Benedict and Brazos 36: Marshal of Abilene

By E. Jefferson Clay

Down on their luck, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos were forced to take jobs herding cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. It was no hardship for Brazos—he’d more or less been born in the saddle and was cowboy all the way through. But Benedict ... well, Benedict appreciated the finer things in life.
So on impulse he quit the drive and headed for Abilene by himself, hoping to find himself a high-stakes poker game and a willing woman or two.
What he found instead was a town under siege by the hell-raising Texas cowboys who wanted to let of steam at trail’s end and didn’t care who got injured along the way.
Many men had worn the marshal’s star in Abilene ... and many had failed to bring law and order to the town.
Now it was Duke Benedict’s turn.
And plenty of blood would be spilled before the wild men of Texas learned that when Benedict wore a star, he meant business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022

Book preview

Chapter One – The Bunch Quitters

THERE WAS A train from the East pulling in just as the wild Texans from the Sublette herd were running off the sixth deputy to wear the star in Abilene in five weeks.

Every train these days brought in its human freight of glory-hunters, empire-builders, whores, pimps, wheeler-dealers and con men, and today’s Westbound was no different. And being the breed they were, they naturally let out an encouraging cheer when they realized that the fat, fast running figure being dragged along behind the yipping horsemen at the end of a lariat, was wearing a brass star.

A Mississippi gambler just recently barred from plying his trade on the riverboats, jerked out a nickel-plated six-gun and pumped three shots into the Kansas sky as Abilene’s luckless lawman went by on blurring fat legs.

Three cheers for the Lone Star Staters! he shouted, and the cheering turned to ribald laughter as the white-faced badge man missed his footing and cartwheeled spectacularly through the mud and slush in front of the Drovers’ Cottage Saloon.

A woman with an enormous bosom elbowed the gambler roughly aside to make way for the six pretty younger women who followed her off the train. All the young women were overdressed and over perfumed. Riff raff! Abilene’s newly arrived madam sniffed at the dude. It’s your kind that always hollers loudest for the law when somethin’ goes wrong.

"You call that law, mother? the gambler laughed derisively. He gestured down Independence Street as sodden, gasping Hec Holland was dragged the last fifty yards through the mud and slush to finally come to rest in the town dung heap. If that’s law, then you’re the patron saint of unmarried maidens."

That set off a fresh wave of laughter which washed down the street as the Texans flipped their rope from the fat throat of the sorry figure in the dung pile, then started their mounts back for the Occidental Saloon at a dead run.

The sounds of laughter mingled with the beat of hoofs and the Texans’ triumphant shouting as they rode, and all in all, it was a colorful and encouraging spectacle to the majority of the new arrivals. For what could be more promising to predators who made their living by shady means, than the sight of a boom town’s lawman being treated with such contempt?

Even some of Abilene’s more responsible citizens were seen to grin at the sorry spectacle their deputy of just five days made as he staggered away across the buffalo grass plains, leaving a trail of mud, manure and derisive laughter behind him.

There were few who saw in this violent scene a warning that the running battle between the Texas herders and the town’s admittedly ineffectual deputies, could possibly lead to violent death and anarchy.

There were even fewer, no more than a handful, who even remotely suspected that what they were witnessing, was only a curtain-raiser for a drama of blood and violence such as hadn’t been seen in an American town since the days of the War Between the States.

At no stage in his colorful career had Duke Benedict felt warmly about cattle. Indeed the opposite applied. Having been reared in a wealthy Boston banker’s home, he distinguished himself as a cavalry captain in the armies of Ulysses S. Grant during the war. Since then he had followed a career as professional gambler, gunfighter and soldier of fortune and had only been able to muster enthusiasm for beef when it came served up to him well done with a garnishing of mushroom sauce—preferably by candlelight and in the company of somebody young and pretty.

The Benedict antipathy for steak-on-the-hoof had undergone a severe testing since he and Hank Brazos had been driven by economic necessity to seek employment as drovers with a Kansas-bound Texas trail herd a month ago. But somehow, despite floods, stampedes, bad food, Indian attacks and the constant company of half-wild Texas cowhands, crisis point was staved off until that gray afternoon when Old Crow broke away from the herd for possibly the hundredth time. Duke Benedict the flashiest-looking ‘cowhand’ in the crew was sent to retrieve the bull. Again.

Now, with the spring sun filtering down on his once immaculate beaver hat and dusted black broadcloth coat, Benedict reined in near a thornbush thicket to exchange stares of mutual loathing with the biggest and meanest bull in the entire Trinity herd.

