Benedict and Brazos 20

by E. Jefferson Clay

  Trogg’s bushy black brows went up. “You are bereaved?”

  “Well, not yet.”

  “You’re anticipating bereavement then?”

  “That’s dead on target, Jube ... anticipatin’.” Brazos’ gesture encompassed the saloon. “Now I know this ain’t the place to discuss our sort of business, Jube, so mebbe we could take a stroll out back where she’s quiet and talk it over, huh?”

  “Well, this is my night off, Mr. Brazos. Why don’t you go see my boss, Mr. Buckhout? I’m sure he’ll still be working at the parlor.”

  “I could do that easy enough,” Brazos drawled, casually producing a wad of banknotes from the pocket of the disreputable purple shirt. “But I figgered to put the business your way, Jube. You see, the feller who told me where I might find you kinda let on that your boss treats you rough and don’t think enough of you. I figgered that bringin’ in fresh business might do you some good.” The engaging smile showed again. “I sure enough know what it’s like to be pushed around by somebody that don’t appreciate a man proper, Jube.”

  Trogg was staring at the money. It was true that Buckhout had always been a hard employer. But that didn’t concern him now. What did concern him was the fact that he was negotiating to buy a run-down business cheap, and any increase in turnover could well see Buckhout jacking up the selling price. Maybe this was one burying they could do without, he reflected. Maybe it would be worth his while to direct this fellow to another undertaker in another town.

  He stared across the room. Chastity was sitting on the bar smoking a cigarette, surrounded by admirers. She caught his eye and blew him a kiss. Trogg felt a lump in his throat. She really did love him, he thought, but she had her heart set on his buying out Buckhout and becoming, in her words, “A man of standin’ and property, Jubie love.” Suddenly Trogg rose from his chair. “A pleasure to do business with you if I can, Mr. Brazos,” he declared. “Shall we go out back, as you suggested?”

  Brazos smiled as he stood. “That’s right, Jube. Clear and quiet out there.”

  Clear and quiet it proved to be. But only until they reached the corner of the yard where the moonlight fell brilliantly ... and a tall, dark-garbed figure stepped from the deep shadows.

  “This the gentleman, Reb?”

  “Yeah,” Brazos said. “This here is Mr. Jubal Trogg. Jube, I’d like you to meet Mr. Elroy Smart.”

  Trogg had his hand out before the name registered. “Smart? You mean the ... the hangman?”

  Benedict claimed the pudgy hand and squeezed hard. “I prefer the title State Executioner, Mr. Trogg. But, yes, you have the right party.”

  Trogg reclaimed his hand and looked from one tall figure to the other. He’d never met a hangman and would have been happy to let things remain that way. He was feeling a little fluttery in the belly as he spoke to Brazos.

  “I ... I don’t understand, Mr. Brazos. You never mentioned Mr. Smart.”

  “I didn’t mention him on account of folks are liable to get jumpy when you tell ’em a hangman wants to see ’em, Jube.”

  Jubal felt his mouth turn dry. “You want to see me, Mr. Smart? I thought—”

  “We both wish to discuss a matter with you, Mr. Trogg,” Benedict corrected. “A matter of life and death, you might well say.”

  The night was pleasantly cool, but for some reason Jubal Trogg found himself sweating. Eyes big as saucers in his fat face, he said, “I’ve changed my mind. I ... I don’t have time to talk business. You’ll have to see Mr. Buckhout.” He turned to go, but Brazos blocked the way.

  “You don’t understand, Jube,” Brazos said quietly. “We want to talk about Dusty Lane. Mainly we want to talk about what you said you saw that night.”

  Trogg felt his heart hammering. There was something wrong here. It was a big effort to force a smile and turn casually towards Benedict. Then he began to run.

  Before Trogg’s little feet had taken him six strides, Brazos’ iron hand clamped around his pudgy arm, jerking him to a halt. Sweat bursting from every pore, Jubal struggled helplessly, opened his mouth to yell, then froze as something round and cold touched his forehead. Eyes almost bursting from their sockets, he looked to the side without moving his head and saw that the hangman was holding a gun. Trogg went limp. He worked up saliva in his mouth and swallowed it. The back of his shirt was drenched. He could feel sweat trickling down his sides.

