Benedict and Brazos 24

by E. Jefferson Clay

  There was silence in the street for a long moment. Then Hank Brazos said:

  “I heard about Calem, James. He killed two men and was tried proper.”

  “There is only one court, and that is the court of the Almighty,” James snarled back. “I have consulted the Almighty in my prayers and have been told that my brother died unfairly. He did no more than others did. The difference was that he was a stranger and alone. But he is not alone now. Others have gone to join him in Paradise, and many more shall follow on this day.”

  “Then all this is just to even accounts for one man?” Benedict breathed. “How much vengeance is one man worth, James?”

  “A harvest of souls,” James intoned. “Nothing less shall appease my wrath.”

  “You’re mad!” Benedict said. “You must be mad to—”

  Benedict stopped as James gave a terrible shout and sent his hands streaking for his guns.

  Duke Benedict came clear with a lightning, two-handed draw that no eye could follow. As his twin guns roared, Whitey Cassidy jerked out his Colt and fired at Brazos who threw himself to the side and clawed for his six-gun.

  Spinning around from the impact of two slugs, Deacon James cannoned into Cassidy, knocking the man off his feet. But the collision steadied James. His six-guns thundered. The bullets whispered past the crouched Benedict’s face, and then Duke’s Colts roared back. Brazos was shooting now, pumping shot after shot at Cassidy who had twisted wildly away from James. Dust puffed from Cassidy’s shirtfront as lead slammed home, and then Brazos spun with a bullet in the shoulder. The Texan hit the street and rolled with lead kicking the dust around him. Benedict went to one knee and drove another bullet in James who refused to go down, then he snapped a shot at Cassidy. As Cassidy twisted to take aim at Benedict, Brazos got his Colt working again. His first shot missed, but his second burned into the side of the albino’s head, killing him instantly.

  Brazos struggled to rise. Six feet away, Benedict was still pumping lead at James. The Deacon’s shirtfront was a crimson splotch, but still he stood.

  “Misbegotten!” he roared in a voice like the crack of doom. It was his final word. Like a forest giant, Deacon James shuddered and then pitched forward into the powdery dust. His momentum rolled him over and he lay on his back, arms spread wide, his long hair fanned out to cover his dead face from the sun.

  Duke Benedict’s lean face was grim as he stood before Myron Haggerty and Brent Jerome in the Rawhide law office an hour after the guns had fallen silent.

  “Shake hands!” he snapped. “Now!”

  The lumberman and the cattleman eyed each other warily across the desk. The office was crowded. Hank Brazos stood behind Jerome with one arm in a sling, his good hand on his gun butt. George Cash and Sheriff Wheeler stood near Haggerty, looking tougher than the cattleman had ever seen them. The mayor, Mr. Benedict and the town leaders who had been assembled at the jailhouse were silent.

  Low voices sounded from outside where the cowhands stood in uneasy proximity to the loggers from the Jimcrack Hills. The death of James and Cassidy had robbed the lumbermen of all taste for violence, while the force of angry towners the cattlemen had encountered on their arrival had had a similarly sobering effect upon them.

  The massing of the citizens of Rawhide following the shootout had been a spontaneous thing. Rawhide had stood back and watched while two newcomers had pitted themselves against the dangerous Deacon James, but somehow the example set by Brazos and Benedict had fired their pride. Rawhide had seen enough bloodshed and was determined there would be no more. And the only way peace could be guaranteed for the future, it was decided, was to show their unanimity, then bring the loggers and the cattlemen together at the table.

  It was Benedict who had spelled out the terms to a shaken Jerome and a subdued Haggerty. The loggers would be permitted to cut timber along Ray River, but there would be definite limits placed on the scope of their operations. In return for this, Haggerty would refrain from all further harassment, and the cattlemen and loggers would share the profits of the cutting operations. Both had finally agreed to the conditions, now all that was required was the handshake to seal the deal.

