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Having a fall out with Graxx, Buck heads to Jed
Buckmaster’s place after his posse is ambushed and killed by the Pxelepiti. www.sfwestern.com
Episode 41
The wet weather splashed in my face off and on all the way to
the Buckmaster spread. It was only mid-afternoon, but dark, roiling clouds
concealed the sun, making it seem more like dusk.
The pinto clopped across the range slow as a cow in a bog
hole. I was too tired to spur him on and plain too weary to care. Furthermore,
I was afraid I'd ride this horse to death as well if I spurred him on. Then
I'd be walking. I didn't know where I'd get another steed.
Too preoccupied over the deaths of the men and the events of
the past year, I guided the pinto along by instinct, very lucky my instincts
didn't fail me.
When I spotted the barbwire fence that bordered the
Buckmaster property, I knew I'd soon receive the ministrations of an old
friend. The type of fence told me it was Jed's ranch. Most fences had sharp
barbs, not flat triangle strands like Jed's. He'd gotten a couple of spools of
the weird wire in Texas, near the Indian Territory, and carried them all the
way to Arizona when he came. He considered his type of fence better for the
cattle he'd someday have on his own ranch. He thought they wouldn't prick
themselves and get sick so easily.
Nowadays Jed was less impressed with his fence. He claimed it
didn't deter the cattle enough and allowed them to forage into the easy
pickings of the family garden when the drought made it slim pickings on the
range.
I rode to the back of the cluster of buildings and hitched
the pinto up in the barn to keep him from the elements. From there, I stepped
back out into the deluge, walked up and pounded on my friend's ironwood front
door.
Like I was a dog waiting to be let in, I stood outside in the
storm with thunder crashing all around me. I saw that Jed never did get around
to building a porch like he talked about.
I waited for a minute, gathering they thought my knocking was
the wind. Next to the house, a full-grown palo verde batted the walls.
I pounded again on the door, shouting: "Hey, Jed! Open
up! It's Buck Turner!"
The Buckmaster family finally must have heard the rattling
and booming on their door. I heard a young voice call out, "I'll get
it."
In the doorway stood Jed's oldest son, ten-year-old Albert,
who'd grown a bit in the last six months.
He gaped at me as if I were a ghost. "Mr. Turner?"
he mumbled. He knew I'd moved to the city; I don't think he could have been
more surprised had it been Grover Cleveland himself.
"That's right, Albert" I said, stepping in, glad to
be out of the inclement weather.
I took off my great coat and hung it on a peg by the door.
"I can't tell you how good that fire feels," I said, appreciating
the roaring blaze in the fireplace in the center of the room. "I think
that might be the nicest fire I've ever seen."
Albert was a smaller version of his swarthy father. Today
they sported an identical wide-eyed look.
"You're the last person I'd expect to see right
now," Jed said, proffering his hand enthusiastically. "What a
pleasant surprise. So it was you making all that noise at the front door!
Ha!"
I laughed to myself
"Now what could possibly get a tramp like you out in
this fine weather?" he said. "You look like you came across some
lots - and I heard things were looking up in Contention."
I wanted to indulge in our normal swagger and banter, but,
didn't have the will enough to do more than shrug.
He gazed at me intently, noticing my shivering body.
"Something's wrong. What is it Buck?"
I supposed I looked peaked. Between the cold I'd just come
out of and my thoughts, I shivered.
"You all right?" he said.
"Right enough."
I motioned toward his kitchen table. "Maybe you could
pull up one of those chairs and join me? It feels good to sit here and warm my
carcass by the fire."
"Yeah, it's a cold one today isn't it? You can almost
forget we're coming up on summer. We've got a bit to catch up on," Jed
said.
"I'm not one for writing letters," I said.
"Me either. How's Edith and the kids?"
"Fine."
"The job in Contention? Heard things are looking
up."
"They're fine too. But that's not what led me here -
well, partly."
Talking to Jed about what happened was one of the hardest
things I've ever done. I broke down several times thinking about how I got my
men murdered. I told him everything about the killings and the falling out
between Graax and me.
Jed was silent, taken aback, I think.
I swore about Graax bitterly in front of all the Buckmasters,
forgetting about his wife and children who were listening, though the baby
didn't count. "Sorry about the language, ma'm."
"Don't worry none. All you've seen, you're entitled to a
little cussing," she said.
"Thank you kindly, Beth. I hate talking that way in
front of children," I said. "This whole affair has got me unfixed.
You got any coffee? It would sure warm my bones."
"Elizabeth?" Jed said, gazing at me with his
unreadable steel-blue eyes. In a night of poker, no matter the stakes, he
always won more hands than he lost. "Could you?"
