Benedict and Brazos 27

by E. Jefferson Clay

  “He sounds like he’s tellin’ the truth,” Fallon said.

  Brazos grimaced. “Killed a woman and kid!” he said in disgust. “We sure enough have some partner, don’t we, Fallon?”

  “I’d deal with the devil himself if I thought it could help us here,” Fallon replied. Then with a sideways glance at the big gunfighter, added, “Not that I reckon anything much can help us now ... ”

  “The marshal’s givin’ up too easy, Brazos,” said Flint. “I’ve told him all I want is Holly, but he doesn’t seem to believe me.”

  “How the hell are you going to get Holly without rousing the whole damn town, Flint?” Fallon said with a sudden flash of anger. “Tell me that.”

  “Why, I reckon you’d have figured that by now, Fallon,” Flint said. “Your courier here is goin’ to ride back in then send Holly out by tellin’ him you got to see him urgent.”

  Fallon lifted his hands, let them drop back to his knees. “I should have figured that. What do you say, Brazos? Can you do it?”

  Brazos tugged out his tobacco sack and commenced fashioning a smoke.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Shacklock is watchin’ Holly as close as me and Benedict. Seems he don’t rightly trust him. Could be Holly might have a hard time gettin’ out of town—that’s if I was to take him Flint’s message.”

  “You’ll take it,” Flint said with the assurance of a man holding all the cards.

  “I don’t fancy linin’ any man up for execution, even a pilgrim like Holly,” Brazos growled.

  “Holly or the marshal,” Flint said matter-of-factly. “Take your choice.”

  Licking the cigarette into a neat cylinder, Brazos set it between his lips and took out his matches. The brief flare of light lifted his rugged face from the gloom as he sucked the cigarette into life. Smoke gusted from his lips as he flicked the dead match away and looked at Flint.

  “Not much of a choice, Flint,” he said. “But if I do it, it’s goin’ to trim whatever chance we have of rescuin’ the governor’s wife, mebbe finish it altogether.”

  “Tough,” was Flint’s response.

  “We’re the only chance she’s got, mister.”

  “You’re wasting your breath, Brazos,” said the lawman. “He doesn’t care about Mrs. Arnell. All he wants is what his breed ever wants. Blood.”

  “Funny,” Brazos said, “but somehow I figured from what I’d heard about you, Flint, you were different from the general run of gun shark. But I see I was wrong. You ain’t no different from any of ’em, are you? Shacklock, McGuire, Holly ... no different.”

  Caleb Flint’s iron face twitched as though the words had hit a nerve. But when he spoke, the voice revealed no weakening.

  “You’re about as subtle as a buffalo bull, Texan. You can’t shame me into changin’ my mind. I can see that Fallon’s fed you up on this moonshine about him and the governor’s lady and the rest. But Caleb Flint doesn’t buy that line of goods, mister. Love’s just a word people use to hide their true reasons for doin’ things. Your marshal might think he loves this woman, but if you could see into him you’d find that all he really wants is the chance to outsmart and get square with the men who’ve made him look such a fool.”

  “That’s a lie, Flint,” Fallon said angrily. “It’s a dirty lie.”

  “Truth? Lies? What’s it matter?” Flint said with sudden disinterest. “All that matters is the result, and that’s goin’ to be Holly lyin’ dead at my feet. Better get back in the saddle, Texan.”

  Bitter words sprang to Brazos’ lips, but died there. With a helpless glance at the marshal, he turned to his horse, then halted as Flint spoke again.

  “I’m not changin’ my stance, Brazos,” he said, “but if you want to know the truth, I’d sooner that woman lived than died. I got me an old pard in Drum who wouldn’t feel any more kindly about the boys kidnappin’ a female than I do. Look up Notch Mallone when you get back, tell him the score, and ask him to help you find the woman. If he can, he will.”

  “Mallone?” Brazos queried.

  “Yeah. Tall man with a Mex moustache. You must have met him?”

  “Nobody in Drum answerin’ that name or description, Flint.”

  Flint frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Certain. Could be this Mallone was one of them that quit rather than have anythin’ to do with the kidnappin’. Hear that there was four or five did that.”

