The Stranger from Abilene Read online

  “I don’t have that information.”

  “Met him before, back along the trail?”

  Clayton shook his head—then realized it was the kind of momentary lapse that could get him killed around a man like Kelly.

  You idiot, Cage! Never take your eyes off his gun hand!

  Aloud, he said, “No. I don’t know the man.”

  Kelly smiled, about as warm as a snake grin. “Then how will you know who to kill?”

  “Because he’ll try to kill me first. Then I’ll have him pegged as the one.”

  Chapter 3

  Nook Kelly took a step back, and for a moment Clayton thought he was going to draw. He recalled the lawman’s reputation and figured he was a dead man.

  But the marshal raised a hand, index finger extended, aimed at Clayton’s face, and then dropped it until it pointed at the ground. “Step down. Walk with me.”

  Clayton swung out of the saddle. Now that he stood beside Kelly, he was struck by how small the man was, his own rangy six feet dwarfing him.

  “Walk where?” he asked.

  “To the livery. I’ll see you bedded down for the night.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Benny Hinton always has coffee and stew on the stove. He’s an old range cook, and habit dies hard.”

  Clayton hesitated. “I reckoned you’d draw down on me for sure.”

  “I’m studying on it,” Kelly said. “Give me time.”

  Hinton was a sour, stringy old man, badly stove up, with a slow, stiff-kneed walk.

  “Benny, can you take care of this feller’s horse, then bed him down and fix him up with grub?” the marshal said.

  “Cost him.”

  “You got money, Mr. Clayton?”

  Clayton looked at Hinton. “How much?”

  “One dollar for man and hoss, two bits extry fer the grub.”

  “Your prices run dear.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “Pay the man, Mr. Clayton,” Kelly said. “Or go hungry.”

  Clayton paid with ill grace, but later admitted to himself that Hinton’s son-of-a-bitch stew, sourdough bread, and coffee were well worth the price.

  Kelly watched Clayton eat, waited until he built and lit a smoke, and then said, “Tell me about it.” He looked at Hinton. “Set, Benny. I want you to hear this.”

  “You ain’t running me out of town, Marshal,” Clayton said, more stubbornness than a warning.

  “Tell me.”

  Kelly and Hinton were listening men. They squatted in front of Clayton, waiting, the marshal’s head cocked to one side.

  “Twenty-five years ago, on the last day of the last year of the late war, a bunch of irregular Reb cavalry rode up on a farm in the Beaver Creek country of northern Kansas.”

  Clayton drew deep on his cigarette. “They say Frank and Jesse James were with the outfit, but I don’t know about that.”

  “Just say it plain,” Kelly said. “Don’t tell me what you don’t know.”

  “All right, the telling is simple enough. The Rebs ransacked the farm, took what they could carry, but one of them, a youngster by the name of Lissome Terry, shot the farmer right there in his parlor.”

  “For no reason?”

  “He had a reason. The farmer’s young wife was the reason.”

  Clayton searched his memory, made sure he got the story right. “The farmer’s backbone was broke, maybe an inch above his belt. He lay paralyzed on the floor, watched Terry throw his wife on the table and violate her.”

  “Then Jesse was nowhere near that farmhouse.”

  Clayton looked at Kelly. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Jesse would have no truck with abusing a woman,” Kelly said. “Neither would Frank, even though he was a mean bastard. I rode with them for a spell, back in the day, and I knew them as well as any man.”

  “I don’t know if Jesse was there or not, and it doesn’t really matter,” Clayton said.

  “All right, spill the rest.”

  “Isn’t much left to tell. The Rebs rode away, Lissome Terry with them. The farmer’s wife got up from the floor, spat on her wounded husband, and stepped over him. She hanged herself in the barn.”

  “Spat on him, though. Seems hard,” Hinton said.

  “I guess she blamed him for not trying to save her. Later it turned out the man was paralyzed from the waist down and couldn’t have helped her anyhow.”

  “Kin o’your’n?” Hinton said.

