Benedict and Brazos 26

by E. Jefferson Clay

  Walker smiled and was about to reply when light footsteps sounded from the parlor. Benedict turned casually, then found himself staring like any country yokel sighting his first girl after too long out in the tall timber. He was being as obvious as a tarantula on a soda biscuit, but he couldn’t help it, for a connoisseur of the fair sex like himself simply never expected to meet somebody like her in a place like Babylon.

  The girl who stood before him brightened the apothecary’s shop in a vivid green velvet dress that was drawn taut across her full breasts, sweeping full-skirted about her hips to her slender ankles. She was in her mid-twenties but her skin still held that pale, clear texture of the very young. Strikingly handsome rather than pretty, she had a poised, faintly arrogant look to her, cool, a little melancholy perhaps, but

  completely confident. Her chestnut hair was piled high in the latest mode and she wore a faint trace of powder.

  Remembering his manners belatedly, Benedict swept off his hat and bowed.

  “Madam, forgive me for staring the way I did, but indeed for a moment there I imagined myself to be confronted by a living reproduction of a Renaissance painting.”

  She accepted the florid compliment as though it were no more than her due, but behind her cool mask, Benedict sensed she was pleased by the flattery, as any woman should be if she were only honest enough to admit it.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she said, and surprised him again, for her voice was deep and cultivated.

  Then Benedict received his third and biggest surprise in a row when the apothecary spoke behind him.

  “This is Mr. Benedict. Mr. Benedict, may I present Mrs. Murdock?”

  He was reaching for her hand before it registered. He halted. “Mrs. Murdock?”

  “Mrs. Bourne Murdock,” she smiled. “I’m the sheriff’s wife. I believe you have already met my husband?”

  The last time it had happened was when Duke Benedict bumped into former Confederate Sergeant Hank Brazos in peacetime Kansas a year after their respective units had tried to annihilate each other at a place called Pea Ridge, Georgia. It happened again now. Duke Benedict was momentarily at a loss for words.

  Chapter Four – Black Sheep With a Big Gun

  HE WAS THE black sheep of the family and looked mean enough to have still rated that distinction had he belonged to the Borgia clan. He was no wider than a barn door and didn’t look any tougher than a grizzly bear roused from hibernation. Indeed, with his coarse black beard tossing in the dusty wind and his voluminous duster flapping about his legs, he looked more like a bear than a man, but for the gun he carried. Grizzlies didn’t pack big, polished double-barreled Greener shotguns, and the man called Canada Smith was never seen abroad without his.

  The hot Colorado wind that played with his hair and beard blew dust across the new graves. There were seven new graves in the tiny Boothill outside Trailtown, five full-sized, two the graves of children. The markers were of wood and each carried the name of Smith.

  Smith. The most common name in the book. None of the lawmen who had come to Trailtown to investigate the bloody massacre that had briefly put the tiny Colorado township on the map had connected the name with Canada Smith, while nobody in town had known that he was part of the family. Canada had been booted out of the paternal home long before the Smiths had shifted to Trailtown, and when one had a son or brother like Canada it wasn’t bragged about.

  His father, a giant, Bible-quoting and fearsomely righteous patriarch of the old school, had finally given his eldest son his marching orders following the demise of a neighbor. The neighbor had died suddenly when Canada had shoved a shotgun under his chin and pulled both triggers following an argument over a half ounce of tobacco. He hadn’t been called Canada then, but had acquired the nickname when forced to seek sanctuary from the law north of the border.

  That had been eight years ago. In eight years, Canada Smith had never contacted his family and there had been no way they could reach him. They followed their diligent, lawful way of life down here in Colorado while Canada lived like a hermit in the snowy wastes of Canada, living off what he shot, making a little money panning for gold, occasionally blowing some French trapper or redcoat out of his boots just because he couldn’t avoid killing any more than could a timber wolf.

  But through all those years, Canada had carried a faded picture of his folks with him and looked at it often. It was as though he frequently needed assurance that he had indeed sprung from human stock and was not ‘more animal than man’ as his critics often alleged. Deep in his brutal, shaggy breast, the wild man had a few glimmers of genuine feeling, and they had all been centered down there in that plain, white-painted house on the edge of town.

