Benedict and Brazos 6

by E. Jefferson Clay

“I’m sure. That is why you sent for him, isn’t it, because he is a gentleman? And of course you didn’t really mean it when you spread the word around that he was the important somebody who, to quote you, ‘will put all the dirty Cousin Jacks back in their places?’ Really, Foley, sometimes I believe you grow so devious that you confuse yourself.”

  “I didn’t spread that story at all. I don’t know how it got started. But I do know that—”

  “We’ll both have turtle soup,” Rhea said to Pancho. “And what will you have for the main course, darling, mutton or veal?”

  “You really don’t give a damn, do you?” Kingston said. “You don’t care that my mine is idle or that those ignorant Irish micks won’t go back to work until I agree to spend thousands of dollars re-timbering the shafts. You don’t care that everything I’ve built up here is suddenly in jeopardy, do you?”

  “Mutton, Pancho,” she said, “for both of us.”

  Kingston bit his lip in fury as the Mexican vanished. A tense silence fell over the room. Rhea turned her head from side to side, watching her reflection in the big windows that commanded a panoramic view of the mining town spread below Kingston Hill. Toying with his soup, Kingston watched his wife from under lowered brows, wishing he could hate her but doubting that he could.

  He was relieved when his son Cole came in to tell him that Art Shadie wanted to see him. Cole, Kingston’s son from his first marriage, was a tall, well-made man of twenty-two with an open, guileless face. In the years between the death of his first wife and his marriage to Rhea, Foley had been close to his son, but they’d drifted apart shortly after Rhea came to the house. It was clear that his wife and his son barely tolerated each other, and he suspected that this was Rhea’s fault.

  “Tell Shadie he can come in, Cole,” Kingston said.

  “Really, Foley,” Rhea admonished as Cole went out, “there’s no earthly reason why you can’t talk with Shadie after the meal. Your precious mine isn’t going to cave in during the next half hour is it?”

  “It’s not the mine I’m concerned about tonight.”

  She looked at him closely. “Where has Shadie been the past few days, Foley?”

  “Down south,” was all he would say, and he was rewarded by the curiosity she wasn’t able to conceal as Shadie shuffled in, hat in hand.

  “Evenin’, boss, Mrs. Kingston.”

  Art Shadie was the boss of the ten-man crew of hardcases that were known around Spargo as Kingston’s Regulators. He was a tough, blocky, broken-nosed gun-toter with greasy black hair and a disconcerting habit of wiping his nose with his sleeve. Kingston regarded him as a rough diamond but a trusted and valuable employee. Rhea considered him a pig.

  “Well?” Kingston said.

  Shadie glanced uncertainly at Rhea.

  “Let’s have just the nugget of it, Shadie,” Kingston said. “Was your journey south successful or otherwise?”

  Shadie grinned. “Successful, boss. I, er, seen that joker and he reckons he can handle your little problem, no trouble at—”

  “Use your kerchief, Mr. Shadie,” Rhea said icily.

  Shadie broke off, jaw hanging open. He flushed when he realized he’d been unconsciously lifting his sleeve to his face as he talked. A tough, sometimes dangerous man, Shadie felt and acted like a schoolboy in Rhea Kingston’s disturbing presence.

  “Leave the man be, Rhea,” Kingston said, touching a table napkin to his lips and looking unusually pleased with himself. Then, to Shadie, “Money side right, too?”

  Still red-faced, Shadie nodded. “Reckon so, boss.”

  “Fine, fine. Well, you’ve done well, Shadie, very well. We’ll discuss things in greater detail later. In the meantime, have yourself a good bath and a meal; you’ve earned it.”

  “Right, boss.” Shadie nodded to Rhea as he turned to go and she saw the look of hunger in the man’s eyes, despite the fact that she’d gone out of her way to belittle him. She was accustomed to adulation from men wherever she went, and she was amused by Shadie’s interest.

  Shadie paused at the door. “Er, you plan on goin’ out tonight, boss? The boys want to know if you’ll need ’em.” Since the mine had closed, Kingston hadn’t felt free to venture abroad at night without protection.

  “No,” Kingston said. “Mrs. Kingston and I are having a quiet evening at home together.”

  “How utterly charming,” Rhea said as Shadie closed the door behind him.

