Benedict and Brazos 18

by E. Jefferson Clay

  He started to run, curses bubbling from his mouth. His face hit a stanchion and he staggered back. Recovering his balance, he drove for the dim outline of the doors again. The sound of hoofbeats was loud now. Monk skidded out onto the porch just in time to see riders wheel from sight around the barn at the western end of the street, the dust of their going rising in a thick screen.

  It caught up to him in a rush then—the pain, the knowledge that he’d failed, Ruby’s treachery, the brutal, searing realization that Bo Rangle had won again. He slumped against the building wall and pressed a hand to his shoulder, grimacing in the gloom. Men were moving about inside. Two men who’d taken cover across the street emerged slowly, walked hesitantly towards the saloon. The shocked whisper of voices became a clamor before Monk shook his heavy shoulders, shrugged away the pain, then pushed himself away from the wall.

  “Gimme a gun!” he snarled at the men standing at the base of the steps.

  The towner took one look at the savage, broad-boned face and drew his Colt from his belt. Monk plucked it from the man’s fingers, slammed the weapon in his own holster, then went to the hitchrack. Two wild-eyed horses reared at his approach. Monk snapped free the lines of the nearest animal, mounted up, then untied the second. Reefing the horses back from the rail, he turned their heads west and used steel.

  His mount bounded away, the second responding a second later as the lines snapped taut. Leaning forward in the saddle, Monk clenched his teeth as the jolting pump of hoofs sent tremors of pain through his bloodied shoulder. Then the last building of Devil’s Fork swept past him and he was gone.

  “Shucks, I’ve seen bigger buryin’s than this,” Peter the Great boasted. “Had me a little bit of a farm in Ohio once. Right near the Grand Henry Dam. Rained forty days and forty nights and old Henry busted like he was made of paper. Washed the town away. My place was forty feet under the water. Took a month to collect all the bodies. Hell, this ain’t nothin’ compared to that.”

  Standing on the porch of the bullet-peppered saloon with Benedict and Brazos, Whisky Bob Macphee scowled hard at the little man, but Brazos shook his head and made a circle around his temple with his forefinger. The saloonkeeper shrugged and turned his gaze back to the hill behind the store where the towners were busy with their shovels.

  “I thought I’d seen just about everything in my time out here,” Whisky Bob confided after a moment’s silence. “But last night ...” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Eight men dead in about a minute …”

  “If you’d have been with us you’d have seen—” Chalkey began, but Brazos cut him off with:

  “Pete, why don’t you go across to the store and see how Cody is comin’ along?”

  “It’s always me that gets to do the runnin’ about,” Peter the Great said happily, flapping away in his too-big coat. “Reckon that’s ’cause if I do somethin’, she’s done right.”

  “He’s one of your posse?” the saloonkeeper said dubiously.

  “There were bigger and smarter men than him hidin’ under their beds when we left Whetstone,” Brazos said. “He’s all right.”

  Whisky Bob grunted. “Reckon you know your own business. You fellers still mean to ride after Rangle and Monk?”

  “That’s right,” said Benedict, his face grim. “They headed west, did you say?”

  “Due west,” supplied one of the group squatting on the edge of the porch. “Headin’ for the badlands.”

  Benedict turned to stare west. Two miles beyond Devil’s Fork, a long line of sentinel buttes marked the fringe of the Charko Badlands. They’d ridden the badlands before on Rangle’s trail. It was mean country, and tracking would be difficult there. But if things kept on the way they had been, they should be able to follow Bo Rangle by the dead men he left behind ...

  Benedict flicked his cigar butt away and nodded to Brazos, then they stepped down from the porch and started across the street. As they approached the store, Tara Killane emerged. The girl appeared to be dazed.

  “You feel all right, Miss Tara?” Brazos asked.

  The girl blinked, then passed a hand over her forehead. “I’m all right, Hank.”

  “You certainly don’t look it,” Benedict remarked.

  She stared at him for a long moment, then she turned to Brazos. “Is it true about the girl, Hank?”

  Brazos’ brow furrowed. “What’s that, Missy?”

