The exploding window and the roar of the crowd drifting up from the town below gave Benedict his first intimation of what was going on in Johnny Street as he came down the hill from the Kingston mansion. Upon reaching the house, he had been told by Rhea that her husband had gone to the mine and had left a message for Benedict to wait for his return.
Rhea had seemed quite happy to sit and talk with him while he waited. But after what he’d seen last night, he didn’t feel comfortable in the woman’s presence and so had elected to head back to town with the intention of returning to the house later.
Now, halfway down the hill, Benedict halted. Squinting his eyes against the sun’s glare, he saw the turmoil of activity in front of the Silver King Saloon. With the dust it wasn’t possible to see exactly what was going on, but a lot of people were milling about down there and more were running to swell the crowd.
Curious, Benedict strode quickly down the trail. As he reached Johnny Street, he heard somebody running towards the Silver King shouting, “Fight!”
But it wasn’t until Benedict reached the perimeter of the crowd and caught a glimpse of Paddy Clancy and then a faded purple shirt that he realized who was putting on the show.
His first reaction was one of disgust. Surely to hell Brazos had enough sense to realize that this wasn’t the time and place for stupid brawls.
But, as Benedict climbed onto a parked buckboard to get a better view, he saw the combatants and knew this was no ordinary brawl. There was a murderous ferocity to the blows these men were slamming into each other as they stood toe-to-toe in the dusty center of the excited crowd in the street before the saloon.
Brazos was bleeding copiously and Clancy looked even worse. One of his eyes was shut tight, there was a gap in the front of his mouth where teeth had been, and Benedict could hear the tearing rasp of his breath from fifty feet away.
It looked to Benedict as if Brazos was getting on top.
It seemed that way to Paddy Clancy, too, as still another straight left made contact with his battered face and knocked him back against the rear wheel of a freighter wagon. Clancy couldn’t believe it. Even after he’d taken the header through the window, he’d still felt he had Brazos’ measure. But in the wild minutes since, Brazos had pounded him mercilessly and was still quick enough to dodge two out of every three punches Clancy threw.
Never before had Clancy faced the prospect of defeat. Victor of a hundred brutal brawls, he was yet to know the ashy taste of running second. He couldn’t let himself lose, not here in front of the whole town—and not to Hank Brazos. Everything he’d built in Spargo was based on the power behind his two fists. It was an authority he had to maintain or sink back into the ranks of mediocrity.
Desperation made him crafty. He’d learned a thing or two from Brazos about feigning weakness. Pushing himself off the freighter wheel, he took a tremendous roundhouse swing, missed and fell to his hands and knees.
A great gasp went up from the crowd. Everybody thought he was finished.
“Damn it, Brazos got the better of him,” Beauford hissed, but when he turned to see why Holly Doone didn’t answer, he saw that Doone was no longer standing at his shoulder.
Doone was in the crowd peering between the shoulders of two miners at the fallen Paddy Clancy. There was a lethal light in his eyes and he was fingering the butt of his .45.
Brazos waited for ten seconds for Clancy to get up, then he panted, “Had enough, tough mouth?”
Clancy’s bowed head nodded. His chest heaving, Brazos turned slowly away. Just as he did, Clancy’s great hands lashed out, wrapped around his ankles and jerked him off his feet. Clancy then clapped a stranglehold around Brazos’ neck.
“Thought you had me, didn’t you?” he cried triumphantly. “You poor fool. No man beats Clancy.”
For a bad moment the street swam in Brazos’ vision as Clancy’s forearm mangled his windpipe. But then, with a desperate effort he twisted and locked his hands around Clancy’s waist. The stranglehold was still in place, still so fierce that Brazos couldn’t see, but now he was applying force, bending Clancy’s great torso back.
The crowd fell silent as the terrible test of strength moved towards a climax. Both men were kneeling, Clancy with his massive arms squashing Brazos’ throat, and Brazos arching Clancy’s body back inch by agonized inch from the waist. Locked that way, they formed an awesome tableau for a full minute and then somebody whispered:
“Clancy’s goin’!”
But Clancy was already gone. The arms around Brazos’ neck didn’t have the strength to crush an egg. For just a moment, as he felt the giant’s bones turn to water in his hands, Brazos was tempted to push back that extra inch which would have snapped Clancy’s spine. It was surely what Clancy would have done had their positions been reversed, but, reminding himself that he wasn’t Clancy, Brazos unlocked his grip and let his adversary fall to the street.
It was then that Holly Doone made his play. Inflamed by the blood and violence and angered by Beauford’s refusal to let him take care of Brazos in the first place, the young killer slid his six-gun from leather.
