Diamond Buckow (2 page)

His head swam as he sought the answer. Anything to get out of his fate, or at least to override the awful thump-thumping in his chest. He prayed for his heart to pound to death
now
, and make a simple end to his suffering.

Then with a lightning bolt's swiftness, he remembered—that night in Blough's yard! Old Henry had been gone on a business deal for three days. Buck hadn't been able to sleep, and he'd gone out for a spell past the bunkhouse he was sharing with the twins and Yocum while they were making their cattle rustling survey.

Buck had looked up just in time to see the deputy skulking away, and the faint outline of Nancy Blough peering through a lighted window.

Buck groaned. Newt must've seen him, after all. Yocum probably thought Buck knew a whole lot more than what he saw by accident. Buck wondered what he could do now. If he said anything at all, he'd ruin Mrs. Blough's reputation. He couldn't do that.

Nancy had come the closest of anyone around the Blough ranch to being Buck's friend. She was only two years older than his sixteen, and they talked some. Especially about her parents back in Saint Louis, and how her father worked day and night to put bread and butter on the table.

Then, her father ran into Henry Blough, his old schoolmate, on a business trip. He learned how wealthy his acquaintance had become, and suddenly turned into a matchmaker. So here and now was his little Nancy. She had become a Westernized city girl and was married, homesick, and miserable.

Old fart
, Buck thought with disdain about his employer. He had no right wedding such a young and pretty lady, dragging her away from everything she knew. No matter what she did—if she did
anything—with
Newt, it wouldn't be her fault or her shame. No, Buck couldn't tell a word, even if he
was
about to be hanged. Newt would go ahead, anyway, so it couldn't serve any good purpose.

A burst of ribald laughter came from Yocum to Willy to Clem. Buck knew with bleak certainty his time was at hand.

Buck couldn't see Jake Strickland but he guessed the top hand was still back of the cottonwood, checking that he'd tied the kid's own Mexican riata firmly enough to insure death.

In a moment Strickland emerged from behind the tree, making a point of not looking at Peter D. Buckow. While Jake hauled himself up into the saddle of the red sorrel geld, Newt Yocum pulled the reins of Buck's mare over her head.

Excitement shone on the deputy's face as he ordered, “Clem, you quirt his mount from under him. I'll lead her on so she won't run away. Let's go!”

Buck's eyes clamped shut as his thoughts spun backward to his Uncle Ed. Edward Malvers had been close to him when he was a boy, and had given him the strength to endure. As he concentrated on the details of his beloved Unc's appearance, he remembered every hard-lived line in the man's face. Buck swore he'd make it through this, without letting Newt see him beg...no matter what awaited him on the other side of life.

A whistle sliced the air as Clem's saddle whip met the little mare's rump. She had planted her feet, doggedly resisting Yocum's tug at her reins. Bunching her muscles in anticipation of the lash, the mouse-brown leaped straight up and came back down only inches from where she had been standing.

The jolt shook Buck out of his seat, but he was helpless with both hands pinioned behind him. His legs tightened automatically against the horse—with the natural reflex of one used to the saddle. As his head snapped forward, crown up, he wondered vaguely if it would break off.

Buck felt a slippery sensation and knew, dully, that he was sliding off the mare's rump. Sliding, sliding, the way he'd slid down a haystack when he was a boy of eight. Even now he recalled the licking he'd gotten for that prank.

Then the noose grew taut around his neck. Buck felt the grulla getting away from him. He felt the relentless pull of his own rope holding him under the tree limb while she moved off. Without a sudden drop or jerk, he knew he'd been denied the quick, clean death a broken neck would have brought.

The four horsemen were aware of his harsh, pained gasping as they rode away. Willy and Clem looked back, eager to watch their victim strangle. But Jake Strickland rode up and whipped their mounts' rumps with the knotted end of his rope, urging them along and spoiling the twin's and Newt Yocum's view. They swore long and loud, but to no avail. Jake herded them all ahead of him and forced them to keep going.

With muleheaded determination he refused them the sight of Buck's dying.

