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It was a case of mistaken identity when Galloway’s two lawmen arrested Hank Brazos on a charge of rustling. Brazos went quietly, sure that his saddle pard, Duke Benedict, would soon arrive to help him clear everything up. But the law had other ideas. No ifs, no buts … Hank Brazos was going to stay behind bars until the circuit judge could find him guilty and sentence him to hang!
Benedict could always help the big Texan escape … but if things went wrong, it might come to gunplay and innocent parties could die. So he decided to take a different route – to ride solo and find and arrest the real culprits himself.
Trouble was, to stand any chance of success, he had to swap one partner for another … in this case, Brazos’ irascible hound, Bullpup!
BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 17: THE BUZZARD BREED
By E. Jefferson Clay
First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
© 2021 by Piccadilly Publishing
First Electronic Edition: February 2021
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Chapter One
No Town for Strangers
The pale light in the east turned to a strong glow behind the sawtooth peaks of the Misty Mountains, then it became gold as the sun appeared, opening slowly like the lid of an eye to look down on the campsite where Hank Brazos slept.
A finger of wind snaked from the shadows of a broken-walled canyon to stir the campfire ashes near the sleeping figure. The wind crept through the trees, touching hesitantly at the two menacing shapes stealing towards the tiny beacon of flame. Then the wind was gone, leaving the dawn chill and quiet once again—until the brush of boot leather against stone penetrated the sleeper’s dreams.
Hank Brazos’ danger-honed instincts brought him awake in an instant, and he rolled, at the same time jerking the big Peacemaker from beneath his saddle pillow.
“Reach, mister!” a tremulous voice ordered.
The giant Texan had no intention of reaching—until he saw the stars on their shirts. Lawmen. They came in quickly as he lowered the Colt and rose, a neat, clean-shaven man behind a sheriff’s badge and a buck-toothed deputy. The latter snatched Brazos’ gun, then gave him an unnecessary shove.
“Do that again and you’re gonna have to get used to scratchin’ one-handed, friend,” Brazos growled.
The way the deputy almost tripped over his big feet in his haste to get away, seemed to confirm for Brazos what he’d immediately suspected. The lawmen were as nervous as yearlings at branding time. So Brazos put on a big, friendly grin as he turned back to the sheriff to explain that whoever it was they were after, he wasn’t their man.
The grin began to fade when the sheriff brusquely announced that they had him “dead to rights” for cattle rustling and were taking him in. The smile was long gone when Brazos’ big dog, Bullpup, came loping back to the campsite after chasing coyotes to find his master sitting his saddle under the sheriff’s gun.
Bullpup’s hackles rose menacingly as he headed for the man with the gun, but Brazos held him with a word. If he’d wanted these lawdogs chopped up, he could have done it with his Colt. They surely didn’t know how lucky they were that Hank Brazos was a man who respected the law, regardless of what crackbrain sometimes got to represent it in the west.
“Look, Sheriff,” he began again as he saw the deputy returning with their horses—but Sheriff Frank Holloway cut him off.
“You can do your talking at the jailhouse in Galloway, rustler.”
Brazos stared. “You from Galloway?”
“Yes. Now that’s it, thief. No more talk.”
Until that moment, young Hank Brazos had been getting madder by the moment, just as any easy-going stranger would after being roused from badly needed sleep to find himself hung with a cattle rustler tag. But mention of Galloway lightened his gloom. For Galloway was his destination and he was due to meet a pard there with more brains, book-learning and knowledge of the law than a whole clutch of cowtown lawmen. He straightened his broad shoulders and a small, relieved grin worked at the corners of his mouth. Yeah, his partner could straighten this fool mess out, the peaceable way. There were times when riding with a high-stepper like Duke Benedict could be downright tedious for a simple ex-cowpoke like himself, but when fancy gunplay or fancy talking were needed, then having the Yankee dude to back your play could be mighty comforting.
They started riding. After a mile, the big Texan lifted the harmonica that was strung by a cord around his neck and began to blow pretty music through it.
