Benedict and Brazos 3

by E. Jefferson Clay

  After witnessing the cold-blooded killing of a man named Boyd Larsen, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos found themselves up to their gunbelts in mystery, murder and mayhem. Someone was rustling cattle from Nate Kendrick’s Rancho Antigua, and while that in itself wasn’t Benedict and Brazos’ business, rumor had it that the man doing all the rustling was Bo Rangle, the cut-throat outlaw they’ve been tracking ever since he massacred their men in the closing days of the Civil War.

  Signing on as range detective and wrangler respectively, Benedict and Brazos set out to run the rustlers to ground and exact their revenge on Rangle. But before they can find the man, they need to find the cattle … and somehow or other, those cattle have vanished right off the face of the earth!

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 3: THE BIG RANCHERO

  By E. Jefferson Clay

  First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Digital Edition: December 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 – The Night the Killer Came

  The cantina door swung open and Salazar the killer stood there in the yellow lamplight with the night a black frame around him.

  The Mexican’s coal black eyes swept over the crowded, noisy room, pausing no longer on the man he’d come to kill than on any other. His spurs jingled softly as he crossed to the rough, unplaned bar, breathed “Tequila,” to Big Fats Arriba.

  “Si, Señor Salazar, si. It is some time since we see you in Sabinosa, is it not?”

  The newcomer made no response. He picked up his drink and took it to a corner table and sat with his back against the wall, scarred face in the shadows.

  Big Fats shivered, wishing it was the chill New Mexico night that made him cold, but knowing it wasn’t. He peered through the swirling tobacco smoke at the new arrival to Arriba’s Cantina, until Salazar felt his stare and drilled him with a cold, unblinking glare. Big Fats dropped a glass, and bent gruntingly to sweep up the fragments with unsteady hands. When he straightened red-faced, he didn’t look over to the corner table again. With flat feet, indigestion, and a bad-tempered wife with a nagging tongue who gave him a calling down every day, the barkeep had all the problems he needed.

  Apart from Big Fats who knew all the good, the bad and the ugly in that lawless corner of south-east New Mexico, few denizens of the cantina paid any attention to the latest arrival who’d been blown in by the yammering wind. For Saturday night in Sabinosa was the night you left your worries at home and made your way to Arriba’s to forget about the week just done with, and to hell with the new one waiting around Sunday’s corner.

  Arriba’s didn’t cater to the fastidious, but it was a big, warm and comfortable enough place to be on a night like this, when the wind-whipped sand blasted angrily at the windows and the whole night was alive and howling. The cantina, which had been a church in the days when Sabinosa believed in God, was some eighty feet long by forty wide, with a low-beamed roof and thick adobe walls. The altar had been converted into a rough stage where a pair of drunken Mexes strummed guitars, and half-naked girls sporadically danced and sang.

  The place was dimly lit with six oil lamps hanging low from the rafters over bar, stage and gaming tables, and on crowded nights with the air thick with smoke, it was impossible to see from one end to the other. Still, that only added to the atmosphere the patrons boasted, and nobody was concerned with poor visibility as they drank their rum and tequila, pawed the girls and watched with fascinated interest as the back of Hank Brazos’ great fist was forced closer and closer to the burning candle stump waxed to the table.

  “You reckon you’re hot as a two dollar pistol, don’t you, blacksmith?” Brazos grunted as the flame singed the back of his hand. He was a youthful giant of a man with a craggy sun-bronzed face and a great barrel of a chest. “You reckon you got me beat backside-to-breakfast?”

  “It would seem so, gringo,” Gregorio grinned.

  He stopped grinning instantly as the thick slabs of muscle rolled under his opponent’s faded purple shirt, and Brazos’ hand drove his hairy arm back up towards the vertical.

  “Now what do you reckon, blacksmith?”

  Seated at the table next to the contestants with the little pile of stake money in front of him, tall, good-looking Duke Benedict saw what was happening and gave a sharp cough. Brazos’ hard blue eyes cut to his partner and Benedict imperceptibly shook his head.

