The sun was climbing blood-red out of the Jimcrack Hills as Ben Hollister and Hank Brazos stood on the gallery of Hollister’s ranch house. It had been a big, comfortable house once, but it had fallen into disrepair over the past few years. From within came the sounds of Billy Hollister’s snores and the clatter of old Groot at work in the kitchen. Arnie McQuade was out back at the corral tending the horses and keeping his ear cocked for the sound of trouble.
McQuade was due to be disappointed. Standing tall and sober in the strengthening light, Ben Hollister heard Brazos out in silence.
With no way of knowing how Hollister had taken the news, Brazos pulled out his Bull Durham and began to put a cigarette together. Hollister was looking out over the awakening rangeland, gray eyes distant. Brazos was smoking his cigarette when Hollister finally turned to him. Brazos felt the impact of the man’s personality.
“I suppose Duke had no choice but to hit Billy, Hank?”
Brazos picked a thread of tobacco from his bottom lip.
“No choice, Ben.”
Hollister nodded. “Billy’s one of those fellows who should never drink.”
“Yeah ... I kinda got that idea last night.”
Then Hollister smiled. “You look a little nervous, Hank.”
“Well, mebbe I am at that,” Brazos conceded.
“No need,” the outlaw assured him. “Duke’s my friend. If he hit Billy it was because he deserved it. We’ll let it lie at that.”
Brazos felt relief flood over him. “Why, that’s mighty white of you, Ben. And I’ll tell you this now. You’re takin’ it just like Benedict said you would.”
“We’ll say no more about it.” Hollister, gestured at the doorway. “Groot likely has breakfast about ready, Hank. You might as well have a bite before you head back.”
Brazos sucked in a deep breath. “There’s just one more thing, Ben.”
Hollister frowned. “Yes?”
“Well ... with things bein’ as they are in Glory and with me and Benedict tryin’ to get things straightened out some, well, I kinda come up with the idea ridin’ out as how I ought to ask you a favor.” He inclined his head at the house. “I mean about Billy.”
“Oh? What about Billy?”
Brazos supposed that there were a dozen diplomatic ways of putting his request. But, being no diplomat, he gave it to Hollister straight from the shoulder.
“Ben, the last thing me or Benedict want or need is trouble with you fellers, but I reckon the surest way we can come by it is through Billy. I don’t want to hard-name your kid brother but he’s about the most trouble-prone young pilgrim I ever did see and he sure enough seems to have it in for Benedict. What I’m askin’ is for you to keep that kid away from Glory, leastways until the Yank and me pull out.” He hesitated, then added, “I guess that’s askin’ a heap, eh?”
“Indeed it is, Hank, it’s asking one hell of a lot ...”
Hollister’s voice trailed away as he glanced through the doorway. He stood there stroking his clean-shaven jaw for a long moment, then he turned back to the big Texan.
“Yes, it’s asking a lot, but I’ll do it.” He lifted a hand as Brazos made to reply. “But I want you to understand why. I’ll do it for Billy, because regardless of anything else I don’t want him tangling with Benedict. Duke is my friend and Billy is my brother. Because I think so highly of both, I’ll go along with you.”
“Goddamn it all,” Brazos beamed, thrusting out a big hand. “You’ll do me for a man to ride the river with, Hollister.” And as their hands met, he said, “Now did you say something about chow?”
After two helpings of ham and eggs and some five mugs of coffee, Hank Brazos forked his big appaloosa, waved goodbye to Ben Hollister and headed for the Glory trail.
“A good man, Groot,” Ben murmured to the grizzled old cow thief standing at his side.
“A good man with a fork, I’ll grant him that.”
“Indeed he is,” Hollister smiled, then turned at the sound of uncertain steps as Billy appeared bleary-eyed in the doorway. Ben sobered as he looked at his brother and said quietly to Groot, “Better heat up a fresh batch of coffee, old-timer.”
Groot stared at the dark bruise down the left side of Billy’s face as he stepped past him. Billy ran fingers through his tousled hair, worked his jaw from side to side and stepped out, wincing as the sunlight hit him.
“You look like hell,” Ben said soberly. “How do you feel?”
“Like hell,” Billy spat. “Where’s the big plow-walker?”
“He just left.”
“I suppose he fed you a whole lot of hoopla about last night?” Billy had been too sick, sore and sorry to give his own version of the incident when they’d arrived. He had in fact been incapable of doing anything beyond staggering inside and crashing onto his bed.