  “Why did you take off thataway, Jube?” Brazos’ voice was soft.

  “I ... I was scared.”

  “What do you have to be scared of?” asked the man with the gun. “There’s nothing to fear if you were telling the truth?” He lowered the gun and nodded to Brazos. “Let’s move this tub of lard.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Trogg almost shrieked.

  “Where we can talk quietly,” said Benedict.

  Trogg looked pleadingly at Brazos. In the saloon the giant Texan had looked like an easy-going fellow just off the range who would bend over backwards to help anybody in trouble. But he didn’t look like that now. Huge and unsmiling, he presented a terrifying sight to Jubal Trogg.

  “Chastity baby,” Jubal Trogg groaned, wondering if he would ever see his beloved again.

  It took only a few minutes to crack Jubal Trogg. Brazos had given him a couple of cuffs around the ears and Trogg had promptly fallen in a heap, needing whisky to revive him. After that no further interrogation was needed.

  He had lied to the court, Trogg admitted, sitting forlornly on a battered box, elbows on his knees and his black curls tousled. He hadn’t been anywhere near Eastman’s store the night Vic Clanton and Sam Eastman were killed. He probably wouldn’t have even attended Dusty Lane’s trial—except for the man with the money.

  “What man with what money?” Benedict wanted to know.

  “I dunno who he was,” Trogg confessed. “But he bumped me in the dark out back of the parlor just after they arrested Lane. He told me that if I said I saw Dusty do the shootin’, he’d give me a thousand dollars. And he had the money right there with him.”

  “And you took it,” declared Brazos, squatting on his heels and massaging Bullpup’s ears.

  “I never saw so much money in my life,” Trogg went on. “I was flat busted from buyin’ things for my girl, and she was naggin’ me to get ahead. I ... I saw the chance to buy Mr. Buckhout out and set myself up for life with Chastity ... so I took it.”

  “Somebody must have dearly wanted Lane convicted to pay out that sort of money,” Benedict said. “But why did they go to you? How did they guess you would perjure yourself and swear another man’s life away?”

  Trogg’s head sank. “Everybody in town knows that Dusty and I are both sweet on Chastity, and that she didn’t seem able to make up her mind which of us she wanted to marry.” Trogg ran stubby fingers through his hair. “I was sure for a long time that she’d end up pickin’ Dusty ... and this looked like my big chance to get him out of my hair.” He looked up. “Mebbe you fellers reckon it was an awful low thing to do, but it didn’t seem that way to me at the time. I mean, after all, Marshal Brand saw Dusty runnin’ from the store, didn’t he? The way I looked at it, I was just helpin’ the law put a killer where he belonged.”

  “Just a civic-minded citizen,” said Benedict, who had Jubal Trogg tabbed as a rogue who would stop at little to gain his own ends if he thought he could get away with it.

  “What happens now?” Trogg asked after a minute’s silence. “Are you fixin’ to make me own up before a judge?”

  “Would you admit to your lie in court?” Benedict asked.

  “Sure he will,” Brazos answered. “What choice does he have?”

  “Trogg?” Benedict pressed, but the little man just stared at the ground. In response to Brazos’ puzzled frown, Benedict said, “We can’t hold a gun in a court of law, Reb. They have stiff penalties for perjury in this state, as Mr. Trogg undoubtedly is aware. I doubt very much that he would be prepared to tell the truth before a judge and earn himself a lengthy pris
on term. Would you, Jubal?” Trogg refused to reply, but his silence implied that Benedict was on target.

  “Dusty Lane was convicted on the testimony of both Trogg and Marshal Brand,” Benedict said soberly. “We’ve established that Trogg’s evidence was spurious, but that still leaves Brand’s testimony. And who can tell? In all probability, it was the lawman’s evidence that carried the most weight. It’s more than possible, the way I see it, that even if Trogg were to publicly admit his perjury, it might not be enough to reverse the jury’s decision and save Lane’s life.”

  As always, Brazos was having trouble keeping up with Benedict’s superior mental processes. But after a few moments of concentration, he felt he had the drift. “Then that means we’ve got to go to work on the marshal?”

  Benedict’s stare was frosty. “Don’t be a fool, man. You don’t ‘go to work’ on city marshals. I’m forced to the conclusion that if we want to save Lane from the noose, we still don’t have enough evidence to do it legally. Therefore we may be obliged to do it another way.”

