“Told you that you wouldn’t like it,” Clayton said as he walked past Kelly.
The marshal grinned. “Cage, you’re under arrest. You and your cat.”
“On what charge?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll come up with a few.”
Chapter 59
“Marshal, I want that man charged with attempted murder, wanton destruction of property, and . . . and . . .”
Ben St. John’s jowls quivered, his face black with anger.
“This is an outrage! My bank is wrecked and he”—a fat ringed finger stabbed in Clayton’s direction—“is responsible.”
“Mr. Clayton has agreed to pay all the damages,” Kelly said.
Clayton, who had agreed to no such thing, ignored that and said, “Your paid killer failed.” He looked at Kelly. “With an I.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” St. John said.
For a moment the banker’s eyes met Clayton’s and he recoiled, like a man who’s just stared into the sun.
He knows. Damn him, he knows.
Clayton reached into his pocket and threw five double eagles into St. John’s face. “Mitchell didn’t kill me. You can have your money back.”
“Mitchell?” St. John said, kicking the fallen coins away from him. “Are you talking about the dead man you dumped in my place of business?”
“You should know,” Clayton said. “You sent for him.”
“I never saw that man before in my life.”
St. John looked at Kelly, a pleading expression on his face. “Marshal, I’m one of this town’s leading citizens. Are you just going to sit there and let me be abused in this way by a . . . saddle tramp?”
Kelly seemed to consider that; then he said, “Did you hire Shack Mitchell to kill Mr. Clayton?”
“Of course not. That’s preposterous. Why would I want this man dead?”
“Because I know who you are,” Clayton said.
Kelly was surprised. He’d expected St. John to fly into another rage, but the man said simply, “Who am I?”
Clayton rose to his feet, the hate in him as cold as ice. “Your name real name is Lissome Terry. Do you remember a farm in Kansas and the farmer you shot and his wife, the high yeller woman you raped?”
Clayton felt Kelly’s eyes burn on him.
“You’re a raving lunatic,” St. John said. “I’ve never been in Kansas.”
“Yes, you have, Terry, you and Jesse and Frank and them. The woman you raped was my mother, and after you’d done with her she hanged herself. You crippled my pa, and he’s been in a wheelchair ever since.”
St. John would not meet Clayton’s accusing stare. Oh God, those eyes, looking right into me. Lancing into me . . . “Marshal Kelly, I want this man locked up. I want him charged and sent to Yuma for thirty years.”
Kelly’s voice was even, unhurried.
“Mr. St. John, I can charge him with leading a horse onto the boardwalk. That’s a ten-dollar fine.”
“The horse charged into my bank, with a dead man across the saddle.”
“The horse got scared and bolted. It’s still a ten-dollar fine.”
“I’ll speak to Mayor Quarrels about this. It’s obvious that you and Clayton are in cahoots. Which one of you murdered the poor man you’re trying to pass off as a hired assassin?”
“I did,” Kelly said. “He was trying to kill Mr. Clayton.”
“So you say.”
“Right. So I say.”
The marshal reached into his drawer and pulled out a stack of wanted dodgers. He thumbed through them until he found the one he wanted. He threw it across the desk to St. John.
“Shack Mitchell is wanted in the state of Texas for the murder of one James McFaul, a lawyer,” he said. “Look at Mitchell’s likeness. He’s the man I killed today.”
“The man you hired to kill me, Terry,” Clayton said.
St. John shook his head. His quivering jowls and small bloodshot eyes gave him the look of an outraged hog.
“I’m in Bedlam,” he said. “You’re both raving mad.”
“Don’t leave town, Mr. St. John,” Kelly said.
The man smiled. “I won’t, Marshal. But you will. Depend on it.”
Chapter 60
“Well, what do you think?” Clayton said after St. John left.
“About what?”
“Is he Lissome Terry?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. He’s Terry all right. I could feel the fear oozing out of him like sweat.”
“That doesn’t prove a thing. Get him in court and he won’t sweat fear or anything else.”
“He likes screwing black women,” Clayton said.
Kelly smiled. “And what does that prove?”
“My mother was black.”
“She was high yeller. You said so.”
“She was black with a pink skin. Terry was a Southern boy. He knew what she was.”
Kelly shook his head. “That’s doesn’t cut it, Cage.”
“I was speaking to Moses Anderson at the ranch house. He says St. John is poking Minnie, the little gal who was Lee Southwell’s black maid.”
“So, he likes to screw black ladies. I can’t hang him for that.”
“Moses says whores have a habit of disappearing after St. John is finished with them.”
Kelly smiled. “Cage, you keep calling him St. John. Does that mean you aren’t sure yourself that he’s Lissome Terry?”
“No, I’m sure all right. And I think Moses knows a lot more about the man than he’s telling.”
“Sometimes Moses is full of it, but I can talk to him.”
“He knows everything that happens in Bighorn Point.”
Kelly thought about that, then said, “I’ll talk to him. And that black gal, what’s her name?”
“Minnie.” Clayton hesitated a moment, then said, “She’s whoring, Moses says.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That doesn’t surprise you?”
“Nothing blacks do surprises me.”
Clayton felt that like a slap. He stroked the kitten on his lap. “You don’t like colored folks much, do you, Nook?”
“Not much.”
“And me?”
“What about you?”
“I’m part black.”
Kelly looked at him. “Cage, I’ll study real hard on that.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Clayton said, “Emma?”
“Yeah . . . Emma.”
Chapter 61
Ben St. John was seething. Mitchell had failed him. The moon would come up tonight and still shine on Cage Clayton.
One of the drunks who’d been hired by Moses Anderson told him he saw the black man blabbing to Clayton.
About what? How much did the man from Abilene know?
He hadn’t had time to question Moses before he killed him, but still, the safest way had been to shut him up for good.
Thank goodness he lived a short ways out of town. St. John was able to tell his clerks that he was going out to walk off a headache. The .32 he’d used didn’t make much of a bang, especially inside a rock-walled cabin.
Despite his vile mood, St. John smiled.
Moses and his woman had fed him collard greens, ham, and corn bread, washed down with buttermilk. He thanked them with—Bang! Bang!—a bullet to each of their heads.
But the greens had given St. John a slight case of indigestion, and now, when he burped, he tasted them all over again.
It had been a good meal, though, and the buttermilk had been nice and cold, served out of a clay jug.
“Are you all right, dear?”
His wife looked up from her embroidery, her long, horsy face concerned.