The Stranger from Abilene

Around him stretched beautiful country, but it was a lost and lonely land, haunted by the ghosts of vanished buffalo herds and the Indians who had hunted them.

Clayton smiled. Kelly knew what he was doing. Nobody would look for him out here. This was the end of the earth and the beginning of nowhere.

“If you get the chance, see what’s in them packing cases in the refrigerator cars,” the marshal had told him. “Maybe it’s only beef, but it could be something else.”

And Clayton had smiled at the man. “You’re making busywork for me, right?”

Caught in his own deception, Kelly grinned. “Well, I don’t reckon you’re going to find dead Apaches. But you never know.”

“And it will keep me out of mischief.”

“Two days, Cage. You can stick it out that long. I’ll pack you plenty of grub and a bottle of Old Crow, unopened, mind.”

“Will you have Terry when I get back?”

Kelly shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ll try my best to find him.”

“Man can’t say better than that.”

“Keep safe out there, Cage. I don’t think Vestal will discover where you’re at, but you never know.”

“Maybe he’ll wish he hadn’t—if he finds me, I mean.”

“Cage, Shad Vestal can shade you any day of the week, without even half trying.”

“I’m that bad, huh?”

“No, you’re pretty handy with a gun. You proved that in the Windy Hall when you killed Seth Wilson, but you’re not in Vestal’s class. But then, few are.”

Kelly laid a hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “Remember that and you’ll live longer.”

Now, pleasantly drowsy among the trees, lulled by the creek’s soft song, Clayton knew his best option was to ride north and forget the whole sorry business.

But he realized that was impossible.

There was one thing about him that Nook Kelly didn’t know—the force that drove the man called Cage Clayton. . . .

He was filled with hate.

That’s why he wouldn’t back off, from Shad Vestal or anybody else. Hate is like water in a dry gulch: The longer it runs, the deeper it digs. And Clayton’s hate was deep . . . the product of twenty-five years, a hate so intense, so painful it afflicted him like a disease.

He rose to his feet, tightened the buckskin’s cinch, and swung into the saddle. To the south, purple clouds were forming over the peaks of the Sans Bois, and the wind had picked up, carrying with it a distant rumble of thunder.

It would storm before too much longer. Clayton took a yellow slicker from behind his saddle and laid it over the horn. He allowed himself a smile. Maybe he wasn’t ready for much, including Shad Vestal, but he could still beat the rain.

Clayton topped a rise and saw the railroad spur ahead of him. Beside the single track were a water tower, a woodpile, and an old boxcar that had been converted into a makeshift station house. A handful of men moved around down there and he backed off. He rode down the rise, dismounted, and slid his Winchester from the boot. Slowly he inched back to the crest and dropped on his belly in the long grass.

Two mounted cowboys watched three Mexicans load sides of beef, wrapped in thin burlap, into one of the new Swift refrigerator cars.

The loading, from two heaped wagons, took the best part of an hour, since the beef had to be carefully packed into the bottom of the car where the air was coolest. The cowboys didn’t help. If they couldn’t work from the back of a horse, they didn’t work. But they were happy to supervise, encouraging the sweating Mexicans to greater effort with regular kicks up the ass.

After the car was packed, another wagon drove up to the spur. An elderly Mexican handled the four-mule team, and a couple more men sat in the back.

The wagon was loaded with boxes made of rough, unfinished pine, and these were manhandled into the car.

Clayton touched his tongue to his dry top lip. Kelly had sent him here only to kill time and stay the hell out of the way. But he wanted to look inside those boxes.

Was there beef inside—or dead meat of a very different kind?

Chapter 15

The rain came as the day shaded into evening, and with it thunder and sizzling streaks of lightning.

Clayton shrugged into his slicker, then topped the rise again. Down below at the spur, the work was over. The cowboys were riding away, followed by the wagons. He waited for another ten minutes to make sure no one was coming back, then got to his feet and walked down the opposite side of the rise.

Rain pounding him, Clayton reached the refrigerator car, then stopped, his breath catching in his chest. Above the roar of the storm, footsteps crunched on gravel.

A few moments passed; then Clayton heard a foot skid on the wet grass beside the track and a man cursed. Clayton leveled the Winchester and stepped into the shadow of the car.

The footsteps stopped, as though a sixth sense had warned the man that there was someone close, in the darkness.

“Tom, is that you?” the man said. A listening moment, then, “Lon?”

Thunder filled the silence and lightning gave it authority.

Clayton heard a triple click as the man cocked a Colt.

“You come out now,” he said. “I don’t let bums ride this train.”