Benedict and Brazos 1

by E. Jefferson Clay

  “You being funny?” Benedict said tersely.

  “Me?” Brazos said innocently. “Hell no, Yank. Just happened to remark on how damned purty you look. Sure wish I had me a store suit like that there.”

  Benedict stared at him closely. There was a mocking quality to Brazos’ words, and that smile was plainly phony.

  “Okay, so you like my rig,” he said shortly, turning to go. “And now you’ll have to excuse me.”

  “Goin’ along to Belle’s?”

  Benedict took two strides, propped and glared back. “What’s it to you if I am?”

  Brazos shrugged, great slabs of muscle moving beneath the purple shirt that Duke Benedict wouldn’t be caught dead in. “Not a thing I guess, Yank.” And then, as if the idea had only just occurred to him: “Say, reckon I’ll come along with you. That’s if you don’t have no objections.”

  Benedict came back slowly, gray eyes tight. “Look, Brazos, we had our fun last night. I enjoyed it, and who knows, maybe someday we’ll tie another one on. But right now, I have business to attend to.”

  “Sure, sure I understand. Or leastways I reckon I do.” Brazos’ face underwent a swift, sober change. “Your business in Daybreak got anythin’ to do with Bo Rangle by any chance, Yank?”

  It was suddenly very still in Johnny Street. A dangerous look crossed Duke Benedict’s face, then was gone, leaving the sculptured features cold.

  “So you know about Rangle?”

  “That he’s been around these parts? Yeah, I heard tell. Seems kinda funny you never mentioned it last night, Yank.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I dunno. Mebbe you can tell me.”

  Benedict shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nothing to tell,” he said convincingly. “I don’t know what you’re driving at, Reb,” he added, “and I don’t much care. All I know is that I don’t have any more time to waste jaw-boning.”

  Brazos screwed his face into a heavy frown as he watched Benedict stride off. He scratched his belly, kicked at a stone and felt the familiar ache in his temples that always came with too much thinking.

  He let Benedict go fifty yards, before tilting his hat forward and with his hands thrust deep into his hip pockets, slouched after him.

  Ben Sprod’s face told its own story as he slowly lowered the field glasses. Wordlessly he passed the glasses to Frank Piano, then spat on the rocks and tugged out his tobacco caddy. It was hot in the hills where the outlaws had drawn up to rest, even in the shade of the vast cottonwood that landmarked this broad, stony mesa in the Sweet Alice Hills.

  There was no trail up here. From the mesa the land descended in wide curves for several hundred feet where it broke against a gaunt rock shoulder that looked like a horse trying to climb into the brassy Kansas sky. The ridge stretched far northward and formed the southern wall of the deep canyon beyond. Sun-bleached flats of buffalo grass swept beyond the canyon, broken by streams lined by willows and cottonwoods. In the distance, so far away that they looked like insects against the whiteness of the plains, rode the posse.

  Ben Sprod hadn’t believed it was actually the posse when they’d first sighted it as they rode leisurely through the familiar ruggedness of the Sweet Alice Hills. Sure, there’d been rumors for weeks that Daybreak was going to get a big posse out after him as soon as they could get a gunfighter or two to ride with them, but the badmen hadn’t really believed it any more than they’d really believed that some gunslick bounty-hunter named Surprising Smith had been signed on by the Daybreak Town Council.

  But there was no longer a shadow of doubt now. With the aid of the glasses, Ben Sprod had picked out and identified the figures of Humphrey Carbrook, Dobie Clanton the storekeeper, Jesse Morgan of the stage depot and three or four other familiar faces among the big bunch, but had looked longest and hardest at a small, unfamiliar figure decked out in gunfighter’s black.

  “Hell’s breeze!” Frank Piano said angrily as he studied the riders. “They’re ridin’ dead on our tracks from Daybreak, Ben. I said all along it was a crazy idea of yours to go that close to town, even if we was—”

  His words were chopped off as Ben Sprod caught him with a vicious backhanded slap across the mouth. The blow almost knocked Piano to the ground. He spat blood, and for a moment his eyes blazed with fury. But he wilted when he saw that hungry look in Sprod’s sunken eyes and the way his fingers fanned over the butt of his Colt.

