One-Man Massacre (15 page)

"I'm full-grown and long-weaned, old buddy. You took
me with my eyes wide open."

"Maybe you'd like to match me for your half of this
bonanza
—winner take all?"

"Not on your life. The way my luck's running I'd win
this damn desolation."

"Desolation, hell! This mountain's worth twenty million to somebody. Fifty."

"Even more, Fargo. But not in our time, not for
twenty years. That somebody's going to have to spend half a million to get it out."

"Then let's sell it to him."

Buchanan grinned. "You're the bottle with the cork
p
u
lled," he assured him. "Sell what to him? What is it
you figure we own?"

"We're here, ain't we? The federal government itself s
a
ys a man that squats on something long enough has
rights, don't it?"

"Rights to live on it, to work it. He can't sell it
—and
in
the second place whole mountains are excluded. That
I’
m sure—" His voice broke off sharply and he swung to
hi
s feet in a lithe, one-piece motion.

"What's the matter?" Fargo asked.

"We got a visitor," Buchanan said, striding to his
wa
r
bag.

The cat?"

"Too noisy for her." He slid a rifle free from the bag,
la
i
d it in his arm and crossed the clearing at a right
a
ngle to where the sound had come from.

"I don't hear nothin'," Fargo said, but by then Bu
ch
anan had slipped from sight over the ridge. Fargo went
in his own belongings, produced a formidable Greener,
sue was soon out of sight in the opposite direction.

Rosemarie was certain that not even in the wildest
of her rugged Scotland was there such a fearsome
as the Sierra Negras. At the start of her climb it
been the trees, so thick they all but blotted out the
midday sun, so close together a person had to detour to
find a way between. And down there snakes and a whole
world of slithering things made each new step forward
an adventure in itself. For an hour you worked along in
that company, then the trees grew sparser, the shade
diminished and the torrid sun beat down. But the heat
was a minor discomfort compared to the bramble bushes
—thigh-high they grew, like rolls of barbed wire piled one
atop the other, and their bristling defiance of free pas
sage was nature at her thorniest best against the trespass
of the animal—in Rosemarie's sorry case, human species.

But a determined person could get past the brambles, paying for it with legs scratched and bloodied from ankle
to knee, cotton skirt shredded to ribbons, and could sur
vive that and then find the going really hard. For now the mountain inclined sharply, became a bare wall of
rock studded with sharp outcroppings, and climbing it
was a test of sheer endurance combined with the sure-
footedness of a cat.

Of which there were plenty, thriving unmolested as
they did in this natural habitat. But night is the time
when cats hunt, and though half a dozen terrified the
girl with their grunts and snarls, none made the effort to
molest the strange-scented game on such a warm, lazy
day.

Up she went, slowly, precariously, and after another hour the mountain relented, grew gradually less inclined as if paying a grudging reward. Soon she could see the
top, a hundred feet beyond, and she stopped and called
his name.

There was no answer. She called it again. Oh, no, she
thought dismally. He can't have gone away.

She continued on
—thirty more feet, fifty, seventy-five
—and that was when Buchanan caught the first sound
of her approach and moved defensively to apprehend
whoever it was.

And then she called a third time.

"Tom! Tom Buchanan! Oh, where are you?"

"Right behind you," he said and she nearly fell to the
ground from the start it gave her. His hand steadied her,
and the reassuring strength of that made the girl want
to collapse again, but for a different reason. As it was
she leaned her head against his chest and relief came in
the form of quiet tears.

"Who's with you?" Buchanan asked.

"No one."

"You climbed up here all by yourself? What in the
world for?"

"Angus Mulchay. Gibbons has him. They're going to kill him."

"Hey, whatcha got there, boy?" Fargo cried excitedly,
breaking from his cover and coming up to them quickly.
"By damn!" he said admiringly, drinking in his first
sight of womankind in nearly six months.

"This is Fargo, Rosemarie. He's not really as foolish
as he looks right now."

Fargo heard the reprimand and quit his wide-eyed
inventory.

"This is the good-lookin' gal you danced with down
there?"

"This is her. Camp's around this way," he said to
R
osemarie. "You can get some rest there and something
Id
eat."

There's no time," she protested weakly. "We've got
to get back to him."

He had started to lead her to the campsite, but the
gi
rl
's strength left her all at once and he just did catch
he
r
up. Buchanan carried her the rest of the way, settled
h
er
on his blankets, and hardly was she there but her
ey
es
closed in deep sleep.

Fargo peered down at her intently.

“Y
ou got yourself a beauty, Buchanan."

"She's not mine," Buchanan answered, kneeling at his
wa
r
bag.

