Benedict and Brazos 19

by E. Jefferson Clay

  “Would it be reasonable to assume, Mr. Benedict, that you still harbor some resentment against those who were once your enemies?”

  “Please, Father,” Emma put in quickly, “surely there is no need to bring up things like that.”

  “It doesn’t bother me, Miss Emma,” Benedict replied in his clipped Eastern accent. His gaze travelled slowly around the room. There were pictures of army men in Confederate gray on the walls; a huge chromo of Jefferson Davis, the doomed South’s president; and a photographic portrait of Stanton Claiborne standing before a tent with General Robert E. Lee. Missouri was a long way from Tennessee, and the Civil War had been over for almost a year, but the atmosphere in this great house was as Southern as sorghum and molasses. Last night Stanton Claiborne had expressed his gratitude to the two men and had offered them the comforts of his house while they recovered from the rigors of the trail. Benedict, though he’d sensed empathy between them as former officers and products of a rich, cultured class, had also felt barriers rise between them when Claiborne discovered that Benedict had fought for the North.

  Now, bringing his gray eyes back to the cattleman, Benedict gave a small smile. “Colonel,” he said quietly. “I feel that the differences between North and South should be forgotten. Surely you agree that no good can come of perpetuating old grievances?”

  “That’s easy for a victor to say,” Claiborne replied stiffly. Then, with a small nod to his frowning daughter, “But, as my daughter suggests, perhaps such things are not matters for discussion at this particular time and place. Now, sir, are you certain we can’t tempt you with a little baked ham?”

  Benedict declined gracefully, and the atmosphere in the big room began to improve. The maid brought Brazos a heaped plate and the giant Texan attacked the food with gusto. In the five days since they’d set out after murderer Brady Monk, they’d eaten nothing better than hard tack and had slept either in the saddle or briefly in hard bedrolls. Sleeping under the stars had been harder on the fastidious Benedict, but the Texan, who had lived hard and rough all his life, had missed good food most.

  “You can sure put the fodder away, Hank,” Lonnie Claiborne said admiringly. The boy had a strip of plaster across his forehead where Monk had hit him with his gun barrel, but otherwise he looked little the worse for last night’s violence.

  “I always heard Texans were good on the—”

  “You will kindly be silent, sir!” Claiborne snapped at his son.

  Lonnie’s handsome face fell. “What for?”

  “You are still very much under a cloud, that is the reason, sir,” the rancher replied. “If it had not been for your disobedience in inducing your sister into accompanying you to the river last night, neither of you would have been placed in danger. I am most displeased with you, Master Lon.”

  The boy looked at Benedict and Brazos in anger and embarrassment. Both turned away. Lonnie stared at his grim-faced father for a long moment, then he suddenly hurled his table napkin down.

  “Who cares what you think, old man?”

  “Lonnie,” Emma cried, her face paling. “Please don’t start, Lonnie.”

  “Sound advice,” Claiborne said. “You well know that rudeness is not tolerated here at any time, a rule that applies doubly so when guests are present.”

  There was a crash as Lonnie kicked his chair back and lunged to his feet. His mouth twisted, the boy glared venomously at his father, then stamped from the room.

  With a hurried, “Excuse me,” Emma jumped up and rushed after her brother.

  Benedict and Brazos exchanged a silent look across the table, then they turned to Claiborne as he started to rise.

  “You must excuse me,” the rancher said, white-lipped in his anger. “That boy has to be—”

  “Don’t mean to tell you your business, Colonel,” Brazos cut in, “but back home in Texas when I broke yearlin’s to the reins, if one kicked wild and got his tail up, I always found it best to wait until he cooled off some afore tryin’ to gentle him.” He met Claiborne’s hard stare and shrugged. “Of course, like I said, I don’t mean to tell you your business.”

  His face expressionless, Benedict waited for Claiborne’s reaction. He was already aware, even after only ten hours at Shiloh Ranch, that there were difficulties between Yankee-hating Stanton Claiborne and his handsome, wild-eyed son. Claiborne seemed to treat Lonnie as a rebellious child. Though it was obvious to Benedict that the boy needed discipline and restraint, he’d sensed last night that his father was handing out more of both commodities than was necessary. Claiborne impressed him as an iron disciplinarian of the old school, and he wouldn’t have been surprised had the cattleman gone after his son with a bullwhip. He was relieved when Claiborne finally nodded to Brazos and sat down.

