The Stranger from Abilene Read online

  Chapter 19

  Shad Vestal sat his horse, head raised, testing the darkness for sound. A pair of hunting coyotes yipped back and forth, and in an oak grove off to his left an owl asked its question of the night. The wind whispered, thunder grumbled in the distance, and raindrops ticked from the tree branches. But there was nothing of human origin. No cough or snore or cry torn from troubled sleep.

  Vestal grimaced. Damn it, where was Clayton?

  He eased his horse forward, rode through a saddleback between a pair of shallow hills, then up a low ridge, drawing rein near the rain-slicked surface of a volcanic boulder, fallen there a long time past.

  Vestal listened, and the night listened to the listener, as though on alert for what he might say or do. Again Vestal lifted his head, smelled the air, trying to scent his prey. He sniffed, sniffed again. No, he had not been mistaken. It was wood smoke, fleeting, faint, but there.

  Lightning flashed without thunder, searing the sullen land with stark light. The rain had been heavy earlier, and a man could not build a fire in the open. That left only the boxcar at the railroad spur.

  Had Clayton gone there, seeking shelter from the storm? If he had, he was probably dead by now. Hugh Doyle was on guard there, and he was a man inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.

  After a last glance at the featureless sky, Vestal swung his horse toward the spur.

  When Vestal reached the tracks, he dismounted and switched from boots to moccasins, better for killing work than high heels and spurs.

  Even in the dark, he read the story in the bloodstains alongside the rails. The rain had washed some of the blood away, but there was enough left to color scarlet the small pools among the grass and rocks. Two men had fought with guns here. One had been wounded, how badly Vestal couldn’t tell. But the other had been hit hard and bled out.

  So Doyle had taken a bullet, but had gunned Clayton. That’s how he read it.

  Like a wolf, Vestal sniffed, his lips drawn back from his teeth. He followed the scent. The body had been dragged into brush close to the tracks. But it was Doyle’s corpse, not Clayton’s. Vestal pondered that.

  Hugh Doyle, one of the railroaders in Park Southwell’s pocket, had been good with a gun. He’d killed two men that Vestal knew about, and enough Chinese to populate a small village.

  Clayton was better than he’d given him credit for, handy with the iron. Not that Vestal was afraid—he wasn’t—but it was always good to know your enemy.

  He drew his Colt and walked toward the boxcar on cat feet. The door was closed and a ribbon of smoke came from the stove’s iron chimney. Clayton’s horse was grazing nearby.

  Vestal paused outside the boxcar for a long minute, listening, but hearing nothing. Clayton was either asleep or dead. Vestal cocked his revolver and slid the door open. It moved without a sound.

  The room was lit by a single oil lamp and the glow of the stove. An empty whiskey bottle sat on the table. Clayton lay near the stove, unmoving.

  Damn it, was the man already dead?

  Moving on silent feet, Vestal stepped to Clayton and stood looking down at him. The man was still breathing.

  Vestal lowered the Colt until the muzzle was just an inch from Clayton’s temple.

  He grinned.

  Like taking a candy stick from a baby . . . .

  Chapter 20

  But Shad Vestal did not pull the trigger. Something was wrong. He eased down the Colt’s hammer. Better to kill Clayton later, he thought, on the Southwell Ranch.

  Vestal smiled. Yeah, why not? The plan dawned on him with crystal clarity. First, gun the old man, then Clayton. Next, blame Clayton for Park’s murder. The man from Abilene thought he’d found the man he’d been hunting and killed him. It was so simple.

  He even knew how the newspapers would play it. Brave ranch foreman Shad Vestal, they would say, caught Clayton in the act of trying to violate helpless Mrs. Southwell. Enraged, Clayton went for his murderous revolver, but Shad Vestal was faster on the draw. Now the frontier is rid of yet another mad-dog killer and would-be rapist.

  Then the clincher: Mrs. Southwell, at present heavily sedated, will inherit the Southwell ranch and all of her dead husband’s business interests.

