Benedict and Brazos 20

by E. Jefferson Clay

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  If ever a man was born to hang, it was Dusty Lane. But Lane never figured he would hang for a crime he didn’t commit … in this case, a cold-blooded double murder.

  Luckily for Dusty, his old friend Hank Brazos got to hear about his plight and decided to do something about it—with the reluctant help of his gun-swift partner Duke Benedict.

  They rode for the town of Spearhead with no set plan in mind, but quickly started to put all the pieces together … a witness who wasn’t as reliable as he seemed … a sheriff who would sooner look the other way … an undertaker with big ambitions … and a whisper-voiced killer named Raven, who was happy to kill anyone who got in his way—and even those who didn’t.

  Someone was out to break the Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association by any means … and by hang rope or bullet, it didn’t matter to them who had to die in the process.

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 20: BORN TO HANG

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2021 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First electronic edition: May 2021

  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.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

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  Chapter One – Marked Man

  STRIDING INTO EASTMAN’S Store just on dusk, Vic Clanton didn’t look like a man walking in the shadow of death. Indeed, with his ruddy face, powerful body and purposeful walk, he seemed as rugged and durable as the Arkansas landscape that stretched away on all sides of the bustling town of Spearhead.

  At least that was how he looked to storekeeper and long-time friend Sam Eastman, who greeted the cattleman with a broad grin and a hint of surprise in his voice.

  “Howdy there, Vic. You slip the leash or something? Where are your men?”

  Clanton well knew the reason for Eastman’s surprise. He hadn’t gone beyond the boundaries of his Bald Rock Ranch without bodyguards since fellow rancher and Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association founding member, Bart Channing, had been shot dead in Winterset two weeks earlier. Now he forced a smile.

  “Reckon I just got tired of movin’ every place in a herd, Sam. Besides, none of those waddies ever could keep quiet about anything important, so I had to get away from ’em or run the risk of some big-mouth spoiling my surprise.” The cattleman’s leathery features took on the eagerness of a boy’s. “Did it come, Sam?”

  Eastman reached under the counter. “On the noon stage, Vic,” he said, producing a small, flat box. “I checked to make sure it was the one you ordered.”

  Clanton opened the box and took out the glittering necklace. Clara’s twenty-fifth anniversary present.

  “Clara’s gonna figger you held up a bank or somethin’, Vic,” Eastman said, chuckling. “When will you give it to her?”

  “Tomorrow night, Sam. But there won’t be a shindig to go along with it.” The cattleman sobered as he returned the necklace to its box. “Just didn’t seem a suitable time to throw a party, not with this thing hanging over our heads.”

  Eastman nodded in understanding. Clanton was referring to the murder of Bart Channing and the rumor that the surviving members of the A.C.A., Clanton and Joshua Whitney, were marked for death. Something like that was bound to throw a cloud over a person’s life, and Eastman wondered why Clanton hadn’t sent one of his gunmen in for the package. He was about to say as much when there was movement outside the window, then a man was standing in the doorway.

  Because the new arrival made no more sound than a shadow, Clanton was unaware of his arrival until he noticed Eastman’s fixed stare. Then the big cattleman turned sharply and found himself staring at a stranger.

  The man, young and slimly built, had a pock-marked face and glossy dark hair. His skin was pale, though it was blazing mid-summer. His dark clothes were free of dust and he wore a heavy .44 gun rig. He looked faintly amused as he stared at the two middle-aged men through cold yellow-flecked eyes.

  Vic Clanton suddenly became aware of the jewelry box in his hand. He started to slide it under his shirt.

  “Give me a look at that thing, Clanton.”

  The stranger’s voice was soft, almost whispery. There was something about his eyes as he started forward, left hand outstretched ... something hypnotic that might have frightened a lesser man than big Vic Clanton.

  “Who the hell are you?” the rancher demanded in a voice that could cower a cowhand at fifty paces. When the stranger halted, but made no reply, Clanton turned to Eastman. “Do you know this jasper, Sam?”

  Eastman swallowed. “You—you don’t know who he is, Vic?”

  “Would I be asking if …?”

  Vic Clanton stopped as he realized the man with the yellow eyes had addressed him by name. The young stranger half-smiled.

  “Thinkin’ about now that you should have stayed home, Clanton?”

  Looking into that narrow, chalk-white face, Clanton suddenly knew this was no chance meeting. He could smell danger in this man. And so could Sam Eastman, who lunged for the old Sharps rifle he kept under the counter.

  Clanton cried, “No, Sam!” as he saw the stranger drop his hand to his hip. Then, clumsily, Clanton went for his own gun.

  It seemed to Clanton that the store suddenly exploded in a great red roar. But it was the stranger’s gun, firing again and again. He fell, feeling as he had years ago when a horse kicked him. He thought he heard Clara discussing breakfast. He was on the dusty boards, a red haze before his eyes, the taste of blood in his mouth. He didn’t hear the thump of Sam Eastman’s falling body or the thud of the killer’s Colt as he dropped it to the boards. Nor did he hear the most terrible sound of all ... the soft, whispery laugh of the young man with the old eyes as he watched them die.

