The Stranger from Abilene

by Ralph Compton

  Cage Clayton felt sweat trickle down his back. The day was hot, but he knew this for a fear sweat. He expected the five rifles to blast at him any minute. Nothing happened.

  One by one the rifles lowered and he looked into flat Apache faces, angry, hard, and rough-hewn as rock—merciless. One of the riders, wearing a ragged white man’s coat and plug hat, grabbed the buckskin’s reins. He led Clayton after the others.

  There was nothing about this setup Clayton liked. What was the old saying? Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

  A bullet had burned across the meat of his left shoulder, not deep, but enough to draw a trickle of blood.

  The Apaches rode southeast, farther into the Sans Bois. They were grim, silent men and the only sounds were the fall of hooves and the creak of saddle leather.

  After an hour along a whisper of trail that switched constantly back and forth around rock falls and steep mountain ledges, the Apaches rode into an arroyo that ended in a tree-covered clearing about five acres in extent.

  Clayton heard the sound of trickling water, and a section of the far rock wall of the arroyo, under an overhang, was blackened from countless generations of campfires.

  He then had his first indication that the Apaches didn’t hold him in high regard. The man leading his horse pulled him alongside, raised his foot, and kicked him out of the saddle. Clayton landed hard on his wounded thigh and groaned in sudden agony.

  The stony faces of the Apaches around him told him that the groan had not added any to his prestige. After being hauled to his feet, Clayton was dragged to the overhang and thrown on his back.

  An older man, with tired eyes that had seen too much of life and death, kneeled beside him. Like the other Apaches, he wore white men’s castoffs. He had the look of a farmer, not a bronco warrior, but his blue headband marked him as a former army scout.

  “We will ask questions of you. If you tell us the truth, you will die quickly,” the old man said. His hair was gray and thin. “But if you lie, then you will beg the Apache to kill you, because your death will be painful and slow in coming.”

  Clayton said nothing, no words springing to mind that could get him out of this fix.

  “Why do you kill the Apache?” the old man said.

  Chapter 24

  “I do not kill Apaches,” Clayton said, finding his voice at last.

  “You were with one who does. The one we call the Hunter.”

  “I was his prisoner. That’s why I have no weapons. He took them from me.” He showed the star on his shirt. “I am a lawman.”

  Another Indian grunted. Whether it was a good or bad sign, Clayton didn’t know.

  “Why did the Hunter take you captive?” the old Apache said.

  “I saw . . . I know what he does with the dead Apaches.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He sells them and they are taken away in a railroad car.” Clayton racked his brain, trying to find an alternative to refrigerator car, a term these Indians wouldn’t know. “It is a car of ice,” he said. “Colder than the coldest winter.”

  That last started talk among the men and their faces were puzzled.

  “Why a car of ice?” the old Apache said.

  “To take them far to the east, to the great cities.”

  Damn, how do I explain doctors, vivisection, and medical research to an Indian?

  “What do they do with the bodies of Apaches in these great cities? Do the white men eat them?”

  “No, they cut them up.”

  That caused a stir among the Apaches, and the youngest, a teenager wearing a collarless shirt with a red-and-white-striped tie, turned his face to the sky and wailed like a wounded wolf.

  “You lie to us,” the old Apache said. “You tell us tall tales.”

  “I do not lie,” Clayton said. “Doctors . . . medicine men . . . cut up the bodies to look inside them.”

  The old man was shaken to the core. His voice caught in his throat and his hands trembled. “If a Mescalero is treated thus, his soul cannot fly to the Land of Ever Summer. He will wander forever in a misty place between heaven and hell.”

  The Apaches looked into Clayton’s eyes. “Can what you tell us be so?”

  “It is so,” Clayton said. He was aware that he was walking a ragged edge between life and death, and right then he wouldn’t have given a plug nickel for his chances.

  “Why does the Hunter kill us and send our bodies away?” the Apache said.

  “For money.”

