Buchanan Says No (3 page)

"My husband makes a damn poor man
,”
Ruby Weston
said unfeelingly, stepping away from the door. But when
she would have passed Frank Power he slipped an arm
a
r
ound her supple waist and pulled her against him with
a
n
easy familiarity. He kissed her mouth, slid his lips to the
hollow of her throat. She put her hands on his chest and
p
u
shed him away.

"No," she said. "Your heart isn't in it." She looked up
at
him coolly, a raven-haired, dark-eyed woman of truly
startling beauty. Her face was a study in
planes;
as a dia
mond
is
,
and each angular feature was in almost too perfect proportion to another, creating a final effect that had
the same restless, discomforting, prismatic brilliance as a
precious stone.
Her figure was a complement to that face: long and
slender legs, boyishly slim hips, a fashionable, unemphatic
b
u
st—and overall an impression of resilience, unbreakability. Ruby Weston, nee O'Hara, was twenty-three years
old.
“

"Boyd had work to do for me today," Frank Power said
to her now. "Important work." There was accusation in
his tone.

Ruby had moved toward the settee. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Important to both
of us, Frank," she said. "He left the ranch at seven this
morning to get the money at the bank."

"The game at Troy's interfered."

Again there was the rebuke, the implication of responsi
bility on her part for whatever it was her husband had
done.

"I know about the game
.
" she said. "Who all is
playing?"

Power smiled sardonically. "The big attraction is my
friend from Chicago
.”
he said. "The man Boyd is sup
posed to be dickering with for the beef."

"That's just fine," Ruby said. "Leave it to Boyd."

Power glanced at her for a long moment and then his
left hand went to the black, wiry-haired mustache on his lip, thumb and forefinger stroking it, an all but uncon
scious mannerism in times of decision.

"I'm afraid I'm through leaving it to Boyd, Ruby," he
said. "Your husband is a luxury I can no longer afford."

There was finality in that and a deep sigh went through her body, was audible across the heavy silence between
them. Obviously she had expected him to say that, and once it was spoken she seemed to feel a kind of relief,

"What becomes of us, Frank?" she asked.

"Us?"

"Boyd and I. What do we do? Where do we go from
here?"

Power carried his cigar to an ash tray, looking sidewise
at her as he moved, a half-amused smile touching his lips.
He flicked off the long ash, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Boyd," he said very carefully, "gets the chance to ride
out of this country with no regrets,"

"And me?"

"You don't ride anywhere. You move into the biggest mansion on top of Signal Hill and live happily ever after."

"As Mrs. Frank Power?"

"As Mrs. Anything-you-want"

"Then you won't marry me?"

"And spoil a beautiful friendship?"

"Suppose I insist on it?"

"Then that
would
spoil it." He took a deep drag on the
cigar, blew out the smoke expansively. "You're a desirable
woman, Ruby," he told her. "Also an intelligent one. I
should have thought you'd had enough marriages to suit
you."

"You miss the point," Ruby said. "I'm probably better
off with Boyd."

"Boyd's a lightweight, a nothing
.
This morning he
signed his name to a bank draft and
it
was worth ten thou
sand dollars. But I made it available, told him what to do
with
it. If he signs his name tomorrow morning the cash
ier will laugh in his face."

"So Boyd is through?"

"Finished."

"When are you going to tell him?"

"As soon as the game at Troy's is over. I don't exactly
want to advertise my problems." He crossed over to where
sh
e stood. "And that game," he said huskily, "isn't going
last
forever."

She let his arms go about her, submitted to the embrace
without joining in it.

Chapter
T
hree

Buchanan and Sandoe made their way along Signal
Street, and with each passing moment there was some
thing new and interesting to catch the eyes of the pilgrims:
here an inviting saloon, there a girl in a doorway, a hard
ware store with shining new handguns on display, a barber's shop, a girl passing by in a carriage, a haberdasher,
two girls smiling down at them from a single window.

"Not so frolickin' fast," Sandoe complained. "What's
the
hurry for?"

"You'll have time for everything, kid," Buchanan told
him. "What we need is the wherewithal"

They swung
i
n toward the portico of Bella House, Buchanan in the
lead, when a lean figure in black stepped from the
shadows and blocked their way.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked one of Frank
Power's alert bodyguards in a flat, tonelessly authoritative
voice.

"I'm going in there," Buchanan answered, "as soon as
y
ou take that gun out of my ribs."

"Punchers and drifters stay south of the Happy Times
Saloon,"

"Says who?"

"Says the finger on this trigger. Get back down the
street where you belong."

