CHAPTER 17
“Well. You heard the man,” Sheriff Banning said as he unlocked the door to Buckhorn’s cell and swung it wide. “No charges. You’re free to go.”
Through the bars to his cell and the front door the sheriff had obligingly left open when he went out for his confab with Wainwright, Buckhorn as well as the others left inside had indeed heard the ensuing exchange.
“Free to go,” Buckhorn echoed, one brow arched somewhat skeptically as he exited the cell with less enthusiasm than might be expected. “Just like that, eh?”
Banning frowned. “What more do you want? I had fifty-fifty testimony as to who prodded the shoot-out between you and Dandy Jack. Now, with nobody willing to press charges or push the matter any harder, I got even less than that. So why should I be the one to push it, especially when I’ve got three murder investigations squalling for my attention?”
“If you’d listen to me,” Conway reminded him, “you’d stop and consider that this breed and those murders ain’t necessarily two separate things.”
“Dang, I almost forgot,” Buckhorn muttered. “Keep that cell key handy, Sheriff. You’re gonna need it again. Won’t take me but a minute for the neck wringing I aim to get out of the way.”
He took a step toward Conway but the weasel slipped away and out the open door. “You keep away from me, you gun-happy redskin. I’ll find somebody who’ll listen to what I have to say. I ain’t done with you!”
“Let him go. He’s not worth the trouble,” said Banning.
“What if he catches up with Wainwright and stirs him up? Gets him to change his mind about Buckhorn?” Justine said.
The sheriff shook his head. “Wainwright ain’t the kind to change his mind. Especially not for the likes of Conway.”
“And even more especially,” Buckhorn added, “because Wainwright already figures I’m as good as taken care of.”
Justine looked thoroughly confused. “What is that supposed to mean? Quit talking in damn riddles!”
“Not a matter of talking in riddles,” Buckhorn told her. “It’s a matter of reading between the lines. You heard Wainwright say he saw no reason for anybody to press charges over the shoot-out between Dandy Jack and me, right? Then he made it a point to right away tack on—in front of a whole passel of his men, mind you—that he couldn’t be responsible in case there was somebody who felt a closer tie to Jack and decided to cause trouble for me on their own if I stuck around too long.”
“In other words,” Hampton said, “practically encouraging somebody to go after you as long as they did it in a way that left him out of it.”
“Is that right, Paul? Is that how you took his meaning also?” Justine asked of the sheriff.
“I only know what he said. I can’t read Wainwright’s mind,” Banning responded testily. “Besides, what would you have me do? Put Buckhorn back behind bars for his own protection?”
“I do a pretty good job of protecting myself, thanks,” Buckhorn said. “Which reminds me, I’d like to have back the guns and bowie knife your deputies stripped me of when they locked me up earlier.”
From a lockbox at the base of the office’s gun rack, Banning withdrew the requested weapons and handed them to Buckhorn. “You won’t be needing to use these anytime soon if you were to move on. Say tomorrow, the earlier the better. Since you said you were just passing through anyway, that shouldn’t present a problem.”
Buckhorn grinned as he buckled on his gunbelt. “You running me out of town, Sheriff?”
“No. I got no legal basis to do so. But if I had my ’druthers, seeing you hit the trail out of here would be pretty high on the list.”
“Paul, that’s a dreadful thing to say,” Justine protested. “Whatever Buckhorn’s past, the only trouble he’s caused here in Wagon Wheel has been when others forced it on him.”
“I won’t argue that. But any trouble that comes the way of a fella like Buckhorn usually ends up in gunplay. If it was always between him and somebody like Dandy Jack, that’d be one thing. Wouldn’t bother me a bit. But there are a lot of other folks in Wagon Wheel who ain’t gun wolves, to use Hampton’s term. Bullets start flying around on a regular basis, it’s just a matter of time before some poor innocent catches a slug. The thought of that does bother me.”
Justine suddenly looked uncertain.
Buckhorn seemed a little uneasy himself. “Look. Something like that is the last thing I’d want to see happen. I don’t mind drifting on. It’s mostly what I do. But the notion of being hurried on my way doesn’t suit me worth a damn.” He cut his gaze to the sheriff. “I got a hotel room booked for tonight and one more. Call it pure stubbornness, but I’m not inclined to break that arrangement. After that, I reckon I can find it in me to pick a direction out of here.”
Banning didn’t try to hide the fact he wasn’t crazy about having Buckhorn around for that long. But all he said was, “Hope you pick a good one.”
“Before I turn in tonight, though,” Buckhorn said, “I got a couple more things I’m curious about.”
“Such as?”
“I couldn’t get a full look through the open door. My angle was partly cut off. But when Wainwright first rode up, there were a couple other fellas did some talking. One of ’em was kinda young-sounding and he spouted some unkind remarks about Dandy Jack. I believe Wainwright called him Mr. Sweetwater afterwards. What do you know about him?”
“Sweetwater’s his name, just like Wainwright said. Leo Sweetwater.” Banning’s mouth tugged down at the corners, indicating he didn’t think much of the subject. “And, yeah, he’s a young one. Hardly into his twenties. Wears a two-gun rig and packs a snotty attitude that’s always primed, just begging for somebody to say or do something out of line that’ll give him an excuse to pull on ’em. Why? You know the whelp?”
“I’ve heard of him. Nothing good. I’d say you got him pegged. So he’s Wainwright’s top gun, is that it?”
“That’s the way it shakes out.”
“He come aboard before or after Dandy Jack?”
“After. He’s only been on the scene about six months.”
“So he replaced Jack at the head of the list?”
“That’s the way he acts. The way Wainwright treats him.” Banning made a face. “Hell, I can’t say for sure the pecking order as far as who rates where on the Flying W crew.”
Buckhorn nodded. “It fits. It’d explain why Jack was so proddy in the Silver Dollar. He was aware of his status slipping in the ranks of Wainwright’s gunnies, saw going against me as a way to make a statement, bolster himself back up.”
“Those who make their way with a gun have a lot of peculiarities.”
Buckhorn’s mouth twisted wryly. “Yeah, I reckon peculiar is one word for it.” His expression turned thoughtful again. “Wainwright also made a comment about his history with Indians. That naturally caught my attention, too. I figure it might play another part in my chances of making it out of Whitestone County in one piece.”
“I don’t know about that,” Banning said. “But the thing about Wainwright and Indians traces back to when he first settled in these parts after the war. He came with the start of a herd and a wife and baby son. There were still a fair amount of Indians around, mostly Apaches out of Mexico. Some say Wainwright hated ’em and fought ’em right from the start, others claim he tried to get along with ’em. Either way, there came the day when a small war party hit the house while he was away and wiped out his family.
“For a long time after that, he let his ranch go to hell and did nothing but hunt and kill Indians . . . until he’d driven every trace of a redskin from Whitestone County for a hundred miles and wider. From there, he went back to building his ranch, concentrated on it just as fiercely as he’d concentrated on killing Indians, and built it up to what it is today.”
“That’s a sad and tragic tale,” Justine said quietly. “It could even be an impressive one if Wainwright didn’t also see fit to apply the same brand of ruthlessness to everything and everybody else he comes up against.”