  “Perhaps you are right, Mr. Brazos,” he said stiffly. “Perhaps it is best to ...” His voice faded and he shrugged. “But enough of such things. I didn’t invite you to stay in my house to burden you with my private problems.” He looked at Benedict keenly. “A cigar, Captain Benedict?”

  For a moment Benedict was tempted to say that old military titles, like old hatreds, were best forgotten. But sensing that the ice might be melting a little, merely nodded gravely.

  “I would enjoy a cigar, thank you, Colonel.”

  “You don’t mind us smoking while you eat, do you, Sergeant?” Claiborne asked, snapping his fingers to the maid who brought a box of Havanas to the table.

  “Used to live next door to the boilin’-down works back home in Frog Holler,” Brazos grunted.

  Taking this as confirmation that Brazos didn’t object to their smoking, the cattleman presented Benedict with a cigar, then a light.

  The next thirty minutes passed comfortably with sunshine streaming through the east windows. Now, with the hunt for Brady Monk behind them, Benedict and Brazos could relax. They were curious about their host and his family, and in response to their show of interest, Stanton Claiborne was soon talking freely.

  The Claibornes had been a wealthy cotton family for generations, Stanton Claiborne’s great-grandfather having planted the first cotton seeds in Tennessee well before the turn of the century. When the Civil War began in 1861, the Claiborne estate was one of the biggest and richest in the South. A colonel in the Tennessee Militia and a personal friend of the South’s great leaders, Davis and Lee, Claiborne was one of many who believed the war would be over quickly, with victory for the South taken for granted. A year later, after bloody realities such as Bull Run, Harper’s Ferry and Fort Sumter, the South and Colonel Stanton Claiborne had second thoughts.

  When the Confederate army had fifteen thousand men taken prisoner at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February, 1862, Claiborne decided it was time for him to go to war personally. He was given his own regiment and fought with distinction. Then, in 1864, Grant’s blue legions smashed through the South, engulfing Shiloh, the great Claiborne plantation.

  With a small group of loyal soldiers, Claiborne infiltrated the Union lines and fought his way back to Shiloh, where he found his plantation laid waste, his wife murdered by renegade Federals, and his son wandering in a horrified trance among the ruins of the great house. His slaves were gone, all but the faithful old black mammy who had hidden his daughter and kept her safe in a corn cellar.

  It was plain then to Stanton Claiborne that the South was doomed to die. With his son and daughter and a small fortune in gold that he’d cached in a cottonfield before riding off with his regiment, Claiborne, disguised as a Yankee officer, worked his way west, arriving in Winchester County, Missouri, the same month the South surrendered at Appomattox courthouse.

  Like every other western State at the time, Missouri was cattle-rich and money-poor. Stanton Claiborne’s gold bought ten thousand acres of the finest cattle country in all of Missouri. Soon after that, he set about building an exact replica of his home in Tennessee.

  The Shiloh Ranch had prospered, the cattleman told his audience of two over coffee; but prosperity, it seemed, had
brought its own burdens to the colonel. Sounding more like a Southern autocrat than ever, Claiborne hinted in his arrogant, damn-them-to-hell manner that the citizens of Winchester County, almost exclusively Northern by persuasion, fiercely resented the success of Shiloh. However, Hank Brazos, loyal Southerner that he was, sensed it might be less the ranch’s success than Claiborne’s manner that had set the locals against him. Even when talking to Benedict, to whom he felt indebted at the moment, Claiborne couldn’t conceal his enmity completely, so one could well imagine what his manner would be like with others who were neither cultivated gentlemen like Benedict nor on the credit side of the rancher’s ledger.

  The conversation drifted around to Lonnie and Emma, but before Claiborne’s house guests could hear a great deal about the wild boy and his lovely sister, ranch foreman Buck Morrow was ushered into the room by the houseboy.

  A burly, thick-necked Tennessean who had served with Claiborne in the war, Morrow exchanged nods with Benedict and Brazos, then asked Claiborne if he could come to the stables where one of his blood mares was about to foal.