  “Sorry, Ben,” he muttered, wiping the back of his hand across his bloody lips. “I never meant to run off at the mouth.”

  Ben Sprod spat between Piano’s dusty boots, lips curling in a sneer. He wasn’t going to have any tenth-rater saying he’d made a mistake, even if it was as plain as paint that he had. He knew now he shouldn’t have gone so close to Daybreak hunting that gunfighter. But how the hell was he to know that they’d finally get around to sending that posse out after them.

  “Well, what are we goin’ to do, Ben?” Dick Grid asked after a heavy, hot minute. Grid’s left arm was strapped wrist to shoulder in bandages and hanging in a black sling. He’d stopped a slug in the elbow in the set-to with Hank Brazos the day before.

  “Do we quit the valley?”

  “The hell we do,” Sprod shot back.

  “But, Ben—”

  “But nothin’. This here’s my valley and I ain’t fixin’ to be choused out by no bunch of plaster-gutted towners callin’ theirselves a posse.”

  “But damnitall, Ben, our hosses ain’t in no condition for a long run.”

  “I know that,” the outlaw leader snapped back. Sprod glared at the horses. They were blowing softly through their nostrils and jingling their gear as they rubbed their heads against their legs to mop off the sweat. They’d been ridden hard and badly fed for too long. He didn’t figure the posse would last long, but if it did new mounts would be needed.

  With sudden decision, he crossed to his horse and mounted up.

  “Where to, Ben?” Piano asked as he and Grid followed suit.

  “The Circle C Ranch,” said Sprod, cutting a final look down at the posse before heeling away. “Olan Fletcher runs the best horseflesh in Calico Valley.”

  Piano and Grid weren’t about to argue with that. But what they couldn’t figure was how Sprod meant to talk Olan around. Olan was a cousin of Ben’s, but Ben still owed him plenty for horses they’d got before, and Olan had told him straight out he wasn’t going to let him have any more until he paid up. And big, tough Olan had sounded like he meant it.

  The riders came out of the hills, then angled south-east. They crossed a broad, rolling plain ribboned with chaparral and speckled with beeves. The sun was high when they topped a swale and eyed the Circle C ranch house, shaded by a grove of tall peppercorns. The fans of a windmill on spidery legs whirled lazily and the clanking of the pump sounded faintly in the singing stillness.

  They rode in. They spotted Olan Fletcher at work in the horse corrals by the house. Three abreast they crossed the hard-packed sand of the house yard scattering a clutch of fat Dominique hens. Big Olan Fletcher scowled hard when he saw who it was, and the scowl cut even deeper when Ben Sprod told him what they wanted.

  “No horses until you pay for the last cavvy, Ben. I made that clear to you afore.”

  “There’s a posse on our heels, Olan.”

  “That ain’t no concern of mine.”

  Sprod’s voice softened as he stepped down. “You ain’t hearing good. Cousin Olan. I want horses. You wouldn’t turn your own kinfolk down in time of need, would you?”

  “That’s the same line of bull dust you handed me last time,” Fletcher said heatedly, big rivers of sweat coursing down his hard, beefy face. “Cost me three prime saddlers that time. You ain’t doin’ me again.”

  Sprod spread his hands then dropped them at his sides sending up the dust. “Olan,” he said regretfully, “you’re sure gettin’ hard in your old age. Here’s your cousin hot and beat and run ragged by a posse and all you can say is—”

  “Yo
u ain’t goin’ to make me change my mind, Ben.” Sprod shrugged. “Okay, Olan, but you wouldn’t deny a man a cold drink, would you? Do you still keep that barrel of sweet water in the kitchen like you used to?”

  Fletcher scowled; then wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “All right, you can take a drink. But you tell your pards to stay put, Ben. I never did trust that pair of beauties.”

  “You heard Cousin Olan,” Sprod said, but as Fletcher turned for the house, he nodded imperceptibly to his henchmen before following.

  The water was cold and Sprod let it splash out of his mouth and down his bony chest. Fletcher watched him uneasily, leaning back against the kitchen workbench. His heavy shoulders were tensed and his fingers drummed against the wood.

