by Jonas Ward
“You don’t figure Malvaise would sucker us into some-thin’?” another asked suspiciously, taking a potshot over the saloon doors, ducking as an answering shot splintered the wood.
“He wouldn’t do that,” a companion said.
“No? Well, I count four that don’t get paid this month.”
“Five,” another said laconically from the saloon window. “That big sonofabitch just picked off Bronk Bonner.” He poked his gun through the glass, fired three quick ones, dove to the floor when Pecos and Billy returned the lead almost immediately.
“They’re movin’ on!” the one at the door announced. “We got ’em on the run, boys!”
“Well, you go out and chase after ’em, Stix,” the man close to the floor suggested. “I’ll cover you from here.”
“I tell you they’re leavin’!”
The Texans were, for a variety of reasons. To get Billy patched up, to avoid pressing their marvelous luck thus far, to resume Buchanan’s personal business at the bank.
“Let’s get him between us,” he said to Pecos but Billy waved their help away impatiently, got up from his kneeling position on his own power.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Hell, I get worse than this little scratch just shavin’,” he said. Hard on his words came a burst of fire from behind. Buchanan wheeled to find Tragg and Ruppert sniping from the bank building.
Now this, Buchanan told himself, is what I came back for. This is more like it. And he went after his tormentors with reckless disdain, his face wildly joyful. He ran full tilt at them, shocking Pecos and Billy alike, firing impartially as he moved. Saul Ruppert suddenly screamed, clawed with both hands at his belly and went down. That was too much for Tragg, so badly rattled already, and he broke and fled for his life, darted into the alleyway alongside the building.
Buchanan had a good crack at his enemy during those moments, but instead he held his fire, followed Tragg into the alley and made a fervent wish that he might get the other man hand-to-hand. Just five minutes was all he asked for. That would wipe the slate clean.
The alley went on through to a narrow street beyond. There were some houses scattered along it, a storehouse for wheat. Buchanan saw Tragg pull the big door open on that building, enter it and pull the door shut again. The storehouse was tall, shaped like a silo, windowless except for some shuttered openings near the very top.
Tragg got the door closed, slid the bolt home and leaned against the frame breathing heavily. Running didn’t come natural to Biggie. He never even walked if he could avoid it, and to be chased like this by that gahdamn ramstram out there had exhausted him. Exhausted him morally, too, for running away didn’t come natural to Biggie, either. It was always others who ran from Biggie Tragg—from his bullying fists when he was growing up in Kansas, from his merciless guns ever since. But gahdalmighty, he alibied to himself now, you just don’t stand there and get killed by some friggin’ madman who don’t care his ownself whether he lives or dies. That’s what he was, Biggie repeated, crazy. The treatment under the sun had driven him loco.
Tragg straightened up from the storehouse door with a start as he felt it shake under Buchanan’s pull, moved across the floor in the semi-darkness and mounted the ladderway to the second level. Loud in his ears was the groan of the hinges as Buchanan gave the door another mighty tug.
He can’t, Biggie thought. Good God, he can’t pull that door loose from the building … Still and all, he climbed to the third level of the bin, found a vantage point that looked down at the door and waited there with his gun drawn.
It’ll give eventually, Buchanan decided after a third try, except I don’t have time for eventually. He stepped backward, unhooked the Colt and laid six slugs crosswise into the wood. He reloaded, tried the door a fourth time and it came open. And as it did Tragg sent two shots crashing from above. Buchanan plunged inside, a split second ahead of another angry bullet, gained the cover of the overhang and paused there for several seconds.
“Go on, climb that ladder!” Tragg yelled down at him. “Come on up after me, you bastard!”
Buchanan was already studying that problem, noting the ladder’s angle of incline. It would take a complete damn fool, he thought, to mount it the orthodox way. But if a man was only half a fool, and half lucky, he could try getting up to the next floor on the underside of the ladder.
The man in the catbird seat above sent two more shots racketing down, both of which would have caught Buchanan if he had been ascending. Tragg’s jeering voice followed.
“Come on,” it urged. “Come on up and get me!”
