Buchanan's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

seven, entered the office and ■ft there for as long as he could stand it. Then he would p r ow l t h e streets of San Antone, restlessly, without pur pose and the sight of the huge, shoulder-swinging figure made many an onlooker think uneasily of a brooding lion let loose among them.
    Buch anan was also of some concern to the local law, Marsh al Grieve. Like most good peace officers in a melt ing pot of a town like this one, Fred Grieve was a re formed drifter and border rider himself. He could spot the type at a glance, that wildness, the easy bravado, and he had alerted his twelve constables for something special in t he way of trouble half an hour after the big man rode in and began asking for Rig Bogan. Buchanan had made a true prophet of the lawman by his performance in Qu e e nie's over in Spanish town. That was as special as you could ask for, even in San Antone, and Grieve had called in his off-duty force, waited for the twister to really rip.
    But then the perplexing things had happened, the contradictions that disturbed the marshal deeply. Instead of leading the fractious Bogan into real trouble, the drifter had taken the ex-convict out of town altogether, up into the Plateau, his two trailers reported. Waiting for the rest to gather, Grieve decided, and waited himself for a raid on one of the banks. But no. Six weeks go by and the two friends return —Bogan so tanned and fit he was almost unrecognizable—and though they visited the banks, and other merchants, there was nothing against the law in trying to borrow money.
    Then surprise number two. The Double-B Fast Freight, red wagon, yard, office and all. If Fred Grieve was a betting man, and if he had a hundred dollars, you would have gotten long odds that no breed of tomcat like this Buchanan from West Texas would ever get mired down in the freight business. But, by the harry, he was —and with no less than Honest John Magee for a customer.
    Last of the contradictions about Buchanan, and prob ably the most unsettling to a plain-thinking, plain-speaking man like the marshal, was that he had yet to see the other man packing the tool of his trade. Grieve admitted, only to himself, that he could have made a few minor errors in judgment about Buchanan's purposes in coming to San Antone. But not about Buchanan being a gunfighter. He couldn't be wrong about that.
    So the marshal asked him, stopped him in the middle 6f State Street and put it to him pointblank. This was the afternoon of the fourth day that Rig Bogan had driven out with the wagon.
    "What's your game, bucko?" Grieve asked, and Bu chanan looked from the silver badge to the leathery face in surprise. A moment before being accosted his mind had been full of thoughts about New Orleans, the prospect of busy days and busier nights, a life where a man had something to occupy himself. Not, by God, this owning a damn freight business.
    "My game?" he said to the marshal.
    "You own a gun, don't you?" .
    “Y eh."
    "And you know how to use it, don't you?"
    Buchanan nodded.
    "And if someone needed that gun real bad," Grieve west on, "they could hire it, couldn't they?"
    "You mean to say with all those constables of yours ..."
    "He ll , I ain't talking about me hiring it."
    Then what are you talking about?"
    “ Abo u t you," the marshal said. "You might have sold Ma g ee and Penney on you being a freighter, bucko, but you don't fool me for two minutes."
    ""What do you figure I'm up to, marshal?"
    "It ’ll develop soon, I expect. Your kind don't play the waiting game for long. But when it happens," Grieve told him, “I’ll be right there to take a hand. Remember it."
    Buchanan smiled. "Fair enough," he said. "Thanks for the advance notice."
    " Welcome. And you can start packing that shooter any time. Ge t your cards out where folks can see them." G riev e left Buchanan standing in the middle of State Street, walked away with the feeling that he had scored some victory over the big man. Buchanan shrugged off the