ABE CARBO, the man who had seen everything, was hard put to believe what he was seeing now.
He had led the group into Emerson’s disordered yard area, and had been the first to dismount. Brushing the querulous old man aside, he had entered the adobe building with a gun in his fist. There stretched on the floor was Waldo Peek, the indestructible man. His jaw hung in a lopsided fashion, his breathing was a groaning, rasping sound, forced through a broken nose and swollen lips. It wasn’t even a face, Carbo thought, taken with a morbid fascination for the gargoyle ugliness of it.
In those swift seconds Carbo imagined that an enemy made furious enough had done that to him. He shuddered. Then, blindly, the realization came to him that he had spent a lifetime behind a gun because he so desperately feared a physical beating.
Footsteps sounded at his back and Carbo dragged his eyes away from the wreckage of Waldo Peek.
“So?” Gomez said tensely. “Where is the boy?”
“Maybe he knows,” Carbo said, indicating the worried Hamp Horne who stood in the corner.
“They took the Mex with ’em,” Hamp said.
“They? Who?” Carbo snapped.
“Pecos,” he said. “Pecos and the hardcase. The big guy.”
“Buchanan?”
“Yeah. But Pecos got killed up the road. Waldo got him.”
Gomez stepped past Abe Carbo, throwing caution to the wind in his sudden excitement.
“Buchanan?” he asked, echoing Carbo’s disbelief. “He is with Juan del Cuervo?”
Simon Agry pounded in “Good God! Is that Waldo Peek?”
“What the hardcase left of him,” Hamp Horne said. “Me and the old man drug him inside. Ivy got hisself killed at the start of it. He’s outside somewheres.”
Gomez was no longer interested. He had swung around, started for the door.
“Where you going, amigo?” Abe Carbo asked and the segundo’s face broke into a broad grin. He looked like a happy bulldog.
“Home, amigo,” Gomez said. “I’m going home.”
“He’s got the paper you want,” Carbo said to Simon Agry.
“Hand it over,” Simon said, bolstered by the gun in Carbo’s grasp. “I kept my part of the deal.”
Gomez laughed in his face.
“Let’s have it!” Simon demanded.
“Or what, señor?” Gomez nodded his head toward the doorway. “Carbo cannot shoot in all directions at once. In the crossfire your body will be an inviting target.”
“Don’t let him bluff you, Si,” Carbo said goadingly, richly enjoying the play of emotions on Agry’s mobile face. But Simon was mindful only of Gomez’s threat and the fact that he was the most exposed man in the room.
“The hell with a scrap of paper,” he blustered. “A deal’s a deal, and by Judas I mean to collect!”
Gomez laughed again, then held his fist toward Abe Carbo, the thumb pointed upward.
“Until then, señores,” he said and walked out on them. The men inside could hear his voice shouting the news, hear the vaqueros send up a joyous whoop as they wheeled their blooded mounts and sped away.
Buchanan! Gomez thought emotionally. Was there ever such a one for being in the right place at the right time? Never! Viva Buchanan, the patron saint of Rancho del Rey!
“Which trail do we take, Café?” Ramon asked when the juncture was approaching.
“Through Agrytown! I would stop long enough to spit at the ground before the sheriff!”
“I have never seen you in such spirits, viejo.”
“Tonight in my quarters,” Gomez promised, “we will drink until the vat is dry.”
Ramon blinked. Was this Gomez, the man of stone?
• • •
Not even the prospect of hanging had saddened Juan’s heart quite so deeply as Buchanan’s forsaking him on the trail. Perhaps it was the abruptness of it, the fact that at the very moment Buchanan announced it Juan’s thoughts had been overflowing with the happy incident of bringing his great friend to the hacienda.
It had been a hard and stunning blow, and Juan found himself almost incapable of sensation, of movement, as Buchanan’s horse pounded away into the night and Buchanan’s harsh words echoed and re-echoed in his ears. Then, letting the animal set whatever pace it desired. Juan no longer cared where he went.
But a mile later he suddenly reined up. Had it been Buchanan’s decision to make? Because the man did not choose to ride with him, was that any reason Juan must ride where Buchanan commanded? No, came the defiant answer, and with that as justification he swung back to find the trail to Agrytown.
Then another argument stiffened his resolve. Why, he asked himself, was Buchanan making this side trip? Answer: To retrieve his purse from the sheriff. And hadn’t the purse been stolen on Juan’s account? Therefore, to aid Buchanan was only simple courtesy — unrelated to friendship, loyalty or any such sentimentality — and only what would be expected of a Del Cuervo. He spurred his mount forward.
When he came to the town, however, he made his way cautiously. It would not do to undo everything that had been accomplished and fall into the sheriff’s hands again. In addition to the unpleasantness of being hanged, such a fiasco would only convince Buchanan of his unreliability, or whatever it was that Buchanan objected to about him.
So he moved along warily, keeping to the shadows, and finally dismounted altogether, hitching his horse to a post and proceeding on foot. His destination was the sheriff’s office, which he imagined to be Buchanan’s destination as well, and when he passed the saloon his mind was flooded with the remembered violence inside the place and right here on the sidewalk. And only twenty-four hours ago. It seemed as if an eternity had transpired since he’d ridden here to kill Roy Agry …
Juan ducked quickly into an alleyway the instant he saw the sheriff’s office door opened and Lew Agry step into the street. He watched as Agry peered carefully up and down, then moved resolutely along the row of buildings. Where was Buchanan? Was he, too, observing the man from concealment?
