The Stranger from Abilene

by Ralph Compton

  Kelly neatly avoided a pile of horse dung on the street, then said, “The Windy Hall serves a good breakfast and the coffee is the best in the Oklahoma Territory.”

  Kelly constantly touched his hat brim to the respectable ladies of Bighorn Point, and prosperous businessmen called out to him by name.

  “No whores in this town, huh?” Clayton said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “A ferryman back a ways.”

  “Ferrymen talk, but they don’t know squat,” Kelly said. “The Windy Hall has what it calls hostesses. As to whether they’re in the business or not, you’d have to ask when you run up on one.”

  “I’m just curious, is all.”

  “Or looking for trouble.”

  “No, just curious.”

  Clayton stopped at the door to the saloon.

  “Kelly, why are you doing this, buying me breakfast like we were kissin’ kin?”

  The marshal smiled. “Because you’re where the action’s at, Mr. Clayton. Bighorn Point had lost its snap before you arrived. I think that’s all about to change.”

  “Can’t you call me Cage?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “I’m a big eater,” Clayton said. “Your bill will run high.”

  “Then let’s eat, shall we?”

  The Windy Hall was narrow, dark, and dingy, cringing in on itself as though apologizing for being in such a God-fearing town in the first place. The reason for its name became quickly apparent to anyone entering—owing to some peculiarity in its construction, the prairie wind sighed around its roof constantly, a low, soft moaning, like a widow mourning a husband.

  As Kelly had promised, the food was good, the coffee better. When he finished eating, Clayton pushed himself back from the table, burped, and built a cigarette.

  “That was good,” he said to Kelly.

  “Figured that. You ate enough for three grown men.”

  “You’re paying, so I figured, what the hell?”

  “Did you like the waitress?”

  “Yeah. She’s right pretty.”

  “Then don’t like her. Her boyfriend is sitting over yonder and the look he’s giving you ain’t exactly social.”

  Clayton let his eyes drift to a table set against the far wall of the saloon. Two men sat there, one picking his teeth with a fork.

  “The one on the left,” Kelly said, “giving you the hard eye.”

  “I see him.”

  “Name’s Charlie Mitchell. He claims he killed a man in El Paso and another in Wichita. Fancies himself a fast gun and wants to be known as a hard case.”

  “He’s too young to be the feller I’m looking for,” Clayton said, dismissing the man.

  “Yeah, but he’s not too young to kill you,” Kelly said.

  Chapter 8

  Nook Kelly, more experienced in the ways of the wannabe gunfighter, saw it coming down before Clayton.

  Mitchell leaned across the table and said something to the man picking his teeth. That man, small and mean with the face of a ferret, looked over at Clayton and laughed.

  Mitchell said something else and the ferret shrugged and said, his voice loud, “Hell, he wants your woman, Charlie. He made that clear.”

  The ferret said it and Kelly heard it.

  He turned to Clayton. “Bad stuff coming down.”

  “Looks like,” Clayton said. “But I have no quarrel with that man.”

  “He has a quarrel with you, though.”

  “Can you make it go away?”

  “Yeah, I can kill him. You want that?”

  “I can’t step away from this, can I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Charlie is no bargain. Some fellers would.”

  “Some fellers can’t hold up their heads in the company of men either.”

  “I can stop it. Just say the word.”

  Clayton shook his head. “If it comes, it’s my play. I’ll go it alone.”

  “Suit yourself. But I’ve seen Charlie shoot. He’s good.”

  “You ever seen me shoot?”

  Kelly made no answer and Clayton said, smiling, “I’m not good. At least, that’s what I think.”

  “Your gun’s back at the livery.”

  “Didn’t think I’d need it this early in the morning. Anyhow, you were here to protect me.”

  “Trusting man, ain’t you?” Kelly said

  Mitchell was on his feet. He was a tall, muscular man, somewhere in his midtwenties. Back along the line, he’d decided to affect the dress and manner of the frontier gambler. He wore a black frock coat, boiled white shirt with a string tie, black-and-white-checkered pants and a low-crowned flat-brimmed hat.

