Benedict and Brazos 4 Read online

  Some town, Tumbleweed.

  The street led him directly to the big, long adobe horse stables, with the name “Jackson’s Livery” painted on the sign above the door. As he rode up, a smart familiar figure stepped out, causing him to haul rein in surprise.

  “Ah, I see the boy found you okay,” Duke Benedict greeted him with a wide smile. “Well, don’t just sit there gaping, Reb. I was just leaving for the town’s leading saloon which the good Mr. Jackson informs me glories in the name of the Cobweb Palace, but if you move smartly, I’ll wait for you.”

  Brazos went on gaping. He’d fully expected to find Benedict taking his ease in a plush saloon when he got to Tumbleweed, yet here he was still at the stables.

  Then Benedict stepped back into the light and he immediately saw the reason why. The Yank was hardly recognizable as the stubble-jawed, dust-caked figure who’d left him some two hours back on the trail. He’d shaved and bathed and dusted his clothes and polished his boots. His hair was brushed neatly and he could just have stepped out of the Opera House at Austin.

  Brazos shook his head wonderingly. He’d always had the Yank tabbed as one of the greatest dudes he’d ever met, and this put the seal on it.

  “You know, Benedict,” he drawled, “I reckon if you had the choice ’twixt livin’ dirty or dyin’ clean-shaved in a store-bought suit, you’d take dyin’ any day.”

  “We are wasting valuable drinking time, Reb,” Benedict said briskly.

  That reminded Brazos of his powerful need for something stronger than canteen water. He got moving. Inside five minutes he’d washed himself down, found some scrap meat for his dog, given Jackson elaborate instructions as to how he was to take care of his appaloosa when the boy brought him in, and paid the man from a roll that was getting dangerously thin.

  “Okay, Yank, let’s go,” he grinned. And as they headed for the door: “I’ll try and rustle you up a marrowbone after I’ve slaked my dry, Bullpup.”

  The hound growled in disgust and sniffed at the scrap meat disdainfully as the two stepped out into the darkness. As they headed for the main street, Brazos said,

  “Some town, eh, Yank?”

  “The Kansas City of the Southwest,” Benedict said mockingly.

  Brazos peered closely at a couple of loafers they passed on a sagging front porch.

  “Reckon he’s here, Yank? Shapes up as the sort of burg Bo Rangle might like.”

  “I’m afraid we’re out of luck.”

  “How come?”

  “I questioned Jackson while I was taking a bath. The outlaw gang we heard about belongs to some reprobate named Jack Savage. Jackson insists Bo Rangle’s never been to Tumbleweed, and he seems like a fellow who might know.”

  Brazos’ face showed his disappointment. Another false lead? That long, forced ride for nothing? Could be. There was no shortage of disappointments when you were hunting a wily, ruthless varmint like Bo Rangle.

  Back at Jackson’s Livery, Bullpup was feeling the pangs of disappointment too as he finally rejected the scrap meat, growled menacingly at Jackson, then got up on his thick bowed legs and walked to the doorway to peer out into the night.

  The dog sniffed the night air of Tumbleweed. His sensitive nose sifted through the drifting scents and picked up subtle, exciting suggestions of stew pots and butcher shops and things he couldn’t quite define, but which set his mouth to watering and induced a deep-down rumbling under his ribs.

  Scrap meat? What he really wanted was something really solid to pack his guts with.

  And being independent by nature, he swaggered off in the darkness to do something about it.

  Two –No Town for Strangers

  Duke Benedict sat with his back against the rough unplaned bar of The Cobweb Palace waiting for Brazos to rejoin him. Through the dim and dusty light, three faded percentage girls eyed the stranger with lustful interest, but were reluctant to approach. The newcomer was so good-looking he made their mouths water, but there was an air about him that warned faded saloon flowers like themselves that he was way out of their class.

  Finally big Hank Brazos slouched in scratching his belly. He’d been out front asking questions about Bo Rangle. Benedict cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nope. Looks like Jackson was right.”

  “Damnation!”

  “You can say that again.” Brazos scowled. “Say, where’s my beer?”

  “They don’t serve beer in The Cobweb Palace.” A sly look crossed Benedict’s face, but Brazos didn’t see it. “But there’s whisky aplenty. Barkeep, a double shot of your very best for my friend.”