  The alternative, as Sheriff Wheeler had pointed out, would be jail for both of them. Mr. Lanning and Mr. Benedict were quite certain they could musterup enough charges against both men to guarantee they would remain in prison for a long time.

  “What do you say, Haggerty?” Jerome growled.

  Haggerty stared at his enemy, then he thrust out his hand.

  It was over.

  The slinged arm affected Brazos’ balance a little, but fortunately it didn’t impede his kicking ability.

  “You realize this hurts me more than it does you, Jeb?” he said, as he again applied his number ten to the seat of Jeb Draper’s britches.

  Jeb Draper couldn’t believe it. But before he could say as much the boot thumped home again.

  “It’s all for your own good, Jeb.”

  Another kick.

  “You’ll thank me for this one day when you’re sittin’ on your stoop with your kids playin’ around your feet and some honest pay in your pocket, Jeb.”

  Another one for luck.

  Brazos released his grip on Draper’s shirt collar, and his old pard from the Texas Brigade tenderly massaged his backside. The punishment exacted, Brazos stopped looking ferocious and tugged out his makings to build a smoke one-handed.

  “You’re gettin’ off mighty light, Jeb,” Brazos said amiably. “And you’ve got the Yank to thank for that. He wasn’t none too pleased to know I’d pushed him into standin’ up for a bank thief, but I was able to persuade him that if he let you go you’d turn over a new leaf.” The Texan’s eyes glittered. “And that’s what you will be doin’, won’t you, Jeb?”

  Jeb Draper nodded meekly. After three hours of being locked in a cellar, followed by a short ride out to this hill two miles from Rawhide and a spell of rough handling, he was in no mood to argue about anything.

  “I’m sorry, Sarge,” Draper said penitently. “For everything. For gettin’ involved with them no-goods, for lyin’ to you, and for tryin’ to squeeze Benedict. I guess I’m just plain no good.”

  “Ain’t easy for a man to settle down after four years of war, Jeb,” Brazos said, puffing his cigarette into life. “I know that better than most.” He grinned then and thrust out his big hand. “No hard feelings?”

  Draper took the hand. “You’re a good man, Sarge,” he said warmly. “And I hope everythin’ goes all right for you.”

  “See you when the grapes get ripe, Jeb,” Brazos smiled.

  Brazos sat his saddle for some time after Draper had ridden off, his blue eyes playing slowly over the landscape. It was hard to believe, with everything looking so quiet and peaceful now, that so much violence had taken place here in this pretty valley. But the good part about it was that he felt the peace would last. It had taken a lot of killing before North and South had settled down; and the same thing could happen here in Rawhide.

  He was smiling as he rode back to Rawhide where he found Duke Benedict, hero of the hour, all in a twist.

  Dulcie Kain arrived on the afternoon stage from Bowie, and had immediately set out to find her old lover from Colorado, Marmaduke Creighton Benedict the Third.

  Their reunion proved to be nothing nearly as rapturous as pretty Dulcie had anticipated. She had been so thrilled when she had heard Duke was in Rawhide, she had told a strangely tense Benedict at the Lanning house, that she had jumped on the first stage and hurried to join him. Surely he was thrilled to see her as well?

  Following the gunplay, Benedict’s ability to be thrilled by anything was understandably low. But the reason for his lack of enthusiasm at Dulcie’s arrival’ was that she knew far too much about him and his past, and was far too talkative to have around while his father was present. Added to his woes was Sharon Lanning’s immediate jealousy when she found pretty Dulcie on her private stoop, treating Duke Benedict as her personal
property. It was just possible, a sweating Benedict told Hank Brazos on the gallery ofthe Lanning house, that Sharon might spill the beans to his father.

  “Why should she do that?” asked Brazos, always the innocent.

  “I can’t go into that,” Benedict snapped. “But I sense that she might. And that is where you come in, Johnny Reb. I want you to—”

  “No, not so fast, pilgrim,” Brazos cut in, his eyes narrowing. Hank Brazos might be an innocent, but he wasn’t dumb. “You said Sharon is jealous. How come?”

