One-Man Massacre (2 page)

"No," Gibbons said curtly to Leach when the gunman
had started toward the bar. "Not here."

". . . and I'm onto you, Lord," Mulchay continued.
"You've been raising a big bogeyman about Mex bandits
for months now. But you don't fool me or any of the
rest of us on the riverside. We know what you're after,
and by God we'll fight you tooth and nail!"

"Whatever I do is for the benefit of us all," Lord said, addressing himself to everyone present. "For Scotstown
and for the Big Bend." With that he started again
toward the door of the private room.

"For the benefit of Overlord!" Angus Mulchay shouted
after him. "You won't stop till you own it all!"

The door opened and the party went on through. Gibbons stopped briefly on the threshold.

"No one else comes inside," he told his men. "And
avoid trouble with that loudmouth. This deal isn't set
.”

"I was fixin' to cut the dust some," Leach said, his
manner truculent by nature. "It's a long ride from Laji
ta
s."

Gibbons studied him, his small mustache bristling, and
in his mind he was weighing Hamp Leach's ability with
a gun and Hamp Leach's talent for making himself un
pleasant. The gun won.

"Take your pleasure, Hamp," he said. "How're your
funds?"

"What funds?"

Gibbons took a thick wallet from his coat, extracted
two twenty-dollar gold certificates and gave one to each
of them.

"Go easy, boys," he cautioned. "The treasury is feeling
a pinch." He went on in and Leach left Rig Gruber to
guard the door while he himself sauntered to the bar.
He did not move to where the garrulous Mulchay still
held forth
—not because Gibbons had ordered it, but be
cause of someone who had caught his eye at this end.
She was tall for a woman, taller than many men, and
her long, raven-black hair and piquant Scotch beauty
lent an air of tamelessness about her. Barmaids in Hamp
Leach's considerable experience were either overly shy or
overly bold, but this one carried herself with a kind of
quiet dignity, as if this were a profession to be proud of.
Leach knew different. Border women doing this work
had descended to it, and every one was a wench for the
asking.

"The best in the house, honey," he told her, leaning
his loose-jointed frame far over the bar, bringing his high-
cheekboned face familiarly close to the girl's. Now he stared insolently down the neck of her dress, and each
thing he did was the sure-footed, no-nonsense approach
that had never failed him from El Paso to Brownsville,

"Put your leerin' mugg back on its own side of the
stick," Rosemarie MacKay told him, enough of the burr and the heather in her voice to indicate she hadn't been
transported across the ocean too long ago.

"Watch yourself, dossie," Leach cautioned. "I'm not one of your two-bit cow chasers." His glance fell again
to her queen-size bosom and rested there for another disrespectful moment.

The girl took a step backward, her mind flashing a
warning. He was a different proposition from the men
who came to the bar and flirted with her in their half-
shy, good-natured way. There was evil in this one.

"What will you have?" she asked as neutrally as she
could manage.

"Like I told you, baby
—the best in the house."

"We have Scot's whisky and corn. Beer in the keg,
but no ale tonight."

"You got a sister over in San Antone? Half-breed?"

"Whisky or beer?"

"Set up along your general lines?" Leach went on, his
eyes taking another long journey. "And friendly to a
fighting man."

"The friendship here is in the glass," she told him,
then started to move away.

"A bottle of the corn," Leach ordered, his voice abruptly
turned surly. She lifted a quart bottle from the back bar,
uncorked it and set it in front of him with a glass. Sud
denly his powerful fingers snaked forward, much too quick for the girl to retract her hand. His grip closed harshly around her slim wrist.

"Listen good, dos
—you're doing business with Hamp
Leach
..."

"Let go of me."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll call for help."

Leach, still holding fast, cocked a derisive glance over
his shoulder. Ranchers, punchers, clerks and barflies-
typical cowtown gathering on Saturday night. The young
bucks might come to the Glasgow later, but not until
they had kicked up their heels to every jig and reel at
the dancehall down the street.

"Call," Leach invited, but she had seen the same faces
in the crowd he had, knew them all for basically good
men but certainly no match for this professional trouble
maker.

"Please let me go," she said.

"What's goin' on?" a voice demanded, and it was the
s
el
f-same Mulchay, two drinks older than he had been
and making his way recklessly along the bar.