The bull which boasted the meanest temper in Trinity County, had backed its hindquarters into the thicket to present the most reluctant cowhand in the Indian Territory with the problem of prising him out.

A thundering crescendo of sound suddenly erupted from the bull’s throat to go booming across the wide plains that were churned into a mile-wide quagmire by the passage of the northbound herd. The sound carried clearly to the distant chuckwagon where Greaseball Callaghan and big Hank Brazos travelled along in comparative comfort on the padded high seat of the lurching wagon.

Brazos grinned as he leaned out past the canvas cover to peer back.

Got a healthy set of lungs that critter, Greaseball, he observed. Sounds like he’s really enjoyin’ soundin’ off at the Yank.

Who wouldn’t? replied the Trinity’s grouchy cook, who like most of the crew, had not warmed any to Hank Brazos’ high-stepping saddle-partner on the drive. He spat tobacco juice over the mule’s behind. But Old Crow might as well enjoy himself while he can on account they’ll be cannin’ him at some Eastern meat-packin’ house inside a month, most likely.

Too bad, commented Brazos. Too bad they’re sayin’ all the grade bulls have served their time and got to make way for the pure-breds. Them old mossyhorns like Old Crow helped make Texas what it is.

I ain’t sorry to see ’em go, replied the trail cook, who unlike his giant young companion, had no affection for cattle. The longhorn breed’s too wild and dangerous. Why, that old varmint hisself has busted up two drovers, three hosses and tore down half a mile of fence since we left Trinity. He’s outlived his time.

Just then, the subject of their conversation changed tones from that resembling a deep-voiced pipe organ to a shrill, challenging tenor.

Taking out his chased silver cigar case and selecting one of his dwindling supply of cigarillos, Duke Benedict studied the entrenched bull with an expression of loathing that should have peeled strips from Old Crow’s scarred hide.

As he felt for his pocket flint, his right hand brushed the butt of a pearl-handled .45. His fingers came back to the Colt handle and for a long moment the temptation was so strong that he actually thought he would do it.

One shot.

That’s all it would take and it would solve so many difficult problems for them both.

Not only that, he knew he would enjoy it more than anything, perhaps more than the night he’d spent with Gloria la Rue of the Austin City Dancers the night before his luck ran out at the tables ...

With an act of will he drew his hand away from his Colt, set fire to his cigar, looked north. The moving sea of surging red backs and tossing horns that was the Trinity herd was now but a dark line along the horizon. The chuckwagon was a bobbing blob of lighter color in the herd’s hoof-torn wake. In another few minutes he would be all alone on a godforsaken plain in the Indian territory with just his horse and one ornery longhorn bull.

Duke Benedict was anything but an emotional man, but emotions welled up in him now as he returned his attention to the bull. In that moment the weight of the past four weeks seemed to come down upon him like one of those spring deluges that had soaked him to the skin since leaving Austin.

Was it only four weeks?

It seemed an eternity longer. An eternity of dirt, discomfort, noise, work and boredom.

Never had days seemed so much alike or so long. He was amazed as the weeks went by how remote city life became—the exciting hiss of cards spinning across green baize, the scent of a woman’s perfume, the touch of fine Kentucky bourbon on the palate. It seemed incredible that he had ever dined with senators and governors or had ever been chased from New Orleans, Dallas and points west by jealous husbands.

Surely he had been toiling for years across these sodden plains and raddled hills, and would toil on eternally.

His loathing mounted and he deliberately conjured up all the worst aspects of the drive to fan his resentment. Sleeping in a saddle, dirty, wet and sunburnt. To have cracked lips tortured by alkali dust, to swim flood-swollen rivers, to be aroused in the middle of rainy nights at the shrill cry of ‘Stampede!’ And worst of all, to have a certain overgrown Texan look at you with a wink and say patronizingly, Could be we’ll make a genuine trailhand out of you yet, Yank.

Suddenly he wasn’t smoking his cigar. It was burning away in his fingers unheeded as he turned his gray eyes north again. He wasn’t looking at the moving line along the world’s rim that was the almost invisible herd now, but at the faint blue trace along the skyline far beyond.

Hills.

The far hills of Kansas!

Beyond those hills lay towns, railroads, glittering saloons, pretty women and men with money in their pockets and a taste for high-stake games.

He wasn’t thinking about loyalty to a long-time partner or even the accumulated pay he would forfeit now as he drew a coin from his vest pocket. All he was