She glanced away, refusing to meet his eyes. She was seated on a low, crumbling wall with the moonlight glittering on the creek behind her. Hunkered at Quinn’s side with his hat thrust back, Brazos reached for his makings as he studied her profile keenly.
“You tried to get Benedict killed or jailed, ma’am,” he accused. “Why?”
Tara shook her head. “That was a lie.”
“One hell of a lie,” he agreed.
Now she turned to Benedict. “Not my lie, Duke—Bourne’s. I never told him that outrageous story. The first I heard of it was last night when he returned home.”
“You’re saying the sheriff made up that story himself?” Benedict demanded. “Why?”
“He hates you, Duke. Bourne is insanely jealous, and simply because you and I have been friendly, he was convinced we were having an affair. He means to murder you with the help of his brothers. He won’t gunfight you fairly. They’ll try to kill you before morning. The story about your attacking me has turned the town against you. Bourne will tell Babylon after you’re dead that you attacked me again, or some such tale. They will accept it, and that will be the end to it.”
Brazos rubbed his jaw. “Funny thing, ma’am, your husband strikes me as a mighty hard man, but not a liar.” Benedict said with ominous quietness, “I must agree.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me, Duke?” Tara asked, facing him squarely, looking tragically beautiful in the moonlight.
Benedict hesitated. He wanted to believe her, but found it hard. He was saved the necessity of answering when Billy Quinn groaned, opened his eyes and looked around.
“What ... where am I?” He blinked as recollection came flooding back, then winced as pain shot through his head. Brazos took him roughly by the shoulder and dragged him into a seated position against the wall. “Hey, go easy, Brazos,” Quinn panted. With the terrible fury burnt out of him, he was just another man, almost a child in the giant Texan’s grip.
“Like you went easy on them folks back in Trailtown, Colorado, killer?” Brazos rumbled. Disgust showed in his features as he studied his man. “How could anybody kill like that? Women and kids ...”
“Simple, Johnny Reb,” murmured Benedict. “He’s crazy. You saw how he fought us.”
Brazos touched his tender belly, then massaged his aching jaw. “Yeah, I saw.” The blue eyes flicked to Tara who was watching Quinn with a strange absorption. “Still don’t believe it, ma’am?”
“I never shall. Never.”
“Never can be a long time. So now we come to the heart of things, Mrs. Murdock. What are you and this butcher-boy doin’ meetin’ here this time of night?”
She answered without hesitation. “I thought you may have guessed by now.”
“Perhaps we’re a little slow, Tara,” Benedict said, his expression unreadable behind a cloud of cigar smoke. “You tell us.”
Tara clasped her hands in her lap and sat with her back very straight. “I live in terror of my husband. Everybody believes Bourne Murdock is a fine, honorable man of the law—by far the best of the Murdocks. But he’s not. He’s a brute and a monster and I regret the day I agreed to marry him. I’ve tried to leave him twice and each time he’s caught me and brought me back. I’ve been desperate. Nobody would help me, nobody had the courage ... until one night Bourne beat me and I went to Bob’s shop for medication. Somehow I told him everything, and because he is a kind and gentle man, he took pity on me and agreed to try and help me escape.”
“Just out of the goodness of his heart?” Benedict asked.
“What are you implying, Duke?” she demanded regally.
What Benedict was implying was that Quinn may have had an ulterior motive in extending a helping hand to a lovely, distressed young woman. But Tara’s indignation was impressive enough to knock that unworthy notion flat.
“Nothing, Tara,” he said. “Proceed.”
She shrugged. “That’s almost all. Tonight, after Bourne told me what he’d done, I realized I couldn’t endure it any longer, that I couldn’t stay around while he murdered you, Duke. I had to leave, now, tonight. I sent a message to Bob to meet me here. He had just agreed to buy a buggy and pair and drive me to the railhead at Fort Lucas when you came upon us.”
“Nothing but the gospel truth,” insisted Billy Quinn.
Benedict and Brazos ignored him. They might believe Tara Murdock, but not him. They knew they had their man. All that had to be decided was what their next move would be.
