The Stranger from Abilene Page 10

  “Ah, now you’re getting interesting again,” Kelly said, lifting the makings from Clayton’s pocket. He began to build a cigarette. “For a while there, you really did start to get boring, Cage. So, let’s hear your story.”

  “You ever think of getting your own tobacco?” Clayton said.

  “No.”

  After Kelly lit his smoke, Clayton began to roll his own.

  “What I told you about getting a thousand dollars to kill a man in Bighorn Point is true,” he said.

  “Ah,” Kelly said, a meaningless sound.

  “What I didn’t tell you was that the woman who was raped by Lissome Terry was my mother.”

  “Now you’ve surprised me,” Kelly said. “Go on.”

  “After Ma died, my father retreated into himself. He became a bitter, remote, and hostile man, obsessed with only one thing: making money. He’d taken refuge in a cold, dark place inside him, and then found he couldn’t live happily in his own skin.”

  “And being crippled didn’t help, huh?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Clayton drew deep on his cigarette. “I think he may have blamed me for being in Abilene that day picking up supplies. Maybe I could have made a difference. I don’t know. Finally, when I was seventeen, I couldn’t bear to stay with him any longer. I rode on down to the Panhandle and signed on as a hand with Charlie Goodnight. Went up the trail three times, kept a distance from whiskey and women, saved my money, and started my own brand by way of Abilene Town.”

  “Then you went belly up,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah. Pa sent for me, said he’d give me a thousand dollars to get the Rafter C back on its feet if I’d kill a man.”

  “Lissome Terry.”

  “Yeah. Pa said the fact that Terry still cast a shadow on the earth ate at him like a cancer. He said he saw Ma all the time and she looked angry. He said her soul would never rest in peace until Terry was dead.”

  “How did you feel about Terry back then? Did he stick in your craw?”

  “I swore that if I ever ran across the man, I’d kill him. But I had a ranch to build, and riding on a vengeance trail was no part of my plans.”

  Kelly ground out his cigarette butt under his boot. “The Pinkertons are damn sure that Terry is in Bighorn Point?”

  “Seems like. One of their men got too close and disappeared, and they backed off after that. But they still swear Terry is living in the town.”

  Kelly rose to his feet.

  “All right, Cage, let’s go find him,” he said.

  Chapter 35

  The hazy peaks of the Sans Bois smudged the horizon as Clayton and Kelly rode across rolling country in the direction of Bighorn Point. Crickets scratched out tunes among the buffalo and lovegrass and heat lay heavy on the land. Only the mountains looked cool.

  Ahead of them, two long ridges crowned with a mix of pine and hardwoods formed a narrow canyon, its floor thick with brush and cactus. As Clayton watched, a covey of bobwhite quail exploded from the brush and fluttered into the air before scattering into the long grass. A stray elk or antelope, he figured. A chance for a shot if he were a hunting man.

  Kelly turned his head, looked at Clayton. “When Park Southwell came up the trail from Texas ten years ago, he had two partners with him,” he said.

  “I didn’t know that,” Clayton said, surprised.

  “Me neither until I spoke with J. T. Burke, the editor of the Bighorn Point newspaper. He says the two men with Southwell were John Quarrels and Ben St. John.”

  “The mayor and . . .”

  “St. John is the only banker in town.”

  “You think—”

  “Yeah, either one could be the man you’re hunting.” Kelly shrugged. “Well, at least it’s a possibility to consider.”

  “Quarrels . . . it’s hard to believe—”

  “Men change. Many an outlaw settles down and leads a respectable, churchgoing life.”

  “And St. John?”

  Kelly smiled. “A pillar of respectability. He has a horse-faced Yankee wife who brought her own fortune with her and he’s a deacon of the church. As far as I can tell, he kisses babies, don’t kick dogs, and he’s down on liquor, whores, and gambling.”

  Clayton, thinking, made no answer, and Kelly said, “Shoot ’em both, Cage, an’ then you’ll be sure you got the right one.”

  “That was a joke, right?”