  “Charlie keeps his gun in the right pocket of his coat,” Kelly whispered. “And he’ll probably have a hideout in a shoulder holster.”

  “Ready for war, ain’t he?” Clayton said.

  “Only with you,” Kelly said. The marshal grinned. “Damn it, Mr. Clayton, even without trying, you make things happen. You surely do.”

  Mitchell walked to Clayton’s table, his boots thudding on the wood floor. There were a dozen men and a few women in the saloon, and now Mitchell addressed them.

  “You’ve all heard about this man.” He pointed at Clayton. “He says he won’t leave Bighorn Point until he’s killed one of our citizens, man, woman, or child.”

  “Shame,” a woman said. She looked at Clayton. “For shame.”

  “Well, I’m giving him his chance,” Mitchell said. He looked down at Clayton. “I’m a citizen of this town. Let’s see you try to kill me.”

  “You tell him, Charlie,” a man said, a giggle in his voice.

  Kelly rose to his feet. “Charlie, this man is unarmed,” he said. “Draw down on him and I’ll hang you before sundown.”

  “You in on this, Nook?” Mitchell said.

  “Keeping it fair, is all.”

  Mitchell turned and called out to the ferret, “Wilson, give him a gun.”

  The man called Wilson strode to the table. He wore two Colts, slung low in crossed belts.

  Clayton grimaced. Another damned tinhorn.

  Wilson laid a short-barreled Colt on the table and Mitchell sneered, “You got a gun now, mister. You bragged you’d kill a woman or child. Well, let’s see how you stack up against men.”

  The bartender and pretty waitress had moved out of the line of fire and a silence, taut as a fiddle string, stretched across the sun-slanted saloon.

  Mitchell had a hand in his coat pocket. “Pick up the iron and get to your work,” he said. “And damn you fer a yellow-bellied coward.”

  Clayton said nothing, his head bent, staring at the oiled blue steel of the revolver on the table.

  Seconds ticked past....

  Beside him, Clayton heard Kelly groan, a lost, disappointed sound. Sensing faintheartedness, he’d stop it soon.

  But Mitchell would not let it go so easily. He took a step toward Clayton, right leg forward, and readied himself to cut loose a backhanded slap across the older man’s face.

  Mitchell knew what would happen. He could see it, almost taste it.

  He’d slap the stranger around, make him bloody, then run him out of Bighorn Point. He’d be a hero, a fearless gunfighter who stood up for his town. Hell, they might even erect a stat—

  Clayton’s right boot found its target.

  The two-inch leather heel, hardened into the consistency of iron by years of sun, snow, wind, and rain, slammed hard into Mitchell’s right kneecap.

  The man screamed, staggered back. But Clayton was on his feet, crowding him. As Mitchell’s gun came out of his pocket, Clayton drove a work-hardened right fist into the man’s chin.

  Mitchell went down like a poleaxed ox, his back crashing so hard onto the wood floor the bottles behind the bar jumped.

  But Wilson was drawing.

  Clayton dove for the table and, before it collapsed under him, palmed the blue Colt. He landed on his right side, rolled. Wilson was four feet from him. The little gunman f
ired first. Too fast. The bullet kicked up pine splinters inches from Clayton’s head.

  Clayton shoved the Colt out in front of him, thumbed off a shot, then a second.

  Hit twice, one of them in the belly, Wilson shrieked and went down, black blood frothing into his mouth.

  Mitchell, his right kneecap shattered, was hurt bad, but still game.

  He scrabbled around the floor, found his Colt, and tried to bring it into play. Clayton, on his feet now, stepped through smoke and raised his gun.

  But Kelly ended it. He kicked the gun out of Mitchell’s hand and yelled, “Damn you, Charlie. It’s over. He’ll kill you.”

  Mitchell groaned and lay on his back, his right leg from the knee down jutting out at an impossible angle.

  But Clayton’s blood was still up. His ears ringing from the concussion of the guns, he waved his Colt around the openmouthed crowd and hollered, “I’ve never harmed a woman or child in my life. Let any one of you bastards step forward and call me a liar.”

