“What makes you so sure he came here at all?”
“We picked up his trail east and followed it all the way to Teton Sioux Valley,” Benedict replied. “There’s nothing but wilderness beyond the valley, so it’s logical that he was making for here.”
“Logic,” the sheriff said. “That’s some fancy word, gunfighter. Words are important to you, huh?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m not a great man for words myself, but I pride myself that what I say carries weight.” He poked a hard finger at Benedict’s well-tailored torso. “I don’t like your looks, mister. I’ve never fancied gamblers or gunfighters and you’ve got the smell of both. We’ll be watching you close like I said, and the first time you even look like stepping out of line, you’re dead pigeons. Do I make myself clear?”
Duke Benedict stared down at the offending finger. Then he smiled widely and only Hank Brazos knew the significance of that smile; only he knew that behind his pose as a dude, Duke Benedict was one of the most dangerous men in the West, with a hair-trigger temper.
“Very clear, Sheriff,” Benedict said, still smiling. “Now, if there’s nothing else ...?”
“On your way,” Murdock said with a jerk of his thumb. And as they started for the door, added: “And—Texican, keep that dog under control, hear? I don’t allow troublesome hounds in my town neither.”
“Whatever you say, Sheriff,” replied Brazos, his smile every bit as phony as Benedict’s, as shoulder to shoulder they sallied out into the street, the focal point of a hundred watchful eyes.
“Nice friendly town,” Brazos muttered with heavy irony as they untied their horses. His cowboy grin came easier then as he glanced both ways to see the watching faces at the windows. He chuckled, the harmonica slung around his muscular neck by a thin strip of rawhide catching the sun. “Ever had the feelin’ you don’t exactly fit in, Yank?”
“As Alfred de Musset so eloquently put it, ‘How glorious it is—and how painful—to be an exception—’”
Brazos’ brow rutted. He had trouble following Benedict at the best of times, doubly so when he started quoting from what he called ‘the classics.’
“What’s that mean, Yank?”
Benedict paused before replying, his gray eyes raking the street. Babylon was a solid, handsome town with lofty storefronts and a red brick bank. It should be the sort of town where a pleasure-loving young swashbuckler could feel at home, even if he were engaged in the dangerous business of bounty hunting. Yet with the intimidating presence of the four lawmen watching them in stony silence from the jailhouse porch, with the watching faces, and the air of tension that was almost thick enough to feel, sunny Babylon seemed chill, strangely menacing ...
Benedict had intended checking into the hotel right away and enjoying the luxury of a tub, shave and breakfast to ease the trail kinks out of his lean frame. But sighting the batwings of the Longhorn, he changed his mind.
“It means, Johnny Reb,” he drawled, leading his horse away, “that it’s time for a drink.”
Hank Brazos could and mostly did, argue with his trail partner on just about every topic under the sun, but the next time they argued about taking a drink would be the first.
Chapter Two – Beat the Drum Slowly
THE TIN IN which Patsy Hanlon kept his gold dust was six feet away from where he stood by his hearth, glaring at the unwelcome visitors the dusk had brought. His rifle, cleaned and oiled and loaded for instant use, stood against the wall three feet away. Hanlon made a desperate choice between them and leapt for the gun.
“You blood-suckin’ varmints!” the gutsy little prospector shouted and snatched the weapon up.
They were all taken by surprise, even Slade Slattery. They had sized the runty miner up as a tough little old-timer, but he should have had more damned sense than to throw down on four gun hung young hellions.
But odds didn’t concern Patsy Hanlon in that blazing moment. He’d smelt the outlaw stench on these four strangers even before they had calmly informed him they had come to rob him. Stung by outraged indignation and supported by a formidable nerve, he got his rifle up and jerked trigger before Slattery’s six-gun could come into play.
Hanlon’s bullet hummed past an astonished Jack Weston’s shoulder, thudding into the roughhewn doorjamb behind him. And then Hanlon was staggering backwards under the brutal impact of Slattery’s shot, the rifle jarring from his hands. Shot after shot came in a continuous rolling roar, until the hammer clicked on an empty shell casing and old Patsy Hanlon lay still on the floor in a spreading pool of crimson—dead six times over.