Moving out of earshot of Quinn and Tara, it didn’t take them long to decide. Regardless of Quinn’s capture, Sheriff Murdock was still certain to come against Benedict, whether openly and alone on Front Street at dawn, or murderously and by stealth with his brothers at night. Yet the solution was obvious. They had Quinn, and the trails were beckoning. They could be long gone come first light. There would be no confrontation with the Murdocks, no blood in the streets of Babylon.
“How about Tara?” Brazos asked.
Benedict stared across at the woman with shadowed eyes. He desperately wanted to believe all she had told them, and dearly wished he could simply say they would take her with them away from this place where she seemed so unhappy. But it was impossible. Were they to leave Babylon with the sheriff’s wife, Bourne Murdock would marshal the entire Teton Sioux Valley to hunt them down. The blood would surely flow and good men would die alongside bad and almost certainly amongst the dead would be Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos.
“What about her?” Benedict replied brusquely, then strode across to Quinn and hauled him to his feet. “Gag him, Brazos,” he ordered. “We’ve got to get horses and we can’t risk any noise.”
Tara got up swiftly. “You can’t do this, Duke.”
“I’m doing it, Tara.”
“I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
She did her best. Without warning, she began to scream. The scream was short lived. A long step carried Benedict to her, a short clipped punch to her lovely jaw dropped her across his arm.
Benedict’s face was haggard as he lowered her gently to the long grass. “I didn’t want to do that, Reb,” he panted. “Why did she scream?”
“Beats me. But then I never pretended to understand womenfolk.” Brazos looked towards the town. “Reckon anybody heard?”
Getting up, Benedict stood silently listening for a moment, then shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. Let’s go.”
Brazos drove the heel of his hand into Billy Quinn’s back, getting him started in the right direction. As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Benedict the cynic and womanizer blowing the unconscious woman a goodbye kiss on his fingers, the gesture so tender that it jolted him into realizing that Benedict had come to regard Bourne Murdock’s wife as more than just a casual, lovely acquaintance. Much more.
It was a funny world, all right, the Texan mused as he tramped along the trail behind five thousand dollars’ worth of killer on the hoof. Trouble was, nobody was laughing.
Chapter Eleven – Skein of Truth
FRONT STREET WAS awake by four-thirty, busy by five.
It was a long time since so many people had been abroad so early in Babylon, but this was no ordinary morning and nobody meant to miss the drama of dust, gun smoke and blood that was to be enacted for them come sunrise.
The ghouls were out in force, not much caring who won providing they saw blood spilt. But many were sober, honest citizens who deeply regretted that such an ugly thing could have come to pass in their fair town, yet who felt bound to be present in the fear that a win by Benedict would leave Babylon without a sheriff strong enough to combat the threat of the Sudden bunch. A few of them went along to root for Benedict and get ready to cheer when Bourne Murdock bit the dust.
The most boisterous of these had taken up a vantage point on the upper gallery of the Nugget Saloon where the girls were busy serving them early morning drinks. Tom Sudden was the only quiet one in the group, but Slattery and the others were sk
ylarking about as they killed time, jeering at the townsmen passing to and fro below.
The second bunch who stood to gain much by Murdock’s death occupied deep chairs on the same level as the rowdy Sudden bunch on the gallery of Nero Nash’s Longhorn Saloon. With blankets over their knees against the morning chill and nursing hot toddies, the members of the Railroad for Babylon Committee managed to conceal their eagerness as they waited. Nash already had Bourne Murdock dead and buried, and there was no way the Council would elevate any Murdock deputy to the sheriff’s chair until that deputy had come out in full support of the Wyoming and Western laying its railroad tracks to Babylon. If none of the Murdocks would agree to this, Nash had several candidates who would, and the Committee had the strength to get them elected. If Benedict ran second? They didn’t even think about that. Rumor had it that Duke Benedict was one of the fastest guns in the West.
The jailhouse became the focal point of the spectators’ attention as the first gray bar of light appeared in the eastern sky. There, behind shuttered windows and barred doors, Bourne Murdock was warming his hands before the pot-bellied stove and watching the hands of the Seth Thomas clock on the wall.
