When Five Bells Toll (Benedict and Brazos 31) Read online

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Benedict and Brazos had seen it all before—a supposedly genuine treasure map pointing to a priceless, solid gold statuette down in Old Mexico. According to legend, the Golden Virgin of Santo Sabinas had been hidden away in a spooky, disused monastery deep in the Sierra Espantosa, a vast range of almost impenetrable mountains that were said to be … haunted!

  It was all hogwash, of course. But there was something about the map that looked genuine. And for a half-share in whatever treasure they managed to find, Benedict and Brazos decided to team up with two hard-luck brothers and a small boy who quickly began to idolize gun-swift Benedict.

  There was just one problem.

  Other greedier, crueler men also had their eyes on the Golden Virgin, as did a merciless colonel of Federales. And one way or another, he was going to have it … even if it meant torturing Brazos half to death … and then threatening to execute the child!

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 31:

  WHEN FIVE BELLS TOLL

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Electronic Edition: April 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.

  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

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – To Raise a Little Money

  Chapter Two – The Fortune Hunters

  Chapter Three – Partners

  Chapter Four – South By Sierra Madre

  Chapter Five – Siege at Trabajo

  Chapter Six – The Haunted Land

  Chapter Eight – Of Blood and Gold

  Chapter Eight – Day Train to Rosarita

  Chapter Nine – Five Bells for the Virgin

  Chapter Ten – Bloody Sunrise

  Chapter Eleven – Son of Mine

  About the Author

  Chapter One – To Raise a Little Money

  THE MAN CALLED California Jim kept his big toothy smile of welcome in place until Hank Brazos produced the hundred-dollar bill. Then he glared up at the giant Texan through narrowed eyes.

  “What’s the big idea, cowboy? We agreed you was to bring tens. Tens into hundreds—that’s what I promised to do for you, ain’t it?”

  “Reckon so, California,” Brazos said. “But after I left here last night when you changed them dollar bills of mine into a bunch of tens, I got to thinkin’, ‘Why fool around with chicken feed when you could make a real killin’?’ I mean, if you can change a ten into a hundred with this here invention of yours, ain’t any reason why you can’t turn a hundred into a thousand. Kerrect?”

  California the con man searched the young giant’s sun-bronzed features suspiciously, but the Texan’s blue eyes were as guileless as a baby’s. With a sour look, he took the big bill from Brazos’ fingers and snapped it expertly between his fingers. It was genuine, right enough.

  “Where’d you get this?” he wanted to know. “Last night you told us you only had ten bucks to your name after that cattle dealer ran out on you and your pard without payin’.”

  “Si, you told us this,” confirmed the hairy Barrera. It was the Mexican who had first made contact with Hank Brazos and told him confidentially of the wonderful invention of a gringo friend of his which could ‘raise money.’

  Brazos winked conspiratorially.

  “Got me a connection down here I never told you about before, gents. Real soft touch. He’s got a whole passel more of them big centuries he’ll let you raise if you show you can do the trick with that one there.”

  California stopped being annoyed and started looking greedy.

  “How many more?” he asked sharply.

  “Just between you and me, he told me he’s holdin’ two grand,” Brazos confided.

  “There’s some pilgrim in this town that’s packin’ that sort of money I ain’t heard about?” demanded the con man, who liked to boast he could scent a loose dollar bill a mile upwind.

  “Who is he?”

  “Made me promise not to tell his name, California,” said Brazos. “But he flashed his money pouch after I showed him the tens you’d raised from ones. He told me the tens was genuine. He said he’d let you raise the whole two grand and he’d pay you and me a ten percent cut apiece.”

  It was quiet in the dingy room for a minute. The three men stood around the big old Manique stove that was an essential part of the ‘money-raising’ process. The window looked out on a stinking alleyway and the sprawling rooftops of the squalid Mexican town of San Carlos. California and his associates had operated from more luxurious surroundings in the past, but they were making good money here while waiting for the next big strike.

  California kept turning the C-note over in his fingers and darting glances at the Texan. Brazos tried to look relaxed, but inside he was nervous. Last night hadn’t been the first time the easy-going young Texan had been gypped by a smooth-talking stranger, but this was the first occasion he’d tried to outsmart one of the smart ones. Hank Brazos was by nature a man who did his best work with fists or a .45. Mostly he left the clever work to his partner who, to hear him tell it, was about the smartest operator north or south of the border.

  Finally California went to the door. “I’ll have to talk this over with my other pard, Texas,” he said. “I ain’t that good at raising the really big stuff, you understand. My pard can do it, but I ain’t sayin’ as how he will. Needs special chemicals and special paper, savvy? Ain’t certain as how we got it, but I’ll go see.”

  “Keno,” Hank Brazos said and California went out leaving him thinking: ‘It’s goin’ just like the Yank said it would ... except for this pard. The Yank said he’d try and hustle up a thousand-dollar bill ... which I guess goes to prove it was a trick after all ...’

