“I’m sorry, Doc, but I simply don’t have time for breakfast this morning.”
“But we missed out yesterday, too, Eleanor,” protested the gambler as they came to halt in the morning sunshine before the library.
“I’m sorry, Doc,” the girl repeated, “but I just don’t seem to have time these days.”
Pain showed in the gambler’s brown eyes. He turned his face quickly away so she wouldn’t see. Doc Christian had sensed all along that his interest in Eleanor Barry wasn’t returned, and it went hard against the credo of his fierce and lonely pride to continually press his suit, feeling as he did like a beggar holding out his hat for crumbs.
His face composed, he turned back to her as she fumbled for her key in her purse.
“What time will you be closing up tonight?”
“About eight, as usual. But there is no need for you to walk me home thanks, Doc.”
“I don’t agree, Eleanor. I think there’s every need.”
She’d found her key. She looked at him closely. “What do you mean, Doc.”
“I mean there’s trouble brewing. I don’t want you walking the streets alone after sunset.”
The girl smiled mischievously. “You’re forgetting, Doc, women don’t have to be afraid walking the streets at night now.”
Christian smiled when he understood. “Oh, you mean our fearless sheriff.” He sneered. “What a fraud! He was up there swaggering around the Rawhide last night as if he were a real lawman. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a high stake game with that partner of his I might have knocked his hat off just for the fun of it.”
“His partner? You mean this gambling man, Benedict, you’ve spoken about?”
Christian’s eyes hardened. “Yeah, Benedict.”
The girl suddenly stiffened. Christian glanced over his shoulder to see the man they’d just been discussing approaching from the direction of the livery stable. As usual, Brazos had his battered hat perched right on the back of his head and was walking with his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, powerful shoulders straining against the thin cotton of the faded purple shirt. He was whistling and looking happy enough with things despite the battering he was supposed to have taken the other night. Swaggering along behind him as if he owned the whole street came the incredible Bullpup looking as if he’d like nothing better than to sink his teeth into somebody’s fat hide. Anybody’s hide.
Brazos propped in the middle of the street when he sighted them. He grinned, doffed his hat and changed direction. Eleanor made a small disgusted sound as he came up the steps.
“Why, mornin’ there, Missy, Christian. Some sweet mornin’ ain’t it?”
Eleanor Barry made no reply, just looked him up and down with a cold stare which surely would have peeled strips off a hide less thick than his. Doc Christian twirled his gold watch on its chain around his finger and cocked his head to one side.
“Well, if it’s not the sheriff, our fearless guardian of law and order,” he said with heavy sarcasm, though without much rancor. “Tell me, how many heads have you cracked this morning, Sheriff?”
“None so far today, Christian,” Brazos grinned. “How many tinhorns have you fleeced?”
“Oh, the repartee,” Christian mocked, then broke off suddenly when a tall figure emerged from the Harmony Hotel and headed towards the library.
Doc Christian’s face went tight. A vain, proud man, Christian took inordinate pride in his superiority to the ragtag general run of citizen, yet sensed, in almost every way, Duke Benedict’s own superiority to him. He’d disliked Duke Benedict that first day he’d met him on a Mississippi riverboat, and he disliked him every bit as intensely now.
“Why, good morning, Sheriff Brazos and the estimable Doc Christian,’’ Benedict greeted them with a faintly amused smile. The gambler was dressed in a flawlessly tailored brown suit, highly polished tan boots, bottle-green vest and four-in-hand tie. The sunlight glinted brightly on the heavy gold watch chain across his flat middle and on his immaculately brushed hair as he removed his hat with a little sweep and bowed to the girl. “Miss Barry, I believe. My very great pleasure and honor.”
Brazos looked at the sky and waited. Doc Christian glared at Benedict and waited. Benedict gave Eleanor Barry the full benefit of his pearly smile and waited, too. They were all waiting for the same thing, which was for Eleanor Barry to show signs of going weak at the knees at having met the handsomest man unhung.