  Kelly smiled. “Yep, only a—”

  The flat statement of the rifle and the thud of the bullet hitting Clayton’s horse happened in the same instant. The buckskin went down as though poleaxed, rolled, and pinned Clayton’s leg under the saddle.

  He was aware of Kelly charging toward the canyon, his rifle to his shoulder, firing.

  Clayton tried to drag his leg out from under the horse, but the jolt of pain in his wounded thigh stopped him. He cursed, then pulled his gun. Kelly vanished between the canyon walls and Clayton heard the thudding echoes of gunfire.

  What the hell was happening?

  He saw a drift of smoke on top of the ridge to his left and thumbed off a couple of shots in that direction. But he was shooting at shadows and the range was too great for a six-gun. Pinned like a butterfly to a board, he could do nothing but wait.

  There was a lull in the shooting that lasted almost half a minute, then two more shots. Then silence.

  Clayton again tried to free himself. Pain ripped at him, but he clenched his teeth and pulled harder. But the weight of the horse was too great. He wasn’t going anywhere, at least not real soon. Was Kelly dead? Would the bushwhackers come to finish the job?

  Clayton didn’t want to find the answer to either question.

  He had lost his hat when the horse fell, and the sun blasted at him. He managed to reload the Colt from his cartridge belt; then his eyes swept the canyon ridges. Nothing moved and there was no sound.

  “Kelly!” he yelled.

  No answer.

  Clayton swore. Alive, the buckskin was a good horse. Dead, he was a son of a bitch.

  “Kelly!”

  The returning silence mocked Clayton.

  “Kelly!”

  A bullet kicked up a startled exclamation point of dirt three feet from Clayton’s head.

  All right, if you feel that way about it, I’ll shut up.

  A lone horseman rode out of the canyon, coming on slowly though the shimmering landscape.

  Clayton shielded his eyes with his hand, squinting into the distance. There was no mistaking the rider—it was Nook Kelly, his Winchester across the saddle horn. When the lawman drew rein, Clayton said, “Hell, was it you took a pot at me?”

  “I sure did,” Kelly said. He smiled. “I should’ve blowed your damned brains out.”

  Chapter 36

  “Damn it, what was all the hollering about?” Kelly said.

  “I’m pinned under my horse.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Why did you shoot at me?”

  “To shut you up. Your girlish screams were annoying the hell out of me.”

  “Well, you could have killed me.”

  “Sure I could, but I didn’t. Just wanted you to be quiet, was all. Did you really think I’d holler back when I wasn’t sure how many bushwhackers were up on the ridge?”

  Kelly had been right not to give his position away, and Clayton felt like a fool. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think about that.”

  Kelly smiled and nodded. “Maybe you’re just not a deep-thinking man, Cage. Pity, that.”

  The words stung and anger flashed in Clayton. “Instead of lecturing, can you get this damned hoss off me?”

  “I think so.” Kelly grinned. “I’ll study on it for a spell and let you know.”

  “Go to hell,” Clayton said.

  Kelly used his own mount and a rope to pull Clayton’s horse off his leg. It was an efficient way to move the buckskin, but hardly gentle.

  “That hurt like hell,” Clayton said after he was freed.

  “No bones br
oken, but your wound has opened up again. Looks like you’re a bleeder, Cage.”

  Clayton ignored that and said, “What happened in the arroyo?”

  After he took the makings from Clayton’s pocket, Kelly started to build a smoke.

  “There were two of them,” he said, looking down at tobacco and papers. “I’ve seen them hanging around town for the past month, a couple of young, drifting farm boys down on their luck.”

  “You killed them both?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t give me any choice. Those boys were sodbusters, not gunfighters, but they were mangrown enough to carry Winchesters and they used them pretty well.”

  “Well enough to kill my horse,” Clayton said.

  “Better the horse than you, I guess.”

  “Yes. Thank you for that.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Kelly said. He smiled at Clayton. “You may not know the man you’re hunting, but he sure as hell has you pegged.”

  “The bullet was meant for me?”

  Kelly lit his cigarette and shook out the match. “Now, what do you think? I’m a much loved and respected peace officer, so it wasn’t me them rubes was paid to kill.”