  But only Kelly took that step. He laid a hand on Clayton’s shoulder and said, “It’s over. You won, so let it go.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Kelly called to the bartender, “Clem, Hennessy brandy. And two glasses. Damn, I need a drink.”

  Chapter 9

  “Charlie Mitchell will be stove up for weeks,” Kelly said. “Doc Sturgis says his kneecap is broke into three pieces.”

  “And Seth Wilson?” Clayton said.

  “Dead as he’s ever gonna be. Hell, you know that. You pumped two bullets into him.”

  Kelly studied Clayton’s face. He figured the man was around forty, about the same age as himself, but right now he looked years older.

  “It’s no easy thing to kill a man,” Kelly said. “It happens so fast. Two seconds, maybe less, and a healthy young man is on his way to meet his maker.”

  Clayton made no answer and Kelly spoke into the silence. “How do you feel?”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t try to buffalo me, Mr. Clayton.”

  “All right, then—empty. I don’t feel a damn thing.”

  “You will later. Unless you’re a natural-born killer, you’ll feel that big empty hole inside you and wonder how you can ever fill it again.”

  Clayton rose to his feet and stepped to his hotel room window. “I’m not that,” he said. “Not a born killer.”

  “Never took you for that. Never pegged you for a killing man.”

  Without turning, Clayton said, “I do feel something. I feel I should head back to Abilene.”

  “What about the eight hundred dollars you said would save your ranch?”

  “I don’t want to step over the bodies of dead men to get it.”

  “You figured you could just ride into this town and proclaim to all and sundry that you planned to kill a man before you left.”

  Kelly stepped beside Clayton. “A threat like that can pile up bodies real fast.”

  “So I found out this morning.”

  “You can’t leave anyhow. You’re already in too deep. The man you came down here to kill knows all about you by now. He’ll never let you leave the territory alive.”

  “Why would he care? Just so long as I’m gone.”

  “You might come back. Whoever the man is, he can’t take a chance on you.”

  Clayton watched a loaded freight wagon rumble past on the street, its huge wheels and the oxen hauling it kicking up a cloud of yellow dust. Over on the opposite boardwalk, a small boy rolled a hoop and a pair of the local belles strolled by, wearing tiny hats, flaunting huge bustles.

  “Do you think Charlie Mitchell was paid to set me up?” Clayton said.

  “Nope. I think Charlie braced you just for the hell of it and to build his reputation as a pistolero. He picked on the wrong man, was all.”

  Kelly turned away from the window and stopped at the door. “I’m planting Seth Wilson out at the old army graveyard at sundown when it gets cooler,” he said. “Do you want to come pay respects to your dead?”

  Clayton hesitated only a moment, then said, “I’ll be there.”

  Kelly nodded. “Good. It’s a true-blue thing to do. A town ordinance says I have to be there. You don’t.”

  The old cemetery lay hidden among the Sans Bois foothills, in the shadow of Hulsey Mountain. Its markers were long gone, victim to time and harsh weather, and the place had a run-down, seedy appearance, overgrown and overlooked.

  “It’s the closest we got to a boot hill,” Kelly said as he and Clayton rode up on the place. “They say one of old Geronimo’s wives is buried here, but I don’t know about that.”

  The undertaker, a hopping black crow of a man, met them at the sagging iron gate that led into the place. He had a spring wagon drawn by mules and two assistants, men who leaned on their shovels, smoked pipes, and didn’t want to be there.

  The undertaker handed Kelly and Clayton mourning garments, and asked, “Will there be more?”

  The marshal shook his head. “We’re it, Sam. Get him planted. Be dark soon.”

  “Do you plan to guard the body, Marshal?” Sam asked.

  Kelly shook his head. “No. He’ll have to fend for himself.”

  The burial ceremony was brief. Sam said the words, the grave diggers smoked their pipes and waited, and the wind slapped the black cotton of the mourning garments against the legs of Clayton and Kelly.

  It was full dark, the moon rising, when the last shovelful of dirt fell on Seth Wilson’s pine box.

  “Let’s go,” Kelly said.

  “Hold up, Marshal,” Sam said. He pointed to his assistants. “Are you sure the mayor didn’t say anything about paying one of these men to guard the grave?”

