Brazos grinned broadly. “That’s tellin’ ’em, Yank. How do you like them apples, Holloway?”
The sheriff was tight-lipped. “You can take it from me I’m not about to release you on the say-so of a fast talker I don’t know from Adam, mister.” He looked narrowly at Benedict. “A fast talker who started a ruckus at the Seven Sisters almost as soon as he hit town,” he added critically.
“If I was you, I’d shove the dude in, too, Sheriff,” Warren advised, his buck-teeth gleaming like a dog’s in the smoky yellow light.
“I wouldn’t advise that, Deputy,” Benedict said softly. “No, I think that would be something you might sorely regret.”
“Are you threatening an officer of the law, Mr. Benedict?” the sheriff bristled. “By glory, man, I only admitted you here because you held yourself to be a friend of this—”
“Simmer down, Sheriff,” Benedict said, lifting a hand. “Look, we’re not going to get anywhere wrangling and name-calling. I’ve already given you more than enough information to establish Brazos’ innocence. It seems to me your duty is perfectly simple. A wire to the marshal’s office at Rebo City is all that’s required.”
“Ain’t no telegraph in Galloway,” Warren said with obvious relish. “Try again, dude.”
“That expression is beginning to irritate me, Deputy,” Benedict murmured. His manner didn’t change, but something in his eyes reached Warren and the man pulled his lips tight over his ugly teeth. Benedict gave a small nod, then looked at Holloway. “Now, once again, can we discuss this calmly and sensibly, Sheriff?”
It seemed like a reasonable enough request. But Sheriff Holloway obviously wasn’t in a reasonable mood. And it became glaringly apparent over the next few minutes as they argued that the sheriff was determined to see it through. He had his man and he was going to have him arraigned before a circuit judge. He wasn’t interested in Benedict’s reasoning, and he plainly had no intention of contacting Rebo City.
The more they debated, the more disgusted and incensed Brazos became. But Benedict’s was a cooler head at the moment, and the longer the discussion went on, the more and more certain he became that there was more to this business than met the eye. Holloway seemed like a reasonably intelligent man, yet he was acting like a blind and stubborn fool.
Why?
The man couldn’t have any grudge against Brazos; they’d never met before. It was plain that Warren was a Texas-hater, but Holloway showed no sign of sharing his subordinate’s sentiments. The evidence was flimsy in the extreme, yet Holloway persisted in insisting that he could make his ridiculous charge stick.
Why?
Suddenly Benedict was remembering something he’d seen in his first ten minutes in town. Something he’d merely noted, but to which he had no reason to attach any significance—until now.
“Sheriff,” he said, interrupting yet another repetition by Holloway of the “facts” of the case. “Are you much troubled by rustling hereabouts?”
Holloway looked at him—warily, Benedict thought. “Some,” the lawman conceded after a pause. “Why?”
“Have you had any success in apprehending those responsible?” Benedict’s tone was casual.
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“A simple question, Sheriff. Have you or haven’t you?” Not knowing what Benedict was driving at, Brazos looked in puzzlement from one man to the other as Holloway fidgeted, plainly uncomfortable. Then Brazos said roughly: “Well, go on, answer him, man. Like he says, it’s a simple question.”
Holloway shot a hard stare at Brazos, then looked back to Benedict. “I still say it’s none of your business, mister. No, we haven’t had much luck in tracking them down. But—”
“Ahh!” Benedict said softly.
“Ahh?” Brazos echoed. “What the hell does that mean, Yank?”
“What does it mean, Johnny Reb?” Benedict said, straightening and tugging down the lapels of his coat. “It means, my bucolic friend, that you are almost certainly a pawn in the seamy realm of politics.”
Brazos didn’t know what his partner was talking about. But the sheriff seemed to. At least Holloway stopped looking so confident, and his face turned pale under Benedict’s accusing stare.