  “It might be a good thing if you refrained from sarcasm in front of the help,” Kingston said critically, but he was unable to conceal how pleased he was by Shadie’s news.

  Rhea was openly curious. “What is going on, Foley? What are you up to?”

  “I’m not sure I understand, my dear.”

  “Why did Shadie go south?”

  “Just business. It would only bore you if I told you. Business matters always do, don’t they, darling?”

  “It’s something to do with the strike, isn’t it? And it’s somehow connected with this Benedict person, isn’t it?”

  The quick, sharp look that crossed his face told Rhea that she’d hit the target, but his reply was bland:

  “A strange assumption, Rhea. More greens?”

  She leaned on her elbows, her face lovely in the soft light, her green eyes intense. “Why are you bringing Duke Benedict here, Foley? I mean the real reason? You say you need him to help you in your trouble with the miners, but Shadie and the others seem quite capable of handling things. Why do you feel you need Benedict? Could it be that you’re expecting things to get much worse?”

  As had happened many times, Foley Kingston found himself impressed by his wife’s hard-edged intelligence. He smiled and said, “Let us say that it is my little secret for the time being. I enjoy my secrets, my dear, just as you enjoy yours.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Kingston bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to say that.

  “Speak up, Foley. You’re never short of a few thousand words. What is my secret supposed to be?”

  Kingston’s face had turned almost haggard, but nothing could have made him reveal what he’d hinted at. After all, he wasn’t certain if his wife was being unfaithful to him. And if she was, he didn’t really want to know.

  Chapter Two – Two for Spargo

  Old Billy Murphy poked left and right with his crutch to clear a path for himself through the funeral parlor doorway.

  “Out of me way, damn and bedevil you! Is it true what I’m hearin’?”

  The miners cleared a path for him. Like Murphy, most of them were Irish. Their grim looks answered his questions more eloquently than words and for a moment the fierce-faced old man seemed drained of the power to move or speak as he stood leaning on his crutch staring from face to face.

  Then undertaker Bert Egstrom, long, gaunt and solemn, appeared in the doorway leading to the bigger room where he kept the coffins. Egstrom rubbed his dry hands together and said, “He’s in here, Mr. Murphy.”

  Murphy swung around. There were a dozen or so men in the second room where three pinewood coffins stood on carpenter’s horses. The shades were drawn against the glare of the sun, but the room was gloomy rather than cool. Two strangers stood leaning against the bench along the far wall. On the bench behind them with a pair of boots sticking out was a canvas-covered shape. In the center of the room an uncovered body lay on another heavy bench. The body had red hair, the color Old Billy Murphy’s had been before it turned pure white.

  Murphy’s lips twitched as he moved to the bench to stare down at his son. His sick drinker’s face paled, making the network of red veins stand out. On one cheek was a big mole like a peg driven into the skin.

  “Murdered!” he whispered in the thick quiet, his eyes taking in the ugly holes studding the corpse. “Look how they murdered me son!”

  “You have my deepest sympathy, Mr. Murphy,” Egstrom murmured with professional gloom. “We all understand how you must feel.”

  “The devil you do!” blaze
d the old man whose temper could be impressive even if he was as skinny as a snake and half crazy. His red-rimmed eyes bulged as he jabbed a shaking finger at the corpse. “Look at him in the name of St. Patrick—massacred he is! What did they slaughter me darlin’ boy with, a Gatlin’ gun? Who did it? What blackguard committed the foul deed? Tell me, God rot your souls!”

  The miners looked silently at the two strangers. Old Billy Murphy straightened slowly as he stared at them, a giant in a faded purple shirt and a tall man dressed like a gambler. His eyes flicked down to the low-hung guns they wore, then lifted again to their faces. Their expressions were devoid of either sympathy or guilt as they met the terrible accusation of his glare.

  “They are the murderers?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  Bert Egstrom made to explain, but Duke Benedict cut him off. “We shot your son, Murphy. He ambushed us yesterday afternoon along the Hondo Trail.”

  “Liar!” the old man screamed. “Tommy was a good boy, a gentle, clean-livin’—”

  “Save it, joker,” Brazos said. “We’ve been talkin’ to folks about your son. Seems he was a rotten-tempered little polecat that’s been in trouble all his life.”

  Murphy tried to speak but rage choked him off.