  Even now, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t witnessed the real thing here last night, despite Duke Benedict’s contemptuous insistence that the money-raising con was ‘as old as Plato.’ Sometimes Duke Benedict referred to him as an ‘innocent abroad,’ whatever the hell that meant.

  The Mexican was dozing and Brazos was rolling his third Bull Durham cigarette when California returned with his partner, whom he introduced as Mr. Kell Zachary of New York, London and Paris.

  Kell Zachary immediately began to talk seriously about the great skill required to raise large bills, while Hank Brazos started to sweat. A very tall, broad-shouldered man with regular features and a dashing pencil-line moustache, Kell Zachary was as friendly as could be and real impressive. But Brazos was a better judge of some men than others and one glance at Kell Zachary was all it took for him to know that this one was really dangerous.

  “I don’t want to hurry you along none, Mr. Zachary,” Brazos finally broke in. “But you fellers told me yourselves this here money-raising’s against the law and it seems to me that the longer we stand here jawin’, the more risk we take of gettin’ caught. If you can do it, I’d admire to see you do it now.”

  The trio stared at him in silence for a few moments before Zachary smiled suddenly and spread his big han
ds.

  “You’re right of course,” he said. “All right, Hank, let’s have your hundred dollars and we’ll see if the old Zachary touch is as sharp as ever.”

  Wordlessly, Brazos passed him the bill, then moved to stand with his back to the open window. He watched Zachary carefully roll the hundred-dollar bill into a sheet of blue chemical paper, stick the roll into a cardboard tube shaped like a firecracker, then place the tube carefully inside the stove that the Mexican had kept hot all along.

  Brazos lifted his hand in a quick signal behind his broad back and then re-joined the others by the stove. Zachary told him that it took exactly ten minutes for the process to work and the moment the time had expired, he jerked the door of the stove open and reached in for the roll.

  “Judas, but that’s hot,” the man gasped, bouncing the cylinder from hand to hand before he was able to flip off the metal cap and break it open. A large, multi-colored bank note slowly uncurled in his open palm. Kell Zachary smiled triumphantly and extended the hand towards Brazos.

  The note on Zachary’s palm was a one-thousand dollar bill.

  Brazos took the note to inspect it with an expression of wonder that was as bogus as Kell Zachary’s chemical skills. For having been told what to look for by the same person who’d called him an innocent abroad, Brazos had seen Zachary make the switch. The cylinder containing the one hundred dollars was in the big man’s coat pocket. He was almost disappointed to know for certain that the whole thing was phony. But there was nothing wrong with this thousand-dollar bill in his fingers.

  “Well, Hank?” Zachary smiled proudly.

  “Beats all, I swear.”

  “I must admit it rarely works as perfectly as this, but my process is improving every time. Now if you’ll hand the note to California so he can clean all traces of chemical off it, you and I will take a little drink and talk about your friend. The one with the big money, I mean.”

  Brazos coughed and the door crashed inwards and a tall, handsome man in a black broadcloth suit came striding in. He had a Peacemaker .45 in either hand and wore a brass-plated badge on the left lapel of his coat.

  “I’m a United States marshal,” he said crisply, “and I’m arresting you all for tampering with property of the Treasury. I’ll shoot the first man who moves!”

  He looked as if he meant it. Yet despite the stern warning, hairy Luigi Barrera jabbed an accusing finger at him and started to shout excitedly in Spanish. Immediately the tall man with the Colts lunged forward and knocked the Mexican to the floor with a sweep of a gun barrel.

  Things happened fast after that.

  Hank Brazos leapt the unconscious Barrera and dived for the open doorway. The marshal grabbed at him and somehow they got tangled up and fell in an untidy, struggling heap against the wall.

  Zachary and California saw their chance and took it. They spun together and nosedived out through the window into the alleyway like men who had done that sort of thing before.

  “What about Barrera?” California shouted as he bounded to his feet and ran.

  A shot blasted from the room and a slug howled through the window into the sky.

  “What about him?” snarled Kell Zachary, and shouldering his loyal henchman aside, was first to charge through the sagging gateway. He went pounding down the alley with legs driving and arms pistoning as another booming shot rocked the San Carlos night. Threading through gray piles of garbage with California cursing and blowing heavily at his heels, Zachary made the cross street with his hide still intact, then led the way towards the river.

  Gloom and mist swallowed them.

  It was a half-hour later before they considered it safe to emerge cautiously from beneath a sagging old trestle bridge on the southern fringe of town. They stood beneath dark skies staring towards the town.

  California was still cursing and bemoaning the loss of the thousand dollars that represented the entire profit from two weeks spent working the money-raising fraud around San Carlos, but Kell Zachary was quiet now. Ominously so. Outlaw Zachary was a man who hated to lose and seldom did so. And worse than anything, he hated to lose money.