  Marble John, the saloonkeeper, poured from a black bottle standing on the bar.

  Brazos tipped the glass to his lips. Immediately his eyes bugged as he exploded into a violent cough that sent whisky spraying clear across the bar.

  “God’s spurs!”

  “Exactly,” Benedict grinned.

  Brazos gave him a look of blue violence.

  “Some goddam partner you are not to warn a man. What the cross-eyed Judas is it anyway?”

  “Who can tell?” Benedict indicated the bottle. “No label.”

  Brazos hefted the big black bottle and shook his head sadly as he turned it in his big hands.

  “Beware the bottle without the label,” he drawled. “That’s what my old pappy always said, Yank. Never kiss a gal who wears green stockin’s and never drink from a bottle without a label.”

  “From all the hair-raising stories I’ve heard from you about your father, he would drink quicklime through a barbed wire blanket.”

  “He shore enough would,” Brazos agreed proudly. And chuckled. “That was another thing he used always say too.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t do like I do, do like I say.”

  “One of nature’s gentlemen and true philosophers, your pappy.” Benedict turned to the man behind the bar. “Just what is this, friend?”

  Looking surly, the barman sniffed. “Sour mash. Best in the house. If you don’t like it then you …”

  “We didn’t say we didn’t like it,” Brazos cut in.

  “We didn’t?” Benedict said.

  Brazos grinned and lifted the bottle again. “It ain’t all that bad you know, Yank, once you get to breathin’ again and your kidneys stop sinkin’, that is.” He took a small pull, coughed and rubbed watering eyes. “Sorta grows on you.”

  “Yes, like warts,” Benedict said disgustedly. Then to the saloonkeeper. “Are you sure this is your best.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And you have no wine?”

  “No.”

  Benedict shook his head and picked up the bottle again. “Bottled in the Barn,” he named it. “Guaranteed to kill forty yards around the corner. All right, we’ll drink it, barkeep, but lace our glasses with sarsaparilla will you. It might retard the poisoning process a little.”

  Hank Brazos chuckled but the tall, bleached-out man behind the bar did not. Marble John had his pride and didn’t take kindly to people hard-naming his liquor. He produced a bottle of sarsaparilla, topped up their glasses, and moved down the bar to sulk.

  Sipping cautiously on their drinks and slowly beginning to relax, Brazos and Benedict studied their surroundings.

  The Cobweb Palace was pretty unique even by their widely-travelled standards. The room was about sixty feet long by thirty wide, with a low, beam-hung ceiling and about half as much lighting as it needed. The floor was earthen, every corner was choked with the silvery layers of cobwebs that gave the place its name. The clientele scattered about at rough-hewn tables, comprised mostly unshaven deadbeats, a smattering of businessmen, and half-a-dozen girls who looked as if they might have been born and bred in the good old Cobweb Palace.

  Still, it beat the desert hands down, and even if it looked as if they might have guessed wrong about Bo Rangle, they’d made it to town safely. The sour mash was tasting a little better every glass. In lieu of the rare steak and wine Bene
dict had envisioned, they settled for a plain meal of beef stew from the kitchen, and Brazos’ spirits picked up to the point where he blew out a couple of tunes on the harmonica he wore on a cord slung around his neck while Benedict condescended to let the least shop-worn looking of The Cobweb Palace’s percentage girls sit by him and hang on to his every witty word.

  Marble John decided to be sociable after awhile and came back down the bar to watch Brazos polish off a huge plate of grits from the kitchen and to listen in as Benedict questioned a couple of barflies about Bo Rangle.

  The strangers the desert wind had blown in intrigued Marble John as much as his customers; they just didn’t fit into the categories the saloonkeeper kept in his head. It was Marble John’s pride to know men, but this pair had him puzzled.

  The big one, for instance. He looked like a saddle bum, but there was a sense of explosive force behind the amiable blue eyes that made it hard to picture him lining up for chow at a chuck wagon, or taking a chewing out from a cranky ramrod. And his companion had “dude gambler” stamped all over him, yet he wore his twin guns gunfighter style and didn’t talk like any gambling man Marble John had ever known.

  Brazos finally drained his glass and stretched.

  “Well, what do you say, Yank? We go hunt up some place to lay our weary heads?”

