The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 17

By the time he had retrieved his horse and staked him out on a patch of grass among some wild oak, Cage’s leg had started to bleed again and the pain was a living thing.

After he returned to the old boxcar, he tried to numb the searing pain with the Old Crow, but he couldn’t drink too much, not if he was to dig out the .45 ball buried in his thigh.

Clayton opened his Barlow knife and poured whiskey over the carbon steel blade. He dropped his pants; then, as careful as a naked man climbing over barbed wire, he shoved the point of the blade into the open wound.

Clayton bit back a scream.

Oh God, I can’t do this.

His courage wasn’t up to the task, and that was the long and short of the thing. He gritted his teeth.

Cage, you damn coward, get it done. There ain’t nobody but you.

He plunged the knife deeper, and this time he screamed. He reached out, grabbed the Old Crow with a trembling hand, and gulped down nearly half a pint. The bourbon danced around in his head for a while, then hit him hard.

“Bastard!” Clayton yelled, but whether at the man who’d shot him, the whiskey, or the bullet, even he couldn’t tell. He rammed the blade into his leg again.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” He drank another slug of booze. Deeper. Blood spurted. The pain was white hot. His body shrieked at him to stop. Deeper still. The steel scraped on . . . something. The bullet? Bone? He didn’t know. He levered the tip of the blade upward.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

More whiskey. Damn, the bottle was almost empty.

Dig down, tip the blade upward.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

He saw it! The bullet, a gray iris in a scarlet eyeball. He shoved the blade under the ball. Gritted his teeth. Now! Tip it up and out!

The bullet jerked from of the wound, described an arc in the air, and landed with a thud on the floor. Clayton didn’t hear it.

He’d already fainted.

When Cage Clayton woke, he was lying on the floor, the top of his head wedged tight against a wall.

How long had he been out?

He looked at his watch. It had just gone on three o’clock and the night was still full dark. An hour, then, maybe less.

He rose slowly to his feet, the wound in his leg paining him like blazes. A quick search of the room uncovered a clean white shirt left by its recently deceased owner.

Hungover, his head pounding, Clayton poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat at the table again. The wound looked red and inflamed, but it had stopped bleeding. He drank coffee, then built and lit a cigarette, steeling himself for what he had to do.

He picked up the Old Crow. Good, there was enough left. Now wasn’t the time to hesitate. Clayton poured the contents of the bottle into his open wound.

He roared as shrieking pain slammed at him, coming in waves, each one more agonizing than the one before.

This time he didn’t faint, but he vented his lungs.

“Aaaarrrgh . . . ya son of a bitch!”

It took him time to recover, but after a few minutes Clayton used the shirt to bind his wound. He stood, gingerly tested the leg. It took his weight, but the pain was considerable.

He sat again, smoked a cigarette, and drank more coffee.

Then he heard the train whistle.