Benedict and Brazos 25: Nobody Kills Like Ketchell

By E. Jefferson Clay

Accused of stagecoach robbery, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos had no choice but to run for their lives. It was just plain bad fortune that in so doing they ran smack into a wagon train heading across the desert for a mining town called Tarbuck.
The wagon train was no ordinary outfit. It was made up of forty women, all bound for Tarbuck to meet the men they’d agreed by mail to marry.
Big Rosie Moriarty immediately took a shine to Brazos ... but Benedict’s attention was taken by the beautiful Libby Blue.
There was just one problem.
A kill-crazy outlaw called Kain Ketchell had broken out of prison with one goal in mind – to kill Libby, the woman he blamed for his arrest and incarceration. And nobody killed like Ketchell!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005497446

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Accused of stagecoach robbery, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos had no choice but to run for their lives. It was just plain bad fortune that in so doing they ran smack into a wagon train heading across the desert for a mining town called Tarbuck.

The wagon train was no ordinary outfit. It was made up of forty women, all bound for Tarbuck to meet the men they’d agreed by mail to marry.

Big Rosie Moriarty immediately took a shine to Brazos … but Benedict’s attention was taken by the beautiful Libby Blue.

There was just one problem.

A kill-crazy outlaw called Kain Ketchell had broken out of prison with one goal in mind – to kill Libby, the woman he blamed for his arrest and incarceration. And nobody killed like Ketchell!

BENEDICT AND BRAZOS 25: NOBODY KILLS LIKE KETCHELL

By E. Jefferson Clay

First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

© 2021 by Piccadilly Publishing

First Electronic Edition: October 2021

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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Series Editor: Ben Bridges

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

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Chapter One – The Killing Machine

A DARK COACH hitched to two black horses stood in the driving rain at the corner of Chimney Cliff’s Oxbend and Gulliver Streets a few doors along from Jackson’s Funeral Parlor. It could have been a funeral coach judging from its somber appearance. But it wasn’t.

The sodden horses had their heads bowed in bleak submission to the elements. The vehicle’s running lights burned weakly, but the interior was dark. Cigar smoke drifted from the half-open windows.

Ed Winter sat in one corner of the coach facing the bank that would be robbed when Wainright and the others got through eating at the Silver Spoon. Winter, a new man in the outlaw band that had once been bossed by the notorious Kain Ketchell, couldn’t understand how anyone could eat at a time like this, even allowing that twenty-four hours had passed since their last meal. Winter’s insides were a solid knot of tension beneath his shabby leather coat. He had never felt less like eating in his life.

Trig Alta sat opposite, watching the dim lights of the eatery as he probed his teeth with a worn whalebone toothpick. The owlhoot veteran looked huge in a belted army greatcoat and a white ten-gallon hat slanted at an angle over his mean yellow eyes. Even his pock-scarred face looked oversized, and the hand holding the cigar looked strong enough to crush bean cans. In contrast to Winter, the giant badman was totally relaxed; this was old stuff for dangerous Trig Alta.

A towering, broad-shouldered drunk staggered past. His battered Stetson was pulled low, completely concealing his features.

The drunk stopped abruptly, leaned against a wheel and gave himself over to the luxury of a hacking, lung-clearing cough. The horses started to fidget.

Trig Alta lifted the curtain and said, Move along, rumdum!

The drunk turned. It’s a free country, horse-face!

I said move.

Make me!

Alta swung the coach door open, then grimaced as the rain hit him. Sliding back into his seat, he jerked his thumb at Winter. Get rid of the clown.

Winter stepped down and moved quickly around the horses. He was a short, thick-set man with a muscular spring to his step. Alta saw him approach the drunk, then a short body punch dropped Winter as if he’d been shot.

With a curse, Trig Alta reefed the coach door open and leaped down, a yard-wide Hercules in a massive army greatcoat, ready to teach a drunk a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a lifetime.

The drunk slewed around, then lurched towards him. Alta was cocking his fists when something odd about the motionless Winter caught his eye. He stared and saw that Winter’s chest was a mass of glistening crimson.

