Benedict and Brazos 37 by E. Jefferson Clay

Author:E. Jefferson Clay [Clay, E. Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action hero, American Frontier, Colt.45, ebook, fiction, Gunfighters, Piccadilly cowboys, Pulp fiction writing, the Old West, Western frontier Fiction
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Barlow kept cooking and Sullivan kept wolfing it down.

Baked ham from a tin, stewed okra and corn left over from Barlow’s supper, Southern biscuits. Sullivan ate like a starving man, which indeed he was. The last square meal he’d eaten had been aboard the gold train just before they had disembarked with the general’s casket at Chinston. The gunfighter wasn’t certain just how long ago that had been. But he did know that in the interim, he had existed on canteen water and jerky.

He felt like a new man by the time he’d finally had his fill; a man ready to ride.

Sullivan burped gently as he took his six-gun from the table and got to his feet. “You’ve done me proud, Lennon,” he complimented. “Now fetch the mule and I’ll be on my way.”

Barlow’s face went white. He and fat Jennie had grown old together. He talked to the mule in the long, lonely hours. She was his best friend. Surely after all he’d done for the outlaw, he couldn’t expect him to part with his Jennie?

He said as much in trembling words and Doc Sullivan smiled coldly.

“Lennon, Lennon, we’ve been gettin’ along like a house afire. Don’t go wreckin’ it all because of a fat old mule.”

“You can’t take Jennie,” Barlow said desperately, backing away towards the mule’s stone stall. “She’s all I got in the world, Doc.”

“Now, listen to me, Lennon—”

“No, I won’t listen,” Barlow said wildly. “You’re not takin’ my mule.”

Sullivan’s expression didn’t alter as he lifted the gun barrel and squeezed trigger. A thin tracer of flame leapt across the firelit cavern, the storm of the gunshot deafeningly loud. The shot missed and Barlow froze, hope leaping into his eyes as he stared through the gun smoke at the outlaw’s face.

Then Sullivan laughed and Barlow knew he’d missed deliberately to prolong his agony. Before the anger he felt had time to reach his wizened old face, Sullivan killed him with a bullet that tore through his throat, cutting his windpipe and shattering his backbone.

They never listened, Doc Sullivan told himself with a lazy smile as he rode away in the dawn’s hazy light. How many men had he warned before only to have to prove the point in the end with gun smoke?

He’d lost count. There seemed no end to the hardheads who simply wouldn’t believe the old truism:

The doctor always knew best.

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