The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 38

“If McLean’s lawyers have been talking to Lee Southwell for the past couple of months, she planned to sell the ranch before her old man was even in the ground,” Clayton said.

“Seems like,” Kelly said.

“Maybe Southwell was murdered.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“Probability, I’d say.” Clayton looked over at Kelly on the next rocker. “How’s the beer?”

“Warm.”

Clayton took his own schooner from the porch rail and tried it. “Well, it’s wet.”

“Yeah, it is at that.”

“Can you arrest Lee Southwell and Shad Vestal on suspicion of murder?”

Kelly sipped his beer. “No.”

“But if she planned to sell the ranch—”

“Who’s to say that it wasn’t Park who wanted to sell it? Lee always talked about going east to live in Boston or New York. Park could have finally caved and agreed to her demands.”

“But it was Lee who contacted McLean.”

“You ever married, Cage?”

“No.”

“Figured that. Married men often let their wives handle business deals. Keeps peace in the happy home. Park could have been no exception.” Kelly lazily turned his head. “In other words, I’d be laughed out of court, especially when everybody knows Parker Southwell died gallantly leading a cavalry charge.”

“Yeah, but Vestal could’ve popped him and blamed the bandits.”

“He could, and I believe he probably did, but believing and proving are different things.”

“So Lee and Vestal take McLean’s money and run.”

“Right now, that’s how it’s shaking out.”

“And the dead Apaches?”

“I can’t take that to court either. The whole town believes outlaws attacked the train at the spur, and they’ll believe any lawyer who says the same outlaws murdered the kidnapped Apaches.” He looked at Clayton again. “You really believe a jury of eight men could look at Lee Southwell on the stand, sobbing into her little lace hankie, and find her guilty of anything?”

“Damn beer is getting warmer,” Clayton said. He sighed. “No, they wouldn’t find her guilty.”

“Case closed,” Kelly said.

A silence stretched between the two men. A Cooper’s hawk glided across the blue bowl of the sky, then dove, and somewhere beyond the town a little death happened.

Dust kicking up from his feet, a dog crossed the street and vanished into an alley. A bottle clinked, marking his passing.

The last of Mayor Quarrels’s watermen quit, took off his hat, and scratched his bald head. The empty street was as dry and dusty as ever, the water already evaporated.

Down at the church a woman stepped outside, applied a polishing cloth to the door brasses, then thought the better of it and went back inside.

A lizard ran along the porch rail, then stopped, its sides heaving.

Kelly watched the lizard for a while, then said, “Cage, ain’t you bored with it yet?”

“Bored with what?”

“This town . . . waiting for a man to reveal himself so you can kill him.”

“I’m running out of money,” Clayton said.

“Maybe Lissome Terry, whoever he is now, knows that. Maybe he figures he can wait you out.”

Clayton shook his head. “No, Nook, he’ll make a move. He’s just been lying low, biding his time.”

“Well, I sure hope so. I’m getting bored all to hell again.”

Irritated slightly, Clayton said, “If I got shot, would that help?”

Kelly brightened. “It sure would. Give me something to do.”

Clayton decided not to fill in the silence that followed, but Kelly did it for him.

“Emma likes you,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“She told me so.”

“I thought I bored her like I bore you.”

Kelly nodded. “Yeah, strange, that, but you don’t. All she talks about is Cage. Cage said this and Cage said that and Cage—”

“I get the picture.”

“Well, she likes you.” Kelly turned his head. “I thought you should know.”

After a while, Clayton said, “I’m too old for her. I’m used up and I’m broke. Hell, I don’t even own a horse. What do I have to offer her?”

“Get a job.”

“I’ve got a job.”

“I mean a regular job. A forty-dollar-a-month job.”

“Yeah, forty a month is going to keep Emma in style.”

“Some married couples have done with less.”

Kelly held his beer glass to the light.

“Damn, I’m sure I saw a fly in there,” he said. “I guess not.”

He looked at Clayton. “Cage, get married and hang that gun you’re wearing on a nail. Use it to shoot coyotes.”

“After my work here is done, I’ll think about it.”

“Think hard, because you aren’t cut out to be a gunfighter. You’ve killed two men and crippled another, so let it go at that.”

Kelly took the makings from Clayton’s pocket. “You know why I’m bored, Cage?”

“Because nobody’s killed me yet?”

“That, and because my time is over and I know it. Most of the men I rode with back in the old days are dead or in jail. America doesn’t need gunfighters anymore. She needs engineers, road builders, factory workers, men to plow the land. Fellas like me are going—what’s the word?—extinct.” Kelly smiled. “I walk around this town with its church and school like yesterday’s ghost. My gun skills are in such high demand, Mayor Quarrels pays me two bits a head to shoot stray dogs.”

Kelly’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “I’m hauling my freight, Cage. The French are paying big money for laboring men to help dig a canal down Panama way, and there’s talk our own government will soon get involved.”

“Nook, I can’t see you using a shovel and swinging a pick,” Clayton said.

“Maybe not, but I’m going to give it a try.”

Kelly finally lit his cigarette. “You ever think that Lissome Terry might be dead?” he said.

“He’s not.”

“How do you know? All men die, some sooner than others.”

“He’s here, in Bighorn Point. I can feel him, smell his stink.”

Kelly’s breath sighed through his chest like a forlorn breeze. “Cage, marry Emma. Build a new life for yourself.”