The Stranger from Abilene

“You’re a raving lunatic,” St. John said. “I’ve never been in Kansas.”

“Yes, you have, Terry, you and Jesse and Frank and them. The woman you raped was my mother, and after you’d done with her she hanged herself. You crippled my pa, and he’s been in a wheelchair ever since.”

St. John would not meet Clayton’s accusing stare. Oh God, those eyes, looking right into me. Lancing into me . . . “Marshal Kelly, I want this man locked up. I want him charged and sent to Yuma for thirty years.”

Kelly’s voice was even, unhurried.

“Mr. St. John, I can charge him with leading a horse onto the boardwalk. That’s a ten-dollar fine.”

“The horse charged into my bank, with a dead man across the saddle.”

“The horse got scared and bolted. It’s still a ten-dollar fine.”

“I’ll speak to Mayor Quarrels about this. It’s obvious that you and Clayton are in cahoots. Which one of you murdered the poor man you’re trying to pass off as a hired assassin?”

“I did,” Kelly said. “He was trying to kill Mr. Clayton.”

“So you say.”

“Right. So I say.”

The marshal reached into his drawer and pulled out a stack of wanted dodgers. He thumbed through them until he found the one he wanted. He threw it across the desk to St. John.

“Shack Mitchell is wanted in the state of Texas for the murder of one James McFaul, a lawyer,” he said. “Look at Mitchell’s likeness. He’s the man I killed today.”

“The man you hired to kill me, Terry,” Clayton said.

St. John shook his head. His quivering jowls and small bloodshot eyes gave him the look of an outraged hog.

“I’m in Bedlam,” he said. “You’re both raving mad.”

“Don’t leave town, Mr. St. John,” Kelly said.

The man smiled. “I won’t, Marshal. But you will. Depend on it.”

Chapter 60

“Well, what do you think?” Clayton said after St. John left.

“About what?”

“Is he Lissome Terry?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. He’s Terry all right. I could feel the fear oozing out of him like sweat.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing. Get him in court and he won’t sweat fear or anything else.”

“He likes screwing black women,” Clayton said.

Kelly smiled. “And what does that prove?”

“My mother was black.”

“She was high yeller. You said so.”

“She was black with a pink skin. Terry was a Southern boy. He knew what she was.”

Kelly shook his head. “That’s doesn’t cut it, Cage.”

“I was speaking to Moses Anderson at the ranch house. He says St. John is poking Minnie, the little gal who was Lee Southwell’s black maid.”

“So, he likes to screw black ladies. I can’t hang him for that.”

“Moses says whores have a habit of disappearing after St. John is finished with them.”

Kelly smiled. “Cage, you keep calling him St. John. Does that mean you aren’t sure yourself that he’s Lissome Terry?”

“No, I’m sure all right. And I think Moses knows a lot more about the man than he’s telling.”

“Sometimes Moses is full of it, but I can talk to him.”

“He knows everything that happens in Bighorn Point.”

Kelly thought about that, then said, “I’ll talk to him. And that black gal, what’s her name?”

“Minnie.” Clayton hesitated a moment, then said, “She’s whoring, Moses says.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That doesn’t surprise you?”

“Nothing blacks do surprises me.”

Clayton felt that like a slap. He stroked the kitten on his lap. “You don’t like colored folks much, do you, Nook?”

“Not much.”

“And me?”

“What about you?”

“I’m part black.”

Kelly looked at him. “Cage, I’ll study real hard on that.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Clayton said, “Emma?”

“Yeah . . . Emma.”

Chapter 61

Ben St. John was seething. Mitchell had failed him. The moon would come up tonight and still shine on Cage Clayton.

One of the drunks who’d been hired by Moses Anderson told him he saw the black man blabbing to Clayton.

About what? How much did the man from Abilene know?

He hadn’t had time to question Moses before he killed him, but still, the safest way had been to shut him up for good.

Thank goodness he lived a short ways out of town. St. John was able to tell his clerks that he was going out to walk off a headache. The .32 he’d used didn’t make much of a bang, especially inside a rock-walled cabin.

Despite his vile mood, St. John smiled.

Moses and his woman had fed him collard greens, ham, and corn bread, washed down with buttermilk. He thanked them with—Bang! Bang!—a bullet to each of their heads.

But the greens had given St. John a slight case of indigestion, and now, when he burped, he tasted them all over again.

It had been a good meal, though, and the buttermilk had been nice and cold, served out of a clay jug.

“Are you all right, dear?”

His wife looked up from her embroidery, her long, horsy face concerned.

St. John lowered his newspaper. “I’m fine, dear. Perhaps a little touch of indigestion.”

“Can I get you a seltzer?”

“No, I’ll be just fine.”

“I heard about the horse and the dead man,” the woman said.

“Yes, that vandal Clayton did it. Drunk, of course. He should be locked up.”

“He’s the one who says he’s in Bighorn Point to kill a man, isn’t he?”