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

  Denham jerked his hand away from his Colt as though it had grown white hot. He glowered at Goffin. “Goddamn it, Holly, whose side are you on, anyways?”

  “Just ain’t hankerin’ to see blood spilled is all,” Goffin replied, unruffled. Then he looked at Brazos. “Better take it easy, Hank.”

  Always quicker in action than in brainwork, Hank Brazos tried to marshal his thoughts. The plan was for this homecoming prodigal son to show up as a formidable, two-fisted, Yankee-hating rebel and so attract the attention of whoever was hatching an anti-government plot down here in Wildhorse County. So far, he’d been acting so tough that his face was beginning to hurt from it. He didn’t want to overplay his hand, but sensed in this situation a tailormade opportunity to make a powerful impression, both on the Alamo men and the two score or more silent citizens who’d been attracted to the spot.

  It was an opportunity, he decided, he couldn’t afford to pass up.

  “Your ramrod wants me gone and I want to stay on, Holly,” he said quietly. “Reckon as how it’ll take more’n just words to settle that—yours, his or mine. Tell you what, Denham, you whip me and I’ll git and won’t come back. But if I whip you, I stay.”

  “Done,” Denham rapped out before Goffin could intervene. “What’s your choice, hard-mouth? Guns, blades or fists?”

  “Makes no never mind to me.”

  “Great hades,” Holly Goffin said in disgust, “like a couple of bull moose wranglin’ over a new cow. Well, if you’re bound to have it out, use your goddamned fists.” He extended a hand to either man and snapped his fingers. “C’mon, hand over the hardware.”

  “Suits me,” Denham said, delivering his Colt and spitting on his hands. His eyes were bright with the confidence of an expert brawler who had never yet tasted defeat.

  “Any way suits me,” Brazos grunted as he passed over his shell belt. “Let’s see how big you really are now …”

  The rest of his sentence was smashed back into his teeth by a looping right from Hayes Denham that knocked him clear off the Three Dimes porch, over the horse trough, to land on his broad back with a mighty thud in the Trail Street dust.

  It was a long time since anybody had knocked Hank Brazos off his feet and he didn’t like it. Rolling swiftly aside as Denham leapt down from the porch, he lunged to his feet, went low beneath a whistling blow and crashed a jolting blow to the mouth. Denham propped, spat red, then left-hooked to the side of the head, driving Brazos sideways.

  Brazos backed up, blue eyes intent and wary as the Alamo man circled. The tumble from the porch had dislodged Brazos’ battered hat and his bleached blond hair gleamed like gold in the blazing sunlight. Under the thin stuff of the faded purple shirt, slabs of muscle moved silkily as he sparred, parried, and looked for his chance.

  Denham continued to move crabwise, left hand extended, the right cocked against his blued jaw. The Alamo ramrod’s vest shirt was the color of blood. Butter colored dust lifted from shuffling boots to drift across the animated, sweating faces of the spectators who seemed equally divided in their patronage. Brazos was bigger and more muscular, they observed now, as the combatants occupied a man-made circle in the center of the street, but Denham was plainly much faster, while that record of his spoke for itself.

  “Six to four Brazos!” the Three Dimes dealer, Owen O’Sullivan declared when Denham lunged into the attack and scored with three successive straight lefts to the jaw. “Take six to four Denham!”

  “What do you reckon, Cory?” blacksmith Lucas Donner asked of the Alamo rider as the battlers surged to and fro. “You know Brazos from the old days.”

  “I reckon Denham’s too damned good for him,” Wellsmore replied honestly. “He’s scorin’ three and four to one. Nobody can take that sort of punishment from Hayes, not even Brazos.”

  Hank Brazos was thinking exactly the same thing as he was driven back towards the Ace Corral in a wild swirl of dust. Hayes Denham hit as hard as any man he’d ever faced, and he’d faced plenty. Denham didn’t swing, but drove in short, crisp punches that had all his powerful frame behind them. With those iron fists sledging through his guard, it wasn’t hard to understand how Hayes Denham had earned his reputation as the best brawler in the county.

  “Six years wasn’t long enough for you, hard-mouth,” Denham panted as they clinched against the corral fence. “You should have stayed away another six.”

