Marauders' Moon (10 page)

“Out in the open,” Buck murmured.

“I thought you'd want to know,” Mitch said innocently.

Buck only looked at him.

“Is it all right?” Mitch asked.

“All right?” Buck echoed. He smiled slightly, and it was more of a grimace than a smile. “Are you sure about all this, Budrow? Plumb sure?”

“It happened that way,” Mitch said. “Maybe if I'd waited I'd of got their names. I thought you'd want to know about—”

Buck grunted, silencing Mitch. He looked fondly at him. “You couldn't have done better, son, if you'd brought their names.”

Mitch made a diffident gesture. “It was luck, mostly.”

“Go get some sleep,” Buck said. “I've got all the proof I need.”

Mitch went out to the bunk house. There was a chorus of snores which Mitch did not seem to hear. Once in his blankets, he got to thinking about Buck Tolleston. A salty little devil, a good boss, in his way. And then Mitch tried not to remember that. When someone's got a gun to your ear, you aren't much interested in anything else, he reflected, not even people who are good to you. Before he dropped off to sleep, he heard Buck walking toward the corral.

Buck didn't even wait for breakfast. Now that he had definite proof of his suspicions, there were other considerations more important than filling his belly. He rode into Wagon Mound in mid-morning, tied his horse in front of the sheriff's office, and went inside.

Wardecker was not there, but Wally was. Buck ignored him and would not condescend to tell him his business. Out on the step, Buck paused. There was work for him at the bank, tallying losses, liquidating the investments of the people who had to have money and have it quickly. Patton was dead, and Buck was bewildered by the task that faced him. He eyed the bank with distaste. Just then he spotted Will Wardecker coming up the sidewalk alone, his old body hunched comfortably over the crutch.

Buck turned and said over his shoulder to Wally, “Here comes Will. I want to talk to him alone.”

Wally obligingly stepped out. Wardecker greeted Buck and went inside, and Buck shut the door after him and followed him to his creaky swivel chair.

“Well, you think I'm a pretty hard man, don't you? Plumb suspicious, unreasonable, quick-tempered, and a little wild in the way my thinkin' runs,” Buck said mildly.

Wardecker looked at him shrewdly. “I'm wrong about somethin'. What is it this time?”

“First thing is, your prisoner, Webb Cousins, jumped the country. Rode down into Wintering County with another hombre—likely a man sent up from there to get him. I put Cousins on a windbroke horse to—well, never mind. Anyway, he joined this other rider and they rode over into Wintering, we think.”

“Who said so?”

“My men. They tracked 'em as far as the county line. Mac made camp there last night, waitin' for daylight, and sent word back to me. They're headin' for Wintering.”

Wardecker said, “What've you been doin' to the boy, Buck?”

“Doin'!” Tolleston flared up. “Feedin' him, givin' him a decent bed, decent work, as much freedom as I could!”

“Then it don't seem logical he could have run for Wintering, when they want him over there.”

Buck smiled thinly. This was what he had been waiting for. “Not unless they was bringin' him home to pay him for a good job of bank robbin' done.”

“I don't believe it,” Wardecker said gently.

“No? All right, listen to this.” He told him about Mitch Budrow's visit to Bull Foot, and what he had seen. Wardecker listened intently, polishing the bowl of his cold pipe with his hand.

“Of course,” Buck finished sarcastically, “those hardcases just struck up an acquaintance with Meeker. Maybe they wanted a job, bein' broke. Maybe this Cousins decided to run down and give hisself up, preferring jail to what I was givin' him. Maybe it's just coincidence and what the hell do we care—they never hurt us.”

Wardecker grimaced. “Easy, Buck.”

Tolleston said nothing. His triumph was complete, so he waited.

“You can trust this Mitch Budrow?” Wardecker asked.

“You know him. What do you think?”

“I allus liked him. Besides, he owes you somethin'. I'd say, yes.”

“All right.”

Buck waited. Wardecker packed his pipe and lighted it and sat there, arms folded across the back of his neck, staring at the blue smoke he was exhaling.

“Hell,” he said quietly. He looked up at Tolleston. “What's next, Buck?”

“Cattlemen's meeting.”