“You’re talking like a fool, Benedict,” the sheriff said, but without real conviction. “And you’ve talked enough. This meeting is over and—”
“Not quite, Sheriff,” Benedict broke in, nothing soft about his manner now. “You are coming up for re-election. You’ve had rustling plaguing your county and you’ve failed to put a stop to it. And voters aren’t going to re-elect lawmen who fail to do the job they’re paid to do. Isn’t that so, Sheriff?” He nodded. “Of course it is. So you decided to show voters that you are doing your duty. They want a rustler, so you give them a rustler—any luckless stranger who happens to drift along at the wrong time.”
Now Brazos understood. “Well, I’ll be horn-swoggled and clabber-footed!” he breathed, his craggy, sun bronzed young face wide with the simplicity of it all. “Benedict, if I ain’t said it before, that there’s a real good thinkin’ head you got there ...” Then the full enormity of the injustice done him hit him hard and he swung his big head towards a pair of very shaky looking lawmen. “Peace officers?” he accused venomously. “Why, you’re nothin’ but a pair of dirty crooks! Get this here door open before you find yourselves saddled with more trouble than you can handle. And I mean pronto!”
It was right then and there that Frank Holloway demonstrated his most significant characteristic: mule-headedness. It was plain the man was badly shaken by Benedict’s accusation. But he was also a man who’d taken a big gamble to hold his office, and now that the money was on the table he wasn’t about to pull out of the game. He denied everything vehemently, then he stated that Hank Brazos would definitely face the judge at the end of the week.
It took five testy minutes of debate for the manhunters to be convinced that Holloway wouldn’t back down, and then Benedict realized that if he wasn’t going to be able to spring Brazos the fair-and’-square way he might have to do it the other way. Certainly he wasn’t about to leave Johnny Reb to face some cow-country judge and maybe get his neck stretched. Waiting for a break in the conversation, Benedict murmured to Brazos:
“Paradise.”
The lawmen didn’t catch the word, and it wouldn’t have meant anything to them if they had. But Brazos heard it clearly, and it meant a lot to him. Two months ago in Paradise, New Mexico, Benedict had been jailed on a trumped-up charge of gunning down a gambling man. That night, Brazos had ripped the window bars out with a rope lashed to his saddle pommel, and they’d made quick tracks through the sagebrush.
Brazos couldn’t deny that the idea held strong appeal. Being a man of the wide open spaces, even the briefest confinement was intolerable for him. And it was doubly galling when he suspected that the lawmen who’d arrested him were using him as a scapegoat.
Yet he found himself shying away from the idea of breaking out. At Paradise, they’d got away without a shot being fired. But he’d seen jailbreaks turn sour before. When they did, you could end up with innocent people getting hurt or even killed. He couldn’t be sure whether that possibility would worry Benedict or not, but it definitely worried him.
Maybe, he reflected, there was another way. It came to him a minute later, just as Holloway was insisting again that Benedict leave them to get on with the job they were paid to do.
“Benedict,” Brazos said soberly, “Paradise might be all right, but maybe it’s a bit early for that. There’s another way, that’s if you’re willin’ to give her a try.”
At the moment, Benedict was willing to consider anything. He’d seen the aftermath of fouled-up jailbreaks himself.
“Let’s hear it, Johnny Reb.”
“Maybe you could get a line on them rustlers.”
Benedict looked at Brazos the way he always did when the big man came up with something he should have thought of himself. “By glor
y, Johnny Reb,” he breathed, “that’s a possibility. Perhaps I’m no better than an average sign reader, but—”
“You reckon I don’t know that? But I can tell you where I was and Holloway can tell you where the cattle tracks petered out. You could take Bullpup with you and—”
“Forget it, Texan,” Andy Warren put in. “The sign of that herd led into limestone country up there by Cross Hollow, and you know it. If there was any way of followin’, me and the sheriff would have done it.”
The deputy sounded as if he might be telling the truth for once, but Benedict and Brazos refused to be discouraged. They had three choices; judge and jury, jailbreak, or getting a lead on the real cow thieves. The latter won and the following minutes were occupied with Brazos drawing a carefully detailed map of the Cross Hollow region and giving Benedict instructions in the art of sign reading—this while the sheriff and his deputy looked on in stony silence.
Then Holloway reluctantly agreed to release Bullpup.
