Buchanan on the Prod (Prologue Western)

by Jonas Ward

“Right,” Frank Riker told him. “And tell him to be sure to put it on Malvaise’s account, not ours.” The wagon left the yard, Riker led Buchanan and Dolly toward the house, and Pecos and Billy headed for their bunks. What with one thing and another the pair of Texans both felt a little shuteye was coming to them.

  Matt Patton had his home lit up brightly, stepped out onto the porch to greet his guests. He had seen Buchanan prone on Lord’s operating table but that hadn’t prepared him for the massive vertical view and he stared up in open wonder. Then, like Riker, his gaze went to Dolly.

  “How do you do, young lady,” the old man said formally, his voice and manner blandly ignoring her rather startling state of undress. “I’m Matt Patton.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” Dolly said. “I’m Dolly Dupré.”

  “And this, of course,” Patton said, “is the stranger who came to us today. I can’t begin to tell you, Buchanan, how happy I am to shake your hand.”

  “Same here, Mr. Patton.”

  “Happy and grateful beyond words,” Patton added, his voice quietly choked. “Thank you for my son’s life, among other things you’ve done since morning.”

  “You’ve got a fine boy,” Buchanan said. “I kind of owed him a hand out there, you know.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, he had me dead to rights for trespassin’,” Buchanan explained. “Then took a chance and let me ride on.”

  “He didn’t say anything about that to me,” the father said.

  “One thing, though,” Buchanan added. “When he’s up and around again I’d work him out on that rifle. He’s not the best shot I ever saw.”

  “Maybe you can teach him,” Riker said.

  “Be glad to, if I had the time,” Buchanan answered. “But I don’t.”

  “You can’t stay to help us, then?”

  “Well, I’d like to talk some about that,” Buchanan said. “I hear I’m already on the payroll.”

  “If you’re talking about the thousand dollars,” Matt Patton said, “that’s money you’ve already earned. We only brought you out here to keep you from being attacked again in Indian Rocks.”

  “Obliged.”

  “But we could use any help you could give us,” Riker put in.

  “Let’s not press that,” Patton told his foreman. “Right now I want you and the young lady to come inside and make yourselves as comfortable as you can.” There was a household staff of three awaiting them and among them was a young Mexican girl of Dolly’s general measurements. Patton instructed her to take Dolly along and fit her out with something suitable to wear. Buchanan he invited upstairs to Terry’s room, and though the boy was pale and wan-looking in the big bed, he managed a wide grin when he saw who was standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, kid. How you makin’ it?” Buchanan greeted him casually.

  “Makin’ it fine, thanks to you, Buchanan,” Terry answered. “But I thought you were headed north from Nogales?”

  “Am,” Buchanan assured him. “If I can just get north of this Pasco County, that is,” he added wryly.

  “Been havin’ quite a time for yourself,” Terry said.

  “As busy a day as I can remember.”

  “Sure played a lucky hunch when I didn’t plug you this A.M.”

  “Amen,” Buchanan said.

  “I think both you happy warriors could do with some sleep,” Matt Patton interrupted then. “Plenty of time in the morning to gab.”

  “We hope,” Frank Riker said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Got a little information in town from Doc Lord,” the foreman answered. “Seems like Malvaise had tonight picked to stomp us out once and for all.”

  “You don’t think he will now, though, do you, Frank?”

  “Boss, I’ve quit trying to predict Malvaise,” Riker said. “I don’t think he even knows what he’s going to do until the spur of the moment.”

  “Well, we’d better make preparations for an attack, then,” Patton said.

  “Oh, the crew’s as ready for trouble as they’ll ever be,” Riker said. “As ready as half a dozen punchers can ever be for gunplay.”

  “How many has Malvaise got?” Buchanan asked.

  “I’ve kind of lost count,” Riker smiled. “The way they’ve been turnin’ their toes up all day I don’t figure he’s got many more than that himself. Except that they’re gunmen,” he added.

  “Is that how this war’s been going?” Buchanan asked. “Malvaise calls the turn and you fend him off best you can?”

  “What else?” the foreman replied. “This is a cattle outfit. My boys know all there is about chousing beef but not a damn thing about gunfighting.”