“He told me what happened,” Ben said soberly. “He also told me something else, Billy. Something you’re not going to like.”
“Well, I don’t rightly figure as how I’d like anythin’ that big rube might say. What is it?”
“They want you to keep out of town for a spell, Billy, and so do I.”
Billy Hollister went white. “Are you jokin’, Ben?”
“Afraid not, Billy. It’s what they want and it’s what I want. You could have gone and got yourself killed last night and I’m not running that risk again. That’s it.”
When Ben Hollister spoke like that, Billy knew there was no shifting him. But later, after his brother had gone inside, Billy Hollister stared bleakly in the direction of the Glory trail and muttered aloud, “Nobody’s gonna bar me from Glory, Ben. Not you, not no overgrown Texas brush popper—and no dude-fingered gamblin’ man. By Judas, they ain’t ...”
Five days passed. For Hank Brazos they were five easy days during which he patrolled Glory’s quiet streets, soaked up the sun and talked with drinkers at the Jubilee or Prairie Flower. About the only strenuous exercise he got was dodging Hetty Judd.
For Hetty, apart from the frustration of never getting around to reviving memories of moonlit nights in good old Frog Hollow, Texas, they were five days in which she saw Glory shaping up to the sort of town she’d always known it could be. She was heard singing as she went about her chores at her rooming house. She let Mick Pollock run over with his rent, sent in some flowers to the old biddy next door she hadn’t spoken to in years, and she pulled total strangers up in the street to inform them that Duke Benedict and Henry Brazos were the best things that had happened to Glory since the Devilrider Saloon burned down. Hetty was a happy woman. If there was one small cloud on her horizon, it was the strange way the usually predictable Rumer Paget was behaving.
For tiny Rumer Paget, it was not a good five days. Not when he had to listen to Hetty gush and reminisce about “dear Henry”. He got stories of dear Henry’s prowess with horses and fists and just about everything else with his breakfast, lunch and supper. Small wonder that he drank more than was good for him and spent long hours in his room with the door locked, shadow-sparring and doing push-ups. Sooner or later, Rumer knew he was going to punch that overgrown Texan. Either that or his dreams of winning Hetty and a half share in her prosperous rooming house were going west.
For Grace Jenner it was a bad five days. Each morning found her hoping this would be the day the Hollister bunch would come in to challenge Duke Benedict, yet each night found her growing steadily more convinced that the chance of a confrontation between Benedict and Ben was growing more and more remote.
For Benedict they were five good days. He saw a lot of Victoria Parnell in those five days, but what pleased him most, was the letter that arrived on the fifth afternoon by stage from the south. It was a reply to the letter he’d written United States Marshal Cliff King. In the letter, King informed him that he planned to come to Glory personally within the next week, bringing with him a sheriff from New Mexico with ten years of distinguished service behind him.
To celebrate the good news, Benedict and Brazos went to the Jubilee Saloon at seven that night to partake of Grace Jenner’s excellent whisky.
“No reason we can’t hit the trail as soon as King shows up, Yank,” Brazos said over his second whisky.
“No reason at all,” Benedict replied. He was lifting his glass when the batwings opened and a young man entered, his big rowel spurs chinking as he approached the bar.
It was Billy Hollister.
Benedict and Brazos exchanged a startled glance, then started along the bar. Seeing them coming in the mirror, Billy turned and leaned back lazily against the zinc edging and smiled at them.
“Why, ’evenin’ there, Mr. Marshal Benedict, sir, and Mr. Deputy Brazos, too.”
Brazos’ face was stony as he said, “What are you doin’ in town, Billy?”
Still grinning broadly, Billy Hollister looked around at the curious faces. “Why, Mr. Deputy, sir, I’m here to drink a little whisky and breathe a little free air.” The smile vanished as if it had never existed and the maverick look was in the boy’s eyes as he rapped, “It is still free air, ain’t it? This is still the good old United States where a man can come and go as he pleases?”
“Does Ben know you’re here?” Benedict asked, tight-lipped.
“Well, that I wouldn’t know, Marshal, sir,” Hollister replied, putting on his mocking smile again. “Ben wasn’t home when I suddenly came down with a powerful urge to slake my thirst.” He turned his back on them deliberately, contemptuously. “And now, if you don’t mind, lawdogs, I’ll get around to doin’ just that.” He slapped the bar top. “Barkeep, one large whisky at the double, boy.”
