Benedict and Brazos 1 by E. Jefferson Clay

Author:E. Jefferson Clay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: revenge, action heroes, piccadilly publishing, wild west fiction, gunfighters in the old west, ebook westerns, the us civil war, the american frontier, best western books
Publisher: Piccadilly

“You know, my daddy was a preacher of sorts,” Sweet Shirley confided.

“Do tell,” Brazos, said noncommittally.

“Yeah...the sort to make you want to throw your Bible away.”

“I know the sort.”

Silence fell again, the silence that comes to all bordellos in summer’s midday heat, whether they be rough little clapboard shacks, or a fine new palace of sin like Belle Shilleen’s.

The ground floor parlor where Brazos sat taking ease from the outside heat with six of Belle’s girls was quite the plushest room he’d ever been in. Some thirty feet long by twenty wide, it was carpeted wall-to-wall with a rich red Brussels pile that shone with a soft luxurious gleam under the lamps that burned as bright at noon as at midnight. There were velvet-covered settees, plush divans, fine drapes and curtains. Large gilt-framed paintings of bouncing, naked ladies adorned dark blue walls, and in pride of place in one corner stood the new steam piano.

Until today, one piano had been much the same as another to Hank Brazos, but not now. He knew all about Belle Shilleen’s piano, for he’d just spent the entire morning helping Benedict erect the pipes that would make it go.

Benedict had been somewhat annoyed when Brazos had arrived at Belle’s almost on his heels three hours back, but once he realized he meant to stay around, he’d promptly put him to work. The work had comprised laying pipes from the boiler-room of Belle’s old establishment next door, across the backyard and under the floor of the new building to connect up with the piano’s fittings. Belle had intended going to the expense of setting up a steam machine inside the new premises, but Benedict, with some professional advice from laundry-man Willy Wong who knew all about steam, had devised this alternative.

They’d stoked up the sturdy boilers next door after they got the pipes linked up and now the piano worked perfectly. As long as the boiler fire was kept going, the piano would play twenty-four hours a day if needed and would save Belle the considerable cost of employing a player. That saving, Benedict estimated, would pay for the cost of the piano within a year.

Brazos hadn’t minded the work, but the whole business had made him even more curious about why Benedict was going out of his way to do so much for Belle Shilleen. If Benedict were about right now he’d try and find out, but while he’d been sluicing off the sweat of his labor, in the tub out back, Duke and Belle had disappeared upstairs.

Seated rather gingerly on an ornate little chair that he wasn’t quite sure was up to holding him safely, Brazos glanced up at the clock above the gleaming bar which ran the full length of one wall. It was nearly one. They’d been up there a hell of a long time.

He turned to Shirley lounging nearby, almost dressed in something made of filmy chiffon. “They still upstairs?”

“Guess so, big boy.”

He looked at the ceiling. “What the hell they doin’ you reckon?”

If he’d thought twice before saying that he wouldn’t have said it.

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