The Stranger from Abilene

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.