Buchanan on the Prod (Prologue Western)
Page 15
He rode down the main street as far as the big frame building whose sign proclaimed it to be the Swinging Door Saloon. Buchanan smiled. He tethered the roan out front and whistled to a stableboy. Colt on his hip, Buchanan pushed the batwings open and walked in.
The place was mediumly crowded. A lot of heads swiveled to take Buchanan in as he entered. He was used to that. Anybody his size quickly got used to being stared at.
He flicked his eyes over the crowd, hunting for Malvaise or Larson. No sign of them. He went to the bar, where a pretty and somewhat tired-looking hostess was setting up drinks. The girl was easy on the eyes, a shrewd-faced blonde with an open blouse revealing high, firm breasts. She looked Buchanan over from top to toe in blunt appraisal.
“Hello, there,” she said with a warm smile. “You’re new around here, eh? I’m Elsie.”
“Tom Buchanan. Just rode up from Indian Rocks, and I could use some refreshment.” He dug into his pocket and found a gold five-dollar piece. Putting the half eagle on the counter, he said, “I want some bourbon, some steak, and some coffee. Give me as much as this’ll buy me.”
She set a bottle and a glass in front of him. “Start on this,” she said. “I’ll tell the cook about your steak.” She gave him a frank smile, and ducked back into the kitchen. Buchanan poured out a stiff shot and downed it. When the girl returned, he was on his second.
Buchanan said, “You rent rooms here?”
“Sure do. Got three empty ones upstairs.”
“Now you’ve got two. I’m staying overnight.”
She lit up. “Glad to hear that, big man. You’re an easier sight than the other two roomers we got today.”
Buchanan leaned forward in interest. “What other two roomers? Where they from?”
“Come to think of it, I guess they were from down your way. Damn near must have ridden their horses to death, too.”
“They give their names?”
“Well, I could check the register if you were all that interested.”
“Might be that they’re friends of mine,” Buchanan said casually. “I’d sure appreciate it if you’d have a look at your register.”
With a pretty flounce, the girl crossed the room to the big book. On the way, one grizzled old puncher reached out to grab a handful of her backside, and without looking at him she slapped his hand away. Buchanan chuckled. The girl could take care of herself, all right.
“Their names are Ted Smith and Mike Jones,” she told him.
“Smith and Jones, huh?” Buchanan repeated. “Couple of uncommon names there.” He moistened his lips thoughtfully. “You remember what they look like?”
“Sure. Smith, he was maybe six feet tall, and thick through the shoulders. An ugly son. Gloomy-looking, didn’t ever smile.”
That could only be Malvaise, Buchanan thought. He felt a twinge of interest. “How about Jones?”
“Same size, but a lot leaner. Kind of shifty-eyed, if you ask me. Sort of reddish hair.”
Stix Larson to a T. Buchanan poured himself another slug of bourbon. “How long they staying here?”
“Just overnight,” the hostess said.
“And where are they now?”
“Smith’s upstairs in his room. Jones went out for a walk maybe half an hour ago. Why you so interested, anyway?”
“Just curious,” Buchanan said. The girl leaned forward over the counter, and the blouse fell away in front, giving him a nice view of her firm white bosom. Buchanan had something more than just a scholarly interest in feminine pulchritude. The ramstammer was eying the merchandise with keen appreciation when a motion in the backbar mirror caught his eye. Behind him, the batwings of the saloon were opening and someone was coming in.
Easily, Buchanan turned to face the newcomer. The man stepped into the saloon.
Stix Larson.
Larson stood just within the door, looking around uncertainly the way any man will when he enters a saloon in a strange town. Then he started for the bar. But he hadn’t taken more than a step and a half when his eyes came to rest on the craggy face of Tom Buchanan. Larson’s jaw dropped. For half a second they faced each other across the full length of the saloon. Then Larson’s hand started for his side.
