The Stranger from Abilene

“Look at the bloody clothes, the stains in the sink and on the knife,” Clayton said.

“So the Apaches roughed Vestal up some, maybe cut him. They stripped him naked because that’s one of the ways an Indian shows his contempt for an enemy.”

“Then where is he? And where is Lee Southwell?”

“We’re going to find them. I don’t think they’re far.”

“You reckon they’re still on the ranch?”

“Yeah, I do. What’s left of them.”

Chapter 50

Kelly was a tracker, a skill Clayton did not possess. He stood outside the door where Vestal had been taken and pointed to the footprints.

“I count five men, a couple of them wearing moccasins, the others shoes or boots.” He showed a pair of parallel gouges in the dirt. “That’s where Vestal’s toes dragged across the ground as they hauled him away.”

“And Lee?”

“You can see the tracks of a woman’s high-heeled boots”—he pointed—“there and there. My guess is they let her walk to wherever they raped and murdered her.”

Clayton, a man who had a live-and-let-live attitude toward Apaches, and Indians in general, had met prejudice before. Now he accepted it from Kelly as the words of a man living in his place and time.

“Let’s go find them,” he said.

But he didn’t want to find Lee Southwell.

“Still think Shad Vestal killed those men?”

Kelly, his face like stone, drew his knife and cut the rope that held Vestal’s body. The body thumped to the ground. The head, burned black to the white bone of the skull, raised a cloud of gray ashes when it hit the dying fire.

“Lee wasn’t raped,” Clayton said. He could think of nothing else to say.

“How do you know?” Kelly said. He was restless, his movements quick, a man on edge.

“They would’ve stripped her like they did Vestal.”

Kelly lifted the woman’s skirt and looked. “You’re right. I guess they didn’t.”

The marshal was quiet for a while, then said, “They made her watch Vestal dying, then stabbed her.” He looked at Clayton. “Whose death was the worst, his or hers?”

“There’s no good death, Nook.”

“Seems like.”

Kelly gathered the reins of his horse.

“Mount up,” he said, “we’re going after them.”

“Shouldn’t we bury—”

“No. We’re bringing in the Apaches. I’m going to hang every one of those murdering sons of bitches in the middle of the street in Bighorn Point.”

Clayton hesitated. “Nook, you think that Vestal could have murdered Lee? Maybe that’s the real reason he was leaving for Boston without her.”

He saw it in the lawman’s eyes, a strange mix of cold anger, disgust, and confusion.

“Damn it, Cage, are you a white man?”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“Then for goodness’ sake start acting like one. Get up on your damned hoss and let’s find those savages. They must be all tuckered out by their night’s work and that means they haven’t gone far.”

Kelly spat. “And stop looking at me like that.”

Chapter 51

The man Vestal had called the Hog was dreaming. It wasn’t a pretty dream, not one of high mountain peaks and blue skies, but one of misery, cruelty, and pain. It was the kind of dream only a man like the Hog could appreciate. Lying back on his leather couch like a gigantic, sweating walrus, he smiled to himself.

Someone tapped on the door.

“What is it?” the Hog yelled, awake.

“A message from your wife, sir. She and Reverend Bates are waiting for you at the church to discuss the roof repairs.”

“Who brought the message?”

“Andy Brown’s boy.”

“Give him a nickel and tell him to inform my wife that I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

The Hog stood and primped at his mirror, arranging his thinning hair into kiss curls on each side of his forehead. He smoothed his large mustache, adjusted his cravat and diamond stickpin, and considered himself for a moment.

Yes, he was a fine-looking man. It was no wonder that women gave him sidelong glances when he cut a dash at the church coffee socials.

But he scowled as, unbidden, a jarring thought entered his head. One woman in particular was becoming a problem. Minnie, one of the black girls who worked in town, had been one of his side projects for a few weeks. She was as stupid as a rock, and might let something slip.

The Hog smiled and his reflection smiled right back. No matter, after he got rid of Clayton—the first two incompetents he’d hired for the job had failed him badly—he’d do for Minnie. He might even kill her himself. He’d enjoy that very much.

And who would suspect him of murdering a whore? That is, if anybody cared enough to investigate.

“No one,” he whispered aloud to the smirking fat man in the mirror. “No one in the whole wild world.”

Chapter 52

Kelly followed the Apache tracks south, five men riding unshod ponies and in no hurry to scamper back into the Sans Bois.

Clayton thought their leisurely pace indicated an absence of guilt, as far as Lee and the Southwell hands were concerned, but he said nothing, in no mood for another tongue-lashing from Kelly.

After an hour’s ride through rolling country heavily forested by pine and hardwoods, they crossed Cunneo Tubby Creek, named by the Choctaw for one of their famous war chiefs.