Cautiously lifting his head over the marble railing, Kingston could see them closing in. They’d taken cover behind trees, fences and outbuildings when their first drunken charge had been halted by withering fire from Kingston and his waiting men, but now they were creeping in. Directly beneath him where two dead miners and a dying one lay in a bloody heap near the ornamental fountain, a bull-necked miner with a gun in one hand and a blazing brand in the other was crouching on his haunches, waiting for a chance to rush the house. Kingston lifted his gun, aimed, then ducked as lead snarled past his cheek. Bobbing up again, he saw the miner charging for the house. He ripped off three shots. The miner fell down, rolled, lurched to his feet and staggered on, his gun gone but still clutching the brand. Regulator guns roared from below and the miner fell again, but as he did he hurled the brand with desperate strength, through one of the living room windows.
Reloading his guns from his ammunition belt, Kingston peered down, waiting for the brand to be flung back out. It didn’t appear. Chick Hasty was posted in the living room. Surely they hadn’t nailed him, too? Perhaps the brand had gone out? But moments later the miners began to cheer and he saw the reflection of dancing flames on the ground.
“You can be sayin’ your prayers if you know any!” roared the great voice of Paddy Clancy. “You’ll be burnin’ in this world and in the next.”
“Remember Number Six Shaft, Kingston?” another voice shouted from the stables. “Remember Number Six, you murderer!”
Kingston licked his lips. Eleven men had died in a fire in Number Six Shaft at the Motherlode last year. Scum! A pity they hadn’t all burned. Drunken Irish pigs!
He turned his head as Sump Conroy’s head and shoulders appeared at floor level, in a doorway ten feet to his left. “We’re burnin’!” Conroy shouted. “We got to get out!”
“We’re going nowhere,” Kingston snarled back, unable to believe the possibility of defeat at the hands of these men he despised so deeply. “Get down there and put the fire out.”
“But, boss, it’s—”
“Do as you’re told or I’ll blow your stupid face in.” Conroy’s ugly face vanished. Kingston turned his back to the yard just in time to see one-time Motherlode pump man, Brian Hoolihan, come rushing from the trees at the north end of the house waving a brand and shouting like an Apache. Kingston’s gun bucked against the heel of his hand and Hoolihan was obscured in gunsmoke. When it cleared, he saw that the miner had fallen across his brand. Hoolihan jumped up with a terrifying scream, his clothes flaming. A gun snarled from below and the man spun and fell and burned, still screaming.
Kingston laughed. Of course they couldn’t beat him. He rose and made for the door. He’d better see how his men were doing with the fire. Once that was under control, he could lead a counter attack. He’d suffered casualties but the miners had sustained heavier losses. And why not? They had no discipline, no real reason for fighting. He did!
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled across the step with a searing pain in his left side and the dim sound of cheering ringing in his head.
He’d been hit!
Bullets spattered against the walls and doorway as they tried to finish him off. Desperation gave him strength and he hauled himself to safety into a bedroom and kicked the door closed behind him. The door shuddered under the thud of bullets as he lurched out of the bedroom and gained the main upstairs corridor.
He examined his wound. The bullet had caught him in the side and gone right through. He was bleeding freely, but though he knew no real damage was done, the sight of his own blood had a strange effect upon him; it was as if he were bleeding away his courage.
Pulling himself together, he staggered to the rear balcony to see how Mack Hogg and Ed Rife were making out. He found Hogg lying dead, with a bullet in the head. Rife was gone.
A spasm of pain seized him. He pressed his hand to his side and lurched back inside as somebody spotted him from below. Chest heaving, gun in hand, he crossed the corridor again and caught the first smell of fire.
Squinting through a shattered window at the scene below him, Kingston felt the full wrench of fear. The voices of the miners down there belonged to men he’d victimized and exploited, now drunk on whisky and hate and smelling victory. Five minutes back, surrender had been unthinkable, now he realized it was impossible. They’d shoot him down like a dog if he asked for mercy.
Panic twisted his vitals and the impressive facade that had been Foley Kingston began to crumble as guilt and fear did their destructive work. His house was burning, his men were dead, and he was encircled by hate-filled miners, with Clancy and Beauford urging them on
Beauford!
Suddenly the flood of panic ebbed and he began to think like the old Kingston. There would be no dealing with Paddy Clancy ... but, Beauford? Did he have a last desperate card to play?
The idea caught hold of him. Not even aware of the pain in his side now, he ran along the corridor to the room where Art Shadie had lashed Rhea to her bed.
Ace Beauford, crouched in the gloom of the stables with Clancy and the Kellys, shouted with the rest as Foley Kingston fell. Another cheer rose moments later when flames burst from the living room and spread with incredible speed. A Regulator came running out with his hands above his head. A dozen guns stormed together and lead punched him all the way back to the flames.
