It took a lot to frighten Hank Brazos. A father who had had the startling habit of shooting his six-gun off near the boy’s head to attract his attention had never been able to do it. Neither had Comanches, Cheyenne, Sioux, nor, subsequently, the combined crushing might of all the armies in Union blue. Raw courage was one of the few virtues the modest Texan would admit to, but like every brave man throughout history he had his Achilles’ heel. And he felt something tingling in that section of his mighty frame now as he was plonked down on a bench under the canvas while his Amazon Samaritan peered out to watch the approach of the posse. Women. This was the breed that could put the fear of God into uncomplicated Hank Brazos, and he moved instinctively a little farther along the bench now as the woman the others had called Rosie swung to face him, hands on hefty hips.
“Sure and they’ll be talkin’ to Hurble now,” she smiled. “That divil could lie all the holy saints and angels out of the heavens and into the pit if he was of a mind, so you’ll be safe enough no doubt.”
Safe? The word loomed large in Hank Brazos’ head as she towered there looking him over like he was a prime side of beef.
“Faith now, but you’re a fine, strappin’ specimen if ever I was seein’ one,” she declared. “I’m not for bein’ too sure what this here Riley one I’m goin’ to in Tarbuck is goin’ to be like, but I’d be willin’ to bet me rosary beads you’d be makin’ two of him.” She chuckled. “I always did fancy a strappin’ figure of a man.”
Brazos had begun to sweat, and it had nothing to do with the voices he could hear outside. What sort of a madman’s wagon train had they blundered into? He had seen three men and upwards of forty women. And not just ordinary, comfortable-looking women either, but females with a look in their eyes that experience had taught him spelled danger to young, freedom-loving bachelors.
Where was Benedict when a man wanted him? Why hadn’t the fancy-stepping, four-flushing tinhorn dude stuck with him? He always stood by Benedict in times of great danger.
And now the danger drew closer and smiled again.
“Hurble,” Brazos blurted defensively, clutching at the straw. “That was the feller with the beard, I take it, ma’am?”
“You’d be takin’ it right,” she replied, lowering her great bulk to the bench beside him. “He’s the benighted leader of this divil’s parade of Jezebels. But let’s not be for talkin’ about borin’ articles like Hurble when we could be—”
“He said somethin’ about drivin’ wagons,” Brazos said quickly, moving again and finding there was very little seat left. “Is he short of drivers?”
Big Rosie frowned. “Of course he’s short, you spalpeen! What young boyo in his right mind would be for takin’ on the job of shepherdin’ a collection of single womenfolk across, Eagle Valley with the blazin’ summer comin’ on? Sure, he’s got a few dim-witted ones lined up, but he’ll be needin’ more if he’s to be gettin’ underway ...” The hot breath of her smile broke over him again. “And I’m thinkin’ it’d be like the hand of the Almighty bestowin’ his grace upon a worthless sinner like meself if you was to join us. Now what do they call you, boyo, me darlin’? Brendon, Rory or dear Patrick maybe?”
“Hank,” Brazos managed to get out. His shirt was soaked with sweat now and he had used up all the bench.
“Hank,” she murmured, nudging closer. “That’s for bein’ Henry, isn’t it, me fine, big darlin’?”
Brazos nodded numbly and she rested a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m takin’ it you’re not spoken for, Henry me love?”
“I got a woman back in Texas,” Hank Brazos lied in a hoarse whisper. “And she’s the spiteful kind, ma’am. She sure won’t take it kindly if she gets to hear I’m foolin’ with another woman.”
Rosie thumped her chest. “I’m thinkin’ she’s not the woman I be, boyo.” Suddenly she dropped her boastful manner and purred, “My, you’re a big and strong-lookin’ feller. You have hair like ripenin’ corn—and those muscles! Would you be for objectin’ if I was to have a feel? Just one little feel?”
Brazos watched in horror as a hand the size of a dinner plate inched towards him. He could hear the voices of the posse men outside, but it was as if they were on another planet. The real and imminent danger was right here in the confines of this Conestoga. He flinched out of reach of the fingers once. They reached again and he reared back—and ran out of seat.
