by Jonas Ward
Then, angered by the treatment he had received—and this time against Frank Riker’s counsel—Matt had tried to move a few hundred head through the fence. Riding ahead of the cattle were two fence cutters, plainly unarmed, and they had been shot and killed. Big M’s gunmen had routed the rest of Patton’s riders and appropriated the beef for trespassing.
Bart Malvaise followed that incident with a jarring ultimatum to Spread Eagle: Big M would buy out Patton’s 15,000 acres at one dollar an acre. If the offer wasn’t accepted within forty-eight hours, Malvaise warned, then Big M would force its neighbor out of the county.
Matt turned it down, heatedly, sent for the law to protect his rights. The law of Pasco was George Boyd, a well-intentioned old man but grown rusty by the long years of peace in his bailiwick. The sheriff set out to parley with Bart Malvaise at Big M, but somewhere between Indian Rocks and the ranch he was killed.
Malvaise, as if acting on some prearranged schedule, moved quickly into the void. He arranged for a special election and had his own foreman, rough-handed Sam Judd, installed as high sheriff. Judd, with a trio of tough deputies, stayed close to Indian Rocks and kept the town under tight rein. That left Malvaise unhampered in his campaign to drive Matt Patton out.
Spread Eagle stock began to disappear, and in its place on Spread Eagle grass came Big M brands. And when Matt’s punchers tried to move the beef back where it belonged they ran into Malvaise’s hired guns. Frank Riker finally got Patton’s permission to bring in hardcases of their own, but those that weren’t hired away by Big M were overwhelmed by odds of four and five to one.
In fact, on this day when young Terry was waylaid there were only two professional fighters remaining—Pecos Riley and Billy Rowe—of the more than twenty that Riker had imported.
So there were neither the time nor the energy to spread the welcome mat properly for the stranger who had brought Terry back. Spread Eagle was hurting bad, was down on its knees. And as he watched Matt Patton’s tired face as he hovered over his son’s bed, Frank Riker was certain that Spread Eagle was going to throw in the towel. Big M had won.
The foreman glanced up to find Pecos Riley beckoning him from the bedroom doorway. He went out into the hall with the gunslinger, found Billy Rowe there. The pair had been riding the line all morning and now there was an expression of elation, unusual around here, in both their faces.
“Is the kid gonna make it?” Pecos asked first.
Riker shrugged. “Hard to tell.”
“Well, his old man can be proud of him,” Pecos said then. “The boy sent that sonofabitch Lafe Hupp to kingdom come back there.”
“And give some grief to Hamp Jones,” Rowe added happily. “We found the bastard’s rifle lyin’ in the dust.”
“Plus tracks enough to show that he run off a couple more,” Pecos said with pride. “That Terry really had himself a party.”
Frank Riker listened to the glad tidings in thoughtful silence. A dead Lafe Hupp and a wounded Hamp Jones added up to the first score for Spread Eagle in months. Now the ramrod felt himself wishing that the stranger had hung around for the thanks due him. His help to Terry obviously added up to something more than getting him home.
• • •
WHEN BUCHANAN SAW that he was approaching a town his first intention was to cut around it and keep pressing north till nightfall. But the fracas back there on the trail, plus the time lost doubling back with the boy, had upset his timetable some. Besides, the roan needed a watering and could probably stand some feed other than scrub grass after three days’ travel. On top of which, Buchanan thought, I’m so hungry myself that my stomach must think my throat’s been cut. A little bourbon to cut the dust, he decided, followed by a good thick steak and black coffee.
Indian Rocks the town called itself, and a nice, orderly little place it looked to be. But peaceful as it seemed, there was still a war being waged beyond it and the big man prudently unpacked his Colt and hung it on his hip after getting the horse stabled.
The Silver Queen was his destination, and as he eased his huge frame through the swinging doors he discovered that he had walked in on the middle of some sort of speech, or maybe a lecture, being delivered by a bantam rooster of a man in a black frock coat. A small man with a big voice who had obviously stuck his head too deep in the jug.