  The crumbling ruin of the old Mexican house gleamed whitely against the deep green of the bougainvillea that had crawled over the wall and now encroached along the portico itself.

  Hank Brazos sat on the old stoop with his dog, Bullpup, dreaming of lazy days in Old Texas ... before he’d gone off to fight the Civil War, and long before he’d clapped his blue eyes on a Yankee ex-captain who could be the best gun partner a simple Texan could wish for, or the most mule-headed son of a bitch unhung.

  There was an ancient weathered table on the verandah behind Brazos. A bottle of rye whisky stood on the table beside a rolled-up newspaper with the words “Spearhead Gazette” showing. There was also a bottle of gun oil and a big, white-handled Peacemaker .45 on the table.

  Duke Benedict sat across from Brazos with his long legs crossed. He wore a white silk shirt open at the throat as a concession to the blistering heat. The light bouncing off the hot Painted Plains put a gleam on the flat bronze of his cheeks and struck glints from his vigorously brushed black hair. His gun-cleaning chore completed now, Benedict sat motionless, a long black cigar burning in one of the fastest right hands Brazos had ever seen.

  A gust of wind caught the edge of the paper now, fluttering it briefly. Hank Brazos turned his big shaggy head and scowled at the
paper. The giant Texan was illiterate, but after three readings of the article by a barkeep back in Adobe Crossing, he could just about recite the newspaper story word for word. The Spearhead Gazette told how rancher Vic Clanton and storekeeper Sam Eastman had been shot dead in Spearhead three days ago, and a man named Dusty Lane had already been tried and convicted of the double killing. Lane was now in the Spearhead jailhouse awaiting the hangman.

  The reporter had done a thorough axe job on Dusty, painting him as a maverick outlaw, then grudgingly conceding that the “condemned” man had served “without distinction” during the recent War Between the States. Hank Brazos could have corrected the reporter on that, for there was plenty of distinction in Dusty Lane’s record with the Texas Brigade. One of Dusty’s many exhibitions of courage came during the Second Battle of Bull Run, when he saved the life of Sergeant Hank Brazos.

  Now Brazos scowled at Benedict. He couldn’t believe it. Benedict had flatly refused to help Dusty. Worse than that, if Brazos persisted in riding west for Spearhead, Benedict would press on alone to Sundown City. This would finally put paid to a strange, improbable partnership that had somehow managed to survive more than a year of danger and violence.

  Benedict’s cigar was finished. He flicked it away, then turned to pick up his Colt.

  “Time to ride, Johnny Reb,” he said in his clipped Eastern accent.

  In contrast with the Texan’s heavy mood, Benedict looked relaxed, with just a touch of eagerness in his expression as he glanced northward across the broiling miles of yellow desert. They no longer trailed the man they had hunted as partners, but somewhere beyond the broken teeth of the Lockjaw Mountains, in a town called Sundown City, was a plush saloon—the Gambler’s Rest—and a stunning redhead named Ruby. While Hank Brazos had brooded during the long horse miles from Adobe Crossing about convicted killer, Dusty Lane, Benedict had been remembering the last time he’d seen the comely Ruby down in Dallas, and for him the brutal miles had fairly flown by.

  If the end of the partnership was weighing heavily on Duke Benedict, he gave no sign of it as he rose, gun in hand, and flashed his white smile.

  “Shake a leg, Texan. Ruby doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Brazos’ face was hard as he got to his feet. Benedict was a six-footer, but the Texan towered over him. Brazos scowled, spat and then said:

  “I was just thinkin’, Yank ...”

  “A dangerous exercise for those ill-equipped for it. Now—”

  “About Colonel Addison.”

  “What about him?”

  “I guess you remember the colonel?”

  “Of course I do. I served under him during the war. Then, some months ago in Kansas, you and I—” Benedict suddenly broke off as enlightenment dawned. “Ahh! I do believe I see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to draw an analogy between what we did for the colonel and—”

  “Draw a what? Speak English so a man can understand.”

  Benedict let out a long sigh. “Very well. We’ll use basic English. You’re saying that because we joined forces to get the colonel out of trouble, I should be prepared to assist you now ... though what anyone could do for your friend Dusty Lane is quite beyond me. Do I read you correctly, Johnny Reb?”

  “You’re right on target, high-stepper. Let’s see you wriggle out of that one.”

  “No wriggling necessary. In Kansas, you helped me assist a fine old southern gentleman who’d fallen foul of a group of swindlers. Any man of decency would have stepped forward under such circumstances. But that particular situation bears no resemblance to the affair in Spearhead. Not only has Lane been tried and convicted for murder, but by your own admission the man was a pilferer and brigand during his years with the Confederacy. Can you in all honesty …?”

  “A crook and a hardcase, yeah,” Brazos interrupted. “But a murderer? No chance. Yank. Dusty just couldn’t gun a man down in cold blood. He mighta changed plenty since I saw him last, but—”

  “Spare me the rest,” Benedict snapped in a way that suggested he had reached the end of his patience. “We have, by your estimate, another fifty miles to travel before we hit the Lockjaws. I suggest you spend that time deciding which way you intend to ride from there ... north with me or west by yourself. That is all there is to be decided.”