"Watch yourself, Angus." A friend tried to caution the
little terrier
-
like rancher, but he might just as well have
warned a cock let loose in the pit.

"Take your mitts off that lass!" Mulchay demanded,
coming to an unsteady halt. A wicked smile signaled
Leach's intentions just a bare instant before he brought
a heavy-booted foot from the floor, planted the heel deep
into the older man's belly and kicked out with it. With
a sickening grunt Angus Mulchay was jolted backward
into a table and down. He lay there for several seconds,
fighting for breath, then rolled to his hands and knees and started to rise again.

"No, Mr. Mulchay," Rosemarie cried to him. "Don't!"

Mulchay got to his feet, weaving from side to side, and
Leach, smirking at the man's determination, slid the .45
from its holster and flipped it easily so that he held it by
the long barrel.

"Come on, Angus-boy," he said goadingly. "Step up
and get your thick skull split open."

The words were spoken into a heavy silence that had
fallen over the big room. Mulchay eyed the weapon
steadily, and so deep was everyone's concentration that
no one heard the batwing doors swing wide to admit an
other spectator.

"Come on, Angus," Leach invited again, his voice thick
with the desire to inflict pain. "Come and get it, cow
man."

Mulchay passed a hand across his mouth and stepped toward him, recklessly. Leach's arm swept back
—and then
a huge shape shouldered itself between the two of them.

"If you're not too busy, ma'am," Buchanan said to the
wide-eyed Rosemarie, "I'd sure like a drink."

"Get the hell outa my way!" Leach snarled, and
Buchanan turned with a look of surprise. Now his shoul
ders blocked Mulchay off completely.

"If I'm in your way, brother," he said amiably, "then
walk around me." His attention returned to Rosemarie and the sight of her made him smile. "If it wouldn't be
too much trouble . . ."

Leach swung at his head and Buchanan picked off the
blow with his left hand, forcing the gunman's arm up.

"What's biting on you, anyhow?" he asked him in a
conversational tone, peering inquisitively into the taut,
white-with-rage face of the other man. With all his
strength Hamp Leach jerked to free his arm. Buchanan
held fast, then twisted the gun out of Leach's fist and
sent it skidding the length of the bar with a lazy motion.
He turned to Rosemarie for the third time.

"Now, ma'am
—how about that drink?"

The girl blinked her eyes and swallowed. "What
—
what would you like?"

"Anything at all, so long as it's made in Kentucky and
a hundred proof."

"I'm buyin'!" Angus Mulchay sang out, reaching up to
give Buchanan a resounding thump on the back. "But
did you never taste real Scot's whisky, lad?"

"Not yet."

"Ah, I wish I had that treat in store. My private bot
tle," he told Rosemarie grandly, stepping back to survey
his guest. "Where'd you come from?" he asked wonder
ingly.

"No place in particular."

"Is that a fact? And where you bound?"

"Same place."

"You must like it there."

"I like it best wherever I am."

Rosemarie set down the bottle and two tumblers and
began to fill them, her eyes never leaving Buchanan's
face.

And Hamp Leach was left to stand there, not just
ignored by the three of them, but forgotten. To be
shamed like this was a brand-new experience, and though he felt a need for some kind of direct action, the gunman
plainly didn't know what was expected of him. His Colt was in full view at the end of the bar
—no one there had
the nerve to touch it—but to walk down and get it was
to lose even more face. To take on the sonofabitch bare
fisted was another way, except that he remembered very
vividly how the sonofabitch had manhandled him just
now.

Rig Gruber came to stand at his elbow.

"Let it lay, Hamp," he advised in a low voice, easing
the man aside. "Remember what Gibbons said. We ain't
set here yet."

"Let it lay? What he did?"

"Just one of them things," Gruber said philosophically.
"This ain't your night."

"You wait and see whose night it is. For crissake, look
at the raggedy-pants tramp! No gun on him, don't even
own boots! Just a goddam, sheepherdin' saddlebum!"

Gruber had noted the same things
—the lack of a
weapon, the flat-heeled work shoes, the worn clothes and
beard stubble.

"But he's been around," Gruber said. "He didn't break
his nose or pick up that knife scar herdin' any sheep."

"A friggin' fistfighter," Leach said with all the contempt a gunman has for brawlers. "Riffraff."