Riding warily behind their ox-shouldered prisoner, the sheriff and his deputy exchanged a puzzled glance. Then Deputy Andy Warren lifted a finger and made a circular motion around his temple.
Sheriff Frank Holloway nodded in full agreement. Any man who could horse around playing a mouth organ when he was in as much trouble as this overgrown cattle thief, just had to be a little touched in the head.
Tall and handsome Duke Benedict, immaculately dressed and possessed of dashing style, was the most impressive specimen ever to drift down Sunset Street in Galloway—and the percentage girls on the upper gallery of the Double Eagle Saloon were immediately aware of it.
“Gosh, Flo,” breathed pretty Dulcie Grey, leaning over the railing for a better view. “Will you take a look at that?” Ten years and a hundred saloons older than her companion, buxom Flo Hainley was looking—and doing her professional best not to seem too impressed.
“Not bad, I guess,” she decided as the horseman approached. “Kinda fancy, though, ain’t he?”
“Fancy?” Dulcie beamed, turning her smile on with full candlepower as Benedict glanced up. “He’s beautiful!”
“Men aren’t beautiful ...” cynical Flo began to reply, but broke off as the handsome stranger doffed his low-crowned black hat and gave a courtly bow from the saddle, flashing white teeth.
Flustered in a way she’d forgotten she ever could be, Flo Hainley found herself blushing and smiling like a dewy-eyed seventeen-year-old—until she realized he was going past. Then her face fell and she stopped arching her fine high breasts.
“Too good lookin’ and too cocksure of himself,” she mumbled. “They’re the worst kind, Dulcie. Trouble with a big T.”
“I wish he was giving me trouble,” Dulcie sighed wistfully, watching the tall figure recede along the street. Then she looked down at herself critically, running her hands over her slim waist and flaring hips. “I wonder why he didn’t stop, Flo? They always stop for us.”
“That’s the kind they are, kid,” said Flo Hainley, who would have given a week’s money to have had the stranger check his horse and ride across. “Only interested in their fancy selves, nobody else.”
Expert as she undoubtedly was on the male species, Flo was way off the mark this time. Duke Benedict was not immune to their generous and well-advertised charms. In truth, he was less immune to a pretty face and figure than almost any man alive. But right now, with two hard days on the tra
il behind him and his fastidious nature clamoring for a bath and fresh underclothes before he kept a rendezvous, he had to keep his priorities straight. Necessities first, he told himself—then perhaps a visit to the Double Eagle.
The sight of the girls had given Benedict a favorable first impression of Galloway, and that impression was sustained as he rode along Sunset Street in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. He’d never visited the town before; he and his partner Hank Brazos had selected it at random as the logical meeting place when they had split up two days back at Rebo City. He saw a solid looking cowtown with several saloons, a church steeple showing beyond the false front of the general store, a jailhouse, hotel, a sturdy brick bank. The general run of towner looked honest and was most likely hard working. Of course, there was suspicion in their eyes as they paused to watch him go by. Townsfolk were usually suspicious when Duke Benedict appeared in his tailored dark suit, bed-of-flowers vest and white-handled guns. Gunslinger or professional gambler, they would be tagging him.
He halted briefly before the two-storied saloon called the Seven Sisters. There had been a Seven Sisters Saloon in Arroyo, Colorado, before the war, boasting the comeliest proprietress any saloon had ever had. He smiled reminiscently, then pushed on to the jailhouse.
The law office was locked up tight. There was a poster on the wall inviting the locals to vote for incumbent sheriff Frank Holloway in the up-coming council elections. A porch loafer told Benedict that the sheriff and his deputy were out hunting rustlers in the Misty Mountains. Benedict wanted to ask the law if they’d heard anything of the man he and Hank Brazos were hunting, but that could wait. Bo Rangle’s trail was cold, and he had only a slim hope of it getting hot here in Galloway.