  Benedict ruefully examined his roll, sadly depleted after long, fruitless weeks on Bo Rangle’s trail.

  “We don’t have too much loose change to splash around on accommodation,” he observed.

  “Maybe I could squeeze you into my room, handsome,” offered the thirty-year-old blonde whose name was Ellie Mae. “If you asked me real nice, that ...”

  Ellie Mae’s voice became a shriek of fright as a gun suddenly blasted outside. Immediately customers dashed for the doors as shouts of fury drifted over the batwings, mixed with what sounded like the savage growls of a beast.

  “What the hell is that?” Brazos said, straightening from the bar. “Let’s go take a look, Yank.”

  “You take a look,” Benedict replied indifferently. “Hick town brawls or whatever aren’t really in my line.”

  Brazos shouldered his way out through the batwings, thrust a couple of spectators aside and saw feathers. Big white feathers, little white feathers, swirling all about in a cloud of dust that was drifting past the gallery.

  “What the ...?” he said.

  Then he saw Bullpup. The hound was ducking round a water trough with his jaw clamped tight on the leg of a squawking chicken, hotly pursued by a wild-eyed man in a frock coat waving a double-barreled shotgun.

  “Drop my chicken!” the red-faced man was bellowing. “Drop it you wall-eyed, mongrel son-of-a-bitch!”

  Bullpup paid no heed. How was he supposed to know that the squawking bird that he was holding firmly by the leg, was the sole producer of eggs in dusty Tumbleweed? All the dog knew was that it had taken him an hour to smell this chicken out and get his jaws around it and he wasn’t about to surrender it.

  That was until Brazos bought in.

  “All right, all right, simmer down, joker,” the big man said, jerking the shotgun wielder to a halt as he pounded past. Then with authority, “Drop that dirty bird, Bullpup.” Bullpup slowed to a halt, looking appealingly across at his master. Brazos pointed to the ground. Reluctantly the dog opened his jaws. The chicken, which had lost just about every feather in the melee, staggered, squawked, then shot off down the street like a road runner with turps on its tail.

  “Damn fool hound,” Brazos grinned affectionately, releasing the speechless man with the shotgun. “Come on inside and I’ll give you a shot of sour mash and rustle you up somethin’ solid.”

  Brazos turned away. As he did, a blur of movement caught the corner of his eye. He whirled just in time to see the choleric, red-faced man in the frock coat swinging his gun up to take aim at the dog.

  “Hungry are you, you monster?” the man bellowed. “Well, I’ll give you a meal of blue whistlers.”

  Hank Brazos didn’t act. He reacted. Eyes suddenly snapping cold, he lunged forward and knocked the shotgun up as it went off with a roar like a cannon. With ridiculous ease he plucked the smoking weapon from the man’s hand, raised it high and brought it down across his upswinging thigh. The gun smashed into two pieces which he tossed aside, then laid powerful hands on the gaping man.

  Red Nose roared with rage, then shrieked in terror as he was lifted high and saw the stars between his feet. His scream became a gurgle as he disappeared completely under the surface of the horse trough. An awed crowd gathered as Brazos held the squirming figure under for a full twenty seconds before leaving go. Hair streaming down his ugly face, the man in the frock coat flopped over the side of the trough, gasping and spluttering, his eyes rolling wildly.

  “If you’d shot my dog I’d have had to drown you sure, mister,” Brazos told him vengefully, then shoved the sodden head under once more for luck. “And let that be a lesson.”

  He turned away with a snap of his finger. “C’mon, Bullpup. Goddam, all that ruckus over one lousy chicken.”

  Chickenless but triumphant, the hound swaggered off behind his master through the gaping crowd, pausing to watch with red-eyed enjoyment as towners hurried to drag Red Nose out of the trough, before following Brazos into The Cobweb Palace.

  “What the devil was all that about?” Benedict said without much interest as Brazos returned to the bar with his front soaked with water.

  “Ah, jest teachin’ a joker somethin’ about how to treat animals,” Brazos said casually. He was a man whose anger blew over quickly. He got a tin dish from Marble John, poured in a generous jolt of Bottled-in-the-Barn, topped it off with sarsaparilla and set it before the dog. Bullpup lapped into it without hesitation and Brazos was grinning as he straightened.

