One-Man Massacre by Jonas Ward Read Free Book Online

there an undertaker in town?" he asked.
    "Simmons does a nice funeral," Hamlin answered civilly. "None of your fancy caskets and all, but he gets them u nder the ground in fine style." "And where is Simmons?"
    "Bein' Saturday, he's up the street, playin' the fiddle and callin' the reel."
    Gibbons took a twenty-dollar gold note from his vest, carried it to the bar. "Send for him," he told the bar tender. "Tell him I want Sergeant Leach laid out in mili tary fashion."
    "It's all bought and paid for," Mulchay said. "By whom?"
    "By the same lad that so calmly plugged your sergeant, and him with a borrowed weapon . . ."
    Gibbons' hand came down on the bartop hard. "As you fust explained," he said angrily, "we bury our own dead." With that he strode from the place, Gruber and Kersh at his heels.
    Angus Mulchay followed, showing none of the tem perate caution of his neighbors. So far as they were con cerned, Gibbons and his gunmen could come and go with bo interference from them. Especially they could go. Mulchay was back within sixty seconds, his face alive with concern.
    "There's a gang of them —a whole dirty gang of them!" he said, outraged.
    "Have a wee knock, Angus," Hamlin advised, "and be thankful they're not out there on your account."
    "Ay," Mulchay retorted, "it's the lad's turn tonight. Tomorrow it's me, then you. And next, you, Mac intosh .. ."
    "Don't talk daft, man. What harm have I done the likes of Black Jack Gibbons?"
    "You made the mistake of settlin' riverland that the almighty Malcolm Lord wants. You stood with me and MacKay and wouldn't sell out."
    "And still won't. But what's that to do with anything?"
    "Lord brought Gibbons to Scotstown, right?"
    Macintosh nodded.
    "And Gibbons don't roam the border for his health, right?"
    "So it's said."
    "Said? Man, I was there not two weeks after the mas sacre. I saw the graves with me own eyes."
    "We know, we know," Hamlin told him.
    "Then know something else," Mulchay said. "Lord and Gibbons are going to make a grab at our holdings."
    "My title is clear," Macintosh protested. "I'll have the law on them!"
    Mulchay laughed in his friend's face.
    "By law do you mean Bart Taggart, him so stiff with the misery he cannot even walk the length of Trail Street? Or the deputy, him more interested in dancin' Saturday night than whatever befalls?"
    "The law in Austin, then," Macintosh said, suddenly less confident. "I'll have a Ranger down here to protect my rights."
    "Better hitch up your buggy right quick then," Mul chay said. "You'll be there in a week. Maybe they'll even send two Rangers back with you —two against Gibbons' cutthroat army."
    They were soberer men now than they had been two minutes ago.
    "What is it you suggest, Angus?"
    "That we do now ; what we would have done in '37. Defend ourselves, man!"
    "But this isn't '37. Why, I haven't even bought one of those new rifles ..."
    "We'll fight them with anything we can lay hands on," Mulchay told him. "Knives and clubs, rocks —any thing."
    "But Gibbons is all proper military, so they tell me. Cavalry and the like, and every man a veteran of hard combat."
    "There's one," Mulchay said, pointing to Leach. "Per sonal bodyguard to the great poobah himself."
    "But it took the lad to lay him out. Most likely a gunfighter in his own right."
    "What's your alternative, then —just roll over and play dead?"
    "Ah, you're just making wild guesses," Hamlin told him. "You're worse at ringing false alarms than the boy in the meadow."
    "Good night to ye," Mulchay said, turning his glass face-down on the bar, the classic, old-country symbol that his night's drinking was ended.
    "Where you going?" his friend asked, much con- coned.
    "Where Mulchay goes and what Mulchay does," he shouted at them, "is from now on Mulchay's business!" Something caught the fiery Scotchman's eye and he changed direction to cross toward Leach. He bent down over the dead man, rolled him over as he would a sack at meal and exposed the ex-gunman's once-fired