  Kelly said he hadn’t.

  Then one of the grave diggers said, “Don’t make no difference anyhow. Neither of us is staying.” He spat into the dirt at his feet. “If the resurrectionists come after the stiff, they’d leave with two bodies instead of one an’ count their blessings.”

  Sam looked crestfallen, the wind tangling in his beard. “I plant them, the resurrectionists dig ’em up.” His eyes sought Kelly’s in the gloom. “Don’t seem fair, do it, Marshal?”

  Kelly smiled. “Life ain’t fair, Sam. Nobody should know that better than you.”

  The undertaker nodded. “True, so very true.” A talking man by nature, he said, “Why, look at young Mrs. Brown, the poor little creature, gone at such a tender . . .”

  But Kelly and Clayton had already shed the mourning garments and walked away, leaving Sam to talk into uncaring darkness.

  Chapter 10

  The two men rode in silence for a while; then Clayton said, “What the hell is a resurrectionist?”

  “Fancy name for a body snatcher.”

  Clayton’s face showed his surprise. “I thought all that was over.”

  “The hell it is. There’s a steady market for stiffs in the medical schools back east, and they pay well.”

  “I reckon Seth Wilson’s body would smell pretty high before they got it to New York or Boston or wherever.”

  “Not if was loaded into a refrigerated railroad car.” Kelly turned and looked at Clayton, his face a blur in the crowding darkness. “There’s a spur line of the Denver and Rio Grande to the north of town, ends up at a small freight yard. Some of the local ranchers ship cattle from there and occasionally the trains have a passenger car.

  “I rode up there one time and saw a bunch of men loading long packing cases into one of them new refrigerator cars I was talking about.”

  “You figure they were shipping bodies?”

  “Sure of it.”

  Clayton laughed, the first time in a long while, and it felt good. “I didn’t know so many folks died around these parts.”

  “They don’t,” Kelly said, “at least not white folks, but plenty of Apaches do.”

  “Apaches?”

  “Yeah, starving or dying of disease up there in the mountains.”

  “So somebody is making mo
ney shipping dead Apaches to medical schools back east.”

  “That’s about the size of it, only the Apaches say their people are mysteriously disappearing, especially women and children. They can’t account for that and I got to say it’s troubling me some.”

  Kelly’s face was grim. “All we need in these parts is another Apache uprising. A few years back Geronimo raised enough hell around here to last white folks a lifetime.”

  “Did you inspect those packing cases?”

  “No. I’m only a town marshal and I was way off my home range. I wired the county sheriff and he told me to forget the damned Apaches and keep an eye on the graves of white folks. The United States Marshal’s office said pretty much the same thing.”

  “The army?”

  “Stretched too thin. They already have all the work they can handle, and disappearing Apaches is pretty low on their list of priorities.”

  “Take a lot of dead Apaches for a man to make a living at it.”

  “It’s a sideline, I reckon. If you’re already shipping beef, why not throw in a few dead bodies and make yourself some extra bucks? Unlike cows, you don’t have to feed and care for Apaches, so it’s all profit.”

  “Hell, Kelly, I thought you said you were bored,” Clayton said. “It seems to me like there’s plenty breaking loose around these parts.”

  “Maybe so, but it doesn’t concern me. If Apaches are murdered and shipped east like sides of beef, it’s happening outside my jurisdiction. Take one step beyond the town limits of Bighorn Point and I’m nobody.”

  Kelly’s horse tossed its head, the bit chiming. “So you see, Mr. Clayton, I am bored. Or at least I was until you rode into town.”

  Chapter 11

  Cage Clayton rose with the dawn. He was hungry, but had no desire to eat in the saloon again. That left Mom’s Kitchen and its uncertain culinary arts, but it was the only restaurant in town and he started to cross the street. He almost never made it.

  He heard the pounding of a horse team’s hooves and suddenly a speeding buggy was almost on top of him. Clayton jumped out of the way, tripped, and came down hard on his back. He had a fleeting impression of a pair of galloping grays, a beautiful young woman at the reins, and beside her a small frightened black girl clinging on for dear life.