Buchanan was already on his way, monkey fashion, and when his head was just below the landing he grabbed hold of the ledge, went across to the other side by hand. Then, swaying to gain momentum, he gave a quick lunge, threw a leg over and kept rolling.
Tragg, concentrating one hundred per cent on the base of the ladder, was so startled to find his enemy directly below—and half again closer—that he nearly lost balance and pitched forward. Now, close to panic, he scrambled to his feet, started climbing feverishly to the top landing.
The scurrying was music to Buchanan’s ears. And, gauging it rather nicely in such poor light, he sent a bullet roaring past Tragg’s head and into the next rung the man would have grasped.
“I don’t have to kill you,” Buchanan called to him and Tragg held on there as if frozen, then slowly screwed his head around.
“You—don’t?”
“Nothing for you to remember that way,” Buchanan told him. “Just back down here, mister, and let’s you and me lock horns.”
“You mean, fight? No guns?”
“No guns.”
The man trapped on the ladder gave the proposition a moment’s thought. Then, almost negligently, he tossed the .45 he was holding and landed it at Buchanan’s feet. Buchanan holstered his own, unbuckled the belt and let it slide to the floor.
“Come on down here, mister,” he invited.
“Sure,” Biggie Tragg said and smiled wolfishly. With his back masking his movements he eased his hand beneath his shirt, slowly slid the knife hidden there into the palm of his hand. Just as slowly he backed down the ladder, the picture of reluctance. He turned and faced Buchanan, arms hanging apishly at his sides, the slim, razor-sharp blade out of sight behind his knee.
“This is for keeps,” Buchanan told him. “Try anything you want to.”
“I aim to,” Tragg said and his fist tightened on the shaft, got ready to plunge it into Buchanan’s gut. Buchanan’s eyes were on Tragg’s ugly face, the sadistic mouth. He stepped forward and aimed a punch that would change those features permanently. Tragg slashed upward with the knife.
• • •
“PECOS! BILLY!” Matt Patton exclaimed as his ex-gunslingers entered the bank building. “What are you two doing here?”
“Came back for a fella’s hat,” Pecos explained. “Where’s Malvaise?”
“He lit out that way,” Patton said. “Right after the shooting started in the street.”
“Figures,” Pecos said. “Someplace where old Billy can set a spell, Mr. Patton? He got stung out there.”
“To hell with that,” Billy protested. “Let’s find Buchanan.” But Rowe was whitening around the cheeks and there was pain in his eyes.
“Bring the boy in here,” Patton directed, leading the way into the office. Banker Aylwood was there, fussing nervously over the bruised, groggy Frank Riker. The banker turned, saw the drawn guns, gasped.
“My God!” he cried. “A holdup! On top of everything else, a holdup …”
“No, no,” Patton said. “These are two of my—my former boys. What did you say you came back to Indian Rocks for?”
“A hat,” Pecos repeated. “Stretch out on that settee, Billy-boy,” he added with concern for his partner. “I’ll go hunt up the sawbones pronto.”
“Forget me, damnit,” Billy said, “and go hunt up Big Bend.
I don’t like the way he took off after Biggie Tragg.”
“He’ll be all right,” Pecos said. “You lie down.”
“He was too wild,” Billy insisted. “He had the blood up. I seen good hounds follow a bear right into its own cave with the same never-you-mind …”
“All right,” Pecos said appeasingly. “You just get off your feet and I’ll go look after Buchanan.” He moved Billy to the couch, lowered him onto it.
“I’d love to know what’s been going on around here during the last few minutes,” Matt Patton said. “Things have been happening too fast for an old man like myself.”
“And too fast for us sprouts,” Pecos said, starting to feel a little harassed by the responsibilities piling up. “What happened to Frank?” he asked of the ramrod.
“Malvaise,” Patton answered, summing up all their troubles in one word.
“Hear you come to terms with him.”
Patton nodded, but the banker disagreed.
“Technically speaking, you haven’t, Matt,” Aylwood said, picking up the deed that was signed with only the letter ‘M’. “Malvaise left in such a hurry that he forgot this.”