The dog emerged from his cell peaceably enough, aware by now that this was neither the time nor the place to cause trouble. But when Brazos hunkered down and reached through the bars to massage his ugly ears and tell him he had to go with Benedict, the battle-scarred trail hound’s hackles rose. He rolled yellow eyes up at Benedict and Benedict stared down at him with a distaste that at least matched his own. Brazos’ dog and Benedict enjoyed a perfect hate relationship. Bullpup dreamed of the day he would have the nerve to sink his bone-grinding molars into that well-tailored backside, while Benedict often reflected on how sweet it would be to put the muzzle of his Colt up against that iron skull and trigger.
But necessity can make strange trail partners, and when Brazos put out his hand, touched Benedict’s leg and said, “Go, Bullpup!” the hackles went down as the dog got to his feet and stood beside Benedict. He would loathe every minute of it, but he would go.
Brazos rose. “I won’t forget this, Benedict.”
Duke Benedict abhorred sentiment. “Stay lucky, Johnny Reb,” he murmured casually, almost indifferently, then he strolled down the corridor with the most reluctant hound in Keogh County at his well-polished heels.
Holloway followed to see Benedict out, but the horse-toothed deputy lingered.
“If that’s your best chance, Texas,” he smirked, “you’re gallows bait already. That high-steppin’ pard of yours looks like he’d lose himself blind if he got more’n half a mile from the nearest saloon.”
Brazos swung his broad back on the deputy without reply and made his way across to the barred window. Nobody had to tell him that Duke Benedict was no trailsman. But Benedict was smart, and with Bullpup with him, Brazos was ready to bet they would come through for him.
Then he frowned at an unwelcome thought. He was betting. With his life.
Chapter Three
Mystery of Misty Mountain
Benedict drew up across the street from the Seven Sisters Saloon. The soft lights shone welcomingly and the music called. Above the false fronts, the night sky was thickly sown with stars, and a fat yellow moon just beginning to climb out of the hills. There was a gentle breeze blowing in from the river and the whole night seemed to pulse with endless possibilities.
Benedict sighed, seeing in his mind’s eye somebody about his style strolling arm in arm towards the river under this sky that surely had put on all its glory just for lovers. On his arm was Amy, or possibly Sadie Peabody in her low-cut blouse, or perhaps even one of those handsome girls he’d seen on the gallery of the Double Eagle.
But who did he have sharing this velvet Nevada night? Eighty-seven pounds of flea-infested, camp-robbing, chicken-stealing trail hound.
With another sigh he moved on, seeking comfort in philosophy. His thoughts rummaged through his vast mental storehouse of platitudes, axioms, quotations and verse, but without coming up with anything that mirrored his glum mood. Finally he had to settle for a backwoods proverb, handed down to Hank Brazos from his benighted father, and in turn, unhappily, passed on to Benedict:
“Life is chickens one day and feathers the next.”
He was still weighed down by his heavy mood as he rode out twenty minutes later. Turning his back on all the temptingly plump chickens of Galloway, he headed into the feather-littered moonlight of this lonesome night.
“Come in,” Lafe Darlington called at the sound of heavy knuckles on his door.
The door from the alley behind the Double Eagle Saloon opened and Jim Hurd stood outlined against the darkness. The saloonkeeper’s right-hand man stepped in and closed the door behind him. A burly redhead with legs like tree trunks, the bruiser glanced at Ed Tewksbury and Sandburr Sam, then crossed to the desk.
“Well?” Darlington snapped. He was a powerfully built, florid-faced man of forty with cold, flat eyes and a tight, wide mouth that gave him the look of a catfish.
“Benedict just headed out for the Misties, boss,” Hurd supplied.
“Alone?”
“Yeah. He took the Texan’s dog with him.”
“Gone looking for the cattle?”
“So Warren tells me.” Hurd glanced at Wilson and Tewksbury, then added, “Warren figures him for a real dude. Reckons he couldn’t find a dead Injun in a post-hole.”
“Some dude,” the saloonkeeper growled, leaning back in his horsehair-stuffed chair. “You get a look at Jobe Hood and Pete tonight?” He waved a hand at the door. “All right, that’s all for now, Hurd. Go help at the tables.”
