Bo Rangle had not passed through Glory.
They were certain of that by the time they had worked their way to the bottom of their second beers at the long, gloomy bar of the Prairie Flower Saloon. The barkeep and the half dozen surly customers they had questioned had hardly been communicative, but there was little doubt they’d been telling the truth when they’d insisted they’d never seen or heard of a certain tall butcher with gunsight eyes and a band of the worst desperadoes ever to roam the west. Over the long months of hunting, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos had developed a sure sixth-sense about such matters. Brazos had even come to believe he could smell Bo Rangle at any place he’d visited and he sure as hell couldn’t smell him in Glory.
“He must have cut west,” the giant growled with his massive back leaning against the bar and the almost empty glass dangling from his right hand.
“Or then again he could have gone south, north or east,” countered the tall Benedict, a sharp note of criticism in his voice. “If you will remember, it was I who cast doubts on the authenticity of our information on Rangle back in Beaumont, and you who insisted that half a lead was better than none at all.”
“So it’s my fault, huh?”
“Well, it certainly isn’t mine.”
“So we drew a bad lead. Better to take a chance than loaf about Beaumont chasin’ everythin’ in a skirt like you seemed content to do.”
“Well, call me a libertine if you will, but I can assure you, my bull-headed friend, that I would infinitely prefer to chase skirts in Beaumont, as you so crudely put it, than drink watered beer in this pest-hole.”
“That reminds me,” Brazos growled, straightening and signaling to the barman. “Where’s them next two beers we called for, joker?”
The barman, Studs Mulligan, was a fat, greasy looking specimen with protruding brown eyes that were round as marbles. He wasn’t pulling beer. He was in fact swabbing at the bar top and he went right on doing it.
Brazos put fingers to his teeth and whistled piercingly.
“Hey, two more beers!”
Studs blinked at the big Texan, but before he could reply a rough voice sounded at Benedict’s elbow.
“Sorry, gents. Two’s the limit.”
Benedict and Brazos turned together. The man who’d come up to the bar was short and sharp-faced. He was decked out in a cheap brown suit and a garish waistcoat.
“And who the hell are you?” Brazos challenged.
“I am Scobie Passlow, owner of the Prairie Flower, mister. And I say no more beer. The simple fact of the matter is, we don’t cotton to strangers in this man’s town. Experience has taught us that most strangers mean trouble and seeing as we’ve got as much of that as we need, we don’t encourage them to stay on.” The little man put on what he obviously imagined to be a winning smile. “Now that you’ve slaked your thirst, gents, why don’t you just mosey on?”
Benedict and Brazos stared at the man, for the moment struck speechless by his effrontery. Then, in the thick silence, a deep voice sounded from the direction of a nearby table.
“Better do like he says, drifters.”
They turned to the table. The man who’d spoken was a big, strapping fellow dressed in blue denim with the muscular arms of a blacksmith. He glowered at them, and for the first time the two newcomers became aware of the open hostility in the room. There had been an unnatural silence in the saloon ever since they’d come in, but this was their first hint that they were the cause of it.
“And who the pluperfect are you?” Brazos demanded.
“That is my good friend, Charlie Hursag, the town smithy,” Passlow supplied. Then he added pointedly, “He doesn’t like strangers any more than I do.”
Hank Brazos’ reaction, once he realized Passlow was serious, was, to his partner, predictable. The giant Texan spat accurately between Scobie Passlow’s shiny boots, then started rolling up his sleeves.
“Mister,” he said softly, “I’m hot and I’m dry and I’ve come a mighty long way and now I’m gettin’ ornery. So you just tell your fat, cow-eyed barkeep to start pullin’ beers or I’m about to start pullin’ noses.”
Passlow flushed and men began to shuffle their feet all around the room. Studs Mulligan reached for a keg bung. Scenting battle, Brazos started a grin that faded when Benedict suddenly reached out and laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Hold it, Reb.”
Brazos gaped. “Hold it?” he echoed. “We mosey in here as peaceable as two jokers can get, and this panty-waist son of a bitch saloonkeeper has got the brass-bound gall to tell us—”
“I know, it’s not really acceptable,” Benedict said. “I don’t care for it any more than you do. But beer of this regrettable quality is certainly not worth brawling about, so let’s see if we can’t find a place that’s somewhat more hospitable.”
Brazos blinked. “You mean we’re gonna let ’em buffalo us?”
“Nobody buffaloes Duke Benedict,” the gambling man replied with a hardness in his voice that Brazos recognized. “It’s just that this pest-hole is not worth a dust-up. Let’s go.”
Brazos glared at his partner for a long moment before the hot light went from his eyes. When it got right down to bedrock, Benedict was really the leader of the man hunting duo, though Hank Brazos would rather walk through hell with his socks off than admit it. Now, cooling down in the face of Benedict’s cool assessment of the situation, he swept a glance around the barroom and realized, as usual, that his partner was right again. The Prairie Flower Saloon just simply wasn’t worth bruised knuckles.
“All right, Yank,” he finally growled, unclenching his fists. “C’mon Bullpup, let’s get out of this roach trap.”
“A wise decision, gentlemen,” Scobie Passlow called after them as they headed for the doors. “And if you’ll take my advice, you will quit town.”
Brazos’ gesture told the saloonkeeper what he thought of his advice, but he kept on walking after Benedict and would have followed him all the way out if Charlie Hursag had had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Hursag, who had the reputation of the town’s best brawler, mistakenly mistook common-sense for cowardice and called after them mockingly:
“That’s right, run along like good little boys.”
The two men propped. Brazos glanced at the ceiling, then turned slowly to face the blacksmith’s table. Benedict could see what was coming, but he made no move to interfere this time. For one thing, the smithy had stepped beyond the bounds of what they were prepared to take, and for another there was no stopping Brazos when he got that particular shade of battle glint in his eye. The gambling man just stood to one side and watched the giant Texan saunter back to the table where Charlie Hursag came eagerly to his feet.
