“How about this chair, Miss Grace?” asked barkeep Steve Emory as the Jubilee staff set about the chore of cleaning up the previous night’s debris. “Not much point in trying to get it fixed, I reckon?”
Standing by the bar and looking surprisingly calm, Grace Jenner said, “Take it out and burn it, Steve.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Grace.” Then Emory pointed at the dark brown bloodstains near the wall. “Don’t know how we’re gonna get that carpet really clean again, Miss Grace.”
“Do your best, Steve,” the woman murmured, then she walked to the batwings and stepped onto the verandah.
Seating herself on a green-painted porch bench, Grace crossed her long legs and looked steadily across the street at the jailhouse. Under normal circumstances, she would have been furious over what had taken place in her saloon the previous night, but there were bigger, more far-reaching things on Grace’s mind. Lost in her thoughts, big Grace wasn’t aware that one of her determined admirers, Bill Tobin, had come up to stand by her bench until the man spoke her name for the second time.
“Oh, Bill,” she murmured. “How are you this morning?”
“The important thing is how are you, Grace,” replied the big-nosed proprietor of the feed and grain barn. “I mean, after that shocking business last night ...”
The woman dismissed this with a gesture. “Thanks to Marshal Benedict, I’m perfectly all right, Bill.”
Tobin shook his head in wonderment. “Yeah, him and Brazos sure enough put the lid on that Yellow House River bunch and no mistake.”
“They certainly did. In my opinion, Duke Benedict taking on the marshal’s job has been the best thing that’s happened to Glory.” She frowned. “But one thing disturbs me, Bill. It’s something that no one seems to have thought of yet.”
“What’s that, Grace?”
She gazed at him levelly. “Well, I’ve been wondering ... What would happen if Ben Hollister came to town and started trouble? That would place our new marshal in an awkward situation. What do you think would come of it?”
Bill Tobin had no idea. Yet the seed of the possibility was planted in the man’s mind, just as Grace had intended it should be. When he returned to his feed and grain barn some time later, the first thing he said to his foreman, Joe Tanner, was:
“What do you figure’d happen if Ben Hollister came to town and got himself on the wrong side of the new marshal?”
Joe Tanner had no idea. But it was a pretty disturbing thought, he had to concede. And by the time the sun set over Glory that night, the possibility which nobody seemed to have thought of until Grace brought it up, had just about replaced last night’s shoot-out as the main topic of conversation.
With Bullpup scampering ahead of him, Hank Brazos mounted the jailhouse porch and swung into the jailhouse doorway. Inside, Duke Benedict sat at the desk, writing. Benedict glanced up. “Be with you in a minute.” Then he dipped his pen in the inkwell and bent to his writing again.
Brazos walked in and skimmed his hat at the peg on the wall. Lowering a ham to the edge of the desk, he peered down at what Benedict was writing. But, never having seen the inside of a schoolhouse the look didn’t help him much.
Swinging one dusty boot, Brazos commenced to build a smoke, peering through the doorway at the street. On this, the second day after the shoot-out at the Jubilee Saloon, the big Texan was feeling tolerably pleased with things. Since taking on the role of deputy marshal, he hadn’t seen much of romantic Hetty, which suited him just fine. But there was still one dark cloud on the horizon, and he was thinking about that as Benedict signed his name with a flourish and set his pen aside.
“Well,” Benedict asked, folding the letter and reaching for an envelope, “how’s the street this morning, Deputy?”
Brazos shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Just like Austin on a Sunday afternoon. “What’s the letter?”
Sealing the envelope, Benedict placed it on the desk near the ink stand, got to his feet and stretched long arms. “I’ve written to Marshal Cliff King, Reb.”
“That joker in Fargo City who runs the Marshals’ Office?”
“Yes. I gave him a full report of what transpired on Monday night and suggested, forcefully, that it’s high time he sent somebody in to take over.”
Brazos nodded in full agreement with that. Then, sliding off the desk, he went to the front window, flicked the butt into the street and leaned his big arms on the sill.
“Yank?”
“Yes?”