Reloading his smoking gun, the hawk-faced Slattery said admiringly, “Gutsy, real gutsy. Get the dust, Jack.”
As Jack Weston gingerly stepped over the corpse, Slattery turned to see henchmen Tarp Hilder and Rod Crowdy staring at him in awe.
“What’s the matter, boys?” he asked mockingly. “Been away from the real thing so long you’ve lost your stomach for it.”
It was true that Crowdy and Hilder, like Slattery himself, had only recently been released from long sentences in the State penitentiary, but it wasn’t that they were squeamish about the bloody business that had just taken place. They were merely worried about what Tom Sudden would say about it.
Crowdy admitted as much and Slattery just grinned. “We’re goin’ to need dinero to make it to Babylon,” he said easily. “Anyways, what Tom don’t know won’t hurt him, huh?”
Crowdy and Hilder exchanged a glance as Weston handed Slattery the rancher’s poke. They were on their way to Paradise Flats to join up with the newly released Tom Sudden and Kid Cimarron before riding west to look up their old acquaintances, the Murdock brothers of Babylon, who had been responsible for sending all six to prison. They regarded Sudden as their natural leader and were loyal to him in a way they could never be towards the viciously unstable Slade Slattery. They had been against robbing the prospector and knew how Sudden would react if he should hear about it, for he did not want to advertise his vengeful arrival in Babylon.
They finally nodded to each other in silent agreement. Why tell Tom something he didn’t need to know, particularly when the lethal Slattery was subtly warning that they had better keep it to themselves?
The gold was worth no more than ninety dollars. Ninety dollars for a man’s life. Yet that was high by Slattery’s standards. Slade Slattery had killed men for nothing at all. He expected the money to sustain him until it was time to kill again. He expected that to be soon.
In the back room of Pearl’s Saloon, Tom Sudden changed into a clean linen shirt and knotted a cravat in the last dregs of daylight. He hadn’t worn a linen shirt or a neckerchief in three years. The linen felt good against his skin but the cravat was oddly constricting.
From the mirror the image of his prison-pale face, coal-black hair and sea green eyes gazed back at him. He had been an easy smiling man once, this tall, lean-bellied man whom many in the Valley of the Teton Sioux had come to regard as a harmless, hell-raising cowpoke, but now whenever he attempted a smile it didn’t quite come off.
He had lost three years of his life, his girl, and the ability to laugh at life. Bourne Murdock had a lot to answer for.
He put on the plain leather vest Pearl O’Toole had bought him and buckled on his gun rig. Then he poured two fingers of rye whisky from Pearl’s private supply and rinsed it in his mouth, savoring it before swallowing.
Sudden closed his eyes and for the moment gave himself up to the simple, sensual pleasure of the feel of whisky in his belly. He had never been a heavy drinker but had always dearly loved the taste of good whisky. There had been nights, locked in that stone cage of State Prison, when he would have given an arm for a shot of rye, his life for the taste of the free wind against his face again ...
He drained his glass and went through to the saloon.
The big oil-lamps had just been lit and the professor had taken his place at the open-topped piano to warm up the blustery Wyoming night with a
noisy rendition of Yellow Sky. Sudden walked past the drinkers at the bar, the faro layouts and the glittering wheel with his slow, heavy stride and men watched him covertly.
They all knew Tom Sudden in Paradise Flats. They remembered him from the good old days when he used to stop off here to see Pearl on his way to or from some reckless enterprise or another. Good-looking Tom with his ready laugh and easy ways had always been a welcome visitor to Paradise Flats. And what did they care if some said that Sudden didn’t earn every dollar honestly, that he was too quick with his fists and his guns to suit other men? Whenever he came to Paradise Flats, either alone or with some of his ‘boys,’ Sudden had been quick with a joke or a dollar for a man down on his luck and that had been all that really mattered.
But this pale-faced man with shoulders and arms thickened from three years busting rocks in the State Prison wasn’t the Tom Sudden they’d known and liked. This man was a stranger, the kind whose arrival stilled laughter, not started it like in the good old days.