Benedict said, “Make that your one and only drink, Billy. I don’t want any trouble with you, so just have that one drink and go home. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. If you’re still here ...”
He left the sentence unfinished. Then, with a nod to Brazos, he headed for the batwings.
“Chicken, white-fingered tinhorn bastard! I’ll— ” Billy whirled violently as a hand touched his shoulder. “What the ... oh, Grace.”
Big Grace smiled warmly at Ben Hollister’s kid brother. “I saw the whole thing, Billy,” she said huskily. “The marshal had no right to brace you that way.” She linked a hand under his trembling arm. “Come with me, Billy, and we’ll have a drink or two.”
If old Groot had one real enemy in the world it was that lousy stove. What he hated most about it was its inconsistency. There were times when it would cook an angel cake to absolute perfection, and others when it would burn boiling water.
Tonight the stove was in its contrariest mood. With Ben and Arnie due back any time now, he’d already ruined a pie, and he was giving the iron monster a richly deserved kick when, above the sound of the wind peppering sand against the walls outside, he heard the horses.
As soon as he went out front and saw them coming in, the old outlaw knew something was wrong. Arnie McQuade had hold of Ben’s horse and Ben was sitting crooked in the saddle.
“Ben,” he yelled, jumping down off the gallery. “What—”
“Don’t get to fussing, old-timer,” Ben Hollister muttered as he got down, favoring his right leg. “I’m just a little creased.”
“A fool bounty hunter jumped us crossin’ the Breaks,” Arnie McQuade supplied as he and Groot helped the wounded Hollister into the house. “Must’ve been layin’ for us. He winged Ben before we even knew he was there.” As Hollister eased himself onto a kitchen chair, McQuade added with relish, “But that’s one bounty hunter who won’t be jumpin’ nobody else, eh, Ben?”
Hollister just grunted and stretched out his right leg. Taking out his knife, Groot slit the trousers and was relieved to see that it was only a flesh wound. It had bled considerably, but it was clean and the slug had gone through.
“Fix Ben a drink, Arnie,” he ordered as he hurried to the stove to get hot water.
Absorbed in dressing Hollister’s wound, Groot had forgotten the other thing that had been troubling him—until Ben suddenly looked up and said:
“Where’s Billy?”
Groot’s hands went still. “He ain’t here, Ben.”
“Not here? What do you mean? I told him he wasn’t to leave the place while I was away. Where did he go?”
“Reckon I don’t know, Ben,” Groot said glumly. “I ... I tried to talk him out of it, but you know what Billy’s like. He don’t take notice of nobody but you.”
Thrusting Groot away, Ben Hollister got to his feet. “Damned boy ... Groot, didn’t he even give a hint where he was off to?”
“Most likely he rode over to Peyote would be my guess, Ben,” put in Arnie McQuade. “You want me to ride over and fetch him back?”
Hollister considered that for a moment, then said, “Yes, do that, Arnie. Me, I’d better ride into Glory just in case—”
“You can’t ride twenty miles with that leakin’ leg, Ben,” Groot protested. “But if you really reckon Billy was fool enough to go to Glory, I don’t mind saddlin’ up and goin’ in. Matter of fact, I’d kinda enjoy the exercise after wrestlin’ with that fool stove all day.”
Ben Hollister put his full weight on his leg and grimaced in pain. “Yes, maybe you’re right, Groot. All right, damn it, Arnie, you go to Peyote, and Groot, you ride in to Glory. And if either of you locate Billy, you tell him I said to get his backside here in double-time or by hell I’ll take my belt to him. After that performance he put on in Glory, I can’t trust him away from me.” Hollister paused, then put on a grin. “Sorry to have to put you to this, boys, but I reckon you know how it is?”
“You just don’t fret none, Ben, boy,” Groot said, heading for the door. “We’ll fetch him back safe and sound, won’t we, Arnie?”
“You can bet on it,” big McQuade replied, following the old man. “Now you just take it easy and rest that leg, Ben.”
“Good boys,” Ben Hollister said aloud when they’d gone. “Only the best.” Then, catching sight of Billy’s old work hat on the wall, he shook his head. “Billy, Billy ... what am I going to do with you? Aren’t you ever going to get any sense?”