  “How?” Trogg and Brazos demanded together.

  Benedict smiled. Ever since assuming the role of Elroy Smart, he’d been considering a variety of ways, some logical, some totally crazy, that might save the life of the man to whom Brazos owed his own. Several possibilities stood up reasonably well under close scrutiny, but one stood out high above the others. He was confident it could work, but the plan required co-operation from other parties. One party in particular.

  “Jubal,” Benedict said, watching his cigar smoke climb, “what sort of a man is your employer?”

  Trogg looked confounded by the question. “In what way do you mean, Mr. Smart?”

  “Specifically, is he honest?”

  Jubal Trogg smiled for the first time during one of the worst half hours of his life. “Honest? Buckhout would rob his own mother blind. He’s been robbin’ me for years—and everybody else who’s ever done business with him. Why do you ask, Mr. Smart?”

  Benedict smiled now as he turned his head. Sheriff Calvin had hinted that Buckhout was avaricious and sly, and that triggered off the specific train of thought that occupied him now. He said, “Do you believe that Mr. Buckhout, as a coroner, would be prepared to bend his rules and regulations a little—if the money was right?”

  “He’d bend any rule if the money was good enough,” Trogg admitted without hesitation. “But I still don’t figure what you’re getting at.”

  “All you have to do is keep silent and you will find out, my good fellow.” Benedict moved across to Trogg, still smiling. “Tell me, Jubal, do you believe your Mr. Buckhout could be persuaded to write out a death certificate on someone who was still alive? And if so, what do you think he would ask for his services?”

  Chapter Six – Hot Monday

  TIM FENNER SLURRED, “One more, Barnaby. Jist one more.” The barkeep of the Golden Gate Saloon, generally considered one of the most genial men in Spearhead, frowned as he turned from the group of customers he’d been serving. There was hardly a man Barnaby Frost didn’t like, but he drew the line with Fenner. A sober Tim Fenner was hard enough to take, but a drunken Fenner was next to impossible.

  “You’ve had enough, ain’t you, Fenner?”

  “Says who, Frost?” the drunk challenged. Frost was even smaller than runty Fenner, who crawled to men bigger than himself but never passed up the chance to bully someone smaller. It was just another of the characteristics that made up one of the least appealing characters in Spearhead County. Fenner slapped the mahogany hard. “Set it up, Frost. Pronto.”

  “You got the money?”

  “Put it on the slate.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why, you sawn-off little punk,” Fenner slurred. He reached for the barkeep, then slumped as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

  “You’ve had enough, Fenner,” said a deep voice. “Out.”

  Fenner whirled belligerently, ready to fight. Then he looked into the flat, meaty face of bouncer Jack Elroy who worked days as a slaughter man and weighed over two hundred pounds. Immediately his sickly grin appeared.

  “Hell, Jack, I never meant to raise a ruckus.”

  “You been actin’ up all night, Fenner, and danged if I know what’s got into you. But we’ve had enough of you for one Saturday night, so do you walk out or do you get toted?”

  Fenner elected to walk, though judging by the amount of tripping and stumbling he went through to gain the porch, he might have done better to have accepted the bouncer’s offer of a free ride. Outside, the night air fogged his brain even further, but at the same time it dulled the reservations and fears that had been nagging at him all night long as he’d been trying to work up the nerve to attempt the most dangerous undertaking of his life.

  “I can do it,” he told the midnight street. “For my cut of the loot, I can do it.”

  Drawing confidence from the sound of his own voice, he touched the butt of the old Dragoon Model Colt .45 that rode his hip. His fingers tingled as he straightened his shoulders. Of course he could do it. It wasn’t as if he had to call the hangman out and try to shoot him down hero style. All he had to do was stalk him, put one in his back, then hightail it. Like Dusty had said at the jailhouse, if they got rid of the hangman, it would give them time. And if there was some risk involved, then surely part or all of two thousand was worth it. The stage job had been his first real robbery, and he knew he would never be able to gear himself up to anything like it again.

  The hangman had to go.

  He staggered into the street, aimed a wild kick at Tom Fallon’s ugly blue dog, then struck west along Federal Street. He was feeling better by the minute. Sure he could do it.

