Trouble was brewing in the town of Harmony, between the gun-toughs who manned the Two-Bar ranch, the hardcases who hung around the Rawhide Saloon and the beleaguered miners out at Whipple Creek. Into this explosive situation rode Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict. With a thin bankroll, they were looking to earn some fast money to continue their hunt for a Civil War guerilla who’d killed their comrades and stolen a fortune in Confederate gold … a fortune they themselves planned to get their hands on.
So Brazos pinned on the sheriff’s badge in return for a hundred dollars and month, and soon found himself taking his responsibilities more seriously than he’d thought possible!
Across a poker table, meanwhile, Benedict ran into an old acquaintance named Doc Christian. They were rivals, these two gambler-gunmen. And frankly, Benedict had no idea where Doc fitting into the various warring factions.
When the chips were down, however, Benedict and Brazos found themselves in the thick of a fiery showdown, with just about every gun-filled hand turned against them!
BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 2: A BADGE FOR BRAZOS
By E. Jefferson Clay
First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
© 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing
First Digital Edition: November 2019
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. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
One – Tell Mother I Died Game
A blasting yellow sun was smoking hot in the west when the three riders with the reek of trouble about them rode out of the timber above the prospector’s house on the bluffs of Whipple Creek. They picked it as a gold-hunter’s layout right away from the sluice boxes, tailing pans and mess of gear down by the creek.
“Pay dirt,” said Shallert, the leader, with a slit mouthed grin.
McCoy and Gonzales nodded hungrily. It looked like pay dirt right enough, and they were three pilgrims who could sure use some. They were on the dodge, heading west fast, and funds were mighty low.
“One-man show by the look of it,” McCoy opined pointing at the solitary horse dozing in the corral.
“And prosperous lookin’,” observed Shallert. “C’mon, let’s git it.”
They rode down off the rim, and McCoy and Gonzales exchanged a grin when Shallert took out his knife and started honing it on the thigh of his leather chaps. Sourdoughs could be slightly bashful telling where their poke was hid, but after a taste of old Shallert’s blade a man would tell the devil where God lived.
Under that same yellow sun, some miles south of Whipple Creek, on the broad face of the plains, Duke Benedict struck an attitude which was a forewarning that he was about to orate:
Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind and often tipsy
Hank Brazos’ response was predictable.
“Huh?”
“The words of Winthrop Mackworth Praed,” Benedict supplied. “A man who truly understood life and its vagaries.”
Brazos’ response to that enlightening piece of intelligence was to belch so loud he startled the horses cropping grass nearby.
Duke Benedict fixed his trail companion with a bleak and hostile eye. Sometimes he almost enjoyed Brazos’ company, unlettered saddlebum though he might be. At other times he irritated him and at other times still, he drove him to distraction and made him wonder how in the name of the Mother of God had he ever come to get involved with such a stone-headed son of a jackass.
“You know your trouble, Johnny Reb?” he said sourly. Even the use of the term of address was a reminder of the enormous gulf between himself, a former captain in the Federal Army, and this one-time Southern sergeant.
“What, Yank?” said Brazos, comfortably sprawled out in the cottonwood shade.
“You’re dumb.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not only are you dumb, but you enjoy being dumb. That’s even worse.”
Brazos burped again. The beef they’d fried for lunch had been top class.
“So you reckon I’m dumb, eh, tinhorn?”
“You’re so dumb it’s a wonder your head doesn’t ache all the time,” Benedict assured him. “You can’t read or write and you don’t want to learn. You wouldn’t know algebra from a buffalo’s backside and you believe that Paris, France, is a fancy drink you can buy in Bourbon Street bars in New Orleans. Why back home in Boston, they shoot people as stupid as you.”
Hank Brazos smiled benignly, his rugged battle-scarred young face a gleaming bronze in the shadow of his battered hat. Duke “Yank” Benedict couldn’t get him riled today—not on such a fine sunny day with his belly full of beef, a fat Bull Durham cigarette angling aromatically from the corner of his broad mouth and a mug of good Joe at hand.