  A slow, almost mischievous smile spread itself across the big man’s face. “Let’s you and me pow-wow, Riker,” he said. “I just got a crazy notion.”

  “Let’s all hear it,” Terry Patton said from the bed.

  “Ah, no,” Buchanan told him. “It’s a little too loco for more than one person to hear at a time.” He motioned to Riker and the two men left the room, moved to an adjoining one and talked together for a good half hour. When Buchanan finished, Spread Eagle had its first real battle plan since the Pasco War began. But a bizarre one, Frank Riker thought, with the desperate feeling of a drowning man clutching at a passing log.

  “All we really have going for us is surprise,” he pointed out.

  “That’s all,” Buchanan conceded.

  “And you’ll be riding with boys who are just about gunleery. You and Pecos and Billy will have to handle the shooting end.”

  “That’s right,” Buchanan said. “But if you don’t like the idea, man, just say so.”

  “I do and I don’t, Buchanan,” Riker said. “I think the trouble is, we’ve been on the defensive so long I can’t get used to being anything else.”

  “Then let’s do it for the change,” Buchanan said with a happy-go-lucky grin. “Man’s got to get a little proddy sometimes.”

  “All right,” Riker said. “I’ll clear it with the old man and give you the word. What’s a good time for a stunt like this?”

  “Along about dawn,” Buchanan said. “Punchers don’t mind working around then and gunnies plain hate it.”

  “That go for Spread Eagle’s three guns, too?” Riker asked, smiling.

  “Well, we won’t like it much,” Buchanan conceded. “But I have an idea Big M will like it a helluva lot less.”

  “You get your sleep, then,” Riker told him. “Get all you can.” As the foreman spoke he led Buchanan to a bedroom and opened the door. Buchanan gazed at the bed fondly, bid the other man good night and was fast asleep within minutes.

  Chapter Eight

  STIX LARSON’S WELCOME AT BIG M was different. The man, for all the world like a dog returning home with its tail curled abjectly between its legs, would have led the survivors straight to the bunkhouse if Bart Malvaise hadn’t been waiting for them in the yard.

  “Get the job done?” Malvaise asked confidently.

  “Had a little trouble,” Larson muttered.

  “Trouble? What the hell do you mean, trouble? Twelve of you to take a wagon?” Malvaise looked around uneasily. “Say, where’s the rest of the boys?”

  “They caught it back there,” Larson answered reluctantly.

  “What? What the hell—”

  “Them bastards knew we was waitin’ on ’em.”

  “How could they know? Who’d tell ’em?”

  Larson shrugged. “Is Baby—is your friend still in the house?”

  “No,” Malvaise said. “She’s gone off to sulk somewhere. But she’ll be back.”

  “Unless she’s gone over to Spread Eagle,” Larson said.

  “What the hell are you talking atout?”

  “Somebody tipped ’em off we was waitin’,” Larson repeated. “I say it was her—and that she’s with ’em now.”

  Malvaise’s face darkened. “Then, by God, I’ll take her back!” he thundered.

 
“How?”

  “How?” the owner echoed. “By just ridin’ in there and takin’ her, that’s how!”

  “You don’t mean tonight, though?”

  “Why don’t I? What’ve they got to stop us with?”

  “You painted this wagon job pretty rosy, too,” Larson said, not caring how impertinent he might sound. This had been a rough day for the Big M, and he was minded to call it quits for now before any more Malvaise gunslingers got sent to their reward. “A wounded man and a pair of second rate saddlebums, that’s all. And they mowed us down. You ask me, we’d better get back to full strength before we go troopin’ into Spread Eagle. Send over to Douglas for a dozen good boys.”

  “Larson, have you got a yellow streak?”

  “Yellow, hell! But I’m sure superstitious.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that this has been a real bad day for Big M. It’s like you sit down to poker sometimes and all you draw is those second-best hands. Well, I don’t stay in a game like that. I take my losses and wait till next time—before I’m cleaned out altogether.”

