A Day for Fools to Die (Benedict & Brazos 30)

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  It looked like the end of the trail for Benedict and Brazos, when Brazos got mighty mysterious all of a sudden and just took off on his own. Benedict, the urbane gambler, reckoned he should be glad to be free of the lumbering Texas cowboy at last. Instead he missed having him around.

  So he followed him, to find out just what his little secret was.

  That was when the whole affair grew even more mysterious. Why did Brazos go all the back home to Wildhorse County, start throwing his weight around and bad-mouthing damn’ Yankees at every opportunity?

  It was all part of an elaborate cross and double-cross that would eventually see both men fighting for their lives against a bunch of fanatics who called themselves the Second Army of the Confederate States!

  BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 30:

  A DAY FOR FOOLS TO DIE

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Electronic Edition: March 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 – When Brazos Came Home

  Chapter Two – Town Afraid

  Chapter Three – Trail Street Fury

  Chapter Four – A Game for Two Players

  Chapter Five – The Angel and the Gunfighter

  Chapter Six – The Useless Gun

  Chapter Seven – Outlaw Army

  Chapter Eight – Lovers and Loners

  Chapter Nine – The Proving Ground

  Chapter Ten – The Eyes of Alamo

  Chapter Eleven – Play a Lone Hand

  Chapter Twelve – Blood on the Dying Sun

  About the Author

  Chapter One – When Brazos Came Home

  “This is a big responsibility I’m trusting you with, Brazos.”

  “Reckon as how I know that, an’ I’m plumb honored, Marshal. But there’s just one thing I ain’t exactly happy about ...”

  “No.”

  “Heck, I ain’t even said what it is yet!”

  “There’s no need. I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer’s no.”

  “But Benedict’s my best pard, Marshal Loder.”

  “On this job, your only ‘pard’ will be the United States government, Special Deputy Brazos.”

  “But you don’t understand. I’m used to workin’ with the Yank, and he sure as hell would pull his weight if things got prickly. He’s the best goddam gun hand west of the Big Muddy.”

  “He’s also a notorious rake, gambler, troublemaker and snob. And worst of all, he’s a Yankee. He’s out, Brazos. That flashy dude could wreck the entire assignment and get you both killed.”

  “Then that’s your last word?”

  “Yeah. You still prepared to undertake the job?”

  “Mebbe ... But you’re wrong, Marshal …”

  “About what?”

  “Benedict ain’t no dude.”

  “What he is or isn’t ain’t important. What’s important is that we’re in big trouble in Wildhorse County, and every marshal that’s met you reckons you’re our only hope to clear it up. Will you do it for me, Hank?”

  “I’ll do it. But not for you or nobody else, Marshal Loder.”

  “For whom, then?”

  “For Texas.” Hank Brazos’ big chest swelled. “For the Lone Star State!”

  Duke Benedict was so taken aback he almost dropped the girl he was carrying. “You’re what?” he demanded. He panted a little, for though as pretty as an early Spring and pink as a Texas sunset, Goldie Blain was definitely on the buxom side.

  Monumental in his faded purple shirt, big Hank Brazos twisted his battered cowboy hat in his hands and tonelessly repeated the astonishing announcement that he was riding out. And without his old foe of the Civil War battlefields and subsequent partner on many violent trails.

  He was saddled up and ready to ride from sunbaked Canyon Creek. Alone.

  Benedict stared at him across plump Goldie’s generous bosom. They’d only hit town the day before, following a hard five-week chase after the Bick Gang through the desert and the dashing ex-Federal captain, Duke Benedict was making up for the drought. Now his touchy pride, always his weakness rose to the surface.

  His eyebrows went up. “So you’re heading out alone ...” His lips brushed Goldie’s curved cheek. “So what’s keeping you?”

  Brazos looked wretched. “It don’t have to be for keeps, Yank. It’s just that …”

  “Write me about it some time,” was Duke Benedict’s parting shot to his simple partner of twelve adventurous months. And showing no sign of strain, he mounted the carpeted stairs of the Lucky Deuce Saloon, with Goldie’s silk-stockinged legs protruding from one side of his dark-clad figure and her wide gray eyes peering back over his shoulder at the young giant slowly turning away below.

  “Golly, but Ah think you hurt that boy’s feelin’s, sugar babe,” she said in a voice as Southern as sorghum and molasses.

  Benedict paused before the door of the girl’s room. “Hank keeps his feelings in his fists,” he said with a touch of bitterness.

  “Well land’s sakes, no call to get riled, sugar babe.”

  “Who’s riled?”

  “Ain’t you, honey?”

  “Relieved would be more accurate.”

  “But ...”

  “Goldie.”

  “Yeah, sugar babe?”

  “May I remind you that we didn’t come up here to talk?”

  This was true enough. But neither had they gone to Goldie’s room to brood. Yet an hour later, clad only in his tapered black pants, with moonlight sheening his torso, Duke Benedict stood smoking at the window, doing just that. Brooding. And so deep was his preoccupation that rosy-cheeked Goldie had to speak three times from the big brass bed before he responded.

  “Huh? How was that again, Goldie?”