Now what? The bank! The sheriff was entering the bank, in the dead of the night, and his very furtiveness gave away his guilt. Ai, caramba, what a family of thieves and villains! But where was Buchanan?
Agry was inside the bank now and Juan could only wait to see what would develop. Five minutes later he was still waiting. Ten minutes passed.
At the sound of the shots he froze. Two men put their heads out of the saloon, glanced around the quiet street, and then returned to their drinking. But though the silence had satisfied them, it only worried the boy. He placed the source of the firing at the hotel, and when he saw the clerk come out onto the porch obviously looking for help, he knew that whatever the trouble was it had occurred there.
Well, this was what he had come for, he reminded himself. This was the obligation he must discharge. Juan crossed the street at a lope, decided against a direct entry into the hotel, and went up the alley that stretched alongside. He found the door Lew Agry had used — and all but stumbled over the crawling figure of Tom Buchanan.
“Amigo. You are hit!”
“Is that Johnny?”
“Sí. Can you walk if I raise you, Buchanan?”
“I told you to go home.”
“Can you walk?”
“Don’t know. Slug got me in the shoulder,” he said wonderingly. “Don’t know why it caved in the damn legs.”
“Try to stand,” Juan said, helping the big man aloft with an effort.
“Must be built backwards — ”
Juan got him out into the alley, had him started toward the street when that exit was abruptly blocked by a group of excited men.
“Hold it where you are!” Amos Agry shouted to them.
“Other way, Johnny. Vamos!”
“I said hold it!” A shot came winging after them.
“Man,” Buchanan said feelingly, “some people just can’t mind their own business.” He reached around the boy’s body, slipped the .45 from its holster and sent back a wildly effective fusillade that scattered their tormentors and gave them the temporary protection of the bank building.
“Let me down, kid.”
“No.” Juan resisted Buchanan’s efforts to remove his supporting shoulder.
“Use your head. We both can’t make it and I got what I came for.”
“Is the sheriff dead?”
“Surprised if he wasn’t. Now let go of me.”
They could hear stealthy footsteps in the alleyway, and shouts on the street beyond directing an encirclement of the area.
“Get out of here, Johnny.”
“Look, Buchanan — the rear of the bank is open!” He got the other man moving toward the door, pulled him inside and locked it closed.
“Now you’ve fixed yourself,” Buchanan said angrily. “How you going to bust out of here?”
“You’ll think of something, amigo.”
“Yeah. Me and Duke Hazeltine.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re just another damn loco Mex.” There was a heavy thrusting at the door. “Load this shooter,” Buchanan said, handing Juan the emptied Colt. “Then see if you can find the teller’s cage. There ought to be some weapons handy there.”
As Juan disengaged himself, Buchanan leaned an arm against the wall to hold himself upright. The temporary paralysis that had seized the entire left side of his body was retreating, leaving him steadier on his legs but paining like hell in the shoulder region.
The pounding and the yelling increased in tempo outside. Something heavy, an iron post or a log, had been brought to bear against the door.
“I found another gun,”’ Juan said, returning to his side.
“How do you feel?”
“Very good. Very scared, too.”
“Yeah. Now when that door gives, aim low and shoot fast. We don’t have a chance, but let’s raise as much hell as we can.”
With that the door did give. The two trapped men threw a withering blast into the opening, felling one of their attackers, who gave an anguished scream, and driving the others back. But even as Buchanan and Juan reloaded, the doors behind them swung open and a second force swarmed inside.
• • •
“Low and fast, kid,” Buchanan shouted. “Deal ’em hell till the deck’s gone!”
• • •
Gomez’s mind was so full of Buchanan that when the sound of the firing came to him the association was immediate. Who else could stir the hornet’s nest of Agrytown to such a fury? “Andamos!” he roared, roweling his horse, flattening his body over its neck in the way of vaqueros and literally flying over the ground. Ramon and the the other two men, catching fire from their leader, made a race of it, and they came down Agrytown’s main street four abreast.
Those townspeople who had just discovered the bank’s front door unexplainedly open poured inside with uneasy minds. Only Mexicans rode with that particular rhythm, and by now they knew that one of the two trapped in there was the Mexican kid. They didn’t like the situation any more, and the quicker-witted among them reversed direction and ran for cover.
“Low and fast, kid,” Buchanan shouted. “Wheel and deal!” He fired at one door and then another, seeing the consternation among their enemies at the front of the building but not understanding it. Then there was a great racket of shooting from the street and all the opposition up there collapsed.
“What is happening?” Juan asked.
“I think it’s your Uncle Coffee,” Buchanan said happily. “Let’s have a looksee.” He sent a steady stream of fire into the rear door, covering their back-stepping progress to the front of the building. The war in the street, meanwhile, had fallen off to nothing.
“Buchanan?” came Gomez’s anxious voice. “Is it you?”
“And a friend,” Juan called back. “Is it clear out there?”
“Safe as a cathedral, señor. The rats have scurried back to their holes.”
The two men stepped to the street.
“Where are your mounts?”
Juan pointed to where he’d parked his down the street, and a vaquero peeled off to get it.
“Where’s yours, Buchanan?” Juan asked, but the big man was leaning his weight against the building, strangely silent. With the stimulus of the battle gone he had been overcome with this irresistible desire to sleep forever. Even as Juan and Gomez approached him his head fell forward on his chest and he sank slowly to the ground.