The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 68

Cage Clayton opened his eyes.

The moon was high in the sky and had modestly drawn a gauzy veil of cloud over its nakedness. He heard whispers, a woman’s silvery laugh, the rustle of the wind.

He sat up, his eyes reaching into the night. They stood at the open door of the house, looking at him.

Suddenly Clayton was angry.

“Damn you both, you’re dead!” he said.

Lee Southwell smiled at him. She wore a white dress, a scarlet heart in front where her breasts swelled.

“We’ve come for you, Cage,” she said.

“Time to follow the buffalo, old fellow,” Shad Vestal said.

“And I don’t think I will. What do you think of that?” Clayton said.

He felt around him for his gun, his fingers flexing though the dirt.

“You’re one of us now, Cage,” Lee said. “You’re one of the dead.”

Vestal stepped out of the shadow of the door into the moonlight.

His head was a blackened dome of scorched flesh, bare, yellow bone showing, his eyes burned out.

“Parker Southwell is here, Cage,” he said. “Join us now. We don’t want to keep the colonel waiting.”

“Damn you, Vestal,” Clayton said. “You killed him.”

“Yes, and now I suffer for it,” Vestal said.

Lee stepped beside him, blood glistening on her breast.

“Would you like to sing, Cage?” she said. She looked at Vestal. “What shall we sing for Cage?”

She jumped up and down, then, gleefully, “Oh, I know. Listen, Cage. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

“Shut the hell up!” Clayton yelled.

“In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

Clayton’s fingers closed on the handle of his gun.

He fired at Lee, then Vestal.

After the racketing echoes of the shots were silenced by the night, Clayton staggered to his feet, a man so soaked in blood he looked like a manikin covered in red rubies.

“I done for you!” he cried out. “I done for you both! And be damned to ye!”

The moonlight splashed the front of the house with mother-of-pearl light, deepening the shadows. The still body of John Quarrels lay close to the front door.

Clayton sobbed deep in his chest and dropped to his knees.

“I . . . done . . . for . . . you,” he said. “You came for me, and you rode my bullets back to hell.”

And he fell on his face, and gladly he let the darkness claim him again.

Chapter 69

For the first time in years, Mayor John Quarrels was not at his desk at eight sharp, fresh as the morning itself and eager to meet the challenges of the day.

Or so his clerk thought.

To a mousy little man like Clement Agnew, the mayor’s office was a hallowed spot, not to be intruded upon unless the business was urgent.

Agnew tapped on the door again. No answer. He rapped harder, with the same result.

Swallowing hard, he threw open the door and stepped inside.

From the doorway Agnew noticed a paper on the blotter. Perhaps it was a note of explanation for His Honor’s absence.

But dare he read it? Perhaps it was official town business and strictly confidential.

The clerk hesitated, then made his decision.

The mayor was missing, so this was an emergency.

Agnew rounded the desk and picked up the paper. As a summer rain rattled on the windows, he read and grew pale. Then, as though demons were chasing him, he ran out of the office and didn’t stop running until he reached the marshal’s office.

Nook Kelly listened to the clerk’s concerns about Quarrels and his horror and disbelief when he read what the mayor, a respected and much loved man, had written.

The marshal calmed Agnew and sent him on his way with the assurance that “All will be well.”

Then he read the note.

Marshal Kelly,

I’m sure you will be among the first ones to read this, and when you do I will already be dead.

There were three of us came up the trail from Texas: Colonel Parker Southwell, Lissome Terry, and me. We came with a stolen herd and a considerable amount of money, notes and gold coin, the spoils from the banks, trains, and stagecoaches we’d been robbing for years.

Just before we rode up on Bighorn Point, Park said me and Terry should use new names, since we were wanted men in Texas. The colonel, on account of him being the brains of the outfit, never took part in the robberies and was unknown to the Rangers. Besides, he had honorably worn the gray and was above suspicion.

I became John Quarrels and Terry took the name Ben St. John. He said it had a ring to it.

Later I became mayor and Ben and Park prospered.

I was with Ben, though back then I called him Liss, when he shot the farmer up in Kansas and done his wife, though I took no part in either the shooting or the rape.

Down in Texas he killed a lawman and went back that same night and raped his grieving young widow. Park just smiled and said Liss was “a scamp, and no mistake.”

But Liss shouldn’t have done them rapes and killings, because I blackmailed him with them and he became my “meal ticket.”

But now I am dead, and I don’t give a damn. Liss should get what he deserves—a rope around his neck.

I’m meeting Cage Clayton at the Southwell Ranch this evening. I can’t let him kill Liss and dry up my source of money. But if Clayton is faster on the draw than me, you will read this note. Just be aware that I regret nothing.

Yours Respct.

John Quarrels, Esq.

Kelly dropped the note on his desk, then stepped to the window, rain running down the panes like a widow’s tears.

Clayton had been right all along. Ben St. John was Lissome Terry, the man responsible for his mother’s death.

Was Cage still alive?

The fact that he’d read the note suggested he was. But he could be wounded, unable to move.

Kelly shrugged into his slicker, put on his hat, and picked up Quarrels’s letter.

It was time to talk to St. John.

He shook his head, angry at himself.

No, it was time to talk with Lissome Terry.

The door opened and Emma Kelly stepped inside. She pushed back the hood of her rain cape and smiled at Kelly. “Well, are you treating me to breakfast?”

“Not today, Emma,” he said.

He gave her the note and waited until she read it.

“I think Cage is still at the Southwell place and he might be wounded,” Kelly said.

The girl was confused, overwhelmed by the ramifications of Quarrels’s words. “What are you going to do?” she said.

“Arrest St. John, or Terry, then go look for Cage.”

“He could be dead by then.”

“The way I see it, my duty to this town must come first.”

“But Cage is your friend.”

“Emma, he’d want me to jail Terry before anything else.”

“Then I’m riding out there. You can follow when St. John—Terry—whatever he’s called—is behind bars.”

Kelly smiled. “You love Cage Clayton, don’t you?”

Emma nodded, but said nothing.

“All right, go after him. We’re wasting time talking here.”

“Nook, just one thing.” The girl hesitated, then said, “How black is Cage?”

The question surprised Kelly, but he answered it.

“I don’t know. A tenth? A twelfth? Only his mother could’ve told him for sure, and even then she might not have known herself.”

He looked at Emma, her face dewy fresh from the rain, her eyes clear blue. “Does it really trouble you that much? Cage looks as white as me, or you, come to that.”

“There’s a . . . consideration involved, Nook. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Then we’ll discuss it later.”

Kelly opened the door and he and Emma stepped into the slanting rain.

“I’ll see you at the Southwell place,” he said. “And let’s pray to God that we’re not too late.”