Pearl O’Toole sat at her private table with the chandelier lights gleaming on her brassy blonde coiffure and striking small fires from her ringed fingers as she played her eternal game of solitaire. As hard and calculating as any woman had to be to survive in what was essentially a man’s preserve, Pearl had always been strangely vulnerable where Tom Sudden was concerned. That look was back in her eyes after three long years as he came towards the table from which she presided over her glittering domain.
“Why, Tom,” she said, her heart in her eyes, “you sure look handsome.”
“It’s the clothes, Pearl, not me. The Kid about?”
“I haven’t seen him for a while. Want a hand of stud, Tom?”
He shook his head as he leant against the wall by the table and gazed over the crowded room. She’d only had him back a few hours and yet Pearl already felt he’d gone away from her again.
“Tom,” she said softly after a silence.
“Yeah, Pearl?”
“Must you go back to Babylon?”
Sudden was saved the necessity of answering by the arrival of Kid Cimarron. The Kid, who had been released from the prison with Sudden four days earlier, was thirty years of age but still had the look of a guileless boy with just the suggestion of devil in his blue eyes. Courteous as always in the presence of ladies, Cimarron doffed his hat to Pearl and allowed as how she looked “Mighty fetchin’ tonight,” before turning to Sudden.
“The boys are here, Tom. Just seen ’em comin’ in over the rim.”
Tom Sudden nodded in satisfaction, seemingly unaware of the quick fear in the woman’s eyes. The ex-convict knew they would be expecting him in Babylon, but once freed, he’d taken his time. He had waited three years; he could delay a few more days to gather his friends about him. Slattery, Crowdy, Hilder and Weston had all been released at different times over the past six months, but before they’d walked out of the State Prison, they had shaken hands with Tom Sudden and told him they would be ready to join him at a moment’s notice when he got out. He’d sent out the wires the day he and Cimarron had been released. Four telegrams. They had brought in four men. That was the kind of loyalty Tom Sudden had always been able to count on. As the Babylon Gazette lamented at the time of his trial, “Had this man only seen fit to use his undoubted gifts in a lawful, productive way, there might have been no limit to his success.”
A short time later the batwings swung inwards and Slade Slattery walked in with his powerful, cat-like tread, followed by Hilder, Crowdy and Weston. The reunion was boisterous as such things by tradition mostly were, and Pearl O’Toole felt moved to set up the first round of drinks on the house.
In acknowledgement of her gesture, the desperadoes drank their first toast to her, yet even as their eyes appraised her with the hungry, calculating look she knew so well, Pearl could sense their attention rapidly drifting. As yet they weren’t discussing what had brought them together again, or what they meant to do, but these things dominated them. It was in their voices, in their silences, in the quick, expectant way they watched Sudden every time he spoke or moved.
Pearl’s knuckles showed white as she gripped the bar. She’d never met these four before, had only learned from Sudden that all had been sent to prison by the Murdocks for various crimes she didn’t want to know about. Yet watching them standing there with her Tom Sudden, Pearl, who had seen it all, reckoned she knew them well enough. The breed at least. And they weren’t ‘her Tom’s’ kind.
“Another, boys?” she asked automatically when their glasses were empty.
“Why surely, Miss Pearl,” replied Slattery. “But this time it’s my treat.” He drew a small canvas sack from his pocket and tossed it carelessly on the bar. “Take it out of that, blue-eyes.”
Sudden interrupted what he was saying when he saw Pearl pouring a little gold dust onto the scales kept for just such a purpose. He watched the sack go back into Slattery’s hand, then disappear into his pocket before he spoke.
“How’d you come by that, Slade?”
“Struck a little show out in the Breaks with Tarp here,” Slattery replied easily. “Right, Tarp?”
“Right, Slade,” Tarp Hilder replied, hefting his glass. “To you, Miss Pearl.”
Pearl watched Slattery’s hand as he lifted the glass. Not a corn or a callus marked the sleek, supple fingers. Her eyes cut to Sudden and she saw that he too had noted this. But he didn’t say anything.
