The Stranger from Abilene Page 17

  Closer . . . Come closer....

  Clayton shifted in the saddle, uneasy. He felt he was being watched by a thousand eyes, hostile, malevolent, cold.

  His attention was drawn to the creek, where a solitary Hereford bull shambled to the water and drank. Suddenly the animal lifted his head and peered with shortsighted intensity toward the cattle pens.

  After a full minute, the bull tossed his head and went back to drinking, apparently undisturbed by what he’d seen.

  Clayton uneasily noted that.

  It had probably been a prowling coyote or bobcat, neither of which would make the Hereford feel threatened.

  But it could have been a man, a two-legged animal the bull had learned to trust.

  Yet there was no movement around the cattle pens or the toolshed, and the Hereford finished his drink and walked away without another glance in that direction.

  Clayton wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, then let the black pick its way forward.

  He drew rein in front of the house, then stepped out of the leather to make himself a less conspicuous target.

  The long summer daylight was lingering. Clayton glanced at the sun, sinking in the western sky like a copper penny. Maybe another hour until full dark.

  To his right, the bunkhouse door was ajar, creaking slowly on its hinges in a whisper of wind. Behind that, the barn, a smokehouse, and a corral, timber planks stacked up nearby for repairs that had never been done.

  The place was deserted. Had the note been somebody’s idea of a practical joke?

  Feeling foolish, Clayton called out, “Anybody here?”

  “Right behind you, Mr. Clayton.”

  Clayton felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. How could he have been blindsided like that?

  He turned slowly, his hand away from his gun.

  Then his jaw dropped when he saw the man standing there, smiling at him.

  “Mayor Quarrels. How—”

  The man smiled. “I could’ve gunned you. Easy. You must learn to take more care, Mr. Clayton. Of course, now it’s too late.”

  His anger flaring, Clayton said, “Why are you here? Did you write the note?”

  “Of course I wrote the note. I didn’t tell a lie. I can put a rope around Lissome Terry’s neck anytime I choose.”

  Quarrels stepped around Clayton and stopped when his back was facing the ranch house.

  It was a seemingly casual move, but it set Clayton on edge, as did the style of the mayor’s dress.

  Gone was his businesslike broadcloth; in its place a black hat and shirt, black leather vest, pants of the same color, tucked into polished black boots. His gun belt was black; the only touch of color in his entire outfit the yellowed ivory handles of his Remingtons.

  He looked, Clayton decided, like an outlaw from the cover of a dime magazine, but there was an aura of violence and danger about him, as palpable as the stench of an unwashed body.

  “You sent me the note,” Clayton said, painfully aware that he was restating what Quarrels had already told him.

  “Yes,” Quarrels said, smiling, offering him no help.

  “About Lissome Terry.”

  “Yeah, him. I’ve already said all this.”

  “And you have information for me?”

  Quarrels smiled. “Information? You know who Terry is. You don’t need me to tell you.”

  “Ben St. John?”

  “Huzzah for the man from Abilene.”

  “Were you there? I mean, in Kansas, when it happened?”

  “I was there. I didn’t see Liss screw the woman, but she squealed plenty, so we knew it was happening, me and Jesse and them.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  Quarrels shrugged. “Man wants to hump a woman, it’s no concern of mine.”

  Keeping his anger in check, Clayton said, “Thank you for your help, Mayor. Now I can kill Terry with a clear conscience.”

  “Ah, but it’s not as simple as that, Mr. Clayton.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Yes, I know. And that’s why I’m going to kill you.”

  Chapter 67

  Clayton was taken aback, but he tensed, ready.

  He ran through names in his mind, gunfighters he’d heard men discuss: Wyatt Earp, John Wesley Hardin, Bill Longely, Harvey Logan, Dallas Stoudenmire, Ben Thompson . . . others.

  But the name John Quarrels had never been mentioned that he could remember.

  It didn’t mean the man wasn’t dangerous. He was. And he seemed supremely confident and that worried Clayton most of all.

