Benedict and Brazos 5

  It had been months since Brazos and Benedict had started their search for Bo Rangle, the outlaw who’d killed most of their comrades in the War and stolen a fortune in gold while they were at it. But the west was a big place and Rangle could have gone anywhere.

  Then they chanced upon the best lead they’d had in months … the only trouble was that Race Sackett, the man who could take them right to Rangle, was behind bars, awaiting a noose. There was only one thing to do – bust the outlaw out and force him to take them to Rangle’s lair. But that was going to be easier said than done …

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 5: ADIOS, BANDIDO!

  By E. Jefferson Clay

  First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Digital Edition: February 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  One – Where the Rurales Ride

  “No!” cried the fat little prospector as the slim brown hand of the Mexican curled back the six-gun hammer. “You don’t have to kill us!”

  Nudging Miguel Carrizo, the gun-fondling Hernandez grinned. “You hear that, amigo? The small one says we do not have to kill him.”

  Carrizo was also smiling. And Morelli. The manner of the three gun-toting Mexicans in the dusty gray uniforms of the Martinoro Rurales would have better suited a saloon than bailing up a pair of prospectors on the Texas plains.

  “You are slow to understand, gringo,” Hernandez said. He was a tall, slender man with a narrow olive face and hot black eyes that danced as he added, “You attempted to flee when you saw us. You forced us to pursue you for a mile.”

  “And you shot at us,” stocky Pablo Morelli accused, stabbing his gun into the fat belly of Curry Kelso’s black bearded partner. “Is that not so?”

  Big Joe Stecher said nothing. The prospectors’ buckboard stood at a standstill behind them. It was mid-morning, and the dust of the short, swift chase drifted into the brassy sky. Stecher was packing lead, and it was only because he’d been hit that they’d stopped running to throw themselves on the Rurales’ mercy.

  But these Mexicans who murdered and thieved under the protection of the Rurale uniforms didn’t know the meaning of mercy. That was growing all too plain as Hernandez got ready to gun them down for whatever they had in their buckboard.

  Then Miguel Carrizo touched his leader’s arm. “Uno momento, mi amigo. There is a better way.”

  Hernandez twisted his head. “Que?”

  Carrizo grinned wolfishly. “You will see,” he murmured, and Hernandez and Morelli watched curiously as he carried the captured guns some forty yards down the trail and stood them against a rock. Hernandez’ brows were hooked question marks when Carrizo came jingling back.

  “Now we replace our weapons in our holsters,” Carrizo instructed, sliding his own handgun into leather.

  Still wondering what amusing deviltry their companero had in mind, Hernandez and Morelli put their guns away. “What now?” said Hernandez.

  “Why now,” Carrizo said, facing the prospectors, “we give the gringos the sporting chance.” He inclined his sombrero towards the rock. “There are your weapons, gringos. They are yours if you have the speed and the courage to get them.”

  The prospectors stood frozen. Hernandez and Morelli laughed. Now they understood.

  Kelso broke away first, the sweat of mortal terror splashing from his face as he ran towards the guns. With a savage curse, Joe Stecher swung and pounded after him, overtaking the little man in a few giant strides and diving for a gun. He had snatched up a loaded Colt. The big man was twisting to face the enemy as Kelso lunged for his rifle.

  Only when the Colt was swinging up did the killers move. Displaying the murderous skill and judgment of their breed, they slapped gun butts together. Three guns blurted blue in the sun, three thunderous crashes. Soft-nosed bullets stitched a bloody pattern across Stecher’s chest, punching him backwards over the rock. Curry Kelso screamed in fear, fumbled with his gun and died under a brutal storm of fire.

  The hot guns continued to snarl until hammers spun on empty chambers. The echoes rolled away and the morning seemed suddenly hollow, sucked of all sound.

  Hernandez blew smoke from his barrel. “There are times when you think well, Carrizo. Come, we shall see if they have anything in their possession that was worth dying for.”