  The house that stood empty now with the dusty winds whispering about the eaves.

  It was to this house that the man Billy Quinn had come in his role as a book salesman, first to meet and ultimately to seduce the fifteen year old sister who had just started school when Canada Smith left home. Father Smith had given Quinn a horse whipping in the town square, but after a month convalescing, Billy Quinn had returned to that house to exact his revenge, to wipe out the entire family with a Winchester repeater while they sat at supper.

  All of them ...

  Even Canada Smith, who was probably as close to the primitive as a man could get, still found it hard to understand. Why had Quinn murdered them all ... down to little Roger and Betty, just eleven and seven years old?

  The only explanation that made sense was that the man was crazy. Yet how could a madman be clever enough to elude the law so thoroughly as Billy Quinn seemed to have done?

  His ponderous hand moved to draw a newspaper from the deep pocket of the duster. The copy of the Archangel Star bore that day’s date. Smith had picked it up on his way through to Trailtown. It was folded open to the short article on page three reporting that two men hired by the marshal’s office as bounty hunters had written Marshal Jackson that they had tracked Quinn to Teton Sioux Valley, Wyoming and were hopeful of locating him in a place called Babylon. The Star felt certain it was echoing the sentiments of every citizen in the county when it wished the bounty hunters success.

  The report was brief but it took Smith a long time to read it, for his mental processes were slow and deliberate. In truth, Canada Smith seldom entertained more than one major idea in his brain at the one time, but once an idea was lodged there, it was almost impossible to shift.

  The thought that had preoccupied him all the way down from Alberta, and which held him now, was as simple as could be. It had a name, and the name was vengeance.

  He said goodbye to them all at the graveside: Pa, Mom, Harry, Bernice, Julie, Roger and Betty. Their names, so long since he’d spoken them aloud, sounded strange in his ears.

  Then he went to his horse and rode away, staring steadfastly ahead.

  “Know who I am, sonny?” the gray-headed old-timer asked the bigger of Babylon’s two strangers.

  Hank Brazos gave the man a hard look. It was getting towards the end of a long hard day. He’d been on the go since first light, hawking a dodger and a name around the streets of Babylon and getting nothing but blank stares or ‘what’s a fine upstandin’ young Texican like you doin’ in a dirty business like that?’ kind of reaction. Things hadn’t improved much when he’d waited half an hour at the diner for Benedict before attacking a pie that had given him indigestion, then had Benedict stroll in casually with the best-looking female Hank Brazos had seen outside the Lone Star and casually inform him that she was the sheriff’s wife. Since then the day had lacked charm for him, and about the best that could be said for it was that the outlaws from the State Penitentiary hadn’t shown up yet.

  It definitely hadn’t been the sort of day calculated to put an easy-going Texas cowboy in the most amiable frame of mind.

  “Know who I am?” the old-timer repeated, in the Nugget Saloon.

  “Let me guess,” growled Brazos from behind his beer. “You’re Davy Crockett and them Mexicans
never nailed you at the Alamo after all.”

  The oldster chuckled. “You got a sharp tongue there, sonny. Nope, I’m Old Boomer. I’m the jasper what heard you comin’ yesterday mornin’ and put the sheriff on the alert.”

  “Mister, this might come as a surprise, but that information don’t make me warm to you none.”

  “Never expected it to, sonny,” the old woodcutter said. “Truth is, when I seen you here tonight I figured as how I’d say I was sorry I caused you a little trouble. Guess we was all kinda jittery, thinkin’ you was with Tom Sudden.”

  “How do you know we ain’t?”

  “Nah, you ain’t got the look.”

  “What look is that?” Hank Brazos wasn’t much interested in Tom Sudden, but around Babylon the subject was as hard to avoid as buckshot from a scattergun.

  “Why, the outlaw look, of course.”

  “You’re sayin’ this Sudden pilgrim is an outlaw? You’re the first hereabouts I’ve heard come right out with it.”

  “No, not Tom. The fellers he’s bringin’ with him.”

  “How do you know he’s bringin’ anybody with him—that’s if he even shows?”

