The Stranger from Abilene

In the shade of cottonwoods, Kelly swung down and crumbled horse dung in his fingers.

He looked at Clayton. “We’re getting close.”

“How do we play this, Nook?” Clayton asked.

“We ride up and arrest them.”

“They’ll fight.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know how much sand the Apaches have left.”

Kelly straightened. “I reckon a mile ahead of us, no more than that.”

He stepped into the saddle. “Cage, see to your weapons, revolver and rifle. I don’t want a gunfight, but it may come to that.”

Clayton thumbed a round into the empty chamber under the hammer of his Colt, then fed shells into his Winchester until it was fully loaded.

He turned to Kelly. “I’m ready.”

The marshal smiled. “I’ll say you are. Hell, for a minute there with all that artillery, you even scared me.”

Kelly kneed his horse forward, but immediately drew rein.

“Cage, what I said about you not being a white man an’ all don’t go. You’re true blue and I’ve never thought otherwise.”

“Did we ride all this way just for you to talk pretties or to get the job done?” Clayton said.

Kelly nodded. “Just wanted you to know, is all.”

After another mile, Clayton smelled smoke in the breeze.

Kelly pointed ahead of them. “There, among the trees. They’ve made camp.”

A thin string of smoke rose above the tree canopy, tied in wispy bows by the wind.

“We . . . just ride in,” Clayton said, more question than statement.

“Stay on my left,” Kelly said, “and give me room. If the ball opens, it will be fast, close-up work, so go to your revolver.” He looked at Clayton. “Got that?”

Clayton nodded, but said nothing.

“Then let’s get ’er done,” Kelly said.

They rode into the trees and the Apaches rose to their feet.

The old warrior who had taken Clayton captive stepped forward.

“You speak English?” Kelly said.

“I do,” the old man said.

“Then listen up good.” Kelly’s eyes were never still, measuring the men opposite him, judging who was reckless enough or desperate enough to make a play. “I’m arresting you men for the murder of Lee Southwell, Shad Vestal, and six others.”

He leaned forward in the saddle.

“I will escort you to Bighorn Point, see you get a fair trial, then hang you at the mayor’s convenience.”

Kelly looked beyond the old man to the others. “You men, drop those rifles. Now!”

The youngest Apache was the one who was desperate enough to make the play Kelly feared.

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.”