  Quarrels talked again.

  “I need to keep St. John alive,” he said. “I squeeze money out of the fat man”—Quarrels made a clenching motion with his fist—“until his eyes pop.”

  “You blackmail him by threatening to reveal his true identity.”

  Quarrels smiled. “Blackmail is such an ugly word. Let’s just say Ben keeps me in a style to which I’ve become accustomed. That’s why I can’t allow you to gun him willy-nilly, as they say.”

  Quarrels glanced at the sky.

  “Be dark soon, Mr. Clayton. Shall we get this unpleasantness over with?”

  It was obvious to Clayton that Quarrels’s talking was done, and he himself had no words left unsaid.

  But after a struggle he managed to eke out a few that pleased him greatly.

  “Quarrels,” he said, “you’re an even sorrier piece of trash than Terry.”

  The mayor of Bighorn Point smiled. And shucked iron.

  Clayton took the hit on his feet, fired back. Whether he had scored or not, he had no idea.

  Quarrels stood flat-footed, expertly getting in his work. Two more bullets hit Clayton.

  He dropped to his knees, his head reeling, raised his Colt to eye level, and fired.

  Hit hard, Quarrels staggered back a couple of steps.

  Clayton fired again.

  Another hit, somewhere low in the man’s gut.

  Quarrels backed up, bent over his gun. His back slammed against the house wall, and he straightened, ready to again take the fight to Clayton.

  He ran his Remington dry, two shots kicking up dirt in front of Clayton’s knees.

  As Quarrels clawed for his other gun, Clayton got to his feet. Holding the Colt in both hands, he fired, fired again. He tried for a third shot, but the hammer clicked on the empty chamber.

  But it was enough.

  Through a shifting shroud of smoke, he saw Quarrels fall, and the man showed no inclination to get up again.

  Clayton swayed on his feet. Blood was draining out of him and he figured his life along with it.

  He ejected the Colt’s empty shells and started to reload from his cartridge belt.

  The bullet hit him like a sledgehammer.

  He gasped in pain as the rifle round slammed into the left side of his waist near his spine. The .44-40 destroyed tissue on its way in, more as it exited his belly in an erupting fountain of blood and flesh.

  Clayton fell on his back, struggling to stay conscious, blood in his mouth.

  He thumbed off a shot in the general direction of the cattle pens.

  It was a futile play born of desperation, but had the effect of driving the gunman out of hiding.

  In the crowding gloom, Clayton had a fleeting impression of a tall, loose-limbed man with a drooping mustache running toward him, levering a Winchester from his shoulder.

  Bullets kicked up around Clayton, one close enough to tug at the sleeve of his shirt. He laid the Colt on his raised knees, two-handed the handle, and got off a shot.

  The rifleman stumbled, fell on his face. He tried to rise, but Clayton hit him again and this time the man’s hat flew off. A killing head shot.

  Slowly, Clayton eased himself on his back. He’d been hit multiple times and any one of them could be fatal.

  He stared at the sky.

  A star blazed above him, bright in a dark part of the night sky that slowly spilled ink over the last pale remnants of the blue bow
l of the day.

  The darkness gave birth to a wind that sighed around Clayton, tugging at him, teasing him, mocking his weakness. The black horse stepped close, its reins trailing. Seeing no reaction from its rider, it turned away and Clayton heard the receding clop-clop of its hooves.

  He tried to rise, failed, lay down again.

  Why was he feeling no pain? Was that a good thing?

  No, it was bad. Maybe his spine was shattered.

  He closed his eyes and listened into the rustling night.

  Then a darker darkness than the night took him.

  Chapter 68

  Cage Clayton opened his eyes.

  The moon was high in the sky and had modestly drawn a gauzy veil of cloud over its nakedness. He heard whispers, a woman’s silvery laugh, the rustle of the wind.

  He sat up, his eyes reaching into the night. They stood at the open door of the house, looking at him.

