Benedict and Brazos 4

  The sheriff of Tumbleweed took an instant dislike to Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos. The dude and the giant in the garish purple shirt looked like trouble to him. So he gave them one-way tickets for the next stage out to Flintlock … and that’s when the trouble really began.

  The minute it left town, the stagecoach became a target. Among the other passengers was a federal marshal delivering his prisoner, notorious outlaw Jack Savage, to Flintlock for trial. But Savage’s gang had other ideas. They planned to stop the stage and rescue him, even if they had to kill everyone else on board.

  They reckoned without Benedict and Brazos, and when the stranded passengers took refuge in a deserted town called Buckaroo, they found themselves up against hot lead – and stone-cold ghosts from the past!

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 4: STAGE TO NOWHERE

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2020 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Digital Edition: January 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 – At Dawn Came a Lawman

  “Baby, will you please shut up and fetch me my boots?”

  “But, Jack, you’ve only been here half an hour. You don’t have to leave yet.”

  “The boots, Jessie.”

  “Look at the window. It’s not even light yet. Can’t you just ...?”

  To silence the woman, Jack Savage took her by the shoulders and pressed his mouth against hers. Her hands clutched his muscular back, the nails digging through his black silk shirt. Suddenly the red-headed outlaw twirled her around, slapped her bottom and laughed.

  “My boots, Jessie. Pronto!”

  Sulkily she crossed the room, got his hand-tooled boots and brought them back to the bed.

  “When will I see you again?” she pouted.

  “Who can tell, baby?” Savage grinned, stamping into his boots and crossing to the bureau to scrutinize his lean, hawk face in the speckled hotel room mirror. “Like they say, you jest cain’t never tell where or when Jack Savage’ll pop up next.”

  “And you expect I’ll be just sittin’ here waitin’ when you take it in your head to drop by again?”

  “Baby, I know you will.” He picked up his gunbelt, blew her a kiss and made for the door. “Until the next time, Jessie baby. Adios.”

  Savage was still grinning as he stepped out into the gloomy, silent corridor. He started buckling on his gunbelt as he turned away, and almost cannoned into the tall, solemn-faced man who’d been waiting for him to come out. The man was swinging a gun barrel, and on his shirt vest was the badge of a United States Marshal.

  The most wanted bad man in south-western Arizona didn’t even have time to yell. The Colt barrel caught him just above the left ear and he went down on one side like a pier of a tank stand giving way.

  “You dirty, stinkin’ lawdog,” he mouthed, and struggled fiercely to rise. U.S. Marshal Bob Pledge swung again. The floor leapt up and slammed Savage in the face and he went spinning out into darkness, where the last flicker of light was the knowledge that he’d been betrayed.

  Holstering his gun, the lawman seized Savage and slung him across his shoulder. As he strode away, the door opened an inch and Jessie Markham’s face showed in the crack. Her blue eyes snapped wide when she saw her limp lover draped across the lawman’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to scream, but it didn’t come.

  Jessie’s mouth closed slowly, her first expression of startled indignation giving way to one of deep thought, and she was actually smiling by the time she closed the door softly behind her. She was conscious instantly of a delicious sense of freedom and knew that not until that very moment, had she realized how tired she’d been getting of Jack and his taking ways lately.

  Well, she reflected with a woman’s practicality, tonight had been the last time Jack would sashay in to hang his hat on her bedpost. The law of Arizona had been after him for years. It would be the high walk for wild Jack Savage now, and that was for sure.

  One day was pretty much the same as another in seedy Tumbleweed, but Sheriff Matt Wiley sensed today was going to be something out of the ordinary when he reached the jailhouse at eight o’clock to find a United States Marshal on his doorstep.

  He knew it beyond doubt by the time they got inside and Marshal Pledge told him what had happened at the Tumbleweed Hotel three hours earlier.

  “You ... you done what, Marshal?”

  “I reckon I spoke clear enough, Sheriff,” Pledge replied a little testily. “I’ve arrested Jack Savage, and got him bound, gagged and shackled in the basement of the hotel.”