  Brazos shook his head like a horse being tormented by flies. This was how things usually panned out. He could be dead right about something and Benedict all the way wrong, yet he could count on one hand the number of times he’d beaten the Yank in a battle of words. He glowered, scratched, stared at his dog and then finally let out a gusty sigh.

  “I’ll see to the horses,” he muttered.

  Brazos shambled off. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to tell Benedict to take care of his own fancy black stallion, for the simple reason that Harvard graduate, expert gambler and matchless gun hand that he was, Benedict was sadly lacking in the many skills and talents that came under the heading trailsmanship. Confronted with the simple chore of saddling a horse, Benedict could almost be relied upon to buckle a belly cinch too tightly or too loosely. Or, in packing his warbag, he’d overlook something that would result in a long ride back. Brazos often reflected that the derisive term “dude” might have been invented with Benedict in mind.

  “Damn tinhorn dude!” he grumbled now as he plucked Benedict’s saddle from the shade. Suddenly he halted, staring first at the black horse and then out over the trackless, sunbaked Painted Plains. Open and honest by nature, Hank Brazos now wore a crafty expression as he tugged at his lower lip and considered an idea so foreign to his makeup that he was surprised he’d thought of it at all ...

  It would be a dirty trick, no question about that. Now he had to decide how important it was that he and Benedict remain together. If they did split, could he help Dusty without Benedict’s brains to supplement his brawn?

  The answer to the question made everything else academic. Slipping the saddle from his shoulder, Brazos dropped to his haunches and searched the ground for a pebble the size of his thumbnail ...

  Ten minutes later they set out. They hadn’t travelled a mile when Benedict’s fine black stallion developed a limp in his offside back leg. Until then, Benedict had been riding tall and relaxed in the saddle, smiling around his cigar as he thought about long-legged Ruby in Sundown City. His mood underwent a dramatic change as he brought the black to a halt and stepped down near a lofty granite butte. There was no such thing as a good place for your horse to go lame but out here on the Painted Plains it was a calamity.

  “Well, don’t just sit there, man,” Benedict snapped at Brazos, after his inspection had failed to reveal the cause of the animal’s injury. “Take a look at him.”

  Brazos put match flame to his rolled cigarette before sliding down. Just by the way he studied the black’s hoof and ran a big brown hand gently over the animal’s leg, showed clearly that Hank Brazos had spent a good portion of his life with horses.

  He looked grim as he rose and stared around at the harsh desert landscape.

  “Well, what is it?” Benedict asked impatiently.

  “Shin sore.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much. What do we do about it?”

  “We don’t. You’ll have to spell him a day and soak his leg in hot brine every hour.” Brazos looked genuinely sad. “Sorry to have to leave you out here this way, Yank, especially after that talk we heard about the Comanches back in—”

  “Leave me out here?” Benedict looked stunned. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “Hell, you know I wouldn’t ditch a man in the wilds, Yank ... unless I couldn’t help it, that is. But I got to think about Dusty. Accordin’ to that newspaper, they’re fixin’ to swing him on Monday. Now, if I don’t waste too much time, the earliest I can hope to get there is some time on Saturday.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders and threw out his hands. “I’m powerful sorry, Yank, but you can see I’ve g
ot no choice but to push on.”

  The cigar between Benedict’s teeth had gone out but he didn’t notice. His gray-eyed gaze played over a wasteland that in a matter of seconds had become infinitely more alien and sinister. Beyond the burning flats, rounded hills shimmered in the rising heat waves; ugly, scarred hills pocked with outcroppings of rock. In the far distance the bulk of a mountain range was poised like a dark cloud, somber and unattainable ...

  How the devil was he going to find his way to Ruby’s arms from this corner of hell with a lame horse—and without Brazos to pick the trail?

  As his stare finally came back to Brazos, he caught the faintest flicker of triumph that crossed that saddle-brown face, and a dark, ugly suspicion came to his mind.

  “You’re damn well gloating over this, aren’t you?”

  Brazos shrugged and then started towards his horse with Bullpup trotting at his heels. “Doesn’t strike me one way or another, Benedict. I don’t like leavin’ you stuck out here but seein’ as we’re due to split up anyhow, I’ve got no choice.”

  “You could get this horse fit in ten or twelve hours, couldn’t you?”

  Brazos looked thoughtful. “Mebbe.”

  “How much quicker?”

  “Some. Hard to say.”

  Duke Benedict bit his lip. A proud, vain man, it galled him to concede defeat. But his position was brutally plain: he could remain here in this strip of nowhere with a lame horse and a slender-to-uncertain chance of finding his way to civilization, or he could make a deal.

  When Benedict finally spoke, the words came out as if they hurt. “All right, you over-nourished brush-popper of a grits-eating cretin. You win.”

  But Brazos’ face was blank. “Win? Don’t rightly know what you mean, Yank. You want to spell it out? I mean, I’m just a simple cowpoke ...”

  “Fix the damned horse and I’ll ride with you to Spearhead, damn you!”

  Hank Brazos’ eyes widened. “Judas, Yank, do you really mean that? Well, in that case, I better break out my possibles bag, eh?”