“Move a muscle,” breathed the rider behind Buchanan, “and you’ll never see tomorrow.”
Marinda stared at Race Koenig. “My father—?”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Koenig said. He wrapped one arm around her. “You’ve been through enough, God knows, without this.”
“But ...” she said; she cleared her throat and started again. “But you said Buchanan shot him.”
“That’s right. He did.”
“Last night? At the ranch?”
Koenig nodded. His bleak eyes peered through the dusty glasses at Buchanan, who sat at ease in his saddle with the attitude of a man who had just felt the weight of the last straw that was about to break his back.
Marinda said, “It wasn’t Buchanan who did it, Race. I’ve been with him every minute of the time since yesterday afternoon, and we haven’t been within forty miles of the Pitchfork.”
She said it in a strong, clear voice, and nobody missed hearing her.
Johnny Reo said, “I’ll second what the lady said. We had our hands pretty full last night, and it’s for damn sure Buchanan wasn’t anyplace around here.”
Race Koenig took off his hat and scratched his head. Buchanan felt the gun muzzle recede from his back. He reached around and rubbed the place where the steel had pushed him. His glance was angry, tired, impatient, and intolerant; he said to Koenig, “A man could get in a pack of trouble jumping to conclusions the way you do. If I wasn’t a mite tired, I might think about cracking a few teeth among the congregation hereabouts.”
Koenig was still scratching his head, mostly in embarrassment. “I reckon we made a mistake.”
“I’ll reckon you did,” Johnny Reo said.
“I reckon we kind of owe you an apology, Buchanan.”
Buchanan said, “I’d settle for two shots of whiskey, a good meal, and twenty-four hours sleep. But I’ll have to take a rain check on the sleep. We’re likely to have some Indians for supper.”
All in a tight-riding bunch they swept into the Pitchfork yard and dismounted. Steve Quick, in the ranch house door, stiffened when he recognized Buchanan. “You’re not dead.”
“If I am,” Buchanan said, “somebody forgot to bury me.”
Koenig stepped past him and walked up to Quick, who backed up against the wall, his eyes growing wide. Koenig said grimly, “I’ll just take your gun, Steve.”
“What the hell for?”
“I ain’t just exactly sure,” Koenig said. “But it’s for certain you lied out of both sides of your mouth last night. Buchanan didn’t kill the old man. Wasn’t within forty miles of this place last night.”
Steve Quick summoned his bravado. “Just who the hell says he wasn’t?”
“I do.” Marinda stepped quietly forward out of the crowd.
Quick hadn’t even seen her before; she’d been concealed by the crowd and the cloud of dust. Quick’s face went three shades paler, and he seemed about to faint.
Antonia appeared in the doorway. She just stood there and stared at Marinda and Buchanan as if she didn’t really believe they were alive.
Race Koenig plucked Quick’s gun from its holster and stepped back. Quick seemed dazed; he didn’t even appear to realize that Koenig had taken his gun away. Quick began to clear his throat in spasms.
Koenig said, “Couple of you boys take him inside and tie him up. Something damned funny going on around here, and we’ll have to be gettin’ to the bottom of it. But we haven’t got time for that right now. Boat, skinny over to the bunkhouse and grab up every gun and cartridge you can find. We’ll hole ourselves up in the ranch house. Old Mike built it like a fort against Indians, and I reckon it’ll still serve the purpose.”
Buchanan said, “Sentos isn’t after you or your crew. He’s after us, Johnny and me. Give us a brace of fresh horses.”
“What for?”
“To outrun those Indians,” Buchanan said, “and maybe draw them off you while we’re at it.”
Reo gave him a disgusted look but kept his mouth shut. Marinda said flatly, “No. Don’t let them do it, Race.”
“’Course I won’t,” Koenig said. “Buchanan, I don’t know how you got Marinda away and I don’t expect I ever will know all of it. But whatever you did, it took more guts than I’ve ever seen or heard of. If Mike Warrenrode was alive, he’d back you with every gun he had, and I can’t do no different. Pitchfork stands by its own. You two have got protection whether you want it or not.”
