  “You negotiate pretty convincingly,” Dan Riley allowed.

  “Done my fair share of that kind of negotiating.”

  “Not to mention the kind strictly involving gunplay.”

  “There was a share of that kind tonight, too,” Buckhorn pointed out.

  “Yes. I guess I should say that was regrettable, but I’m afraid Lowe had other shortcomings that made him overdue for culling out regardless. I suppose that makes me sound harsh,” Riley said, “but these are harsh conditions we find ourselves living under.”

  This time it was just the two of them in the room. The door was closed. Buckhorn had waited until Eve and Jeff came out, after the girl had finished the latest examination of her father’s wound. When he’d entered in their place, Riley had motioned for him to shut the door.

  As far as Buckhorn could tell, getting to his feet and venturing outside during the fight—an act Eve found very concerning—hadn’t left the wounded man looking any worse for wear. His mood and tone, however, were decidedly sober.

  “Speaking of harsh,” Riley went on, “I suppose you think that whole business of making you fight to get your own gun back was pretty harsh, too.”

  “You run the show around here. You got a right to call the tune however you want it played. Those who don’t like it don’t have to stick around and listen to the music.”

  “And yet you still want to join our outfit.”

  “What I came here for.”

  “Is it really?” Riley regarded him closely for a long count. “I’m damned if I can make up my mind about you, Buckhorn. I like you, so help me. You got brass, you got grit . . . But that little voice keeps yappin’ inside my head. Tellin’ me there’s something off about you, warnin’ me not to buy the whole package.”

  Buckhorn held his eyes levelly.

  “Man ought to go with his gut,” he said. “If something plain don’t feel right, you’re probably better off not seein’ it through. I got nothing more to say, nothing more to show. I thought revealing that meadow trap gave me a reasonable bargaining chip. If it wasn’t enough, then that leaves riding on the best thing for me.”