“Well, it makes no difference,” Patton said.
“You never can tell,” Pecos told him. “Another couple, three days like this one and Big M ain’t goin’ to strut so tall.”
Frank Riker raised his head painfully.
“What do you mean?”
“This Buchanan fella,” Pecos said, moving toward the door. “His way with Big M is to shoot ’em where you find ’em. Not much strategy to it, Frank, but it works real fine.” “Wish you’d stop jawin’, Pecos,” Billy complained from the couch, “and get with him. That Biggie Tragg ain’t no pushover.”
“Tragg?” Riker said, his eyes showing real interest. “What about Tragg?”
“Buchanan don’t like him much,” Pecos said. “Him and Ruppert. But he’s all square with Ruppert and I figure he’s settlin’ up with Biggie right now.”
“What happened to Ruppert?” Riker asked eagerly.
“He just died outside,” Pecos answered. “Him and five other Big M boys.”
“Five?”
“Oh, it’s a great day to be in the undertakin’ business, Frank. Boom times for sure …”
“For crissake, Pecos, will you make tracks?” Billy demanded. “You stand around here gossipin’ like an old hen.”
The door to the office flew open and Doc Lord stood there, wide-eyed with excitement.
“I told you, Matt, I told you!” he shouted to his friend. “He’s the man for the job, that fella! And you, too,” he told Pecos, slapping the lean gunman on the back. “Watched the whole shootin’ match from my office. Say, what happened to you?” he broke off, moving to Billy. “Stop one?”
“Just a graze, feels like, Doc.”
“Well, let’s have a look-see.”
“Sure. Pecos, get goin’, will you?”
“Right,” Pecos said, relieved by the doctor’s arrival. “I’ll find Buchanan and bring him back here.”
“Do that,” Matt Patton said. “It’s high time I met the man.”
“And watch your ownself,” Billy cautioned. “Big M’d like to get their hands on us real bad.”
“Big M’s left town,” Lord said. “Malvaise pulled his crew back to the ranch—what you boys left of it.” The little man’s voice was gleeful, his eyes dancing.
“See you folks later,” Pecos said and went in search of Buchanan. He exited the bank with due caution, soon saw that Big M had indeed cleared out. Cleared out and left their dead behind, which Pecos considered a breach of faith. They had gone down in Big M’s cause, he felt, and Malvaise had an obligation to bury them decently.
Pecos turned down the alleyway where he had last seen Buchanan’s big, hurtling form disappear, followed it through to the narrow street beyond. His glance swept the houses for some clue to Buchanan’s whereabouts, fell on the storehouse with its door ajar.
“They’re in there!” a voice called from an upper window of one of the houses. “Probably both dead, you ask me!”
Pecos hadn’t asked the citizen, but as he made his way toward the building he was oppressed by the ominous silence. A showdown between a pair like Buchanan and Tragg should have sound and fury, not this unnatural quiet, and now he was beginning to feel Billy’s concern for their new friend. Had he been too wild, after all, as Billy said? Too brash? And was this the cave where the wily bear had led the too-eager hunter?
Pecos stopped ten yards from the building.
“Buchanan!” he called out. “Yo, Buchanan!” There was no answer from inside, no sound whatever. Pecos drew his gun, decided to go in and learn the worst. He reached the entrance, peered around the half-open door. Spotlighted by a shaft of bright sunlight was the broken, grotesquely sprawled body that had hurtled to the floor from the high landing above.
“My God,” Pecos said and went to it.
• • •
BUCHANAN HAD NEVER seen the knife at all, only felt the hot stab of pain as the steel shot up through his flesh and beneath his ribs. His own fist had struck home in the same instant, exploding full into Tragg’s face, driving the other man hard against the storehouse wall. His hand pressed instinctively against the wound then, came away bloodsoaked. He looked at his palm almost curiously, was aware of a sudden weakness taking hold of him, a fast draining of his strength.
“I may be dying, you sonofabitch,” Buchanan said to Tragg then, “but I ain’t dead yet.”
