Benedict and Brazos 2

by E. Jefferson Clay

  Three – A Pretty Little Filly

  “Ah still sho’ enough don’t know how y’all whupped all o’ them fellahs of Dutch Amy’s on your lonesome.”

  Brazos went on soaking his skinned knuckles in the vat of brine the housemaid had brought up for him, but didn’t feel moved to reply.

  Miss Annabelle, from so far south she must have been born on a boat, didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ah jes’ seen li’l ol’ Chet Corbett sashayin’ down by the cafe and ah swear ah wouldn’t have recognized him only for that big hat he wears. What on earth did you hit him with, Mistuh Brazos?”

  Seated on the edge of his bed with his hands in the brine, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and almost a black eye, Brazos gave Miss Annabelle his coldest stare.

  Miss Annabelle finally took the hint and left him. Brazos dried his hands, squinted at his face in the mirror, then went out to the balcony. Front Street, Harmony, was so quiet it almost hurt. Dusk was creeping over the dusty rooftops and somebody was toying with the piano across the street at the Rawhide.

  Brazos scowled towards the southeast, drew deep on his smoke. Duke Benedict was overdue.

  Moonlight sparkled on Whipple Creek.

  “How’s the shoulder feel now, sonny?”

  “Tolerably better,” Benedict assured Rickey, realizing he’d clean forgotten about his wounded shoulder while demonstrating to a wide-eyed Betty just how Edwin Booth, the actor, had handled the sword-fight scenes in “Hamlet.” He touched his shoulder and winced. “Still a little tender but I’m sure it will be all right come morning.”

  Rickey nodded his grizzled head. “Yeah, reckon it should be. But I reckon you done the right thing in stayin’ on to rest up tonight.” The little miner pushed himself up stiffly out of his chair on the verandah. “Well, I’ll be gittin’ along to bed, feelin’ kinda weary and kinda sore.”

  The old man went stiffly to bed. Benedict’s gray eyes twinkled at the girl in the moonlight.

  “Would your pa object if we took a little walk down by the river, Betty?”

  He’d spoken softly, but the old sourdough had ears like a jackrabbit.

  “I ain’t got no objection, sonny ... if Betty ain’t.”

  Benedict grinned and looked a question at the girl. Her answer was a smile as she took his arm and they went down the steps together under the brilliant moon. The night was filled with the sweet evening scents of roses and grasses, the moonlight lending a magic silver sheen to buildings and trees and hills.

  “Just look at the moon,” Benedict invited the girl as they passed through the old gate.

  “Lovely,” Betty sighed, then frowned. “I’m really very pleased you decided to stay overnight, Duke, but what about your friend, Hank? Wasn’t he expecting you in town this morning?”

  “Most likely,” Benedict concurred with a total lack of concern. “Now isn’t that a beautiful moon?”

  Betty dimpled charmingly and squeezed his arm. Yes, it was indeed a very beautiful moon.

  Front Street, Harmony, came suddenly alive every morning around nine for no other reason than to watch Miss Eleanor Barry, the town librarian, come around the Peach Street corner and make her way the two blocks down Main to the library.

  They were all in evidence that sunny morning following the big brawl at the Rawhide, from fifteen-year-old Earl Parnell who took out a book a week though he couldn’t read a word to eighty-five-year-old Bob McQueen who vowed and declared that she was the prettiest thing he’d seen in eighty-five hard Western summers, praying for a smile, yet prepared to be happy with just a nod.

  Yet despite the fact that at twenty-two years of age with a long-legged, perfect figure, a lovely oval face framed by coal-black hair, and the carriage a queen might admire, the progress of the prettiest girl in Harmony on her morning walk down Main Street was never marred by whistle, wolf howl or yell of appreciation. Eleanor Barry simply wasn’t that sort of girl. A man might hoot and holler at girls from the Rawhide and the Red Dog, but never at her. She was a lady every inch and a symbol of class and good breeding in a town where such qualities were too rare.

  So it was that the girl was genuinely startled, when passing the gallery of the Harmony Hall Hotel, to hear a long, low whistle. She was so taken aback that she turned to see a big ox-shouldered stranger with saddle tramp written all over him. She gave him one frosty stare, then continued on her way, her chin a little higher than before.