Beauford grinned as the men cheered again. It was intoxicating, the feel of bloodlust and the taste of triumph. Victory was as good as his and the cost was only the lives of a lot of dumb miners who’d died happy because they’d died drunk.
Then he realized that the men beside him were shouting and pointing upward. Beauford lifted his gaze to the flaming upper gallery and his heart stopped beating.
Rhea!
“Beauford!” Kingston’s voice carried down clearly. “Beauford, I’m coming out. Call off your guns or I’ll kill her.”
Beauford’s heart constricted when he saw the terror in Rhea’s face. Desperately he turned to Clancy and said, “Tell them to hold their fire, Clancy. We’ll have to let him go—”
“Oh sure, sure we will, lad.” Clancy grinned, then his face turned savage. “The devil we will! Open fire, boys!”
“No!”
Beauford’s horrified shout was lost in the blast of the Kellys’ guns and he saw Rhea sag as the bullets crashed home. There was a fleeting glimpse of Kingston as he let the woman fall and dashed back for the doorway, and then he too went down. On his knees, he struggled to rise, then vanished as a blazing section of roof collapsed onto him with a roar.
Beauford’s eyes bulged from their sockets. Then, an incredible fury seizing him, he swung towards Clancy and raised his six-gun.
“You stupid Irish bastard,” he raged. “You’ve killed her. You—”
Clancy wasn’t about to deny it. And he wasn’t through yet. Too late, Beauford realized that the double-barreled shotgun angling across Clancy’s great chest was trained squarely on him. It went off like a field piece, filling the stables with a hellish blue light. Beauford made a gurgling sound like a man screaming underwater.
“Don’t be thinkin’ hard o’ me, Ace, lad,” Clancy drawled, cocking the second hammer. “I know you thought highly of the lass, and all I’m doin’ is helpin’ you be together again ...”
“No,” Beauford moaned, and Clancy snarled:
“Don’t think I wasn’t for knowin’ all along that you were only usin’ Clancy to help you get your strumpet and the mine, and then you’d be seein’ to get rid of me, too, Beauford. Well, the laugh’s on you, me lad.”
“No!” Beauford cried again, and he died in a thunderclap as Clancy jerked the trigger again.
Riding hands and heels, Benedict and Brazos stormed across the Cherry Creek bridge. Their racing horses had outstripped Tricia Delaney and Bullpup by a full mile since they’d first seen the flicker of flames on Kingston Hill. Hitting Johnny Street, they thundered down its dusty length, scattering white-faced towners left and right.
Other towners were streaming up the steep slopes of Kingston Hill—men, women, children, fit and infirm, some drawn by the smell of death, others by fear, and all by the spectacle of Foley Kingston’s great mansion burning end to end.
Men cursed at the sound of galloping horses behind them, but they jumped aside when they saw who it was.
“Benedict and Brazos!”
The names swept through the surging, gaping mass of humanity like a brush fire in summer grass. It sped ahead of them, rolling through the trees and then across the blood-soaked yard above the crackle of flames and the shouting.
But the miners couldn’t believe it. Sure and it was only some trick of the night wind and the crackle of flames that made them think they heard people calling those names.
Then the two horsemen swept through the gateway looking ten feet tall in the light of the flames. Brazos a terrifying giant with a rifle, Benedict a sort of avenging demon with twin Peacemakers glittering in his hands.
One glance at the scene was all it took Benedict to guess that they’d got there too late to help Foley Kingston. Bitter fury shook him as he bore down on the startled miners, a fury directed not just at them but at Kingston and everybody else who’d helped, through greed or hate or whatever, to make this bloody hour inevitable.
The dramatic appearance of Brazos and Benedict threw the miners into confusion. Not even the appearance of a cavalry column from Fort Hood could have shaken them more than these two who had made such an impression on Spargo in just a few memorable days. One man turned and ran and another flung his gun away—but one faced them with a roar of defiance, the double-barreled shotgun in his massive hands swinging upwards.
“To me, lads! To Clancy!”
His tremendous shout was engulfed in the roar of Duke Benedict’s Peacemakers. Clancy’s face fell open as the slugs wrote a bloody pattern across his chest. He staggered forward and a convulsive jerk of his finger discharged the shotgun, sending a howling stream of blue whistlers between the two horsemen. Their guns spat in return and the earth seemed to shake when Clancy fell.
Dad Kelly cut loose and a hot slug fanned Brazos’ cheek. Benedict fired once and Kelly fell on his back, kicking at the air. Firing between his horse’s ears, Brazos knocked Joe Kelly down before he could use his Colt, then swung for another target but there wasn’t any. Guns were hitting the ground, hands were lifting, eyes were gaping at the great dead figure of Clancy. It was over.