“I for one,” remarked Johnny Reo, “don’t aim to argue about that. Buchanan, if you wasn’t such a goddamn stupid hero, you’d know when to quit taking chances.”
Buchanan said, “Johnny, I can’t ask any other man alive to do my fighting for me and I don’t think you can either if you stop a minute and think about it.”
“I do my own fightin’,” Reo said hotly, “which you know damn well.”
There was a strange little sound that came out of Antonia’s throat. Everyone looked at her. She was standing on the top step, a foot or two above the others, and she was looking out past the yard. Her mouth was open.
A cowboy at the back of the crowd called out, “Dust cloud down there. Thirty or forty horses, maybe.”
Reo said to Buchanan, “You see? Ain’t no time to make a run for it anyway, you big stupid bastard.” He grinned and strode into the house.
It broke the others loose; suddenly there was a fast shifting and milling of men rushing off to gather supplies. They poured into the ranch house and moved swiftly from room to room, battening the heavy siege shutters, laying out rifles by the decade-old gun ports. Race Koenig stood by the front door until the last man was inside; he slammed the heavy door and bolted it. “We’ve held off bigger gangs than this one,” he said, and gave Marinda a false grin and a squeeze of the hand.
They could hear the faint roar of Indian voices, rising to high-pitched war whoops. Buchanan moved to a window and peered out through the small rifle port. He’d had enough Indian fighting to last him the rest of his life, he figured, but there wasn’t anything for it but to fight this through to the finish. He had no hatred for those Apaches out there; he wished they would turn around and go in peace.
He saw them, some distance away, leaving their horses and flitting forward on foot. These were Apaches, not Plains Indians, and there was no riding around in circles or breast-beating. Apaches were clever fighters and had a healthy respect for the value of their own skins. They would belly forward to the outbuildings of the ranch and filter from cover to cover. There wouldn’t be any easy targets. It promised to be a long siege.
Koenig came by Buchanan’s post and said, “We’ve got plenty of food, and the well’s in the center patio where we can get to it. We can outlast them—all summer if we have to. And if I know them, they’ll quit after a while.”
“And take every head of stock you own with them,” Buchanan said.
“Can’t be helped.”
“It can if we take the fight to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll have to work it out,” Buchanan said, and squinted upward through the gun port. “Maybe three hours left to sundown. We can’t make any moves until after dark.” He poked his rifle though the port and fired at the distant shape of a dodging Indian. It was the first shot of the battle. The Indian ducked for cover; and guns began booming all around the fortified adobe house.
It wasn’t long before the house stank with the acrid fumes of powder smoke.
Steve Quick sat in a corner of an empty bedroom, hands tied and feet tied. He was brooding over his misfortunes when Johnny Reo turned into the room, gave him a single, desultory glance, and went to the window. Reo stood there awhile, then lifted his rifle and fired through the slot.
“Missed the bastard,” Reo said without heat. He glanced at Quick.
Quick said petulantly, “Quit looking at me like I’m some special kind of bug.”
“You’ve got a lively imagination,” Reo said. “I was only thinking you must’ve been pretty stupid to blame that killing on Buchanan.”
“How was I to know you’d get back alive?”
“I reckon you don’t know me and Buchanan very well.”
“Maybe not,” Quick conceded. “How good a gun is Buchanan, anyway?”
“Good enough, I reckon. You can’t get deader than dead.”
“What about you? That’s a fancy gun you’re scratching those matches on.”
Reo held the flame to his cigarette and shook out the match. His smile was a steel bar. “I got a way with a gun,” he admitted.
A light of calculation burned in Steve Quick’s eyes. He said slowly, “I hope you don’t believe everything Race Koenig tells you about me.”
“Amigo,” said Reo, “I got a habit. I don’t believe everything anybody tells me.”
Something was running through Steve Quick’s mind—something Trask had said to him a few days ago. Reo? He’d set fire to his own mother if he could get a good price for the ashes.
