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  The plan was simple. Duke Benedict would stay in Nogales and build up a stake from his poker winnings, while Hank Brazos ran a string of horses south into Mexico. When they were financially solvent again, they’d reward themselves with a long, restful vacation.

  But they didn’t count on Brazos getting himself arrested and sentenced to hang on a trumped-up murder charge.

  From that moment forward, Benedict had only one priority—to save his partner from a necktie social. To do just that, he agreed to throw in with a fearsome bounty hunter named Branch Lucas, who was in Mexico on business of his own.

  That business concerned a man called Diablo—a man of the people, who intended to free Toltepec Province from the yoke of slavery and had an entire army of renegades at his disposal.

  When Benedict and Brazos threw in with that army, the flame was lit, and the powder keg that was Toltepec Province was ready to explode!

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 32: A MAN CALLED DIABLO

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2022 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Electronic Edition: May 2022

  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.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Stranger in a Strange Town

  Chapter Two – Bad News in Nogales

  Chapter Three – Sundown at San Miguel

  Chapter Four – The Ways of Mama Grande

  Chapter Five – Where Ghosts Will Walk

  Chapter Six – Too Many Cooks

  Chapter Seven – Gambler s Luck

  Chapter Eight – Another Chance

  Chapter Nine – Every Man a Hero

  Chapter Ten – Amigos

  About the Author

  Chapter One – Stranger in a Strange Town

  HANK BRAZOS CERTAINLY wasn’t looking for trouble of any kind, and romance was the farthest thing from his mind when he ambled into the diner that displayed crisp tortillas and golden-crusted tamales in the window. All he was interested in was a little nourishment for himself and his dog, but the fat little Mexican barring his way seemed to have other ideas.

  “No gringos,” the man said, pointing to the sign hanging over the door. “Can you not read?”

  “Not a lick,” the Texan conceded, sniffing appreciatively. He had a sharp nose for good food and the aromas drifting out from the little kitchen in back told him that the cuisine here was real good.

  “We do not serve gringos,” declared runty Pablo Chaves, the top of his balding pate reaching no further than the brass harmonica which hung on a rawhide cord around the big man’s muscular neck. “Gringos bad! Troublemakers!”

  Brazos didn’t seem to hear. He tended to be single-minded when hungry and this velvet dusk in San Miguel had found him one very hungry Americano indeed. The pint-sized Mexican blocking his way seemed no barrier to those fragrant aromas that were causing his empty belly to growl alarmingly, so he just smiled amiably and drawled:

  “How much are your tortillas, amigo?”

  Pablo Chaves bristled. He was a man with a short-fuse temper whose dislike of Americans went beyond the fact that they sometimes caused trouble in his store. He detested America and all things American. Most of all he hated American arrogance, and misreading Hank Brazos’ simple preoccupation with his appetite for arrogance, he did a foolish thing.

  He poked the Texan in the chest with a greasy forefinger. Now regardless of the tough reputation Hank Brazos may have had in other places, he was not a troublemaker. The same however could not be said about his dog. Bullpup loved trouble. He thrived on it, as his battle-scarred hide testified. And if there was one thing more calculated than another to trigger the trail hound off it was anybody laying hands on his master.

  Chaves didn’t even see the ugly head thrust between Brazos’ wide-planted legs. His first awareness of danger was the gentle clamp of big teeth about his plump calf. This was followed by a fierce growl that caused him to leap straight in the air, turn as he felt the playful grip on his person loosen, then take to his heels.

  “I declare,” Brazos said wonderingly, as he stood listening to gringo-hating Pablo’s noisy retreat through his kitchen. “They sure enough got curious ways down here.” And his passage unimpeded now, he strolled to the counter.

  It grew very quiet in Pablo Chaves’ place. Brazos leaned a heavy arm on the counter and Bullpup licked his chops audibly. The cooking fragrances were affecting the digestive juices of man and beast alike. Brazos rapped on the counter with a dime.

  A girl appeared from the curtained-off kitchen, not the kind of a girl a man would expect to encounter in a place like this.

  She was tall and raven-haired and carried herself regally. Dressed in a low-cut peasant blouse and crimson skirt, she wore mother-of-pearl combs in her hair and surveyed the man who had just scared the sweat out of her diminutive employer with a mixture of wariness and amusement.

  “Yes, señor?”

  Brazos’ first reaction was to straighten. The second was to remove his battered hat. Then he blushed, the way he tended to do on such occasions—then tried to think what his gabby partner Benedict might say at such a time to impress a real pretty girl.

  “Ain’t it the purtiest weather you ever seen, ma’am?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen purtier,” the beauty replied, straight-faced.

  “Could be a change comin’, though,” he ventured, suspecting that had educated Duke Benedict been present he wouldn’t be too impressed with the way he was progressing.

  “Little ever changes in San Miguel, señor.” The dark brows lifted. “You wish for something?”

  Brazos frowned and scratched the back of his neck. He didn’t reply, for right at that moment, he wasn’t quite certain about anything. This girl was lovely enough to throw any man for a loop.