Hurd walked to the door that led to the barroom. A wash of sound came into the room as he went out: the clink of glassware, the tinkle of a piano, a woman’s strident laugh. The door closed and it was quiet again as Darlington bit off the end of a cigar and felt at his pockets for matches.
Tewksbury and Sandburr Sam Wilson watched him light up, both men looking a little nervous. Tewksbury was Darlington’s assay agent, a thin, ferret-faced man with a long drinker’s nose slanted to one side of his narrow face. Tewksbury’s well-cut suit was in sharp contrast to Wilson’s rough garb. Sandburr Sam effected the dress of a prospector, despite the fact that he seldom ventured beyond the town’s perimeter.
The match in Darlington’s fingers flickered out. He gusted a huge cloud of smoke across the desk and leaned forward, fingers interlocking. The bright drop-light threw his eyes into deep shadow and emphasized the width of his mouth. Wilson and Tewksbury waited for him to speak, but when the silence dragged on, Tewksbury bent forward in his chair.
“What do you think, Lafe?”
Darlington took his cigar from between his lips and frowned down at the glowing tip as if it somehow offended him. Then he set it between his teeth again and turned his big head towards them.
“What do I think? I think we’ll just sit tight.”
“But what if this Benedict joker gets to track them cattle down, Lafe?” Wilson asked in his thin, whining voice.
“Cantrell’s the best cow thief in the county,” Darlington said. “If the lawmen couldn’t follow his sign, how could a dude do it?”
“Could be Holloway and Warren never looked too hard, Lafe,” Tewksbury said. “They likely figured it was Cantrell, and they wouldn’t be too keen to tangle with him.”
“We sit tight,” Darlington repeated with an air of finality. “For a day or so, anyway.”
“But what if Benedict does flush Casey Cantrell, Lafe?” Sandburr Sam said insistently. “That could blow the whole damn thing.”
Darlington stared bleakly at the prospector. “That’s a dumb question, Wilson. We haven’t come this far just to stand still while a couple of drifters foul things up.”
“You don’t mean ...?” Wilson got to his feet, a sickly sheen of sweat covering his skin. “No rough stuff, Lafe. Judas, man, this whole business has already gone further’n I want. If I’d figured we were goin’ to get mixed up in rustlin’ and suchlike at the start, I swear I—”
“You know your big trouble, Wilson?” Darlington snapped harshly. “You’ve got no guts. You’re as
greedy as a pig and you want the prize just as bad as me and Ed—but while we’re prepared to work for it and take a few risks, all you can do is carp and bellyache. Well, I’ll tell you now, mister—it’s beginning to stick in my craw.”
Wilson paled as Darlington glared at him. Tewksbury got to his feet, spread his hands and forced a smile.
“Now, now, fellers,” he said, “let’s not get to wrangling amongst ourselves. We’re all partners in this, and partners have to stick together. Don’t be too hard on Sandburr, Lafe. He’s only jumpy, and I reckon I am a little, too. And you, Sandburr, you should stop fretting so much. Everything is going fine. It’s just bad luck that this Benedict and Brazos showed up and got mixed up in the deal, but it’ll pan out all right, you’ll see.”
“I ... I guess I do fret too much, Ed,” Wilson said. He looked at Darlington. “I’ll try and cut it out, Lafe.”
Darlington grinned. “Fair enough, Sandburr. And I’ll try and keep a hobble on my hard tongue. Like Ed says, we’re partners.” He rose to his feet. “Come on, let’s have a drink. Seems to me we all need to relax a little tonight.”
It was early afternoon and hot as Duke Benedict crossed a ridge southwest of Cross Hollow and clattered his horse down into a tight little mountain valley. More than half the valley was encircled by walls of red sandstone. At one place, live oaks and elms grew at the base of the cliff near a small pool of water.
A bunch of wild longhorn cattle, mostly cows and calves, were gathered at the pool. One or two were on their feet, drinking. The rest lay on the grassy bank chewing their cuds and waiting out the heat.
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