  Sheriff Matt Wiley had gone distinctly gray around the gills. The marshal watched in disapproval as Wiley jerked a flask from his desk drawer, hit himself with a stiff jolt, then shook his head.

  “Well, I’ll be strapped,” he said in a voice straight out of the Ozarks. “Jack Savage brought to book at last. And you say Jack was on his lonesome, Marshal Pledge? None of his boys with him?”

  “No, they weren’t. Luckily enough, I suppose. Well, Sheriff, there’s no need to tell you what it means, catching this bloody-handed varmint we been after for years. Now it’s my job to get him up to Flintlock quick and fast. I’ll need your help.”

  “Why ... why you can count on me, Marshal Pledge. What you got in mind?”

  “Well I reckon first I’ll bring Savage along here to the jailhouse, then I’ll wire up to Flintlock for a squad of deputy marshals and ...”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t do that, Marshal,” Wiley cut in quickly.

  “Why not, Sheriff?”

  “Well, there’s plenty reasons, Marshal, but the main one is that if you brung Savage up here, then sent up to Flintlock for a whole flock of marshals, in no time flat the whole town’d know what was goin’ on.”

  Pledge looked perplexed. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Well goddamn it, Marshal, if the town finds out, Savage’s bunch’ll find out too.”

  “So?”

  “So mebbe you’re forgettin’ Savage’s bunch, Marshal. Hell, that pack gets wind we got Savage, they’ll be in to bust him out afore you got time to say Bodie Comstock. Mebbe you and me could stand ’em off, but a power of innocent folks is bound to be hurt.”

  Pledge was thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe there’s somethin’ in what you say. In that case, it might be best to keep things quiet. I’ll hold Savage at the hotel until I get my reinforcements and ...”

  “No, no. I reckon I got a better idea than that.” Wiley was past his initial shock and his crafty mind was working at full notch now. “The weekly stage to Flintlock leaves in the mornin’, Marshal. Why don’t we just keep Savage under cover until then, then slip him aboard the stage and you take him up on your lonesome. That way there’d be no fuss and no way Savage’s bunch could get wind of what was goin’ on afore it was too late.”

  The marshal had a few reservations at first, but by the time he left ten minutes later, Wiley had convinced him that his plan for spiriting Savage out on the morning stage was the soundest offering.

  The moment the marshal was gone, Matt Wiley took another pull from his bottle, wiped nervous sweat from his
brow, jammed on his hat, and made fast tracks down to the Hash House Eatery where Mayor Barnaby Littlejohn took breakfast every morning.

  The mayor was there at his usual window table waiting for his ham and egg in all his red-nosed dignity. The only other customers were a hulking blacksmith from the Bar 4 Ranch, a hungover little cowboy holding a huge mug of black coffee in trembling hands, and a filthy Indian lying by the door with his head in a battered hat. Littlejohn looked up and grinned a welcome as Wiley booted the redskin’s legs to one side and hurried across to his table.

  “Ah, my good friend Matt,” he greeted in his flowery way. “Permit me to invite you to share a plate of ...”

  “Shut up!” Wiley hissed, filling a chair. “We got problems. Jack’s been arrested!”

  The mayor blinked. He was a skinny man of fifty with a fierce red nose projecting from between craggy brows and a heavy gray moustache. His frock coat was buttoned tightly about his spare frame despite the heat. A tall black topper sat on the vacant chair beside him.

  “Jack arrested?” he said in alarm. “How? By whom?”

  Wiley quickly told him of Pledge’s visit, then went on to relate what had been decided at the office. By the time he was through, Littlejohn was smiling in approval.

  “You did very well, Matt,” he complimented. “Very quick thinking.”

  “Well, dammit all, I had to come up with somethin’ mighty sharp. I mean, if a whole flock of marshals got down here, it’d likely be next to no time afore they found out you and me have been takin’ money off Jack in return for sanctuary. Be no point in tryin’ to convince them hard-heads we’ve only played along with Savage so’s he’d leave our town be.”