“And?”

“If they've got any fight, it'll be out of my hands. If they ain't, then I reckon I'll have to do somethin' I've been keeping away from most of my life.”

“Kill Wake Bannister?”

“That's right.”

“When'll this meetin' be?”

“I left a note to Mac to send Mitch Budrow into town this afternoon. I want them all to hear it from him. The board of directors of the bank is meetin' this afternoon. That includes almost every cattleman we'll want. Those that ain't there and don't live far we can send for now. And those that live too far will be into town anyway, I reckon, to hear what the bank decides to do, and if it will close down. That bank meetin' can wait until this is finished.”

Tolleston was right. Almost every cattleman of any size, for one reason or another, was in town by noon. Those who were directors, Buck requested to gather for the meeting in the bank. The others were asked to attend, since Buck had made plain that it was to be an open meeting, mainly to ask advice. No one in town, outside of Buck and Wardecker and Mitch Budrow, who had arrived at noon, knew the real purpose of the meeting.

It was held in the bank, and as soon as Buck had recognized the faces of all the men he needed, he directed Mitch to lock the door. It was a grim gathering. All of these men were ranchers, all either stockholders in the bank, or men whose notes the bank held. Directly or indirectly, its welfare was a force in their lives, and this was reflected in their faces. Some of them had been in the posse which had pursued the robbers. That day they had been deeper into Wintering County than ever before and they had not turned back because of fear. It takes time to track fugitives, and these men knew from bitter experience that the deeper they went into Wintering territory and the more time it took, the graver the chance was of being ambushed. Only when the men sent ahead to scout returned to report that a small posse of Wintering men, getting bigger as it came, was approaching, did they turn back. And in that moment many of them realized with bitterness exactly what they had been brewing for themselves for fifteen years. Some wanted to return, band together, and come back and clean up Wintering County, paving the way to the capture of the bank robbers. Others suggested mediation, a parley, a plea for help. Still others were ready to quit, sure that neither of the other plans would succeed. But whatever they believed, they knew that this was the darkest time in their lives. Yesterday Buck Tolleston had purposely avoided talking to them, inciting them. He could win a few over to the side of violence, but not enough. Today he thought he could.

He rapped on Patton's desk with his gun butt. His listeners were scattered on the counter, the other two desks, the chairs against the wall.

He began temperately: “I told you men this was to be a meetin' of the men interested in the bank, for the purpose of seein' what could be done.” He paused. “I know what can be done. It don't concern the bank. It concerns all of us. But before I go on, I want your oaths that what's said in this room—every last detail of it—will be kept quiet. Any man that don't feel like givin' his word can step out.” When none moved, he said, “Then I take it that your oaths have been given. Is that right?”

They nodded or said “yes,” or merely looked at each other, wondering what was coming.

“The news I have to give,” Buck went on, his manner increasingly aggressive and terrierlike, “is damn simple! It's this. I have proof that men over in Wintering County backed the hold-up of our bank and that they are giving the bank robbers refuge there now.”

Buck saw a half dozen men rise out of their chairs, but he wasn't watching them. They were the hotheads, like himself. He was watching three of the older ranchers—Lee Wurdemann, a man who sided him in the old days and now owned the second biggest spread in the county; Wes Anders, big, gentle, peaceful; Miles Kindry, mild as May and hog fat—and one of the younger ones, Lou Hasker. It was at Hasker that Buck looked longest, because Hasker's Chain Link was the county's biggest ranch, employing the most men, and because Lou Hasker, above all people, had irritated Buck the most in the past with his indifference. Hasker was young, able son of an able father, red-haired, drawling, and quiet. The bank held his note for forty thousand dollars. Thirty thousand of it, earned by a daring drive through the Silver Horn Breaks a month ago with more cattle than had left San Patricio County in ten years, was deposited in the bank, awaiting the month when half the sum fell due. As things stood now, Hasker was ruined, and Buck knew it. The only change in Hasker's face now was a little tightening of his jaw muscles. His cool voice cut through the hum of swelling talk.

“Can you prove that, Buck?”