  A cordite cloud drifted thick in the air above them as the three men in the big hats sauntered towards the buckboard. The smoke curled lazily across Riata Creek and rolled over the rim where the little desert rat, Stayaway Jones, was bellying swiftly backwards out of sight, eyes glazed with the horror of what he’d seen.

  Clear of the rim, Jones got up in a half crouch and ran to his mule on shaky legs. Heaving himself into the saddle, he put boots to ribcage, darting fearful glances back over his shoulder. With lonely months in the desert behind him, Stayaway had drifted towards the trail country in search of a little human society, hungry for somebody to talk to besides Martha his mule.

  He still craved company, but he wasn’t that lonesome.

  The flame of sunset dimmed on the mountain tops of Trinity County and dusk was creeping through the sycamores and willows along Riata Creek as the two tall men rode down to make camp. A blue heron cleared the water and winged off through the trees, and a fat gray cottontail hopped lazily into a hollow log.

  That was the rabbit’s first mistake, for these were hungry men with long miles behind them. It made its second error a minute later when the big ugly dog barked at one end of the log and it shot out the other—into the gut-line slip noose Hank Brazos dangled over the exit. A swift jerk, then the cottontail was skinned, cleaned, washed, trimmed and curled up snug in an skillet with a fat white onion and half a pound of wild potatoes.

  “Neat trick that,” Duke Benedict drawled.

  “One my pappy taught me,” grinned Brazos, getting the fire going.

  “I should have guessed ... your pappy being such a gold-plated wonder at everything under the sun.”

  “He shore enough was at that, Yank,” Brazos agreed readily, paying no heed to the irony in the other’s tone as he set the coffee pot in the flames. He was a Herculean young man with guileless blue eyes under a shock of wild yellow hair. “Yessir, shone at just about everythin’ he set his hand to, old Joe did.”

  Duke Benedict grunted and finished off-saddling his black and Brazos’ appaloosa. He fixed the hobbles, then drew a silver cigar case from his broadcloth coat as he came across to the fire to sniff appreciatively at the aroma of coffee and rabbit.

  Benedict plucked a flaming stick from the fire and puffed his Havana into life, the crimson glow briefly highlighting a strikingly handsome face. A sometime gambler, sometime gunfighter with a flamboyant style that set him apart, the ex-Union officer had got to know his partner well on the trails they’d ridden since the war. He could always tell when Brazos was wearing his thinking-about-his-old-man look. Now, exhaling blue smoke, he said:

  “I shall likely regret saying this, considering the way you can bore a man to extinction on the subject, but there is one thing about your father I’ve never been quite clear about.”

  Brazos to
ok a pinch of herbs from his “possibles” bag and sprinkled it in the pan. “What’s that, Yank?”

  “Well, is he alive or dead?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “No idea.” Brazos punched up the fire and sat on his spurs. “You see, Yank, one day back in Cripple Ditch, old Joe just come down with a sudden pow’ful urge to travel on. And, bein’ a man of action, he just put on his best hat, shook my hand and lit out with Lippy Poindexter drivin’ a turkey herd to Fort Worth.”

  “Well I’ll be damned. And this is the hero, wizard and shining example I never stop hearing about?” Duke Benedict was genuinely disgusted. “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Heck, it’d be about five years back now. End of 1860 it was as a matter of fact.”

  “That was just before the war broke out.”

  “Uh, huh.”

  “Ah, perhaps I see a little daylight now,” Benedict said keenly. “Your father got this sudden urge to wander just before hostilities started. It couldn’t have been that he caught a smell of what was coming and came down with a bad attack of cold feet, could it?”

  Brazos was indignant. “Not my old man, no sir. Weren’t afeared of nothin’ that walked, waddled or grunted was Old Joe.” His eyes grew thoughtful. “No, I reckon the old man and Lippy coulda been on the trail months on end afore they even knew war had busted out. The way I figure it, they’d have likely signed up so soon as they heard and ...”

  “I’ll bet,” Benedict interjected.

