The Stranger from Abilene

He heard the pounding of a horse team’s hooves and suddenly a speeding buggy was almost on top of him. Clayton jumped out of the way, tripped, and came down hard on his back. He had a fleeting impression of a pair of galloping grays, a beautiful young woman at the reins, and beside her a small frightened black girl clinging on for dear life.

“Get out of the way, you idiot!” the woman yelled at Clayton.

Then she was gone, the careening buggy lost behind a billowing cloud of dust.

Dazed, Clayton slowly became aware of another face, also female, not beautiful, but pretty enough in a tanned, freckled kind of way.

“Are you all right?” the girl asked.

“I think so,” Clayton said. He rose gingerly to his feet. “I don’t seem to have any broken bones.”

“You’re lucky,” the girl said. “That was Lee Southwell. She thinks she owns the whole county.”

Clayton smiled, rubbing dirt off his pants. “She always drive like that?”

“Always. I heard she’s killed three horse teams in the last year.”

“How many pedestrians has she killed?” Clayton said.

The girl smiled. “Probably a lot.”

Clayton retrieved his hat and settled it on his head. He extended his hand. “Name’s Cage Clayton.”

They shook briefly. “I’m Emma Kelly. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Clayton. Somehow I expected somebody bigger and a lot meaner, like an outlaw—” The girl blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t,” Clayton said, smiling. “I guess you heard why I’m in Bighorn Point and expected some kind of scary bogeyman.”

“Something like that.”

Suddenly the time and inclination for talk faded.

Clayton tried to fill the void. “I was just about to have breakfast. Would you care to join me?”

“Sorry. I can’t. I work in the hat shop and I have to get back. I just popped out when I saw Lee Southwell nearly run you over.”

“Well, some other time?” Clayton said.

“Yes. I’d like that. Some other time.” The girl lifted her skirts and hurried back to the hat shop, and only the memory of her perfume lingered.

Now that he no longer needed to hide behind his manly pride, Clayton arched his back and groaned away his aches.

Damn, that had hurt.

Mom surprised him.

A pretty, matronly woman with a large bust and an ass an axe handle wide, she served Clayton a hearty breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, steak, and eggs, washed down with excellent coffee. As she refilled his cup, the woman said, “I saw what happened on the street.”

Clayton nodded. “An accident, was all.”

“I never like to speak ill of anyone,” Mom said, “but Lee Southwell is a bad one. If she’d killed you she wouldn’t have lost a night’s sleep over it.”

She glanced around the restaurant, saw that everyone was fully occupied eating or talking over their coffee, and said, “She’s married to Parker Southwell, a cripple twice her age. He owns the biggest spread in the territory, and some say he’s into some mighty shady dealings.”

Clayton’s interest quickened.

Could Parker Southwell possibly be the man he was looking for?

He tiptoed around the subject.

“Mrs. Southwell is a beautiful woman,” he said.

Mom nodded. “She’s all of that, and Park dotes on her. Jewels, clothes, fine horses—what Lee wants, Lee gets.”

“Lucky woman.”

“Maybe, but she still has to sleep next to an old man with rotten legs and cold hands.”

“How long has Park Southwell been in the territory?”

“He was here when I opened this place, and that was ten years ago.”

“And before that?”

“Your coffee’s getting cold,” Mom said.

The woman turned away, poured coffee for a couple of middle-aged drummers, then stepped back to Clayton’s table.

“Park Southwell isn’t the man you’re looking for,” she said. “And if he was, you’d never get past his foreman.” She studied Clayton’s face. “Name Shad Vestal mean anything to you?”

“Can’t say as it does.”

“He’s a gunfighter out of Texas and fast on the draw, though he doesn’t boast of it. Some say he’s faster than Nook Kelly, and some say he isn’t. Maybe one day those two will go at it and settle the argument, but until then, you step wide around Vestal and Park Southwell.”

“Seems like sound advice,” Clayton said.

Mom said, “Yes, and here’s some that are even sounder—get the hell out of Bighorn Point and never come back.”

Chapter 12

Fate is not content to inflict one calamity on a man; it loves to pile them up.

Clayton had dismissed his run-in with Lee Southwell from his mind, but now it came back to him with a vengeance.

The woman stood on the boardwalk outside the hat shop, beating the small black girl he’d seen beside her in the buggy. Lee’s riding crop rose and fell, cracking across the girl’s back. The woman’s face was flushed with anger, her mouth pinched, white-rimmed with a cruelty bordering on sadism.

Clayton could not stand still and watch anyone, man, woman, or child—or animal for that matter—abused. The little girl was screaming, begging for mercy, but still the riding crop whop . . . whop . . . whopped on her back.

Clayton’s long stride thudded on the boardwalk.