  “Well, what say we just have one more for the road, Yank, then go find someplace to sleep.”

  Benedict nodded in agreement, held up two fingers to Marble John, frowned as he peeled yet another bill off.

  A little barfly standing nearby who could obviously recognize symptoms of the shorts on sight, said sympathetically, “Accommodation don’t come cheap in Tumbleweed, son. But I heard you fellers say as how you got your hosses stashed at Jackson’s Livery, didn’t I?”

  “That’s right,” said Brazos. “What about it?”

  “Well, coz Jackson ain’t a bad feller. I reckon he’d most likely put you up in his hayloft if you asked him perlite and explained as how you were just a mite short of ready cash.”

  “Hey, that sounds all right, Yank,” said Brazos.

  “Sounds terrible.”

  “Won’t cost us nothin’ most likely.”

  “We’ll take it.”

  They finished their drinks and said an amiable goodnight to Marble John and the little cluster of barflies who’d gathered around, but Benedict was obliged to pass up Ellie Mae’s offer of a goodnight kiss. Even after half-a-dozen Bottled-in-the-Barns, tough Ellie May still wasn’t kissable.

  “Heck, she wasn’t that bad, Yank,” Brazos grinned as he kicked the snoozing Bullpup awake and they headed for the doors.

  “Not that good either,” came the firm reply, and shoulder to shoulder they went out to face the night and a double-barreled shotgun with a badge in back of it.

  The two propped on a dime, hands dropping gunwards. A sour, twangy voice that seemed to echo back out of a rain barrel warned them, “Keep yer paws clear off them hoglegs, boys. I’m Sheriff Wiley, the law in this here town.” Then he lifted his voice. “This the feller, mayor?”

  “That’s him!” bellowed a voice laced with righteous wrath. “The one in the purple shirt!”

  Benedict and Brazos turned to see a big-nosed man in a still-sodden frock coat standing to one side at the head of a bunch of men, pointing an accusing finger. Brazos’ jaw fell open with an audible click when he recognized Red-Nose.

  “The ... the mayor?” he said weakly.

  “Mayor Barnaby Littlejohn,” the mean-
looking little sheriff replied thinly. “The citizen you liked to half drown in the hoss trough. Okay, both of you, hand over your irons and no funny tricks.”

  “Now just a minute,” Benedict protested. “If my partner did violence to this dignitary, then that’s nothing whatsoever to do with me.”

  “That’s some accent you’ve got there, mister,” the sheriff grinned maliciously. “But fancy jawbone ain’t goin’ to do you no good. You come into town with this here lawbreaker and that makes you a lawbreaker too in my book. I’m lockin’ you both up to learn a little respect. C’mon now, the shootin’ irons.”

  Duke Benedict turned his head slowly to stare at Brazos with a look of total ferocity. Brazos grinned sheepishly, shrugged innocently.

  “How was I to know he was the mayor, Duke?”

  “You great thick-witted oaf ...”

  “Save it till later, tinhorn,” the John Law cut in. “Now for the last time, gimme them guns.”

  They handed their weapons over dumbly. The sheriff, obviously relishing his work, then marched them off towards the law office.

  The red-nosed mayor bellowed after them: “Assault and battery, malicious damage and chicken-thieving, Sheriff! Don’t forget to charge them with chicken-thieving, by golly.”

  “I won’t, Mister Mayor,” Wiley called back. Then he chuckled, “By dad, you fellers have got yourselves into real trouble, ain’t you?”

  The jailhouse was dank, dark and dismal. A dingy front office, a solitary cell, the stink of unwashed bodies and old cabbage. “See you in the mornin’, trouble-makers,” Wiley smirked as he turned the big key in the lock, then went off whistling through rotten, tobacco-stained teeth.

  Silence.

  A weighty minute passed. Then Brazos looked up from scratching Bullpup’s ears.

  “Duke, I ...”

  “Shut up.”

  “But hell, Duke, all I wanted to say was how I never meant to ...”

  “I said shut up, damn you! By the great hand of God it’s bad enough to be locked up with a cretin who can’t tell the difference between a city mayor and a town bum, but I’m damned if I’m going to tolerate one word of your homespun idiot’s dialogue on top of it.”