  “ ... and marched East to do their bit,” Brazos kept on, as if the other hadn’t interrupted. “Yeah, figger that’s what happened right enough. And then, well, could be the old man give his life like so many brave jokers ...” He nodded emphatically as the idea took hold. “Yeah, yeah, I’d say that’s perzackly what happened to Old Joe. And o’ course that’d explain why I ain’t never heard a whistle of him since.”

  “Living off the fat of the land with some over-nourished Mexican señora in California would be my guess,” Benedict declared. “I developed an unfailing nose for draft evaders during my years of service, and my nose is surely twitching now.” He leaned back, satisfied with his assessment. “No, I think we can safely put your wonderful old man down as just another quitter, Reb.”

  Brazos’ blue eyes glittered briefly, but, realizing the other was just trying to bait him, he refused to lose his temper. Instead he said quietly:

  “He was no shirker, Yank. But even if he was, just fer argument’s sake—wouldn’t he have been a lot smarter’n most?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you think about it, Yank. You and me, we never dodged it. We went through four years of war, you in the blue and me in the gray. You reckon we both mightn’t have been better off joinin’ up with a west-bound turkey drive in ’60?”

  Benedict started to reply, then fell silent, a shadow falling across his face at the memory of four years of hell ... of a country torn apart and bleeding ... of death and chaos ... destruction and horror … brother against brother ... a million graves.

  And clearest of all was the memory of a crimson place in history named Pea Ridge, Georgia, where forces of Confederate and Union troops tore each other to pieces in a terrible battle for a wagonload of Confederate gold, only to have the gold snatched away by the infamous marauders, Rangle’s Raiders ... leaving a Southern sergeant and a Northern captain the sole survivors of one hundred and fifty men ...

  The sergeant was Hank Brazos, the Union captain Duke Benedict. Chance had brought them together at war’s end, and now they hunted Rangle and the gold over which brave men had died. War had taught them to kill and to survive, had made them a lethally efficient team. But were they better men for it? Had they gained or lost?

  Silence descended on the camp, broken only by the crackle of the flames and the murmur of the little creek over its sandy bottoms. Casual conversation had stirred up old memories still sharp and bitter.

  It was Bullpup who finally broke in on their reverie. Brazos’ big dog got up from where he’d been lying sprawled by his master’s saddle and came to the fire. He sniffed at the skillet, then turned and trotted into the darkness.

  “Where is he going?” Benedict said absently.

  Brazos poked at the rabbit with a willow switch. “He don’t care for rabbit. He’s likely goin’ owlin’. Tolerable fond of owls, he is.”

  Benedict turned away to break out the tinware. When he came back to the fire he found Brazos sniffing at the skillet and frowning.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked.

  “Dunno. Seems I just got a whiff of somethin’ kinda bad, but the food smells okay.”

  Benedict sniffed the air and peered around into the gloom beyond the fire glow. “I can smell something too. What do you make of it?”

  Brazos glanced over his shoulder, shrugged. “Could be somethin’ dead.” He grinned slyly. “Now, if my pappy was here, he’d likely be able to say what it was right off ... just one sniff and ...”

  “Oh doubtless, doubtless,” Benedict cut him off, then his roving eyes fixed on the dim outline of a tree in the gloom. “But while deferring to your father’s undoubted superiority in trail ways, I’ve always found my own eyesight to be quite adequate.”

  Brazos frowned in disgust. “Goddamit, but sometimes you’re harder to follow than a furriner, Benedict. What’s all that jawbone mean?”

  “It simply means,” Benedict murmured, casually selecting a cigar, “that somebody out there is watching us.”

  Hank Brazos started upwards, his hand slapping gun butt, but he froze at Benedict’s urgent hiss.

  “Stay put, Reb. Don’t let on we know he’s there.”

  Brazos slowly lowered himself to his haunches again, eyes bright with tension. “What’s the play?”

  A match flared and touched Benedict’s Havana into life. He drew deeply and gave a tight smile. “Just carry on as if everything’s normal. I’ll work around behind him.”