  Vestal felt like giggling in sheer joy. The plan was so perfect . . . so faultlessly rounded. A thought occurred to him then. Why not kill Clayton now and take him back to the ranch draped over his horse?

  He shook his head. No, that was too messy.

  Suppose he met someone on the trail, Kelly maybe? He would have some explaining to do. He’d get out of it, of course, but why take the chance?

  No, he’d follow the plan as it had come to him, take Clayton back to the ranch and kill him there.

  Vestal rammed his foot into Clayton’s ribs.

  “Get up, you,” he said. “We’re riding.”

  Chapter 21

  Cage Clayton awoke to pain. He looked up at the flashily handsome man towering over him. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Name’s Shad Vestal.”

  “You found me?”

  “A blind man could’ve found you. On your feet.”

  Clayton staggered upright, his eyes moving, searching for his chance. He found none. Vestal was as aware as a hunting wolf.

  “I can’t get up. I’m shot through and through,” Clayton said. “Took a bullet in the thigh.”

  “Then I’ll gun you right here,” Vestal said. “Your choice.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Clayton said.

  He felt weak and light-headed from loss of blood, but he pretended to be more frail than he was and frightened to death—though the latter wasn’t much of a stretch.

  “You’re going to the ranch. Mr. Southwell wants to talk to you about dumping his wife in a pool of shit.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Sorry don’t cut it.”

  Vestal’s hand moved like a striking snake and removed Clayton’s gun from the holster. “You kill Hugh Doyle with this?”

  “The guard?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Yes, I did. He didn’t give me much choice.”

  “Was he trying?”

  “His best, seemed like.”

  Vestal shoved the Colt in his waistband. “Don’t even think about it with me. I’m a lot better than Doyle.”

  It went against the grain and made Clayton queasy deep in his gut, but he played the whining coward role to the hilt. If Vestal didn’t respect him, he might get careless. “Listen, Mr. Vestal, let me go,” he said. “I’ve got money, and you can have it.”

  The big gunman showed a flash of interest. “Where?”

  “Back in Abilene.”

  “How much?”

  “Eight hundred dollars.”

  Vestal laughed. “Hell, Clayton, dead, you’re worth a hundred times that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mister, you don’t need to understand. All you got to do is die.”

  Clayton played for time. When Vestal was talking, he wasn’t shooting. “I know about the Apaches.”

  “Know what?”

  “That you or Park Southwell is shipping their bodies to medical schools back east.”

  Clayton didn’t know who was responsible for the Apache deaths. He was taking a stab in the dark, playing for time.

  Vestal smiled. “Nobody cares about Apaches.”

  “The law might.”

  “And who is going to tell them?” Vestal’s voice was flat with threat.

  Clayton had backed himself into a corner. Now he tried to get out of it. “Not me, Mr. Vestal. I won’t tell anybody.”

  “Damn right you won’t.”

  The gunman picked up Clayton’s rifle and stepped to the door of the boxcar. He glanced outside, then came back to the stove. “Be light soon. We’ll wait till then.”

  He took the cup from the table and poured himself coffee, holding the Winchester under his arm. “Sit,” he said.

  Clayton lim
ped to the table, grimacing. He wanted Vestal to think he was hurt worse than he was. Again, given the gnawing pain in his leg, that didn’t stretch his acting skills.

  Vestal laid the rifle on the table and put his foot on the bench. “Get this into your thick head, Clayton. Nobody cares about Apaches, living or dead.” He waved a hand. “Out there on the range, times are hard. Cattle prices are low and we’ve had some bad winters—lost a heap of cattle.”

  “I know all about that,” Clayton said, trying to find common ground with the gunman. Maybe it would make him less inclined to shoot right away.

  “An Apache on the hoof is worth nothing,” Vestal said. “Dead, he brings five hundred dollars on the Boston and New York medical markets.”

  “Including the children?”

  “Especially the children. The doctors like them young and fresh.”

  “You . . . you just kill them?”

