The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 50

Kelly was a tracker, a skill Clayton did not possess. He stood outside the door where Vestal had been taken and pointed to the footprints.

“I count five men, a couple of them wearing moccasins, the others shoes or boots.” He showed a pair of parallel gouges in the dirt. “That’s where Vestal’s toes dragged across the ground as they hauled him away.”

“And Lee?”

“You can see the tracks of a woman’s high-heeled boots”—he pointed—“there and there. My guess is they let her walk to wherever they raped and murdered her.”

Clayton, a man who had a live-and-let-live attitude toward Apaches, and Indians in general, had met prejudice before. Now he accepted it from Kelly as the words of a man living in his place and time.

“Let’s go find them,” he said.

But he didn’t want to find Lee Southwell.

“Still think Shad Vestal killed those men?”

Kelly, his face like stone, drew his knife and cut the rope that held Vestal’s body. The body thumped to the ground. The head, burned black to the white bone of the skull, raised a cloud of gray ashes when it hit the dying fire.

“Lee wasn’t raped,” Clayton said. He could think of nothing else to say.

“How do you know?” Kelly said. He was restless, his movements quick, a man on edge.

“They would’ve stripped her like they did Vestal.”

Kelly lifted the woman’s skirt and looked. “You’re right. I guess they didn’t.”

The marshal was quiet for a while, then said, “They made her watch Vestal dying, then stabbed her.” He looked at Clayton. “Whose death was the worst, his or hers?”

“There’s no good death, Nook.”

“Seems like.”

Kelly gathered the reins of his horse.

“Mount up,” he said, “we’re going after them.”

“Shouldn’t we bury—”

“No. We’re bringing in the Apaches. I’m going to hang every one of those murdering sons of bitches in the middle of the street in Bighorn Point.”

Clayton hesitated. “Nook, you think that Vestal could have murdered Lee? Maybe that’s the real reason he was leaving for Boston without her.”

He saw it in the lawman’s eyes, a strange mix of cold anger, disgust, and confusion.

“Damn it, Cage, are you a white man?”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“Then for goodness’ sake start acting like one. Get up on your damned hoss and let’s find those savages. They must be all tuckered out by their night’s work and that means they haven’t gone far.”

Kelly spat. “And stop looking at me like that.”