The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 48

Kelly and Clayton rode out of Bighorn Point at day-break.

Clayton rode a rented horse, a big-boned bay with a rough trot and a mouth like iron. For Clayton, the horse’s gait was unfortunate because Benny Hinton had poured them coffee for the trail and most of Clayton’s ended up down his shirtfront.

Kelly, who handled the tin cup without any difficulty, looked at Clayton and grinned. “Having trouble there, Cage?”

“Old coot filled the cup too full,” Clayton said. “Did it on purpose too.”

“Well, well, we’re a tad grouchy in the morning, ain’t we?” Kelly said.

“Yeah, so don’t say anything nice to me or I’ll shoot you right off’n that damned hoss.”

Kelly laughed. “Now, that ain’t likely, is it?”

“What? The sayin’ or the shootin’?”

“Both, I reckon.”

Ahead of them the peaks of the Sans Bois sawed into a scarlet sky and the air came at them clean and clear, scented with pine and grass and the vanilla fragrance of the new-borning day.

Clayton gave up on his coffee, threw out what was left, and made to throw the cup away.

“Give me that,” Kelly said, holding out his hand. “Benny will charge us two bits if we lose one.”

As the lawman leaned back and shoved the cup into his saddlebag, Clayton said, “Why does Hinton dislike me so much?”

Kelly considered that. “Maybe it’s the way you look at a man,” he said finally. “It’s like, well, it’s like you look right inside him to see what makes him what he is.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Well, you do it. I knew a man like that once, feller by the name of John Wesley Hardin. Heard of him?”

Clayton nodded. “Yeah, gunfighter from down Gonzalez County way in Texas. Last I was told he was in prison someplace.”

“He’s doing twenty-five years in Huntsville, which he don’t deserve. Anyway, Wes was like you. He’d stare right into a man’s soul.”

“So, what does Hinton have to hide that I make him so uncomfortable?”

“Nothing that I know of, unless it’s his cooking. You spook a man, is all, looking at him like that. And what a man doesn’t understand, he fears.”

Clayton smiled. “And do I spook you, Nook?”

“No, you don’t. Ol’ Wes used to stare at me like that all the time over the rim of a whiskey glass, so maybe I got used to it.”

“Well, I’m going to stop looking at folks that way,” Clayton said.

“Ain’t gonna happen, Cage. It’s a thing you’re born with and it won’t ever go away.”

“Hello the house!”

Kelly sat his horse and scanned the building. Windows stared back at him with empty eyes, the bloodstreaked sky caught in their panes.

“Nobody to home,” Clayton said.

“You check the bunkhouse?”

“The hands aren’t there. It’s like they picked up and left in a hurry.”

Kelly stepped from the saddle. “We’ll go inside. I’m feeling something I don’t like.”

Guns drawn, Clayton and Kelly entered the ranch house. There was no sound, only the tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway and a persistent, droning buzz.

They checked a couple of bedrooms, then the parlor. Everything was as it should be.

The buzz stayed with them, growing in intensity.

“Bees in the walls?” Kelly said.

Clayton lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. Could be, I guess.”

A second hallway met the first, forming a T. They turned right and stepped into the room at the end of the corridor.

Shad Vestal’s fancy duds were still spread out on the bed.

“All ready for his trip, huh?” Clayton said.

“Seems like,” Kelly said. “But where the hell is he? And where’s Lee?”

Clayton checked another room, then stepped through the dining room door after Kelly.

They walked into a charnel house.