  “Save your breath, Yankee,” Brazos replied, locking his arms about the man’s muscular back in a crushing bear-hug. “You’re goin’ to need it all before we’re through.”

  Denham ripped upwards with a vicious knee and looked indignant. “Yankee?” he queried. “Who’s a damned Yankee?”

  “Every son of a bitch I fight is a Yankee,” Brazos gasped, putting on more pressure. “That’s how come I never lose.”

  “Until now that was,” Denham retorted, and proved he’d only been foxing weakness in the bear-hug as his left arm came free to elbow jolt Brazos in the face, breaking the grip and spinning him six feet back along the corral fence.

  Brazos’ eyes rolled and he clutched the rails desperately, bringing an expectant yell from the onlookers as Denham charged. The only spectator who didn’t look impressed by his grogginess was straw-chewing Holly Goffin who had seen his old friend from Frog Hollow fight and win before.

  Brazos looked as helpless as a kitten until his adversary was right on top of him. Then his glazed look vanished miraculously, and driving off the fence, he head-butted to the face, the dread Liverpool Kiss.

  Denham fell on his back, but was immediately on his feet again, swinging wildly. “That Hayes,” Alamo man Frank Carr said admiringly, “he must be made of goddamn solid rock.”

  It looked that way to the onlookers, but not to Hank Brazos. In close, he could tell the head-butt had taken the sting out of Hayes Denham, a fact that was borne out moments later when Denham caught him with his own version of the Kiss and it barely brought water to his eyes. Brazos had his man going, and there was too much riding on the outcome of this brawl for him to let up.

  It was time to wind this one up.

  Denham seemed to sense his intent as he closed in behind a series of short, ripping punches to the body. Desperation flickered in the Alamo man’s eyes and sent the adrenalin pumping through his body. He managed to hook a foot behind Brazos’ leg, then butted to the jaw. They crashed against the corral fence and went through, a rail cracking with a sound like a rifle shot.

  They tumbled into the deep dust of the corral and Denham’s pants leg snared on a broken section of railing. Denham seized the wooden spear, drove it at Brazos’ face. Brazos ducked, plucked the timber from Denham’s hands, and swatted him across the head with it. Denham stumbled under the impact then, whirling his body, kicked Brazos in the crotch.

  Pain shot through Brazos’ body and he lost his temper. With his tattered purple shirt hanging from his Herculean frame, he launched into a two-fisted attack for which Hayes Denham had no counter other than his considerable courage. In a matter of seconds it became plain that Brazos had won the fight and could finish Denham off whenever he chose. But instead he kept pistoning those short, cruel blows to the head and body of his reeling adversary, damaging blows that were meant to cut and hurt but not put a man away.

  There had been great admiration for Brazos’ performance before, but now much of that admiration turned to distaste. It was one thing to whip a man, the sobering faces of the spectators seemed to say, but it was another to chop him up and humiliate him when he was well and truly whipped.

  A half minute passed, punctuated only by the ugly, hard sounds of Brazos’ fists, and then Denham was down again with blood streaming from nose, mouth and eyes. Grunting, streaked with dust and sweat and blood, Brazos bent down to reef him to his feet.

  A calm voice said, “That’ll do it, Hank!”

  Holding the half-conscious Denham with one hand twisted in his sodden shirtfront, Brazos turned hot blue eyes to the slim man strolling into the dust-shrouded corral.

  “Keep out of this, Holly,” he warned.

  Goffin kept coming towards him. “I said that’ll do it, Hank. You’ve proved your point.”

  For a long, bad moment it seemed as though Hank Brazos might turn his fighting fury on the young man who had always been something of an enigma even to those who’d known him all his life. But after a hanging moment passed, Brazos shrugged, hauled Denham all the way upright, then flung him violently away from him to crash against the fence before pitching face downwards in the dust.

  “So you’ve made your point, too, Holly,” Brazos said, wiping a sweaty forearm across his mouth. “But don’t horn in on me that way again, amigo.”

  The words were as hard as he could make them, and full of threat. Yet to the surprise of all, Holly Goffin just smiled.

  “You’re still all steamed up, Hank. You wouldn’t go against me.”