Buchanan moved neither forward nor backward, quietly
debating it, and the delay brought the gunman's partner
from his waiting place in the alley entrance. It happened
very swiftly then, too fast for Buchanan to stop it. The
first guard's attitude, the second one's abrupt entry had snapped Mike Sandoe's trail-taut nerves. The Colt swept
into his fist in one blurred instant and in the next it was
roaring furiously.

The guard bracing Buchanan was luckier than his partner. He caught only fists—a left that slammed downward
on his wrist, a choppy right that glazed his eyes and
buckled his
legs.
Buchanan let him fall and turned to the
man who had been shot, writhing and groaning in the
alleyway.

"You're real slippery with that shooter
,”
he told Sandoe
reprovingly.

"Didn't know his intention. He hurt bad?"

"Some." Buchanan's probing hand came away blood-
soaked and he wiped it carefully on the wounded man's
shirt. "Not much left in him
,”
he said.

"Tough luck
,”
Sandoe said. "What do you figure they were so proddy about?"

"Didn't want us muckin' up their pretty hotel, near as
I could make out."

The two of them seemed oblivious of the buzz of voices
from the hotel porch, of the dozen-odd gamblers and
drinkers who had come out onto the street from Troy's
place, curious but cautious. Then one man, a star glisten
ing on his vest, made his way across Signal Street.

"Guns up!" he announced. "This is the law."
"Let's get out of here," Sandoe said, but Buchanan put
a
h
an
d over the barrel of the drawn Colt, forced it down
bac
k toward the holster.

"This is where our money is, kid
,”

“
Damn
it
cut out the kid stuff
,”

The lawman moved close to them, glanced at the pair
on
the ground,
and then
raised his startled face to Buchanan.

"
W
hat goes on here? Ain't that Kersey and Bowen?"

Buchanan shrugged. "Strangers to us, Sheriff
,”
he said.

"City marshal
,”
the man with the star corrected testily.
"
a
n
d strangers in Bella stay south of the Happy Times."

"So the fellow said," Buchanan admitted.

*"And you plugged him?" the marshal asked, incredulous.

"That was me," Mike Sandoe said. "The first one braced
us with his gun already drawed. That one doing all the
m
oaning like to have scared me half to death when he
b
u
sted out of the alley
.
”

"It was more justifiable than not
,”
Buchanan agreed
.
""You got my word for it, Marshal
,”

“Y
our word! And who the hell are you?"

'Tom Buchanan," Buchanan said. "Out of Alpine,
West Texas. Sheriff Jeff Sage will vouch for my word
around Alpine
,”

"This is around Bella, Territory of California," the
marshal told him, bristling even more. "And the pair you
picked on work for Mr
.
Frank Power
.
”

"He ought to learn them better damn manners
,”
Sandoe
said.

The marshal turned his head to the people on the
porch,

"Will somebody get Doc Brown down here?"

"Sent for," someone answered, and the lawman swung
back to Buchanan and Sandoe.

"Saddle up and ride, boys
,”
he said. "That's the best break you'll ever get in Bella."

"Thanks just the same," Buchanan told him, "We got
some business matters to attend to first."

"With who?"

"Fella in the hote
l
here."

"Didn't I just tell you about staying south of the—"

"Marshal, we're not going to break the law in Bella.
But that 'south of the Happy Times' business leaves me
with a bad smell in my nose
,”

"Likewise," Sandoe said. "So step to one side, Mr.
Marshal, and let two peace-lovin' gents be about their
business."

He brushed the officer aside and started for the
entrance stairs, causing hurried movements on the porch
as the onlookers scurried out of his way.

Buchanan paused briefly at the marshal's side. "That
body don't mean no real harm
,”
he said confidentially.
"Just nerved up some, is all."

"Nerved up? That's Sam Kersey he plugged, the swiftest
gunny that ever worked these parts."

"They're all the best till the next one rides in," Bu
chanan said, and went off after Sandoe with the marshal's
wide-eyed gaze following him up the stairs.

They crossed the porch together, but when they entered
the lobby Sandoe fell a step behind, as if seeking some
sort of assurance from Buchanan in the face of such ele
gance and respectability.

The head clerk, Callow, had got a hasty report of the
shooting outside, and now he watched the approach of
the ferocious pair with a face gone chalk-colored. Killers,
he told himself, and all he could think about was the
dream he had had, the one in which he was killed during
a gunfight down at the south end of town. But this was
no dream
.

"I'm looking for Boyd Weston
,”
Buchanan said, and
his voice was the only sound in that hushed room.

Callow tried to talk but his throat was locked,
all
he could do was shake his head from side to side.

Buchanan, misinterpreting the clerk's fear for evasion
looked down at the open register. "Boyd Weston
”
read
one of the signatures, and someone else had written, "46."