Buchanan moved faster. The Colt seemed to fly into his hand, and he fired as he brought it up. There was a single loud boom that stopped conversation dead cold, and Stix Larson dropped his gun without firing it and stared in surprise at the hole that had just been blown in his chest. He was dead before he hit the floor.
The place was very quiet. Holstering the Colt, Buchanan walked between the white-faced onlookers and knelt by the corpse at the door. He rolled Larson over. A moneybelt was strapped around Larson’s waist—a bulging moneybelt. No sense letting all those good greenbacks get stained with varmint blood, Buchanan figured. He unhooked the belt and poked it open. It was crammed with crisp bank notes, and down at the bottom it sagged under the weight of a couple dozen double-eagle pieces.
Smiling pleasantly, Buchanan hefted the moneybelt and fastened it round his own broad middle. The Indian Rocks people would sure be glad to get their money back, he thought cheerfully. Now, all he had to do was to hunt up that other prime skunk and take the remaining twenty-five thousand away from him, and—
“Buchanan!”
The shrill scream of the girl behind the bar cut into Buchanan’s reverie like a white-hot blade slicing through a tub of butter. The big man looked up and moved only slightly to one side; in the same instant, there was the crash of a gunshot and Buchanan felt the sizzling pain of a slug landing in his right shoulder. The impact of the shot nearly knocked him over, since he’d been in a half-kneeling position. As he stumbled forward, he inclined his head and saw Malvaise standing on the staircase, a smoking gun in his hand, an ugly smile on his face.
Buchanan’s right arm was dangling limply. He went rolling forward just as Malvaise fired again. The second shot smashed noisily into a row of empty whisky bottles arranged along the wall for decoration. Splinters of glass went flying every which way. Malvaise cursed.
Forced to crossdraw, Buchanan clumsily got his gun out of his holster with his left hand. He pumped a shot in the general direction of the staircase, but he was off balance and the shot went wild. Malvaise returned fire, missing Buchanan’s scalp by half an inch.
“Damn you!” Malvaise screamed.
Buchanan fired again. Again, too hasty. His left hand shook, and to his disgust the shot flew past Malvaise’s nose and embedded itself in the wall just back of where the erstwhile Big M man was standing.
Malvaise wasn’t anxious to stand around and trade shots with Buchanan any longer, evidently. He turned, suddenly, cutting diagonally across the saloon floor to make a break for it through the left-hand door that gave outward onto the stable. Buchanan watched with interest as Malvaise burst through the door. Crossing the floor in five easy bounds, the big ramstrammer leaned out and saw Malvaise streaking for the stable. Buchanan took careful left-handed aim, tightened his trigger finger, felt the satisfying whang of the Colt against his hand, and followed the true path of his bullet across some twenty yards into the back of Malvaise’s neck, just where his head began to sprout out of those thick wide shoulders. Malvaise spun crazily, did a kind of endflip, and came to rest in a little heap.
He didn’t move.
Buchanan walked over to him and rolled him over. Malvaise’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything, that was for sure. Buchanan parted the dead man’s vest. He had a moneybelt on, just as Larson had. Buchanan undipped it with his left hand. The right arm still wasn’t up to doing much, and Buchanan couldn’t very well fasten the belt around himself with one hand, so he draped it over his arm and turned around.
He was looking into a gun. The man holding the gun was a grizzled oldster wearing a shiny badge.
Buchanan said calmly, “You can put the gun away, Sheriff. The shootin’s over.”
“Who are you? What’s the meaning of all this?”
�
��The name’s Tom Buchanan, Sheriff. As for the dead meat, they used to be named Malvaise and Larson. They’re the critters that held up the Indian Rocks bank two days back and killed a couple people. I rode out after them.”
The sheriff holstered his gun and nodded in approval. “Right. You hurt bad?”
“Got a piece of lead in my shoulder, I guess.”
“Elsie, send a boy out for the doc,” the sheriff said to the girl behind the bar.
Buchanan glanced down at his shoulder. Blood was oozing steadily down his back, and the embedded slug was starting to set up a dull regular throbbing.
