Was he, and others like him, responsible for Carson and Phillips and others like them? What would happen if he presented them with an armload of books, saying to them, “Here, gentlemen, within these pages lie the answers. Here is a thousand years of wisdom. Understand this and you’ll learn how to cope; how to live decently…” Buck shook those thoughts away.
We are all put here on this earth with the capability to learn to reason. These men, and others like them, don’t want to learn. Therefore, it lies on their head, not mine. We come into this world naked and helpless and squalling. Yes. But we are equal to the task of learning.
Buck mentally settled it.
To hell with them!
“Ain’t you got no tongue?” Phillips hollered. “Cain’t you talk?”
“What do you want me to say?” Buck asked.
“Beg and we’ll let you turn tail and run on out of here!” Carson yelled.
“I beg to no man,” Buck’s words were softly offered.
“Then die!” Phillips screamed. He reached for his gun.
Buck let him clear leather before he drew his right-hand .44. He fired twice, one slug taking Phillips in the belly, the second slug hitting the man in the center of his chest. Phillips fell backward, mortally wounded.
Carson had not drawn. The man’s face was chalky white. He watched as Buck holstered his .44. Buck waited patiently.
The street was silent as a hundred pairs of eyes watched in awe and disbelief, the incredible speed of the tall young man an astonishing thing to witness. His hand had been like a blur as he drew, cocked, and fired.
“Back off, Carson,” Buck said. “Just turn around and walk away and it’s over. How about it?”
A hundred pairs of ears heard him offer the man his life.
A hundred pairs of ears heard Carson refuse the offer. “Hell with you!” Carson snarled, and went for his gun.
Born with the gift of ambidextrousness, Buck was as fast with his left hand as with his right. In a heartbeat, Carson lay dead on the dusty street. The man’s bootheels and spurs beat a death march on the dirt as his spirit joined that of Phillips, winging their way to their just rewards.
Buck reloaded his .44s and holstered them. He walked across the street to his chair and sat down.
People began streaming out of offices and stores and saloons. They gathered around the fallen pair of would-be gunhands. They looked at Buck, sitting calmly on the boardwalk.
“Mind if we get the man to take your picture?” some called.
Buck didn’t mind at all. He wanted Stratton and Potter and Richards to hear of this.
The town’s only photographer gathered up his bulky equipment and came on a run.
Buck sat calmly, waiting for the marshal.
5
“When you gonna tell the boy you still alive and kickin’?” Beartooth asked the mountain man who had been following Buck.
He was called Beartooth because he didn’t have a tooth in his mouth. And hadn’t had in forty years. No one knew what his Christian name was, and it wasn’t a polite question to ask.
“I might not never,” the mountain man said. “He thinks I’m dead. Might be best to keep it thataway. I’m only goin’ in if and when he needs help.”
“He’ll need help,” Dupre said. “Plenty guns up at Bury. And they all going to be aimed at your friend.”
Dupre had drifted up from New Orleans in the late ’20s. His accent was still as thick as sorghum.
“You ain’t seen Smoke—’scuse me, Buck—git into action,” the mountain man said. “He’s hell on wheels, boys. Best I ever seen. And I seen ’em all.”
“Don’t start lyin’, Preacher,” Greybull said.
Greybull was a mountain of a man. It took a mule to pack him around.
“What do you think about it, Nighthawk?” Preacher asked.
“Ummm,” the old Crow grunted.
“Whutever the hell that means,” Tenneysee said. “Damned Injun ain’t said fifteen words in the fifty year I been knowin’ him.”
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.
“Might make the lad feel better if’n he knowed you was still breathin’,” Pugh said. Pugh was commonly referred to as “Phew!” He hated water. “Then again,” Pugh said. “It might make him irritable. He probably said all sorts of kind words ’bout you. An’ thinkin’ of enough kind words ’bout you to bury you probably took him the better part of a month.”
“Phew,” Preacher said. “Would you mind changin’ positions just a tad. Right there. Don’t move. Now the wind is right. Why don’t you take a bath? Damn, you’d make a vulture puke.”
“Well, if you ask me—” Audie said.
“Nobody did,” Beartooth said. “Hell, nobody can see you.”
Audie was a midget. About three and a half feet tall. And about three and a half feet wide. He was a large amount of trouble in a very compact package.
“As I was saying,” Audie said, “before your rudeness took precedent.” Audie had taught school in Pennsylvania before the wanderlust hit him and he had struck out for the west, on a Shetland pony. When the Indians had seen him, they’d laughed so hard they forgot to kill him. “I think it best that Preacher keep his anonymity for the period preceding our arrival in Bury. Should Preacher reveal his living, breathing self to the young man, it might prove so traumatic as to be detrimental to Jensen’s well-being.”
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said, nodding his head in agreement.
“Whut the hale’s far you shakin’ your head about, you dumb Injun?” Greybull said. “You don’t know no more whut he said than us’ins do.”
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.
“Whatever Audie said, I agree with him,” Matt said. Matt was a Negro. Big and mean and one-eyed.
Matt was probably the youngest man present. And he was at least sixty-five. He had lost his eye during a fight with an angry mountain lion. Matt had finally broken the puma’s back.
“Good Gawd, Audie!” Deadlead said. “Cain’t you talk American? What the hell did you jist say?”
Deadlead had earned his nickname from being a crack shot with a pistol. Like most of the mountain men, no one knew what his Christian name was.
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.
“I say we break camp and meander on up towards Bury,” Powder Pete said. “Old as we is, some of us might not make the trip if we wait much longer.”
“I opt fer that myself,” Tenneysee said. “What do you say, Nighthawk?”
“Ummm.”
“I’ll not have this town filled up with would-be gunhands looking to make themselves a reputation,” Marshal Dooley said. “Get your truck together and hit the trail, West.”
“Friendly place you have here, Marshal,” Buck said with a double-edged smile.
“Yes, it is,” Dooley said, ignoring the sarcasm in Buck’s tone. “Something about you invites trouble, boy.” He waved a hand absently. “I know, I know. You didn’t start the fight. And I understand from talking with witnesses you even tried—slightly—to back away from it. That’s good. But not good enough. Clear out, West.”
“In the morning soon enough?”
Dooley