The hungry crackle of the flames seemed to grow louder after the guns fell silent. As a hundred pairs of awe-big eyes watched them from the safe distance of the wrought-iron fence, Brazos and Benedict dismounted. The gambler looked at the flames, then turned to one of the miners.
“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Kingston?”
The miner gestured at the inferno. “In there.” Duke Benedict slowly holstered his guns.
Nobody felt much like food the next day, except the coffin makers and gravediggers Egstrom kept working late into the night. The day after wasn’t much different, but on the third day, with things slowly beginning to return to normal, Terry Mulligan decided something special was called for to help folks take their minds off what had happened, so a handwritten sign appeared in the window of his eatery:
TODAY’S SPECIAL
SPARE RIBS WITH LONE STAR SAUCE
Brazos, insisting that he patronized Mulligan’s establishment out of loyalty to Texas, put away three full ribs and enough Lone Star sauce to stun a goat.
Benedict, settling for one rib and a mug of coffee that Mulligan had thoughtfully fortified with a jolt of whisky, sat smoking at the front window table, while Brazos made up his mind whether he could handle a slab of Jalapeno pepper cornbread with his coffee. Outside, Bullpup dozed in the shade of the porch. The trail partners’ horses stood patiently at the hitch rack, saddled and ready for the trail. The two men were pulling out as soon as Brazos felt he’d fortified his constitution sufficiently for the journey.
There was a subtle difference in the atmosphere today, Benedict noted as he watched the street. Under the eternal dust haze there was a feeling of optimism. A black chapter had closed and there was a rebirth of confidence in the future. Benedict smiled. The ability of people to pick up the strains of day-to-day living after great suffering was something he’d witnessed in cities ravaged by the Civil War. Seeing it happen here in Spargo brought an Old Testament proverb to Benedict’s mind:
“As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.”
Well, a whirlwind had certainly passed through Spargo, but now the righteous would build something solid and good on the ashes of destruction.
Brazos was just polishing off a last hefty slab of pepper cornbread when Tricia Delaney and Cole Kingston appeared in the street outside. The girl saw Bullpup and stopped to pat him. Benedict and Brazos got their hats, paid the check and went out.
“So you two are leaving?” Cole said, indicating the horses with a nod of his head.
“That’s right,” Benedict said with a bow and a smile for Tricia. “There is a cold trail we have to try and pick up.” He peered into Cole’s face and saw that the young man’s look of uncertainty was gone; there was resolution, sureness, in his eyes.
“I’ve hired men to start re-timbering the mine,” Cole said. “And I’ve cancelled the deal with the strike-breakers. All the miners will be back to work in a few days.”
“We heard about it,” Benedict said. “We intended to look up both of you to say goodbye.”
“Go on and tell him,” Tricia said impatiently as she tugged at Cole’s arm. “Or are you too shy?”
“Tell us what?” Brazos asked.
“Tricia and I are going to get married,” Cole said with a blush. “Soon.”
Now Benedict was certain that Spargo would be all right. To his way of thinking, there was magnificent symbolism in the marriage of Foley Kingston’s gentle son and Shamus Delaney’s beautiful daughter: a unifying of the very forces that had torn the town apart.
A few minutes later, after congratulatory handshakes with Cole and some premature kisses from the bride, Benedict and Brazos rode across Cherry Creek Bridge. Their last glimpse of Spargo was of the blackened ruins of the mansion on Kingston Hill.
Then the trail ahead beckoned and they urged their horses into a gallop.
About the Author
E. Jefferson Clay was just one of many pseudonyms used by New South Wales-born Paul Wheelahan (1930-2018). Starting off as a comic-book writer/illustrator, Paul created The Panther and The Raven before moving on to a long and distinguished career as a western writer. Under the names Emerson Dodge, Brett McKinley, E. Jefferson Clay, Ben Jefferson and others, he penned more than 800 westerns and could, at his height, turn out a full-length western in just four days.
The son of a mounted policeman, Paul initially worked as a powder money on the Oaky River Dam project. By 1955, however, he was drawing Davy Crockett—Frontier Scout. In 1963 he began his long association with Australian publisher Cleveland Pty. Co. Ltd. As prolific as he was as a western writer, however, he also managed to write for TV, creating shows like Runaways and contributing scripts to perennial favorites like A Country Practice. At the time of his death, in December 2018, he was writing his autobiography, Never Ride Back … which was also the title of his very first western.
You can read more about Paul here.
The Benedict and Brazos Series by E. Jefferson Clay
Aces Wild
A Badge for Brazos
The Big Ranchero
Stage to Nowhere
Adios, Bandido
Cry Riot!
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E. Jefferson Clay, Benedict and Brazos 6
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