Clayton had backed himself into a corner. Now he tried to get out of it. “Not me, Mr. Vestal. I won’t tell anybody.”
“Damn right you won’t.”
The gunman picked up Clayton’s rifle and stepped to the door of the boxcar. He glanced outside, then came back to the stove. “Be light soon. We’ll wait till then.”
He took the cup from the table and poured himself coffee, holding the Winchester under his arm. “Sit,” he said.
Clayton limped to the table, grimacing. He wanted Vestal to think he was hurt worse than he was. Again, given the gnawing pain in his leg, that didn’t stretch his acting skills.
Vestal laid the rifle on the table and put his foot on the bench. “Get this into your thick head, Clayton. Nobody cares about Apaches, living or dead.” He waved a hand. “Out there on the range, times are hard. Cattle prices are low and we’ve had some bad winters—lost a heap of cattle.”
“I know all about that,” Clayton said, trying to find common ground with the gunman. Maybe it would make him less inclined to shoot right away.
“An Apache on the hoof is worth nothing,” Vestal said. “Dead, he brings five hundred dollars on the Boston and New York medical markets.”
“Including the children?”
“Especially the children. The doctors like them young and fresh.”
“You . . . you just kill them?”
Vestal shrugged. “I prefer to say we process them, just like beef.”
“How much can a man like Southwell earn from dead Apaches in a year?”
“Depends. But in an average year, I’d say ten to fifteen thousand dollars. And that’s all profit. You don’t need to feed Apaches.” Vestal grinned. “And we dig up the occasional newly buried body to add to the take. Maybe we’ll even process you.”
A faint mother-of-pearl light filled the boxcar’s open doorway.
“Saddle up, Clayton,” Vestal said. “It’s time to hit the trail.”
“Do you still aim to kill me, Mr. Vestal?” Clayton said, again playing the frightened innocent.
The gunman nodded.
“There ain’t much a man can depend on in this life, but you can depend on this,” he said. “I surely am going to kill you.”
The fear that twisted in Clayton’s belly wasn’t pretend. It was all too real.
Chapter 22
“You’re up early this morning, Marshal,” J. T. Burke said.
“Thunderstorm kept me awake,” Kelly said.
“They will do that.”
The marshal’s eyes roamed around the newspaper office, an inky shambles of scattered file cabinets, type cases, discarded sheets of newsprint, composing stones, and a huge platen printing press.
“J.T., I’d like to read your files going back, say, ten years or so,” Kelly said.
The proprietor of the Bighorn Point Pioneer, a tall, thin man with an alcoholic flush and one arm, made an apologetic face.
“Sorry, Marshal. My back issues only date from 1886,” he said. “Everything before that burned in a fire. I rebuilt this place the year before you became the law here.”
“Damn it,” Kelly said.
“My memories didn’t burn,” Burke said. “The misuse of whiskey has dulled them some, I admit, but maybe there’s something I can help you with.”
The editor’s eyes sharpened as he sensed a story.
Kelly knew Burke was as slippery as an eel and would come at him from a direction he didn’t expect, wheedling out information before he even knew he was giving it. He threw up a defense, a disinterested casualness. “I just had some time to kill and figured I’d find out what happened in Bighorn Point before I became marshal,” he said.
Burke’s eyes were still probing. “Nothing happened,” he said. “The town was dying, breathing its last.”
Kelly saw an opening, and he took it. “So, what changed things?”
Burke opened a desk drawer and held up a pint of whiskey. “Drink?”
“No, thanks,” Kelly said. “A bit too early for me.”
“You mind if I do? Just a heart starter, you understand.”
“Help yourself.”
Burke took a swig, put the bottle back in the drawer, and said, “So, what changed things?”
Kelly said nothing, waiting for the editor to fill in the silence.
“Parker Southwell and his partners changed things,” Burke said.
“I didn’t know he had partners.”
“He did, way back when.”
Again Kelly waited. He had no clear idea why he wanted information on Southwell, except that Clayton had said the old man could be the one he was hunting. What was it he’d said?
“He could be. I don’t know.”
So even Clayton wasn’t sure. But Kelly had decided to at least go through the motions of finding out.
Burke was talking again.
“Ten years ago, let me see. That would be the spring of ’eighty, Southwell came up the trail from Texas with nine hundred head of cattle and told folks he planned to establish a ranch south of town.”
“His partners were with him?”
“Yes, but they weren’t cattlemen. One was John Quarrels, our current mayor; the other, Ben St. John, owner of the only bank in our fair city.”
“What did Quarrels do?”
“He built a dry goods store but sold it after a year. The mayor is not a man to stand behind a counter in an apron.” Burke opened the drawer again, stared inside as though trying to make up his mind, then closed it. “Ben St. John used his own start-up money for the bank, so he must have had quite a stash when he arrived in Bighorn Point,” he said.
“So between the three of them, they saved the town from drying up and blowing away?” Kelly said.
“Sure. We had a bank, an excellent store, and a big ranch close by. The next year St. John and Quarrels bankrolled the building of a church and a school, hired a reverend and a teacher, and people started to arrive, eager to call such a God-fearing town home.”
“How come only one saloon?”
“Southwell, St. John, and Quarrels are the movers and shakers in Bighorn Point, and one thing they wanted was respectability. They closed three of the saloons and left one open as a courtesy to travelers. As Parker Southwell said at the time, ‘A saloon has never helped business, education, church, morality, female purity, or any of the other virtues we hold so dear.’”
Burke couldn’t resist a sly dig. “Maybe ol’ Park should forget cows, grab his Bible, and go on the kerosene circuit.”
“Give me an out-and-out scoundrel any day,” Kelly said. “I don’t much like being around respectable people.”
“A man after my own heart,” Burke said. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”
“I’m sure. I got to be on my way.”
“Mr. Clayton—is he respectable?” Burke said.
The question took Kelly by surprise. Burke had a way of doing that. “Why do you ask?”
“Our man from Abilene says he’ll kill somebody in this town before he leaves. Is that respectable?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Unless he has a good reason?”
“I’m sure he has.”
“Avenging a past wrong, I imagine.”
“Yeah, it has to be something like that.”
“Perhaps Mr. Southwell is his intended target.”
Now the marshal was wary. “What makes you say that?”
“Mr. Southwell is a man without a known past.”
Kelly smiled. “Hell, J.T., he’s been in this town for the last ten years.”
“Yes, but what did he do during the time between the end of the war and 1880? Come to that, what did his partners do?”
“Former partners.”
“Former? Maybe. Maybe not.”
Kelly shook his head. “J.T., you’re a suspicious man.”
“That’s what makes me a good newspaperman, Marshal. Perhaps I’ll do some digging, find out what Southwell and the others did in Texas after the war.”