“You snuck up on me, Yank,” Brazos pointed out. “Sorry if I scared you any.”
“You didn’t scare me,” Benedict snapped back. “What the sweet Judas are you doing here anyway?”
“Waitin’ for you. I seen you two sittin’ inside there billin’ and cooin’, and I had me a hunch that sooner or later you’d be comin’ this way.”
Honey Smith giggled, just a little drunkenly. “Say, he’s cute, Duke baby. Don’t you think he’s cute?”
Benedict did not. He thought rather that Hank Brazos was a Grade A horse’s ass, but with a lady present, could hardly say so. What he did say was:
“You’re wearing me thin, Johnny Reb. You’re making it harder every time I see you to remember that we fought side by side once. I’ll put it to you plain. Get out of my hair and damn well stay out.”
“Sorry I can’t do that,” Brazos said laconically. “Matter of fact I’ve got to talk to you, Yank. Right now.”
“The hell, you say.”
“It’s about Belle Shilleen, Yank.” A deliberate pause, then, “About Belle and her old boyfriend as a matter of fact.”
Duke Benedict swore softly. “So you know?”
“That’s right, Yank. At least some of it. Now do we talk in front of Mr. Surprisin’ Smith’s little bride, or do we talk private?”
“Let’s go,” said Benedict abruptly.
“Duke baby,” the girl protested, “you’re not going off and leaving little Honey all alone, are you?”
That’s exactly what Duke Benedict was going to do. But he was anything but happy about it, and by the time he’d escorted her upstairs, and come back down and walked out into the saloon’s lamplit backyard with Brazos, the gambler’s temper was climbing towards boiling point again.
“All right, Johnny Reb,” he snapped. “You want to talk, so talk.”
Brazos was very sober. “All right, Yank, I will.” He licked a cigarette into a neat cylinder and set it between his teeth, the blue eyes hard and accusing. “Let’s see how I’ve got it figured, Benedict. At Pea Ridge you got yourself a sniff of two hundred thousand bucks in gold and as soon as the war finished you set out after the gold to see if you could pick up the scent again. Right so far?”
“You’re doing the talking,” Benedict said coldly, around a freshly-lit cigar. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, well listen good then. You’re a smart man, Yank, you got book-learnin’. You find out that Bo Rangle’s been around these parts so you drift down here and start sniffin’ about. You’re lookin’ for a lead on him and you find out that Belle Shilleen was his old sweetheart. So what do you do? You take up with Belle and I’ll bet my saddle you’re pumpin’ that girl for all you’re worth tryin’ to get a lead on Rangle.” A match burst into life on Brazos’ thumbnail and set fire to his cigarette. He dragged deeply, exhaled towards the stars that were beginning to show point by point in the night sky. “Right?”
Duke Benedict’s handsome face looked calm enough in the lamplight, but underneath he’d been jolted. He’d figured Hank Brazos was a dumb saddle bum, and Hank Brazos had just proved Benedict had sized him up wrongly.
“Right?” Brazos prompted again.
Benedict let the tension run out of him. He was a good gambler. He knew to a nicety when he could get away with a bluff and when he couldn’t. This was one of those times when bluffing or lying wouldn’t do any good.
So he put his cards on the table face up. “Why... right I guess, Johnny Reb.”
Brazos nodded gravely to himself. He’d been pretty sure what was going on when Gypsy had told him about Belle Shilleen and Bo Rangle, but he’d needed Benedict’s admission to be certain. Now he was.
A cool night wind was rising, stirring the dust of the yard and moaning in the dark pines of the vacant lot next door with a sound like a woman crying, and Brazos was reminded of another night when a cold wind had risen to blow away the gunsmoke and the smell of death from a shell-pocked ridge in Georgia. It was kind of a shame he brooded, that he couldn’t have just gone on recalling the Yank like he’d been that day. A pity he couldn’t have just remembered him as the bravest man he’d ever met, and not know him now as a man hungry for gold and likely ready to do anything to get it.
“Well?” Benedict snapped as the silence stretched out. “What’s the next play, Reb? Or can I guess?”
“Guess away.”
“You want in. You want a cut.”
Benedict was way wide of the mark. But Brazos didn’t let on.