  Clayton nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Their rifles were aimed at me.”

  “Well, if it was Terry who hired them two, he fears you and he’s willing to pay somebody else to do his killing.”

  Kelly placed his hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “He’s a dangerous man, Cage. From now on step light and”—he smiled—“stay out of dark alleys.”

  The marshal rose to his feet. “We’ll strip the saddle and bridle off your hoss and I’ll send Moses Anderson out for them. You’ll have to pay him, of course.”

  “Are we going to bury the men you killed?”

  “With what? Our bare hands? Moses will plant ’em, if he can find them.”

  Clayton picked up his rifle as Kelly swung into the saddle.

  “Climb up behind me,” the marshal said. “And try not to attract the attention of any more bushwhackers, huh?”

  Chapter 37

  A month passed and the summer heat grew more oppressive. Hammered by the sun, Bighorn Point was dusty, dreary, and deserted. The sawn timber of the buildings warped and smelled of beaded pine resin, and nobody went outside unless it was really necessary.

  Like many another man in town, Cage Clayton gazed often on the Sans Bois and dreamed of their shadowed, ferny places where green frogs splashed in rock pools and stuck out their tongues at hovering dragonflies.

  Reluctant to make any kind of physical effort, he sat in a rocker on the shaded hotel porch, too sapped to move anything but his eyes.

  There had been no more attempts on Clayton’s life, and Bighorn Point seemed content to quietly drowse the summer away, waiting with listless patience for the first winds of winter.

  Over at the livery, Benny Hinton had tried to sell Clayton a yellow mustang that must have weighed less than eight hundred pounds. The little horse had a mean eye, a swayed back, and a cough, but Hinton insisted the thirty-dollar nag was a veritable Bucephalus, ready to carry the man from Abilene on any adventure.

  Clayton passed and Hinton, irritated, said he’d find him another. He didn’t add, “just as bad,” but Clayton reckoned it was on the tip of his tongue.

  He and Emma Kelly had stepped out a few times, but, uneasy and constantly on his guard for assassins, he knew he hadn’t been good company for a young girl.

  He thought Emma liked him well enough, but he wasn’t sure. And that was where things stood between them.

  Then, the morning that Mayor Quarrels hired some loafers to water the street in an attempt to keep down the clouds of dust that coated everything in town with a layer of yellow grit, Angus McLean arrived in Bighorn Point.

  And everything changed.

  The little Scotsman, sour and ill-tempered, rolled into town in a dray driven by Moses Anderson. The once-a-month passenger car had arrived at the spur, and Moses had been unloading barrels of beer from the only boxcar.

  The big black man had only been too glad to offer McLean a ride into town, but the two dollars he’d charged rankled the Scotsman. Now, standing beside the grinning Anderson he vented his outrage on Marshal Kelly, who had joined Clayton on the hotel porch.

  “Two dollars this damned Hindoo is charging me,” McLean yelled. “It’s highway robbery, I tell ye.”

  Kelly smiled. “It’s the going rate, Mr. . . .”

  “McLean. Angus McLean of Edinburgh Toon. Here to buy a ranch and cattle, no to be robbed by Hindoos.”

  Moses Anderson was a huge man, well over six feet with bulging muscles to match. His hair was graying at the sides, but he had the quick, amused eyes of a teenager. “It’s better than walking,” he said.

  McLean turned on the man, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Ye’re a robber!”

  “Two dollars,” Anderson said, grinning, holding out a palm the size of a shovel.

  McLean cursed under his breath, removed a steel purse from his pocket, and extracted a couple of coins. The purse snapped shut like a bear trap.

  “Here, and be damned to ye, and you’re a bandit, so ye are.”

  After the grinning Moses left, Kelly said, “Are you staying long in Bighorn Point, Mr. McLean?”

  “I am not. Just long enough to conduct my business. I’m told you have a stage through here.”

  “Day after tomorrow at noon.”

  “Then I’ll be on it.”

  “Have you found a ranch yet, or are you just looking?” Clayton asked.