Eleanor Barry’s dimpled knees had seldom supported her so securely, though of course none of them had any way of knowing that. Harmony’s lovely librarian had a life-long prejudice against smooth and handsome men.
“How very nice, Mr. Benedict,” she said coolly, then finding her key, unlocked her door and stepped inside. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
It did Hank Brazos’ heart good to see the look on Benedict’s face as he stared after her. He chuckled as deep as his liver as the gambler replaced his hat, wearing a stunned look.
“Well, Yank, you can’t charm ’em all, like they say.”
Benedict stopped looking stunned and showed a glint of anger when he saw that Christian was smiling, too. “Something amusing you, Doc?”
“Could be, Benedict.”
“Maybe you’d like to amuse yourself over a game of stud at ten bucks a hand.”
Christian made a little bow. “That would be my pleasure.”
Benedict bowed right back and gestured down the street. “After you.”
“Hey, go easy on those ten-dollar hands, Yank!” Brazos called after them as they strode off together, but drew no response. He shook his head and grinned. Like a pair of gamecocks they were, though he wouldn’t care to be a stranger who said that to their faces.
He turned his head, peered through the library door then winked down at Bullpup and went inside. Making a pretence of being busy at her desk, Eleanor Barry looked up in annoyance, but was somehow disarmed by his broad, boyish smile.
“I shore like the way you done that, Missy.”
“Done ... I mean did what?”
“Cut Benedict down to size. Now there’s a feller that can use all the trimmin’ down he can get.”
“I don’t recall cutting anybody down to size, but I must say I find your attitude rather strange. Isn’t Mr. Benedict supposed to be your friend?”
“In a manner of speakin’,” Brazos conceded, leaning his shoulder against the weighty book rack and looking serious. “Hope them two don’t get to wranglin’ over cards ... don’t wanta have to jug ’em both.”
“You’re not really taking that badge you’re wearing seriously are you?” The girl’s voice was rich with scorn.
“Why shouldn’t I, Missy?”
“Because it means less than nothing, that’s why. Dutch Amy owns that badge in Harmony. She can give it to any saddle tramp she likes.”
Brazos scratched the back of his head, tipping his hat low over his eyes. “I don’t see it perzackly thataway.”
“No? Well what way do you see it—perzackly.”
He had to cast around a moment for the right words.
“Well, mebbe Dutch did pin this star on me and mebbe she’s payin’ me my wages. But I don’t see as how it matters much who’s hirin’ me. I’m just doin’ my job keepin’ law and order.”
“Picking fights and getting paid for it you mean.” She sniffed, bustling away with a handful of books.
Unruffled, Brazos peered around the library at the rows and rows of books. “Whoosh, but you shore got yourself a heap of words in here, Missy. Must be millions of ’em.”
“Yes, there are—and now, good-day to you, sir.”
“Yessir,” he said unruffled, “millions of goddamn books.”
“Look, Mr. Brazos, if—”
“Now don’t go gettin’ steamed up, Missy,” he murmured, coming deeper into the room and looking around him. “I just want to have a bit of a look about. I shore do like books.”
She arched a dark eyebrow and put her hands on her hips
as she watched him moving about the room, peering closely at the titles which she knew he couldn’t read.
“Let me guess,” she said finally. “You can’t read.”
“Nope.”
“And of course you’d like to learn?”
He turned to face her. “Why that’s jest what I would like to do, Missy. How did you know?”
“It’s about the oldest play there is.”
He frowned. “How’s that?”
She flopped her hands at her sides. “Every yokel that takes a fancy to me comes up with that line sooner or later. If I had a dollar for every ignorant cowboy who’s tried that on me I wouldn’t have to work for a living anymore.”
“You shouldn’t ought to talk thataway about folks who ain’t as lucky as you, Missy,” Brazos said with gentle reproof. “Mebbe some of them yokels you talk about wouldn’t be yokels if they’d had a chance to read and write.”