  Glowering, Brazos turned back to the blacksmith, then suddenly broke the grip as Gregorio forced his hand down onto the candle.

  “You win, blacksmith,” he growled, to a wild chorus of jubilation from the winners packed five deep around the tables.

  “First time I’ve ever seen him bested at wrist-wrestling,” Duke Benedict said with convincing dejection as he paid out the dimes, quarters and centavos to all who’d backed the blacksmith to win. “Without a doubt, Señor Gregorio, you’re an uncommonly powerful man.”

  Pas Gregorio, two hundred and sixty pounds of prime Mexican beef with arms like thighs and a face like a badly cooked tortilla, stood up in acknowledgment of the compliment and thumped his mighty chest. There was triumph and relief in the blacksmith’s greasy heart, for there for a couple of moments he’d thought he’d felt a truly uncommon strength in the arm of the bigger of the two gringos who had drifted into Sabinosa late that afternoon. But he’d been happily mistaken. Hank Brazos, like every other man he’d ever locked hands with, had folded in the end. A good opponent, but nothing really special.

  While Gregorio basked and the debonair Benedict paid out his bets with convincing dejection, Hank Brazos stood moodily to one side twisting a quirley, scowling darkly and avoiding the silent reproof in the eyes of the ugly dog squatting at his feet.

  His expression didn’t change any when Benedict came up to him and spoke softly.

  “Now this time you win—but not before I say so, understand?”

  “Of course I do, dammit. I ain’t dumb, am I?”

  That was a matter for some debate as far as Benedict was concerned. His partner was in something of a class of his own when it came to some things like reading trails, brawling, raising hell or trading lead, but brainwork was hardly his long suit. Brazos was just as likely to forget that this was just a means of raising folding money, and if that happened they could end up without even the ten dollar “outlay” Benedict had already paid out.

  “Just take it easy,” Benedict advised. “You and I know he can’t beat you, and in a couple of minutes they’ll all know. So don’t jump the gun.”

  “I know what to goddam do,” Brazos growled back, watching Gregorio who was now letting a tarnished cantina angel feel his bicep. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Benedict turned to the crowd and announced that, simple-minded fool as he was, he had a final miserable five dollars to wager on a second and final contest—that was, of course, if Señor Gregorio was willing.

  Señor Gregorio was more than willing. He quickly resumed his chair and assumed the ready position, elbow on the table, hand outstretched between the two burning candle stubs that were waxed to the table to keep the contestants honest. The Mexicans covered Benedict’s f
ive like men who were almost ashamed to take the money, and Brazos sat down opposite Gregorio trying to look like a man beaten before he even began.

  Bets covered, Benedict sat down elegantly beside the dancing girl who thought he was bello, and said to the combatants:

  “Take the grip!”

  They took the grip.

  “Commence!”

  Gregorio set to with a fine show of strength and immediately brought a roar from the crowd when he forced Brazos’ hand down an inch. The hands remained at that level for a sweating, grunting ten seconds, then moved another inch toward Brazos’ candle.

  “Hah! He is defeated again!” a buck-toothed Mexican laughed at Benedict’s elbow.

  “Not at all,” Benedict disagreed. “My partner is simply letting your blacksmith expend his energy.”

  Buck-teeth sneered. “Eef you have such confidence, Señor, then why ees it you do not wager more on your amigo than a miserable five dollars?”

  Duke Benedict seemed to hesitate at that. He frowned, then with a great show of reluctance, dipped into his vest pocket and produced a beautiful, heavy gold watch. He sighed regretfully, then got up and slid the watch across the bar to Big Fats.

  “Barkeep, what will you lend me on my timepiece?”

  Big Fats’ eyes stretched wide as he picked up the finest looking watch he’d ever seen. But being a thief and usurer to the bone, he immediately looked disinterested as he shrugged.

  “Fifty dollars ... no more.”

  “It’s worth two hundred and you know it. But very well, Shylock, I’ll take it.”