  “Just keep your voice down, Matt,” Littlejohn said placatingly. “No call to advertise.”

  “Okay, okay,” Wiley said worriedly. “But what do we do now? We just can’t let Pledge drag Jack up to Flintlock and hang him.”

  “No, I agree, Matt, we can’t. But let’s look at this thing calmly. You say Jack is in Pledge’s custody right now and will remain so until stage time in the morning?”

  “Right.”

  “And Pledge will be Jack’s sole guard on the journey north to Flintlock?”

  “Yeah ... just the marshal.”

  “Then it’s simple.”

  “It is?”

  “Surely. All we have to do is to get word out to Jack’s boys and leave it up to them. If Bodie Comstock and the bunch can’t take care of one tinhorn marshal, Matt, then they’re not the men I think they are.”

  Matt Wiley looked at his partner in crime and corruption with undisguised admiration. “You know, Mayor, that’s a real good head you’ve got on your shoulders.”

  “I’ve never denied it, Matt. Now, you go send your deputy out to the hideout to see Comstock, and while you’re doing that, I’ll order you a plate of baked ham and flapjacks.”

  Duke Benedict rode up out of the sandy wash and reined in under the thrown shade of a giant saguaro cactus and waited for his partner to catch up. His eyes, red-rimmed from three days of heat and glare and desert, probed hopefully ahead only to see more heat and glare and desert stretching ahead.

  He licked his lips and glanced upward at a strange sound. He saw a woodpecker working at a hole in the cactus, foam and pulp spewing from the busy beak. A humorless smile touched the corners of his sun-cracked lips. Some country where even a bird couldn’t find water, but had to settle for the rare, bitter moisture from saguaro flesh.

  The tall, black-haired rider took out the last of his cigars and set it alight as Hank Brazos came up the shaley slope leading his lamed appaloosa, his big ugly dog padding along in the horse’s shadow. Benedict noticed that though both horse and dog looked to be just about at the end of their tether, the man’s stride was as deliberate and tireless as it had been four hours back when he’d dismounted to relieve his lame horse of his two hundred and twenty pounds weight. There was something depressing about this sort of iron stamina, and not for the first time Benedict found himself wondering absently just what this man was made of.

  Brazos halted as he drew abreast and stood staring north through the rippling waves of heat. Hunting a renegade outlaw named Bo Rangle, the two had struck north across the Buscadero Desert on a tip that an outlaw gang was operating up Tumbleweed way. They’d been riding the desert three days and there was still no sign of their destination or their quarry.

  Their hunt for Rangle dated back to the dying days of the Civil War when opposing forces of Confederate and Union troops had fought a bloody battle for a shipment of Confederate gold, only to have the gold snatched away by the infamous Rangle’s Raiders. Rebel Sergeant Hank Brazos and Federal Captain Duke Benedict were the sole survivors of one hundred and fifty men. Chance had brought them together at war’s end and now they hunted Rangle and the gold brave men had died for.

  Suddenly Brazos broke the silence. “Chittlin’s ...”

  Benedict blinked. “What?”

  Brazos looked up at him. “Chittlin’s, Yank. I just got me a powerful hankerin’ for a bucket of chittlin’s and plenty of molasses and maybe a little sowbelly on the side. Yessir, reckon that’s what I’ll be lookin’ around for once I’ve slaked my dry at Tumbleweed.”

  Duke Benedict’s handsome, beard-stubbled face twisted with revulsion.

  “There’s no doubt about you is there, Brazos? Here we are after three days of half-starving and damned near dead from thirst, and all you can think of is filling yourself with trash.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with chittlin’s.”

  “We feed the dogs on chittlings back in Boston.”

  “Still good chow,” the big man said defensively.