The slight dip of Holly Doone’s right shoulder might have seemed insignificant to most people, but not to Duke Benedict. During the time he’d been watching the ruckus from the buckboard, Benedict had been keeping a sharp eye on Beauford and Holly Doone. What he’d seen at the Silver King last night, backed up by his discussion with Brazos earlier, made Ace Beauford highly suspect, and Beauford’s expression as he watched Clancy losing ground had been deadly ... but now it was Doone who was making a play.
Benedict’s reaction was the instinctive, lightning move of a man who knew the life-or-death value of a split second. He drew and fired in one fluid motion. His bullet found its target an instant before Doone could squeeze the trigger.
A roar of panic went up from the crowd as the shot rocked the street. The bloody combatants were forgotten as people knocked each other down in a scrambling effort to get out of the line of fire.
As the crowd parted, Benedict was revealed in clear sight on the buckboard, a smoking Colt .45 in his fist. Face-down in the dust where he’d rolled off the sidewalk, was Holly Doone.
His chest still heaving, Brazos turned slowly away from Clancy, his eyes narrowing with comprehension as he, like all the staring onlookers, saw the naked Colt in Holly Doone’s fist.
“He intended to do what Clancy was unable to, Reb,” Benedict said grimly. Then he jumped to the ground and approached the gallery where Ace Beauford stood looking stunned. “This your idea, Beauford?”
Beauford shook his head. “No ...” He stared down at the dead man. “Damned fool ...”
“Dead fool,” Benedict amended, housing his gun. He turned to Brazos. “Come on, Reb. We’ll—”
“Just a moment ... we ain’t for bein’ finished with this yet.”
They turned to see that Clancy had regained his feet. He looked as if he’d lost an argument with a buzz-saw, but to their astonishment, he was lifting his fists in a fighting stance.
“Ah, don’t flog a dead horse, joker,” Brazos said disgustedly. “Goddamn it all, a man’s just been killed.”
“We ain’t finished yet,” Clancy mouthed, shuffling around him. “Come on, damn you.”
It was impressive but pathetic. Paddy Clancy, it was plain to all, couldn’t have licked a stamp in his condition.
Then an imperious voice sounded from the crowd and a skinny little woman in a black dress and bonnet came through and walked fearlessly up to Clancy.
“Come on, there’s been enough of this foolishness, son.”
Clancy dropped his fists. “But, Mother, you can’t be for stoppin’ me before I’ve—”
“I said there’s been enough of this foolishness,” Mother Clancy repeated. “Just look at ye, all covered with blood and dirt ... and not a lick of respect in ye for a man that’s dead!”
“But, Mother—”
“Enough,” tough little Mother Clancy snapped, and reaching up, seized her giant son by the ear. “If ye got no more sense than a child, then I’ll be treatin’ ye like a child. Come on, we’re goin’ home.”
Perhaps it was a funny sight, a gray-headed little woman leading a bone-crushing giant like Clancy away by the ear. But nobody laughed. Spargo seemed to have had its fill of fun for one day.
“Will you please sit still for a minute, Hank Brazos?”
“Look, I feel fine now, Tricia. Honest.”
“Men!” the girl said in mock disgust, dipping the cloth in the bowl of water and laudanum on the kitchen table, then reapplying it to his face. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’d do with yourselves if it wasn’t for us women. You don’t know the first thing about looking after yourselves, and that’s for sure. I suppose you’d still be standing up there at the bar of the Lucky Cuss drinking beer if Dad hadn’t met you and had sense enough to bring you home to get patched up.”
Shamus Delaney chuckled from his place by the window as Brazos sighed in resignation. “They always know best, son,” the Irishman assured him. “At least to hear them tell it they do.”
“All I’m wonderin’,” Brazos grumbled, wincing as the cloth touched a tender spot, “is if young Cole Kingston knows what a bossy woman he’s gettin’ himself mixed up with.”
“Be still,” Tricia said firmly, but she smiled despite herself.
Finally she was through. As she put the things away, Brazos got up and studied himself in the little square of mirror hanging by the kitchen cabinet. He was agreeably surprised. In the bar mirror at the Lucky Cuss, where he and Benedict had repaired for a few badly-needed whiskies after the showdown at the Silver King, he’d looked like twenty miles of bad road. Thanks to Tricia Delaney’s skill, he now looked no closer than ten.
“You’ll be stayin’ for supper of course, Hank?” the girl said. “Steak and potatoes tonight.”
“She makes the best creamed potatoes in Spargo, son,” said Delaney, “and there’s nobody fussier about potatoes than an Irishman, I can tell you.”