  Vestal shrugged. “I prefer to say we process them, just like beef.”

  “How much can a man like Southwell earn from dead Apaches in a year?”

  “Depends. But in an average year, I’d say ten to fifteen thousand dollars. And that’s all profit. You don’t need to feed Apaches.” Vestal grinned. “And we dig up the occasional newly buried body to add to the take. Maybe we’ll even process you.”

  A faint mother-of-pearl light filled the boxcar’s open doorway.

  “Saddle up, Clayton,” Vestal said. “It’s time to hit the trail.”

  “Do you still aim to kill me, Mr. Vestal?” Clayton said, again playing the frightened innocent.

  The gunman nodded.

  “There ain’t much a man can depend on in this life, but you can depend on this,” he said. “I surely am going to kill you.”

  The fear that twisted in Clayton’s belly wasn’t pretend. It was all too real.

  Chapter 22

  “You’re up early this morning, Marshal,” J. T. Burke said.

  “Thunderstorm kept me awake,” Kelly said.

  “They will do that.”

  The marshal’s eyes roamed around the newspaper office, an inky shambles of scattered file cabinets, type cases, discarded sheets of newsprint, composing stones, and a huge platen printing press.

  “J.T., I’d like to read your files going back, say, ten years or so,” Kelly said.

  The proprietor of the Bighorn Point Pioneer, a tall, thin man with an alcoholic flush and one arm, made an apologetic face.

  “Sorry, Marshal. My back issues only date from 1886,” he said. “Everything before that burned in a fire. I rebuilt this place the year before you became the law here.”

  “Damn it,” Kelly said.

  “My memories didn’t burn,” Burke said. “The misuse of whiskey has dulled them some, I admit, but maybe there’s something I can help you with.”

  The editor’s eyes sharpened as he sensed a story.

  Kelly knew Burke was as slippery as an eel and would come at him from a direction he didn’t expect, wheedling out information before he even knew he was giving it. He threw up a defense, a disinterested casualness. “I just had some time to kill and figured I’d find out what happened in Bighorn Point before I became marshal,” he said.

  Burke’s eyes were still probing. “Nothing happened,” he said. “The town was dying, breathing its last.”

  Kelly saw an opening, and he took it. “So, what changed things?”

  Burke opened a desk drawer and held up a pint of whiskey. “Drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Kelly said. “A bit too early for me.”

  “You mind if I do? Just a heart starter, you understand.”

  “Help yourself.”

  Burke took a swig, put the bottle back in the drawer, and said, “So, what changed things?”

  Kelly said nothing, waiting for the editor to fill in the silence.

  “Parker Southwell and his partners changed things,” Burke said.

  “I didn’t know he had partners.”

  “He did, way back when.”

  Again Kelly waited. He had no clear idea why he wanted information on Southwell, except that Clayton had said the old man could be the one he was hunting. What was it he’d said?

  “He could be. I don’t know.”

  So even Clayton wasn’t sure. But Kelly had decided to at least go through the motions of finding out.

  Burke was talking again.

  “Ten years ago, let me see. That would be the spring of ’eighty, Southwell came up the trail from Texas with nine hundred head of cattle and told folks he planned to establish a ranch south of town.”

  “His partners were with him?”

  “Yes, but they weren’t cattlemen. One was John Quarrels, our current mayor; the other, Ben St. John, owner of the only bank in our fair city.”

  “What did Quarrels do?”

  “He built a dry goods store but sold it after a year. The mayor is not a man to stand behind a counter in an apron.” Burke opened the drawer again, stared inside as though trying to make up his mind, then closed it. “Ben St. John used his own start-up money for the bank, so he must have had quite a stash when he arrived in Bighorn Point,” he said.

  “So between the three of them, they saved the town from drying up and blowing away?” Kelly said.

  “Sure. We had a bank, an excellent store, and a big ranch close by. The next year St. John and Quarrels bankrolled the building of a church and a school, hired a reverend and a teacher, and people started to arrive, eager to call such a God-fearing town home.”