  Not certain that this was such a good idea, Brazos started to argue but found himself talking to Benedict’s back. Benedict stooped to pick up a canteen, then strolled off and disappeared into the darkness.

  The Texas night seemed to suddenly turn chill as Brazos squatted there like a statue carved in granite. He could feel eyes drilling through the back of his faded purple shirt, and he knew only too well the over-sized target he would present to a pack of rifle-toting Apaches or a skulking camp-robber with murder in his eyes.

  Time passed. It seemed a hell of a long time. Brazos, forced himself to prod at the cooking rabbit, check the battered coffee pot. The wind was picking up and he could smell that pungent stink stronger than before. He brushed his hands over his knees, then came bursting to his feet with his hand full of gun as a commotion erupted behind him.

  Slitted eyes stabbing at the gloom, Brazos could see nothing, as a banshee wail of fright split the air, followed by a sharp spell of swearing.

  “What the hell ...?” he grunted, starting forward, then propped as Duke Benedict lunged out of the darkness holding his nose with one hand and a squirming bundle in the other.

  The Navy Colt in Brazos’ fist angled downwards and a relieved grin worked at his features when Benedict released his catch, a diminutive little desert rat with wild, frightened eyes and a rigout that would put a scarecrow to shame. The man stank.

  “Well, goddam, but you’re a ripe l’il varmint, ain’t you?” Brazos smiled, moving quickly out of downwind. “What do you reckon it is, Yank?”

  Pressing his handkerchief to his nose, Benedict said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” He gestured with his gun. “He’s not wearing iron, so presumably he didn’t mean us any harm.”

  “I never,” the pungent little man insisted. “All I was lookin’ fer was a mite o’ company. I ... I seen your fire and I was just checkin’ you out afore I showed meself.”

  “He’s okay, Yank,” Brazos decided, holstering his gun.
“Well, seein’ as how you’re here, li’l feller, you might as well join us. We’re about to eat.”

  “Now just a minute,” Benedict protested. “He can’t eat with us.” He took his kerchief away, sniffed, then hastily pressed it to his nose again. “God’s teeth, man, haven’t you ever taken a bath?”

  “Take it easy, Yank,” Brazos said as the little man’s face fell. “You’ll hurt his feelin’s. Likely it ain’t your fault you smell like Saturday night at the skunk works, is it, partner?”

  The desert rat winced. “It shore ’nuff ain’t, big feller. I know as how I don’t smell too good, but ain’t nothin’ I kin do about it. It runs in the family. My daddy stunk even wors’n me, and my grandaddy, old Stayaway Jones the first, smelt so bad they had to shoot him in the end.”

  “Stern measures, but doubtless necessary,” Benedict mumbled around his kerchief. “Now look, Stayaway, you’re welcome to share our supper, but definitely not our campsite. Nothing personal, you understand.”

  Stayaway Jones looked appealingly at Brazos, who softened.

  “He could set downwind, Yank. Don’t seem such a bad kind of joker. Likely been a long time since he’s had folks to talk to.”

  “Bin months,” the desert rat confirmed eagerly. “Bin out in the desert so long I jest had to bust out an’ scare up somebody to talk to.” He talked to Benedict, “I’ll set downwind like your pard says, mister ... just want a little company.”

  Benedict grumbled, but he finally gave in when it occurred to him that the unsanitary Mr. Jones might possibly know something about Bo Rangle. He and Brazos were pushing south towards Martinoro on the Rio on nothing stronger than a rumor that Rangle had gone into Mexico. Their supper guest looked like he might be a scavenger of information on the local scene.

  Stayaway was just that. Sitting a good twenty feet away from the fire with a dish of rabbit stew and a big mug of coffee, the little man chattered on non-stop about Indians and bandidos and of general doings along the Rio Grande plus the weather and the hardships of eking a living out of the desert … but not a word about a tall renegade killer named Bo Rangle.