Despite herself, the girl felt oddly touched by his words, his manner.
“You mean it’s true—you really can’t read?”
“Nary a line.”
“Well, if you’re so anxious to learn about words, why haven’t you started before this?”
His shoulders shrugged. “Just never got started, Missy.”
“You mean you were never sent to school?”
“Nope.”
“But why not? Didn’t your parents care?”
“My ma died havin’ me and my pa just never got around to it I guess.”
“But that’s terrible,” she said, genuinely shocked. “What sort of a man was he?”
Brazos smiled to himself recalling old bum Joe Brazos. He’d always had more to do than worrying about sending a kid to school. Riding freights, working as scullion in railroad cook shacks. Stumbling and crashing down in drunken alleys from San Antonio to Cheyenne, passing out on coal piles, dropping his yellow teeth one by one in the gutters of the West. And at the first smell of war, disappearing fast and fearful on a California-bound freight, never to be sighted since. No old Joe didn’t have time to worry over schools ...
He didn’t want to talk about that, so he picked up a leather-bound book from the desk and squinted at the lettering.
“What’s this say, Missy?”
“That’s Beauty and the Beast,” the girl replied, her voice almost friendly now. “It wouldn’t interest you though, it’s a children’s book.”
“Looks like a mighty fine book to me,” he disagreed, flicking through the pages. He sighed, “Yessir, I’d sure admire to be able to read a book like this here.”
Eleanor Barry knew she should ask him to leave right then and there. But she didn’t. There was something about this man, some quality of innocence or honesty behind his rough exterior that was getting to her. She grew aware, as she watched the way great slabs of muscle moved under the purple shirt as he turned the pages of the book, of a strange tingling in her wrists and found herself wondering if she’d ever encountered a man who looked quite so much of a man.
She blushed when he glanced up and saw her looking at him that way. “What is it, Missy?”
She put on an impersonal face. “I was just thinking that perhaps you might like me to teach you to read.”
His smile broadened. “Why, that’s mighty nice of you, Missy. I’d sure admire to learn to read and I’d sure enough jump at the chance it’d give me to spend a little time with you.”
She blushed even deeper. Furious at herself, she spoke even more sternly than she meant to.
“I admire your honesty, but I feel that you should know that were I to spend every minute with you until doomsday I’m quite certain I wouldn’t find one possible thing about you that I might find attractive.”
“Oh, I ain’t such a bad feller when you get to know me.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that. Now about this reading, I have a little time to spare right now ...”
Brazos’ smile faded. He put the book back on its rack, walked to the door, looked out. His nose twitched a little as he saw a bunch of miners walking past the hotel and farther down cowboys from the Two-Bar Ranch skylarking in front of the Red Dog Saloon. He could smell trouble in the air. Seemed there was always something to lay a prior claim on his time when he looked like picking up a little bit of book learning ...
“I cain’t take time out right now, Missy,” he said, turning back to the room. “But I’ll sure enough be around afore I’m much older and uglier.”
“I wonder,” she said stiffly, disappointed as she set about her work. “Now you must excuse me, I have things to do.”
Brazos tipped his hat, grinned, and went out into the sun. He paused to look back through the window to catch her looking out after him. He tipped his hat again and she turned away furiously. He grinned to himself as he headed off down the stem. She sure was a mighty pretty filly and no mistake.
Seven – Whipple Creek Lament
“What did you say, cowpusher?” Stash Trotter snarled, drunk and truculent.
“Jest happened to remark as what a fine night it is,” replied Rusty Wilson, lounging against the hitch rail of the general store.
“You’re a liar,” Trotter rasped, approaching menacingly. “You called me a dirty name.”
“C’mon, Trotter,” ordered Mick Briskin who’d been heading for the Red Dog with his fellow miner when Wilson had made his insulting remark. “Don’t dirty hands on no cowboy.”
“Who’s askin’ you to buy in, crowbait?” Wilson shot back, just about as drunk as Trotter.