  Clayton blinked again, his answer a long time in coming. “No.”

  “Then how come you’re involved?” Kelly said.

  “I have a ranch up Abilene way, or had. Three bad winters wiped me out. Had to pay off my hands and sell what cattle I had left. I was flat broke, down on my uppers. Then a man offered me a job.”

  “To kill this Lissome Terry ranny?” Hinton said.

  Clayton nodded. “Two hundred up front, another eight hundred when the job is done.”

  “You ever kill a man before?”

  “No. I never felt the need.”

  “How do you know Terry is in Bighorn Point?”

  “The man who hired me had the Pinkertons trace him this far. For a few years, Terry left a wide path behind him—murder, robbery, you call it—but then he vanished from sight. He was a hard man to track down.”

  “Why didn’t the Pinks grab him?” Kelly said.

  “They said Terry is living in this town under a different name, but they couldn’t pin him down further. After one of their agents disappeared, the Pinkertons wanted to investigate further, but the man I work for called them off. He convinced them that Terry, or whatever he’s known as now, could get wind of what was happening and scamper.”

  “So the Pinks backed down, huh?” Kelly said. “That isn’t like them. They’re bulldogs.”

  Clayton nodded. “They took some convincing, that’s for sure.”

  “And that’s when your man hired you. Terry dead, the Pinks satisfied, no loose ends to tie up.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “It was the farmer who hired you, huh?”

  “Yeah. He’s a rich man now, but he’s confined to a wheelchair and the pain he lives with every day, inside and out, don’t let him forget.”

  “And you reckon Terry will get wind of you being in Bighorn Point and try to kill you?” Clayton said.

  “Yeah, once the word gets out that I’m hunting him. He has no other choice.”

  Clayton smiled, looked from Clayton to Hinton. “I’m depending on you boys to spread the good news.”

  “Maybe we will,” Kelly said, “after I make up my mind on whether to run you out of town or shoot you.”

  Hinton looked at the lawman. “Bighorn Point is a peaceful, God-fearing town, Marshal, and this here feller spells trouble. You take my advice and just gun him.”

  “Your advice is noted, Benny,” Kelly said.

  The eyes he turned on Clayton were as hard as chips of granite. “I’m still studying on it.”

  Chapter 4

  “Well?” Benny Hinton said after a few moments.

  “Well, what?” Kelly said.

  “Ain’t your studyin’ done? Are you gonna gun him?”

  “Not just yet.”

  Clayton felt anger in him, hot and red as a flaring match. He rose to his feet. “Marshal, I told you I’ve never killed a man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use a gun.”

  Kelly hadn’t moved. He squatted on his heels, smiling, his hands still.

  “Mr. Clayton, you’d just think about skinning the iron and then you’d be dead.”

  He rose to his feet. “I don’t plan on killing you anyhow. At least, not tonight.”

  “You lettin’ him stay on, Marshal?” Hinton said.

  “For a week.”

  Kelly looked at Clayton. “If you ain’t dead in seven days, then you leave town. That set all right with you?”

  “Ask me again in a week,” Clayton said. “I’ll give you
my answer then.”

  Kelly recognized the implied challenge, ignored it. “You got a week, and that’s all you got.”

  “Damn it, why, Marshal?” Hinton said. “There ain’t no bad folks in this town. This stranger is a bounty hunter. He might shoot anybody he pleases, then gallop back to Abilene and claim his reward.”

  “He’s no bounty hunter, Benny. I can smell one of them from a mile off. No, he’s what he says he is—a one-loop rancher down on his luck—and he’s got seven days to find his man. If that man even exists.”

  “I asked you why afore. Now I’m asking it again,” Hinton said.

  Kelly’s head turned slowly in Hinton’s direction. “Because I’m bored, Benny. Bored with this damned town, bored with my do-nothing job, bored with you and four hundred respectable citizens just like you.”

  The old man was stung, and for a moment his thinking slipped a cog. Anger can push a man into dangerous territory, and Hinton stepped over that boundary.