  “They were just telling me inside about what happened last night. They said that Ruby Ballard left with Bo.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s so. Seems it was the girl who got Monk’s gun off him and started the whole damned thing.” He looked at her intently. “Do you know that girl, Miss Tara?”

  She seemed not to have heard as she turned and walked slowly down the porch to stare westward. Brazos turned in puzzlement to Benedict, who shrugged.

  They entered the store. Reb Cody was slumped in a chair with the gray-headed old storekeeper applying hot compresses to his shoulder. Cody had become feverish during the long night’s ride.

  “You fit enough to come along, Cody?” Benedict asked.

  Cody looked at the dark-faced Beecher standing nearby, then shook his head. “I reckon not, Benedict. Looks like you’re gonna have to go on without me.”

  “What about you, Beecher?” Benedict asked.

  “I’m still with you.”

  Benedict nodded. He’d been under no misapprehensions from the beginning concerning Beecher and Cody. It was the smell of gold that had prompted them to join the posse. Both he and Brazos had been anticipating trouble from the hardcase pair if and when they reached the gold, but they were prepared to cross that bridge when they came to it. Both Cody and Beecher had proved to be good fighting men and with the certainty of more fighting ahead, Beecher was handy to have around.

  “Let’s ride,” Benedict said.

  “I sure hope you catch up with them butchers, Mr. Benedict,” Whisky Bob called out.

  “Some chance of that,” another said as the riders moved off. He spat tobacco juice in a stream. “If that there is a posse, I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

  Nobody argued with the old cracker’s opinion. It was true that Benedict, Brazos and Beecher looked tough enough. But you could discount the girl and the little fool in the big coat. It seemed such a feeble force to throw against a butcher like Bo Rangle that few of the watchers believed they would ever see any in the patchwork posse again.

  Chapter Eight

  Badlands

  “Still say we could have give her another week up there,” prospector Benny Saddler declared as he and his partner toted their gear out of the old mission to load it onto the burros. “I know you’re mortal afeared of gettin’ snowed in, Dobie, but I ain’t had even a twinge of the rheumatics yet. And you oughta know I start twingin’ a week afore the first snow, regular as breathin’.”

  Dobie Keefer grinned as he dumped his bedroll across the back of a long-eared burro. “You and your rheumatics. You’re as healthy as a bear and you know it, Benny. If you get any twinges at all, I’m thinkin’ they’d be in your conscience for lettin’ me shoulder the heavy work all summer.”

  “God’ll punish you for sayin’ that, Dobie.”

  “You reckon He could find me out here?”

  It was a good question, for the old Mormon mission where the prospectors had made overnight camp stood in a deep basin on the bank of a wild river in one of the most inaccessible corners of the Utah Territory. Situated on the western fringe of the Charko Badlands under the frowning ramparts of the Rockies, the mission had been built twenty years ago by one of the first Mormon parties to come West. The Mormons’ idea had been to convert the savage heathen to Christianity, but the red man had not been ready for religion and brotherly love, and instead of embracing the faith they’d wiped out the entire community.

  The weak sun was washing over the cluster of buildings as the prospectors finished their packing and set about brewing up a final mug of coffee before taking to the trail. A col
d wind snaked down from the high country, whistling in the wild corn that grew right up to the buildings in places, and whining through the courtyards where old walls had crumbled.

  A metal weather cock in the shape of an angel with outspread wings stood atop the broken slate roof, twisting this way and that in the wind. The main building that contained the chapel and the living quarters that had once housed the visionaries who’d brought the word of God to the Sioux and Cheyenne, only to be repaid with torture and death, were still solid, though fighting a losing battle against the elements. Almost all the furnishings had been used as firewood by men like the old prospectors who used the place as a stopping-over point on their way in and out of the mountains.

  The walls of the mission were pocked with bullet holes and pits of decay. Rust scaled the hinges and metal work of the big double doors that opened into the courtyard, and the wood itself had the gray patina of age and rot. It was ten years since the last Mormon had died here. Another ten and the mission, founded in such high hopes, would crumble back to the earth it had arisen from.