He clutched wildly at the tailgate of the schooner as he felt nothing but air beneath him. Too late. He hit the ground hard, lunged to his feet, and stared directly into the face of a startled posse man clutching a shotgun.
The posse man’s mouth opened wide and Brazos watched with a kind of stunned fascination as he filled his lungs to shout. He had a very loud shout.
“Sheriff! I got one!”
They came from all over then, with the voice of the sheriff lifting above the pandemonium.
“Search every wagon, boys! That other varmint must be close by!”
Six-guns prodded the Texan’s broad back and a hand plucked his .45 from the leather. Above him, the mighty Rosie was waving clenched fists and giving the posse men a dressing down that had a few blushing.
Brazos managed to look a little sheepish when they dragged a disheveled Benedict forth amidst a great wailing of female voices. Brazos took it like a man when the Yank shouted angrily across at him.
“You cretinous Texas brush-popper! All you had to do was keep quiet and we’d have made it!”
“Never mind the jawbone,” a lanky deputy barked, taking Brazos by the arm. “Come on, big feller, we’ve got a nice comfortable jail waitin’ for you.”
For a man of the wide open spaces like Hank Brazos, the word jail had a chilling sound. But, glancing up at the furious Big Rosie as they led him away, he was aware that for the first time in his life, “jail” seemed to sound every bit as sweet as “free.”
Chapter Three – Sweet Libby Blue
SHERIFF BART SPARGER’S headache was growing worse as, with the afternoon shadows lengthening over Chad City, he sat behind his office desk and pondered a big question: When is a stage holdup not a stage holdup?
That morning, when the lawman had peered over the rimrock in the Whetstones to see two armed strangers holding a passenger and stage crew at gunpoint, it had seemed as clear-cut a case of armed robbery as a man could wish to encounter. The swift chase and the ultimate arrest of the guilty parties out at Keef Hurble’s wagon camp had merely seemed to confirm his belief that he was dealing with a pair of desperate characters who would undoubtedly be sent to prison, which in turn would be a splendid feather in Bart Sparger’s cap.
But then things had begun to go wrong. He had started asking questions as he was duty-bound to do, and the answers had brought on his worst headache of the year.
At first he had been disinclined to believe Benedict’s and Brazos’ story about Claydell cheating them at cards in Durant with a marked deck. And Stacey Claydell had certainly been impressive in denouncing the prisoners as liars and thieves. But then Sparger had felt obligated to get a wire off to Sheriff Keeno in Durant, and had Claydell still been in Chad City when the reply came back, Sparger would have jailed him, too. For Sheriff Keeno had the marked deck in his Durant office and could confirm that Claydell had gypped Benedict of two hundred dollars. Obviously the wily Claydell had anticipated this development and had left Chad City fast. But Sheriff Bart Sparger was still left with two testy prisoners in his cells.
The problem was what to do with them.
At times like this, Sparger liked to put himself in the boots of the county sheriff and his immediate superior in Fort Henry, Sheriff Paul Fogerty. Whatever black eyes or feathers in the cap Sparger had accrued along the way, they were always seen in relationship to Fogerty. Sheriff Fogerty terrified him, and Sparger was sweating now, trying to decide whether the county sheriff would land on him like a thousand bricks unless he released the prisoners on a misdemeanor charge, or whether he might fire him on the spot
for setting free a pair he considered to be as guilty as sin.
If only he could wire the top sheriff and ask his opinion.
But Fogerty didn’t like that. He wanted his men to use their own initiative. Then he tore living strips off them when they made mistakes.
With a sigh, Sparger leaned back in his chair and stared moodily across the room at his deputy, Biff Womack. Like just about everybody else in Chad City at that hour, the deputy was absorbed in the latest issue of the Chad City Clarion that had just hit the streets.
The blazing headlines read:
KAIN KETCHELL ESCAPES AND RUNS AMOK!
EIGHT SLAIN IN CHIMNEY CLIFF MASSACRE!
Sparger sniffed. If Womack showed more interest in the problem they had here, instead of in some mad dog running amok a hundred miles away, he might come up with something that would help the sheriff’s headache go away. Why fret about Ketchell anyway? The men he’d killed were all outlaw scum like himself, vermin the killer believed had betrayed him. What loss? The law would soon run the butcher down. In the meantime, what about two men who had robbed a stage only to get back something they themselves had been robbed of?