“Just look at you,” he was shouting unevenly to his half-interested audience of barflies and poker players. “Just look at yourselves sitting around this saloon while out there—out there my old friend Matt Patton is being set upon by wolves and jackals! What kind of men do you call yourselves? How can you sleep nights with a clear conscience when you won’t rally round Spread Eagle in its darkest hour …?”
“You sure talk a good fight, Doc,” a heckler called from one of the card tables and there was derisive laughter.
“Don’t see you packin’ no hardware,” another said.
“I’ll lead you!” the man named Doc Lord shouted back. “Come on and mount up right now! I’ll ride with you against Bart Malvaise! Come on!”
“Have another snort, Doc,” someone advised. “Not you, nor me, nor anybody in his right mind is gonna get in the way of Bart’s gunnies. Your friend Matt should’ve taken the offer to sell out in the first place.”
“Sell out, you say? Sell out! You’re the ones who’ve sold out! Sold out the finest, kindest, most honorable gent who ever came into this territory!”
Buchanan slipped around behind the agitated doctor, found a spot for himself at the end of the bar. The barkeep approached him.
“How’s the food here, friend?” he asked the man.
“I eat it.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Buchanan said, taking in the man’s barrel-shaped belly. “I’ll have a steak about this thick,” he added, spreading thumb and forefinger a good three inches. “Red in the middle and seared on the outside. About a quart of hot coffee. And to start off with, set that bottle of Old Friends in front of me.”
“That’s gonna come to about ten dollars,” the bartender said. He had been taking stock of his customer—the battered, broken-nosed face with the two-day growth of jetblack beard, the grimy clothes and dog-eared hat, the formidable size—and if he had never run across one of the truly wild ones he knew he was looking at one now.
“Ten you say,” Buchanan replied unoffended, “and ten it is.” His hand dipped into the money belt at his waist, came up with a gold coin which he laid on the bar. The bartender palmed it, seemed satisfied, placed the order with the cook and set the bourbon down. Buchanan downed a shot as though it were water, poured another.
The little man was still haranguing his listeners at the other end of the room and now the retorts from the audience were getting sharper and more impatient. He was being told, flatly, to shut up, to go home and sleep it off, to do anything but bother them at their leisure. Buchanan, the disinterested spectator draped comfortably over the bar with his broad back to the proceedings, suddenly got the impression that the goading voice was coming closer. It was, and when he turned his head curiously he found the pint-sized jingoist standing directly at his elbow.
“Here’s one of ’em!” Doc Lord said, pointing an accusing finger up into Buchanan’s face. “Here’s one of them high and mighty Big M gunmen! A hired killer! Murders for gold! What’s it like to take a human life? What’s it like to shoot a man in the back like your gang did to my friend, Sheriff Boyd? Tell us how that felt!”
“You’re in the wrong church, mister,” Buchanan answered amiably enough. “I just dropped in for a drink and a meal.”
“A likely story! Gunfighter written all over you! Hard-case! You kill when Bart Malvaise tells you to!”
“You got me wrong, brother,” Buchanan told him again. “Strictly unemployed …”
There was a commotion at the door as the Spread Eagle’s rider came through, followed by a very pretty young girl whose expression was full of concern. Kathie Lord, the doctor’s daughter, who had been at home when the
messenger arrived, directed him now to the saloon. She would have been concerned about the bad news from Spread Eagle in any event. That the dying man was Terry Patton brought the thing close to her heart. The two of them advanced along the bar.
“Come on out to the ranch quick, Doc,” the rider said excitedly. “Young Terry’s shot up bad.”
The doctor seemed badly confused by the abruptness of their entrance, the bad news. He blinked his eyes, swayed back and forth.
“Jake,” Kathie Lord told the barkeep with authority, “bring hot coffee and bring it quick.” She took her father firmly by the arm, led him to a table in the corner. The girl hardly had the old man seated when the saloon doors swung open again—and from the hush that fell over the Silver Queen Buchanan got the definite impression that the new arrival was a very important poohbah around these diggings. He did, in fact, have an air to him, a look of hard authority, and the trio of hulking, expressionless gunmen who followed him inside gave the man added stature.