  “On account the governor of the State Pen wrote the sheriff and let him know he’d heard Sudden was teamin’ up with some old prison pards before headin’ home is why, sonny. As for him showin’, you can bet on that. He used to do a little cuttin’ with me when he was younger, did Tom. Good boy, strong as a bull and mebbe a little wild. But one thing you could be sure of, when he said somethin’, he meant it.”

  Brazos turned his wide back to the bar and leant against it. His hat was thrust to the back of his head and his tousled hair gleamed like gold under the lights. He wasn’t looking testy or bored any longer, for like it or not, he was finding himself developing an interest in the stories surrounding Sudden, particularly since meeting the sheriff’s wife.

  “Tell me about Sudden and Sheriff Murdock’s wife,” he said.

  Old Boomer glanced sharply about him, the way people here had the habit of doing before discussing Babylon’s peacekeepers. Then he edged closer and spoke in a lower voice.

  “Tom Sudden was loco about that gal, big feller, don’t let nobody tell you different. Seems to me I seen a big change in Tom after he started squirin’ Tara about—that was her name then, Tara Clanton. They sure enough made a handsome couple, always laughin’ and joshin’ together. Not like when she was with the sheriff. Our sheriff ain’t what you’d call a laughin’ kind of man.”

  “So I noticed. But the sheriff won that good-lookin’ woman when Sudden went off to jail, huh?”

  “That’s how it went.” Old Boomer rubbed his chin whiskers, frowning. “Folks say as how she would have waited for young Tom, only Bourne Murdock kinda pushed her into sayin’ yes, but somehow I got my doubts. Purty as a heart flush that Tara Murdock, but she never exactly struck me as the waitin’ kind. Matter of fact, I always thought she showed just a mite flighty.”

  That gave Hank Brazos something to chew over as he finished his beer, for he hadn’t been much taken with a married woman taking cups of coffee with strangers the way Tara Murdock had with Benedict that day. Of course, he reflected darkly, glancing across to the poker layout where his partner was buying two cards in an attempt to fill an inside straight, it was no more than he might have expected of Benedict. Put a handsome woman in his sights and Harvard-educated, gunslinging Duke Benedict was no longer a man to be relied upon.

  Old Boomer gabbed on for a while, but finally drifted off when he realized Brazos was paying him no attention.

  The Texan didn’t even realize the old woodcutter had gone. With his half-empty glass in his hand and his dog sleeping amongst the cigar butts at his feet, the big Texan was looking inward. Life was getting complicated, he thought. Seemed he’d never felt this way in the old days. Everything had been straight-forward back in Texas. If he wanted money he took a job for a spell. If he wanted to drink he drank and woke up sick as a dog next day. And if he wanted trouble, why even a man his size could score a fight in just about any old saloon any time he wanted ...

  Nostalgia had the one-time Texas cowpuncher in its grip, but like nostalgia mostly does, it paid no dues to reality. It wasn’t the long trails with Benedict or the necessity to take on jobs like this one that had changed the Brazos character and the Brazos way of life forever. Four years of shot and shell they called the War Between the States could take credit for that. It had taken four years to turn a young Texan into a restless drifter who could never be content with a place like tiny Frog Hollow again; that long for him to find a partner to ride the trails with, who, regardless of the fact that he might be vain as a peacock and sometimes as unreliable as a ten-cent clock, was still the best fighting man Henry Houston Brazos had ever met, still the ingredient that lent zest even to a crusade like the hunt for bloody Billy Quinn.

  A slow smile touched Brazos’ generous mouth. He was feeling positive again now as he lifted his glass. They would win through here, regardless of homecoming hellions, a quartet of flint-hard badge packers and a killer’s seemingly stone-cold trail, he told himself. They always did. The old team ...

  Benedict and Brazos ...

  Unaware of the generous thoughts coming his way from across the room, Benedict raked in yet another winning pot with one hand and gently stroked the soft upper arm of copper haired Angela Cord with the other.

  The girl and the game occupied Benedict completely as he signaled the dealer to deal them around again. He had the knack of forgetting the day’s problems when night came down and it had been no trouble at all to dismiss their lack of progress in the Quinn search, Brazos’ nervousness over Tara Murdock, or even the fact that the swamper had just whispered in his ear that Little Angela was Deputy Sheriff Morgan Murdock’s girl.