  “I would if I was pushed.”

  “No chance. You and me go too far back for that.”

  Brazos stared at him, trying to maintain his flinty stare. But the good memories of other days crowded him, drawing the heat from his eyes. After a long moment, he looked away to where Wellsmore, George, Morton and Carr were crowding around Denham.

  “He’s a big man, your ramrod, Holly,” he said. “But he’s not big enough.”

  “You whipped him fair, but could be you’ve made a bad enemy, Hank.”

  “The world’s full of Yankees who hate my guts.”

  “He’s no more a Yankee than you and me, Hank,” Goffin smiled. “You ought to know I’d never take orders from any damn Yank.”

  It was growing crowded and noisy in the Ace Corral now and the two men turned and walked out through the broken fence, heading for the water trough where Brazos soaked his aching head. Watching him, Goffin rolled him a Bull Durham, lit it and passed it across. Brazos drew deeply, grunting his appreciation. Bullpup swaggered up and licked his hand as if to say ‘well done.’ Holly Goffin’s look was deep.

  “Why’d you come back, Hank?” he asked abruptly.

  “This is where I sprung from.”

  “There’s more reason than that.”

  “Are you callin’ me a liar?”

  “Mebbe,” Goffin smiled.

  Brazos glared, then grinned. “I keep forgettin’ you’d never buy the bluff, Holly.” Then he turned sober. “Well, mebbe there is another reason, pard, though you’ve likely heard it before. I’ve found life too damn tame after all the excitement of the war. Just seems to me that everywhere I’ve been, everybody’s had himself a bellyful of fightin’ except Hank Brazos. Everybody seems set on lickin’ Yankee boots ...”

  “That’s the way it’s got to be these days.”

  “Yeah? I heard it was different down here, Holly, and that’s what brung me back. I heard that down here in Wildhorse there’s men who ain’t ready to lie down and play dead dog just on account some dirty carpetbagger or Blueguts says so. I heard that down here there’s still action and fightin’ and easy money to be made by them with spirit enough not to wear the Reconstruction yoke.”

  “Well, there’s always big talk, Hank. I’m not sayin’ that what you’re hintin’ at is right or wrong, but I am sayin’ things have changed a heap down here in six years. Really changed.”

  “You mean like so many of the old-timers driftin’ on, new men driftin’ in? Like your boss at Alamo?”

  “Reckon you’ve heard about Chard Ringerman then, Hank?”

  “Some.” Brazos looked west, in the direction of Frog Hollow. “Joni married him, her pa tells me.”

  “Yeah. Reckon she just up and got tired of waitin’ for you to come back from the war, pard.”

  “She’s ... she’s keepin’ well?”

  “Purtier than ever.”

  “Sure would like to see her again.”

  “I don’t reckon that’d be such a great idea, Hank. Like I been sayin’, everything’s changed. Matter of fact, things have changed so much hereabouts since the old days when we were fiddle-footed cowboys together, that I don’t reckon you’d believe it. My advice would be for you to mosey on and at least keep your memories.”

  “Tryin’ to get me to move on, too, Holly?”

  “Hank, I recall you were never much at takin’ advice, but I reckon the best advice I can give you is to tell you to quit the county.”

  “Sorry.” Brazos inclined his head towards the lurching Denham who was being assisted through the corral gate by Wellsmore and Ryan George. The Alamo ramrod still looked a sick man with the blood on his face and the dust in his hair. Brazos’ mouth narrowed to a hard, thin line. “I just proved I’m the biggest man in Wildhorse again, Holly. I’ll be stayin’ on until somebody bigger shows up.”

  “What if I was to tell you that there might be somebody bigger around already?”

  “I’d say he’ll have to prove it.”

  Chapter Four – A Game for Two Players

  By midnight, the liveliest saloon in Wildhorse was the Dancing Lady on Sundown Street. They served bad whisky and flat beer at the Dancing Lady, yet the hitchrack was lined with nodding horses, while loud guitar and piano music from the old building washed out over the buckboards and surreys stashed in the yard out back.

  Girls were the attraction that kept the cash registers at the Dancing Lady ringing and the customers’ minds off the indifferent liquor.

