Mitchell went down like a poleaxed ox, his back crashing so hard onto the wood floor the bottles behind the bar jumped.
But Wilson was drawing.
Clayton dove for the table and, before it collapsed under him, palmed the blue Colt. He landed on his right side, rolled. Wilson was four feet from him. The little gunman fired first. Too fast. The bullet kicked up pine splinters inches from Clayton’s head.
Clayton shoved the Colt out in front of him, thumbed off a shot, then a second.
Hit twice, one of them in the belly, Wilson shrieked and went down, black blood frothing into his mouth.
Mitchell, his right kneecap shattered, was hurt bad, but still game.
He scrabbled around the floor, found his Colt, and tried to bring it into play. Clayton, on his feet now, stepped through smoke and raised his gun.
But Kelly ended it. He kicked the gun out of Mitchell’s hand and yelled, “Damn you, Charlie. It’s over. He’ll kill you.”
Mitchell groaned and lay on his back, his right leg from the knee down jutting out at an impossible angle.
But Clayton’s blood was still up. His ears ringing from the concussion of the guns, he waved his Colt around the openmouthed crowd and hollered, “I’ve never harmed a woman or child in my life. Let any one of you bastards step forward and call me a liar.”
But only Kelly took that step. He laid a hand on Clayton’s shoulder and said, “It’s over. You won, so let it go.”
Without waiting for an answer, Kelly called to the bartender, “Clem, Hennessy brandy. And two glasses. Damn, I need a drink.”
Chapter 9
“Charlie Mitchell will be stove up for weeks,” Kelly said. “Doc Sturgis says his kneecap is broke into three pieces.”
“And Seth Wilson?” Clayton said.
“Dead as he’s ever gonna be. Hell, you know that. You pumped two bullets into him.”
Kelly studied Clayton’s face. He figured the man was around forty, about the same age as himself, but right now he looked years older.
“It’s no easy thing to kill a man,” Kelly said. “It happens so fast. Two seconds, maybe less, and a healthy young man is on his way to meet his maker.”
Clayton made no answer and Kelly spoke into the silence. “How do you feel?”
“About what?”
“Don’t try to buffalo me, Mr. Clayton.”
“All right, then—empty. I don’t feel a damn thing.”
“You will later. Unless you’re a natural-born killer, you’ll feel that big empty hole inside you and wonder how you can ever fill it again.”
Clayton rose to his feet and stepped to his hotel room window. “I’m not that,” he said. “Not a born killer.”
“Never took you for that. Never pegged you for a killing man.”
Without turning, Clayton said, “I do feel something. I feel I should head back to Abilene.”
“What about the eight hundred dollars you said would save your ranch?”
“I don’t want to step over the bodies of dead men to get it.”
“You figured you could just ride into this town and proclaim to all and sundry that you planned to kill a man before you left.”
Kelly stepped beside Clayton. “A threat like that can pile up bodies real fast.”
“So I found out this morning.”
“You can’t leave anyhow. You’re already in too deep. The man you came down here to kill knows all about you by now. He’ll never let you leave the territory alive.”
“Why would he care? Just so long as I’m gone.”
“You might come back. Whoever the man is, he can’t take a chance on you.”
Clayton watched a loaded freight wagon rumble past on the street, its huge wheels and the oxen hauling it kicking up a cloud of yellow dust. Over on the opposite boardwalk, a small boy rolled a hoop and a pair of the local belles strolled by, wearing tiny hats, flaunting huge bustles.
“Do you think Charlie Mitchell was paid to set me up?” Clayton said.
“Nope. I think Charlie braced you just for the hell of it and to build his reputation as a pistolero. He picked on the wrong man, was all.”
Kelly turned away from the window and stopped at the door. “I’m planting Seth Wilson out at the old army graveyard at sundown when it gets cooler,” he said. “Do you want to come pay respects to your dead?”
Clayton hesitated only a moment, then said, “I’ll be there.”
Kelly nodded. “Good. It’s a true-blue thing to do. A town ordinance says I have to be there. You don’t.”
The old cemetery lay hidden among the Sans Bois foothills, in the shadow of Hulsey Mountain. Its markers were long gone, victim to time and harsh weather, and the place had a run-down, seedy appearance, overgrown and overlooked.
“It’s the closest we got to a boot hill,” Kelly said as he and Clayton rode up on the place. “They say one of old Geronimo’s wives is buried here, but I don’t know about that.”
The undertaker, a hopping black crow of a man, met them at the sagging iron gate that led into the place. He had a spring wagon drawn by mules and two assistants, men who leaned on their shovels, smoked pipes, and didn’t want to be there.
The undertaker handed Kelly and Clayton mourning garments, and asked, “Will there be more?”
The marshal shook his head. “We’re it, Sam. Get him planted. Be dark soon.”
“Do you plan to guard the body, Marshal?” Sam asked.
Kelly shook his head. “No. He’ll have to fend for himself.”
The burial ceremony was brief. Sam said the words, the grave diggers smoked their pipes and waited, and the wind slapped the black cotton of the mourning garments against the legs of Clayton and Kelly.
It was full dark, the moon rising, when the last shovelful of dirt fell on Seth Wilson’s pine box.
“Let’s go,” Kelly said.
“Hold up, Marshal,” Sam said. He pointed to his assistants. “Are you sure the mayor didn’t say anything about paying one of these men to guard the grave?”
Kelly said he hadn’t.
Then one of the grave diggers said, “Don’t make no difference anyhow. Neither of us is staying.” He spat into the dirt at his feet. “If the resurrectionists come after the stiff, they’d leave with two bodies instead of one an’ count their blessings.”
Sam looked crestfallen, the wind tangling in his beard. “I plant them, the resurrectionists dig ’em up.” His eyes sought Kelly’s in the gloom. “Don’t seem fair, do it, Marshal?”
Kelly smiled. “Life ain’t fair, Sam. Nobody should know that better than you.”
The undertaker nodded. “True, so very true.” A talking man by nature, he said, “Why, look at young Mrs. Brown, the poor little creature, gone at such a tender . . .”
But Kelly and Clayton had already shed the mourning garments and walked away, leaving Sam to talk into uncaring darkness.
Chapter 10
The two men rode in silence for a while; then Clayton said, “What the hell is a resurrectionist?”
“Fancy name for a body snatcher.”
Clayton’s face showed his surprise. “I thought all that was over.”
“The hell it is. There’s a steady market for stiffs in the medical schools back east, and they pay well.”
“I reckon Seth Wilson’s body would smell pretty high before they got it to New York or Boston or wherever.”
“Not if was loaded into a refrigerated railroad car.” Kelly turned and looked at Clayton, his face a blur in the crowding darkness. “There’s a spur line of the Denver and Rio Grande to the north of town, ends up at a small freight yard. Some of the local ranchers ship cattle from there and occasionally the trains have a passenger car.