  “We were about to close for the night, señor,” the girl told him. She gave a small smile. “So if you will just tell me what it is you want ... or perhaps you only came in to frighten Señor Chaves for your amusement?”

  He found his voice.

  “Right sorry about that, ma’am. But the little feller got kind of excited about somethin’ and when he poked me my dog, Bullpup, kinda chomped his leg a little. Never meant no harm, of course.”

  She leant forward to study Bullpup who looked up at her with his pink, sandpaper rough tongue licking around his teeth.

  “Such a handsome animal,” she said, proving to Brazos beyond all doubt that she was a girl of great judgment. “And he looks so hungry.” She straightened. “A tortilla for your Bullpup, perhaps?”

  “That’s just what he come in for, ma’am.”

  “And one for yourself, before I go home?”

  Brazos had suddenly lost his appetite.

  “Reckon not, ma’am,” he said.

  “Oh?” Those lovely dark brows lifted again. “Then there is
nothing you wish for?”

  “Reckon there is, ma’am. I’d admire to walk you home.”

  Afterwards, he couldn’t believe he’d said it. He couldn’t recall ever being so forward, but then he’d never met a girl quite like this before either.

  The girl surveyed him gravely, but still with that subtle hint of amusement in her eyes. Señorita Rosalina Oteros was accustomed to handling ardent customers. She knew the way men looked at her and guessed what was in their minds, so that in time most men had come to seem much the same to her.

  But this one was different, she was thinking, taking in the vast, sun-bronzed size of him, the open, honest face—now blushing furiously—the sky-blue eyes. He was not like the men of her own race who sought her favors and was certainly different from most Americans she knew. He looked gentle despite the huge muscles and that big black gun on his hip, she thought. Yes, a gentle giant.

  “And why should I permit a total stranger to escort me home, señor?” she asked calmly.

  He’d come this far, he just had to go through with it now.

  “Why ... why on account from what I’ve seen of your town, I don’t figure a lady ought to be abroad at night alone, ma’am,” he got out.

  “Sí, that is only the truth,” she replied, then turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Brazos waited. Voices sounded in back and he heard the proprietor’s voice lifted querulously. Maybe they were deciding to summon the law. Maybe that’s what they did in San Miguel when Americans ignored ‘keep out’ signs and made a play for their womenfolk.

  But there was no cause for alarm. Rosalina Oteros was merely reassuring her small employer that the danger was well and truly over, and soon she reappeared dressed for the street with a lace mantilla draped over her head and shoulders and carrying two paper-wrapped tortillas, one for the lip-smacking trail hound and one for his master.

  “I live on Maderos Street, señor,” she said simply and that was that. No hollering for the law, no unseemly scenes. Just a starry Mexican night waiting outside and one beaming young Texan proud to be seen out with somebody who just had to be the prettiest girl in town.

  It was true what Benedict said sometimes, Brazos thought as he got to the door; fortune favors the brave ...

  The tortilla place stood on Presidente Square near the big stone jailhouse and directly opposite the church. The town was built around the square, which was wide and treeless with an ornate well in the center where the women gathered by day to draw water and exchange gossip, their places taken at night by lounging men who sat smoking on the benches to watch young girls promenade.

  By the time the giant Americano and the girl had crossed the square and were passing the high towered church, they looked somehow easy together ... and their passing didn’t go unnoticed by the loafers at the well.

  “Who is this with the Señorita Oteros?” wondered a pockmarked youth smoking a black cigarillo.

  “Is one called Brazos,” informed the hotel clerk. “Tonight he checks into the hotel. He tells me he is on business, that he waits in San Miguel to be joined by a man named Benedict.”

  “Is a big gringo,” remarked another.

  “And unusual,” added a fat man.

  “Why unusual?” asked the clerk.

  The fat man shrugged. “He must be different from all others, or Señorita Oteros would not permit him to escort her home. No?”

  They considered, then nodded in agreement. For Señorita Rosalina Oteros, though much admired by the male population of San Miguel, was regarded as unattainable, it was even said that she had recently rejected the suit of Sancho Garcia, considered by some señoritas as a very handsome man and a good catch.

  “A proud girl to reject such a suitor as Sancho,” observed the clerk.

  “And a brave one as well,” commented the fat man, and again all heads nodded. For it was also well known that Sancho Garcia was one of the most dangerous men in San Miguel, an hombre who would not take rejection kindly, one might think.

  With Bullpup padding behind, Brazos and the girl turned out of the square and followed a poorly-lit, twisting street between crowding houses. In the gloom, Rosalina half expected her escort to find an excuse to take liberties with her but he simply took her by the arm. She wondered about him. He might be anything, a gunfighter, an adventurer or a man running from the law. Mostly, the Americans who found their way to San Miguel fell into one of those categories. And yet she sensed that this one, with his great shoulders and his open, boyish face, might be different.

