The Stranger from Abilene

“You think he’s the man you came to Bighorn Point to kill?”

“He could be.”

Anderson took a step closer. “He’s sparkin’ a little black gal.”

“I thought he didn’t like coloreds.”

“He don’t. But that little black gal’s got a thing between her legs he likes jus’ fine.”

“What’s her name?”

“Minnie.”

The name rang a bell. “She was Lee Southwell’s maid.”

“Was. That’s right. Now she swamps the saloon and does some whorin’ on the side. Ben St. John is her best customer, steadylike.”

Clayton nodded. “He’s not the man he seems to be. Like he leads a double life.”

“He likes women, that’s for sure, and the more of a whore she is, the better he likes her.”

“How come the town knows nothing about this?”

“St. John is a secretive man. And a couple of women who bragged in the saloon about servicin’ him ain’t with us no more.”

“He killed them?”

“All I know is, they ain’t around, and that’s all I’m sayin’ on the subject, Mr. Clayton.”

Anderson stepped away. “I got to go now. My woman expects me back to town.” He gave a white grin. “Collard greens, ham, and cawn bread for supper.”

Moses Anderson waved as he led his two wagons from the front of the house.

It was the last time Cage Clayton saw him alive.

Chapter 55

After the wagons left, Clayton stepped into the ranch house and into silence.

Only a grandfather clock in the hallway made a sound, remorselessly ticking away time.

Clayton shivered. Damn clock made him think of death and Judgment Day.

Moses Anderson had done a good job. There was not a trace of blood left in the dining room or the kitchen, and he’d opened windows to clear the smell of decay. Someone, probably Anderson, had placed a vase of wildflowers in the kitchen window, and a vagrant bee buzzed around the blossoms.

The flowers did little to cheer the place.

Clayton walked to the dining room and stood beside the table. The room was oppressive, hot, weighing on him as though he were wearing a damp greatcoat. He felt eyes, watching, waiting, wondering why he was there.

And that spooked Clayton badly. The whole damned place did.

Determined to see this tour to the end, he walked into the parlor, furnished in an overly ornate style in the fashion of the time.

Above the fireplace, draped in black crepe, hung a picture of the gallant Custer. The great man stared belligerently across the room at the opposite wall where an oil painting of Lee was flanked by one of Parker Southwell, dressed in the gray and gold splendor of a Confederate colonel.

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .

The clock in the hall reminded Clayton that this was a house of the dead and he was not welcome here, not now, not ever.

Clayton had never lost the cowboy’s superstitious fear of ha’nts and the restless dead and now it plagued him.

There was the time when one of his hands had been struck by lightning and his hat lay on the range for three years. No one would touch it or go near it, the cowboys riding a mile out of their way to avoid the thing.

Finally a great wind rose and took the hat away and everybody, including Clayton, was relieved.

He felt the same way about this house as he had the hat.

He went from room to room, smelled Lee’s perfume in her bedroom, the gun oil, leather, and cigar tang of Parker’s study.

Shad Vestal’s clothes were still spread out, untouched, on the bed. Moses Anderson had been up the trail and he shared the cowboy’s superstitions. He’d left the duds where they lay.

And that’s what Clayton wanted to do with this house . . . leave it where it lay.

He returned to the parlor and poured himself a drink from a decanter that Moses hadn’t cleared away, then built a smoke.

It was there, in that room, he decided that he couldn’t bring Emma to this place.

Could they ever take a starlit walk along the creek and spoon under the cottonwood knowing that a man had hung head-down from one of its branches, suffering the agonies of the damned?

Could they spend a restful night in any of the bedrooms? Lee’s? Parker’s? Vestal’s?

Could they eat a meal in a dining room that had witnessed the slaughter of six human beings?

Could they live with the shadows of people who were once vibrantly alive and were now lying cold in pine boxes in the undertaker’s storeroom?

Clayton asked himself those questions, and the answer to all of them was an emphatic no.

He’d take Emma back to Abilene, start up his ranch again.

Angus McLean would need to find himself a new manager.

Chapter 56

Shack Mitchell was well pleased with himself.

He’d only been in Bighorn Point an hour, but in that time the contract had been agreed on, his fee paid up front, and he’d left on the trail of the mark.

That was how he liked to conduct his business. Get in, get out, and get lost.

The fat man had understood all that, since he’d once been in the man-killing profession himself.

“Call it professional courtesy,” the fat man had said. “You trust me, and I trust you to get the job done. So there’s no need to stand on ceremony. Just bring me Cage Clayton’s head and then ride out.”