  “Could be ... ” Flint said, as though thinking aloud. “But Notch always said that if he ever quit the trade, he’d come farmin’ with me ... ” The gunfighter suddenly stiffened. “By glory ... maybe that’s how ... ”

  “How what, Flint?” Fallon demanded. “What are you on about?”

  “I haven’t been able to figure how Holly found me,” Flint said heavily. “The only man who knew where my spread was for sure, was Notch. If Notch quit Drum, he’d have headed for the Altars. Holly knew we were pards. He could have figured where Notch was goin’, followed him, let him lead him right to my stoop—and then you can be sure—killed him before comin’ after me ... ”

  Caleb Flint’s voice faded to a whisper, to nothing, his silence as deep as an open grave. It seemed a long cold time before he turned slowly to look at Brazos, then jerked his head in the direction of Drum.

  The Texan made no attempt to argue; there could be no reasoning with a man who looked the way Iron Man Flint did at that moment. But stepping up, he somehow managed a reassuring grin for the marshal.

  “Keep your chin up, Marshal. Don’t give up, on account me and the Yank won’t give up until we’ve used up all our chances.”

  Hollow words, he thought, riding out. For things certainly looked bad, and he saw little hope of his returning to Drum, contacting Holly and getting him to leave for the canyon without Shacklock’s say-so. And if he did, what then? Maybe if the worst came to the worst he and Benedict could shoot their way out. But what of Rachel Arnell? And how might they save Fallon from Flint if they failed to deliver Holly into his hands?

  A cold breeze had sprung up while he’d been in the canyon and it whipped against his set face and fluttered his shirt and shotgun chaps as he touched the stiff-gaited sorrel into a reaching lope. With the soft leathery whispering of the chaps against his legs, he had covered a mile or more before he realized there was another sound in the night that was not being made by the wind nor the beat of steel-shod hoofs on hard earth.

  Reining in at the base of a broken butte just as the quarter moon hung its hook over the horizon, he cocked his ear and the sound came to him again, clearly now.

  It was the sound of gunfire.

  And it was coming from Drum.

  Chapter Eight – The Governor’s Lady

  DOWN HERE WHERE the lamps burned as brightly at midnight as at noon, she suddenly heard the quick scurrying sounds from the gloomy shaft again. She tried not to look, but it was impossible. Against her will, Rachel Arnell turned her head slowly towards the gloomy shaft that led down into this wide, low-roofed room beneath the earth.

  There they were.

  Little amber eyes winked at her. There was a soft scampering sound as her guard stirred in his uncomfortable chair and the rats vanished, squeaking.

  “Goddamn ... goddamn …” the gun packer slurred, halfway between sleep and wakefulness. Then his ugly head rolled and again his soft snores filled the room.

  The woman closed her eyes, forced them closed. She sat erect on a straight-backed chair identical to the one occupied by her guard. Her long, slender legs were free, but her hands were tied behind her with the ropes knotted to the rungs of the chair. In the greasy lanternlight, she looked younger than she really was, despite the hollows and lines that ten days of terror and uncertainty had put in her face. She was dressed in the same outfit she had worn that night to the Ladies Aid meeting in Capital City when her bodyguards had been mown down and she had been hauled, screaming and struggling, onto a cruel-faced killer’s horse. The lace-fronted blue blouse was grubby now, but somehow
she had managed to keep the dark, ankle-length skirt brushed clean during the brief times they untied her to eat.

  She sat in silence, waiting for the sounds of the rats again. Somehow she had found the strength to cope with everything else, except the rats of the Lucky Cuss Mine.

  She had Challinor to thank for at least knowing the name of the old mine where she had been a prisoner for over a week. Challinor, the slab-faced gunfighter snoring in the chair across the room, talked to her more than the others, even though he never said much. Challinor had told her that they had been instructed by Kain Shacklock not to talk to her so they wouldn’t get to know her too well and start feeling sorry for her.

  Her mouth twisted at that thought now as she opened her eyes again. Shacklock needn’t have bothered, she thought. She hadn’t met one of her sinister captors who seemed to have any more compassion in his makeup than did Shacklock himself. And that was none at all.