  “The tortilla was to your satisfaction, Hank?” she asked, having exchanged names before they left the diner.

  “Huh? Oh yeah, Rosalina,” Brazos grinned, licking his fingers. “Just right. You do the cookin’ back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Must be hard work, slavin’ over a stove all day.”

  “It is a living.”

  “Guess so. And from what I’ve seen of things down here, makin’ a livin’ ain’t all that easy for some these days.”

  “What have you seen, Hank?”

  “Well, I delivered a remuda of horses to a ranchero over Carsalla way, and then headed back for San Miguel by way of Santa Clara valley. I thought I’d seen poor folks before, but out there they’re strugglin’ to keep body and soul together by their looks.”

  “It is true. Mexico has never been so hungry or oppressed. El Presidente is a good man I think, but many who serve him such as Colonel Prado in this region are bad men only interested in power.” She shrugged. “But of course this can be of little interest to an Americano.”

  “That ain’t so,” Brazos replied, side-stepping a puddle in the gloom. “I was born dirt poor and I can tell you it grieves me to see little kids beggin’ in the streets and folks cashin’ in for want of a good feed.”

  “Well, there are those who are not content to allow things to continue as they are.”

  “You mean like this rebel pilgrim I’ve been hearin’ about ... this El Diablo?”

  “Sí. The Devil, as the Government calls him, is a man with the poor at heart.”

  “Was, don’t you mean, Rosalina? Didn’t I hear he’d been jailed and sentenced to hang?”

  She sighed. “It is so. And it is a tragedy, for El Diablo and his people have really fought to help the shirtless ones. But such things are depressing to talk of on such a fine night, Hank. Tell me something about yourself. Why have you come to San Miguel?”

  “I’m waitin’ for my pard to join me, Rosalina. We arranged to meet up here after I delivered my cayuses. Benedict’s on his way down from Arizona and then we’re goin’ huntin’ out west, kind of a vacation.”

  “Then you are in the horse business?”

  “On and off. I can turn my hand to most things, provided it’s honest work, I guess.”

  Rosalina nodded, pleased with what she was hearing. “I see. And this friend of yours, this Señor Benedict, he too follows the same line of work as yourself?”

  Brazos chuckled. “Well not exactly. Benedict ain’t much with horses and he’s even less with cows or most anythin’ that causes a man to sweat. He’s more for pickin’ up the loose change at the gamblin’ layouts or hirin’ out if somethin’ or somebody needs lookin’ after.”

  “A gunfighter?”

  “He’s been called that, but he don’t much care for the tag. Mind you, he’s tolerable slick with a six-gun when he has to be.”

  “He does not sound like you, Hank.”

  “Not a damn bit, Rosalina. He’s mighty spry-lookin’ and he’s got more education than I reckon’s good for any man. He’s kinda flashy and high steppin’, and he’s one of them pilgrims who just naturally figure they’re dead right about everythin’ under the sun and everybody else is wrong.”

  “And this is your friend? Why, you sound as if you do not even like the man.”

  “Hell! That’s about as wrong as you can get, Rosalina, on account that hard-nosed, mean-
mouthed, tetchy fool is about the best man a feller ever had at his shoulder when the goin’ got rough.”

  “And this is his only virtue? As a fighter?”

  “Mebbe I ain’t puttin’ it as well as I might, Rosalina. What I mean is ... Benedict’s a man to ride the river with. Understand?”

  Rosalina nodded her dark head tentatively. She doubted she would like Duke Benedict, she decided, but that was of no consequence. She was getting to like Hank Brazos more and more, so much so that as they turned into Maderos Street, she said impulsively:

  “It is not far to my home now, Hank. Would you care to come in for some coffee?”

  Brazos declared that coffee sounded just fine to him, and with elation took her by the arm as they walked the last half block to the neat, adobe little cottage.

  His action was as gentlemanly as could be and the way Rosalina smiled up at him showed only too clearly that she found nothing objectionable about it. But the same didn’t apply to the burly figure who stepped suddenly from a darkened doorway in front of them ... the burly, slightly unsteady figure of a man who had followed them unnoticed from the square before cutting ahead through the alley so he could waylay them. The slope shouldered figure with the tequila-laden voice seemed to find what he’d witnessed very objectionable indeed.

  “Take your hands off my woman, you gringo son of a whore!”

  “Sancho!” Rosalina cried, her hand flying to her throat. “What ... what are you doing here?”

  “Doing what plainly needs to be done,” came the thick reply. “Protecting the virtue of Mexican womanhood against the filthy gringo.”

  “Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute, mister—” Brazos began, but the drunken Mexican’s voice overrode him.

  “You stand next to death, gringo pig. Leave now before he takes you in his arms.”

  “Hank,” Rosalina cried urgently, seizing Brazos’ arm, “please do as he says. He is not responsible for what he does when he is drinking, but I can calm him. Only you must go, now.”

  “Goldurn it, missy. I can’t just leave you like this,” Brazos protested. “Who is this jasper, anyways?”