  “Just like old times, Olan,” said Sprod. He hung the water ladle back on its nail above the barrel. “You recall when my maw used to bring me around and we’d fool in the barn and then come lickin’ up here for a nice cool drink?” '

  “That was a long time ago, Ben. That was afore you turned killer and thief.”

  “Ah, time’s made you hard and no mistake, Olan.” Sprod shook his head sadly but there was a steely glint in his sunken eye. “Never did think I’d live to see the day my own kin would turn so hard agin me.”

  A horse whickered from the corrals, followed by a stamp of hooves. Fletcher started, looked at Sprod, then hurried to the doorway. A curse broke from his lips when he saw Dick Grid and Frank Piano cutting three horses out of the corrals.

  “Git away from my hosses!” he roared angrily. He dragged out his gun and pounded down the steps. “Git out of that corral, you thievin’ pair of no-goods.”

  Neither man paid him any attention. Fletcher ran twenty yards then stopped in his tracks as a chill of premonition hit him like a blow. He spun in the dust. Ben Sprod’s long frame filled the kitchen doorway. Sprod was smiling and he had his gun out.

  Fletcher’s jaw fell open with an audible click as Sprod’s gun arm lifted. For a moment as he met the sinister chill of Ben’s smile, he knew true fear before rage took over, shaking him like an aspen in a high wind.

  “You dirty Judas, Ben!” he shouted and swung up his gun.

  Sprod’s .45 exploded, the boom of the shot startling the horses in the corrals and setting the hens squawking again.

  Olan Fletcher was knocked against a dusty tree trunk with lead in his guts, his face a twisted mask of shock and fury.

  “Damn you for a butcherin’ bastard, Ben Sprod,” he choked and sent a wild bullet into the roof of the house.

  Sprod triggered again and hot lead smashed into Fletcher’s knee. His head spinning with agony, the rancher realized he was toying with him. Sobbing and cursing he clutched at the tree trunk and slewed sideways, trying to get behind it. From the kitchen the sound of the big six-gun churning again was like the roar of an avalanche. Cruel lead nails drove into Olan Fletcher’s broad back and hammered him into the tree. He stayed transfixed there for a full ten seconds after the gun had fallen silent, then slowly slid down the trunk and rolled onto his back on the hard sand.

  Ben Sprod crossed the yard, his shadow a black pool around his boots. He fingered fresh shells into his gun and favored the dead man with nothing more than a half-bored glance as he jingled past the tree to the corrals.

  “Always was a hardhead,” was his obituary for Cousin Olan. “All right you jokers, let’s get our saddles onto these three goers and make some dust.”

  There was probably more virtue to be found in the Carbrooks’ front parlor that morning than in all the rest of Calico Valley. There was always a lot of virtue about when the Christian Ladies of Daybreak got together, and there was an even bigger roll-up than usual this hot Friday morning. The rumor had gone about that at long last the long-suffering womenfolk of Daybreak were preparing to “take matters into their own hands.”

  Mrs. Carbrook’s help had finished serving coffee and cakes and Matilda Carbrook herself was doing the talking. This was mostly the case, for not only was she founder and chairwoman of C.L.O.D.—an abbreviation the good ladies didn’t care for—but she also had an uncommonly loud voice.

  That voice was growing louder as the stern and sturdy Mrs. Carbrook warmed to her subject. “It’s perfectly obvious that our menfolk will simply not take us seriously,” she declared, not for the first time that morning. “If they did, they certainly would not have gone gallivanting off after that ridiculous outlaw just at the very time when we need to present a solid, united front against the forces of Satan right here in our fair town.” That brought an enthusiastic chorus of approval. The good ladies weren’t really concerned if Ben Sprod went about shooting up stage guards and cowboys. They knew where the real evil lay right enough, and that was about one block west of the Carbrook house right here in Daybreak.

  “I called this meeting for a specific purpose,” Mrs. Carbrook went on, gaining momentum by the minute. “And that is to decide whether or not we are going to sit back and watch this... this monument to Daybreak’s shame be officially opened for... for... well, you all know what for... tomorrow night, or are we going to stop it?”