"I'd let it lay, Hamp."

"But you're not me, and that's the big difference. Lis
ten
—move on down there, casual-like, and get me the
Colt."

"You know what Gibbons said . . ."

"Get the Colt, Rig."

For five years Gruber had armied with Leach in one
form or another. And from the beginning Leach had
bossed him. The habit was hard to break and he moved
off now to get the gun.

THREE

M
alcolm Lord
was still smarting from the tongue-
lashing he had received from Angus Mulchay as he
sat with his five guests at the round table in the Glas
gow's private parlor. He was also apprehensive about the
effect of such talk on Captain Gibbons.

"My deepest apologies for the unpleasantness out
there, Captain," he said, and it was clear that Lord was not a man called on to apologize very often.
Gibbons waved the subject away.
"I always consider the source, sir," he replied, looking
around at the other faces. "I hope you gentlemen have
done the same."

The gentlemen returned his gaze levelly and were non-
committal. So far as Messrs. Butler, Watson, Sims and
MacPike were concerned this was Malcolm Lord's party.
They were his neighbors in the Big Bend, they were here
at his invitation, and beyond a vague suspicion about the purpose of this meeting they were content to have it all
explained.

But they all had heard the same things about Black
Jack Gibbons that Mulchay had spoken outside. As a
former officer in the war against Mexico, and captain in
the Rangers, the man had spent the last twenty years of
his life in the very thick of the never-ending trouble along
the vast border. And until a year ago he had been one
of the more dashing and admired lesser heroes of the
Texas Rebellion, a "typical" Ranger who commanded
respect for the badge and the authority by their singular courage, their penchant for enforcing the law almost
singlehanded.

A year ago Captain Gibbons had been dispatched to
Brownsville to settle a dispute about a beef tally. A group
of ranchers insisted that some of their stock had drifted
, onto the Matamoros range and had been incorporated
into Mexican herds. The Mexicans insisted just as stoutly
that they had choused the Texas cattle back across the
border. What the Texans wanted was free access through
Matamoros and the right to inspect the herds for them
selves. The Mexicans, feeling that their honor was being challenged and their sovereignty threatened, refused. They
would, however, allow the Ranger to come by himself
when the roundup was completed and see for himself that there were no American brands present.

His superiors in Austin never got a clear answer from
Gibbons as to why he didn't accept this peaceful and rea
sonable solution. All they knew was that the captain told
the Mexicans he would consider the plan, and that dur
ing the next six weeks he diligently recruited every ex-
cavalryman and jobless rider in the region and formed
them into a thoroughly unofficial but quite formidable
militia of a hundred expert gunmen. Then, without
warning, he hurled that band at Matamoros, and for
seventy-two bloody hours they slaughtered all the live
stock in sight over a radius of nearly twenty miles.

That was only the beginning. Gibbons led his lawless
militia back into Brownsville, where those of Mexican
birth exceeded the native Texan population nearly five to
one. For ten days the terror lasted
—midnight raids, mass
trials, mass executions, individual murders—and when
it was done there were five hundred less Mexicans in
Brownsville.

At his court-martial Gibbons blandly testified that he
had uncovered a secret plot to invade Texas: a Mexican
army of two thousand was being raised, its arms and men
financed by the sale of cattle, most of them stolen from
Texas ranches. So he had first struck at the roots of
the invasion, killing the herds before they could be mar
keted. The second part of the plot, according to the ac
cused Ranger, was to be an uprising in Brownsville when
the invasion began. "Every Texan," the trial transcript
read, "man, woman and child, was to be killed. The only
ones to be spared were unmarried women between the
ages of fourteen and twenty-one. They were to be trans
ported to Matamoros and handed over to the bandit
general, Campos."

So ran Gibbons' defense of his actions around Browns
ville. His judges, shocked and disgusted, kicked him out
of the service "without honor" and Governor Tatum offered an indemnity of one hundred thousand dollars
to the Mexican government. But even with this official
condemnation of his act, and the new nickname "Black
Jack," there was a large and rather influential number
living largely along the border who chose to believe Gib
bons' account of his actions at Brownsville and raised
their voices in his defense. What the man had done be
came less and less discussed. It was why he had acted to
"save" Brownsville, and they especially admired his sav
ing the flower of Texas womanhood from the bandit
chief.