  “We also have a fair idea what he was up to,” put in Benedict, who had coaxed considerable information about Tommy Murphy from the gabby Egstrom before the old man arrived. “As you might have guessed by now, my name is Benedict. I’m a friend of—”

  “Benedict!” Murphy gasped. “Kingston’s hired gun!”

  “Kingston’s friend,” corrected Benedict who’d been puzzled to learn earlier that not only was his arrival anticipated in the mining town, but he was reputed to be a gun-for-hire whom Foley Kingston had imported. “I’m not a hired gun, even though it seems many of you believe so.” He pointed to the corpse of Tommy Murphy. “He believed it, old man, and it is my educated guess that he rode out yesterday to try and account for me before I could get to Spargo. Would that be right, old man?”

  “Lies!” Murphy gasped. He stared in mute appeal at the men about him, but their eyes fell away from his glance. They were big, rough, muscular men, mostly illiterate and violent and suspicious by nature, but they shared a respect bordering on dread of men of the fast gun breed. Well before Benedict’s arrival in Spargo, his name had been bruited about as a wonder gunman and bloody-handed killer. His arrival with big Brazos and two dead men across their saddles, backed by his air of authority and the double guns he wore, seemed to support all they’d heard about him.

  Old Billy Murphy sensed their reluctance to support him and it enraged him even more. Swinging away from his son’s body, he advanced towards Benedict and Brazos with words spilling out of him as if they scalded his mouth.

  “Hired killers! The lowest breed there is! You don’t have loyalty to any man—just to the dirty dollar.” He halted before them, gesticulating. “You come to a town where honest, God-fearin’ and hard-workin’ men are locked in an honest fight for better conditions with a money-grubbin’ rich man—and you kill a man’s son and then flaunt his death as if it was somethin’ noble you’d done.” The old man’s body shook with the force of his emotion, and he lifted his crutch as if to lash out with it. “Killers! Well, I’m not afeared of you even if everybody else seems to be. I won’t be backin’ and crawlin’ and—”

  His tirade was interrupted by a menacing growl. The old man jumped back, nearly falling as Bullpup scurried from behind the two men and bared his teeth at the threatening crutch.

  “Mother of God!” the old man yelped. “What in the name of Lucifer is it?”

  Pleased by the effect his appearance created, the massive, bull-headed hound barked to identify himself as a dog, then squatted when Brazos snapped his fingers at him.

  “Like me, he don’t take kindly to pilgrims bellerin’ and shoutin’,” Brazos said. Murphy, recovering from his shock, started to talk again, but Brazos over-rode him. “Look, old feller, you don’t seem to get the straight of this. Instead of you roarin’ and dirty-namin’ us, you ought to be grateful we brought your dry-gulchin’ son in with us instead of leavin’ him—”

  “Dry-gulchin’?” Murphy cried. “What foulness is this? Who are ye sayin’ me boy killed?”

  “Him.” Benedict flicked the canvas cover from the second corpse. “Chad Bowers, old man, an out-of-work cowboy who joined us to ride up here looking for honest work—shot down like a dog by your fine son. Now what do you have to say?”

  Murphy swallowed convulsively as he stared down at Bowers’ waxen face, then he turned away. “I’m not believin’ it,” he panted, but he didn’t sound convincing. “Me boy wouldn’t do a man in that way.”

  “You reckon not?” Brazos said. “Well, tell us this, mister. If your boy wasn’t out huntin’ trouble, what was he doin’ twenty miles along the Hondo Trail? Mebbe you can explain that on account nobody else seems to have much idea.”

  For a moment a trapped, furtive look crossed Murphy’s face. Then he grew defiant. “All right, all right, spout your filthy lies in a bereaved old man’s face—spit on a father’s grief if you will ... but there’ll be a reckonin’ for ye, by all the saints there will be!”

  He gestured contemptuously at the men who’d been watching the clash in tense silence.

  “Everybody on our side of the fence in this unlucky town isn’t old like me or yellow-gutted like them here that calls themselves men. Just wait until Clancy hears about this, you butchers, then you’ll be smirkin’ on the other side of your faces. Clancy’ll be knowin’ how to deal with your dirty breed—and don’t you be makin’ no mistake about that.”