This was Bart Malvaise—six feet tall, two hundred ten, square-jawed, square-shouldered, dark piercing eyes, dark unsmiling face, possessed of a megalomaniac’s drive for power, the unquenchable desire to run things.
Buchanan knew the type on sight, knew it from the telltale bristling of the hair along the back of his neck. Knew, too, that just as he resented this breed, that man couldn’t abide a Tom Buchanan with his easy-come, easy-go, live-and-let-live ways.
And, ordinarily, Bart Malvaise would have singled out Buchanan’s presence in the crowd as instinctively as a mastiff scents his strongest enemy, marked him for the unbranded maverick he was and felt compelled to test their wills. But now the man in the dark gray outfit and gleaming black boots had something even more urgent to attend to. He strode directly through the strained silence of the room to the table where Kathie Lord had brought her father. The three gunmen followed at a more leisurely, swaggering pace, formed a semi-circle behind their boss.
“One of my boys needs a broken arm set,” Malvaise told the doctor in a voice that seemed to have contempt for the entire human race. “He’s waiting for you in your office.”
“Your man will have to wait, Bart,” Kathie Lord answered. “My father has to go up to Spread Eagle on a matter of life and death.”
“First things come first,” Malvaise told the girl curtly. “Any trouble at Spread Eagle comes second. Let’s go, Doc.”
“No!” Kathie said. “He’s going with us. Terry Patton is lying at death’s door this minute!”
“And I say good riddance to any Patton,” Malvaise said sharply. “Come on, Doc. On your drunken feet! Hamp Jones needs attention!”
“Terry first,” the doctor said, running the words together. “Bad shot. Best friend’s son …”
Malvaise swung his head around briefly.
“Bring him,” he told his men and stepped between them as if that order settled the matter. Two of them started around the table toward the doctor. The rider from Spread Eagle, a slightly built puncher, shouted a protest and got in their way. The nearest gunman grabbed him by the shirt front, swung him aside and then slammed him full in the face with his fist. The cowboy went reeling backwards into another table and sank to the floor.
“You mean bully!” Kathie Lord cried and she, too, stood in front of her father defensively. “You awful killers!” she accused them all. The second one clamped his hand on the girl’s arm, pulled her aside roughly. Then they both laid hands on the little doctor, jerked him to his feet.
Five yards separated the bar from that table and Buchanan covered it with a leisurely three strides. He spun the first Big M man free of the doctor and hit him just once on the point of the jaw. The second one made a belligerent noise and he earned himself a sickening jolt in the midsection that jackknifed him directly into the path of an almost negligently thrown right hook.
Buchanan turned then, addressed himself to Bart Malvaise.
“The boy,” he said quietly, “needs the Doc bad. And the boy’s friends hired the Doc first.”
Whatever Malvaise was going to answer, astounded as he was, was overridden by the shout of the third gunman.
“That’s him, Bart!” he yelled. “That’s the ranny plugged Lafe and Hamp!”
The man should have shot Buchanan first and identified him to Malvaise later. But he reversed the order, went for his gun as he spoke. Buchanan’s Colt cleared leather in a blur, roared deafeningly in that low-ceilinged place, and with the echoes of the gunblast reverberating against his eardrums Bart Malvaise found himself standing quite alone among the dead and the unconscious. Alone and staring into the stony face and placid blue eyes that he would never forget.
“Better get to your patient, Doc,” Buchanan’s deep voice said into the silence. And the doctor, shocked almost completely sober by the lightning chain of events, stepped to Buchanan’s side and rested his hand briefly, almost reverently, on that marvelous right arm.
“You can do it,” he said. “You’re the man for the job, whoever you are.”
“Thank you for your help,” Kathie Lord added and Buchanan grinned down in pleasure at the sight and sound of her, winked mischievously.
“My thanks, too,” the Spread Eagle rider put in, rubbing his bruised jaw. Then they were gone from the saloon and attention focused back on Buchanan’ and Bart Malvaise. The owner of Big M had used the few intervening moments to get himself back under control and now the familiar arrogance was back.
