The town of Hatch was a miserable clutter of unpainted buildings. There was a general store, a blacksmith’s shop, a saloon, a stage depot that had been closed a year ago, and a church that had been abandoned long before that.
A few scrubby horses stood at the hitch rack of the Paylode Saloon as the two riders and the big spotted dog came down the main stem in the late afternoon. A loafer on the porch of the store opened one eye to squint at them as they went by, then went on back to dozing. The horsemen swung up to the hitch rack, stepped down and went into the saloon.
The gloomy place smelled of stale beer. Behind the bar hung the painting of a magnificently endowed female wearing a wisp of yellow veil. The presence of a large water pitcher in the background had apparently been considered justification enough for the painter to name his masterpiece “Dolores At The Bath.”
Brazos glanced briefly at the customers of the Paylode before bringing his blue-eyed gaze back to the painting. Then he picked up his beer, blew off the froth and drank deep.
Finally he said, “Nope.”
Duke Benedict, rolling his whisky around his mouth and trying to remember if he’d ever, in all his vast experience, sampled a brand that had less to recommend it, cocked an eyebrow and said, “What do you mean—nope? No one has said anything.”
Brazos started to reply but was interrupted by a sudden squeal emanating from a curtain-covered booth at the rear of the room. The squeal was followed by scuffling, a slap and a loud, lascivious guffaw, then silence.
“Just one of the boys in off the spread, gents,” supplied the greasy-haired barkeep. He jerked a thumb and winked.
“Pretty full of sass and vinegar when they come in after a long spell away from the bright lights.”
Totally unimpressed by this slice of information, Brazos went back to staring at the oil painting. “Nope,” he insisted, “I just don’t believe her.”
Manfully getting half his drink down, Benedict studied Dolores’ lush pinkness. “Why not?” he challenged.
Brazos rubbed his stubbled jaw. “I just reckon there’s too much of her.”
“Too much?” Benedict said with the testiness of a true connoisseur of feminine charms. “How the devil would you know?”
“What sort of a dumb question is that?”
“I take it then that you’re an authority on this particular subject?”
Brazos flushed a little. “I’m just sayin’ she’s too blamed big, that’s all. Now you take another look at that filly and tell me if you ever saw a female with such ... I mean ... well, with everythin’ that she’s got.”
Duke Benedict shook his handsome head. “Perhaps I haven’t actually encountered a young lady so generously endowed, but, unlike you, I’m quite prepared to believe she could be real.”
But Brazos wasn’t, and they went on arguing about Dolores. But the one thing they agreed upon was that the noise from the booth in the back was beginning to get unbearable.
“Just how many lonesome hicks are kickin’ up their heels down there, Curly?” Brazos growled as another shriek of girlish laughter interrupted their debate. “Sounds like half the dirty country from here.”
“Reckon it does at that, stranger,” agreed the laconic barkeep, leaning an elbow on the bar. “But that’s just one joker in there. He ain’t been in for quite a spell—and nobody likes to howl at the moon more than Arnold.”
“Noisy goddamn Arnold!” Brazos said peevishly, then he blinked as the curtain that screened the cubicle flipped aside and a girl came rushing out, wild-eyed and clutching her dress to her. But one rosy-tipped breast popped free and the customers roundly cheered.
“That’s it, Curly!” the indignant girl blazed, struggling to adjust her dress but only succeeding in revealing more of what she was trying to conceal. “I’m not going to put up with that ... that madman a moment longer. He’s—” She was interrupted by a crash of glassware and a shout from the booth she’d just left. She pointed. “Listen to that. I tell you. Curly, he should have a keeper when he comes to town. He’s crazy.”
“Liz, baby,” Curly Slocum said placatingly, “Arnold only comes in a few times a year, like you know. So how’s about bein’ nice to him just a spell longer, at least until he—”
A bottle came out of the cubicle, bounced off a table and hit the wall. “Liz, my love,” came a drunken voice. “Come back to me, little Liz, or I’ll kill myself, I swear it.”
“Go ahead,” stormed Liz, stomping for the stairs. “See who gives a nickel-plated damn!”
Slocum sighed as the girl flounced upstairs. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the booth. “The quietest varmint you’d meet in a day’s ride is Arnold Woodcock when he’s sober—but show him a pretty leg and a bottle of hooch, and Arnie’s gone and he won’t stop goin’ till—”
He broke off as a wild bellow sounded from the booth. “Just hold it a minute, gents,” he said, worried now. “He sounds like he’s really gonna cut loose. I better go quieten him down some afore he does any damage.”
Leaning on the bar, Benedict and Brazos watched little Curly Slocum lift the flap of his bar and cross to the cubicle. The barkeep put his head through the curtains, then there was a heavy thump and he came staggering back, rubber-legged, his hand clapped to his forehead.
“He hit me!” Slocum gasped, collapsing against the bar. “Damn, I never figgered he’d have the nerve, not even when he was drunk as a skunk.”
“He’s really gonna tie one on, Curly,” cackled an old graybeard from a table in the corner. Then, to the two strangers further along the bar, he said, “You’re fixin’ to really see somethin’ if you stick about, fellers. Funnier’n a circus, Arnold is, when he really cuts loose.”
“Arnold is beginnin’ to strike me as bein’ about as funny as a dose of cholera,” Brazos growled as a glass came whistling over the cubicle wall to knock a bottle from a shelf close by. “What do you say, Benedict?”