Then he asked the towner about Brazos. “Nope,” drawled the loafer around a cud of chewing tobacco after Benedict had given him a description of the giant Texan. “Ain’t seen nobody like that hereabouts, stranger.”
Benedict’s eyes turned thoughtful as he lit a Red Man cigar. He and Brazos had split up at Rebo City to hunt for sign of Rangle along different trails. In deference to the fact that Brazos was a veteran trailsman and still regarded Benedict as a city boy, the Texan had taken the tougher trail through the mountain country, leaving him to comb the flat country south-east. It figured that Benedict should have reached Galloway first. Well, maybe Brazos was taking his time.
Benedict smiled now in pleasurable anticipation of a few hours of relaxation without the Texan. Brazos was a top man on the trail, but he could cramp your style when you were out to scare up a little fun among the ladies. So, with a little fun firmly in mind, Benedict started to search for a hotel.
But accommodation proved to be a bit of a problem. The Rialto Hotel, impressive enough from the outside, proved to be tatty and gloomy within, and there was no bathhouse. The Frontier Hotel had a bathhouse, but you wouldn’t stable your horse in one of its dark little rooms. He finally settled for Mrs. Peabody’s Rooming House for Gentlemen in a side street off Sunset. The rooming house looked plain but clean, and his decision was cemented when he saw a blue-eyed girl in a low-cut blouse working the yard pump. A minute later, he was signing the register under the attention of those blue eyes.
Her name was Sadie Peabody, the daughter of the proprietress. While he asked about bathing facilities, house rules and the like, Benedict noted that she was about twenty years of age, small in stature but in no other respect. She was quite pretty in a sultry way.
It was an hour later when he emerged from his room, bathed and shaved and sporting a clean blue shirt. His black boots and gun belt gleamed from vigorous polishing. On his way out, he encountered the good Mrs. Peabody, a forty-five-year-old version of her daughter, plump and beaming and dressed in a fashion that would have better suited somebody ten years younger and about twenty pounds lighter.
“Mr. Benedict,” she gushed as he entered the lobby. “We are so pleased you’ve chosen our humble little establishment.”
Benedict removed his hat, lifted her pudgy hand to his lips, then murmured gravely, “A great pleasure, lovely lady.”
Abigail Peabody gaped in astonishment, then her hand flew to her generous bosom. The way she primped, beamed and blushed all at once suggested that it had been a long time since she’d encountered such gallantry.
“Why ... why, Mr. Benedict,” she got out at length as her daughter entered the room. “How charming. I ... I do hope that you shall be staying with us for some time?”
Benedict was looking past her at the girl. Sadie leaned against the counter, one hip outthrust, a hand toying with the crimson tie that held her thin blouse together over her heavy breasts. Then she winked, slowly and deliberately, and Duke Benedict felt the old familiar tingle in his wrists. “So do I, dear lady,” he drawled. “So do I ...”
Catching the sparkling glance he gave the girl, Mrs. Peabody recovered some of her boss-of-the-boardinghouse composure. She cleared her throat and said firmly, “Of course, Mr. Benedict, while we hope you will feel completely at home here with us, I feel it necessary to stipulate, as I do with all my guests, that—”
“I’m sure I can anticipate what you’re going to say, my good Mrs. Peabody,” he cut her off. “But there is no need. With me, women stand on pedestals. Indeed, I share the sentiments expressed in the Book of Proverbs, Old Testament: Woman; she is more precious than rubies and all things thou canst desire are not to be compared with her.”
That seemed to dazzle both women. “Yes, on a pedestal,” Benedict repeated, moving to the door. Then he paused and looked at them both as he fitted his hat to his head. “But really, I think it is tempting a righteous man just a little too severely to meet not one, but two such lovely rubies on the one day under the one roof.”
Then, wearing the expression of a man trying desperately to cope with temptations almost too strong even for a righteous erector of pedestals, he left two dazed and intensely flattered “rubies” staring after him as he headed for the main stem.