  “That slipped out. What I meant was—”

  “Uh huh,” Brazos said, tight-lipped. “I get it. True to your old form, you just couldn’t keep your hands off anythin’ wearin’ a skirt. Judas—your pard’s wife! You really are a low-life, ain’t you, Benedict?”

  “For God’s sake, keep it down!” Benedict urged with a desperate glance at the house. “All right, Reb, I suppose I have to be honest. My relationship with Sharon has not been above reproach, I’ll confess. But it wasn’t my doing. I—”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “All right, so I’m a heel with women and you are Saint Hank with a golden halo,” Benedict sighed, forcing himself to be calm. Then he smiled and put a hand on the Texan’s shoulder. “Hank, I know you won’t let me down. I’m in trouble here with those two women inside eating watercress sandwiches and staring daggers at each other. I’ve got to get them apart and I’ve got to get Dulcie to hell and gone away from here before one of them says something that my father shouldn’t hear.” Benedict’s broad smile had never been more charming as he squeezed Brazos’ shoulder. “You’ll help me, won’t you, partner? The old team?”

  “Sorry.”

  Benedict’s hand dropped. “What?”

  “Can’t do it, Yank,” Brazos said. He paused as he saw Mr. Benedict come through the front door, then he looked at Duke with a twinkle in his eye. “Some other time, mebbe.”

  Benedict couldn’t believe it. “But you can’t let me down,” he called as Brazos went down the steps. “You’re my friend.”

  “You a friend?” he said, just loud enough for Benedict senior to hear. “Perish the thought!”

  He saw the shaft hit Benedict before he turned and sauntered off down the path and out the gate.

  “Hank!”

  Brazos kept walking, big boots thudding on the planks. He couldn’t stop grinning. Of course, Benedict would talk and connive his way out of his fix; he always did. But while he was doing it, he would lose a lot of sweat. And he would remember this the next time he felt inclined to trim Hank Brazos’ sails.

  Brazos turned into Trail Street, looked both ways, then headed for the Silver Dollar Saloon, remembering Benedict’s quote from some English writer or other:

  “All’s well that ends well.”

  About the Author

  E. Jefferson Clay was just one of many pseudonyms used by New South Wales-born Paul Wheelahan (1930-2018). Starting off as a comic-book writer/illustrator, Paul created The Panther and The Raven before moving on to a long and distinguished career as a western writer. Under the names Emerson Dodge, Brett McKinley, E. Jefferson Clay, Ben Jefferson and others, he penned more than 800 westerns and could, at his height, turn out a full-length western in just four days.

  The son of a mounted policeman, Paul initially worked as a powder monkey on the Oaky River Dam project. By 1955, however, he was drawing Davy Crockett—Frontier Scout. In 1963 he began his long association with Australian publisher Cleveland Pty. Co. Ltd. As prolific as he was as a western writer, however, he also managed to write for TV, creating shows like Runaways and contributing scripts to perennial favorites like A Country Practice. At the time of his death, in December 2018, he was writing his autobiography, Never Ride Back … which was also the title of his very first western.

  You can read more about Paul here.

  The Benedict and Brazos Series by E. Jefferson Clay

  Aces Wild

  A Badge for Brazos

  The Big Ranchero

  Stage to Nowhere

  Adios, Bandido

  Cry Riot!

  Fools’ Frontier

  A Six-Gun Says Goodbye

  The Living Legend

  Diablo Valley

  Never Ride West

  Shoot and Be Damned

  Wardlock’s Legion

  Kid Chaney’s Express

  Madigan’s Last Stand

  Bury the Losers

  The Buzzard Breed

  Bo Rangle’s Boothill

  Echoes of Shiloh

  Born to Hang

  Fool With A Fast Gun

  Two Guns to Glory

  Gunhawks on the Loose

  The Glory Hunters

  … And more to come every month!

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