The sheriff had had a bad night. Not only had the prospect of facing a gunfighter at dawn troubled his sleep with dreams, but upon waking in the small hours, he’d found his wife missing. He had just roused his brothers to start a search when Tara returned with a strange story that she had been out trying to solicit help among the citizens to run Benedict and Brazos out of town before the gunfight could take place. Of course, she said, she had failed. The only men in town with guts enough to stand against a man like Benedict were Sudden and his men. And Bourne Murdock.
The sheriff looked at his hands. He had never been very fast, but seldom missed when he got a gun going. On good days he couldn’t miss. He wasn’t afraid. He wondered how Duke Benedict felt ...
His brothers were in attendance. They weren’t talkers, but they were gabby this morning. He was a fool to have agreed to a duel, they chided. That was hero stuff from dime novels. All he had to do was say the word and they would all walk down Front Street with him.
He never gave the word. It was a matter of honor and he’d agreed to fight it out to the death like a gentleman.
A rooster crowed. An excited, awed whisper ran down the street. It was sunrise. The time had come.
Bourne Murdock appeared on the jailhouse porch dressed in funereal black with his big Navy Colt resting in the holster strapped to his thigh. He stepped down into the deep dust of the street and looked both ways. There was no sign of his adversary, yet the menacing sphere of the red sun had already cleared the sway-backed spine of the mountains.
It was a taut and tense ten minutes before somebody was moved to go into the hotel and see if Duke Benedict had overslept. From that point it took less than one minute by the jailhouse clock for the news to run from one end of Front Street to the other. Benedict and Brazos had fled. There was a note saying they had caught Quinn and were taking him to Archangel.
Uproar!
Babylon was jubilant, with the exception of the stunned minority. The ordinary citizens had never wanted to see their sheriff gunned down, and soon they were breasting the bar at the Longhorn or the Nugget, drinking toasts to the best peace officer in Teton Sioux Valley and jeering at ‘yeller-bellied dude gunslingers.’
But within the hour, another change of mood was coming over the town. Uncertainty. From the saloon windows the drinkers could see Tom Sudden and his gang prowling Front Street with their guns sagging in their holsters and their brooding eyes flicking at the law office. It was suddenly brought home forcibly to Babylon that the Sudden bunch had been counting on Duke Benedict to be the instrument of their vengeance, but now they were back to where they had begun.
The atmosphere grew electric as the morning wore on. Babylon was like a powder keg, but who would be fool enough to touch off the spark?
Nobody knew who it was until later ... when it was much too late. But just after ten o’clock as Stacey and Virgil Murdock stood on one side of Front Street watching Slattery and Tarp Hilder tormenting a tethered mule, the main street rocked to the crash of a rifle and the front window of the law office exploded under the impact of a bullet.
That was the spark that started the flame that became a holocaust.
Billy Quinn the killer made swift work of his plate of beans in spite of the Winchester muzzle touching the back of his neck as he ate. They had untied his hands to eat when they stopped for chow, making camp at Antelope Canyon. They weren’t taking any chances with their prisoner.
Hank Brazos had little difficulty in wolfing his breakfast with one hand whilst keeping the forefinger of the other curved around a rifle trigger.
There were plenty of beans for Brazos and the prisoner, despite the fact that the Texan had only cooked up one can. They split Benedict’s share between them. Benedict seemed to have lost his appetite and was pacing to and fro before the small fire with a long Cuban cigarillo jutting from his teeth. Brazos belched shatteringly and the fact that Benedict didn’t even reprove him for his manners proved beyond doubt that the Yank’s thoughts were far away.
There was no prize for guessing where.
After sopping up the last of the bean juice with a hunk of pone, Brazos belched again, then sleeved his mouth and set down the rifle.
“Put your hands behind your back, Quinn,” he ordered.
“Judas, I’m just getting my blood to run again!” Reaching forward, Brazos grabbed the killer’s arms and jerked them roughly behind his back, causing Quinn to wince. The Texan didn’t enjoy what he was doing, but not for a moment was he about to forget that this slender young man in his sober apothecary’s suit was reputed to have murdered over twenty people.