  Above, the old bridge hung across the dark night, strung with oil lamps in smoky glass chimneys. A buggy and pair clopped across, the brief sound emphasizing the hush. Zachary had expected the town to be boiling with searchers by this, but San Carlos was now very peaceful after the uproar at the old house on Juarez Avenue,

  California broke off cursing to take a pull from the flask he always carried. He belched, then asked querulously:

  “What the tarnal is a U.S. Marshal doin’ down here anyway, Kell? You figgered that out yet?”

  Zachary shook his head silently. He didn’t know. It was just one of the many things he didn’t know about this bad night.

  His henchman started to speak again, then broke off abruptly at the sound of approaching horses. In seconds the river bank was empty. Two horsemen emerged from the mists on the town side, swung around the old watchtower, then loped across the echoing bridge.

  They vanished into the darkness of the plains beyond the town, but not before the watchers from beneath had identified them as Hank Brazos and the arresting marshal.

  Hank Brazos’ soft laughter carried faintly to them on the foggy air as the sounds of hoofbeats died and were gone.

  Zachary and California exchanged a long, fixed stare in the half light. Laughter? What in nation’s name would that overgrown Texan find funny in the prospect of a term in an American prison?

  A terrible suspicion suddenly lanced through Zachary’s mind like cold steel. He didn’t say a word to his henchman as he swung away from the river and started running back towards the central block, didn’t have to. For California Jim was already beginning to smell a rat, too.

  They approached the old rooming house cautiously. Men were still standing around in groups, discussing the gunshots that had jolted San Carlos out of its midnight tranquility.

  The local lawman, a fat sheriff with a drooping moustache, strolled across the gallery with a deputy. The lawman didn’t appear unduly disturbed. He certainly didn’t look like a man who was about to work up a sweat chasing after a gang of money-raisers.

  Suddenly California tapped Zachary’s shoulder and pointed across the street. Turning his head, Zachary made out the furtive figure who was watching the activity around the rooming house from an alley mouth. It took several seconds to realize it was Barrera.

  The last they’d seen of Luigi Barrera he’d been unconscious on the floor. Helpless and red-handed.

  This didn’t make any kind of sense. Or did it?

  It was the work of minutes to cut across Juarez Avenue half a block down, then circle around to Barrera’s alleyway. He was still there, puffing on a cigarillo and massaging his battered head.

  The Mexican jumped inches in the air when Zachary eased up and tapped him on the shoulder. He recognized them, shaking but relieved.

  “Kell ... California,” he gasped. “Madre de Dios, is good to see you. I thought maybe they kill you before they escape.”

  “Escape?” Zachary rapped, his eyes intense in the gloom. “Lawmen don’t escape, Mex. We’re the breed that does that.”

  “I see you still do not understand,” Barrera said dramatically, clutching his sore head. “That man, he was no marshal, amigo. I see him with Brazos at the cantina last night, that is why he hit me on the head before I could tell you. The man with the badge is Brazos’ companero, Benedict. Now you see?”

  “Benedict?” California breathed. “Brazos’ pard ...?” He rolled owlish eyes at Zachary. “But ... but that means ...”

  California couldn’t bring himself to say just what it meant.

  But it wasn’t necessary to put it into words. They all knew what had happened now.

  The takers had been taken.

  Without a word, the three ran to get their horses.

  If there wasn’t an old saying that ‘Hell hath no fury like a
conman outconned,’ it was high time somebody coined it.

  Chapter Two – The Fortune Hunters

  THE TELLER BLINKED behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “You wish this bill changed into ten-dollar bills, señor?”

  “Correct,” Duke Benedict smiled around a freshly-lit cigar. “That will come to one hundred ten-dollar bills,” he added helpfully.

  “You do not wish to open the account?”

  “As impressive in appearance and as sound in reputation as your fine establishment is—no, I don’t wish to open an account.”

  “One moment, señor,” the man said and left his cage, carrying the one thousand-dollar bill gingerly to the manager’s office. Even in bustling Starrado City, big bills like this were rare. And when presented by strange gringos, they were plainly something to be approved by the man who, in the eyes of the clerks, stood only slightly below God ... the manager.

  Manager and teller reappeared moments later. The portly manager held the note in his fingers. He saw the handsome Americano leaning lazily on the counter in his broadcloth suit, frilled shirtfront and immaculate, low-crowned Stetson. He was winking at sixty-years-old Señorita Gonzales, the bank’s oldest employee. The manager was appalled to see the woman blush and giggle like a giddy girl.

  In the name of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, was there no modesty left in this sinful world?

  The manager cleared his throat. “Change the money as he wishes!” he told the teller. “Pronto!”

  “We do not question him as to how he came by it, sir?”

  “Not unless we wish to waste the entire day,” the manager said austerely and with a withering glare at his ageing lady clerk, he stamped back into his office and slammed the door.

  Basking in the glow of the effect he was having on the interested clerks of the bank, Benedict paused at the door to tuck his money safely in an inside pocket. Then he tipped his hat to Señorita Gonzales and sallied out into the brilliant sunshine where Brazos waited with the horses.