“I’m all that dumb, eh, Yank?” he drawled with a sly smile. “And you’re as sharp as a Mexican toothpick of course?”
“Of course. I was smarter in diapers than you’ll be when they put you in the ground.” The gambling man was really laying it on. A prolonged absence of intellectual company was making him mean and proddy.
Brazos eased himself into a sitting position.
“Okay, if you’re so all-fired smart, Benedict,” he drawled, “which direction do we take from here to get to Harmony? That ought to be as easy as hell for a gold-plated genius like you.”
Some quality of arrogance left Benedict’s face as he scowled around him at the fast trackless face of the plains lying panting under a scorching sun. He cursed beneath his breath, then jabbed out a long slender finger.
“That’s our line.”
Brazos chuckled as he uncoiled his feet stretching his herculean body. He jerked a big thumb in the opposite direction to Benedict’s pointing finger.
“Sorry, genius. Thataway’s Harmony.”
Benedict flushed. “You’re lying. You’re just trying to make me look a greenhorn. We just came that way.”
“You reckon? Well, if you want to go your way you’re welcome.” Brazos emptied his coffee mug on the fire. “But me, I’m headin’ my way.”
Duke Benedict’s fine gray eyes glittered with a brief hatred as he watched the bigger man leisurely whistle up his dog and ready his appaloosa for the trail. He finally swore bitterly, then hurried to get his own black stallion saddled, and when they rode out from beneath the giant cottonwood minutes later, they followed Brazos’ direction. Duke Benedict was an impressive man with a gun, a deck of cards, or a woman, but Hank Brazos was streets ahead of him in trailsmanship and he knew it.
“Shore wish we’d of got ourselves a big city eddication, Bullpup,” Brazos grinned down to the massive, battle-scarred hound trotting beside him as they rode out, and to the glowering gambling man behind, it seemed the battle-scarred dog chuckled deep in his chest.
The hooves drummed, the dust rose red into the brassy sky—and Duke Benedict rode with his eyes drilling at the broad muscular back of the man ahead and brooded bitterly on the strange turn of Fate’s cards that had made them saddle partners—surely one of the most improbable partnerships in all the West ...
It had all begun some six months ago in the dying days of the Civil War at a place called Pea Ridge, Georgia. There, a Union detachment led by Benedict had tangled with Confederate Brazos’ outfit which was e
scorting a $200,000 gold shipment to Mexico for General Nathan Forrest who planned to rebuild the battered Secessionist Army there. The two squads had fought to a bloody stand-still, and just before they would certainly have rubbed one another out entirely, Rangle’s Raiders, a pack of Civil War marauders had stormed onto the scene and snatched the gold away.
The war over, Benedict had set out to find that gold, had met Hank Brazos again by accident, and necessity had forced the unlikely partnership. Bound by a common cause, Brazos needed Benedict’s gun skill and icy intelligence as badly as Benedict needed his trailsmanship and iron fists. It was an uneasy alliance, but it worked, and not even Benedict could deny that. Despite his defects, Hank Brazos was the breed you wanted backing your play when trouble exploded.
Trouble seemed a long ways off as they came to Whipple Creek. Ahead lay Harmony and a chance to build a stake to finance the continuing hunt for Bo Rangle’s gold. “Sinews of war,” Benedict called it. “Eatin’ money,” was Brazos’ definition.
They followed the course of Whipple Creek until they came to where the sluggish stream looped between high buffs. Set back from the bank, a prospector’s shack dozed in the sun.
Brazos had been blowing on the harmonica he wore slung on a rawhide cord round his neck since they’d hit the river. He stopped playing to look at the shack, and it was only then that they heard the sound that went like a whipsaw blade down the spine.
It was the nerve-jarring scream of a man in agony and it was coming from the open door of the prospector’s shack up ahead.