Tragg spit out some broken teeth, wiped blood of his own from his face, braced himself against the wall and held the knife ready for another blow. One more trade, the man knew, and this fight was his.
“Come and get it,” he told Buchanan savagely.
And Buchanan came at him as if there were no knife, moved right into Tragg with his fist cocked high. A cry of brutal triumph burst from Tragg’s throat as he saw Buchanan commit himself to that last, desperately reckless punch.
Or thought he saw Buchanan swinging at him. Tragg actually did commit the knife, uppercutted with it, and as the blade moved harmlessly through the air he realized with a shock that Buchanan had feinted his punch, stopped it in mid-air and twisted his body out of the knife’s path.
Then his body recoiled against the off-balance, flat-footed Tragg, all of it driving a left fist that wanted to tear Tragg’s head loose from his shoulders. The power of it spun Tragg completely around, catapulted him headlong into the wall again. He sunk to his knees, got up again, turned around.
“I ain’t dead yet,” he heard Buchanan tell him a second time, saw that vengeful figure move in relentlessly, stared at those massive fists.
“No!” Tragg screamed. “No!” And as Buchanan went to hit him again the man dove frantically to his right to avoid the blow, forgetting in his fear what a perilous battleground this was. Tragg’s dive carried him out over the ledge of the narrow landing, sent him plunging with a hideous shriek to the floor far below.
Pecos arrived five minutes later, knelt briefly beside the body with its fatally broken neck, wondered about the bloodstained knife still tenaciously gripped in the dead man’s hand. He stood up, raised his head.
“Buchanan!” he yelled and the echo came back from the high ceiling. “Buchanan!”
Pecos bounded up the ladder, found Buchanan sitting with his back propped against the wall, his chin on his chest, quietly bleeding his life away.
Chapter Six
BART MALVAISE DIDN’T get his drink until he was back in his lair at Big M. All the way up to the ranch he had kept his own dark counsel, not speaking a word to the men. And from the angry, sullen set of his back he gave out the very definite impression that he was highly displeased with their work in town.
A feeling that was mutual among the gunmen who had survived the brief but costly battle on Trail Street. Their principal grievance against Malvaise was his failure to prepare them for trouble. He had sent word that the war was over, to come
in and celebrate, and they had left the ranch in a holiday mood. But Malvaise had been one hundred per cent wrong—and when the leader of a guncrew is caught guessing that badly, morale is shaken all the way down the line. They were sore at Malvaise about that and they were sore at him for not making some arrangements about their casualties. They had no objection to his order to pull out, but when Stix Larson had asked about their dead, Malvaise had made the snarling answer that it made no difference what happened to them now, that they were of no further use to Big M. There was resentment among them about that. And, finally, they resented his displeasure now. The boss should be in a high rage about the licking he just took, but to blame them for riding into that nest of hornets was too much to stomach.
“What the hell were we supposed to do?” Larson growled to Buck Speer.
“And how about himself?” Speer wanted to know. “Why didn’t he use them fancy guns to help Biggie and Saul in front of the bank?”
“Instead of sneakin’ out back,” Lou Nash put in.
“Yeh,” Larson grunted. “How do you figure Biggie made out with that big bastard?”
“Well,” Speer said, “you know that Biggie and me ain’t no special buds, but all the same I wish him luck. That guy acted like he was bulletproof, or somethin’.”
“Or like he didn’t give a damn,” Larson said. “Ramstammers like that give me the willies,” he added complainingly. “It ain’t natural to fight a man that don’t care like he should.”
“Right,” Nash agreed. “Where’d Spread Eagle hire him from?”
“I never fought him no place,” Speer said. “And I’d remember if I did.”
“Story I heard,” Larson said, “was that Malvaise tried to hire him a couple hours ago. Right after he beat up Biggie and Saul and kilt old Jules. Way I get it, the guy told Malvaise to stick the job in his hat.”
“Don’t imagine that set too good on his nibs there,” Nash said. “What’s the scudder’s handle, anyhow?”
“Don’t know,” Larson said. “He’s Mr. Trouble so far as Big M is concerned.”