  His cheekbones burning, he said, “Or maybe you’ve slowed down on account of them years of doin’ nothin’ and you think this stranger can shade you with the iron.”

  A second passed, another. Kelly stood stock-still. Then he moved.

  His hands blurred and suddenly the Bulldogs were hammering, his bullets kicking up straw and dirt around the old man’s feet.

  Hinton screamed, did a frantic jig, then fell flat on his back.

  Talking through the ringing echoes that followed, Kelly said, “Still fast enough for you, Benny?”

  “You’re crazy!” the old man shrieked. “Plumb loco!”

  Kelly grinned. “No, I’m not crazy. Like I said, I’m bored.”

  Clayton heard shouts, and doors opened somewhere in the street outside.

  The marshal, still grinning, stepped to the barn door and held up his hands.

  “Go back to bed, folks,” he yelled. “Just some plumb loco rooster shooting at the moon.”

  “You all right, Marshal?” a man’s voice said.

  “I’m fine. Now go home, and take them others with you.”

  After the mutterings of his would-be rescuers faded into silence, Kelly turned in the doorway and looked at Clayton.

  “Did you think that was fast, Mr. Clayton?” he said.

  “I’ve never seen faster,” Clayton said.

  “Hell, and I wasn’t even half trying,” Kelly said.

  Chapter 5

  Cage Clayton woke after an hour of restless sleep.

  Kelly was gone and Hinton had locked himself in his office, making a point of slamming the bolt home so Clayton would hear it.

  Clayton glanced at his watch. It was two thirty, the dead of night. He rose, dusted straw off his pants, and stepped to the livery door. The town was quiet, sleeping under a lilac sky aflame with stars. The air smelled of pine, carried on the wind off the Sans Bois Mountains a few miles to the south, and to the north, out on the prairie, night birds called into darkness.

  Clayton walked a few yards away from the barn and looked down the shadowed street. Somewhere out there was a man who would try to kill him. Not tonight, but maybe the day after or the day after that.

  He lit a cigarette. He knew that if he stepped out of line, Nook Kelly would gun him. But where was that line?

  Only the marshal knew, and he wasn’t telling, at least not yet.

  Kelly told Hinton he was bored, wanted to see what would happen. But when it did happen . . . what then?

  Clayton might have to kill a man Kelly didn’t want dead. The little gun exhibition he’d given tonight wasn’t really directed at Hinton. It was a warning to Clayton: Cross me and I’ll kill you.

  The rancher’s cigarette had gone out. He lit it again, the match flame reflecting orange on the lean planes of his face. Clayton had no crystal ball. He couldn’t predict the future. But one thing he did know—he could never match Nook Kelly’s skill with a gun. Not in this lifetime or in any other.

  He ground out the cigarette butt under the sole of his boot and shook his head. All he could do now was take things as they came. There was no use building barriers on a bridge he hadn’t even crossed yet.

  Yet, as Clayton lay again on his uncomfortable bed of straw and sacking, a man was already plotting his death.

  He didn’t know it then. But he would know it soon.

  Chapter 6

  “He’s here. The man you said would come.”

  Two figures were silhouetted in the dark room. One on his feet, one sitting up in bed.

  “Bounty hunter?” the man in the bed said. His voice was the weak whisper of a man who found it hard to breathe.

  “Rancher. Or so he says.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Egan Jones, the ferryman. Rode into town on a lathered mule, maybe an hour ago, to spread the news. Kelly told him he already knew, so Jones came here, figured you’d want to hear it.”

  “He did right. But he knows too much, that damned ferryman, or guesses too much.”

  “You want me to get rid of him permanent?”

  “No, not yet. Give him ten dollars and tell him to keep his big mouth shut.”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s this man’s name?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t give Jones his handle. Said he was from up Abilene way, though.”

  “Then this has got to be the work of that Kansas farmer, damn him to hellfire and perdition. How can a man nurse a hate for twenty-five years?”