  As events turned out, he shouldn’t have brushed aside that last factor quite so casually. Angela Cord was small, lushly curved and flirtatious, it was true, but she was also a dangerous risk these days, despite her role as a saloon girl. The local blades gave red-lipped Angela a wide berth, and she had been delighted when the handsome Benedict had displayed no reluctance to share her company even after Biff Conway had whispered in his ear.

  She was beginning to think that Duke Benedict might be just what life in Babylon needed to give it a fillip, and was rubbing his neck fondly when Deputies Morgan and Stacey Murdock came in on their nine o’clock patrol.

  Things began to quieten in the Nugget right away, so quiet that a man could almost hear the slow red flush spreading over Morgan Murdock’s square-jawed face as he took in the scene at the poker table. That look said eloquently that even if Angela didn’t seem to know whose girl she was these days, there wasn’t any doubt in a certain deputy sheriff’s mind.

  “That dude again,” Morgan breathed to his brother. “This afternoon he walks Tara home, tonight he’s shinin’ up to Angela. By hell, I know a sure cure for that feisty breed.”

  “Take it easy, Morg,” Stacey cautioned, but his warning fell on deaf ears as slab-shouldered Morgan started forward. Big Morgan, whom Bourne sometimes chided for ‘doing his thinking with his fists,’ looked ready to do so again.

  Benedict saw the trouble coming and got ready to meet it. “Ah, Deputy Sheriff Murdock,” he welcomed with his flashing smile. “Any possibility of your taking a little time off duty and relaxing over a game of cards?”

  He could charm the birds when he chose, and he took a lot of the sting out of Morgan Murdock’s confrontation, though the big lawman was still riled enough to reach out and drop a heavy hand on his shoulder as he said:

  “Mister—!”

  That was it. No more. For at that moment a large sun-bronzed fist attached to a purple-shirted shoulder flashed into Benedict’s line of vision, there was a sound like an axe biting wet wood, and Morgan Murdock’s eyes rolled glassily as he tumbled floorwards, taking poker table, chips, bottles and cards with him as he went.

  Hank Brazos sucked a knuckle and said rig
hteously, “Man can’t go around roughin’ up citizens even if he is the law. Right, Yank?”

  “You ape!”

  Brazos’ honest glow faded. Here he was demonstrating that his loyalty was as reliable as ever despite a few sharp words earlier, but instead of gratitude, Benedict was staring at him as though he’d just robbed the poor box.

  “What’s the matter, Yank? I stopped him from beltin’ you one.”

  “Chucklehead!” snapped Benedict, and would have said more had not the batwings opened at that moment to admit the tall figure of the sheriff. The look on Bourne Murdock’s face as he came forward to study the wreckage was the kind that naturally silenced tongues, even an eloquent one such as Duke Benedict’s.

  Chapter Five – Jailer, Set Me Free

  THE FRONT OFFICE of the jailhouse where Bourne Murdock sat writing in the charge book was square, sparsely furnished and austere as a monk’s cell. At one end a wooden bench for miscreants and visitors stood against the spotlessly whitewashed wall. At the opposite end, the seat of justice, a hard, flat-topped desk, faced it. A stove that gleamed, a locked rifle rack containing four polished repeating Winchesters and a shotgun and a vast noticeboard ornamented with wanted posters, completed the furnishings.

  The spartan jailhouse reflected the Murdocks’ way of life, as did also their compound of ruthlessly neat cottages on Joshua Street. They had been reared hard and without luxuries and didn’t indulge in them now, even though their womenfolk protested at times. Not Stacey’s wife Addie, so much as Tara. Bourne Murdock indulged his beautiful wife regarding clothes and personal effects, but he refused to turn their home into something made of plush and velvet like, as he said, the ‘reception room of a whorehouse.’

  Hard men with hard ways. But fair. Bourne Murdock had suspended Morgan for a week without pay for starting the trouble at the Nugget, and he wouldn’t have jailed the bounty hunters had Brazos not floored Morgan with a mighty right hook.