The Stranger from Abilene

Clayton had no illusions about the note. The chances were high it was bait on a dangling hook designed to lure him into a trap.

He could be bucking a stacked deck, but he was willing to accept the odds.

St. John himself might have written the note, pushing for a showdown, as anxious as Clayton himself to get it over with.

He nodded to himself, his face grim.

Well, that suited him just fine.

But then another thought struck him—St. John was a careful and cunning man.

He wouldn’t come alone.

Clayton walked to the livery and threw his saddle on Shack Mitchell’s black.

Benny Hinton angrily stepped beside him. “Here, where are you taking that hoss?”

“Out.”

“No, you ain’t. The owner is deceased and his animal is now town property.”

Clayton’s nerves were stretched almost to the breaking point and he was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.

Suddenly his gun was in his hand, the muzzle jammed between Hinton’s shaggy eyebrows. “Are you going to give me trouble, old man?”

Hinton stepped back, scared, but still angry.

“You’re bad news, Clayton. I knowed that the minute I set eyes on you. Take that hoss and I’ll see ye hung fer it.”

Clayton ignored the man and led the black from the stable.

Hinton followed him.

“After you steal the horse, why don’t you keep on riding, Clayton?” he said. “Bighorn Point was a peaceful town until you got here.”

“When I got here, old man, Bighorn Point was a cesspit and it still is.”

He swung into the saddle and smiled at Hinton. “You take care now.”

“And you go to hell.”

Clayton stared down the dusty street, the shadows already stretching longer as the sky tinted red.

“Seems to me, hell is where I’m at,” he said.

Chapter 66

As he rode through the deepening day, Clayton took the note from his shirt pocket and read it again, as though the letters would suddenly leap from the page and rearrange themselves into the name of the person who wrote it.

He knew with almost one hundred percent certainty that he was riding into a trap—but there was always a slim chance the note was genuine. To positively identify St. John as Lissome Terry was a gamble worth taking.

The sky above the Sans Bois peaks was rust red, streaked with pale lilac, when Clayton reached the Southwell Ranch.

When he was still a ways off, he drew rein and studied the house and the surrounding terrain to be sure he wasn’t the target of a hidden rifleman.

Nothing moved and in the fading light the ranch house was silent, still, as though it had been abandoned a hundred years before.

But the house had a hold over him that Clayton did not understand.

It seemed that he was being constantly drawn to the place, a moth to flame, as though the dead were reaching out from the grave and beckoning to him.

Closer . . . Come closer....

Clayton shifted in the saddle, uneasy. He felt he was being watched by a thousand eyes, hostile, malevolent, cold.

His attention was drawn to the creek, where a solitary Hereford bull shambled to the water and drank. Suddenly the animal lifted his head and peered with shortsighted intensity toward the cattle pens.

After a full minute, the bull tossed his head and went back to drinking, apparently undisturbed by what he’d seen.

Clayton uneasily noted that.

It had probably been a prowling coyote or bobcat, neither of which would make the Hereford feel threatened.

But it could have been a man, a two-legged animal the bull had learned to trust.

Yet there was no movement around the cattle pens or the toolshed, and the Hereford finished his drink and walked away without another glance in that direction.

Clayton wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, then let the black pick its way forward.

He drew rein in front of the house, then stepped out of the leather to make himself a less conspicuous target.

The long summer daylight was lingering. Clayton glanced at the sun, sinking in the western sky like a copper penny. Maybe another hour until full dark.

To his right, the bunkhouse door was ajar, creaking slowly on its hinges in a whisper of wind. Behind that, the barn, a smokehouse, and a corral, timber planks stacked up nearby for repairs that had never been done.

The place was deserted. Had the note been somebody’s idea of a practical joke?

Feeling foolish, Clayton called out, “Anybody here?”

“Right behind you, Mr. Clayton.”

Clayton felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. How could he have been blindsided like that?

He turned slowly, his hand away from his gun.

Then his jaw dropped when he saw the man standing there, smiling at him.

“Mayor Quarrels. How—”

The man smiled. “I could’ve gunned you. Easy. You must learn to take more care, Mr. Clayton. Of course, now it’s too late.”

His anger flaring, Clayton said, “Why are you here? Did you write the note?”

“Of course I wrote the note. I didn’t tell a lie. I can put a rope around Lissome Terry’s neck anytime I choose.”

Quarrels stepped around Clayton and stopped when his back was facing the ranch house.