“I heard some talk about Ben Hollister around the bars last night.”
“What sort of talk?”
“Well, I guess I don’t have to spell it out for you that there are folks around town here who ain’t any happier about the Hollisters comin’ in here from time to time than they are about the Greathouse boys shootin’ up the street.”
“Look, you’re trying to tell me something, so come straight out with it.”
With a gusty sigh, Brazos grunted. “All right, if that’s how you want it. What they’re sayin’ is, now that you’re marshal, it could be that you’ll have to tread on Ben Hollister’s toes a little.”
“Hogswill,” Benedict said, striding across the room to take his coat off a peg. He slipped into the coat and picked the letter up from the desk. “I’m going along to the post office to mail this. And if time seems to be hanging so heavy on your hands that you’ve got nothing better to do than stand around bars listening to stupid talk, perhaps you’d like to occupy yourself sweeping up and going to work on that gun-rack. By the look of those weapons, Grady didn’t go near them with an oil rag from the day he took over.” He started for the door fitting his hat to his head, then halted. “And what the devil are you grinning about?”
“Not a blamed thing, Yank,” Brazos assured him. But he was thinking, as Benedict strode out, that the Yank’s sharp words were a good sign. When he was quiet or polite, he couldn’t help worrying about the gambling man. But when he got around to tearing a few strips off you, it was a sure sign he was feeling good again. So he didn’t worry about Hollister any more that day. He only started to be concerned, when Rigg Smith drove his water cart up from Lincoln Creek on his last trip of the day, and two horsemen rode up behind him.
The big, slab-faced young rider on the black horse was Arnie McQuade. His slim companion on the high-stepping palomino was Billy Hollister.
The midnight moon was sheening the rooftops of Glory as the two weaving figures made their way along the walk from the Prairie Flower Saloon towards Grace Jenner’s Jubilee, where their horses stood hitched out front. Billy Hollister was giggling as he started to walk with one foot on the street and the other on the walk, but Arnie McQuade was serious.
“Come on, Billy, quit the foolin’,” the big man said, his whisky-thickened voice revealing loss of patience. “We got to be gettin’ home. Hell, Ben expected us back hours ago.”
Billy Hollister, who’d put away the same amount of liquor as his husky companion but was much drunker, lurched against McQuade, seized him by the arm and waggled a finger in his face. “Just one more li’l ole drink, Arnie, boy.”
“You been sayin’ that for the last ten drinks, Billy.”
“We’ll have just one at Grace’s, Arnie,” Billy insisted, feinting a punch at a passing stanchion. Then, grabbing hold of McQuade’s arm again, he said, “You know, Arnie, that Grace is a real nice woman. I always thought she hated me on account of how she’s got it in for Ben and suchlike, but tonight, hell, did you notice how she was shinin’ up to me? ‘Have another little drink, Billy. This one’s on the house, Billy. How’ve you been keeping, Billy’?” He punched McQuade on the shoulder and laughed. “I tell you, she thinks I’m cute, big man. And of course she’s right. I’m as cute as a button, anybody’ll tell you that.”
They reached the Jubilee’s hitch rack and Arnie McQuade stopped dead. “We’re not havin’ no drink at Grace’s, Billy,” he said emphatically. “We’re goin’ home and right now.”
Billy Hollister stood weaving on the porch, his drink-reddened face boyishly petulant, bottom lip thrust out. “Jeez, Arnie, you’re gettin’ to be a real wet blanket, just like old Ben. Sure ain’t no fun drinkin’ with a man that’s lost his ginger.” With a shrug, Billy lurched for the hitch rack and reached for the first bridle he came to. He blinked as the big, ugly buckskin rolled its eyes at him.
“Hey, this ain’t my horse! Who stole my horse?”
“Your horse is the next one, Billy. Come on, don’t fool around, man.”
Billy Hollister looked at his palomino, then turned back to the buckskin. “Now that’s a relief! For a minute I thought my fancy animal had turned into a different horse. But come to think of it, and come to take a close look at you, feller, you ain’t really a horse at all.” He poked the big animal’s nose. “You ain’t a horse!” He punctuated each word with a poke. “You are a plug. Now repeat after me—I am a plug.”