Benedict tugged at his lapels. After three weeks of fresh air, dust, heat, flies and boredom, he was going to have some relaxation here in Hatch. It was growing plainer by the second that to achieve peace and quiet, something had to be done about fun-loving Arnold.
“I say follow me, Reb,” Benedict said quietly, starting for the rear of the long room.
“With you all the way!” Brazos grinned, rolling up his sleeves as he walked.
“Better be careful, strangers,” warned the still groggy Curly Slocum. “Liz was right. He ain’t just drunk today—he’s crazy!”
Benedict jerked the curtains apart and Brazos loomed at his shoulder. Inside the cubicle, a short man with red hair fumbled for another glass to throw. As he started to turn towards them, Brazos pushed past Benedict, ready to bring Arnold Woodcock’s day of riotous fun to a finish then and there.
“What the hell do you skunks want?” bellowed the drunk, lurching to his feet.
Neither man answered or even moved. For staring at them from no more than two feet away was the face of the scourge of Diablo Valley, Turk Jory!
Benedict was first to come out of it. Brazos was still standing there, astounded, his jaw hanging open, as his partner demonstrated the one skill that surpassed his talent with a deck of cards, clearing his right-side Colt faster than a man could blink.
The bad man took one look at the big Peacemaker, turned white as a bed sheet and fell back against the wall, waving his hands in panic before his face.
“No!” he shrieked. “For pity’s sake, don’t shoot! Curly! Curly, do somethin’! They’re gonna kill me!”
Hank Brazos was totally astonished by the reaction of the so-called scourge of Diablo Valley. Even Benedict, a hard man to surprise, found himself slowly lowering his gun and gaping as Turk Jory cringed in the corner, giving the impression of a man on the verge of collapse.
“Jumped-up Judas, Yank,” Brazos breathed. “What kind of bad man have we got here?”
“Perhaps the tricky kind,” Benedict said, suddenly lifting his gun again as suspicion hit him. “All right, you can dispense with the histrionics, Jory.”
“Jory?” the cowering man said. His hands came down a fraction and he didn’t look quite as terrified as he had a moment before. “Did you ... did you say Jory, mister?”
“Of course he did,” put in Brazos, then he turned his head as Curly Slocum tugged at his elbow.
“Had me worried there when your pard hauled iron, big feller,” the saloonkeeper said. “But now I guess I understand. You mistook Arnold for that feller Jory, huh? I’d best explain, gents. But first, I reckon we’d all breathe a little easier if you put that gun away.”
“The devil I will,” Benedict snapped. “This fellow has killed more men than the plague. He’s—”
“I ain’t Jory,” blurted the man with the red hair. “I ain’t Jory and every man here knows it. Ain’t that so, Curly?”
“Sure, Arnold, sure,” the saloonkeeper said. Then, to Benedict and Brazos, he said, “You see, we’ve been through all this before, gents. And poor old Arnie here, well, I guess he’s been through it more times than he cares to recollect. Right, Arnold? How many times has somebody jumped you and hollered, ‘You’re Turk Jory!’?”
“Who wants to remember?” the man with red hair said bitterly, as Duke Benedict finally let his gun fall to his side. Benedict and Brazos moved aside as the man got to his feet and moved slowly towards the bar, shaking his head helplessly. “Three years of it I’ve had. Ever since that Jory got reward money on his head down south. Up until then I was a real happy man, wasn’t I, Curly?”
“Happy enough, I reckon,” confirmed Curly Slocum. “Poor and kinda prone to get yourself into trouble when you came to town, but I’d say you were a contented man in them days.”
“Sure I was,” the redhead went on, leaning his elbow on the bar. “Then it started. I’d never even heard of Turk Jory, then this joker wearin’ a star rode out to my place along the Socorro Road and beat me over the head with a gun barrel.” He shook his head sadly. “Since then I been hit and jumped and roped and shot at by more jokers than I can put a name to hereabouts, and all on account of I’ve got the lousy luck to look like that bad man.”
“It’s kinda funny when you come to look at it, Mr. Benedict,” said an unimpressive-looking horse wrangler by the name of Toby Kells. “I mean Arnold gettin’ mistook for Jory the way he does. The way we hear it, Jory is a real firebrand who eats up posse men for breakfast, while Arnie here, well, he just can’t stand the sight of guns, can you, Arnie?”
Arnold Woodcock, almost totally recovered from the shock that had nearly sobered him, agreed that this was indeed the case.
“It’s part of me—just like the way I always sneeze when I’m drinkin’.” He sneezed, then went on, “Matter of fact, I’m a peaceable feller all around unless I get a little likker inside me. Then I get a little ornery, like you seen. But I can be as drunk as a brewer’s cat and howlin’ at the moon, and I still can’t stand the sight of a gun ... especially when it happens to be pointin’ at me.”
Hank Brazos’ lip curled a little at this admission, for in his Lone Star State being afraid of guns was about on a par with being afflicted with leprosy. Both disgusted and bored now with the whole Woodcock business, he turned to Benedict to suggest they get back to the serious business of drinking, only to find the Yank standing there stroking his jaw and studying Mr. Arnold Woodcock with an expression of rapt interest.
Brazos nudged his partner’s elbow. “Snap out of it, Benedict. He ain’t Jory. Heck, even Bullpup can tell that by now.” But Benedict continued to stare at Arnold Woodcock with a brightening glitter to his eyes that Brazos knew from long experience meant no good for somebody.
Then Benedict smiled and slapped Arnold on the back.
“My friend,” he said, “let us repair to a more private place to discuss a most important matter.”