  “Oh, I’ve found one all right, if it stands up to my scrutiny. For the last couple of months, I’ve been dealing with the lassie who’s selling it through my lawyers in Boston.”

  Suddenly Clayton was interested. “Would that be Lee Southwell?”

  “Aye, it would. Do you know her?”

  “We’re . . . acquainted,” Clayton said.

  The hotel doors were opened to catch the nonexistent breeze and McLean looked past the two men into the lobby. “Weel, I’d better get my room and lay doon my bag. I can’t stand this infernal heat.”

  Then, as though he’d just remembered something, he said to Kelly, “Is there somebody who can drive me oot to the ranch?”

  The marshal nodded. “Moses Anderson has a gig. He can take you out to the Southwell spread.”

  “You mean the brigand that just robbed me?”

  “Either him, or you can rent a horse at the livery.”

  “Damn it all, man, I canna ride a horse.”

  “Then Moses is your man,” Clayton said.

  A suspicious look crossed McLean’s face. “Are you two in cahoots?”

  “No.”

  “How much will he charge me?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelly said. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “He’ll rob me.”

  The marshal smiled. “Probably.”

  McLean’s narrow shoulders slumped. “I’m going to end up in the poorhouse, so I am.”

  The Scotsman checked into the hotel and reappeared ten minutes later, his black frock coat just as dusty as it was when he went inside. “Where do I find that Hindoo highwayman?”

  Kelly pointed the way and McLean said to Kelly, “If I’m no back by dark, come looking for me, Constable. Not that it will matter. You’ll probably find me robbed of my purse and my throat cut.”

  Chapter 38

  “If McLean’s lawyers have been talking to Lee Southwell for the past couple of months, she planned to sell the ranch before her old man was even in the ground,” Clayton said.

  “Seems like,” Kelly said.

  “Maybe Southwell was murdered.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “Probability, I’d say.” Clayton looked over at Kelly on the next rocker. “How’s the beer?”

  “Warm.”

  Clayton took his own schooner from the porch rail and tried it. “Well, it’s wet.”

  “Yeah, it is at that.”

&
nbsp; “Can you arrest Lee Southwell and Shad Vestal on suspicion of murder?”

  Kelly sipped his beer. “No.”

  “But if she planned to sell the ranch—”

  “Who’s to say that it wasn’t Park who wanted to sell it? Lee always talked about going east to live in Boston or New York. Park could have finally caved and agreed to her demands.”

  “But it was Lee who contacted McLean.”

  “You ever married, Cage?”

  “No.”

  “Figured that. Married men often let their wives handle business deals. Keeps peace in the happy home. Park could have been no exception.” Kelly lazily turned his head. “In other words, I’d be laughed out of court, especially when everybody knows Parker Southwell died gallantly leading a cavalry charge.”

  “Yeah, but Vestal could’ve popped him and blamed the bandits.”

  “He could, and I believe he probably did, but believing and proving are different things.”

  “So Lee and Vestal take McLean’s money and run.”

  “Right now, that’s how it’s shaking out.”

  “And the dead Apaches?”

  “I can’t take that to court either. The whole town believes outlaws attacked the train at the spur, and they’ll believe any lawyer who says the same outlaws murdered the kidnapped Apaches.” He looked at Clayton again. “You really believe a jury of eight men could look at Lee Southwell on the stand, sobbing into her little lace hankie, and find her guilty of anything?”

  “Damn beer is getting warmer,” Clayton said. He sighed. “No, they wouldn’t find her guilty.”

  “Case closed,” Kelly said.

  A silence stretched between the two men. A Cooper’s hawk glided across the blue bowl of the sky, then dove, and somewhere beyond the town a little death happened.

  Dust kicking up from his feet, a dog crossed the street and vanished into an alley. A bottle clinked, marking his passing.

  The last of Mayor Quarrels’s watermen quit, took off his hat, and scratched his bald head. The empty street was as dry and dusty as ever, the water already evaporated.

  Down at the church a woman stepped outside, applied a polishing cloth to the door brasses, then thought the better of it and went back inside.