  “Duke, didn’t I please you?”

  “Indeed you did.”

  “You all don’t show it.”

  Benedict blew cigar smoke through the window and exclaimed. “Damned impertinence!”

  “Duke!”

  “Uh? I didn’t mean you, lovely lady.”

  “You’re thinking about your friend.”

  Benedict made no reply, but she was dead on target. He couldn’t get his farewell scene with Henry Houston Brazos out of his mind. He’d ridden the trails with that rugged ex-Confederate sergeant for over a year, enduring his homespun philosophies, his narrow puritanism, the homicidal tendencies of his impossible dog and his endless anecdotes about his benighted father. They had battled enthusiastically and sometimes desperately with the hellers of the West, and on occasion had battled one another. Sometimes the unlikely partnership had been a strain on the educated scion of a wealthy Boston banking family, but mostly it had been good, mostly exciting, and always unpredictable. Benedict supposed he’d always known it would wind up one day, yet never anticipated that Brazos would be the one to finally call quits.

  He shook his sleek head.

  It had always been he who had threatened to quit, mostly after one of Hank Brazos’ misdemeanors. Brazos was always the one who’d smoothed things over and held the partnership together. Yet tonight, out of the blue, with no good reason that Duke could see, Johnny Reb had walked out on the Duke.

  At the moment, he didn’t know if he were more peeved with Brazos, or mystified by the manner of his going. With a sigh, he went back to bed.

  “It’s simply out of character,” he opined next morning, over coffee on the little balcony.

  Goldie was not at her sharpest in the early morning. “What ... who ...?” she blinked.

  “Don’t worry your pretty head, Goldie ... but it is.”

  He stared out at the blue morning.

  Brazos’ action was totally out of character, he told himself, his thoughts crystallizing under the stimulus of the new, fresh day. There was a mystery associated with the entire matter of Brazos’ abrupt departure, and Duke Benedict had always relished a good mystery.

  “Hold it right there, jasper!”

  Shad Martin wasn’t much jumpier than the next man, but that harsh order coming seemingly from nowhere brought him up sharply, heart pounding as he turned.

  A tall, lean man drifted from the doorway of the Wildhorse Feed and Grain store and Martin’s heart skipped a full beat when he saw who it was.

  Buck Swift was one of the newer men in the county, one of a growing breed whom level-headed citizens like Martin reckoned was giving Wildhorse County a bad name. There was nothing definite against Buck Swift; he just rode with a trouble-making bunch, never seemed short of a dollar, and as far as anybody knew, had no regular job of work.

  But it took
more than that to raise a lump in portly Shad Martin’s throat. Shad had been a big winner at the Three Dimes Saloon’s poker game tonight, and Buck Swift had been the heaviest and least gracious loser.

  A finger as hard as a gun barrel poked the little man in the chest. “You got somethin’ that belongs to me, Martin,” Swift growled, and Martin remembered that the sheriff and his deputies were out of town investigating a rustling, which just might account for the hardcase’s assurance.

  “That was a fair, honest game, Buck Swift,” he managed to get out. “You was just ridin’ a losin’ streak too hard is all. You shoulda quit.”

  “Don’t start tellin’ me what I should have done, Martin. What I should have done was check out that deck, and mebbe dealer O’Sullivan’s sleeves while I was about it. But it ain’t too late to change things.” Swift snapped his fingers. “Fork out, fat man. I dropped sixty bucks tonight, but I’ll settle for forty.”

  Shad Martin flushed and found some courage.

  “I ain’t givin’ you one nickel, Buck Swift!” he shouted, then spun and started to run.

  Swift caught him in three long strides and chopped the edge of his hand across the storekeeper’s neck. The little man shot headlong and struck hard in Coyote Street dust. He was only dimly aware of Swift kneeling by his side going through his pockets. His pocketbook slipped from an inside pocket and Buck Swift was smiling in the half light as he rested back on his haunches to riffle through the greenbacks.

  “... Thirty ... forty ...” he counted, “and another ten for makin’ it tough, storekeeper. Next time when I make a business proposition, you’ll likely be quicker to snap it up without horsin’ about.”

  Now Wildhorse, southwest Texas, was a troubled town that summer, but even so this sort of thing was hardly common. Sheriff Beardsley maintained reasonable law and order within the town precincts, whilst letting the county more or less go to hell. Holdups and stand-overs weren’t common within the city limits.

  “Now I don’t want you to go hollerin’ to the law or to nobody else, pot-belly,” counselled Swift, “on account I only took back what I lost through cardsharpin’. My advice is for you to mosey on home and forget it. If you don’t you could end up short of more’n a few miserable bucks. Like a gallon of gore, for instance. Get me?”

  “You ... you thief!” Martin gasped as he struggled to his knees. “You and your kind are makin’ this county a place decent people can’t even live in. Well, I’m goin’ to holler blue murder about this, Swift, and I’ll see you go where you belong, behind bars.”

  “Too bad you feel that way,” Swift said nonchalantly, then struck the little man a vicious open-handed blow across the mouth. As Martin tumbled, Swift fetched him a backhander across the face then drove his hand into the storekeeper’s inside pocket again. For opening his mouth too wide, Shad Martin was now going to get a real working over and no loose change at all.