  “I shall be along immediately, Buck,” Claiborne replied, and when the man went out, he rose and went to the sideboard for his hat. It was a white panama, the sort of hat rich planters had worn like a badge of honor throughout the South’s era of wealth and grace, a period such as America would never see again. Claiborne waved his guests back to their seats as they rose politely. “Please have some more coffee, gentlemen,” he insisted.

  Claiborne started for the door and then paused. It was obvious that what he said next came hard to his proud nature.

  “Gentlemen, perhaps I was a little brusque last night and possibly I was that way with you again this morning, Captain Benedict. But that is my nature and I want you to know I’m truly grateful to you. Though you were indirectly responsible for that butcher coming to Shiloh, I know that but for you I would almost certainly have lost my children last night.” He cleared his throat. “You are my honored guests here as a result of your bravery, and I want you to understand that I would consider it an honor and a privilege if you could see your way clear to remain here with us for some time so that we may demonstrate our gratitude in full measure.”

  With that off his chest, the tall, impressive man gave a courtly bow, then turned to salute the giant chromo of Jefferson Davis before placing the planter’s hat on his magnificent head of silver hair, and striding out. To Benedict it seemed that for a moment he could hear, muted and distant, the stirring strains of “Dixie.”

  Seated on the long front gallery, Hank Brazos put a match to his Bull Durham cigarette and grunted.

  “Well, what do you reckon, Yank?”

  “Eh? What’s that?” Benedict’s manner was vague as his gaze drifted over Stanton Claiborne’s kingdom of grass, men and cattle.

  Sucking smoke deep into his iron-ribbed barrel of a chest, the Texan made a gesture that embraced all the green and gold stretched before them. “I mean about Claiborne’s offer to stay on a spell. A man could do a power worse, it seems to me.”

  Benedict’s expression was thoughtful as he leaned against a colonnade. What Brazos was proposing entailed more than remaining on at the Shiloh Ranch for a few days. The unlikely partnership between the educated son of a rich Boston banker and an illiterate Texas cowboy had followed an erratic yet strangely durable course for almost a year, but when they had set out after killer Brady Monk, Benedict had announced that this would be their last trail together. Duke Benedict had wider fields to conquer and the giant Texan, despite being a tower of strength in a dangerous situation, would only slow him down.

  Because running down a butcher of Monk’s caliber was such an uncertain thing, Benedict had made no hard and fast plans for the immediate future. Now that the time to do so was at hand, the gambler-gunfighter felt a strange reluctance to ride off on his own.

  He pondered over this as he watched figures emerge from the big red barn some fifty yards away, and he told himself with a self-mocking little smile, that perhaps his reluctance was due to all the talk of war and glory in the dining room. On a crimson ridge in Georgia several months before the war’s end, a Union force under a youthful captain, and a Rebel band commanded by a hulking Rebel sergeant, had fought over a shipment of Confederate gold that had ultimately fallen into the hands of the infamous Rangle’s Raiders. At the end of that day of carnage, the sole survivors of one hundred and fifty men, Confederate Sergeant Hank Brazos and Union Captain Duke Benedict, had shaken hands in a crimson twilight before going their separate ways. A bond had been established that day, a bond that had prompted them to team up at war’s end to hunt down Bo Rangle. The bond was still a real and tangible thing here this morning under the summer sun in Winchester County.

  “We could be real cozy here, Duke,” Brazos declared after a long silence. “You’ve been bellyachin’ plenty about livin’ rough and suchlike. Seems to me there’d be enough plush and finery here to suit even you.”

  A smile flirted with the handsome gambling man’s mouth. Brazos, who could be subtle on occasion, was as transparent as glass at times like this. Then Benedict’s smile began to fade as he realized perhaps the time had come to finally bring the curtain down. Exhaling a cloud of expensive cigar smoke, he turned his head to look at the Texan who had squatted down to welcome his great trail hound who came swaggering up the steps, his pink tongue lolling, panting from the exertion of chasing all the Shiloh cats into the tall timber.