  Suddenly Clayton was angry.

  “Damn you both, you’re dead!” he said.

  Lee Southwell smiled at him. She wore a white dress, a scarlet heart in front where her breasts swelled.

  “We’ve come for you, Cage,” she said.

  “Time to follow the buffalo, old fellow,” Shad Vestal said.

  “And I don’t think I will. What do you think of that?” Clayton said.

  He felt around him for his gun, his fingers flexing though the dirt.

  “You’re one of us now, Cage,” Lee said. “You’re one of the dead.”

  Vestal stepped out of the shadow of the door into the moonlight.

  His head was a blackened dome of scorched flesh, bare, yellow bone showing, his eyes burned out.

  “Parker Southwell is here, Cage,” he said. “Join us now. We don’t want to keep the colonel waiting.”

  “Damn you, Vestal,” Clayton said. “You killed him.”

  “Yes, and now I suffer for it,” Vestal said.

  Lee stepped beside him, blood glistening on her breast.

  “Would you like to sing, Cage?” she said. She looked at Vestal. “What shall we sing for Cage?”

  She jumped up and down, then, gleefully, “Oh, I know. Listen, Cage. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

  “Shut the hell up!” Clayton yelled.

  “In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

  Clayton’s fingers closed on the handle of his gun.

  He fired at Lee, then Vestal.

  After the racketing echoes of the shots were silenced by the night, Clayton staggered to his feet, a man so soaked in blood he looked like a manikin covered in red rubies.

  “I done for you!” he cried out. “I done for you both! And be damned to ye!”

  The moonlight splashed the front of the house with mother-of-pearl light, deepening the shadows. The still body of John Quarrels lay close to the front door.

  Clayton sobbed deep in his chest and dropped to his knees.

  “I . . . done . . . for . . . you,” he said. “You came for me, and you rode my bullets back to hell.”

  And he fell on his face, and gladly he let the darkness claim him again.

  Chapter 69

  For the first time in years, Mayor John Quarrels was not at his desk at eight sharp, fresh as the morning itself and eager to meet the challenges of the day.

  Or so his clerk thought.

  To a mousy little man like Clement Agnew, the mayor’s office was a hallowed spot, not to be intruded upon unless the business was urgent.

  Agnew tapped on the door again. No answer. He rapped harder, with the same result.

  Swallowing hard, he threw open the door and stepped inside.

  From the doorway Agnew noticed a paper on the blotter. Perhaps it was a note of explanation for His Honor’s absence.

  But dare he read it? Perhaps it was official town business and strictly confidential.

  The clerk hesitated, then made his decision.

  The mayor was missing, so this was an emergency.

  Agnew rounded the desk and picked up the paper. As a summer rain rattled on the windows, he read and grew pale. Then, as though demons were chasing him, he ran out of the office and didn’t stop running until he reached the marshal’s office.

  Nook Kelly listened to the clerk’s concerns about Quarrels and his horror and disbelief when he read what the mayor, a respected and much loved man, had written.

  The marshal calmed Agnew and sent him on his way with the assurance that “All will be well.”

  Then he read the note.

  Marshal Kelly,

  I’m sure you will be among the first ones to read this, and when you do I will already be dead.

  There were three of us came up the trail from Texas: Colonel Parker Southwell, Lissome Terry, and me. We came with a stolen herd and a considerable amount of money, notes and gold coin, the spoils from the banks, trains, and stagecoaches we’d been robbing for years.

  Just before we rode up on Bighorn Point, Park said me and Terry should use new names, since we were wanted men in Texas. The colonel, on account of him being the brains of the outfit, never took part in the robberies and was unknown to the Rangers. Besides, he had honorably worn the gray and was above suspicion.

  I became John Quarrels and Terry took the name Ben St. John. He said it had a ring to it.

  Later I became mayor and Ben and Park prospered.

  I was with Ben, though back then I called him Liss, when he shot the farmer up in Kansas and done his wife, though I took no part in either the shooting or the rape.