  In the center of the horseshoe bar, on a raised platform, danced three girls in sequined tights, skimpy tops and high-heeled, cherry-colored shoes. The local preacher thundered against the ‘near nakedness and blatant lewdness’ of the Dancing Lady’s girls just about every Sunday, providing the saloonkeeper with the best free advertising to be had in town.

  The dancers worked a half hour on and a half hour off and it was almost time for them to go upstairs to the balcony to get away from the cigarette smoke and pawing hands.

  On the platform nearest the batwings, Sally Blair danced like a dervish, charged on her own special mixture of sour-mash whisky and mescal. She was a curvaceous redhead with big breasts and a baby face and her long hair swung around her head in the spotlight as she rocked her hips in time to the driving beat of the guitars.

  Sally never missed a beat and was the Dancing Lady’s star attraction. Most of the customers who showed up at the saloon night after night came to see Sally, and most of them thought they were in love with her as she tapped and twirled in her mescal-tinted haze, though it was common knowledge that Sally only had eyes for one man.

  That man wasn’t here tonight, and because of that, Sally had hit herself with almost double her usual dose of stimulant before going on. The mescal only improved her dancing and the spectators couldn’t know that as she whirled and twirled in such perfect time to the music, her thoughts were on things totally divorced from her dancing as she worried about Buck Swift’s absence.

  The number was drawing towards its close. Tossing her auburn hair at the lights and kicking her cherry-colored shoes at the cigarette smoke, Sally gave the paying customers their money’s worth and more, and when the girls left the stage, the storm of applause was, as always, mainly for her.

  “Hell, but I must be gettin’ too old for this caper,” panted Lil Speers as they climbed the stairs to the balcony.

  “You need some of my medicine, honey,” Sally smiled, still excited by the applause.

  “I’ve got enough problems without gettin’ myself tied up with that stuff, Sally,” Lil replied. “Thanks, honey, but no thanks.”

  It was pleasantly cool on the balcony. The music was muffled below, and there was a breeze coming in from the river. Lil Speers and Pretty Lucy just sat with their long legs stretched out before them for a time, recovering from their exertions, but Sally paced to and fro, still pulsing with the restless energy engendered by the drug she used. Sally would be an old woman at thirty if the mescal didn’t kill her before that, but until that happened her energy burned brightly.

  “You didn’t see Buck in the crowd, did you?” she asked after a silence.

  Lil and Pretty Lucy shook their heads and exchanged a glance. To them, Buck Swift, with his foul temper, vanity and mysterious comings and goings, was a pain in the neck and a man to keep clear of. But they had given up trying to steer Sally Blair away from him. Sally was hooked on mescal and sour-mash and Buck Swift, and that was just the way things were that Texas summer in Wildhorse.

  “I hope he hasn’t taken sick again,” Sally said worriedly.

  “He looked all right when he was around just on dusk, honey,” Pretty Lucy said. “For somebody who got hit as hard as he did by a feller as big as Hank Brazos, that is.”

  “Why did that overgrown rooster have to come back and have a run-in with my Buck anyway?” asked Sally petulantly as she leaned on the wrought iron railing. “As if there’s not been enough troubles hereabouts without more blowin’ in.” She turned her head and looked at them. “Do you reckon he might be one of them rebels they talk about?”

  There was a solemn pause. And then, “I think he’s just a feller who elected to come back and see what the old hometown looked like, Sally,” Pretty Lucy opined.

  “He’s sure as shootin’ got his own funny way of doin’ it,” Sally grouched, her mescal glow beginning to fade. “Heatin’ up everybody who looks crosswise at him.”

  “I had a drink with that lovely Holly Goffin before supper,” Lil confided. “He was tellin’ me that he’s never seen anybody change so much as that Hank Brazos feller did. Holly said that before the war, he and Brazos and some of their friends used to go huntin’ and shootin’ and all that together and he said Brazos, was about the hardest feller to get riled or mixed up in a ruckus you ever did see.”

  “That awful damned war,” Lucy sighed. Then looking at Lil, she asked, “Did Holly chance to say anythin’ to you about Brazos and Mrs. Ringerman, honey? About their goin’ together once, I mean?”