There was a silence now, an expectant silence that the woman didn’t understand until Tom Sudden, his fresh drink untouched on the mahogany before him, said quietly:
“The bigger they are ...”
“The harder they fall,” chimed in four voices.
“And big Bourne Murdock ...”
“Will fall hardest of all.”
They all looked at each other, no longer smiling now, and Pearl O’Toole was shut out. The little piece of doggerel was something they used to recite on freezing jailhouse nights when the mournful winds moaned around the dripping gray walls of the State Penitentiary and it was necessary for caged and bitter men to give themselves something to hang onto, something to make the waiting tolerable. The small ritual had always worked, but never more so than now when all that lay between them and Bourne Murdock was not stone and steel, but merely distance.
Tom Sudden was ready to go now; it showed in his eyes.
“Drink up,” he said, and his voice was not unlike that of an army commander readying his men for battle.
The green eyes, bleak and distant now, turned to Pearl as she reached out with an unsteady hand and touched his wrist.
“Tom,” she pleaded, “why go back there?”
“It’s my home, Pearl.”
“Not any longer, Tom. Not with the law against you.”
“Law?” Sudden challenged in a bitter voice. “That’s just the point, Pearl. It wasn’t the law that threw me into the State Pen, but a man with reason to want me out of the way. Murdock framed me, Pearl. I said that at my trial, but I doubt anybody believed me. The judge certainly didn’t. But it was the truth, sure enough. Oh, I’d done some wild things in my time, I’ll allow, and some I’m none too proud of. But one thing I never did was run thirty beeves off the Box Star ranch that night the Murdocks arrested me. Bourne Murdock framed me, Pearl, and I’m going back to prove it. I’ll bring him down.”
“Into the dirt where he belongs,” confirmed Slattery, and emptied his glass at a gulp.
“Tom,” Pearl said, “even if this story is true—”
“What the hell does that mean, Pearl?” Sudden said angrily, jerking his hand away. “Did I ever lie to you?”
“No, Tom, never,” she had to confess. “So you were framed. What does that matter now? You’ve served your time and the Murdocks are stronger than ever in Babylon. What can you hope to achieve back there?”
“Justice,” said Tom Sudden. “That’s all I want, Pearl, no more and no less.” His voice dropped to a low pitch, and he spoke like a man who had
ground something into himself so deeply there was no letting go. “I want justice ...”
He believed every word, Pearl realized, watching his face. But then she glanced at the others and their looks were not like Sudden’s. In their eyes, even in the eyes of personable Kid Cimarron, there lurked little red lights of hatred, and violence held on a leash.
She clutched at Sudden as she came around the bar, no longer caring about her dignity nor the curious eyes of her customers who were seeing a new Pearl O’Toole.
“Tom,” she cried desperately, “can’t you see? They don’t want justice. You might be innocent but they surely aren’t. They’re going with you to get vengeance, Tom. Look at them and you’ll see it for yourself. They won’t be content with merely proving Murdock unjust, even if it were possible. They want more, Tom. You must know that.”
Sudden didn’t pull away from her, but he was as remote as a granite statue.
“They’re my pards, Pearl,” he said woodenly. “Murdock’s got his brothers, I’ve got my pards.”
“Tom—?’
“Enough, Pearl. It’s time.” The stone went out of his body then and he bent to kiss her just like the old days, lightly, warmly, the kiss of a good friend who would never again be a lover. “Thanks for everything, Pearl,” he smiled and was gone, walking from her saloon and her life without a backward glance.
Her Tom was gone, and the words wrenched inside her. “Her Tom.” Her mouth twisted as she turned to the shelves of bottles and polished glasses. He had never been hers, though perhaps once in the early days he may have been close. But she had lost him, first to the dark-haired girl he still plainly loved, then she had lost him to the hungry maw of the State Penitentiary for three long years, and now she was going to lose him again. Only this time it would be the last time.
She would lose him to Death.
If the Murdocks didn’t kill him, his wild friends would.
Of that she was certain.
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