  “We shall stop it, Matilda!” spinsterish Miss Susie Briggs declared vehemently. “What that scarlet woman has built there on the corner of Piute Street is a danger to every man and an affront to every God-fearing woman in Daybreak.” Then lapsing into the Biblical as she lifted a furled umbrella high: “I say this citadel of wickedness must be destroyed lest Daybreak become an American Gomorrah!”

  Wild applause, stamping high heels, even an exuberant whistle or two. Standing facing the rows of chairs, it was all Matilda Carbrook could do to suppress a triumphant smile. Things were going far better even than she could have hoped. She hadn’t been sure before that her fellow C.L.O.D. members felt as strongly about Belle Shilleen’s new bordello as she did herself, but their mood this morning was more than convincing.

  She lifted her hands for silence and was about to continue her address when her eye was caught by a tall figure walking past the house. Mrs. Carbrook’s high color turned to brick red as she marched across the room to the window, beckoning them all to come take a look.

  “If we needed any more to convince us that things have gone beyond all the bounds of decency here, then that should dispel them,” she declared. “Do you know who that fellow is? He’s a gambling man named Benedict. Each morning for the past three mornings, I’ve seen him go past here and march straight into that—that place. At least that harlot’s other customers were discreet enough to confine their visiting hours to night-time, but now they’re going down there in broad daylight.”

  The women clucked like so many disapproving hens as they watched the tall, handsome figure. And sure enough, when he reached the Piute Street corner, he crossed over to the big new bordello and went straight inside. “Disgusting,” gasped Mrs. Harp Moody.

  “Appalling,” agreed Mrs. Jesse Morgan.

  “Revolting,” agreed pretty little Hallie Martin, wife of the Reverend Martin. And then a trifle winsomely, “My, but isn’t he a comely gentleman. One can’t help wondering why a man like that would want to—need to—oh dear!”

  The young woman broke off in confusion, sensing that what she was saying might have sounded a little indelicate. Reproving faces turned to her and she blushed in embarrassment. She was finally saved when Miss Susie Briggs suddenly gasped:

  “Look, ladies, there’s another one!”

  The ladies looked. A large, somewhat reprehensible figure was slouching past the picket fence. In sharp contrast to the immaculate Benedict, this stranger to Daybreak looked as if he might have come straight from the cow yard. He wore an impossible purple shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist to reveal a great barrel of a chest which was ornamented by a silver harmonica hanging from a cord around his neck. A battered disaster of a hat sat on the extreme back of his big blond head, and as he walked he was kicking a battered can before him. Had he looked their way, he might have been startled to see a score of pop-eyed
women staring out the big window. But his attention seemed fixed on the big brick building on the corner. And as the gambler had done, he ambled across to the bordello as if it was quite the most natural thing in the world and disappeared through the front door.

  The timing of Belle Shilleen’s two mid-morning clients couldn’t have better suited Mrs. Carbrook had she planned it that way.

  “Well, ladies?” she said ominously, turning away from the window. “Need any more be said?”

  It certainly need not. They’d seen enough, and all that remained now was to work out a plan of action. That took them the rest of the morning, but by the time the meeting was over, two vital decisions had been reached.

  The first of these would be implemented if the posse hadn’t returned by nightfall. An elected delegation of C.L.O.D. members would pay a visit to the bordello to warn Belle Shilleen personally for the last time that they didn’t intend to let her go ahead and open her new house for business that night.

  The second and more drastic decision concerned the course of action they would follow only if their warning fell on deaf ears. The time for talking and pussy-footing was over, they declared unanimously. If all else failed then they must use force. Husbands, brothers, sons, fiancés, friends all would be brow-beaten and bullied into supporting them, and they would march on Belle Shilleen’s bordello to destroy it.

  Only little Mrs. Hallie Martin timidly wondered if this perhaps were not a little extreme, but she was shouted down. The worthy ladies of C.L.O.D. had blood in their eyes, and as they fell upon the lunch provided by a triumphant Mrs. Carbrook with appetites whetted by the prospects of excitement and perhaps violence, there was more than one of them secretly hoping that Belle Shilleen might reject their warning tonight.

  For if she did, and if the town’s leaders riding with the posse didn’t return beforehand, tonight could easily turn out to be the most exciting night in Daybreak’s history.