  But bats and old bloodstains notwithstanding, the mission made a comfortable camp for a pair of old gold-hunters accustomed to living in tents and caves, and Dobie Keefer gave the doorway an affectionate pat as they walked out to mount up. “See you next spring, boys,” he told the ghosts. “Eh, Benny?”

  “Mebbe,” Saddler grunted, throwing a leg across his saddle burro.

  “Sure you will.” Keefer grinned from his saddle. “You’re down in the mouth now ’cause we didn’t do so good this year, that’s all. But come the spring thaw, you’re gonna feel the sap risin’ and start thinkin’ about the big vein we mighta just missed by a whisker, and then I ain’t gonna be able to hold you back.”

  Saddler was silent as they rode around the old cornfield and started up the steep, boulder-littered trail that led out of the basin on the eastern side. Then he said, “Well, you’re right about one thing anyhow, Dobie—the part about it not bein’ a good year.” He shook his head. “Three, four hundred dollars’ worth of dust at most. Mighty poor return for nigh on six months’ diggin’, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She’ll be better next year.”

  “Couldn’t be much worse,” grumbled Keefer. “It’s sure enough gonna be a long, cold winter.”

  Hoofs clattered on stone as they rode through the steep pass a quarter mile above the mission. Neither man spared a glance for the big yellow rock that jutted upwards at an angle some thirty feet off to their right. There was no need, for the trail was steep here and the boulder looked just the same as a hundred others on the stony slopes. But it was no ordinary stone. It was the marker for the buried wooden caskets that bore the stamp of the Confederate Mint, Augusta ... the caskets that contained two hundred thousand dollars in gold coins ...

  The two old prospectors who swore they could smell gold a mile upwind, passed it by thirty feet, preoccupied with the problem of surviving the winter on their little sack of dust ...

  The outlaws rode steadily through the deepening dusk and into the night. They rode by starlight, then into the moonlight flooding the gaunt sweep of the Charko Badlands.

  Far across the chill wastes came the howling of wolves greeting the bright, cold beauty of the moon. Night birds flew overhead, swifts and bats that darted and circled in crazy patterns.

  They came to the malpais, a black ridge of broken blocks of lava reaching across the face of the land. On one side, the winds had created a region of sand dunes several miles deep and running as far as the eye could see. Nothing but salt bushes and sage grew here.

  Another hour and the terrain changed dramatically, giving way to a harsh, stony world of towering buttes, wind-plowed canyons and gaunt red cliffs.

  They moved on, tiny specks of life against the yellow earth. Off to the south lay salt flats. To the north were mesas sparsely spotted with greasewood, mesquite and towering barrel cacti. Raddled hills rose to the southwest, with dusty tablelands and volcanic peaks that finally became a range of ugly hills chopping like fish teeth across the night sky.

  Riding at Bo Rangle’s side at the rear of the column, Ruby Ballard was aware of his improving mood as the miles mounted behind them. Her lover had been hostile and edgy after leaving Devil’s Fork, mainly because he wasn’t sure whether he’d killed Brady Monk or not. But, out here where the going was hard, where the wind knifed and cut and blew sand into eyes and mouths, causing endless grumbling amongst the men, Bo Rangle sat relaxed in the saddle, grinning across at Ruby and even singing snatches of songs from time to time.

  Rangle had always been an enigma to Ruby. She could never be sure of what he was thinking, what he might do next, how he would react to any situation. Perhaps it was his unpredictability, allied with the hypnotic lure of the man’s savagery, that responded to something cruel and vicious in the girl’s own makeup and attracted her to him. It had certainly been easy to throw Brady over for Bo as soon as he smiled down at her that certain way in Whisky Bob’s Saloon. Brady Monk in her eyes was just a journeyman outlaw, dangerous but unimaginative. But Bo Rangle was a living legend, a man unlike any other she had known.

  Angling slightly northwest now to avoid a series of deep canyons, the riders crossed a swift-flowing river that in summer was nothing but burning sand. Resting briefly to eat, they pushed into the chilly night.