  He bent what he hoped was a belligerent eye on the few passersby he chanced to meet, and was passing the darkened bulk of the billiard parlor when a tall, dark-garbed figure swung around the Blacksmith Street corner heading for Merle Bronson’s.

  Fenner froze. “No—” he began in a feeble, fearful voice. It was the hangman, and he felt his courage disappear.

  “Fenner,” grunted a deep voice as the man went past, “why don’t you go home and sleep it off?”

  It wasn’t the hangman at all. It was gambler Roley Dukes. Yet Fenner was still shaking after the man had disappeared beneath the welcoming crimson light above Merle’s front door. He stared up at the sky, his mouth stretched thin and tight like a wound, and knew he wouldn’t do it after all. Not now and not later. He simply didn’t have the guts. So long, Dusty, and so long two grand ...

  Where might he mooch one more drink this time of night?

  The sheriff was alone in his office the next afternoon when Benedict appeared in the doorway, blotting out the sinking sun for a moment.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff.”

  “Howdy, Mr. Smart.” The lawman inclined his head at the ominous looking black bag in Benedict’s right hand. “Gettin’ ready for action, huh? Seen you with the carpenter at the gallows just after noon. Everything in order?”

  “Naturally, Sheriff,” Benedict intoned in his deep-chested, Elroy Smart voice as he moved to the desk. “When Elroy Smart stages an execution, everything is always in order.” His eyes gleamed as he placed the black bag on the desk and stroked the leather. “I leave nothing to chance.”

  Calvin looked a bit uneasy. “Well, it’s nice to see a man who takes pride in his work ... whatever that work happens to be, eh, Mr. Smart?”

  “My sentiments exactly, Sheriff,” Benedict replied, and he patted the satchel again.

  The lawman watched Benedict’s hand for a moment, then he shifted his weight in the chair again. “What have you got in there, Mr. Smart? Your rope, I guess?”

  “My rope ... and the Carstairs Barnaby Never-Fail Loop Adjunct Device—sometimes referred to as the hangman’s friend.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “You mean you’ve never heard of the C.B.N.F.L.A.D.? Good heavens, Sheriff, you are behind the times out here. The Device, as we in the trade
call it, represents the biggest advance in our profession in a century.”

  “It does? What the hell is it?”

  “You’re really interested?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “Well, in that case …”

  With deft motions Benedict opened the bag and plucked forth an article unlike anything the stolid lawman had ever seen. Shaped like a surgical collar, it was some six inches in height and appeared to be made from thin strips of steel, wire and what looked suspiciously like a lady’s corset.

  “Well, I’ll be dogged,” Calvin said after a long moment, sounding impressed. Then he looked up. “What’s it for?”

  “Snap failure.”

  “What’s snap failure?”

  “Good heavens, Sheriff, don’t you know even that much?” Benedict sighed and set the collar on the desk. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be so impatient. You are a layman after all, and I realize that most laymen are abysmally ignorant of the finer points of what Carstairs Barnaby referred to as hangmanship.” He straightened to his full height and look intensely sober. “Snap failure, Sheriff, is when the condemned man’s neck fails to snap, thus frustrating speedy execution. The craft of hanging is directed towards the ideal execution, which is the fall through the trap, the snap, and then almost instant death. There is no untidier spectacle than that of a man dancing on the end of the rope when his neck fails to break. And it was with a truly inspired determination to eradicate this from the work of men such as myself that Carstairs Barnaby dedicated himself to the scientific development of his Device, which guarantees a clean break every time.”

  Looking both impressed and a little glassy-eyed, the sheriff gingerly fingered the collar. “Every time?”

  “Every time. And now, with your permission, I shall go in and conduct a fitting on the accused. Do you care to accompany me, Sheriff?”

  Calvin ran a finger around the collar of his grubby gray shirt. “Not unless you reckon you need me, Mr. Smart.”

  “Of course not,” Benedict said briskly, placing the collar in his satchel. “I’ve been dealing with this breed of cur for so long that they no longer hold any fears for me.” He strode to the archway, then paused to look back. “You seem a trifle peaked, Sheriff Calvin. I suggest a strong mug of coffee to keep your strength up. I want you in good fettle in the morning.”