“You really reckon you can track that gold down, Yank?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Well, I reckon you’re sure onto somethin’, Yank. What d’you reckon is a fair split, then? Fifty-fifty?”
Benedict’s face twisted in a sneer. “So ... I guessed right. All that high-flown talk about that gold belonging to the South and what a true-blue honest man you are! So much hogswill! Why, you’re just as hungry as me, and hypocritical to boot.”
Brazos’ shoulders shrugged and the breeze blew a brief gust of sound through the harmonica on his chest. He grinned and tried to look avaricious.
“Amazin’ how the thought of two hundred thousand in hard gold can change a man’s thinkin’, ain’t it? Well, what do you say? We ride double?”
“I say go to hell. I’m not taking in any partners.”
“Seventy-five, twenty-five?”
Another negative came to Duke Benedict’s lips but died there. He found himself looking at Hank Brazos in a new light. Before Daybreak he’d known all about the man’s courage and fighting ability. Now he also knew that Brazos was a whole lot smarter than he looked, and added to that, Brazos now knew what he was up to. Maybe his proposition was worth thinking about. Maybe he could use a partner in what would likely be a long and dangerous hunt for that gold. Brazos could prove a big asset in the hunt, and when they’d found the gold, if he couldn’t out-smart him for his cut, he was slipping... “I’ll think about it,” he decided.
“Fair enough, Yank.” Brazos exhaled twin streams of smoke from his nose and grinned boyishly. “But you won’t try nothin’ cute, will you, Benedict? Like tryin’ to cross me up and takin’ off on your lonesome. Mebbe I forgot to tell you afore, but I’m the best blue-eyed sign-reader west of the Mississippi, even if I do say so myself. You get my meanin?”
Benedict got it. He was being told that if he didn’t take Brazos as his partner, which was bad enough, then he’d have him dogging his trail all over—which no doubt would be a damn sight worse.
“But I don’t figure it, Yank. It’s nigh to six months since Rangle’s Raiders run off with that gold at Pea Ridge. It stands to reason there wouldn’t be much of it left by now, don’t it?”
“Sure—if he’d gotten away with it. But everything points to the idea that Rangle didn’t get clear with the gold. He ran into Northern troops in Missouri the day after Pea Ridge, got badly mauled but apparently got away—travelling light. I’ve since talked with men who rode with them. They didn’t get Rangle, but they were able to tell me a few interesting things about the chase, and the most significant thing I learned was that the marauder was travelling light.”
“Light? You mean he didn’t have the gold?”
“That’s my guess. Everybody seems to believe he cached the gold in Missouri some place and would head back to get it when things quietened down. When I heard about this, I kept on his scent until it finally led me right here to Daybreak.”
Brazos nodded to himself again, satisfied that Benedict’s story carried the ring of truth. He lit his smoke and said quietly. “Well, do we team up, Yank?”
“I said I’d think about it, and that’s all I’m promising. And now, if there’s nothing else on your so-called mind, I’ve got things to do.”
Brazos took no offence. “Sure, off you go, Yank.” Then as the gambler turned to leave, “You goin’ down to Belle’s now?’
“Later on. Right now I have some unfinished business to attend
to.” His glance drifted to the saloon’s upstairs lights.
“It ain’t no put-in of mine, Yank, but ain’t it kind of a chancy business, skylarkin’ about with that proddy little bounty-hunter’s bride?”
Benedict smiled, the first genuine smile in the past hour. “It’s the risk that makes it exciting, sometimes.”
“Well, it’s your hide.” They moved across the yard together. “But you’ll be showing up at Belle’s later on?”
“Sure, I wouldn’t miss opening night.”
“Me neither I guess, looks like being some shindig. That’s unless them Christian Ladies stir up a ruckus—you hear anythin’ about that?”
“Yeah, I did. Seems like one heck of a joke to me, a bunch of fat old ladies causing trouble. But Belle seems to think they might mean it. Matter of fact she made me promise to be there tonight in case trouble breaks out. She gave me the idea that if I do show up tonight and things are still okay come morning, then she might, just might, give me the lead I’m after on Rangle.”