The sheriff rubbed his forehead gently with his fingertips. From the cells came the sweet strains of The Lonesome Cowboy played feelingly on a harmonica. There was no doubt about it, Sparger had to concede, the Texan could almost make that instrument talk. He hoped the music soothed that great hound that had been padding ominously up and down outside all afternoon. The lawman and his deputy had tried to shoo it away earlier but had given up when Bullpup had lifted his hackles and bitten through a piece of two-by-four to demonstrate what he could do with those huge white teeth.
Sparger was staring at the cupboard where they kept the jailhouse whisky supply, and was wondering if a big shot might help when brisk steps sounded on the porch and wagoner Keef Hurble appeared in the doorway.
Sparger frowned. He wasn’t about to forget that Hurble and his “miners’ brides” had attempted to harbor and conceal two men whom they had had good reason to believe were fugitives from the law.
“What do you want, Hurble?” Sparger growled. Sparger had an impressive growl. In truth he was a reasonably impressive man with his clipped moustache and erect bearing. It was only the secret Sparger who was indecisive and sometimes downright wishy-washy.
“No point in beatin’ around the bush I reckon, Sheriff,” the wagon master said in his big voice that was more suited to the great outdoors than the confines of a law office. “I’ve come to see if I can bail the boys out. What’s your price?”
Sparger sat up straight as the harmonica music ceased abruptly.
“What is your interest in Brazos and Benedict, Hurble?”
“Same old story, Sheriff. I’m still shy a couple of good men. I got to figurin’, after you took ’em in, that if I could pay up their fines, they might come to work for me. That way you’d be rid of ’em, they’d be free, and I’d have me a couple of drivers.”
“Like hell you would!”
The voice was unmistakably that of Hank Brazos. Hurble frowned at the archway leading to the cells, but Sparger was looking hard at him.
“I haven’t fixed a fine as yet, Hurble,” the lawman admitted cagily. “What would you be prepared to pay?”
“Well, say up to a hundred dollars each, Sheriff. I’ve got to have drivers in a hurry.”
“Forget it, Hurble!”
It was Brazos again—and again Sparger ignored him. Two hundred dollars! Now that was a handsome fine by any standard. And County Sheriff Fogerty was always impressed by a healthy account in the Fines and Fees Ledger when he came by on his periodic tours of inspection. A two-hundred-dollar fine would be a feather in the cap of the arresting officer.
Suddenly Sparger’s headache was gone, and with it his indecision. Illegally halting a stage coach and intimidating the crew was the charge. And one hundred dollars apiece was the fine.
“Come with me, Hurble,” he said, all brisk business now as he got to his feet and led the way into the cells.
“The answer,” Hank Brazos growled through the bars before Sparger got the chance to speak up, “is no. I’d rather rot away in this roach trap for ten years than get sold into bondage on this crackbrain’s wagon train.”
Keef Hurble looked hurt. “Now that’s hardly fair,” he protested. “Mebbe some of my gals are a little heavy-handed and a mite scatterbrained, but—”
“They ain’t got that on their own,” Brazos chopped in as a bored Benedict watched from the next cell. “I hold that any man who figures to run a herd of females across Injun and desert country for a hundred miles at the outset of summer without a least twenty gun hands on his payroll is touched in the head.”
“You seem to know a lot about our county for a stranger, mister,” Sparger remarked.
“Knowin’ about the country anywheres is my business,” Brazos retorted, then he scowled hard as he set to work building a Bull Durham cigarette.
Sparger and Hurble exchanged a pensive glance, then turned to the adjoining cell as Duke Benedict spoke up: “Why don’t you admit the real reason why you’re not prepared to accept Hurble’s offer, Johnny Reb? You’re always nagging at me to be honest to the point of nausea.” Benedict’s lazy, cynical smile embraced the peace officer and wagon master. “He isn’t afraid of Cheyenne, drought or anything that moves on four legs. What has him showing a yellow streak a yard wide is sweet Rosie and all her laced and petticoated sisters.”