"I've heard enough," she said. "This is as
terrible as it's incredible. I'll pour you a cup. When you're so inclined,
have Jed give you some of his dry clothes to put on. I've got some chipped
beef in the pot there; would you like some?"
"Thank you kindly Elizabeth. That would be wonderful.
I'm so hungry I could eat a tarp," I said.
Then, turning to Jed, I said: "All them men had their
heads blowed up like someone placed a stick of dynamite in their mouth."
"The men were charging the aliens?," Jed said,
interrupting.
"Yeah, buddy! It was the worst sight I'd ever seen, and
I've seen some bad things in my day. Graax thought nothing of that either.
Took it all calmly, like it was nothing.
"I don't have use for anyone so cold. Seemed like there
was ice in his veins instead of blood," I said. "He acted like a
killer."
"Some people are that way," Jed said, exhaling,
leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. "You can't tell anything
about their character from that. They don't think of the individual lives.
They look at the whole thing. Don't know why an alien would be any different
from some people."
"You didn't see him. If you did, you'd have been
disgusted by his manner too."
"You might be right."
Elizabeth served up some coffee in pewter cups she'd picked
up last year in Santa Barbara. She was proud of them. Having moved away, I was
now considered by her to be a special guest, and henceforth my presence
warranted them.
"That'll warm my bones. Thank you," I said.
Turning back to Jed, I said, "Don't know how we can win.
We'd need some awfully good luck just to hold them off."
He nodded grimly. "If they can do everything you say,
I'd imagine you'd be right. Aliens traveling from one planet to another can
likely do a whole lot more against us than we can do against them. Our people
can't even run a reliable train service."
We were silent, overwhelmed and glum.
"And all I can think about is that this is what it
must've been like for the Indian," I said.
"Hmm," Jed said, chewing on that.
His other boy, Jed Jr. broke the silence: "Does this
mean we're all going to die?"
Jed shrugged and waited for me to answer.
I didn't know what to say. "Why don't you go on and do
something?" Jed said after no answer was forthcoming from me.
"Of course we're going to die - someday," I said
quickly. "Nobody knows when."
"He's right. Now git! Same with the rest of you,"
he said, turning to his other four children who had gathered around.
"I want to hear, Pa!" Albert said in protest.
"Git!" Jed said, flustered.
He turned back to me. "Looks like you were in one
helluva battle."
"A lot of people died quickly. Don't know if you could
really call it a battle. We were swatted at like we were flies. We got
squashed," I said. "Afterwards I rode out of there. It was hopeless.
Didn't see anything else to do."
"There was nothing you could do. Did you see any of
them?" Jed asked.
"There was nothing to see but aliens that made
themselves look like children."
"It must have been quite a shock on the mind."
"Don't know it's as bad as being dead myself."
"Get ahold of yourself! This coffee ain't what you need.
You need something else and I'm going to get it," he said, returning
after a minute with a bottle of homemade whiskey.
"Remember? We used to laugh and cry with this stuff.
It's good most any time." He poured me a shot. "And now I make my
own and this is among my finest batches."
"And you've gotten good at it."
"I'm a regular professional. So drink up! It's good for
you. Anybody's head would hurt had they gone cross lots like you. You just got
to put it behind you. Anybody who was any good would have gone and done the
same thing you did. What else could you have done that wouldn't have got you
killed right away? You know, with you dead, there wouldn't be any fight at
all."
I suppose Jed was as skeptical as the next guy, but he was
less so where I was concerned. He knew me too well for that. I blessed him for
that silently and drank up.
"When they can kill five people like that, no bullets
even, there's not a whole lot you can do. Remember how they used to say the
Thomas Gang killed people like nothing? Even they had to go and pull a
trigger. What else could you have done that wouldn't have killed yourself
right away? With you dead, there wouldn't be any fight at all.
"Government has been coming down and telling the people
they've got to go and fight ever since there's been government. You're part of
the government," said Jed.
"I'm just the sheriff," I said.
"That doesn’t change a thing. You didn't do anything
wrong."
"Won't be sheriff much longer, either."
"You were an agent of the government. You were in the
know. And you would have been a hero had this all worked out.
"If you did nothing, you'd be wrong. I'd be the first to
tell you that, too."
"Why don't I feel good?"
"If doing what was right felt good all the time,
everybody'd do it all the time," Jed said, swigging a shot to match mine.
"I'll agree it's misfortuante, but what can we do?"
"Those men might as well have died for nothing," I
said. "Ain't anybody going to carve a statue for them even if the aliens
decide to leave us alone and everybody finds out about it."