  She could hardly believe it when she heard the steps behind her, the slow lazy drawl.

  “Hey there, little filly, where are you goin’ in such an all-fired hurry this time of mornin’?”

  She stopped and turned, eyes furious. He was shambling after her, thumbs hooked in his cartridge belt and an incredible dog padding beside him. A cigarette dangled lazily from his lips and his smile was infuriating.

  He also looked as if he’d been in an argument with a grizzly bear, and it was those marks of battery that gave the girl her first hint that he might be the stranger who’d worked over the Rawhide that everybody was talking about.

  “Sir,” she said with impressive hauteur, “don’t you have anything better to do than to loaf around the street, conducting yourself like a yokel and harassing passersby?”

  Brazos blinked, thrown off balance for the minute. He’d been brooding on the gallery of the hotel trying to decide whether or not to ride out to the Rickey place to see what had happened to Benedict when she sashayed by. He’d immediately decided there were better things to do than go galloping around the countryside. Compared to this little filly, Miss Annabelle at the Harmony Hotel was as plain as a post.

  His smile returned with new candlepower. “Now go easy on them there ten-dollar words, missy. I can’t rightly figure out just what you’re sayin’.”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to be surprised at that admission? Let me guess, sir? You’re illiterate as well as ill-mannered.”

  That hit Brazos right where he lived. One of the very few points on which the drifter was sensitive, was that he could neither read nor write.

  “I mightn’t have no book-learnin’, missy,” he drawled back, his eyes going up and down her approvingly, “but I reckon I don’t need none to know a real purty filly when I see one.”

  “I’m not a filly.”

  “Well, you’ll do until one comes along.” Brazos put on his most boyish grin. “Look, missy, there ain’t no call for you and I to get to wranglin’. I’m a stranger in this here town. All I’m lookin’ for is a little company.”

  “A little company, sir? Then let me recommend the Red Dog or the Rawhide.” She spun on her heel and shot back over her shoulder, “Or perhaps the livery stable ... yes I’m sure you’d find just the sort of company you require there.”

  She turned off with a flounce, leaving Brazos scratching his head, forehead knit with perplexity. She sure enough could spell out those big words, just like Benedict. And she sure enough didn’t seem to go much on the looks of him. Of course that was just a front he assured himself confidently, heading after her. She was just like any high-spirited little filly. You had to coax them along before you could expect to do any good.

  The girl mounted the walk again and quickened her pace until she was almost running and said something under her breath that Harmony would have been astonished to hear coming from the lips of their librarian.

  It was then that help stepped from the sunlit doorway of the Red Dog Saloon. It was help of the real kind, yet as soon as Eleanor Barry saw it she found herself wishing fervently that it had not showed up.

  “Good morning, Eleanor,” Doc Christian said, formal as always as he touched the brim of his immaculate beaver hat. A small smile, but the eyes were glacial as they went past her. “Is this cow faced baboon bothering you?”

  The words, delivered in a soft educated drawl reached Hank Brazos clearly. He slowed a little then came on, his expression hardening.

  “And what business is it of yours if I am, dude?”

 
“Please, Doc,” the girl said white-faced putting a hand on the man’s arm. “Please, Doc, it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Doc Christian rejected that with a shake of his head, for he had been watching them ever since Brazos had accosted her at the hotel. Christian was a lean man of medium height who held himself as straight as a ramrod. His face was narrow, as though it had been shaped between the pressure of two boards and was an odd mixture of strength and weakness. The flabby skin beneath his eyes and the heavy lines in his cheeks spoke of dissipation, but there was nothing wasted in the hard small jaw, the high cheekbones and straight nose. He was dressed neatly and expensively in a gray suit, bed-of-flowers vest, Star boots and wore a thonged-down Colt.

  “Why don’t you just go on to the library, Eleanor.” Christian said quietly. “I’ll take care of this saddle tramp.”

  A chill or dread went through Eleanor Barry. She liked Doc Christian for his beautiful manners and his wit. But while they were friends, she was very much aware of the strong undercurrent of violence in the man. She wasn’t about to have any gunplay over her.