  Benedict shook his head. “It’s not food at all—not for a man with a palate.” A distant look came into his eyes. “You know what I’m going to be looking for when we get to town? A big steak, with English mustard, French fried potatoes, Peach Melba, fine, freshly-ground coffee in a small Wedgewood cup—and most important of all, a bottle of the very best wine and ...” He broke off when he saw that Brazos was looking up at him with a crooked grin. “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, nothin’ much I guess, ’cept that judgin’ by the way you been cavin’ in the last day or so, Yank, you’ll be lucky to make Tumbleweed at all, let alone get to gallopin’ about huntin’ up half-cooked steak and bottles of wine.”

  Benedict didn’t answer, for there might have been more than a grain of truth in what Brazos had said. Whether Hank Brazos’ taste was little better than a hound’s or not, the young giant was quite plainly weathering the grueling journey far better than he. The gambling man was close to the end of his rope, and he sensed Brazos knew it.

  “I don’t see any sign of that damned town yet,” he said, changing the subject with eyes searching the skyline.

  “Should raise her in a minute,” came the confident reply. “Let’s keep dustin’.”

  They moved on, tiny specks of life, like flies against the yellow earth. Behind them lay the salt flats, ahead a rippling plain sparsely spotted with greasewood, mesquite and towering barrel cacti that stretched away into a smudgy brown haze that blurred the horizon.

  Raddled hills rose far to the left, stippled with viper cactus, Spanish bayonet and mescal.

  To the right spread a vast domain of colored dunes and whispering sand, white beds of alkali and silt. Beyond, wind-plowed canyons and dusty ridges climbed into tablelands and volcanic peaks that finally became a range of hills chopping like fish teeth into the brassy sky.

  It was a sun-blasted world that was no place for a gentleman, Duke Benedict lamented, fit only for buzzards and rattlers, horned toads or lizards. Or men like Hank Brazos who actually seemed to enjoy privation and hardship.

  They travelled in silence.

  Two miles passed. Then, “Look, there she is Yank, dead ahead.”

  Benedict had been slumping in the saddle. He lifted his eyes and there was the town as if it had jumped out of the earth, a skeleton of sun-we
athered wood, the sheen of sunlight bouncing back off the tin roofs.

  Suddenly Benedict wasn’t tired any more. Suddenly, with the prospect of soft lights and hard liquor close to hand, he was his old self again. His back straightened, the dull glaze of fatigue left his eyes and he began to urge his horse forward.

  “Take your ease, Yank,” Brazos drawled. “She’s still a long ways off.”

  “How far do you estimate?”

  Brazos halted, squinting his eyes. “Around five miles.”

  “No distance at all,” Benedict grinned, and the transformation in the man was not much short of astonishing. “Well, no point in you using up boot leather any longer, Reb. You might as well take your ease under that rocky overhang yonder while I head in and send somebody out with a fresh mount for you.”

  Brazos didn’t argue, though as he made his way across to the shade he brooded a little with the rancor of a weary man, as to how come it always seemed to be Benedict who won the important hands—like getting to town a couple of hours ahead of him and likely digging up his steak and wine while he waited amongst the lizards and dust devils.

  Dusk was drifting over the wild country when a boy from the livery stable showed up on a big black gelding leading a spare roan saddler.

  “Your friend hired Mr. Jackson’s biggest hoss and told me to get it out to you pronto, mister,” the boy told him. “Brung you a big canteen too, cold tank water she is.”

  By the time he’d finished off the canteen, darkness had fallen like a club across Arizona and Brazos was riding past the first fence that marked the outskirts of Tumbleweed.

  The town the big rider entered was a long, gloomy main street fronted by rickety buildings and intersected four times by cross streets. It lay brown, ugly and dusty under dim stars and there was the smell of rust and decay where the hot air lay in sullen pockets between the buildings.

  He passed a tumbledown tarpaper shanty sagging in bleak submission to the elements. The sickly glow of a grease lamp revealed the figure of a gross man slumped in drunken sleep at a filthy, littered table. The light glistened on the iron-colored sweat that sheened his big bare belly; a sleeping dog occupied the other chair.