Big Trig Alta knew then that this was no drunk. Too late he saw something glitter in the stranger’s lightning-fast right hand. Then cold steel entered his heart.

His life rushing away on a black tide, Trig Alta stood frozen, staring into the satanic face a bare inch from his own. Recognition hit him as he went spinning into eternity. It can’t be ... it can’t be ...

Ketchell caught the slumping hulk in his powerful arms and bundled it inside the coach with ridiculous ease. Two towners were coming along the walk as he went back for Winter.

Hey, here we go, pard, he chuckled as he heaved the corpse erect. Have you home in no time, and then it’s a gallon of black coffee for you.

Drunken louts, one of the citizens sniffed.

They’ll be sorry in the morning, his companion righteously opined—happily oblivious that two of the infamous Wainright gang were forever beyond regret, sorrow, lust and greed.

The coach door slammed on the dead. Then, getting the canvas wrapped rifle he had stashed against the back wheel, the killer padded along the sodden walk in the direction of the Silver Spoon.

The six outlaws were just starting on dessert under the eatery’s polished brass lamps when Kain Ketchell burst into the little room carrying the sawn-off Winchester repeater.

Beck Bogard and Jim Cooper died even before they realized what was happening.

The killer swung the smoking muzzle in the quest for more kills as Bob Seegar screamed, "It’s Ketchell!" and snatched at his shotgun propped against the table. Then, hit twice in the chest, Seegar skittered against the ashen-faced King Crimson, ruining whatever chance that badman might have had of getting his .45 Peacemaker clear.

Ketchell shot Crimson between the eyes.

Gangling Dan Montrose had been at the table when Ketchell exploded into the room; but, bending to retrieve a dropped cigar, he had escaped the first blasts of fatal lead. With bodies thudding down all about him, Montrose hurled himself behind the fragile cover of an overturned table, hauled out his Colt and got one shot away.

Normally, Montrose was a most reliable shot. But this was no normal situation. His bullet howled a good twelve inches clear of Kain Ketchell’s broad-boned face and demolished the big plate glass front window that was the Silver Spoon’s special pride. Then the table erupted under a blistering scythe of rifle bullets and Montrose rolled onto his back, his face shot away.

The eighth man was Bo Wainright, the top Judas himself.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye sent Ketchell dropping low as a Colt churned from behind the servery doorway. Stunned as much by the sight of Ketchell as he was by the incredible slaughter, slab-faced Bo Wainright had gained cover with a desperate leap, but had been too dazed and bewildered to open up until now.

The bullet furrowed Ketchell’s left shoulder, but he didn’t flinch. His first shot hit Wainright in the chest and he grunted in satisfaction. Then his mouth worked and he started pumping shot after shot into Wainright’s heavy body until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber and Bo Wainright was a torn and bloody thing against the doorway.

His face blank now, Ketchell uncoiled to his feet and walked to the nearest table. Picking up a heavy lamp, he hurled it with all his strength at Wainright’s body. The lamp exploded and flames licked at the window drapes. The short order cook who had been cringing behind his stove since the first shot cracked out, screamed, then threw caution to the winds and dashed for the rear door, expecting a bullet in the back from the mad-dog killer’s six-gun with every plunging stride.

But the last shot had been fired. Judases were the quarry that had brought Kain Ketchell to Chimney Cliff after his bloody break-out from Starkwater Penitentiary. Now, with eight Judases dead, he had no interest in short order cooks.

A short time later, the killer forked his chestnut stallion in a darkened back street and touched its flanks with steel. In another five minutes he had his mount loping across Dunstan’s Hill west of town. Far behind, the Silver Spoon Eatery was a towering pillar of cinders, smoke and flames.

Hold it right there, pilgrim!

Mac Doobie wasn’t much happier than the next man, but the deep voice that seemed to come from nowhere as he made his slow way home down gloomy Cayuse Alley, brought him around with a gasp, his hand going clumsily towards his six-gun.

A towering shadow drifted from the abandoned Sunsmoke Feed and Grain Barn, then a hard finger prodded him in the chest with the authority of a gun barrel.

Relax, pilgrim. All I want is a word or two with you.

Doobie took his hand away from his gun butt and swallowed painfully, none