Benedict and Brazos 25 by E. Jefferson Clay

Author:E. Jefferson Clay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: colt 45, mail order brides, pulp fiction westerns, gunfighters and outlaws, piccadilly publishing westerns, best western ebooks, western series fiction
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Six – Shadow of the Desert

KEEF HURBLE MUTTERED in his sleep as something slender and hard angled through his wagon flap and poked his shoulder.

“Arf ... urrgh!” the wagon master muttered. Rolling onto his side, he tried to go back to sleep.

This time the rifle barrel jabbed into his back, hard.

“Did you want to be up at first light or didn’t you, Keef?”

It was Brazos’ voice. Keef Hurble swore and tried to drag the blanket over his head. Then he remembered. He had decided on an early start to beat the heat.

Rising and dressing quickly, Hurble soon had the train aroused with sunrise still only a pink promise on the horizon. But it was immediately after a hasty breakfast that the wagon master came up hard against a grim fact of life, which was womankind’s inborn and unassailable right to do her laundry.

The campsite was on the bank of a small stream. They had been too weary to worry about washing last night. Now they decided to attend to it before setting out.

Hurble fought hard and might have won had he not been stabbed in the back. Mrs. Agatha Hurble, as formidable a matron as might be found east or west of the Mississippi, broke in on her husband’s exhortations that this was no time to be fooling with washboards, to instruct him to get out of his filthy shirt so she could wash it. Thoroughly crushed by such base treachery, Hurble divested himself of the shirt and then retired to the company of the men gathered around Smiley Dunn’s wagon. There he sat smoking, sulking and waiting until the women were good and ready to leave.

The sun came up clear and bright and it was a pleasant sight to see the women by the little stream with the beams dappling through the Joshua trees, the sound of birds, the friendly chatter as they worked. Resigned to the delay now, Hurble couldn’t figure out why Brazos and Benedict, instead of taking the opportunity to relax a little, had ridden out to scout.

“Ain’t been no Injun sign, has there?” he asked Mick Potter.

“Nobody said nothin’ to me about it if there was,” Potter replied, looking uneasy.

“Relax,” drawled little Smiley Dunn. “Those two are just the restless breed.” He patted his little pot belly. “Used to be that way myself until I got smart.”

“Well, one thing is for sure,” put in Herbie Pitt. “The desert will slow ’em down. They won’t be so anxious to go ridin’ about when she gets really hot.”

“Benedict might slow up,” Hambone said in his cranky way. “But not that other one. Granite, that Texan is. Tain’t natcherl for any man to be that healthy.”

The conversation droned on, until finally, satisfied with their work, the women announced they were ready to move on.

The first few miles took them into higher country, most of it level mesa timbered with greasewood, peppercorn and the occasional dusty cottonwood.

Grass and timber began to thin out around them during the afternoon when they made the long, gradual descent out of the mesa country towards the broad plains.

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