Free Buchanan's Revenge by Jonas Ward

wrong if you were my wife," Bu chanan answered her. "I'd have looked up this jasper re gardless."
    The smile that came to her lips seemed grateful. "For some reason you make me feel better," she told him. "As if I couldn't have changed anything that happened. Thank you." She came away from the window, still holding his shirt. "I'm going to take this down to the kitchen and wash it out," she said. "At least lie down for that little time."
    "All right."
    She went past him and out of the room. Buchanan looked down at the bed thoughtfully, unable for the mo ment not to think of the little story he had just been told.
    A marriage that had lasted one brief month. He had a pic ture in his mind of a beautiful young bride riding in an open carriage with a handsome, smiling yo un g fellow who cut a dashing figure in a long jacket and rakish beaver hat. Then some drunk at a bar has to open his dirty mouth. Buchanan could even imagine him as a beau who had lost out. She must have had beaux like a flame has moths. And the sonofabitch was probably a dead shot with one of those tricky dueling pistols. It would be one of those strictly formal affairs, at-dawn, with everybody being so goddamn polite to each other. "Take six paces, gentlemen, then turn and fire." A wedding and a funeral in one short month.
    And this lonely bed in this little room.
    Buchanan lay down on it again, smelling the perfume in the pillow, staring at the crack in the ceiling just as she must stare at it one long night afte r another.
    Bogan. Think about Rig. Stop looking at the ceiling. Bogan, he told himself again. Bogan winning money from what she called "those three toughs." What was the name in the ledger —Perrott? Two brothers named Fred and Jules Perrott. And a third man named Sam Gill. They'd lost their money and turned surly, taken it out on some old sheriff. And topped off their stay by running out on a lousy one-dollar feed bill.
    What was he trying to remember now? A conversation. The codger at the table downstairs had wondered at the steady parade of noisy guns through town. Some recruit ing going on around here? Somebody stirring the pot?
    Lost a hundred dollars apiece, she'd said. Lost it to a grinning freighter who probably wasn't even packing a pm. Had the brothers and their friend ridden south that morning, the same direction as Rig?
    Buchanan closed his eyes. His great hands folded slow ly into fists, unfolded again and lay still beside him. He w ould be on the trail himself. Right now. He smothered a yawn. Tomorrow he'd be riding, all day, south to Browns ville and Matamoros. Buchanan closed his eyes, and when he opened them again there was a faint gray light coming into the room beneath the drawn shade. It was coming on dawn am he had slept the hours away in her bed. But then he called her mentioning her brother's house and he felt little better. Until he turned his head and found h er curled up in the chair, and then he felt terrible.
    And worse when he realized that the blanket had been thrown over him, that his boots had been removed. Him; the ranny that slept with one eye open and both ears cocked, that could hear a rattler sigh at three hundred feet.
    His shirt, washed and ironed, hung-above the door. Oh, Buchanan, you horse's ass! he growled at himself. What a performance! He came out of the bed scowling, let go with a self-disgusted sigh, then walked softly in his stock inged feet to where she slept, looking somehow bo th cramped and comfortable with her knees drawn up against, her chest, her head pillowed on her forearm.
    Easy, now, he cautioned, bending over the chair, lift ed her effortlessly in his arms and settling her into the b ed. Now he returned the favor, covered her to the chin wi th the blanket, went and got the fresh-smelling shirt and p ut it on. He picked up the boots from the floor, carried them out of the room and on down the stairs. Buchanan lef t the saloon via the kitchen door, walked back down Mat Street to the