The Stranger from Abilene

Chapter 53

The young Apache’s rifle came up as he screamed his war cry.

Suddenly Kelly’s Bulldogs were in his hands and he was firing.

Clayton drew, but couldn’t find a target.

Kelly, a horseback fighter, was among them, his guns hammering.

The young Apache was down, as were three others, one on his hands and knees, retching up black blood.

The old man picked up a rifle and stepped to the side, trying for a clear shot at Kelly.

“No!” Clayton yelled.

The Apache ignored him.

Clayton fired and the old man staggered. He fired again, and this time the Indian fell.

Greasy gray smoke drifted across the clearing, and Clayton’s ears rang. He saw everything around him through a black tunnel, unfolding at a snail’s pace, as though time had slowed down.

He saw Kelly fire at the Apache who’d dropped to his hands and knees. The man rolled over on his side and lay still.

Thin and reedy, the badly wounded young Apache’s death song rose above the silence until Kelly stopped it in midnote with a bullet.

After that, the firing ended.

The Apaches lay unmoving in death. The old man’s hair looked grayer than Clayton remembered and the knuckles of his outstretched hands were misshapen and gnarled and must have pained him in life.

As he watched Kelly reload his revolvers, Clayton tried to build a cigarette. The paper shredded in his trembling fingers and the tobacco blew away.

The marshal rode beside him, took the makings from Clayton’s shivering hands, and rolled the smoke. He licked the paper tube closed, put it in Clayton’s mouth, and thumbed a match into flame.

“You did good, Cage,” Kelly said. “Shot that damned Apache off my back.”

Clayton inhaled smoke deeply. “You saw that?”

“It pays a man to see everything that’s happening in a gunfight.”

“Are they all dead?”

“Dead as they’re ever gonna be.”

“I didn’t want to kill the old man.”

Kelly smiled. “Well, don’t let it trouble you. An old man can kill you deader’n hell, as surely as a young one can.”

“Nook, I still don’t think the Apaches killed Lee and the Southwell hands. It was Vestal.”

“Well, it don’t matter a hill of beans now, does it?”

“We might have killed innocent men.”

“You think Shad hoisted himself up over a slow fire and boiled his own brains?”

“No. The Apaches did that. It was payback time.”

“Then they were guilty of murder.”

Clayton’s eyes roved around the dead men. “And they sure paid for it.”

Kelly nodded. “That’s the law. Commit murder and you pay for it.”

He looked at Clayton with blue, untroubled eyes, as though a brush with danger and the deaths of six men meant nothing to him. “Finish your smoke, then help me load them Apaches onto their ponies.”

He read the question on Clayton’s face and said, “Cage, the citizens of Bighorn Point pay me to administer the law, but the law has to be seen to be done. They don’t want my word for it. They expect to inspect the evidence.”

He smiled. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Five dead Apaches is quite a haul, for Bighorn Point or anywhere else.”

“Yeah, the taxpayers are gonna be real pleased.”

And they were. Brass band pleased.

The town had another hero to add to their list, right up there with the gallant Colonel Parker Southwell and his band of lionhearts.

The Apaches, as wicked and treacherous as ever, had obviously been in league with the bandits the colonel had destroyed. They had taken out their murderous rage on the Southwell Ranch, killing, raping....

Oh, and poor Mrs. Southwell.

That very flower of American womanhood had been outraged, then horribly murdered, her ranch segundo , the brave Shad Vestal, tortured and killed within her sight.

“The only fly in our ointment of valor,” said Mayor Quarrels, “is that the savages were not taken alive. It would have been my great pleasure to hang them all.”

Quarrels said this at the commencement of a street meeting, when Marshal Kelly was presented with a handsome gold badge made from two double eagles.

When the crowd heard the mayor talk about the hanging, they cheered wildly.

As for Clayton, being an outsider and the one who’d thrown poor Mrs. Southwell in horse piss, Mayor Quarrels only shook his hand, and a few in the crowd managed a halfhearted “Huzzah.”

However, Clayton did get an invitation from Ben St. John, the banker, to discuss his financial affairs and his forthcoming nuptials to Miss Emma Kelly.

After singling Clayton out from the crowd, the fat man pontificated on marriage and money matters.

“Marriage is a big step, Mr. Clayton, and the one way to ensure happiness is to be financially secure,” he said. “As the immortal Mr. Wilkins Micawber says, ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’ ”

St. John’s eyes met Clayton’s, but could not stay there, sliding away like black slugs. He looked at Clayton’s chin and beamed. “Do you catch my meaning, sir?”

“Yes, I do,” Clayton said.

“Then come see me at the bank. I assure you, we can put you on a path to prosperity that will enhance your marital bliss.”

St. John put his hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “Shall we say ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll be there,” Clayton said.

He’d disliked the man on sight, and the suspicion lingered in him that St. John might be the one.

He could be Lissome Terry.