“All right you goat-faced old buzzard ... your last chance before you lose an eye.”
Shallert’s voice was thin with worn out patience as he held the glowing point of the iron inches from Rickey’s eyes. It had been fun for an hour, but now it was time they got the gold and got gone. High time.
The glowing rod of red-hot metal looked as big as six midday suns to Jesse Rickey and he knew he would scream again when it touched him next. His gray-matted old chest was scarred in a score of places from the iron and Shallert’s knife, and the wood of the table beneath him was sodden with his sweat and blood. His body was agony from head to toe and though he was as tough an old sourdough as ever washed a pan of gold, he was close to breaking point. He’d have told them where his cache was half an hour back—if there’d been a cache. When he said he didn’t have any gold about him, he was only telling the simple truth. He’d taken his month’s color, a lightweight sack of gold crumbs, into Harmony two days back and didn’t have anything in the house more valuable than the few lousy dollars they’d already found.
“I tell you I ain’t got any danged ”
Shallert jabbed' again, but not at the eye as he’d threatened. A man could go mad from that sort of pain. He wanted the old fool sane at least until he’d spilled. The iron scored a three-inch-long furrow across the top of Rickey’s chest. The stench of scorched flesh and hair rose, Rickey screamed yet again ...and seated lazily against the wall, McCoy and Gonzales looked bored.
McCoy yawned and got up. “Mebbe he ain’t got nothin’, Shallert,” he pondered, loafing across to the table. He tugged at a tuft of gray chest hair and made the old man twitch. “Ain’t natcherl fer an old buzzard like him to hold out so long. Let’s just slit his ugly old throat and git gone, huh?”
Shallert shook his buffalo head stubbornly and jabbed the iron back into the embers. It was a matter of professional pride at stake now, having first failed to get results with his blade before switching to the iron. He’d stripped off his vast greasy shirt and as he worked his gross torso glistened with iron-colored sweat as he stepped back from the fire leaving the poker to reheat.
“He’ll talk,” he promised. “But if you jaspers are gettin’ tired of sittin’ around you can go search the house again. I know he’s got ”
“What was that?”
McCoy and Shallert stared at the Mexican who had jumped suddenly to his feet.
“What was what?” Shallert growled.
“I theenk I hear somethink,” Gonzales said, drawing his six-gun and going to the door. His sharp black eyes played over the yard, but there was nothing to be seen but the weary horses, the dusty trees stirring in the evening breeze beginning to rise off Whipple Creek, and a tumbleweed rolling slowly across the bare yard by the tank stand.
Gonzales holstered his cutter and turned back to the room with an apologetic grin.
“I theenk I was mistake.”
“Dumb Mex,” Shallert rumbled, slamming his own hog-leg back into leather. “The old joker’s already told us he don’t see nobody here from one week’s end to the other ’cept his dotter, and she ain’t due back until tomorrow.” He jerked a thumb. “Go comb the other rooms out again and stop shyin’ at shadows.”
Gonzales put on a shamefaced look, shrugged again and went through the hallway door.
“Never did know a greaser with brains or guts,” Shallert declared, then pricked his ears at a startled exclamation from the hallway. “What the—?”
A moment later Gonzales backed into sight. He had his hands up at Sombrero level and his eyes were bugging with fright. They soon saw the reason in the form of a Peacemaker Colt rammed into the Mexican’s skinny guts. The gun was held in a big brown hand which preceded a great barrel of a chest in a faded purple shirt and a craggy sun-bronzed young head.
“This a private party or can anybody join in?” Hank Brazos grinned, then stopped grinning abruptly when he saw the man on the table.
Shallert was going for iron even as the second tall figure filled the front doorway. McCoy paused for an agonized split-second at Duke Benedict’s shout of, “Don’t try it!” but seeing Shallert’s twin Colts blur into sight, swallowed his fear and slashed at his hip.