“So you think you’re the man for the job, do you?” he asked. “I never saw a fast gun yet that didn’t meet up with a faster one.”
“Amen, brother,” Buchanan agreed.
“And you know what you’re bucking here, don’t you?”
“Me,” Buchanan said, “I ain’t bucking nobody.”
“Then ride out fast,” Malvaise told him. “Ride now!”
“All in good time,” Buchanan said, his glance attracted by the Chinese cook who stood timidly by the bar holding a tray. He motioned to him to bring it along. “Set it down over here, boy,” he called, pointing to a table as far removed as possible from the litter of Big M men on the floor. He swung to Malvaise again, dipping his fingers into the money pouch and pulling out a gold piece. “This is to bury him with,” he said reasonably and flipped the ten dollars. Malvaise, taken off guard, caught the coin in his hand on reflex. His fist doubled over it and his face darkened with embarrassment. But before he could say anything Buchanan was walking away toward the table, his back exposed recklessly.
There was a stir at the front of the place, an exclamation of surprise as Sheriff Sam Judd arrived on the scene. The ex-Big M foreman had seen Malvaise and his party enter the Silver Queen and prudently waited in his office so that whatever business they were up to wouldn’t have the sanction of the law in Indian Rocks. This was standard procedure, an agreement between himself and the head man—always arrive after the misdeed is committed. But what greeted the sheriff’s eyes now was a nasty surprise. Not that someone didn’t invariably get hurt when Bart and the boys came to town, but the dead man today happened to be none other than Jules Sweger. And the pair that were moaning and groaning nearby were nobody else but Biggie Tragg and Saul Ruppert.
“My God, Bart, what goes on here?” Judd asked, sidling up to Malvaise.
“Don’t ask a lot of damn fool questions!” the owner snapped at him. “And get some of these loafers here to take Jules out and bury him!”
“You bet,” the sheriff answered, and put four of the barflies to work. He himself helped Tragg and Ruppert to their feet, brought them to the bar for some reviving redeye. Bart Malvaise stood watching Buchanan begin the demolition of his steak and a half-dozen thoughts went through his mind in quick succession. First and foremost was that this rannihan with all the appearance of just another drifting saddlebum had cost him the valuable services of three top guns in just the past two hours. The answer to that, of course, was to send back to headquarters for a party of those loafing, hundred-a-month gunslin
gers playing poker in the bunkhouse and turn them loose on the damn drifter eating his damn steak.
But there was another consideration. Malvaise had awakened this morning with the certain knowledge that come nightfall he would own Pasco County—lock, stock and graze. He and Hamp Jones, in fact, had planned the last big push against Spread Eagle for sundown—a final raid that would level the other spread to the ground, count Matt Patton and Frank Riker among the dead. That was still the plan, but with three riders already lost how could he be sure that this big, free-wheeling bastard wouldn’t add to the score before he was stopped himself?
Malvaise, remembering the man when he’d been in action a few minutes ago, couldn’t be sure at all. So why not take a different tack entirely, he suggested to himself. Why not simply write off his losses and put the stranger’s obvious skills to his own use?
With that decision arrived at, Malvaise began a slow approach to Buchanan’s table, erased the angry scowl from his face.
“Let’s you and me have a talk,” the Big M boss said.
“Sure,” Buchanan said cordially. “Pull up a chair and pour yourself some coffee.”
Malvaise sat down opposite, declined the coffee.
“My name’s Malvaise,” he said for a starter.
“Mine’s Buchanan.”
“I run the biggest spread around here. Big M.”
“Heard it mentioned,” Buchanan said conversationally. “Tell me the market’s been holding up pretty good for beef.”
“Not too bad,” Malvaise said. “But a man’s got to keep growing bigger if he expects to survive.”
“That how you got it figured?”
“That’s how I know it to be,” Malvaise said. “And very soon I expect to be twice the size I am now.”
“Heard that mentioned, too,” Buchanan said, moving the clean platter aside to make room for a wedge of apple pie.
“Any particular objections, Buchanan?”
“Not from me.”
“But you interfered twice today,” Malvaise accused him.
Buchanan shrugged, washed down some pie with coffee.