Jed placed his hand on my shoulder like he was talking to one
of his boys. "Maybe that don't matter. You do what you think is right,
you do the best you can, there's nobody to rightly argue with you.
"Now shut your mouth about all this before you convince
me you need killing!"
I laughed.
Jed refilled my jigger and refilled his as well.
"Bottoms up! What did you call them? Pxelepiti?"
"Yup," I said after my gulp. "That'll do it
for me." I held my hand over my glass.
"Get that hand off of there. Your whole problem is that
you don't drink enough. You feeling better?"
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe you're right; one or
two more." I uncovered it.
"Course I'm right." He poured me another. "You
gotta admit they're smart for doing what they're doing."
"How's that?" I said before I slid the shot down my
throat.
"Move in when the time is right, not a moment
earlier," he said, refilling the shot glass. "They've got all the
time they want - they're thousands of years ahead of us. It's not like we'll
get the knowledge to keep up with them any time soon. They've got time to
study us, to see how we think. Give us a few of their technological toys and
see what we do with them. Nothing that can really hurt them, things that can
only hurt us. Isn't that what Graax did?" Jed said.
"That's right," I concurred.
"They probably have a bunch of Graaxes we don't know
about going out and finding out all they can about us - especially how they
can conquer us! We just don't know about them yet."
"Tarnation!" I shouted, disgusted at the alien's
treachery. "You might be onto something. And after all Edith did for him!
The Judas!"
"No slight on Edith," he said. "She's fine
woman, but could anyone heal someone as banged up as he was when he dropped
out of the sky? He looked worse than a worm in a bed of ants. I'd suspect it
was all an act to make you trust him, make you think he owed you one.
"He's supposed to be from some kind of advanced race,
right? Would a race like that really have crashes? Especially when he's flying
that little skyship in the clearest of weather."
"He said he got hit by lightning going from cloud to
cloud and that it wrecked his controls."
"A liar has to say something, Buck. And you and I both
know there's no such thing as lightning that goes from cloud to cloud. Sure,
we have train crashes now; costs the railroads plenty. If these people are so
smart, they wouldn't be crashing their ships all over the place. And that's
why they took the ship away; they don't want you looking it over so that you
can sum them up."
I shrugged, disagreeing on several points. I said, "I
don't know Jed. They're not too long on this planet. That's how I think their
things go wrong. He did say there were things implanted in him by the
Lebe'piti that helped him heal up," I said.
"Couldn't keep all the truth from you, could he? I never
liked the looks of him. His eyes were too big and his skin was green, know
what I mean?"
Jed had his ideas. Could Graax really have misled me even
half that much? "I don't know what to believe."
"What better time to marshal your forces for an attack
than by doing it while the other guy doesn't think of you as a threat. That's
the only way to do it, you ask me," he said.
"You think that's what they are doing?" I said,
incredulous.
"It seems plausible," he said. "What do you
think?"
I thought of the time Graax and I spent together and the
reluctance he had in bringing up each new technological amazement from that
bag of wonders we saved from the spaceship. He never seemed to be pushing them
on me, rather I'd say he was just offering to help out.
Maybe this was all about a lack of understanding. More
likely, exhaustion, warmth, the home brew and a storm blowing outside combined
to make the tale and conjecture wild.
"I don't know what to think and I don't know what to
do," I said. "Mostly it looks like our goose is cooked."
"I'd say you're right. After this storm, I say we get
over to Contention and get the meal underway. Let's go eat that goose,"
my old friend said.
"What do you mean by that?" I said.
"We got to do what we can to save the world," he
said. "Besides - I owe you one."
"How's that?"
"Those years ago, when you took me under your wing in
Texas."
"It was nothing," I said.
"I wouldn't have made it without you. It meant a lot to
me. Still does. You put a lot of faith in people, more than others. I like to
think it was well-warranted in me. This time, it wasn't. I hate to see you get
burned by that alien bastard. Not everybody would have left a town ruined by a
storm on the word of someone he trusted, putting his cushy job in dutch."
"He said the world was in danger," I said.
"Still, not everybody would have done what you
done," he said.
"They'd have been smart not to. Anyway, he said he comes
from someplace called Squaattoos," I said.
"Wouldn't be the first time he lied, would it? Those
scientists who watch the sky say there's canals there. Wouldn't it be more
believable to have him come from there? Perhaps they believe that we can
strike back if they came from Mars."
"How?" I said.
"We could find a way," he said. "Don't doubt the
power of the mind."
"I don't know," I said. I didn't know what to believe
anymore.
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