  This argument told on Malvaise, a poker player himself. He stood looking up at the mounted Larson for a long moment, his own dark face reflective. “We ain’t had much luck at all, that’s for damn certain,” he said.

  “And theirs is bound to change if we just wait ’em out. I don’t care who this Buchanan scudder is, he can’t go on winnin’ every goddamn pot.”

  Malvaise smiled now. His anger was subsiding, and his normal cautious craftiness was getting the upper hand. He admitted to himself that it might be disastrous to storm the Spread Eagle tonight. The men were tired, and their morale was shot full of holes big enough to ride a mustang through. A brief respite might be in order, he thought. Just a breather. That Buchanan ramstammer wasn’t any miracle man, after all. He wouldn’t recover completely in a single day.

  “Okay,” Malvaise said thoughtfully. “We’ll call it a day. Call it a damn lousy one.”

  “Amen to that,” Larson said fervently.

  “But we’re going to get an early start tomorrow.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tell the boys I want them up and awake and ready to ride out by five in the morning,” Malvaise said.

  “We ain’t going to wait for new men from Douglas?”

  “We don’t need ’em,” Malvaise said. “How many men you got that can shoot a gun?”

  “About twenty.” Larson frowned. “Maybe ten that’s any good. The rest just go along for the ride.”

  “Ten’s all we need,” Malvaise said. “The others are just the fancy trimming. Ten can take the Spread Eagle.”

  “Look, boss,” Larson said hesitantly, “you know how it is when they’re on the inside and we come riding in. They can pick us off like—”

  “Like the idiots you are!” Malvaise roared. He was furious again. Yesterday he had had the roughest, toughest bunch of hombres west of Alabama manning the guns for him. Today the best men were dead, and what was left sure didn’t amount to much. “Listen to me,” he said in a cold voice. “At five in the morning nobody’s gonna be up and around at Spread Eagle. We’ll smash in there before they know what’s going on. Hell, they’ve only got but three guns in there, and Buchanan’s a sick man.”

  “The boys won’t like gettin’ up so early,” Larson protested. “They’re all done in. They need their sleep, boss.”

  “They’ll have it,” Malvaise said. “I want everybody ready to ride by five, hear me? And anyone still pounding his pillow when I come around to fetch you is going to be unemployed two seconds later.” He paused. “And there’s one other little thing you can tell them.”

  “What’s that, boss?”

  “If Dolly really is over at Spread Eagle, I want her brought back here unharmed. We’ll do all the harming here at Big M—one at a time.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, boss?”

  “Uh-huh. We’ll strip her bare and peg her out in the bunkhouse. And the boys can have her. They can match straws to see who goes in what order. The little bitch has it coming to her for what she done to me. To us.”

  “Boss?”

  “Mmm?”

  “As the segundo, don’t you think I’d have some special rights with her?”

  “You mean like first turn?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Larson said with a hopeful grin.

  “You’ve had an itch for that filly all along, haven’t you?” Malvaise demanded.

  “I’m human, ain’t I?”

  “You haven’t already—”

  “Uh-uh, not me!” Larson said quickly. “That was Hamp who did all the fooling with her. I just thought about her some.”

  Malvaise allowed an ugly grin to appear. “Okay, Stix. I think your request’s within your rights. You get her first. Then all the others.” He frowned. “Everybody else at Spread Eagle gets wiped out, though. Especially that scudder Buchanan.”

  “Right, boss.”

  “See you at five,” Malvaise said.

  Larson nodded. Without another word, Malvaise spun on his heel and went into the big house.

  He slammed the door angrily behind him.

  What a day, he thought. The Big M cadavers laid end to end could practically ring the house. Tragg, Ruppert, Jones, Sweger, plenty more besides. Malvaise scowled darkly. A day like this hadn’t been any part of his plans. But neither had that massive lunk of a Buchanan. He was the one who had messed everything up.

  And to think that Tragg had two chances to put finish to the rannihan, Malvaise thought bleakly. Two chances, and Biggie flubbed them both! It was Tragg’s fault that all this had happened, then. Tragg’s fault that the dead lay in heaps, Tragg’s fault that the deed to Spread Eagle was not already safely in Malvaise’s pocket.