“You reckon what she’d tell you would be the truth?” Brazos asked as they reached the outside stairs leading to the upper floor. “I mean, if she’s sweet on Rangle, she ain’t likely to spill his whereabouts is she?”
“I have a hunch she’s not sweet on him any longer. Sure, she was when the Army chased him out of the valley, but Belle hasn’t heard a word from Rangle since he hauled his freight out of here. She feels he deserted her and she’s sour. She knows what I want from her and she’s hinted she might tell me what I want to know. I reckon that in itself is proof the romance is over.”
Benedict started up the stairs, adding confidently, “She’ll tell me what I want to know right enough, and it’ll be the truth. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, if you’re sure, I’m sure.” Brazos tipped his hat. “Well, see you down at Belle’s later on then—partner.”
“We’re not partners yet, Reb,” Benedict’s voice drifted down. “I just said I’ll think about it.”
“You can’t really afford to turn me down, the way I see it, Yank,” Brazos called back, slouching towards the corner. “Not three for you and one for me, you can’t...” Brazos laughed as he disappeared in the gloom between the saloon and the store, just to reassure Benedict what an easy-going fellow he really was at heart. But the laughter vanished as if it had never existed as he strode through the darkness, and his big fist punching into his palm made a noise like a kicked box.
“Three for you and one for me—like hell, Yank! If we luck onto that gold you won’t be gettin’ one plugged cent’s worth out of it and neither will I. That there gold, if it ain’t been spent or lost already, don’t belong to you or me or Rangle or nobody else. It belongs to the South, mister, and the South’s a-goin’ to git it!”
He was greeted with a surly growl of recognition by Bullpup who was waiting for him on the gallery of the Bird Cage. Brazos delivered the hound an absent-minded poke in the ribs with his boot in response and was heavily conscious of the great change that had taken place inside him in the past couple of hours. In that short time he’d become a man with a purpose in life. And that purpose was to retrieve the Confederate gold any way he could.
He was well aware that he wasn’t any nobler than the next man, as he turned away from the alley, and with Bullpup at his heels, made his way slowly towards the hotel to get ready for the night’s fun and games, but his sweet-faced old ma and his iron-jawed old pa had sure enough made a good job of teaching him the difference between right and wrong. It was as clear in his mind as anything could be that that gold his brave boys had fought and died for at Pea Ridge still belonged to the South—and to the solitary fading hope of the South exiled in Mexico, General Nathan Forrest. And that’s who it would go to, if it turned up. It sure as hell wouldn’t go to keep any dandy, womanizing, gunslick Yankee gambling margin cigars and silk vests for the rest of his life.
Not if Hank Brazos could help it, by Judas!
He was almost to the hotel when he turned at the sound of long-striding steps. His blond brows went up in surprise.
“Yank? What?”
“She was asleep—thanks to the time I wasted gabbing to you,” Duke Benedict snapped, going right past him and stomping up the hotel steps.
Brazos grinned. “Hard luck, Yank.” He winked down at Bullpup. “Sure is heartbreakin’ to see such a nice feller miss out.”
Ten – Along the Arrowhead
Ben Sprod spun on his heels at the click of a six-gun hammer.
A curse ripped from the battered outlaw’s lips when he saw what Dick Grid was going to do. Taking one long stride, he knocked the gun down, then punched Grid to the side of the head and knocked him down. The crippled horse screamed again. Still cursing, Sprod whipped out his hunting knife and cut the beast’s throat.
His tongue mourning after a lost tooth, Grid staggered dustily to his feet, his eyes glazed with pain and surprise.
“What in hell did you go and do that for, Ben?” he demanded querulously, “I was only a-goin’ to put your hoss out of its misery.”
“I know what you were goddamn goin’ to do, dammit! You were goin’ to let that gun off and bring that posse hammerin’ straight for us after we been runnin’ our guts out all day tryin’ to shake ’em off.”
A stupid look crossed Dick Grid’s meaty face as he realized what he’d almost done. When Ben’s horse had put its foot in a gopher hole and broken a leg, it had been instinctive for him to want to put the animal out of its misery. It was lucky Ben still had enough wits to stop him, even though he’d been knocked half-silly in the fall.