Muscles worked strenuously along Hank Brazos’ jawline, but he wouldn’t be drawn into a response. Keef Hurble looked speculatively from one prisoner to the other for a minute, then he spoke confidently.
“So that’s it, huh? Reckon I should have figured as much. But hell take it, Texan, if that’s all that’s holdin’ you back, forget it. I can handle Big Rosie—no trouble at all. Tell me, Duke, how do you feel about taking on a driver-escort job with me? You haven’t said.”
Benedict grinned. “To answer your question, Hurble ... I like girls.”
“Like ’em?” Brazos was goaded into snorting. “He likes ’em like a brown bear likes honey, and he goes after ’em in the same bull-headed way, snortin’ and pantin’ and to hell with anything that gets in his way.” He nodded at Hurble. “I’m here to tell you, pilgrim, that givin’ this high-stepper a job on your train’d be exactly the same thing as givin’ a fox the job of guardin’ the chicken coop.”
“All this is very enlightening,” Sparger put in. “But the simple fact of the matter is, Texan, that I’ve fixed a fine on you and your partner, you’re without funds, and Hurble here is offering a way out for you. I for one think you should take it.”
“You’ve both got the cut of the kind of fellers I’m wantin’, Brazos,” Hurble said persuasively. “We could see to it that—”
“Pardon me, Mr. Hurble,” the deputy broke in, appearing in the archway. “Somebody here to see you.”
“I’m busy,” Hurble replied impatiently. “Can’t you see that, man?”
“I won’t take up more than a minute of his time, Deputy,” a soft, musical voice replied.
Then a slim figure joined Womack in the archway and four silent men found themselves staring along the short corridor at what must have been one of the loveliest sights ever to drive a man’s heart into his mouth.
“Mr. Hurble?” she asked, shy, poised and smiling all at once as she came lightly forward. “I’m Libby Blue.”
She appeared to be around twenty-two or three, but her skin still held the clear texture of the very young. She brightened the gloomy jailhouse in a vivid green dress that exquisitely outlined her young, ripe breasts. Vividly pretty rather than classically beautiful, she had about her a combination of childishness and womanliness as she stood there talking to Hurble. Duke Benedict found her completely entrancing. Her chestnut hair was done in the latest mode and she wore a faint trace of powder.
She was the loveliest creature Duke Benedict had met in years, and the
crushing irony of the situation was that he had been obliged to acknowledge Hurble’s perfunctory introduction through steel bars. How humiliating! More than a little dazed to encounter such a splendid creature out here in the wilds of frontier Dakota, Benedict was even more confounded to discover that Miss Libby Blue was actually seeking Hurble’s permission to join his train for the journey across fearsome Eagle Valley to Tarbuck. He gathered, glumly, that she had somebody waiting for her in the gold-mining community. A wealthy mine owner, no doubt. A man a million miles above a gambler-gunfighter temporarily down on his luck and behind bars ...
Deeply impressed with the perfunctory way in which Hurble discussed the girl’s request before casually granting permission for her to join the train, Duke Benedict watched with haggard-eyed regret as she walked lightly off, her bustle bobbing and her chestnut hair gleaming—probably walking from his life forever. Benedict turned eagerly to Hank Brazos, only to see a big, leathery hand lifting.
“No,” the Texan barked before Benedict could speak. “I’ll allow that that little gal is about the purtiest filly I’ve seen outside the Lone Star State, but that’s all the more reason for us to say no.” He stared through the bars at Benedict for a moment, then he adopted a more reasonable tone. “Yank, you know I’m doin’ this for your own good. You know you’ve got a big weakness for anythin’ that wears skirts. Well, I’m savin’ you from yourself.”
“You’re all heart,” Duke Benedict said bitterly. “A heart as big as Texas itself.”
“Look, Duke,” Hurble said firmly, “even if Brazos won’t consider the offer, what about you?”
Duke Benedict stared at Brazos for a long moment in total silence, then he shook his head. “Sorry, Hurble. You better look elsewhere.”
“I don’t understand, Benedict,” Sparger said. “You’re prepared to languish here indefinitely and turn your back on a golden opportunity to be free, just because this ... this dumb Texan refuses to act like any sensible man might.” He spread out his hands. “Why?”
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