Buck gestured to Mitch Budrow. “Here's the man I sent down to Bull Foot. He's new to them people, so I reckoned he could get away with it. He'll tell you. I only want to add that I have trusted him in the past and found him reliable.” He turned to Mitch. “Tell them what you told me.”

Mitch, showing a quiet confidence he did not feel, told in a level, matter-of-fact voice substantially what he had told Tolleston. The assembly heard him out in utter silence, and when he was finished, they still did not speak.

Suddenly, Lew Hasker said, “Budrow, are you sure you know Hugo Meeker?”

“No, I ain't,” Mitch said. “I took the bartender's word, that and the brand on his horse. But I can tell you what the man I saw looks like.”

“Go ahead.”

Mitch pretended to recollect a moment. Some warning voice inside him told him that this was his last chance to do the right thing, and that by the time he had finished this description he would have taken the choice between being damned or dead. He wanted to live.

“This gent, I should say, come from Texas. I wouldn't say how old he is, because he likely looked the way he does now when he was twenty and he'll look that way when he's sixty. My guess would be forty-five, though. He's got washed-out hair, and eyes between a light gray and a blue and they're shallow. He's got a hatchet face, long, thin mouth; he's lean and his cheeks is sunk and he smokes without taking the cigarette from his mouth He's close to six feet, might weigh a hundred and sixty, and he moves slow. He don't smile neither.”

“What kind of horse does he ride?”

“A blue roan branded Dollar on the left hip.”

A murmur of assent rose from some of the men.

Hasker went on doggedly. “That's Hugo. What about these hardcases?”

Mitch went on stubbornly: “The man I noticed first was about forty. He was wearin' a flat-brimmed Stetson dented four ways. He had deep-set light eyes and the skin was pulled tight acrost his cheeks. He was thin and not very tall, and I noticed he was chewin' on a match the whole time I watched him.”

Wally half rose out of his seat. “That's the man that covered me on the steps, Hasker.”

“The other one—” Mitch began, but Hasker waved him quiet. For a long time, Hasker said nothing. He had a coin in his hand which he examined thoughtfully. Because he had been the first to question Mitch, men were waiting for him to act. He looked up at Buck and pocketed the coin.

“That's good enough for me. Buck. I'll back your play.”

The whole roomful, as of one accord, seconded him.

Buck swiftly addressed the older men. “How about you, Wurdemann, Anders, Kindry? And you, Sweetser and Pillsbury? And you, Dale? Do you think the way Hasker does?”

They said “yes,” and said it emphatically.

“Then,” Buck said, “I step down. You're willin' to fight for what's been taken from you. So am I. I'll let you decide how.”

“Stay there, Buck,” Hasker said. “You've been tryin' to rawhide us into this for years. You were right, I reckon. If we'd taken a fightin' hand in this sooner, we'd never be where we are today. Many's the time you hoped you could do this. How do you plan it?”

Buck answered swiftly, “Ride into Bull Foot, burn it down. Burn the courthouse, all the records, all the stores, all the loadin' pens. And I'll tell you why. Because the whole town—lock, stock, and barrel—is owned by the Bannisters. You can hurt more Bannisters that way than ridin' all over the county—all except one, that is. That's Wake. When you've burned the town, then put the Dollar spread in ashes and you've got Wintering licked.”

“They've got a railroad,” somebody objected. “It's easy to build up again.”

“Burn it down again,” Buck said. “Rustle their stuff, poison their water holes, fire their spreads. It'll take more than one raid, but the point is—keep hammerin'!”

“They'll strike back,” someone else said.

“Of course they will!” Buck said angrily. “Hell, it's war, ain't it? All we want is warnin' and a chance to strike the first blow.” He quieted down. “That's my plan. If you can think of a better one, let's hear it.”

No one could. The Bannisters, all of the same family, had a hold on Wintering County that was almost ownership. Put them down and you put Wintering down. First, the many Bannisters, then the biggest one. Wake Bannister might receive news of the town's being plundered, but he would not lift a finger to avenge it. But if the forces were directed against Wake Bannister's Dollar outfit first, he could, and would, summon the whole county to fight for him. Better to make sure of the town before tackling Wake, so the ranchers reasoned. And it was out of the question to split forces; if that were done, both attacks might fail.