The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 36

“Damn it, what was all the hollering about?” Kelly said.

“I’m pinned under my horse.”

“I can see that.”

“Why did you shoot at me?”

“To shut you up. Your girlish screams were annoying the hell out of me.”

“Well, you could have killed me.”

“Sure I could, but I didn’t. Just wanted you to be quiet, was all. Did you really think I’d holler back when I wasn’t sure how many bushwhackers were up on the ridge?”

Kelly had been right not to give his position away, and Clayton felt like a fool. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think about that.”

Kelly smiled and nodded. “Maybe you’re just not a deep-thinking man, Cage. Pity, that.”

The words stung and anger flashed in Clayton. “Instead of lecturing, can you get this damned hoss off me?”

“I think so.” Kelly grinned. “I’ll study on it for a spell and let you know.”

“Go to hell,” Clayton said.

Kelly used his own mount and a rope to pull Clayton’s horse off his leg. It was an efficient way to move the buckskin, but hardly gentle.

“That hurt like hell,” Clayton said after he was freed.

“No bones broken, but your wound has opened up again. Looks like you’re a bleeder, Cage.”

Clayton ignored that and said, “What happened in the arroyo?”

After he took the makings from Clayton’s pocket, Kelly started to build a smoke.

“There were two of them,” he said, looking down at tobacco and papers. “I’ve seen them hanging around town for the past month, a couple of young, drifting farm boys down on their luck.”

“You killed them both?”

“Yeah. They didn’t give me any choice. Those boys were sodbusters, not gunfighters, but they were mangrown enough to carry Winchesters and they used them pretty well.”

“Well enough to kill my horse,” Clayton said.

“Better the horse than you, I guess.”

“Yes. Thank you for that.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kelly said. He smiled at Clayton. “You may not know the man you’re hunting, but he sure as hell has you pegged.”

“The bullet was meant for me?”

Kelly lit his cigarette and shook out the match. “Now, what do you think? I’m a much loved and respected peace officer, so it wasn’t me them rubes was paid to kill.”

Clayton nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Their rifles were aimed at me.”

“Well, if it was Terry who hired them two, he fears you and he’s willing to pay somebody else to do his killing.”

Kelly placed his hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “He’s a dangerous man, Cage. From now on step light and”—he smiled—“stay out of dark alleys.”

The marshal rose to his feet. “We’ll strip the saddle and bridle off your hoss and I’ll send Moses Anderson out for them. You’ll have to pay him, of course.”

“Are we going to bury the men you killed?”

“With what? Our bare hands? Moses will plant ’em, if he can find them.”

Clayton picked up his rifle as Kelly swung into the saddle.

“Climb up behind me,” the marshal said. “And try not to attract the attention of any more bushwhackers, huh?”

Chapter 37

A month passed and the summer heat grew more oppressive. Hammered by the sun, Bighorn Point was dusty, dreary, and deserted. The sawn timber of the buildings warped and smelled of beaded pine resin, and nobody went outside unless it was really necessary.

Like many another man in town, Cage Clayton gazed often on the Sans Bois and dreamed of their shadowed, ferny places where green frogs splashed in rock pools and stuck out their tongues at hovering dragonflies.

Reluctant to make any kind of physical effort, he sat in a rocker on the shaded hotel porch, too sapped to move anything but his eyes.

There had been no more attempts on Clayton’s life, and Bighorn Point seemed content to quietly drowse the summer away, waiting with listless patience for the first winds of winter.

Over at the livery, Benny Hinton had tried to sell Clayton a yellow mustang that must have weighed less than eight hundred pounds. The little horse had a mean eye, a swayed back, and a cough, but Hinton insisted the thirty-dollar nag was a veritable Bucephalus, ready to carry the man from Abilene on any adventure.

Clayton passed and Hinton, irritated, said he’d find him another. He didn’t add, “just as bad,” but Clayton reckoned it was on the tip of his tongue.

He and Emma Kelly had stepped out a few times, but, uneasy and constantly on his guard for assassins, he knew he hadn’t been good company for a young girl.

He thought Emma liked him well enough, but he wasn’t sure. And that was where things stood between them.

Then, the morning that Mayor Quarrels hired some loafers to water the street in an attempt to keep down the clouds of dust that coated everything in town with a layer of yellow grit, Angus McLean arrived in Bighorn Point.

And everything changed.

The little Scotsman, sour and ill-tempered, rolled into town in a dray driven by Moses Anderson. The once-a-month passenger car had arrived at the spur, and Moses had been unloading barrels of beer from the only boxcar.

The big black man had only been too glad to offer McLean a ride into town, but the two dollars he’d charged rankled the Scotsman. Now, standing beside the grinning Anderson he vented his outrage on Marshal Kelly, who had joined Clayton on the hotel porch.

“Two dollars this damned Hindoo is charging me,” McLean yelled. “It’s highway robbery, I tell ye.”

Kelly smiled. “It’s the going rate, Mr. . . .”

“McLean. Angus McLean of Edinburgh Toon. Here to buy a ranch and cattle, no to be robbed by Hindoos.”

Moses Anderson was a huge man, well over six feet with bulging muscles to match. His hair was graying at the sides, but he had the quick, amused eyes of a teenager. “It’s better than walking,” he said.

McLean turned on the man, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Ye’re a robber!”

“Two dollars,” Anderson said, grinning, holding out a palm the size of a shovel.

McLean cursed under his breath, removed a steel purse from his pocket, and extracted a couple of coins. The purse snapped shut like a bear trap.

“Here, and be damned to ye, and you’re a bandit, so ye are.”

After the grinning Moses left, Kelly said, “Are you staying long in Bighorn Point, Mr. McLean?”

“I am not. Just long enough to conduct my business. I’m told you have a stage through here.”

“Day after tomorrow at noon.”

“Then I’ll be on it.”

“Have you found a ranch yet, or are you just looking?” Clayton asked.

“Oh, I’ve found one all right, if it stands up to my scrutiny. For the last couple of months, I’ve been dealing with the lassie who’s selling it through my lawyers in Boston.”

Suddenly Clayton was interested. “Would that be Lee Southwell?”

“Aye, it would. Do you know her?”

“We’re . . . acquainted,” Clayton said.

The hotel doors were opened to catch the nonexistent breeze and McLean looked past the two men into the lobby. “Weel, I’d better get my room and lay doon my bag. I can’t stand this infernal heat.”

Then, as though he’d just remembered something, he said to Kelly, “Is there somebody who can drive me oot to the ranch?”

The marshal nodded. “Moses Anderson has a gig. He can take you out to the Southwell spread.”

“You mean the brigand that just robbed me?”

“Either him, or you can rent a horse at the livery.”

“Damn it all, man, I canna ride a horse.”

“Then Moses is your man,” Clayton said.

A suspicious look crossed McLean’s face. “Are you two in cahoots?”

“No.”

“How much will he charge me?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly said. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“He’ll rob me.”

The marshal smiled. “Probably.”

McLean’s narrow shoulders slumped. “I’m going to end up in the poorhouse, so I am.”

The Scotsman checked into the hotel and reappeared ten minutes later, his black frock coat just as dusty as it was when he went inside. “Where do I find that Hindoo highwayman?”

Kelly pointed the way and McLean said to Kelly, “If I’m no back by dark, come looking for me, Constable. Not that it will matter. You’ll probably find me robbed of my purse and my throat cut.”