Buchanan's Revenge (17 page)

No one did.

"Sure, sure," Gill said. "Step out the door and let him
plu
g me with that goddamn rifle. What kind of fool do
you
take me for?"

"He told Lash he'd meet you out by the little shack,"

L
eech said. "Now, I don't know this scudder except for
at
rep. I say he'll be waitin' for you, Sam, where he said he
would. Fair and square."

"Easy enough for you to say."

"Sam, you'll go out that door and fight him," Leech
said. "Or you'll be carried out on top of that door. Toes
u
p."

There was a stirring in the big room then. Sam Gill
k
new that he was a minority of one. He raised his head
and a broad, confident smirk appeared on his face. His
husky shoulders squared.

"All right, Big Red," he said, "I'll go out there and take
him. You ever known Sam Gill to back down from a
fight?"

"Never."

"Or lose one?"

"Never," Leech said again.

Gill started across the room with an air of bravado,
turned in the doorway jauntily. "Be right back, boys," he
said, slipping his .45 from the holster smoothly and check
ing the load. "Save me a bottle."

They could hear his boots descending the oak stairs to
the floor below, a confident sound about them, and they
watched from the windows as he walked steadily, without hesitation, across the courtyard.

"Ought to be a good fight," Frank Hancock said. "Any
body want to bet Sam don't take him?"
There were no takers.

Sam Gill crossed the courtyard with the sure, icy con
fidence of a battle-tested veteran. The gun that rode com
fortably on his hip was his living and his life, and he
knew exactly how good he was with it. He knew, too, that he was going to the most important fight he had ever had.
This kill would raise him head and shoulders above the
rest, give him permanent stature in the gang. And erase
the stigma laid on him by the bushwhacking charge.
His most important fight, and Gill knew that he was up
for it. He could feel it all through his body, feel every
nerve alert, pitched to razor sharpness. Even the sound of
his steps on the flagstone seemed magnified.

Suddenly he stopped in mid-stride and a smile of cunning appeared slowly on his lips. Why, he wondered, an
nounce his coming? He lifted one foot, slipped the boot off, did the same with the other and set them both down
very quietly. Now he began walking again, as soundless
and stealthy as a cat.

Buchanan had been listening to the clicking heels, and
when it stopped so abruptly he frowned, wondered if the
other man had run out of nerve. Sure sounded cocky
enough just a second ago.

He was standing well back from the corner of the house,
unprotected by the shadows, determined to give Sam Gill
the selfsame chance to kill him as he wanted. But when
the silence beyond the house continued, Buchanan began
to move slowly in that direction.

He moved that way, and Gill, in stocking feet, circled
the little house from the other side, came up at Buchanan's
back. Then they were both there, not thirty feet apart,
and the only warning Buchanan ever had was the whispery
creak of Gill's gun barrel clearing leather.

Two shots murdered the silence all around, close-spaced
as two seconds. One of the guns roared a second time, a
third. The tumbling echoes of the blasts rolled away and
a taut silence descended once again.

Until a tremendous voice shattered it anew.

"Now, goddamn it," bellowed Red Leech, "are yon
done back there?"

"Done," Buchanan called back softly, the Colt already
holstered. He turned from the dead Sam Gill, began to
walk away.

"Wait," a voice called and Lash Wall came up to him, his manner eager, his eyes bright even in that darkness.
The same darkness that had led Sam Gill into a fatal mis
take of judgment. "Wait," Lash Wall said. "Big Red wants
to meet you. And I want to have a little more parley." He
took Buchanan by the arm, turned him around persua
sively, and led him back to the courtyard.

"Shake hands with Buchanan, Big Red," he said.

The two men locked palms, took each other's measure.

"By damn, you are as big as me!" Leech exclaimed.
"Almost! You wanna wrestle, brother?"

Buchanan laughed. "No, brother," he told him, "not
tonight."

"Tomorra then!" Leech urged. "Man, I ain't tried my
bear hug on a fittin' opponent in near a year or more
.
"

"Ought to keep a few bears handy," Buchanan sug
gested. Lash Wall stepped closer.

"In case it slipped your mind, Big Red," he said dryly,
"tomorrow's when this crew goes back to work."

"Now ain't that hell? All right, brother, we'll lock horns when the job's done! How's that?"

"Occurred to me," Wall said then, "that Buchanan
might want to come along and make himself a pile."

Big Red beamed, landed Buchanan a whack on the back
that would have driven another man into the ground.

"Great!" Leech roared happily. "Great idea, Lash!"

"Wish I could, boys," Buchanan said. "But I got other
plans."

"What other plans?" Leech demanded.

"Going to New Orleans," Buchanan said, speaking as
though he really meant it.

"You can go to New Orleans any time, Buchanan,"
Wall said smoothly. "But you won't fall into a deal like
this one very often."

Buchanan shook his head. "Thanks, though, for the
of
fer."

"Don't you think you owe us something?" Wall said.

"Owe
you?"

"Why, sure," Leech said, scowling fiercely. "You kilt
P
r
ado, didn't ya, and laid old Wynt up with a busted col
larbon
e?"

'Plus the Perrotts and Sam Gill," Wall put in.

"That's five good guns I can't use," Leech accused.
"
Th
anks to you!"

Tm sorry about that," Buchanan said, "but not very."

"Tell you what," Lash Wall said then. "We'll take the one of you for the five of them, pay you full shares on
each. That, in case you're curious, comes to fifteen thou
sand gold dollars."

Buchanan looked down into the man's smiling face,
thought about Honest John Magee back up in San Antone.
And Banker Penney. And a thousand dollars Rig had
wanted to send back to Alpine. Chances were those three men would never get the straight story on what happened
to Rig Bogan. The Double-B Fast Freight Company, in
fact, would always be a sorry memory to them, under a
cloud.