  Big Fats couldn’t produce the money quickly enough. Benedict left the cash on the bar and said, “Well, gentlemen, I have a sentimental attachment for my watch, but loyalty demands I support my partner.” He slapped the bar. “Fifty dollars on the strong right arm of Señor Brazos.”

  The result was instant chaos. It seemed everyone in the cantina wanted a share of that fifty dollars. Yelling, pushing and shoving, the mob showered pesos, dimes, quarters, centavos and a few crumpled dollar bills onto the table until the gambling man was forced to call a halt.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” he beamed, stacking up the loot. “The good Lord loves the cheerful giver.”

  “Por Dios!” whispered little Abrana, the dancer at Benedict’s side, her black Spanish eyes fixed with wonder and greed on such a fortune. “Mi vida, you mus’ be crazee. Your companero, he ees fineesh.”

  “Correction,” Benedict murmured, lighting up a fresh Havana and leaning back expansively. “It is Gregorio who is finished.”

  Abrana took another look at the combatants. The Americano’s hand had dropped another tenth of an inch closer to the flame.

  “Fineesh,” she repeated and her bare brown shoulders dropped disconsolately. Until Benedict had cashed his watch, she’d been content enough just simply to share the company of the most handsome gringo ever to step through Arriba’s batwings. But such extravagance which could better have been lavished upon her, filled her with depression. How tragic for a man to look so intelligent, yet be so stupid.

  Then suddenly the mob’s cheers of encouragement for their champion began to fade, and little Abrana gaped. Hank Brazos had just forced Gregorio’s hand up a full inch.

  Gregorio’s swarthy face showed a brief disbelief. Then Sabinosa’s best threw everything into the final thrust that would drive Brazos’ hand onto the flickering flame.

  Brazos’ fist didn’t budge.

  Now there wasn’t a sound. Doubt, like an evil shadow, clouded every watching face. Across the trembling fists, Gregorio’s uncertain eyes stared at the broad, bronzed face under the shock of wild, yellow hair. Brazos’ broad, fist-scarred mouth didn’t alter its expression, but in the American’s sky-blue eyes, the Mexican strong man saw an unmistakable twinkle.

  The gringo was playing with him!

  The realization twisted Pas Gregorio’s guts. He skinned his lips back from clenched teeth, and mounted a Herculean effort to slam that iron fist back. Always the Americans won ... the Mexican’s land, his women, his heritage. This was one time, one gringo who would not win.

  Unfortunately, this was no ordinary gringo. Two hundred and twenty pounds of iron, muscle and sinew, big Hank Brazos had cut his eye teeth on men of Gregorio’s stamp, had never been bested in a test of strength. And now the big money was on, he slowly and inexorably drove the blacksmith’s arm back to the upright position, then beyond it.

  A groan was wrenched from Gregorio’s strained lips as his hand was driven to within two inches of the flame. Sweat burst from his face as he summoned his final reserves. To no avail. Relentlessly, Brazos powered his locked hand down until the stench of burning flesh began to pollute the smoky air.

  “Enough?” Brazos said softly.

  “No ... never!”

  “Whatever you say, companero,” Brazos murmured, and smashed the beaten man’s fist down onto the flame.

  “Enough!”

  Gregorio’s shout of agony ended the contest. Brazos immediately released him and the blacksmith slumped back ashen-faced, clutching his throbbing hand. The victor came erect, shrugged his shoulders loose, then, because Gregorio had fought hard and clean, unknotted the red bandanna from around his throat and wordlessly wrapped it around the blacksmith’s hand.

  The end had come so unexpectedly and dramatically that nobody seemed to know what to say. With the exception of Duke Benedict.

  “A worthy contest of strength,” he pronounced, gathering up his takings. Then getting up and walking to the bar, he pushed a pile of bills at a stunned Big Fats. “My timepiece, barkeep.”

  The saloonkeeper blinked his surprise away and shook his head. Everybody might have lost out, but Big Fats had no intention of doing so.