  “I told you, Doc, there’s nothing to concern yourself about,” she repeated much more firmly this time. “Now that’s all there is to it.”

  Through all this, Brazos had just stood with his big feet planted wide, eyes not leaving Christian for a moment. He’d read Christian’s brand right off. Gunfighter. Brazos was a good hand with a gun himself, but no world-beater like Benedict. He didn’t want to trade lead with this dandy, but then again he’d never been able to back away from trouble.

  The two mean glared, Christian with icy arrogance, Brazos with an expression that accurately reflected the volcanic force of the man’s primitive nature. It was an ugly moment, a moment fraught with impending violence, which might have erupted into sudden gun hell but for the arrival of Olan Pike.

  “Hey, Brazos,” he called, unaware of the tension, “got a minute? Dutch wants to see you at the saloon.”

  Brazos cut a sideways glance at the man.

  “Get to hell out of here.”

  Olan Pike propped, only then becoming aware of the thick atmosphere. But Pike’s arrival was the diversion that Eleanor Barry had been praying for. Her eyes went pleadingly to Brazos.

  “Please, Mr. Brazos, go with him.”

  Brazos shrugged. It did seem a small thing to get into a gunfight over, even by his standards. When he saw then that Christian also seemed to be cooling down, he turned to Pike.

  “What’s she want to see me about, horse face? If she’s cooked up any smart idea about gettin’ square for yesterday, then she can—”

  “No, Mr. Brazos, it ain’t that. Dutch told me to tell you she wants to talk business.”

  Brazos turned back to Christian and Eleanor Barry. Suddenly he couldn’t even remember why he’d been so angry at the gambling man—and she sure was one mighty pretty filly. No way to go about charming a pretty filly ... plugging some dude gambler right in front of her ...

  “Okay, tell her I’m comin’,” he said to Pike. Then taking a lesson from Doc Christian he touched his hat brim. “Mebbe I’ll be seein’ you again, missy ... now as that we’ve got to know one another.”

  Without another word he turned and went across the street with Pike, seeming to dwarf the burly bouncer with his extra inches of height and barn-door shoulders. It wasn’t until the young giant in the faded purple shirt had disappeared through the batwings of the Rawhide Saloon that Eleanor Barry, and indeed all of watching Main Street was able to draw a relaxed breath.

  That had been close!

  Four – A Hard Star

  For one of the rare times in his young life, Hank Brazos was hazed. Astonished, he stared at Dutch Amy, then at Evans Maclaine the rancher and California Nick the assay agent.

  “Me?” he got out finally, poking his chest with a big forefinger. “You want to make me sheriff?”

  “You’re hearin’ right,” Dutch Amy assured him, rolling her dead stogie around her mouth.

  “Badge is yours if you want it,” affirmed Maclaine, the big beefy boss of the Two-Bar Ranch, a hard-driving cattleman with eyes like drills and a nose like a plow.

  “You’re just the breed of take-charge rooster we’ve been looking for in Harmony,” confirmed California Nick, a snappy dude with teeth like tombstones. “What do you say?”

  Suddenly Brazos realized they were serious and the irony of the situation hit him hard. After all the elaborate planning he and Benedict had gone to, here they were offering him the job. The Yank had failed to show up and the badge was now his for the asking. Hank Brazos, Sheriff.

  He started to chuckle. Maclaine and Nick watched him warily, but Dutch Amy slammed a big fist down on her desk, rocking her little office above the Rawhide barroom.

  “Quit that, Brazos!” she barked. “We ain’t foolin'.”

  Brazos wiped off his grin and met the pig eyes speculatively.

  “This all your idea, Dutch?”

  “Mebbe.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “How much it pay?”

  “Hundred a month plus fines.”

  Brazos suppressed a whistle and his last lingering doubt. So what if Dutch Amy and her pardners looked about as trustworthy as a bunch of Kiowa hostiles? He couldn’t turn down a hundred a month and fines.

  “Reckon you got yourselves a sheriff,” he said soberly.

  They shook his hand, offered congratulations, then took him down to the bar for a drink. Then they went along to the law office, a big solid brick and adobe building on the corner of Carson and Front Streets with four jails in back, a horse yard and a roomy office.