Maybe it was lucky, but right at the moment Ben Sprod considered himself anything but. In fact Ben couldn’t recall when his luck had ever been worse. It had been unlucky enough just to have that posse sticking to their trail like a burr, but now with only two horses between the three of them, things were looking plenty grim.
The accident had occurred on the southern bank of the Arrowhead River which ran the entire length of Calico Valley. They were almost at the end of the good rangeland. To the south and west now lay the badlands which cupped that end of the valley before giving way to the mountains. North across the Arrowhead lay hardscrabble ranching country with dry and sun baked brown hills rolling off into the distance.
Ben Sprod sucked a lacerated finger and looked west. The sun, misshapen and red had been resting on the jagged spine of the Dinosaur Mountains just before the horse fell. Now it was gone and the red and gold of the sky where Bighorn Pass notched through the black range was fading down like an old fire.
The evening wind came up from the south east out of Deaf Smith County raising the dust off the Sweet Alice Hills and spreading it across the darkening sky. Not a sign of a cloud, the outlaw noted. Tonight the full moon would rise and it would be as easy for a posse to follow sign as by daylight. Luck? It seemed he was damned near fresh out of that mighty valuable commodity.
Grid and Piano grew restless. They wanted to be on their way again, but knew that this look on Sprod’s face was his thinking look, so didn’t interrupt.
Finally Sprod said, “The old Star 40 ranch house in Cripple Canyon—it still standin’?”
“Was last time I was down that way,” Frank Piano supplied.
“Right, we’ll hole up there for the night,” Sprod decided and crossed to Dick Grid’s horse. “You two double up. C’mon, let’s get movin’.”
Sprod’s henchmen exchanged an alarmed look, and as Grid got up behind him Piano said, “Ain’t that kinda risky, Ben? I mean Cripple Canyon ain’t but a few miles from Daybreak, for one thing. And for another, what’s to stop the posse readin’ our sign right up to the damned door?”
Ben Sprod swore again, not viciously this time, but wearily. Sometimes he wondered if they’d know how to wipe their noses without him.
“We ain’t goin’ to ride clear across and leave ’em tracks a blind man could follow in the dark, stupid.” He flung a bony hand at the badlands. “We’ll lay a fal
se trail down there, and we’ll lay it so good we’ll be able to get a full night’s rest for our horses while they’re runnin’ themselves into the ground. Come sun-up then, it’s gonna be one mighty weary posse with nothin’ more in mind than gettin’ home and soakin’ their blistered backsides. Let’s go.”
He jabbed his heels and the horse swung away. Hipping around in the saddle as they climbed a crest, Ben Sprod could plainly see the posse men’s dust even as the shadows of night engulfed Calico Valley.
“Why don’t you haul your fat freight, sister?”
“How dare you!”
“I dare right enough. If you and your bunch of blue-nosed hypocrites have got the brass-bound nerve to come down here and threaten me on my own door stoop, then I’ve certainly got the nerve to tell you what you can do with your big fat threats—sister.”
Mrs. Matilda Carbrook, red as a turkey gobbler, turned to see if the rest of the delegation had heard what this impossible woman had said to her. All looked suitably horrified, with the possible exception of the Reverend Martin. The Reverend Martin was staring up at the upper balcony where six half-naked girls had appeared to watch the fun. The Reverend was wearing a most un-reverend look. Martin’s wife saw Mrs. Carbrook’s glare. She nudged her husband and immediately his fatuous expression was replaced by one more suitable for the occasion.
“Disgusting!” he snorted down his long, wet nose. “Quite disgusting.”
“Ahh, your mother sleeps in outhouses!” tough Kitty Kellick called down from the balcony, and Sweet Shirley chimed in an invitation to the Reverend to come up and join the fun.
That was more than enough for Mrs. Carbrook. Puffing herself up like a tickled toad, she fired her parting shot.
“I had hoped you would listen to reason, Miss Shilleen,” she told the richly curved proprietress, who was standing with one hand resting on a flaring hip, the other holding a cheroot in an amber holder. “I had hoped you would not force us to use drastic measures to close down this monument to the devil, before it lured the first innocent young man into perdition. I should have known better, I should have realized that you are too steeped in the ways of wickedness to—”
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