  “Sorry, gringo,” the fat man shrugged, “but I do not now wish to sell the watch back.”

  Benedict’s shoulder dipped and suddenly Big Fats found himself looking down the business end of a Colt .45.

  “My watch!”

  The attention of the onlookers swung from Brazos and Gregorio as Duke Benedict’s hard words cut through the room. Most had tabbed Brazos’ partner as a dude, but the lightning appearance of the gun forced them to take another look. They read the steel in the gambler’s eyes, noted for the first time the breadth of shoulder, the deadly poise and balance of the man that seemed to have escaped them before.

  Big Fats’ smile was sick. “Of course, Señor, I make the joke.”

  His features a study in cowardly dejection, Arriba produced the watch and handed it over. He’d been wrong about Gregorio being able to beat Hank Brazos, and he’d been wrong in sizing Benedict up as a dude. Maybe it just wasn’t his night.

  “Well, now that’s straightened out,” Hank Brazos grinned as Benedict put gun and timepiece away, “let’s get down to some serious drinkin’.” He draped a heavy arm around the blacksmith’s shoulders. “C’mon, amigo, drinks are on me.”

  Up until that moment, the crowd had been silent, stunned by the unexpected outcome of the contest. But the sight of Brazos and Gregorio breasting the bar together jolted them out of their gloom and reminded them that they had seen something special tonight. A battle of strength had been decided with honor, and now also with honor, the former adversaries drank tequila together. Such a noble thing was enough to make a man forget his little problems, and even as a smiling Benedict raked in the winnings, some men shrugged, some smiled philosophically and all moved to the bar to take a little tequila.

  All that was, but the haggard-faced American drinking alone along the bar—and the scar-faced man who sat in the shadows watching him.

  But nobody paid them the slightest attention, for suddenly, with his arm around Gregorio’s shoulders and looking directly at Benedict who was busily stuffing the loot away, Hank Brazos boomed out:

  “Okay, line up and name your poison, boys. Since we are winners, we’re kinda in a generous mood. Ten bucks worth of booze on me and my old pard, Señor Benedict.”<
br />
  A shout of “Fire!” could scarcely have caused more upheaval, and it was a full minute before an angry Duke Benedict could extricate himself from the boisterous, back-slapping mob of grateful drinkers, and haul Brazos clear to give him a piece of his mind.

  “Are you clean out of that lump of granite you call a head?” he hissed, gesticulating at the cantina’s clients who were tramping one another into the boards to get at the free stuff. “Why in the holy name of sweet Judas H. Iscariot did you ...?”

  “Simmer down, Yank, simmer down,” Brazos grinned. “We can afford a few bucks’ worth of booze.”

  “Afford? Goddammit what do you think ...?”

  “Look, hold your tongue a minute will you. We took these wetbacks, Yank, and they ain’t even smart enough to know they been took. A buck’s mighty hard to come by down in this neck of the woods, and some of these tortilla eaters lost more than they could afford. We got our stake, Yank, so leave us not be greedy, huh?”

  Scathing words came to Duke Benedict’s lips, but died there. He looked at the drinkers—they reminded him of orphans at a rich man’s Christmas; it might have been ten years or never since they’d been treated to free liquor.

  “You know maybe you’re right,” he said after a long moment.

  “Of course I’m right.” Brazos grinned around his cigarette and clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Yank, it’s been a long, hard day. Leave us get ourselves around some of this booze.”

  They headed for the bar together, and only then sighted the scar-faced Mexican drinking alone in the corner.

  “Hey!” Brazos called, “didn’t you hear, Mex? Free rotgut. Tequila. Savvy?”

  The man just stared, but made no move, no response.

  “Hey, I said we’re buyin’.” Brazos was not grinning now. “That means everybody.”

  The scar-faced man drew deep on a cigarillo, exhaled a contemptuous cloud of smoke towards them. Brazos growled and made towards the table, but Benedict held his arm.

  “Leave him be, Reb.”

  “But dammitall, that’s an insult.”