Charlie Hursag was big and fast and tough—but he was no judge of a dangerous man. This he found out with bewildering swiftness as he lunged at Brazos with a haymaker and ran straight into an expert right cross that mashed his nose in a burst of crimson and snapped off a front tooth.
Hursag reeled, hit the table, roared like a maddened bull and came charging back to bounce a blow off Brazos’ head that dented his hat.
That was Hursag’s one and only punch. Brazos had an enormous affection for his sorry derelict of a Stetson. A heavy-knuckled fist ripped into the blacksmith’s mid-section. A gale of whisky breath gushed from Hursag’s mouth as he doubled over. Moving with the grace and assurance of a man who’d had more fights than he could remember, Brazos hooked to the jaw, crossed over with a looping right to the already battered nose, then smashed a brutal rip to the ribs. Hursag started to go, but Brazos seized his shirt front to give him one more for luck. He dropped low, rammed his shoulder into the unconscious smith’s belly, hefted him across his shoulder with ridiculous ease, then headed towards the batwings.
The saloon watched in wonderment as Brazos halted six feet from the batwings, hefted the unconscious figure off his shoulders, then flung him hard against the swinging doors. Hursag hit like a hogshead of rum, bounced mightily and ended up in the street. Brazos strolled out after him, straightened his hat, dusted his hands, then shouldered his way back in, looking happier than at any time since leaving Beaumont.
“Ever see a pilgrim bounce like that, Yank?” he grinned. “Musta been all that hot air he had inside him.”
“It could very well be, Reb,” murmured Benedict, cocking an eyebrow at the menacing wall of men coming towards them with a red-faced Scobie Passlow at their head. “And now that honor has been satisfied, I suggest we don’t tarry any—”
That was as far as he got. A bottle hurled by the cowardly hand of Studs Mulligan arced through the air and struck Benedict on the shoulder. It was only a glancing blow and didn’t hurt, but it produced results. Benedict’s boiling point was set a lot higher than the rough and ready Brazos’, but when he reached it, he could be as explosive as his partner and then some. His gray eyes glittered briefly; then, faster than any man had a right to be, he took two steps forward and knocked Scobie Passlow cold with as pretty a right cross as had ever been seen in the Prairie Flower.
“Now you’re talkin’, Yank!” Brazos laughed, and with a Rebel yell he hurled himself headlong into the fray wearing the blissful expression of a man up to his ears in the kind of work he did best of all.
Topheavy Tolliver came in swinging a heavy chair. His foot rolled on the bottle Studs Mulligan had thrown, and as he slid forward, chair still upraised, Benedict kicked the chair and Tolliver went into the corner with a mighty crash.
“Look out, Yank!” Brazos bawled. Benedict ducked and the thrown bottle meant for his head skimmed over his back and took Morrie Jakes hard in the teeth.
The ginger-bearded man who ran squarely into Benedict’s right fist was the next casualty among the Glory ranks, going down as if he might never get up. Brazos struck next, punching lanky Cash Wildgoose so hard to the face that the wheelwright’s wife was going to have trouble recognizing him when he got home.
Undeterred by these initial setbacks, and spurred on by Passlow who had staggered back to his feet to yell orders and encouragement from a safe distance, the towners closed in. Bullpup bit a cross-eyed man with a black beard, Benedict punched him, Brazos kicked him in the backside. That more or less took care of the fat man with the black beard, but while they were so occupied, some of the others were getting in their licks and it was growing a little uncomfortable jammed up against the unyielding bar.
“The window, Yank! Let’s go!”
Following Brazos’ gesture, Benedict saw that the long bar ended just short of a window at the far end. He nodded, then winced as a whisky glass bounced off his head. He ran to the end of the bar and dived headlong through the open window.
With Bullpup tucked under one powerful arm, Brazos was close behind. He heard the roars of chagrin as his boots left the bar and he dived through. It was further to the ground than he’d expected. Fortunately the agile Benedict had landed on his feet and jumped aside to give him room. Brazos hit with a shoulder, then rolled and crashed into a stack of crates, bringing one down squarely on top of his head.
“Jumped up Judas!” he panted as Benedict jerked him to his feet.
“Precisely,” Benedict said tersely, pulling him towards the alley that flanked the Prairie Flower on the eastern side. “Come on, get moving, Reb, we’ve had enough light exercise for one—”
He broke off as they pounded to the end of the alley and almost bumped headlong into the indignant Sheriff Dave Grady. Brazos, his blood well and truly up, cocked a fist, but Benedict said, “It’s the law, goddamnit, Reb,” then he tried to put on a friendly smile as Grady said belligerently:
“What do you pair of clowns think you’re up to?”
That didn’t sound too promising. It was even less so when men poured out of the Prairie Flower with disheveled Scobie Passlow bellowing, “Arrest them, Sheriff! Throw them in the can!”
People were coming from all over, and with Passlow refusing to close his fool mouth and Grady looking more belligerent by the second, things were looking ugly for two somewhat battered newcomers to fair Glory. But suddenly there was an astonished cry of “Henry!” from behind the crowd. Nobody paid much attention, but they were forced to as the woman came plowing through.
She was one hell of a size, with arms any track-layer would have been proud of, and a big, red, perspiring face. Growing aware of the commotion behind him, Grady turned with a curse, then found himself thrust rudely aside as the Amazon came clear of the mob. The huge woman struck a pose, arms flung wide, her face wearing a disbelieving look of joy.
Then with another booming cry of “Henry!” the incredible creature bounded forward, flung her arms around the most startled Texan in a thousand miles, and crushed him to her heaving bosom.