  “How come only one saloon?”

  “Southwell, St. John, and Quarrels are the movers and shakers in Bighorn Point, and one thing they wanted was respectability. They closed three of the saloons and left one open as a courtesy to travelers. As Parker Southwell said at the time, ‘A saloon has never helped business, education, church, morality, female purity, or any of the other virtues we hold so dear.’”

  Burke couldn’t resist a sly dig. “Maybe ol’ Park should forget cows, grab his Bible, and go on the kerosene circuit.”

  “Give me an out-and-out scoundrel any day,” Kelly said. “I don’t much like being around respectable people.”

  “A man after my own heart,” Burke said. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “I’m sure. I got to be on my way.”

  “Mr. Clayton—is he respectable?” Burke said.

  The question took Kelly by surprise. Burke had a way of doing that. “Why do you ask?”

  “Our man from Abilene says he’ll kill somebody in this town before he leaves. Is that respectable?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Unless he has a good reason?”

  “I’m sure he has.”

  “Avenging a past wrong, I imagine.”

  “Yeah, it has to be something like that.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Southwell is his intended target.”

  Now the marshal was wary. “What makes you say that?”

  “Mr. Southwell is a man without a known past.”

  Kelly smiled. “Hell, J.T., he’s been in this town for the last ten years.”

  “Yes, but what did he do during the time between the end of the war and 1880? Come to that, what did his partners do?”

  “Former partners.”

  “Former? Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Kelly shook his head. “J.T., you’re a suspicious man.”

  “That’s what makes me a good newspaperman, Marshal. Perhaps I’ll do some digging, find out what Southwell and the others did in Texas after the war.”

  “You do that, and when you find out let me know.”

  Burke opened the drawer and took out the bottle. To Kelly’s retreating back, he said, “Mixed brands, Marshal.”

  Kelly stopped and turned. “What the hell are you talking about, J.T.?”

  “I inspected those nine hundred cows Southwell drove up from Texas. They were all young, and they wore a bunch of different brands.” He looked at Kelly. “Something to think about.”

&n
bsp; “Hell, so he bought them from ranches on his way up the trail.”

  “Or he rustled them,” Burke said.

  Chapter 23

  “The ranch is southwest of town on a creek,” Shad Vestal said, drawing rein. “I’d say we’re less than an hour away.” He looked at Clayton and grinned. “Time to make peace with your maker.”

  Clayton realized that this man was going to kill him, no matter what, and he dropped all pretense. “Vestal,” he said, “you’re a yellow-bellied son of a bitch and low down. It don’t take much of a man to kill an unarmed prisoner.”

  Vestal smiled. “Clayton, I’m glad you said that. It will make my job so much easier.” The smile slipped and became a snarl. “I was gonna give it to you in the head, but now you get two in the belly where it hurts real bad. Now get off your damned horse.”

  Vestal’s engraved, silver-plated Colt, as flashy as the man himself, was trained on Clayton, hammer back and ready.

  Clayton swung out of the saddle. His head spun as he tried to say a prayer, but he couldn’t string the words together in his mind.

  “Now take three steps away from the horse, then turn and face me.”

  Clayton did as he was told. “You yellow son of a bitch,” he said again, the cuss coming easier than the prayer.

  Vestal grinned, his teeth white. “Two just above your belt buckle. You’ll scream like a woman. For hours.”

  Clayton braced himself for what was to come.

  Shots hammered, their echoes racketing around the hills. Clayton felt the burn of a bullet; then he threw himself flat on the grass.

  He heard the pound of hooves and glanced up. Vestal was galloping away, raking his horse’s flanks with his spurs.

  Five men on small ponies rode over a notch in the hills and went after him, firing rifles. But the range was too great. Vestal had a much better horse and opened distance between himself and his pursuers.

  Clayton caught up his buckskin and had just swung into the saddle when the five men trotted back.

  He wasn’t going anywhere. The five rifles trained on him made that perfectly clear.