  Riding point, hunched up in an old sheepskin jacket, Rack Stonehill frequently glanced back at Rangle and the girl. He was pleased to see Rangle in good spirits, but it did little to ease his nagging uncertainty. Ever since Rangle had slaughtered Brick Whitehead and Sam Macall and taken charge, Stonehill had been riding with fear as his constant saddle companion. It was an unfamiliar emotion for one of the veteran owlhoots, and with each succeeding manifestation of Rangle’s murderous nature, the fear had deepened. Many times on the trail, Stonehill would have cut and run, had he dared. But he knew now that he wouldn’t run. He would see it through, even if he no longer held out much hope of getting a cut of Rangle’s gold. Rack Stonehill knew he would be content—and lucky—just to ride from this lonely, desolate region alive.

  Puffing on one of the crooked black cigars he’d bought in Devil’s Fork, Bo Rangle watched the giant, silent buttes drift by and smiled. This was his sort of country. It was like him: cruel, remorseless, elemental. It asked and gave no quarter. He felt at peace in this savage world.

  But, cheerful as he was, Rangle wasn’t letting himself slip into complacency. The game wasn’t over yet by a long chalk. He’d blasted Monk’s men out of their boots back at Devil’s Fork, but he couldn’t be sure if he’d killed Monk. And if Brady was still alive, then Rangle knew he’d be trailing. Rangle had considered the possibility of having one of Stonehill’s men drop back to watch their backtrail for pursuit, but he’d discarded the idea. The outlaws were afraid of him, and if he let one of them out of his sight, the man might ride off. He didn’t have that many men and he couldn’t afford to lose any.

  A brief frown clouded the killer’s brow as he thought of Brazos and Benedict. Every instinct told him that his long-time enemies had survived that shootout far to the south, and there was no chance that they would quit if they were still alive. But he’d opened up a long lead on them that night, and he’d taken great pains to smother his sign when he’d cut for Devil’s Fork. He reassured himself that, when and if they tracked him to the town, they would be so far behind that there would be no chance of their catching up.

  Another mile and a massive stone formation shaped like a horse’s head loomed a short distance off to the right. The sight of the landmark sent Rangle’s memory spinning back to that day three months ago when he’d seen that horse-head rock last ...

  He’d been alone, driving a heavily laden buckboard drawn by two exhausted horses. Three days before, he had left Brady Monk and the remnants of his battered band in the foothills of the Whiplocks surrounded by the soldiers who’d been harassing them for a week. The same day, a wild dust storm had obliterated his si
gn, and he’d lost Benedict and Brazos who had followed him and the gold across three States. He’d sent Tara to Devil’s Fork to await his return and then he’d driven into the Charko Badlands.

  Heat, dust and desperation had marked his lone journey, but the hardest thing to endure had been his sense of frustration. With failing horses, the hunters somewhere behind, the Rockies an impassable barrier to the west, waterless desert to the south and lawmen to the north, he knew that yet again the gold would have to be cached. Two hundred thousand in gold would have to go back into the earth again.

  Two grueling days took him to Lizard River Canyon, the Rattlesnake River, the Blue Rock Hills and finally to the old Mormon mission. He’d buried the gold, hid the wagon in a cave, killed one of the horses for food, and then he’d ridden back to Devil’s Fork.

  Had it been only three months ago? It seemed an eternity.

  The horsehead rock drifted behind and Rangle turned ahead, his face grim now. There would not be failure this time.

  The big appaloosa picked up the rhythm of its gait when he caught the smell of water. Brazos sat heavy-shouldered in the saddle, his restless eyes scanning the moon washed terrain beyond the horse’s ears. They crested a ridge. Ahead lay the river, glimmering ghost-white in the moonlight. They had been pushing hard, scouting the country ahead of the party, and the appaloosa was thirsty. But Brazos held the horse back, studying the river until confident there was no sign of life, then he gave the horse his head again.

  When the horse and Bullpup had drunk their fill, Brazos hunkered down on his spurs and built a cigarette, alternating the slow preciseness of his actions with quick, sharp glances about him. Reassured, he struck a match, set the cigarette alight and smoked it halfway through before getting to his feet to examine the sign.