The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 60

“Well, what do you think?” Clayton said after St. John left.

“About what?”

“Is he Lissome Terry?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. He’s Terry all right. I could feel the fear oozing out of him like sweat.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing. Get him in court and he won’t sweat fear or anything else.”

“He likes screwing black women,” Clayton said.

Kelly smiled. “And what does that prove?”

“My mother was black.”

“She was high yeller. You said so.”

“She was black with a pink skin. Terry was a Southern boy. He knew what she was.”

Kelly shook his head. “That’s doesn’t cut it, Cage.”

“I was speaking to Moses Anderson at the ranch house. He says St. John is poking Minnie, the little gal who was Lee Southwell’s black maid.”

“So, he likes to screw black ladies. I can’t hang him for that.”

“Moses says whores have a habit of disappearing after St. John is finished with them.”

Kelly smiled. “Cage, you keep calling him St. John. Does that mean you aren’t sure yourself that he’s Lissome Terry?”

“No, I’m sure all right. And I think Moses knows a lot more about the man than he’s telling.”

“Sometimes Moses is full of it, but I can talk to him.”

“He knows everything that happens in Bighorn Point.”

Kelly thought about that, then said, “I’ll talk to him. And that black gal, what’s her name?”

“Minnie.” Clayton hesitated a moment, then said, “She’s whoring, Moses says.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That doesn’t surprise you?”

“Nothing blacks do surprises me.”

Clayton felt that like a slap. He stroked the kitten on his lap. “You don’t like colored folks much, do you, Nook?”

“Not much.”

“And me?”

“What about you?”

“I’m part black.”

Kelly looked at him. “Cage, I’ll study real hard on that.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Clayton said, “Emma?”

“Yeah . . . Emma.”

Chapter 61

Ben St. John was seething. Mitchell had failed him. The moon would come up tonight and still shine on Cage Clayton.

One of the drunks who’d been hired by Moses Anderson told him he saw the black man blabbing to Clayton.

About what? How much did the man from Abilene know?

He hadn’t had time to question Moses before he killed him, but still, the safest way had been to shut him up for good.

Thank goodness he lived a short ways out of town. St. John was able to tell his clerks that he was going out to walk off a headache. The .32 he’d used didn’t make much of a bang, especially inside a rock-walled cabin.

Despite his vile mood, St. John smiled.

Moses and his woman had fed him collard greens, ham, and corn bread, washed down with buttermilk. He thanked them with—Bang! Bang!—a bullet to each of their heads.

But the greens had given St. John a slight case of indigestion, and now, when he burped, he tasted them all over again.

It had been a good meal, though, and the buttermilk had been nice and cold, served out of a clay jug.

“Are you all right, dear?”

His wife looked up from her embroidery, her long, horsy face concerned.

St. John lowered his newspaper. “I’m fine, dear. Perhaps a little touch of indigestion.”

“Can I get you a seltzer?”

“No, I’ll be just fine.”

“I heard about the horse and the dead man,” the woman said.

“Yes, that vandal Clayton did it. Drunk, of course. He should be locked up.”

“He’s the one who says he’s in Bighorn Point to kill a man, isn’t he?”

“Yes, more drunken talk. Just today I told Marshal Kelly to run him out of town.”

“Can we save him?”

“No, my dear, he’s beyond redemption.”

“What a pity. But perhaps we could try by example to—”

“You know, I think I will have that seltzer,” St. John said.

Damn, Edith was an irritating woman.

“Right away, dear.”

He watched Edith’s tall, bony body as she walked into the kitchen and felt no desire.

Sometime soon she’d have to go and he’d move in a woman more to his tastes. But not until this Clayton mess was settled.

Edith was in bed asleep. St. John shook his head at the scrawny wonder of her. Affection-wise, Ben St. John cared more for the Morgan mare he kept at the livery stable than he did his wife.

He reached into the bottom of the closet he reserved for himself and lifted out a dusty carpetbag, then returned to the parlor and sat at the table.

The blue Colt, its barrel expertly cut back to the length of the ejector rod, had lain in the bag for years, wrapped in an oil-soaked cloth. To St. John’s relief, the revolver showed no signs of rust, and the mahogany handles glowed dull red in the firelight.

He cleaned and oiled the revolver, then loaded five chambers. The ammunition was a more recent acquisition, each .44-40 round made by a master craftsman in Fort Smith.

St. John balanced the Colt in his hand. He had killed three men with the gun, and Cage Clayton would be the fourth.

He nodded, his mind made up.

When you want a job done well, do it yourself.