Buchanan's Revenge (15 page)

"Hope he does! What's gettin' into you, Lash? Losin'
your nerve?"

"My nerve is the same as ever, Big Red. What you're
losing are the boys we need to get this job done!"

"Then to hell with the job!" Leech roared down at
him. "The rep of this outfit comes first with me! Let's go,
boys!"

"Down!" John Lime commanded the trio of chained,
snarling, hungry-looking bull mastiffs that guarded his
jail.
"Down!"
he snapped, and the half-wild beasts obeyed,
reluctantly, casting aggressive glances at Buchanan as
they slunk into the shadows. The jail itself was nothing
more than an out-sized adobe hut, with a portal instead of a door, partitions rather than cells and narrow slit
windows without bars. John Lime lit a lantern that rested
on a scarred table just inside the portal, sending a huge rat scurrying into its nest beneath the cracked floor,
throwing light on a tarantula who had complete posses
sion of one entire ceiling corner. Inside each partitioned
section was a mattress of straw that looked as old as the
building itself.

"Some calaboose," Buchanan commented.

"I don't believe in fancy jails,"
Lime
said.

"Guess you don't."

"Nor in taking prisoners. Waste of good money."

Buchanan looked at him. "You got me for a prisoner,"
he said.

"Temporarily," Lime said.

"Oh, yeah?"

L
ime shook his head. "Nothing like that," he said. "I'm
goi
ng to send a deputy around with your belongings and
y
o
u
r horse. He'll escort you out of Brownsville, Buchanan,
and you'll keep right on going."

"You're sure positive about things, aren't you?" Bu
sman asked him feeling his irritation rising to an active
level
again.

"Very positive," the lawman said and then his features
s
eem
ed to relent in the lantern's flickering glow. "I have
to
be, Buchanan," he said. "I couldn't be any other way
and still maintain law and order in this border city. If I
showed one sign of weakness, of indecision, Brownsville
would turn on me the same as those dogs out front." The
man sighed, smiled curiously. "It's not easy," he said,
"being John Lime."

"Why do you keep at it?" Buchanan asked him.
Lime kept smiling, gave a shrug of his shoulders beneath
the expensive coat. "Some men are bo
rn
to hold power,"
he said, in a different voice. "They are put on earth to
direct the lives of lesser men, to run things. I happen to
be one of those chosen." He sighed again, shook his head.
"But it's a lonely road to travel. Lonely and friendless." His
eyes seemed to focus sharply on Buchanan's face. "I envy
a man like you,"
L
ime said. "You don't know how lucky
you are."

"Yeah," the tall man said, looking around at his doleful surroundings. "This is the high life."

"I also like you," Lime said surprisingly. "I almost wish
I didn't have to send you on your way."
"Oh, I'll be right back," Buchanan told him.
-
^:

"You'll what?"

"Be back," Buchanan repeated. "I figure the brother
and his sidekick'll show up now. Wouldn't want to miss
"em."

"I just said that I liked you, Buchanan," John Lime said, his voice and manner withdrawn again. "But I'm ordering
you out of the territory. Defy me and the consequences
will be very serious. Very," he added and moved toward
the open portal. "I'll send a man to ride you out of
Brownsville," he said then. "Don't force me to do anything more." He stepped out into the darkness and was
gone. Immediately, the dogs set up a vicious clamor,
strained fiercely at their chains to get at the prisoner
inside the miserable jail.

Buchanan eyed his lively guards from the entranceway,
speculating wryly that they added a certain extra hazard if
a man had escape on his mind.

"Nice little doggies," he called out to them, experi
mentally, but the sound of his voice only increased then-
frenzy. Just plain unfriendly, he decided, and tried no
more overtures. Fifteen minutes went by, twenty, then
half an hour passed without a sign of the deputy Lime
had promised. Finally a rider appeared in the street out
side, trailing Buchanan's filly behind him.

"You in there, buddy?" the deputy called.

"I ain't out for a stroll," Buchanan assured him. "What
kept you?"

"I'll tell you what kept me, this goddamn ornery horse
of yours kept me! Liked to have stomped me to death
tryin' to get the bit in her mouth!"

"She's stealproof," Buchanan explained. "Has to know
a man for a spell."

"Even got my stallion jittery," the man complained, dis
mounting. "God help any stud takes a notion to her."

"She'll pick one out when she's ready," Buchanan said, watching the deputy make a wary approach. "You know
them dogs real well?" he asked him.

"I know 'em, all right. Sometimes they forget they
know me."

"All Lime said was down," Buchanan told him help
fully.

"That's Lime," the man outside replied. "I happen to be named Boyd. Generally," he added, "if I stand here
till they get my scent they let me by. Takes a minute or
so, depending on how hungry they are."

"They ain't fed since Christmas from the sound of
'em," Buchanan said, not noticing any letup in their snarl
ing and growling.

"Down!" the deputy ordered, but without Lime's bland
assurance of being obeyed. "Back off there, Leo! Down,
Eng! Down, Vixen!" The three animals abated some,
s
eemed confused for a moment. Deputy Boyd kept talking
to
them, edged forward, and the dogs finally decided to let
him
walk past. He stopped at the portal.

"Let them see me takin' hold of your arm," he said to
Buc
hanan. "That usually works."

"Usually?"

"More times than not," Boyd amended.

"Well, just in case," Buchanan said, "let me have my
gun
back."