It was as if the slide off the mare's rump continued right down the haystack and Pete Buckow was eight years old again. Lo and behold, his stepfather was at the bottom waiting with vengeful arms opened wide to catch him. Along with him was Alexander Kirtos, the Greek who owned the winter feed as well as the livery stable and the large pasture behind it. Off to one side was the enclosed area, the stackyard, where the boy was playing and the two men stood ready for him.

Pete spied the pair at the base of the haystack. He tried to run even before he hit bottom. But the dry chaff on the hard-packed ground betrayed him, and he fell. Before he could get his feet under himself to take off, his stepfather fastened a huge beefy hand to the front of the boy's shirt and lifted him, squirming and flailing, to eye level.

“Well, well. Seems like some young'uns don't never learn,” he snarled, glancing at the livery man for his reaction.

Mr Kirtos, who all the children of those parts privately called Curl-toes, flashed an oily smile that was at once both darkly handsome and sinister. “Now, Gerald, don't be too hard on the lad. Of course, I can't afford to lose any of my hay, but I'll be satisfied as long as this never happens again.”

“You bet it won't,” Gerald Hamm breathed. He fixed an ugly glare on the helpless Pete, who was still wiggling in his grasp.

“Looks like
some
smallfry got to develop a callus on their hinder afore they learn how to behave. I've told this'un more'n once not to play in the stackyard. Now, Mr. Kirtos, you can see why I won't never give my last name to this no-good whelp of my wife's first man.”

He pulled Pete's face closer to his own. His stepson could smell a sour mixture of corn liquor and garlic on the man's breath.

“Boy,” Hamm sneered, “you get on home to the woodshed and pick out a board I can use for a paddle. And mind you're there where you're supposed to be when I come to find you.”

Abruptly, he released Pete's shirt as he turned to have a further word with Alexander Kirtos. Once again the boy's dirty bare feet slipped, but this time nobody tried to stop him. Regaining his balance, he darted off as fast as his skinny legs would carry him.

Thinking only to put distance between himself and Gerald Hamm, he took the homeward route that went through the alleys and behind the stores. If he was lucky he wouldn't meet anyone until he made it to Uncle Ed's

Edward Malvers, it seemed to Pete, was the only person in the world who understood him and cared about him. Certainly Ma didn't, or she couldn't have up and married that stinking black-bearded monster who made his boyhood such a hell.

And Hamm—the less he reflected on
that
man, the better. His sister Rebekah was no help at all. She was three years older, just enough that they didn't have much to talk over. Besides, all she cared about was girl things.

Pete's heart ached with loneliness for his father, Seth Buckow. The tears no one was around to see clouded his vision as he made his way through town. Pa had been a lot of fun, he remembered. Good and gentle, too, but firm in his own quiet way. Seth had also believed in the rightness of the law and in helping to protect his town.

Through hazed and watery eyes, as he stumbled toward home and his inevitable beating, Pete saw his father's last moments of life....

It was an early Sunday morning, and a loud cowboy came shooting into town. The women and children huddled in the churchhouse for protection while the sheriff and his men slipped out the back door, cautiously circling the wild man who had leaped off his horse.

After an eternity, standing like he was frozen, the stranger looked around. He seemed to want to find his loose mount and ride away. Thinking it was all over, Seth Buckow relaxed his guard and stepped out in the open.

Through the arched church window where he had been watching, Pete saw the big red-haired fellow draw his gun left-handed and shoot. Pa dropped on the front steps.

The whole town went crazy. The posse took chase, but Seth's assassin was able to get away scot-free. Things eventually settled down again, but not for Pete.

The killer was known in the area. He was a loco named Red Pierce, who would occasionally go berserk and come shooting up a town for the plain fun of it. He was a dead shot regardless of his lame right hand, and most people would back clear off his path rather than fight.

No, things were never right for young Pete after that, and he swore someday he'd get even...even with Pa's murderer...even with Ma, for marrying a bastard like Gerald Hamm. And most of all, even with his stepfather—who wouldn't let Uncle Ed live with them when Pete needed him most, and who treated Seth's son like some mangy old cur to be kicked around.

None of this would have happened but for Red Pierce. If the boy could hope to get him someday, then at least everything else might be bearable.