"What do you say?" Wall prodded at him and Bu
chanan smiled back.

"Suppose," he said, "I was to plug a couple more of
your boys. Could you raise the ante then to twenty thou
sand?"

"Plug a couple more
—" Red Leech roared, then got the
joke and laughed boisterously. He gave Buchanan another
tremendous thump on the back. "Twenty it is, brother!"
he said generously. "I'll cut the rest out of Lash's share!"

And Lash Wall made no protest about that, nor the rip-
roaring party that followed the hasty, irreverent burial of
Sam Gill. Wall had a hunch that the new addition to the
Leech army was the difference between success and failure
of the operation. Besides which, he would be handling all
the money that came from the merchants and Big Red
would never know whose share had been shaved to pay the
recruit.

Eleven

T
wenty-four hours
later the three of them sat their
horses on the Texas bank of the Rio Grande. Ranged
out behind them were the wagonloads of contraband that
were to be convoyed duty-free into Mexico
—a first night's
shipment of more than seventy-five thousand dollars in
cotton and tools. The flatboats were in the water, the
ramps were being laid for boarding, and in a matter of
minutes the initial crossing would be attempted.

"Looks quiet enough over in the State of Tamaulipas,"
Buchanan commented.

"Too damn quiet!" Red Leech bawled.

"Won't be for long, you yellin' like that," Buchanan
said.

"You got some objection, brother?"

"He was only fooling," Lash Wall put in quickly.

"He better be!" Leech said. "And he better remember
who's runnin' this shebang!"

"Wouldn't want to be accused of it myself," Buchanan
said.

"What?" Leech demanded.

"Where the hell's your patrol?" Buchanan demanded
right back. "Ought to've had men over there for the past
tw
o nights, getting the lay of the land, giving you some
idea of what to expect when those flatboats get across."

'"Don't you tell me my goddamn business!" Leech
t
hu
ndered. "I been fightin' the Mex for five years and
n
ever been licked yet!"

"Not at shoutin', anyhow," Buchanan said.

"What'd you say?"

Buchanan looked past him to Lash Wall. "All the same to you," he said, "I think I'll swim across and have a look-
see.

"Good idea. I'll go with you."

"We'll all go!" Leech ordered. "Follow me!" He put his
horse down the bank and into the river. Buchanan and
Wall trailed along behind, not so noisily, and they both
wished that the red-headed man wouldn't urge his mount
toward the other side at the top of his voice.

"Get up
there!" he shouted. "Swim, you four-legged bastard!"
The far bank suddenly blazed with rifle fire.
It was a detachment unde
r
the command of Sgt. Miguel
Gomez, one of the thirty strung out along the river be
tween the
bridges at Matamoros and Rio Rico. General
Antonio
Cueva, commander-in-chief of the Army of Tamaulipas, had known for weeks that the gringos were
preparing to smuggle goods past his lucrative customs. But
where would they try to ford the river? The treasury,
fortunately, was full, and so Governor Diaz was able to
give him the three hundred extra men and horses he
needed to guard the border from invasion. The General, a
brave man and a good tactician, had placed his troops in
the best strategic spots
—and waited.

Now the waiting was over. Red Leech's raucous entry
into the water had alerted the sentries. They gave the word
to Sergeant Gomez, and the sergeant ordered the open-fire.
"Red's hit!" Lash Wall yelled and he and Buchanan
urged their horses forward. But it was the gang leader's
mount that had taken the bullet, fatally, and now Big Red
was thrashing wildly in the muddy brown water.
Another volley roared at them. Twenty rifles.

"Goddamn it, I can't swim
.
" Red Leech bellowed
furiously.

Buchanan got to him, reached down with his arm.
"Grab on!" he said. "Climb up!"

"I'm too big!" Leech shouted from the water. "I'll pull
us both under!"

"Climb up!" Buchanan ordered. Leech took the out
stretched hand put his other around Buchanan's forearm.
"Heave!" Buchanan shouted and lifted the other man
clear out of the water and across the horse's rump. "You
on?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Be damned if I ain't, brother!"

A third volley erupted from the other bank. Buchanan was carrying the Winchester bandido fashion. Now he
unslung the rifle from his back, levered it and pumped.
Levered and pumped.
Off
to his right Lash Wall threw hot
lead at the opposition.

"Cut this way!" Buchanan yelled to Wall. "Come on
downstream!" He swung the filly left, with the current,
kept up a steady oblique fire as he went. The next barrage
from the Mexicans was less organized, raggedy and con
fused. Then guns joined the argument from the Texas
side. Frank Hancock and Sherm Moore had led a dozen men into the river as soon as the trouble started, but they
had to hold their fire until they were sure they weren't
going to hit their own people in the darkness. Now they
were sure, and they let go with a pent-up vengeance.

Buchanan and Wall worked their horses on a gradual
diagonal course to the opposite bank, scrambled up onto dry land. Big Red gave Buchanan a hearty pound on the
back.

"Sure obliged for the lift, brother!" he told him. "Save
your bacon sometime, let me know."

"You can save this animal of mine from goin' sway-
back," Buchanan said, "by buddyin'-up on that stallion of
Wall's."

"Sure, brother, sure!" Leech said, getting down. "But
you know somethin'? You got a peculiar way of sayin'
things. Like you still ain't got it clear who gives the orders and who takes 'em."

"What order you got to issue right now?" Buchanan
asked him. The sound of firing continued upstream with-oot letup.

"What do you mean?" Leech demanded. "Well, here we are in Mexico. And a quarter-mile away
a
re some Mexicans. What are you going to do about it,
mister?"

"*Why, I'm gonna wait till the rest of the boys get here!"
Leech shouted. "Then I'm gonna take them Mexicans
ap
art!"