  A big rider on a travel-stained appaloosa was passing under the street light. His head turned towards Coyote Street and his blue eyes narrowed at the unmistakable sound of flesh meeting flesh with violent impact. He turned his horse towards the sound.

  Swift leapt to his feet, lips skinning back from yellow-stained teeth. “Get the hell away from here, saddle tramp,” he snarled. “I got me a gun!”

  So had the stranger ... and it was in his hand. Swift caught the sheen of lamplight on a powerful, broad-boned face. His fingers brushed the butt of his .45 but he knew he wouldn’t draw, knew he dare not. And now Shad Martin was starting to holler and bleat, and in a minute towners would start appearing. Suddenly, there was but one sensible course of action open to hardnosed Buck Swift.

  With a choking curse, he got up and ran.

  Coyote Street trembled to the sudden drumbeat of hoofbeats. Turning wildly, Swift saw the big horseman bearing down on him. He swerved left, then right. The rider loomed above him. Swift made to leap left again when the sweeping gun barrel hit his head and he struck the earth with his face, the taste of dust in his bloodied mouth.

  The stranger swung down and holstered his gun. Fifty yards behind, Shad Martin struggled up to see the young giant haul the dazed Swift to his feet and the sound of two hard slaps across the face were like music to Shad’s ears.

  “All right, mister,” the stranger said in a deep Texas drawl. “I saw what you were up to. Hand over what you stole.”

  Blood ran from Buck Swift’s mouth and his eyes streamed tears. He was hurt and enraged, but most of all he was frightened. A handful of seconds were enough to convince him that he was in the grip of the strongest man he’d ever encountered. But always the hardhead, he made a play. Feigning semi-consciousness, he slumped against the stranger, who tightened his grip to hold him up, then moved fast to pluck at the gun in the worn leather holster.

  He was fast, but not quite fast enough. The stranger swung his hips back just out of reach, and next moment a fist like iron ripped into Swift’s midsection and jack-knifed him. He wasn’t aware of being swung bodily over the stranger’s shoulder to be toted back to the storekeeper and he was just beginning to regain his wits when he was tossed through the air to land at Shad Martin’s feet with an ugly thud.

  Buck Swift rolled once, his eyes turned in their sockets, and he was through for the night.

  “Seems to me you just ain’t big enough or ringy enough to play these games, mister,” the stranger drawled. Then he lifted his eyes to a gaping Shad Martin and nodded.

  “I ... I dunno how to thank you, mister,” the storekeeper panted.

  “Who needs it?” came the terse reply. “Better collect what he took off you and mosey out before he comes to. He just could wake up ornery.”

  Quickly Martin went through Swift’s pockets and came up with his billfold.

  “That was damn white of you to horn in, mister,” he said. “And the least I can do for you in return is to warn you to keep on ridin’.”

  “On account of him? He don’t look so much to me.”

  “Well, Buck Swift is proddy enough for my taste, mister, but there’s others tougher than him, and they’re his saddle pards. They could cause you plenty grief if they hear about this.”

  “Got a notion I’ll get by,” came the terse reply, and it was only then, as the big man turned away to his horse and dog, that little Martin started to remember. That broad back, that easy walk that was curiously graceful. Where had he seen them before?

  “Just a minute, son!” he said, hurrying after him.

  The big man kept on until he’d reached the street light on the corner before halting. He made an adjustment to his saddle, not looking at Martin as he spoke.

  “What is it now?” he growled. “And don’t call me son.”

  “Whatever you say, mister ... but don’t I know you from someplace?”

  “You should, Martin.”

  The storekeeper’s eyes stretched wide. “You know me?”

  Now the broad, bronzed face swung towards him, the blue eyes amused. “I used to try and buy chawin’ tobacco off you, and you used to tell me as how it’d stunt my growth. O’ course you were wrong about that.”

  “Reckon I must have been at that ...” Martin muttered, delving through his memory of all the faces that had looked across his counter through all the long years. The face, the voice and the Herculean build were all familiar but something was different and suddenly he knew what it was. The expression. He’d known this iron-faced young man once, but then he’d been about the most genial young cowboy in Wildhorse County. And that had been six years ago, before John Hood’s Texas Brigade had gone off to fight for the glorious South and a lost cause.

  “Brazos,” he breathed wonderingly. “Hank Brazos from Frog Holler, as I live and breathe!”

  “Fitted me right, storekeeper.”

  Martin thrust out his hand, but it went unclaimed. He dropped it slowly to his side, searching the young man’s face intently now, seeing the lines and scars the years had put there.

  “Old Joe Brazos’ boy,” he said slowly. “Glory be, but you’ve changed, young Brazos.”

  “Ain’t we all. You weren’t soft in the old days, storekeeper. You didn’t have no pot belly and you’d have fought like a bobcat if any second-rater had tried to lift your money-sack.”

  Some of the pleasure was fading from Martin’s face as he turned his head away. Swift hadn’t stirred since that heavy throw. He brought his eyes back to the big man, stroking his belly self-consciously.