  The old man rose. His face was like stone, but there was an unsteadiness to his chin. The others gathered around him and they talked briefly before he returned to Clayton’s side.

  Apaches had an inborn contempt and hatred of liars, and the old man showed it now as black lightning flashed in his eyes.

  “You are either telling the truth or you are the greatest of all liars,” he said. “If you have lied to us, we will tear out your tongue so you can never tell an untruth again.”

  He grabbed Clayton’s hand and, showing surprising strength, pulled him to his feet.

  “Have I made our feelings clear to you?” he said.

  “I do not lie to the Apaches,” Clayton said.

  “Then we shall see. You will take us to the car of”—he used zas, the Jicarilla word for snow, then corrected himself—“ice. You will show us where the bodies of our children lie.”

  Clayton’s heart sank. “The car is gone. I don’t know when there will be another.”

  “Then I think you are a liar,” the old man said.

  “I can take you to the railroad tracks where the ice car sits when it comes.”

  “You will show us.”

  Clayton nodded.

  Suddenly he felt a chill and he knew why . . . .

  Death stood at his elbow and was growing mighty impatient.

  Chapter 25

  “The saber, sharpened to a razor’s edge, is the solution to our Indian problem,” Parker Southwell said.

  “As you say, dear,” his wife said.

  “Do you think Lo would dare set foot off the reservations assigned to him if he knew ten thousand sabers awaited him?”

  “I think not,” Lee Southwell said, picking at her food. She had heard all this many times before.

  She and her husband sat at opposite ends of the long table that occupied almost the entire dining room. Two black servants stood by to serve them, heads bowed as had been the custom of the old South.

  “It is well known that the gallant Custer, on the bloody field of the Bighorn, cried out in extremis, ‘Oh, for an ’undred sabers!’”

  “I’m sure he did,” Lee Southwell said.

  Her husband spoke around a mouthful of roast beef. “I wrote to President Harrison and told him—I said, ‘There’s only one way to gain the respect and obedience of the Indian. Apply the edge of the saber and apply it often. Apply it till it’s bloody from tip to hilt.’”

  “I know you did, dear,” Lee said.

  “The man’s a bleeding heart, a damned Injun lover. He didn’t even answer me.”

  “His loss, dear.”

  “Yes, and this great nation’s loss.”

  The evening was hot, the candlelit room was stifling, and there was no breeze to offer relief. Sweat trickled between Lee’s breasts and down her thighs, and the heavy silk dress she wore stuck to her back.

  She worried about Shad out there somewhere in the darkness. Clayton was a desperate, ruthless man and she hoped Shad had not ridden into danger.

  Southwell motioned with his fork. “The roast beef is not to your liking?”

  “I’m just not hungry tonight and I have a slight headache,” Lee said. She laid her knife and fork on the plate.

  “Hester, remove Mrs. Southwell’s plate.”

  Southwell looked at his wife, his thin face distorted by candle flames. “Would you care for something else, my dear?”

  “Yes, a glass of bourbon.”

  “A glass of bourbon, Hester,” Southwell sa
id to the black woman.

  “Do we have any ice left?” Lee said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hester said.

  “Then bourbon with plenty of ice.”

  Lee had just been served her drink when a servant stepped into the room.

  “Mr. Vestal just rode in, Mr. Southwell,” the man said.

  “Tell him to report to me right away,” Southwell said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lee’s heart sang. Shad was back. He was alive.

  Vestal, tall, handsome, with a sweeping mustache and yellow hair falling over his shoulders, stepped into the room a couple of minutes later and Southwell waved him into a chair.

  “Well, is he dead?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Vestal said.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “The Apaches have him.”

  “Apaches! What the hell are you talking about, man?”

  Vestal glanced at Lee, then told Southwell about his capture of Clayton and the attack by the Indians.

  “You two leave the room,” Southwell said to the black couple.

  He waited until they were gone, and turned to Vestal. “That was this morning. Where have you been all day?”