  She wished Challinor would wake up. At least even if he didn’t talk, and had a face like a side of meat, the gunman was company.

  Rachel considered rocking her chair or calling out to rouse the man, but decided against it. Challinor had a bad temper and might beat her if she woke him. None of them had attempted to molest her, doubtless again on orders from higher up, but she wasn’t prepared to bet that they wouldn’t if provoked. In all her thirty years, she had never met a more chilling group of men than the gunfighters of Drum.

  Her eyes closed and she must have dozed, for next thing she was aware of, was the sound of steps. Turning, she saw Challinor standing in the shaft mouth with his shaggy red head cocked in a listening attitude.

  “What is it, Mr. Challinor?” she asked.

  The gunman knuckled at his eyes then slouched back towards his chair. “Thought I heard somethin’ like a shot,” he muttered. “Coulda bin mistook, though.”

  “Perhaps your heroic Mr. Shacklock has decided to do something really worthwhile for the Territory and blown his brains out?”

  The hardcase stared across at her in wet-lipped silence for a long moment. Then he grinned.

  “I sure do like the sassy way you talk, ma’am. I’m gonna miss that when you’re gone.”

  When you’re gone.

  The words had an ominous ring, she thought. But then of course, there was nothing that wasn’t ominous in Drum, she reminded herself. And wondered, once again, whether she would ever leave here alive, or even see the sun again ...

  She stared up at the light that hung by a wire from the plank wood ceiling ... while less than a hundred feet away, the faint glow of that same light led Duke Benedict from the main shaft.

  Leaving Quinn’s under cover of the gunfight as Shad Crane and Dave Piper had solved their differences the final way, Benedict had headed directly towards the towering mullock heaps and rusted machinery that marked the Drum mines on the south side of town. He had to find out if that was indeed mine dust he’d seen on Link Callaway’s shirt in the saloon, and if so what had taken the gun packer down a mine?

  The quarter mile run to the first ore crusher proved uneventful, but threading his way through the ancient heaps of spoil left behind by the old miners, he suddenly saw a sentry.

  The guard was posted by the wreckage of an ancient ore wagon. He carried a rifle and was peering across the flats, obviously concerned about the shooting he’d heard.

  The moment he sighted the man, Benedict felt his hopes begin to rise. Why bother posting a sentry out here when they had them ringing the town itself—unless there was something out here worth guarding?

  Studying the lie of the land carefully from the cover of a stack of old lumber, Benedict fixed the guard’s position in his mind’s eye, then turned and snaked away.

  Five minutes later, the faintest whisper of sound behind him was the only warning Varn Hadrick was given before a descending six-gun barrel slammed against his head and knocked him cold.

  Benedict caught the falling gunman and lowered him silently to the ground. He turned and looked about him. Hadrick had been posted outside a mine mouth that at first glance looked no different from another dozen. But dropping to one knee to examine the ground closely, Benedict saw the footprints leading to and from the dark adit. Fresh footprints.

  His soft leather boots made no sound as he ghosted into the musty mine mouth. The shaft stretched away before him like the entrance to some prehistoric cave. There were rusted old rail tracks, and he imagined ore wagons and mules dragging them laden from the tunnels under the earth. He reached out and touched the rough timbers that shored up walls and roof. They seemed solid enough. He hoped so. He was quite certain his parents hadn’t reared their only son and paid a fortune to send him through Harvard just to have him flattened like a bedbug in some nameless old mine-shaft.

  He was forced to travel slowly as he moved deeper into the Stygian darkness. The mine was deep, the shaft steeply sloping. After a while, he could no longer be certain that he was still in the main shaft. He could have unwittingly veered off into a side tunnel. The temptation to strike a vesta was strong, but the disinclination to attract the attention of some hidden gunman and a bullet between the eyes, proved stronger.

  He stumbled on, and then suddenly saw the faint gleam of yellow light ahead ...

  Now he cocked his Colt before moving on, and those who knew Duke Benedict only as a dandy gambling man would scarcely have recognized him in this steely-eyed, dangerous figure that drew closer and closer to that widening square of light.