“Well, I dunno if—”
“Of course you will,” the girl decided for him. “Now you two go sit on the front verandah in the cool while I get supper ready.”
“Real bossy,” Brazos grumbled, but when he was out on the verandah with Delaney, he added, “A nice kind of bossy.”
“She’s a good girl and I’m proud of her, son,” Delaney said as they sat down. “I only hope ... well, I only hope nothin’ ever makes her too unhappy.”
“You mean the set-up with her and Cole?” Brazos asked as he pulled out the makings.
Delaney nodded, then watched the sky, crimson and gold above the setting sun. “He’s a fine lad, Cole. Ten times the man his father is. He and my Tricia are just made for each other ... still, I’m doubtin’ if anything’ll ever come of it the way things are in Spargo ...” His voice trailed off, then he grinned. “But that’s no problem of yours, son. Tell me, are you feelin’ all right now?”
“Just fine,” Brazos replied.
It was almost the truth. He couldn’t recall ever having fought a harder man than big Clancy, but apart from aching ribs, a few tender spots on his face and eight well skinned knuckles, he was feeling almost chipper.
As they sat yarning and smoking the day gave way to night, then Benedict and Cole Kingston arrived. The two had met up the street, and when Cole told Benedict that he intended calling in briefly to see Tricia before going home, Benedict decided to come around and see how Brazos was recovering. Benedict spent ten minutes or so with Delaney and Brazos and was ready to leave when Cole did, but Tricia insisted that he too stay for supper.
“Well, that’s very gracious of you, Miss Delaney,” Benedict said, “but I think Mr. Kingston expects to see me tonight.”
“He’ll make out without you, I reckon, Yank,” Brazos said, and he was glad when Benedict agreed to stay on. Benedict had had to kill a man today and only Brazos understood how that weighed down on him. Tonight, Benedict would be best off amongst friends.
When darkness came and Benedict hadn’t arrived, Foley Kingston began to worry.
“Perhaps he was injured in that business at the Silver King,” he said to Rhea as he paced restlessly up and down before her chair on the long white gallery.
“He wasn’t hurt,” Rhea said impatiently. “Jib Hilder was standing beside him. He said Duke shot Holly Doone down and that was all there was to it.”
“Then why hasn’t he shown up all day?”
“Perhaps he’s down Coyote Street flirting with the girls. How would I know?”
A retort came to Kingston’s lips but he bit it off. Not even Rhea’s tongue was going to spoil today for him. Today had seen the vanquishing of Clancy and the elimination of the gunfighter, Holly Doone. He’d decided that Doone had joined forces with the miners. Yes, it had been a big day, even if he couldn’t understand why neither Benedict nor Brazos had been to see him since the blow-up at the saloon.
When the night wind began to blow, Rhea went inside but Kingston remained alone on the gallery. Finally, Cole came riding through the gates.
“’Night, Dad,” the boy said. He left his horse with Regulator Chick Hasty and climbed the broad marble steps. “Sorry I’m a little late. I, er, was held up.”
“Never mind about that. Tell me, did you see any sign of Duke while you were downtown?”
“Matter of fact I just left him, Dad. Why?”
“Is he all right? I haven’t seen him all afternoon.”
“Sure, he’s fine. Maybe a little shaken up after the sh—”
“Where is he?”
Cole Kingston sighed. He wished he could lie to his father, but he’d never learned the knack.
“He’s at the Delaneys with Brazos.”
“Delaney’s? What in heaven’s name is he doing there?” Cole shrugged. “Having supper.”
Cole waited for awkward questions but they didn’t come. At that moment, Foley’s mind was occupied only with the fact that Benedict was breaking bread with the enemy. He didn’t like that one little bit.
Leaving Cole looking wonderingly after him, Foley strode towards the stables shouting for Hasty not to unsaddle Cole’s horse.
“You goin’ ridin’, boss?” the Regulator asked as he brought the horse back out.
“Of course I’m going riding,” he snapped, taking the lines and swinging up.
“Well, just half a minute and I’ll be with you, Mr. Kingston.”
Riding with a bodyguard had become so customary with Kingston that he found himself sitting his saddle waiting patiently for Hasty. But then he realized that riding with a Regulator would amount to a show of fear. When he rode through town earlier he’d seen the miners, stunned and cowed, beaten in the wake of Clancy’s mighty fall at Brazos’ hands. Yes, today he’d tasted a heady victory and he meant to enjoy it to the full.
He would ride alone down to Bonanza Street. That would show them all that Foley Kingston knew he was firmly back on top.