Trotter’s right fist blurred and there was a sound like a kicked cigar box and Wilson staggered back so far he tripped over the porch edge and fell on his rump.
He was up in a flash and the blows rained thick and fast for a handful of seconds before Hank Brazos appeared out of nowhere to bang their skulls together, then shoved them, stunned and staggering, in different directions along Main.
“Just playful,” the big man said easily, turning back to Briskin who’d taken no part in the fracas. He folded his arms across his chest, the harmonica slung around the muscular column of a neck catching the light from the Red Dog a couple of doors down. “What brings you to town, old man?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Law business—like keepin’ this town peaceful.”
Anger flooded Mick Briskin’s weathered face. “You think you’re hell-on-red-wheels, don’t you, Brazos? Well, as far as I’m concerned, you’re still just a nothin’—a stooge for the money in this town, and a joke.”
“What’s the grudge with you miners, old man?” Brazos said, unruffled, leaning himself back against the tie rack and taking out his Bull Durham. “Why don’t you tell me what makes you so ornery, huh?”
“Why should I?”
“It might help.” Brazos ran his tongue along the cigarette, stuck it between his teeth. “You know, I can’t figure you jackasses out. I took me a ride out by the creek yesterday afternoon and had a look where you live.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen Injuns livin’ better than you.”
Briskin’s face colored hectically. “Look, damn you, Brazos, maybe you’ve got a right to thump us about, but you ain’t got no right to badger and insult a man.”
“Get down off your big horse, old man—I ain’t insultin’ you, I’m just statin’ facts. You’re livin’ in tarpaper shanties, and from what I hear tell you keep alive mainly on rabbit stew. What I cain’t figure out is how come you stay put now the silver’s played out. You don’t work and you damned near don’t eat, and from what I hear tell the Two-Bar’s tryin’ to kick you off your minin’ leases. What’s there for you in Harmony? Seems like you hate everybody and just about everybody hates you back. Why don’t you go off someplace and prospect fresh pastures?”
“I got my reasons,” Briskin said, tight-lipped, “but I’m damned if I’m tellin’ you!”
“Why not?”
“On account you work for Dutch Amy and she’s the meanest, rottenest apology for a wom
an that the good Lord ever put breath into.”
Brazos watched the man through a haze of blue cigarette smoke. “She ain’t so bad, old man, a hardcase sure, but no real harm in her as I see it. But what’s this about you and the Two-Bar? Is it true you fellers are shootin’ one another up out there?”
Briskin looked bleak. “We’re only fightin’ for what’s our’n. We got six months to run our lease out at Willow Flats, by the Two-Bar, but Maclaine and his rotten pack of gun boys are doin’ everythin’ they can to drive us off. It ain’t hardly safe for a man to work out there no more.”
“Why are they tryin’ to hustle you off? The silver’s about played out, ain’t it?”
“Just about. But Maclaine reckons we’re foulin’ up his stock water with slag and ore-washin’s. He says we’re killin’ his cows.”
“Well, are you?”
“Of course we ain’t. We been out there for years and he only started complainin’ a couple of months back. He just hates us minin’ folk is all.”
Brazos considered that, then said: “And where does California Nick fit in?”
“He’s agin us too. They’re all agin us.”
“You know, that pilgrim puzzles me. How come an assay agent stays on in town when the silver’s all but played out?”
“How in hell would I know? I don’t want to know anythin’ about that bunch. They’re all polecats of the same stripe to me. Decent folks would walk a mile to get around any of them.”
Brazos shot the next question straight from the shoulder. “Where does California Nick get his money from?”
Briskin blinked. “Eh?”
“You heard me. You see. I’m a curious varmint by nature, and I’ve seen as how Dutch and Maclaine and Nick are all mighty flush. Well, Dutch has got the Rawhide and Maclaine has got the Two-Bar Ranch, but what does California Nick live on besides air?”
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