  Down in Texas he killed a lawman and went back that same night and raped his grieving young widow. Park just smiled and said Liss was “a scamp, and no mistake.”

  But Liss shouldn’t have done them rapes and killings, because I blackmailed him with them and he became my “meal ticket.”

  But now I am dead, and I don’t give a damn. Liss should get what he deserves—a rope around his neck.

  I’m meeting Cage Clayton at the Southwell Ranch this evening. I can’t let him kill Liss and dry up my source of money. But if Clayton is faster on the draw than me, you will read this note. Just be aware that I regret nothing.

  Yours Respct.

  John Quarrels, Esq.

  Kelly dropped the note on his desk, then stepped to the window, rain running down the panes like a widow’s tears.

  Clayton had been right all along. Ben St. John was Lissome Terry, the man responsible for his mother’s death.

  Was Cage still alive?

  The fact that he’d read the note suggested he was. But he could be wounded, unable to move.

  Kelly shrugged into his slicker, put on his hat, and picked up Quarrels’s letter.

  It was time to talk to St. John.

  He shook his head, angry at himself.

  No, it was time to talk with Lissome Terry.

  The door opened and Emma Kelly stepped inside. She pushed back the hood of her rain cape and smiled at Kelly. “Well, are you treating me to breakfast?”

  “Not today, Emma,” he said.

  He gave her the note and waited until she read it.

  “I think Cage is still at the Southwell place and he might be wounded,” Kelly said.

  The girl was confused, overwhelmed by the ramifications of Quarrels’s words. “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Arrest St. John, or Terry, then go look for Cage.”

  “He could be dead by then.”

  “The way I see it, my duty to this town must come first.”

  “But Cage is your friend.”

  “Emma, he’d want me to jail Terry before anything else.”

  “Then I’m riding out there. You can follow when St. John—Terry—whatever he’s called—is behind bars.”

  Kelly smiled. “You love Cage Clayton, don’t you?”

  Emma nodded, but said nothing.

  “All right, go after him. We’re wasting time talking here.”

  “Nook, just one thing.�
�� The girl hesitated, then said, “How black is Cage?”

  The question surprised Kelly, but he answered it.

  “I don’t know. A tenth? A twelfth? Only his mother could’ve told him for sure, and even then she might not have known herself.”

  He looked at Emma, her face dewy fresh from the rain, her eyes clear blue. “Does it really trouble you that much? Cage looks as white as me, or you, come to that.”

  “There’s a . . . consideration involved, Nook. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “Then we’ll discuss it later.”

  Kelly opened the door and he and Emma stepped into the slanting rain.

  “I’ll see you at the Southwell place,” he said. “And let’s pray to God that we’re not too late.”

  Chapter 70

  Kelly, rain dripping from his hat and slicker, stormed into the bank, letting a glass door slam shut behind him.

  A startled clerk looked up from the counter, his face registering puzzlement, then shock.

  “Where’s St. John?” the marshal said.

  The clerk fumbled for words, finally found his tongue, and said, “He’s with a client and can’t be disturbed.”

  Kelly walked to the end of the counter, lifted the flap, and strode purposely toward St. John’s door. He tried the handle but the door was locked.

  He looked at the clerk. “You, key!”

  The man wrung his hands, his face anguished. “Marshal, there’s only one key to that door and Mr. St. John locked it from the inside.”

  He managed a weak smile. “If you’d care to wait . . .”

  Kelly smiled in turn, nodded. Then raised his boot and smashed the door in, splintered oak erupting from the lock. The door slammed hard against the wall and Kelly heard the terrified clerk shriek.

  St. John, his huge arm draped over Minnie’s narrow shoulders, jerked his head toward the door. Now he hurled himself up from the leather couch.

  “This is an outrage!” the man yelled, his face purple with fury.

  Minnie leaped from the couch.

  “Marshal Kelly, I didn’t do nothing,” she said. “I’m a good girl. Honest, I am.”