The horse’s big yellow teeth flashed and Billy Hollister went lurching back, clutching at his left arm. “Why, you dirty, flea-bitten bag of goddamn bones!” he raged as his fingers came away showing blood, then he kicked the horse viciously in the ribs.
The animal reared and tried to bite his tormentor again. Hollister whipped off his hat and slapped the horse on the nose, then kicked it as hard as he could. Eyes rolling, the big buckskin jerked back on its reins, and reared as Hollister kicked again.
“Better leave that horse be, Billy!”
Half-sobered by his sudden fit of rage, Billy Hollister looked across the street and stiffened when he saw the two tall men walking fast from the direction of the jailhouse. “Well, I’ll be damned! If it ain’t Marshal God Almighty and his over-fed deputy!”
McQuade moved in fast to grab his companion’s shoulders. “Shut up, Billy! We don’t want trouble with these two!”
Billy Hollister jerked free of the bigger man’s grasp. “Who’s lookin’ for trouble? I told ’em I’d leave ’em be if they let me be, didn’t I?”
McQuade couldn’t deny that, for that had been about the sum total of their brief conversation with Glory’s new peacekeepers earlier in the Big Dipper Saloon. But mistreating a horse in the main street hardly constituted keeping to a bargain.
“Better mount up and ride, Billy,” Duke Benedict said as the pair drew up by the hitch rail. “You’ve had your fun for one night.”
“Is that a fact?” Hollister challenged, massaging his bitten arm. He turned and deliberately kicked the horse again.
Brazos was stepping forward as Benedict grabbed his arm. “I’ll handle this, Reb,” he gritted and reached for Billy Hollister, who ducked away from his grip, pivoted and kicked the horse again. Benedict swore, seized him by the vest and Hollister swung around violently to plant a jarring punch to the side of Benedict’s jaw.
Benedict’s reaction was instinctive. His right fist blurred, there was a sound like a kicked cigar box and Billy Hollister crumpled at his feet, out cold.
“Don’t, mister!” Brazos warned as Arnie McQuade made a move towards his right hip.
McQuade’s hard glare faded when he saw that Brazos’ hand was wrapped around his gun butt. Then he swung angry eyes to Benedict.
“Load him on his horse,” Benedict said grimly. “And when you get home, McQuade, you make sure you tell Ben exactly what happened. You understand? Exactly how it happened.”
McQuade didn’t reply. Lips tightly compressed, he went to Hollister, lifted him with ease and carried him around the wild-eyed buckskin to his palomino. While he was fixing his charge on the saddle so he wouldn’t fall off, Brazos turned to Benedict apprehensively and said:
“Just what we wanted not to happen, Yank.”
“Damn it, we couldn’t stand by and see a man mistreat a horse that way, could we?”
“Not sayin’ as how we could. But this could bring us a pack of trouble.” Brazos glanced at McQuade. “Seems to me, Yank, that if those pilgrims carry lies back to Ben, things could get misunderstood pretty quick. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if I rode out with ’em and saw Ben personal.”
Benedict considered that for a moment, saw the wisdom of it, then said, “If anyone goes, it should be me.”
“Can’t buy that, Yank. For one thing, you’re the marshal and maybe I wouldn’t make such a good fist of runnin’ things while you was away. And for another, that kid seems to hate you like poison. I don’t reckon he cares for me all that much, but maybe I’d have a better chance of not tanglin’ with him between here and the Jimcracks.”
“All right,” Benedict decided after thinking it over. “And tell Ben I’m sorry this happened, but—”
“Hell, don’t you think a man’s got any brains at all?” Brazos rapped. “I know what to tell him.” Then, as McQuade undid his lines and swung into his saddle, he said, “Hold on, McQuade, I’m comin’ with you!”
Standing on her balcony almost directly above Duke Benedict, Grace Jenner smiled in the shadows. Dark eyes glittering, Ben Hollister’s one-time lover told herself that things were panning out better than she had dared hope.