The girl made a face. “And who, may I ask, is Dallas Laurent?”
“Huh?”
“Dallas Laurent. You talked about her quite a bit, made me blush at times.”
Clayton looked like a shy schoolboy. “Oh yeah, she was a woman I knew in Abilene.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Last I heard she was in Denver, opened her own house.”
“Now a lot of what you were saying makes sense.” Emma sniffed.
Clayton was spared a further female interrogation when Nook Kelly stepped into the room. It was the first time he’d seen him without his guns.
“How are you doing, old fellow?” Kelly said.
“Peachy. Apart from carrying a ton of lead inside me.”
Kelly laid a reassuring hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “No, the doc got it all out, saved your life. Well, him and Emma. She hasn’t left your side in weeks, and you raving like a madman, jumping in and out of death’s door.”
“Raving about Dallas Laurent?”
“Yeah, her, and less important stuff like cows and grass and winter snows.”
Emma rose to her feet. “I’ll fix you something to eat, Cage. Any preference?”
“How about burning me a huge steak with six fried eggs, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a gallon of coffee?”
The girl smiled. “Two soft-boiled eggs and a piece of toast, it is.” She looked at Clayton. “I’ll see what I can do about the coffee.”
“Emma knows best, Cage,” Kelly said, grinning. “That’s something you’ll learn.”
After the girl was gone, Clayton said, “And Lissome Terry? Did I rave about him?”
“He’s dead, Cage.”
Kelly answered the question he saw on Clayton’s face.
“He shot himself.”
“But when? I mean, how—”
Using as few words as possible in the face of Clayton’s growing impatience, Kelly told him about Quarrels’s letter and the confrontation in the fat man’s office.
“Terry couldn’t take his medicine,” he said. “I don’t know what scared him worse, me or the Rangers. I guess he realized them boys would’ve taken him back to Texas and hung him for sure.”
Clayton lay back on his pillow, his face a tangle of conflicting emotions. “Then it’s over.”
“Yes, it’s over, and Bighorn Point will never be the same again.”
Smiling, Kelly shook his head. “You played hob, Cage.”
The marshal stepped to the door, then turned. “I’m shoeing the black for you. Feels good to work with my hands.”
Clayton said nothing.
“Cage, it’s over and now your life is just beginning,” Kelly said. “Marry Emma and be happy and forget you ever heard the name Lissome Terry.”
Chapter 73
After Clayton ate what Emma described as “an invalid’s meal,” she helped him sit up on the pillows.
“I’ve never been one to lie in bed,” he said. “Hell, Nook is even shoeing my horse.”
“You’ll be very weak for a while yet,” the girl said. “Dr. McCann said you can get up and start walking around in another couple of weeks.”
Clayton shook his head. “Not here. Not in this house. Help me on my horse and I’ll head back to the hotel.”
Emma managed a lopsided smile. “Cage, you’re not exactly welcome in Bighorn Point. You robbed them of their mayor and the proprietor of the town’s only bank. St. John’s—I mean, Terry’s—wife already packed up and left. She didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Robbed is not the word I’d have used,” Clayton said.
“I know, but that’s how the good citizens see it.”
Emma, as though a thought had just occurred to her, held up a hand to stop Clayton from saying anything. She stepped into the silence. “You don’t like this house?”
“No, it’s a death house, a bad luck house. You bring sunshine to the place, but its darkness remains.”
“But what about your job? Where will we live?”
“I don’t want the job. We’ll go back to Abilene. The cabin on my ranch is nothing like this place, but we can make it work.”
Emma said, “Cage, when I’m your wife I’ll go with you anywhere—you know that—and I’m willing to marry you today if you want.”
“I can see a ‘but’ in your eyes.”
“We have a problem.”
“It’s nothing we can’t solve together, Emma, you and me.”
“You’re right. We can solve it, but it will take a sacrifice on both our parts.”
“I’m willing to sacrifice. Just tell me what I have to do.”
“I talked to Doc McCann when he was here, and he . . . Well, he confirmed my worst fears.”
Clayton was genuinely puzzled. “What fears?”
“Cage, we can never have children.”
“You don’t want children?”
“Oh, I do, but that will be impossible.”
Clayton shook his head. “Now you have me really confused.”
Emma sat in silence for long moments, marshaling her thoughts; then, word by word, she began to break Cage Clayton’s heart.
“Cage, you’re part black. I know it’s a very small part, but it’s there.”
Wary now, Clayton tried to make light of it. He said, “Maybe it’s one of my toes—the black part, I mean.”
“It’s not. It’s inside you somewhere, in your blood.”
Before Clayton could say anything, the words wrenched out of Emma, as though every syllable caused her pain.
“Cage, we could have . . . a throwback.”
Too stunned to say anything, Clayton could only stare at her.
The girl covered her face with her hands and said between sobs, “Listen to me, Cage. Try to understand. How would it look to other people to see me, a white woman, nursing a . . . a . . .”
“I understand,” Clayton said after a long while. “I understand perfectly how you feel. You were raised with a certain attitude and it’s hard for anyone to drop the prejudices of a lifetime.”
Emma let her hands fall to her sides. “We can still marry, Cage. I’ll make you happy. I’ll be a good wife to you, I swear I will.”
Clayton shook his head. “I want children someday, Emma. White, black, half-and-half, I don’t care. I’ll still love them.”
Her pain giving way to defiance, Emma said, “I can’t do that.”
“I know you can’t, Emma,” Clayton said. “And I pity you.”
Three hours later, wearing clothes he didn’t originally own, Cage Clayton climbed onto the black.
He was very weak, his heart so shattered he thought it would never mend.
Kelly hung a sack of supplies on the saddle horn and passed Clayton Miss Lee.
“Cage, I’m sorry,” he said.
“We’re all sorry, Nook.”
“Ride easy, pardner, and get better, huh?”
“Sure thing.”
“Write. Let us know that you and your cat got back to Abilene safely.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
Cage Clayton turned his horse north, heading for home, a place where he could heal his body, and his soul.
He did not look back.
Epilogue
Cage Clayton returned to Kansas, where he reconciled with his father and prospered in the cattle business. He is credited with introducing Brahman cattle to the Kansas range.
He married in 1896 and had a large brood of towheaded kids.
Clayton died of influenza in 1930 at the age of eighty.
Nook Kelly died in 1906 while working as a laborer on the construction of the Panama Canal.
Emma Kelly married a preacher, then moved to Oklahoma City. Thereafter she disappeared from the pages of history.
The railroad never reached Bighorn Point and during the automobile age the main highways bypassed the town. By 1928 Bighorn Point was a ghost town and today only the limestone foundations of the church remain, almost invisible in the prairie grass.