Reo’s rifle snaked up to the window; he squinted and squeezed. The rifle boomed and recoiled. Reo hauled it down with a grunt of satisfaction and shook his head. “What mortals these fools be,” he muttered, and chuckled.
“You hit one of them?”
“Uh-huh.”
Quick studied him over a stretching period. Finally he said tentatively, “Maybe you and me could strike up a bargain, Reo.”
It made Reo look at him. “Why should I bargain with you when I got a corner on the market? You ain’t in no position to make deals. You got nothing left to bargain with.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Quick said. “Mosey on over here where I don’t have to shout.”
Reo glanced out through the gun port, fired once, and looked back at Quick. With a shrug and a loose grin, he came over and hunkered down by Quick. “I’m listenin’. Better say it right the first time, though, because you may never get another.”
Antonia moved through the sulphur-smoky parlor handing out fresh ammunition. Men were coughing in the blue haze. Concussion from all the gunfire had blown out all the lamps, and the room was in half darkness, with all its shutters closed and the only light filtering in through the slitted rifle ports. Rays of light sliced through the smoke.
She gave Buchanan a handful of cartridges. “Kill some for me,” she told him.
His red-shot eyes shifted toward her briefly. She admired the jut of his big jaw, the man-sized heft of him, the go-to-hell smile that never seemed very far from the surface.
But all he said to her was, “If you can find Koenig in this steam bath, ask him to drift over here when he gets a minute.”
She moistened her lips and smiled, but it was wasted; he was aiming down his sights through the port again. She pouted and moved on.
She found Marinda stripping away a cowboy’s sleeve to wash and bandage a bullet wound. Marinda looked up, without particular expression, and pushed hair out of her eyes. Antonia’s eyes flashed. She jerked her head in a gesture and waited for Marinda to come over to her.
Marinda stood up. “What is it?”
“I just want you to think about this,” Antonia hissed. “If you think you’ve got everything you wanted, you’re wrong.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” Antonia said angrily, and wheeled away into the smoke.
She stopped by Race Koenig and said, “Buchanan wants to talk to you,” and went on, distributing the last of the cartridges. That brought her near the hall door. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching; she hiked up her skirts and ran quickly down the hall.
When she pushed the door open, she found Johnny Reo sitting on the floor near her husband.
Quick looked up and grinned. “Hi, honey. Looks like we got some help.”
“I was coming to cut you loose,” she said.
“Shut the door, then.”
Reo uncoiled his lanky frame and went over to the window. He peered through the slot for a bit, didn’t seem to see anything to shoot at, and turned back.
Quick said, “A quarter-interest, Reo. One-fourth of the whole shebang. All it takes is three bullets. Koenig, Marinda, and Buchanan if he gets in the way.”
Reo said, “Buchanan’s sort of a friend of mine.”
“Scared of him?” Quick sneered.
“No, I ain’t scared of him,” Reo said.
“Funny. I had you sized up as a man who measured his loyalties in dollars and cents. A sensible man. One-fourth of the Pitchfork, Reo. Think about it.”
“I’m also thinkin’ about how far I can trust you to pay off on your promise,” Reo said. “And so I’ll say this. I’ll be sticking to you like a burr until I get paid off in cash, and it won’t bother me much to shoot you to pieces if you don’t come across.”
“Then you’ll do it?” Quick demanded.
Reo shrugged. His eyes had gone bleak. “You only get one shot at life. Ain’t no point in doing it stony broke.”
“That’s what I always say,” Quick agreed.
Antonia’s eyes shone. She hip-swayed across the room and pressed herself against Reo. She kissed his mouth, grinned, and went back to Quick. Her knife flashed; she began to saw at the ropes that bound his hands.
“Hurry up,” Quick complained.
Reo said, “I don’t mind throwing down on Koenig. Don’t like him much anyhow. But I don’t ordinarily make war on women.”
“You backing out?”
“I’m going to have to think on it,” Reo said. He turned to the window and took aim—and at that precise moment all three of them were shaken by an ear-splitting explosion that rocked the walls of the house.