  Small, furry things squeaked away from his path and little eyes glittered at him redly from the gloom. He wondered what the rat population of Drum would be—taking into account the thirty odd he already knew by name.

  He could see that the light was coming from some kind of underground storeroom, and rounding a gentle curve in the shaft, he saw the woman.

  It was Rachel Arnell.

  He knew it instantly, as much by her brave posture in her chair as by the photograph Fallon had shown him. This woman sat like a governor’s lady, even in her imprisonment.

  There was no time for triumph or self-congratulation. He didn’t know how long it would take them to miss him at Quinn’s, but was damned sure Shacklock would order a search when they did.

  Suddenly he realized the woman had turned her head to see him standing there in the half light. His finger went to his lips, but needlessly as it eventuated. Rachel Arnell’s eyes showed just one flicker of astonishment mingled with hope, then turned away.

  Clever girl, Benedict approved. Then he eased forward.

  Challinor was awake now. The man half sat, half sprawled on his uncomfortable chair, sucking on a sodden cigarette. He was watching the woman from under drooping lids when the blur of swift movement caught the corner of his eye.

  The gun packer made it halfway from his chair and got his Colt clear of leather before Benedict struck. The first vicious blow of the Colt barrel split Challinor’s forehead from eyebrow to hairline, the next drove him backwards over the splintering chair to crash face downwards against the baseboards of the wall.

  The woman stared incredulously as Benedict housed his Colt and swung towards her with a brilliant smile. To her heightened senses, he seemed too heroic, too impossibly handsome to be real.

  And then his very real hands were untying her ropes and a voice that held warm reassurance was speaking to her.

  “Mrs. Arnell, we have precious little time to talk, but I can tell you that my name is Duke Benedict, I came here to Drum with Marshal Fallon, and if Providence continues to smile, I’m going to get you out of here alive.” He hauled her to her feet. “Any questions, dear lady?”

  “Yes. Is Tom all right?”

  His smile flashed again. “That question tells me a lot, ma’am. Yes, the marshal is fine. Now, are you strong enough to walk, or shall I carry you?”

  “Of course I’m strong enough,” she smiled tremulously. “Please, let us hurry, Mr. Benedict.”

  “Duke,” he said, snatching down the lantern. �
�And hurry we shall, dear lady, hurry we shall.”

  The journey to the surface proved uneventful. Under the high stars, the mine area showed no sign of life. Breathing heavily from the climb out, they threaded their way through the piles of tailings and rusted machinery until the open stretch of flats leading to the town lay before them.

  Rachel held back as Benedict started directly towards Drum, leading her by the hand.

  “Mr. Benedict ... I mean, Duke—we’re not going back there, are we?”

  “We are, unless you’re concealing a horse on your person, lovely lady.”

  “But ... but wouldn’t we be better off taking our chances on foot?”

  “Not with their sentries, ma’am. Our only chance is to try and get back into town unseen, get mounted, then get as far as we can before they spot us. I can see men moving about in the streets already, which means they’re looking for me. We wouldn’t get half a mile afoot once they sighted us from the lookouts. But don’t worry. I got across the flats, making use of the cover without being seen, and there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.”

  She was certain he was deliberately making it sound much easier than it was. And she was right. Yet despite the dangers, the Benedict luck saw them through three close calls with searching gunmen in the next ten minutes; another minute and they were easing from the livery stables astride Benedict’s own swift black stallion and Hank Brazos’ giant appaloosa.

  “I swear I must be lucky by trade,” Duke Benedict marveled as they rode down the final alleyway that gave onto the open country. And barely were the words out of his mouth than they were sighted.

  “It’s him!” a voice bellowed from the corner. “It’s Benedict! And by Judas he’s got the woman with him!”

  “Lucky,” Benedict insisted stubbornly, then cut loose at a blocky, gun swinging figure with three rolling shots that ripped the night apart. The gunman fell and Benedict’s voice rang clear above the gun echoes. “Let’s go, Mrs. Arnell!”

  Go they did, storming from the alley mouth past the staring corpse and rushing away across the plains. A rifle opened up from behind, to be quickly joined by another. Then a chorus of Winchesters was booming out but the bullets were already dropping short as the escapees rode swiftly out of range.