  Grinning as he did only for his monstrous beast with whom Duke Benedict shared an unchanging hate relationship, the Texan scratched Bullpup’s thick neck. Then, opening his mouth to commence his farewell address, Benedict saw the boy and girl come into sight from the orchard.

  Benedict’s mouth closed slowly. With their golden hair, their slender young figures and their almost identical faces that could only be described as beautiful, Lonnie and Emma Claiborne reminded Duke Benedict of illustrations of young gods he’d pored over in his father’s great library as a child. They were Youth and Beauty, and they seemed almost too beautiful to be real in this harsh and violent world.

  Duke Benedict felt his resolve weakening. This was a truly beautiful place. Perhaps what he had to do could wait for just a week ...

  Emma stopped to pick a flower and Lonnie stared in the direction of the barn where his father stood talking to the foreman and a black-bearded hostler in a leather apron. His eyes on the girl, Benedict drew his cigar from his mouth and gave a small cough.

  “Perhaps there is a modicum of merit in your suggestion after all, Johnny Reb.”

  Brazos’ big head jerked up sharply. This was too quick a change of tune, too easy a victory. The Texan immediately looked around for the cause, and his craggy, sun-bronzed young face turned rocky when he sighted the young Claibornes.

  Leather chaps creaked as Brazos uncoiled to his feet. Benedict stood over six feet tall, but Brazos was two inches taller and his ox shoulders seemed to blot out half the landscape as he said accusingly:

  “Judas, you just never give up do you, Benedict? I mean, I suppose I can understand a joker like you chasin’ anythin’ that wears a skirt ... but a sweet kid like that?” He shook his head. “That beats all, even for you, Mr. Petticoat-lifter. And that puts the lid on it for fair. We ain’t stayin’ here. We’re takin’ Monk’s carcass to the law for the bounty like we planned, and then if you want to sing the goodbye song and get to hell, that’s your—”

  “Hold hard, damn you!” Benedict interrupted, lifting a hand. “You have a talent for going off half-cocked, Reb, but this beats even your best. You don’t honestly believe I might entertain carnal desires for that ... that child, do you?”

  “If what you just said means what I think it does,” the Texan retorted heatedly, “yeah, I do.” He shook a big finger in Benedict’s face. “I’ve seen you in action too often, high-stepper. I’ve seen you with tough chippies in border hell-holes who would cut your throat for a dollar, and I’ve seen you with grand l
adies who look at a man like he was something that crawled out from under a—”

  “All right,” Benedict snapped, angry himself now. “I might be prepared to concede that the gentle sex represents something of an indulgence of mine, but I do have my own personal code, liberal thought you might hold it to be. That girl over there is a beautiful child, nothing more, and I shall take it as personal if you suggest otherwise again.”

  “Personal?” Brazos stuck out his bull jaw and held his big fists ready at his sides.

  Benedict’s eyes were chips of cold steel, and the cigar clamped between his teeth pointed at Brazos like a gun barrel. “Personal,” Benedict said firmly.

  The tense moment held until Brazos finally let his breath go. “Well, I’ll be damned, Benedict,” he said with awe. “I really believe you mean it.”

  “I mean it, blue stocking,” was the chipped reply. “And now that we understand one another clearly, make up your so-called mind one way or the other. Do you want to tell Claiborne we shall be staying on a while, or do you want to tell him we won’t be returning from Resurrection tonight?”

  A grin of relief flooded Hank Brazos’ rugged face, for despite the wranglings, the hard times and Duke Benedict’s caustic tongue, the big Texan invariably came down with an attack of the blues when he thought seriously about the day they would split up, each to ride his own trail.

  “I reckon I’ll hustle down and tell him we’ll be hangin on a spell,” Brazos drawled.

  “Then be sharp about it,” Benedict rapped, feeling he had won a round. “Then get Monk wrapped up in a canvas and loaded into a buckboard—we want to reach town before it’s too hot.”

  “On my way,” Brazos grinned, and he went down the wide steps two at a time with Bullpup at his heels.

  Watching the powerful figure stride across the yard, Benedict shook his head. Why did it always pan out this way? he wondered. Why was it that every time, just as it seemed he was due to get rid of the Texan once and for all, events conspired to keep them together?