He was strolling along Sunset Street, heading for the prosperous looking Double Eagle, when he passed the saloon that had pulled him up on the ride in. The Seven Sisters. Again he halted. There was even a similarity between the general appearance of the place and Amy Miles’ Seven Sisters in Colorado. On impulse, he headed for the batwings. He would have a refresher here, and at the same time drink a sentimental toast to Amy—wherever she might be.
He walked into the barroom with all his customary poise, glancing around at the customers as he made his way to the long, mahogany bar. He was in the process of ordering a whisky when he grew aware of a disturbance further along the bar towards the rear. Two big fellows, one of them decked out in the greasy leather pants and sleeveless shirt of a blacksmith, were tormenting an old bum. They were tossing his hat from one to the other over the old fellow’s head. Benedict frowned as a couple of onlookers laughed. He wasn’t in the mood for horseplay. What he wanted was a few quiet drinks in pleasant surroundings, perhaps a game of poker, and then the company of a soft and pretty damsel who could help him forget all the long miles and hard times behind him.
Then his drink was on the bar. He’d have just one drink, he thought, and then he’d head for the Double Eagle. There was bound to be a decent game going in a place that big.
Turning to face the doors, he closed his mind to the noise, sipped at the surprisingly good whisky, then let his thoughts drift back to Arroyo, Colorado. There was no doubt about it, even after five years the memory of Amy Miles was surprisingly clear. Or was it so surprising? He’d been young then, damned young; a rich man’s son searching for the excitement and challenge in the raw west that he’d never been able to find in Boston. Then had come four years of war, and Duke Creighton Benedict had been a man with all his options open. Amy had been a few years older, but lovely, and he knew, looking back now, that he’d been a little in love with her during that golden far-off Colorado autumn. There had been a lot of women since, but how many had he loved, even a little?
�
��Too few,” he murmured, feeling sentimental.
A braying laugh intruded on his thoughts. Galloway’s resident clowns had given the old bum his hat back, but now the blacksmith had taken his drink, holding it high above his head with a muscular arm. The barfly was on his toes trying to reach it, and the desperate look on his drink-ruined old face apparently struck some of the onlookers as being side-splitting.
A faint frown creased Benedict’s dark brows as he watched. His eyes played over the big man. There was one in every town. Big Charlie or Big Lafe, or Lofty. They were always bigger and tougher than everybody else and they believed that beef gave them a God-given right to make their own rules. Now the big man was tromping on the little drunk’s toes.
Benedict felt a twinge of anger, but he caught himself just in time. This sort of scene was of no consequence to him, though it was the kind of situation that would have stirred Hank Brazos. The Texan wouldn’t have been able to resist buying in as the backwoods champion of the weak and oppressed. More times than Benedict could remember, he’d castigated the Texan for buying in on deals like this that didn’t concern him, and he’d felt superior each time Brazos had collected bumps and bruises for shouldering somebody else’s burdens.
But that sort of carrying-on wasn’t Benedict’s style. No, sir! He could find enough trouble without going out of his way to look for it. And even if the sight of those fellows tormenting the little bum rubbed his back hair the wrong way, he was staying out of it.
Or was he?
The drunk suddenly lost his footing and staggered against a table which fell over, rolled, and banged against Benedict’s right leg. The impact splashed some whisky from his glass onto his vest. It was his best vest. It had cost thirty dollars in Santa Fe.
Tight white lines showed at the corners of Benedict’s mouth as he set the glass aside. He tugged a silk kerchief from his breast pocket to dab at the damp spot on the vest. Chortling through his black beard, the blacksmith’s companion swaggered along to help the drunk to his feet. The old man had spittle running down his chin. He looked around dazedly and his bleary eyes focused on the tall figure in the black suit. The eyes seemed to convey a mute appeal that reached Benedict in a way he didn’t want to be reached. Then the blacksmith came along with the whisky glass, and Black Beard, making room for him, stepped back and bumped Benedict as he was picking up his glass again.
Benedict and Brazos 17 Page 1