He walked to the bar and poured himself a quadruple shot of bourbon. He downed it.
“Son of a beehive,” he murmured, looking at his shoulder again. “Damned if it wasn’t my only clean shirt.”
• • •
BUCHANAN WAS RESTING easy the next morning. Elsie had fixed him up in one of the upstairs rooms at the saloon, and for the first time in a while he was bedded down in a good soft feather-bed that made him feel like he was staying in a plush hotel.
The local doctor had removed the bullet and had slapped a bandage on the wound. Buchanan was feeling fine now. He’d lost some blood and felt kind of wobbly, but a good steak put some of the strength back into him. It had taken him a while, after breakfast, to count the money he’d relieved the two corpses of. He’d laid everything out neatly on the counterpane, in stacks. Twenty one-thousand-dollar bills, twenty five-hundred-dollar bills, eighty-three hundred-dollar bills, a hundred-ten fifties, six thousand dollars in smaller bills, and twenty-eight gold double eagles. A grand total of $50,360 in cash money of the United States of America.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come on in,” Buchanan said. “I’m decent.”
The door opened. Elsie entered, and favored Buchanan with a pretty smile. “I sent for the Wells Fargo man,” she said. “He’ll be here any minute.”
“Good.”
“How you feeling?”
“Good,” Buchanan said.
“You don’t have many words, do you?”
“Guess not right now,” Buchanan said. “I’m thinkin’, and that don’t leave much room for talkin.”
“Thinkin of what’?” Elsie asked.
“Movin’ on. How far’s the next town?”
“Maybe fifty miles.” Disappointment showed in her face. “I figured you’d be with us for a while.”
“I will be,” Buchanan said. “Till lunchtime.”
“You ain’t a well man!” the girl exclaimed. “You ain’t fit to travel the day after gettin’ plugged like that!”
Buchanan shook his head stubbornly. “I’m on the prod, girlie, and I ain’t slowing down any more. The shoulder’ll heal in the sun.”
She pouted. “I thought we were going to be friends.”
“Well—”
“Stay another day,” she urged.
Buchanan hesitated. He was grateful for her hospitality. But he had an idea that if he let her talk him into staying another day, he might be here a good deal longer than that. She was a mighty tempting little morsel. Buchanan told himself that he had better be moving on, and at the same time he told Satan to get behind him.
“No,” he said. “I’m leaving after lunch.”
She started to reply, then saw the look on his face, the mixture of regret and stubbornness, and wrote him off as a lost cause. “I’ll see if the Wells Fargo man is here,” she said quietly, and went out.
A couple of minutes later there was another knock on the door. This time an efficient-looking man with a clipped brown mustache entered, pushed back his stetson, and said, “You’re Buchanan, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Lew Bryce, local Wells Fargo agent. They tell me you’ve got a consignment for me.”
“They tell you right, Mr. Bryce.” Buchanan waved his hand toward the stacks of money, from which he had previously subtracted a thousand dollars as his due in the range war just concluded. “Soon as you relieve me of this stuff,” Buchanan said, “I can get on my way north again.”
“Take me a little while to count it,” Bryce said.
“I’m not in that all-fired a hurry.”
Bryce sat down at the table and started to leaf through the money. After a while he looked up and said, “I make it exactly $49,360. That square with you?”
“To the penny,” Buchanan said.
“Where’s it going, now?”
“To Mr. Matt Patton, care of the Indian Rocks Bank.”
Bryce nodded and wrote out a receipt. He handed it to Buchanan, who put it in his pocket without looking at it.
The Wells Fargo man started to gather up the money. He said, “You want me to include any message to Mr. Patton?”
“No,” Buchanan said. “No message. Hell, I hardly know the man!”
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Copyright © 1960 by Fawcett Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1988 by
William R. Cox. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.
Cover Images ©Dover Publications/Cowboy & Western Cuts
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4880-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4880-2
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4878-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4878-9