Brazos thumped the Mexican to the floor with his barrel as the two Americans made their play, then spun his Colt towards the real danger.
Shallert was fast, real fast for a man so gross. Duke Benedict was even faster as he dropped into a crouch, triggered, and drove a two-ounce chunk of hot lead square into the drum gut. Blood geysered a startling red, but Shallert gave no sign he’d even felt it. Gunflame flared a violent crimson in his meaty fist, and Benedict staggered as the lead ripped the top of his shoulder and plowed into the doorframe behind. Grimacing, he fired left-handed and Shallert staggered like a drunk.
By now Brazos’ Peacemaker was saying its piece. Blasting across the recumbent figure of Rickey, he drove a brace of shots into McCoy’s narrow chest. McCoy was flung back by the brutal impact of the lead, smashed into the wall, but somehow managed to keep upright to work his gun.
Brazos ducked, blasting back as Benedict got both guns working on the reeling Shallert. For a hellish handful of seconds the room rocked and trembled to the vicious scything cross-fire of shots, the sound rising to an almost unendurable level. Shallert was burning plenty powder, but the only way he would have shot anybody would have been by sheer accident. Shallert was already dead on his feet from half-a-dozen bullets from Benedict’s crashing guns and it was only the reflex action of fingers long trained to kill that kept his guns coughing as he slid back on his hips in the corner, then expired with a piggish grunt with a surprisingly pink tongue shooting from his mouth, his smoking guns clattering harmlessly to the floor.
Tough McCoy was dying too, but he was still able to shoot straight, keeping Brazos pinned in an awkward firing position in the corridor doorway. Brazos shot back with desperate defiance until Benedict calmly swung his gun away from the bloated carcass in the corner and drilled McCoy through the chest. McCoy spun and fell face forwards in the fire then crashed to the hearth with his shirt and hair alight. He lived long enough to scream once, then went burning into eternity.
The whole holocaust had occupied less than ten seconds, but that was long enough for dazed Gonzales to crawl to the open door leading to the bedroom and fling himself through. Brazos leapt after him, smoking six-gun in his fist.
“Drop it and reach, Mex!”
Gonzales was fumbling with the window with one hand, his gun in the other. He pivoted, dark eyes rolling bright and sick in their sockets. His .45 swung up. Brazos’ Colt filled the room with its volcanic thunder and the impact of the shot literally smashed the little Mexican backwards through the window.
Brazos crossed the room in two giant strides. The Mex’s shaking sombrero showed, the man screamed.
“Yo entrega, gringo! Yo entrega!”
“Never dirty-name a Texan, greaser,” Brazos warned him and let him have two up close.
“Dirty mouth,” the big man growled, fingering in fresh shells as he went back to the door. The big room looked like an abattoir and the air was thick with smoke and drifting cordite fumes. Some of the fighting tension went out of Brazos’ face when he saw Benedict standing in the front doorway calmly reloading his guns.
“You okay, Yank?”
Benedict nodded. “A creased shoulder, nothing to worry about. You get the Mex?”
“You can be sure of that.” Brazos looked back at the shattered window and scratched his scalp. “Say, you know what ‘yo entrega’ means, Yank?”
“I surrender,” Benedict said absently, fingering the bullet furrow in his left shoulder. “Why?”
Brazos hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand.
“Dammit, a feller ought to make an effort to pick up a smatterin’ of the Mex lingo even if—”
“Hey, never mind all the gab,” complained a voice from the table. “How about you boys cuttin’ me loose?”
They crossed to the table to find the old-timer very much alive and despite all he’d been through, Jesse Rickey was smiling. The old fellow had taken plenty punishment but he knew he’d been snatched from the jaws of death by a miracle and at the moment was about the happiest old pilgrim in Deaf Jack County.
His smile turned into a laugh as Brazos tugged Shallert’s sticker from his belt, cut the ropes and sat him up.
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