  “Looks kinda homey,” Brazos observed as they waited for the Justice of the Peace to arrive.

  They swore him in with Olan Pike as Deputy. They pinned a badge to his purple shirt, shook hands all around once again, and Brazos promptly left to take a turn of Fort Street and test out the effect the badge would have on sunny Harmony.

  Standing on the office gallery, Dutch, Maclaine, Nick and Pike watched him go down the main stem. Some wit said something to him as he passed the store. Brazos casually shouldered him clear off the walk and went slouching on his way.

  Dutch looked around at her confederates. “Well, what d’you reckon now?”

  “Figure as how you’re dead on target again, Dutch,” California Nick opined. “He’s big, tough and stupid. Just the pilgrim we need to keep things quiet in town while we’re busy at Willow Flats.”

  “Just how I see it,” Dutch growled. She cocked an eyebrow at Maclaine. “Talkin’ about Willow Flats, Maclaine, you said somethin’ about trouble out there when you come in?”

  Evans Maclaine shrugged. “A minor problem, Dutch. I left Curly to take care of it.”

  Dutch Amy grunted and didn’t bother probing further. If Curly Beetson was handling Maclaine’s problem out there, then there was nothing to worry about. When it came to ironing out problems, the massive young Two-Bar ramrod had few equals.

  “Misunderstanding Heck,” the big ramrod said confidentially as the men went out. “That’s at the root of all our trouble with you Whipple Creek boys. Ain’t that so now?”

  “I ... I guess. Mebbe I don’t rightly know ... Curly ...”

  “Sure it is,” the Two-Bar ramrod went on, his face as innocent as a spring morning. “And the only way to avoid misunderstandin’ is to level with each other. Now you think you’re in a bad position this mornin’. Well maybe you are, but only if you don’t level with me. But I don’t expect it to be all one way. You level with me and I’ll level with you. Fair enough?”

  Harmer, drew deeply on his smoke again. It was the first cigarette he’d had since they’d taken him prisoner. “I ... I guess that’s fair,” he said, still a little wary.

  “Sure it’s fair. Okay, you level with me first, Heck. You found somethin’ up nigh the big cottonwood didn’t you? Now don’t say you never, on account we know different.”

  Harmer’s first pulls on his cigarette had been f
or pleasure. The one he took now was to steady the tremor of uncertainty that went through him. He looked into Beetson’s bland friendly eyes and wondered if all the rotten things he’d heard about the Two-Bar ramrod hadn’t been exaggerated. More importantly than that though, he could tell Beetson knew what he’d been up to. There was no point in lying.

  “Yeah,” he said at length. “Yeah, I reckon I did, Curly. I ... I stumbled on it by accident a couple of days back. I ... I was comin’ back to take another look. I never knew you had that strip under guard ...”

  Curly Beetson’s smile was the warmest and friendliest in Deaf Jack County. “Now, that’s better, Heck.” He winked confidentially. “You know what we’ve found, don’t you?”

  “Reckon so, Curly.” Harmer hesitated just a moment then, but realizing there could be no turning back now, chose to be just as straight with Beetson as Beetson seemed to be with him. His gnarled fingers dug into the top of his battered boot and produced a small lump of quartz that glittered brightly. “That’s what you’ve found, ain’t it, Curly?”

  “Why, I knew I could trust you, Heck,” Beetson smiled back, taking the lump of quartz and getting to his feet. He turned his beefy back so that the miner wouldn’t see his triumph. “Er ... you told anybody about this yet, Heck?”

  Harmer hesitated again. Then, seeing no good reason to incriminate his old pard, Jesse Rickey, he shook his head. “Not yet, Curly.” He got up and said curiously, “I just don’t figure it, Curly. Why did California Nick tell us the silver was all played out when it wasn’t?”

  Beetson put a friendly arm around the miner’s shoulders and guided him towards the door. “I’ll explain all that to you later, Heck and it’ll sure make your eyes pop when you hear the truth of it.” He pushed the door open and they stepped out onto the gallery where Burk, Channing and Wilson were loafing about smoking. “But the important thing now is to keep quiet, real quiet.” Beetson laughed softly, an odd, somehow chilling sound. “Quiet as the grave you might even say, Heck.”