The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 49

Five men were sprawled across the dining room table and another lay on the floor. Their faces were covered in a buzzing mass of fat flies, black masks that concealed the contorted features of the dead.

The room smelled sweet, of decay, and the tick of the hall clock was loud, already measuring the minutes and hours of eternity.

His stomach an uncertain thing, Clayton left the room and stepped into the kitchen, expecting to find . . . he didn’t know what.

“White men don’t kill like that.”

Clayton turned. Kelly was framed in the doorway.

“This is Apache work,” the lawman said.

“Caught the hands while they were sleeping off a drunk, you think?”

“Looks that way.”

“Then where is Vestal?”

Kelly shook his head, said nothing.

Clayton made a quick search of the kitchen and discovered a heap of bloodstained clothes that had been kicked into a corner.

He picked them up and laid them out on the kitchen table.

“Expensive duds for an Apache,” he said.

Kelly picked up Vestal’s shirt, studied it, frowning as his mind worked.

The kitchen sink still bore pink streaks of blood, as did a carving knife that lay on the floor where it had been carelessly tossed away.

“Whoever killed those men took time to strip off his bloody clothes and wash his hands,” Clayton said. “I never knew Apaches to be that dainty.”

“Then how did it come up?” Kelly hesitated only a heartbeat. “In your expert opinion.”

Clayton let the barb pass. “Could be that Vestal invited the hands here to celebrate his departure for Boston, got them drunk, then cut their throats.”

“Why?”

“Because they knew too much about the business of killing Apaches and the sale of their bodies.”

Kelly seemed to consider that, but his eyes were steel-hard, a man who intended to go his own way, no matter what. “Vestal was a gunfighter, maybe the best there was around after me. Why didn’t he shoot them?”

Clayton smiled. “Think about it, Nook. A gunshot in an enclosed room is loud. Even men dead drunk can wake and go for their revolvers.”

As Kelly had done earlier, he picked up the bloody shirt.

“Vestal wanted the men dead in the quickest, easiest way possible. That’s why he used a knife and not a gun.”

The marshal’s speech slowed, as though he was talking to a child or an obvious dimwit.

“Cage, I told you, white men don’t kill like that.”

Clayton opened his mouth to object, but Kelly raised a hand.

“Listen to me. You’re right. The hands were drunk, and so was Vestal. The Apaches found them that way, cut their throats, but took Vestal away for special treatment. He was the one they hated most and his death would be a lot slower.”

“Look at the bloody clothes, the stains in the sink and on the knife,” Clayton said.

“So the Apaches roughed Vestal up some, maybe cut him. They stripped him naked because that’s one of the ways an Indian shows his contempt for an enemy.”

“Then where is he? And where is Lee Southwell?”

“We’re going to find them. I don’t think they’re far.”

“You reckon they’re still on the ranch?”

“Yeah, I do. What’s left of them.”