  Benedict and Brazos exchanged exasperated glances, nodded, and without a word headed for the door together. Suddenly they’d had enough of the smell of death and Old Billy Murphy’s mouth. Suddenly they needed air.

  “Clancy!” the old man’s shout followed them out. “He’ll see you rue the day you come to do Kingston’s bloody work for him.”

  Benedict halted when they hit the street, tugging out a cigar and frowning back at the funeral parlor. “Just as well we left when we did,” he said tightly. “I was about up to here with that old fool calling me a paid killer.”

  Brazos’ gaze played over the dusty street as he stood with his weight on one leg, hip thrust out, and twisting a smoke. “Seems he ain’t the only one hereabout with that idea, Yank. Seems the whole damned town figures it the same way.” He licked his cigarette into shape, set it between his teeth. “How come, you reckon?”

  Exhaling a cloud of blue cigar smoke, Benedict shook his head as they moved slowly off along the shady side of the street. “I don’t rightly know, Reb,” he said thoughtfully. “For one, I’m not a gunfighter, and even if I were, I can’t understand why Foley Kingston should put out a story like that.”

  Brazos lifted his gaze to the mansion that stood atop the steep, round-crowned hill at the far end of Spargo’s main stem, Johnny Street. Spargo, a poor-man town of frame, adobe and tarpaper, was set on white alkali flats, half encircled on the eastern side by the Bucksaw Mountains. Spargo’s dust, heat and almost palpable stink of poverty made Foley Kingston’s mansion that much more impressive by comparison.

  It was a big, white two-storied house with lofty marble colonnades and rows of glittering colonial windows now reflecting the yellow sun. Surrounded by heavy shade trees and high iron fences, the building reminded Brazos powerfully of the great serene plantation mansions of the South that he’d fought to defend during the war—before Benedict’s bunch got busy burning them to the ground. The similarity seemed all the stronger because of the contrast between the opulence and the poverty, just as it had been in Georgia and Tennessee.

  Brazos said, “Just what sort of a feller is this Kingston, Benedict?”

  “What sort? Well, he’s an officer and a gentleman for starters.”

  Brazos was unimpressed. “If all the sons-of-bitches I’ve ever struck that called theirselves officers and
gentlemen was laid out end-to-end, it’d likely be a good thing. I mean what’s he really like?”

  “You’ll soon find out for yourself. We’re going up to see him as soon as we’ve checked into the hotel and spruced up.”

  “Mebbe we should’ve gone to see him afore we took them bodies to the undertaker’s.”

  “No ... no, I wanted to get the feel of this place before I saw Foley.”

  “Do you reckon you got the feel of it yet?”

  Benedict wasn’t sure. Certainly they’d already learned a great deal about Spargo. The town was locked in a strike between the miners and Foley Kingston. The miners, claiming that the Motherlode Mine was unsafe following a series of fatal accidents, were refusing to work until conditions were improved. According to Egstrom, the undertaker, the trouble, six weeks old now with no sign of capitulation on either side, had been marked by frequent violent clashes between the strikers and Kingston’s men.

  Obviously a desperate situation, Benedict thought. As for getting the feel of the place, he didn’t know about that. There was something about Spargo that couldn’t be absorbed in a hurry, he reflected as he met the scowling stares of a group of denim-jacketed men loafing in the arcade on the central block. The taste and smell of Spargo was not merely of its dust, which seemed to hang above it in an eternal pall, but it was the taste of suspicion and the smell of fear and anger.

  “Perhaps the funeral parlor is not the ideal place to get the feel of a town,” Benedict suggested, halting opposite a lofty building where the batwings stood propped open to catch any whiff of breeze. He smiled for the first time since they rode over the bridge across Cherry Creek with the dead men. “If you get my meaning?”

  Brazos peered across at the sign that read:

  SILVER KING SALOON

  ACE BEAUFORD PROP.

  BEER! WHISKY! GIRLS!

  Not being able to read or write, the sign could have been written in Arabic for all Brazos knew, but he’d never needed book-learning to be able to recognize a saloon. His grin answering Benedict’s, he pushed his battered disaster of a hat to the back of his big head, spat on his hands with the air of a man about to undertake a pleasurable job of work and led the way across the street ... totally unaware of the eyes of the most dangerous man in Spargo drilling at them from the Chisum Street corner.