With Quinn trussed up to his satisfaction, Brazos set about cleaning up the meal things. He scrubbed the tin plates with yellow creek sand and packed them away, then buried their scraps. Hank Brazos liked to leave a campsite the way he found it.
Quinn watched his industry with a sneer. “Big man,” he mocked softly. “Why, you’re nothing but a gofer. ‘Gofer this,’ Benedict says, ‘gofer that.’ And you do it like a well-trained hound-dog.”
“Tryin’ to drive a wedge twixt us, killer?” Brazos said astutely. “It won’t work. We’ve handled too many bloody-handed butchers like you to fall for those old tricks.”
“The great manhunters of the wild West!” Quinn jeered as Benedict paused to listen. He turned his head and spat, the killer’s nature beginning to blot out the apothecary’s character. “Some manhunters! You couldn’t find a stinkweed if it was in your moustache.”
“We found you,” Benedict remarked mildly.
“Dumb luck,” retorted Quinn, who had given up denying his identity. “But you didn’t even go close to finding out who framed Sudden.”
“Tweren’t our job,” said Brazos. “But who do you reckon did it?”
“I don’t ‘reckon,’ Texan, I know.” Quinn chuckled to himself. “Ah, but there’ll be hell to pay in that man’s town when it all comes out. And of course it will come out ... and the lead will surely fly. Matter of fact, I happen to know that Slade Slattery got a tip on Miller Jenner last night and they’re most likely following it up today.”
“Hold on there,” Brazos broke in. “What’s Jenner got to do with anythin’?”
“He’s Virgil Murdock’s friend of course.”
“So?” Benedict prompted.
Quinn smiled again. “See, I knew you didn’t have any idea, which proves it was dumb luck and not brains that let you catch me.”
“What does Virgil Murdock have to do with this alleged frame-up?” Benedict asked patiently.
“He staged it of course. Him and Jenner. They ran the Box Star beeves off that night and drove them to the Sudden place. Then they went back, gave the alarm and helped with the arrest.”
Brazos and Benedict exchanged glances. The internal affairs of Babylon were no longer of
urgent concern to them, but, because of their involvement with the Murdocks they were curious to know the true story.
Benedict said, “Why should Virgil Murdock frame Tom Sudden?”
Quinn stared at him with malicious pleasure. “You fell for her like a hog at slaughter time, didn’t you, Benedict? I saw that right from the start and it tickled me to think that you knew so little about her or those who had fallen for her before you.”
“You’re jumpin’ from point to point like a buffalo tick, Quinn,” said Brazos. “What does Mrs. Murdock have to do with this story of yours?”
Quinn let his words drop carelessly. “Virgil Murdock was in love with Tara. Unfortunately, so were Tom Sudden and big Bourne. Virgil was running a bad third. So he sat down and planned how to cut down the field. He framed Sudden and made it appear as though Bourne had done it. He expected Sudden to kill Bourne and for them to hang Sudden.” Quinn laughed aloud. “What do you think of that, Benedict?”
“I don’t believe it,” Benedict said.
“Sure you do, because you know it makes sense.” Quinn eased back against his log. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out the way Virgil hoped it would and when Sudden went to jail and Bourne married Tara, Virge threw in the towel and called it quits.”
Brazos rubbed his heavy jaw. “Mebbe that yarn’s got the ring of truth to it, eh, Yank?”
“Possibly. Where did you get this information, Quinn?”
“From Tara. Who else?” Quinn shrugged. “Yes, sir, it’s certainly going to be hell with all the fences down when that nasty little plot is uncovered. If Jenner squeals, Sudden will know he was framed and how, but of course he won’t believe Bourne wasn’t involved for he hates him so much over Tara. Bourne will learn that his brother plotted his death and by the time the gun smoke clears they may just decide to shovel Babylon under and mark it one big grave.”
Quinn looked up at them shrewdly.
“But of course none of that’s of any concern of you fellows. You’ve got what you came after. What matter to you if Babylon goes up in gun smoke?” He smiled wickedly at Benedict. “It’d be just too bad if Tara got caught up in it all but I suppose we have to face the possibility that she will ... she being the bone the dogs will fight over, so to speak ...”
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