  “Well, after a spell I tracked them, thinking they’d shoot Clayton right away. They didn’t. They rode into an arroyo. I waited around for a few minutes, then left.”

  “They tortured him to death, probably,” Southwell said.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “A deserved fate for a singularly unpleasant man,” Lee said.

  “Park, those Apaches were on the warpath,” Vestal said, ignoring the woman. “And there could be more of them. I warned you, we’re culling them too close, too often.”

  Southwell shot a quick glance at his wife, then said, “Shut your trap.”

  Vestal smiled. “Don’t you think she knows?”

  He looked at Lee. “Cattle prices are low, money is tight. Where do you think the ruby necklace you’re wearing came from?”

  “Vestal, I warn you—”

  “Oh, shut up, Park,” Lee said. “I know what you’re doing to the Apaches, and I don’t care. Did you really think the deaths of a few savages would offend my sensibilities?”

  “I was trying to shield you, my dear,” Southwell said. “Harvesting Apaches is a dirty business.”

  Lee lifted the glittering necklace from between her breasts and put it to her nose. “I can’t smell any dirt,” she said.

  Vestal laughed, but when he turned to Southwell again, he was serious. “I think we should end the cull for a while.”

  Southwell shook his head. “Impossible. I have a hunting party out in the Sans Bois now, and a refrigerator car will arrive at the spur tomorrow night.”

  “Who’s leading them?”

  “Baldy Benton—him and Luke Witherspoon.”

  “I’ll go after them, call them back.”

  “No! Do you want to take a look at my accounts ledger? We need the money, Shad.”

  He looked from Vestal to Lee, breathtakingly beautiful in the soft light that erased the hard lines around her eyes and corners of her mouth.

  “The cull goes on,” he said. “Until there are no Apaches left to harvest.”

  Chapter 26

  There was no sign of life at the spur, and no refrigerator cars.

  The iron V of the rails shimmered in the afternoon heat, and the air hung heavy on the trees, their branches listless, unmoving.

  As he sat his horse between the Apaches, Clayton felt he was carrying the full weight of the oppressive day. The sky was the color of dust, the yellow coin of the sun hazy, as though shining through murky water.

  The youngest Apache, the butt of his Winchester on his thigh, rode his paint down the rise to the tracks. He rode to the boxcar, leaned over, and slid the door open. The young Apache looked inside, then swung away and drew rein at the tracks. He stared into the distance: rolling hills, empty land, empty sky.

  Clayton sweated, smelled the rankness of his body. Beside him the old Apache yelled a few words and the youth on the paint returned.

  The old man turned to Clayton, his black eyes accusing. “No Apaches. No white men. No cars. No nothing.”

  “The ice car will be here,” Clayton said.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The Apache grunted. “Then we will wait.”

  “It could be a long time, maybe days.”

  “We will wait.” He pointed his rifle at Clayton. “You will wait.”

  The old man led the way into a stand of wild oak where the Apaches picketed their horses, then sat in a circle in a patch of shade, Clayton with them.

  They waited . . . .

  To the Apache, patience is the companion of wisdom. Not passive waiting, for that is laziness, but to wait and hope.

  “We will hear the train by and by,” the old man told Clayton.

  The man from Abilene said nothing. He was hot, thirsty, and hungry, and patience had never been one of his virtues. He lay on his back, the stoical Indians sitting still and silent around him. Clayton stared into the tree canopy, the leaves silhouetted black against the sky as though charred by fire. His brain reeled, hunting the answer to an impossible question: Why had it all gotten so complicated when once it had seemed so straightforward?

  His plan had been so simple. Ride into Bighorn Point, declare his intention to kill a man, and let the man’s own guilt drive him from hiding. The guilty party would call him out, and Clayton would shoot him.

  Instead . . .

  Clayton groaned. It hurt his head to even think about it.

  The dreary day dragged past with dreadful sluggishness. Then slowly the light seen through the tree canopy changed. Gone was the sullen sky of afternoon, replaced by a million diamonds scattered on lilac velvet.

