The Stranger from Abilene

Clayton realized that this man was going to kill him, no matter what, and he dropped all pretense. “Vestal,” he said, “you’re a yellow-bellied son of a bitch and low down. It don’t take much of a man to kill an unarmed prisoner.”

Vestal smiled. “Clayton, I’m glad you said that. It will make my job so much easier.” The smile slipped and became a snarl. “I was gonna give it to you in the head, but now you get two in the belly where it hurts real bad. Now get off your damned horse.”

Vestal’s engraved, silver-plated Colt, as flashy as the man himself, was trained on Clayton, hammer back and ready.

Clayton swung out of the saddle. His head spun as he tried to say a prayer, but he couldn’t string the words together in his mind.

“Now take three steps away from the horse, then turn and face me.”

Clayton did as he was told. “You yellow son of a bitch,” he said again, the cuss coming easier than the prayer.

Vestal grinned, his teeth white. “Two just above your belt buckle. You’ll scream like a woman. For hours.”

Clayton braced himself for what was to come.

Shots hammered, their echoes racketing around the hills. Clayton felt the burn of a bullet; then he threw himself flat on the grass.

He heard the pound of hooves and glanced up. Vestal was galloping away, raking his horse’s flanks with his spurs.

Five men on small ponies rode over a notch in the hills and went after him, firing rifles. But the range was too great. Vestal had a much better horse and opened distance between himself and his pursuers.

Clayton caught up his buckskin and had just swung into the saddle when the five men trotted back.

He wasn’t going anywhere. The five rifles trained on him made that perfectly clear.

Cage Clayton felt sweat trickle down his back. The day was hot, but he knew this for a fear sweat. He expected the five rifles to blast at him any minute. Nothing happened.

One by one the rifles lowered and he looked into flat Apache faces, angry, hard, and rough-hewn as rock—merciless. One of the riders, wearing a ragged white man’s coat and plug hat, grabbed the buckskin’s reins. He led Clayton after the others.

There was nothing about this setup Clayton liked. What was the old saying? Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

A bullet had burned across the meat of his left shoulder, not deep, but enough to draw a trickle of blood.

The Apaches rode southeast, farther into the Sans Bois. They were grim, silent men and the only sounds were the fall of hooves and the creak of saddle leather.

After an hour along a whisper of trail that switched constantly back and forth around rock falls and steep mountain ledges, the Apaches rode into an arroyo that ended in a tree-covered clearing about five acres in extent.

Clayton heard the sound of trickling water, and a section of the far rock wall of the arroyo, under an overhang, was blackened from countless generations of campfires.

He then had his first indication that the Apaches didn’t hold him in high regard. The man leading his horse pulled him alongside, raised his foot, and kicked him out of the saddle. Clayton landed hard on his wounded thigh and groaned in sudden agony.

The stony faces of the Apaches around him told him that the groan had not added any to his prestige. After being hauled to his feet, Clayton was dragged to the overhang and thrown on his back.

An older man, with tired eyes that had seen too much of life and death, kneeled beside him. Like the other Apaches, he wore white men’s castoffs. He had the look of a farmer, not a bronco warrior, but his blue headband marked him as a former army scout.

“We will ask questions of you. If you tell us the truth, you will die quickly,” the old man said. His hair was gray and thin. “But if you lie, then you will beg the Apache to kill you, because your death will be painful and slow in coming.”

Clayton said nothing, no words springing to mind that could get him out of this fix.

“Why do you kill the Apache?” the old man said.

Chapter 24

“I do not kill Apaches,” Clayton said, finding his voice at last.

“You were with one who does. The one we call the Hunter.”

“I was his prisoner. That’s why I have no weapons. He took them from me.” He showed the star on his shirt. “I am a lawman.”

Another Indian grunted. Whether it was a good or bad sign, Clayton didn’t know.

“Why did the Hunter take you captive?” the old Apache said.

“I saw . . . I know what he does with the dead Apaches.”

“What does he do?”

“He sells them and they are taken away in a railroad car.” Clayton racked his brain, trying to find an alternative to refrigerator car, a term these Indians wouldn’t know. “It is a car of ice,” he said. “Colder than the coldest winter.”

That last started talk among the men and their faces were puzzled.

“Why a car of ice?” the old Apache said.

“To take them far to the east, to the great cities.”