  Well, there wouldn’t be any need for formal signings now, Malvaise told himself contentedly. Come the dawn, Buchanan would be dead, and that scut Frank Riker, and Matt Patton and all the rest. All but Dolly. She’d be getting a different fate, one that would make her wish she’d took a bullet between her nice white round bosoms instead.

  Bart Malvaise went to the sideboard, wrenched open the decanter, poured two inches of good bourbon down his throat. He exhaled noisily and belched. The drink gave him courage. He peered out the window at the starry sky. Wouldn’t be long now. Another six or eight hours and the Big M riders would be descending on the unsuspecting Spread Eagle. Malvaise smiled in anticipation. He headed upstairs for some sleep.

  • • •

  BUCHANAN WAS ITCHING something fierce. He stirred in his sleep, reached a big hairy hand down his side, and scratched. Scratching brought pleasure. But his fingers encountered something on his skin that didn’t feel right, didn’t belong there. Startled, he sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, looking down at himself.

  Stitches.

  A nice long scar that somebody had sewed up right and tight.

  Buchanan scratched his head. How in tarnation had he gotten sewed up while he slept, he wondered?

  Then he remembered. Oh, yeah. Biggie Tragg and that sharp blade coming out of nowhere. Buchanan grinned sheepishly. He had clean forgotten about that.

  Elbowing up out of bed, he went to the window and looked out. It was still pretty dark, with only the merest traces of the sunrise that was still a couple of hours in the future. But, thought Buchanan, enough shuteye was dadblamed enough. Why, he’d been in the sack for close on five hours. That was plenty. More than plenty. High time to be up and around, getting this business cleared up.

  Jamming his huge feet into his boots, he tidied himself together and went clumping out of the bedroom. The big house was silent. The thing to do, Buchanan decided, was to rouse that Frank Riker fellow, then get Pecos and Billy. With some breakfast in them, they could get things rolling.

  Tiptoeing as quietly as he could, Buchanan walked down the long hall, wondering where he could find Riker. Maybe the ramrod slept in the bunkhouse with th
e men. Or maybe not. Maybe he was right here in the big house. Worth a look, anyway, Buchanan figured.

  The first door he opened was the wrong one. It was Terry Patton’s bedroom. The boy hay huddled in a twisted mass of covers, rolling around in uneasy sleep. Quietly Buchanan closed the door and moved on.

  The next door was even worse. He pushed it open and saw Dolly Dupré in the bed. She had pushed all the covers to the floor, and her nightgown was hiked up as far as her milk-white thighs.

  “Ooops,” Buchanan muttered softly, and started to close the door in confusion. But Dolly was awake.

  “Hold it,” she said quietly.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. I was looking for somebody else.”

  “Well, come on in, anyway. I want to talk to you. You’re Buchanan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Nobody else your size around here, anyway. Well, come on in! I won’t eat you.”

  Buchanan stepped over the threshold, closing the door partway behind him. Dolly sat up in bed, pulling her nightgown down as far as her knees. But the act of modesty failed to accomplish much, since the gown was thin and gauzy, and she obviously had nothing on underneath it. Faint moonlight trickling through the window illuminated her curves more than adequately for somebody of Buchanan’s keen eyesight. He gazed at her calmly, his craggy face reflecting neither embarrassment nor desire.

  Dolly said, “You were really looking for my room, weren’t you? Come on, admit it.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m trying to find Frank Riker.”

  “At this hour in the morning?”

  “We’ve got some work to do over at the Big M.”

  “Sit down here for a second?” she said, indicating the bed.

  Buchanan shook his head. “Sorry, Miss Dolly. There ain’t much time to waste.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “I like you fine,” Buchanan said.

  “Then come sit down here next to me.”

  “Please, Miss Dolly. I got to get going.”

  Dolly laughed. “I think you’re afraid of me.”

  Buchanan threw back his head and laughed. “Afraid? Uh-uh, Miss Dolly. I see you don’t understand me at all. I think you’re a right pretty little miss. But if I stop to dilly-dally with you, it’ll be sunup before we know it. So I think I’ll be movin’ along now.” “Wait.”