“
No?"

"No."

"Tell her that when she wakes up," Fargo said.

"I won't be here." He was standing now, unrolling his
holstered Colt from the wide cartridge belt.

"What's that for? Where you goin'?"

"Ran into an old guy when I was down below," Bu
chanan said, notching the silver buckle, settling the gun
comfortably on his hip. "He's in some kind of trouble."

"You comin' back up again?" Fargo asked quietly, and
the two of them looked at each other very steadily.

"Not much future in it, is there?" the tall man asked.

"As much as you are going to find anywhere, Bu
chanan." Fargo's glance fell to the sleeping girl. "More,
I'd say."

"Wrong, Fargo." He crossed the space separating
them, extended his hand. "It's been my pleasure, Mr.
Johns," he said, lightening the mood with his grin. "Drop
in when you're passing through Frisco next time."

"Where'll I find you?"

"Where the loudest music is."

"And the fanciest women?"

"Where else?"

"I'll be there, boy. Save a place at the bar for Fargo."

And so they parted, Buchanan walking off the moun
tain without a look back, Fargo refilling his Meerschaum,
settling down against a post of their dugout to keep vigil
over the girl.

The old man felt the tears on his cheeks, warm and
moist, before he actually knew he'd shed them. He
brushed angrily at both eyes and clamped his teeth down
tight on the pipe
stem.

"What in hell ails y
ou, anyhow?" he asked aloud, furi
ous with himself. "Told you he'd see you in Frisco!
didn't he?"

The self-scorn was genuine enough, but it didn't work.
Fargo was certain that he had seen Buchanan for the
last time, and would hear his voice never again. Not in this life.

SIXTEEN

W
ell,
what kind of a day has it been, Captain?"
Malcolm Lord asked expansively, inhaling deeply on
a slim, fragrant
panatela
.

"Just routine, I'm afraid," Gibbons answered, match
i
n
g the same note of worldliness. "Our work goes for
w
ard little by little, but it goes forward."

The conspirators sat facing each other in deep-piled
leather chairs in the high-ceilinged study of Lord's house;
a roast beef dinner consumed, cigars alight, a pony of
good brandy at each of their elbows and the world on the
cod of a string
—a string each man thought he held.

"I expect Mulchay was difficult," Lord said.

"Beg pardon?"

"Angus Mulchay. When you moved him off the land."

"Mulchay? Oh, yes, I recall the fellow now. As a mat
te
r
of fact, we didn't get to his place at all today."

Lord scowled at that.

"Why not?"

"The heat, I expect. We moved out a family named
T
o
mpkins, though. And the Byrons . . ."

"Bryans," Lord corrected.

"That's right, Bryan. And the Alreds. Is that the
name?”

“
Yes. But Mulchay and MacKay are the important
on
es. The others can come back to the river in time."

'We'll get to Mulchay and MacKay," Gibbons prom
ised.

'When, man? I've got a herd rounded up and waiting
f
o
r that grass."

"Malcolm," Gibbons said familiarly, "you'll be able
to move your stock down to the river by this time to
morrow night."

"Fine, fine," Lord said. "Say, how does this brandy
suit you?"

"I'm afraid brandy is something I know little about."
There was a knock on the door.

"Come," Lord said and it was opened by a servant. A
Mexican, curiously enough, who very pointedly did not
look at Black Jack Gibbons. "What is it, Pedro?"

"Un hombre por E
l
Capitan, senor. Muy importante,
el
dice"
—and though it all concerned Gibbons the
speaker would not acknowledge him by a glance.

"A man to see you," Lord told him. "Says it's im
portant."

Gibbons knew as much Mexican as either of them, but he waited for Lord to translate.

"I'll go see what it is," he said, rising.

"Perhaps we'll have him in here," Lord said to that, asserting himself just as Gibbons had hoped he would.
"More privacy."

"Just as you say, Malcolm."

"Bring the man to me here," Lord ordered and the
servant departed, returned quickly with Apgar
—who ha
d
ridden hard all the way and looked it.

"What is it, Corporal?" Gibbons asked him brusquely.

"We're in for it, Captain," the talented Apgar told hint
anxiously. "The Mex are coming across in force."

"An attack?"

"Like a horde of locusts, Captain. The men want yo
u
."

"By God, let's go!" Gibbons said militantly. "Whe
re
have the murdering bastards struck?"

"At Mulchay's, sir! That's where they're hitting
him
hard."

"Wait, Gibbons!" Lord cried as the other man hurrying through the doorway. "I'll get some men
come with you!"

"The militia can fight its own battles, Malcolm."