"To shoot Lime's dogs? Mister, you must be out of
your head
—" His voice broke off at the sound of his name
being called from up the street.
^;

"Boyd!" John Lime shouted, his voice erratic. "Hold
the prisoner in there!"

Now what? Buchanan thought, his patience thin. Lime appeared before the jail, followed by half a dozen of his
men. They all carried rifles and seemed agitated.
Lime
strode past his dogs as though they weren't there.

"You've apparently stirred the hornets," he said to Bu
chanan. "Red Leech is looking for you with his entire
crew."

"Well, thanks, Sheriff, for the tip," Buchanan said and
started around the man. Lime got in his way.
"Where do you think you're going?"

"Going out," Buchanan told him. "Man's a sitting duck
in here."

"Sorry about that, Buchanan," Lime said, "but you're in
my custody. How would I look if I set you free now?
Everyone would accuse me of sidestepping a threat from
this arrogant bandit
—"

Buchanan looked his amazement. "You told me he's got
six guns to your one," he said, trying to keep his tone reasonable. "You take a fight like that out into the open
country, whittle him down to size. Man, you don't sit in
a damn chicken coop and wait for him to take you."

"We disagree," Lime said, and even as he spoke the
clamor sounded. There were many riders coming this
way, coming nearer by the moment. Lime turned to Dep
uty Boyd, lifted the Colt from the man's belt and re
turned it to Buchanan. "Defend yourself," he said. "We're
in this together."

It was the damnedest fool thing Buchanan had ever heard of. Foolish, but beyond the arguing stage now.
Leech's army had arrived outside, were forming a tight
ominous-looking ring around the adobe jail. The dogs
set up a fierce din.

"This the hoosegow?" Red Leech roared above their
racket.

"This is my jail, Leech!" Lime called back. "And you'r
e
off limits! Turn around and get back where you belong*"

"Why sure, brother, sure! Soon's we stretch that ranny's
neck for ya!"

"The man is my prisoner," Lime told him. "He's under
no sentence to hang!"

"I say different!" Leech bellowed. "Push him out here
by the count of three or I'll blow this pokey over! Start the
count, Perrott
.
"

"One!" Fred Perrott shouted, and from inside the building Buchanan tried to make out the man and the direction
of his voice.

"Two!"

"Last chance, by God!" Leech warned.

"THREE!"

Thirty-five handguns thundered with one deafening
voice. Slugs screamed through the portal in front,
through the slit windows in back, crashed against the four walls and rocked the little building visibly.

The defenders answered back, but not with that tre
mendous firepower, that overwhelming impact. Buchanan,
with single-minded devotion to his mission in Browns
ville, knelt in the opening and sighted carefully on the
rider who had tolled the count. Once, twice, three times
he punished Fred Perrott for the cowardly murder of Rig Bogan and consigned him to hell. And, on either side of
him, two of Lime's men went down.

"Pour it on
.
" Leech bawled and another volley
slammed against the doomed jailhouse, inside and out. A
fagged section of the back wall fell in. Only four of the
trapped guns replied, and one of those silenced was Lime
himself. Buchanan pulled the fallen lawman away from
th
e
portal.

"Hit bad?" he asked him.

"In the forearm. Fractured the bone, I think."

"Give 'em hell.'" Leech cried at the top of his lungs and
th
e third round racketed relentlessly. One more of Lime's
dep
uties screamed and fell. Another went down without a
murm
ur and lay still.

“
I seemed to have made
a mistake," Lime murmured throu
gh his pain. "Should have listened. Fought them in
th
e open
—"

"Hold your fire, boys/" Leech ordered outside. "All
right, in there!" he called. "Anybody wants to come out,
he's got a ten-second truce! Startin' now!"

"You two," Buchanan said to the remaining deputies.
"Pick up your boss and get out of here. Quick!"

They nodded, unafraid but grateful, lifted John Lime
gently between them and carried him outside, past the
bodies of his three jail
guards who had died in the first
barrage.

"Who else?" Leech shouted into the tense quiet.
"Time's up!"

Buchanan had gone to the damaged back wall, was testing the gaping hole with his fingers.

"You asked for it.
" Leech bellowed and Buchanan hit
the wall with his big shoulder in the same instant. The old
mortar gave way with a groan, giving the man an exit
that caught the gunmen at the rear of the building by sur
prise.

"Fire
.
" Leech was bawling out front and the blast of his
guns was instantaneous. But Buchanan was running at
right angles to the building, low and fast. He was spotted
in the bright orange gunflashes.

"Somebody gettin' away, Red!"

"That's him!" Turkey Forbes yelled piercingly. "That's
the scudder kilt Jules!"

"Get the son!" Big Red Leech thundered. "Ride the
bastard down!"

The fox and the hounds. Buchanan plunged on into the
darkness, and as unnatural as it felt to run out on a
n
argument the tall man adapted himself to the situation
with such gusto as to make himself wonder how his Highland ancestors had made their living.

He took his pursuers we
st for fifty yards, directly into
a thick cluster of shacks and stores that was the market
place of the Mexican section, then led Leech's Gang
through a maze of nar
row streets and alleyways toward
the slaughterhouses,
where a hundred busy men labored
at their butchering by
torchlight and a thousand head o
f
cattle bawled dolorously
in their pens. Leech's men sud
denly found themselves
on skittish, unwilling horses—
animals with the scent
of fresh blood in their sensitive
nostrils and no desire to come any close
r.