With his head bent low as he remembered all the painful scenes from his brief past, Pete barreled down the alley back of Silver's saloon. His shoeless feet were blotched and streaked from the loose dirt on the road as he plunged ahead, unseeing.

Feeling a heavy thud as he collided with a solid object, the boy reeled. Then he was abruptly aware that he had brought a pedestrian to the ground. The man's muttered epithets sounded familiar, and Pete found himself staring down into the dull pewter eyes of Edward Malvers.

“Uncle Ed!” he gasped, shocked, as he hastily palm-brushed the settling dust from his relative's rumpled clothes. “Gosh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to knock you down. I didn't even see you coming.”

“That you, Buckshot?” The man looked up, bleary-eyed.

He tossed his long, unkempt gray hair out of his elephant-hide face. “Consarn it, boy, where was you off to at such a clip? I thought I was bowled over by a runaway steer.”

“I don't know where I was goin', really.” His thin face went bright red. “I was thinking to find you, I guess, and I'm supposed to be at the woodshed. Findin' a board for that son-of-a-bitch to whale me with.”

Malvers shook his rubbery cheeks in what seemed like sternness. “Now, look, Buck. Don't you never insult a man's parentage like that. I know old Gerald's no good for you, and I also know he ain't half the man your daddy was. But that's still no way to talk.”

“Yes, sir.” Pete hung his head while his uncle maneuvered unsteadily to his feet.

Edward, obviously, was still a mite tipsy from the heady Silver Special Brew he'd been downing all afternoon. “Best tell me what you and him are on the outs over this time, Buckshot.”

“All I did was slide down Curl-toes's haystack. I know it was wrong. But, Unc, Hamm's goin' to whip me with a piece of wood! He told me to go pick it out, myself.”

The desperate glitter in his blue eyes was enough to break Ed's heart as the boy took a deep breath and plunged on.

“Can't I come and live with you, Unc? Things just ain't the same at home since Pa died and Ma got herself hitched to that—that...” Pete's whole body went rigid as he clenched his fists and steeled himself against the words he wanted to shout.

“No, you know you can't. Why, your Ma wouldn't let you! She says I drink too much.”

A sad, faraway look lightened his eyes. “And Buck, I'm afraid she's not full wrong. It wouldn't be no life for you a-tall.”

“Well, then,” Pete demanded, his chin trembling, “what should I do now? About the lickin'?”

Ed's voice went as soft as the rest of him felt. Putting an arm across his nephew's shoulders he advised, “If I was you, I'd just try to take my medicine like a man and get it all over with. Only, next time, try to keep out of Hamm's way and don't get ketched.”

“Yes, sir,” Pete said grimly, standing as tall as possible. “I guess I can handle anything that land pirate gives out.”

“Land pirate?” Malvers blinked. “Where in tarnation did you get
that
one? I sure as hell never heard it before.”

Pete smiled proudly. “Never got it from nobody. I made it up. See, at school once, the teacher gave me this book about pirates. One of 'em was called Bluebeard. He went all over the ocean in a big boat, just takin' whatever he wanted from other people. Don't Hamm do that? Just takes and never gives? Well, don't that make him a land pirate?”

Ed shook his head. How could he argue with Pete's logic? Anyway, he'd rather the boy called his stepfather a land pirate than a son-of-a-bitch. Although, come to think of it, they both fit.

Aloud he said, “You might have a point there, Buckshot, but it don't change the facts none. Gerald's still got you dead to rights, so you'd best not get his ire up no more. Go on home, now, boy, but come see me as soon as you can. We'll talk again, and maybe go fishin'.”

Pete bit his underlip, trying not to cry again as he shuffled the short distance home. Above all, he decided as he reached the cool darkness of the woodshed, he didn't want his stepfather
ever
to see tears on him, no matter how hard he hit him. Nor his sister, either, whom he had just glimpsed playing with a ball in the front yard. It would shame him for Rebekah to know he couldn't take a whipping.

Halfheartedly, he began to look for a paddle, but then he questioned himself. Why should he? If Hamm was going to be that mean, let him find something to beat with on his own.