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.