  Clayton sat up. The Apaches hadn’t moved, sitting in a circle, thinking . . . about what only God knew. They’d had neither food nor drink, nor had he, but Clayton was irritable and the wound in his thigh throbbed. If he had a woman close, he’d whine and moan and let her comfort him.

  The Apaches needed no such comfort. They were like their mountains—still, silent, unchanging, enduring. With that strange sense many Indians possess, the old Apache said something to the youngest one. The youth rose to his feet, stepped to his horse, and returned with a canteen and a chunk of antelope meat.

  These he offered to Clayton.

  None of the other Apaches were eating or asking for water, a fact Clayton noticed. A man’s pride is a personal thing. But in the long run, it’s what separates the exceptional from the mediocre. Clayton refused the food.

  “I will eat and drink when the Apache eat and drink,” he said.

  The old man beside him nodded. Then he smiled.

  Why he did the last, Clayton did not know.

  Two hours later, he heard the rumble of wagon wheels, and after a few more minutes, the distant wail of an approaching locomotive.

  Chapter 27

  Marshal Nook Kelly stood outside his office, smoking his last cigar of the day. The town was quiet and the street was deserted. A few lights burned in the windows of the houses beyond the church, and over at John Whipple’s gun and rod store, his little calico cat explored the night.

  Despite the quiet, Kelly was uneasy. Where the hell was Clayton? He should have returned from the spur by now.

  The marshal admitted to himself that he liked the man from Abilene. Clayton was a cattleman, not a gunfighter, and he’d found himself out of his depth as a bounty hunter.

  When this whole thing with Park Southwell’s wife blew over, and it looked as if it had because Kelly had not seen the old man or Shad Vestal either, then he’d send Clayton on home. The man he was looking for was not in Bighorn Point or he’d have revealed himself by now.

  Park Southwell didn’t shape up as much of a human being, and probably had started his ranch with stolen cattle, but he’d been a colonel in the war, not a guerilla f
ighter like Lissome Terry.

  As far as Kelly was concerned, Southwell was in the clear.

  But that didn’t answer the question—where was Cage Clayton?

  There were outlaws aplenty up here in the Nations, and a few bronco Apaches who hadn’t gotten the word about Geronimo. It was a dangerous place for a pilgrim, especially one wearing a lawman’s star on his shirt.

  Kelly drew deeply on his cigar. Clayton was handy enough with a gun, but a bullet in the back has a way of canceling out that advantage. The marshal shook his head. Hell, he’d sent Clayton out to the spur, and he was responsible for his safety. But then, Cage was a grown man and could take care of himself. And he knew what . . .

  “Damn it!” Kelly swore aloud.

  The bottom line was he’d sent the man out to the spur and it was his duty as a peace officer to make sure he wasn’t in danger.

  The marshal pitched his cigar into the street. He stepped into his office, grabbed his rifle from the rack, and blew out the oil lamp.

  On his way to the livery stable, Kelly suddenly realized what was at the root of his decision to find Clayton.

  “Nook Kelly,” he told himself, “you’re just too damned softhearted for your own good.”

  Chapter 28

  The Apaches moved through the darkness like silent ghosts.

  Clayton joined them on the ridge and looked down at the spur. A single wagon was drawn up close to the tracks, two cowboys riding herd on its Mexican drivers. The train was off somewhere in the distance, but close enough that Clayton heard the chuff-chuff-chuff of the locomotive.

  Beside him the Apaches were tense, ready. Now he could only act as a bystander and wait for them to make their move.

  A couple of minutes ticked past. The Apaches lay still in the grass, watching. Waiting.

  But for what?

  Then it dawned on Clayton. They wouldn’t make a move until the engine arrived. If there were Apache bodies in the wagon, then God help the train crew.

  After what seemed an endless wait, the train arrived. It was a locomotive with a single boxcar—a refrigerator car. The engine vented steam, for a moment obscuring the wagon and the two riders.