  The man in the bed grabbed a bottle from the table beside him and rattled two pills into his hand. His tall companion poured him water and watched as the sick man palmed the pills into his mouth.

  He lay back on the pillow, his voice even weaker now. “You’ll get rid of him?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want it done quickly and quietly. Oh, and let the Fat Man know you’re taking care of the situation. One other thing: Make it look good for Kelly. I don’t want him on the prod.”

  “I got rid of the Pinkertons. You hear anybody complain, Kelly included?”

  “No, you did well and helped me repay a favor.”

  The sick man on the bed raised a white hand with blue veins. “Lee mustn’t know about this. I want her kept well out of it.”

  “She never found out about the Pinkertons.”

  “No, she didn’t. So do the same with this stranger from Abilene.”

  “A good thing Lee doesn’t know about our other . . . enterprise. I hope no one ever feels the need to tell her.”

  “Who would tell her?”

  “I might, if it was to my advantage.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Old man, push me hard enough and I’ll dare.”

  A silence stretched between the two men; then the tall man said, “I still want her.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first,” the man in the bed said.

  “One day, when I’m ready, I’ll take her.”

  “She wants nothing to do with you. She set her sights higher than Texas gun trash when she married me.”

  “I can make her change her mind.”

  The bed creaked as the older man leaned forward, peering into the gloom. “Touch my wife and I’ll kill you.”

  The tall man moved to the door and looked back. “You’ll kill nobody, you damned cripple. Just remember, I can wring your scrawny neck like a chicken anytime I feel like it, or spill the beans to Kelly and have him do it with a rope.”

  “And you’ll swing with me.”

  The tall man smiled, his teeth a white gleam in the darkness. “It might be worth it to see you dangle at the end of a rope.”

  A sudden fear gripped the man in the bed. Best to play for time. Pretend a small surrender. “We’ll talk. Kill the man from Abilene and then we’ll talk.”

  “Damn right we’ll talk. When I want a woman I take her and I won’t let her husband or her daddy or the Devil himself stand in my way.”

  The right hand of the man on the bed rested on the walnut butt
of a Colt. And for an instant he tensed, ready.

  But the moment came and went.

  He couldn’t kill this man. He needed him too badly.

  After the man from Abilene was dead . . . well, there would be time enough.

  “Don’t fail me,” he said.

  “Have I ever failed you before?”

  The tall man slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter 7

  A slamming door woke Cage Clayton. Benny Hinton stood over him, grinning.

  “Figured that would wake you up.”

  “You always slam doors so loud?”

  “Only when I want to wake fellers I don’t like to see sleeping in my barn.”

  Clayton rose to his feet and stretched, working the kinks out of his back. He took time to build and light a smoke, then said, “Is there a place where I can get breakfast?”

  “Sure. Mom’s Kitchen and Pie Shop, just down the street a ways.”

  “Is that all she sells, damned pies?” Clayton was in a sour mood and his back and hips ached.

  “No, Mom will cook you up a good breakfast, steak and taters, if you can pay for it.”

  “I’m buying Mr. Clayton breakfast this morning.”

  Nook Kelly stood at the barn door. He was freshly shaved, his dragoon mustache trimmed, his clothes clean and pressed.

  To Clayton’s disgust the lawman looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as though he’d spent the last ten hours sound asleep in a feather bed.

  “You ready?” Kelly said, smiling.

  “Give me a minute,” Clayton said. “I ain’t hardly awake yet.”

  He washed his face and hands in the horse trough and used his bandanna to dry off. He settled his new hat on his head, then ran a forefinger under his mustache. “Now I’m ready,” he said.

  “And you’re surely a joy to behold,” Kelly said.

  “Kelly, I’m surprised nobody ever shot you for being so damned cheerful in the morning,” Clayton said.

  “Just my sunshiny good nature coming up with the dawn.”

  “Go to hell,” Clayton said.

  “Hinton said Mom’s Kitchen is the best place for breakfast,” Clayton said.

  “Yeah, he would, since he’s sparking the old gal.”