Kelsey sat up straight. “You’ve got the wrong hat, amigo. That’s mine.”
“You had the wrong one,” I said, still with a grin. “You just picked up the wrong hat back on the prairie. Now you’ve got your own back.”
He did not move, but he said in a quiet voice, “Put it down, kid. Put it down while you’ve got a chance.”
“What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?” That was Bill Hickok.
Now, I didn’t for a moment figure that Caxton Kelsey was afraid of Hickok. He’d taken his own share of scalps, and he was a good man with a gun, but Hickok was standing about twenty feet back of Kelsey’s right shoulder. Jim and me were about ten feet apart, and facing him.
He was boxed neatly, but he was a warrior, and he knew when he was out of position.
Before he had a chance to speak, and maybe make an issue of it that none of us could get out of, I said, “This is my hat, Marshal. It’s got my initials inside.”
They were there, all right, but stamped so small they could hardly be seen, and the chances were he had not noticed them. Holding the hat, my fingers had already found the bill of sale. Even if I lost the hat, I was going to keep that.
There were half a dozen other men in the restaurant, and I handed the hat to the nearest one without taking my eyes off Kelsey. “My name is Otis Tom Chancy,” I said. “You’ll find my initials in the hatband right along the bow in the back of the sweat-band.”
The man took the hat and looked inside. “That’s right,” he said. “OTC right on the sweatband.”
Hickok said, “I think that settles it, gentlemen. Shall we all relax now?”
Well, I put on my hat but, boylike, I couldn’t resist having my say. As I put it on I said, “I’m glad to have this back. I left a bill of sale stuck behind the hatband.”
Well, for a moment there I thought Kelsey was going to go for his gun. His face turned ugly and he made a half-move to rise. Then Hickok said, “Chancy, your horse is in the livery stable. You’d better get it.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Marshal.”
We stepped out on the walk, and we didn’t waste any time heading for the stable. Jim stood in the doorway while I saddled up, and then I took over while he threw the leather on his mount. We gathered up our other stock and headed out of town.
It wasn’t until Abilene was just a row of buildings on the horizon that Jim spoke. “You push your luck, cowboy,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “it was my hat, and those are my cows.”
“He’ll hunt you. He’ll come looking for you.”
I was packing my Colt shotgun across my saddlebows, and had my rifle in the boot, close at hand. I was no match for Caxton Kelsey with a six-gun, and I knew it.
At the second herd we visited they told us where we could find Noah Gates.
We rode up to the wagon about sundown. Well, you should have seen their faces. They had given me up for dead, and here I was. Maybe the most surprised of them all was that redhead.
“Figured you was dead,” Gates said. He glanced from me to Jim. “What happened?”
“That redhead over yonder,” I said. “She’s got herself a man. She set a trap for me and he laid me out with a gun barrel.”
“He lies!” she said sharply. Her face didn’t look so pretty right then. Fact is, I never saw so much hatred in a body’s face. If somebody does you dirt and gets caught at it, they hate you all the more.
“Jim found me, or else I might have died,” I said. “Then I had to trace her friend down and get my hat back.”
“I don’t believe you.” Gates’s skin was mottled and his eyes were downright mean as he spoke. “Queenie’s my daughter-in-law. She wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“This man followed your herd all the way from the Nation, maybe further,” I went on. “Jim and his Shawnee friends came on their tracks and studied them out. Your Queenie used to slip out of camp of a night and meet this man. I figure she told him about our deal, because he was hunting for that bill of sale. He never found it.”
“Dad,” Queenie said, “every word he says is a lie. He’s no good, and the sooner we get shut of him, the better.”
“The man’s name is Caxton Kelsey,” I said, “and unless I’m mistaken he’ll be riding out of Abilene, a-hunting me.”
The name did it. Noah Gates knew that name, all right, and evidently he had cause for not liking it, because he turned sharp around on Queenie. “You took up with that murderin’ no-account!”
“He’s lying!” she repeated, but nobody was believing her any more.
“Then all you told us back in Texas was a lie. It was your fault back there,” Gates said.
“Believe whatever you’re of a mind to.” She stood with her hands on her hips, contempt in every line of her. “Adam Gates was never much of a man, no matter what you thought of your precious son. He was never anything but just a big, awkward farm boy.”
“You married him. You told him you loved him,” Gates said.
“My folks were dead and I had nowhere to go—until Cax came along.”
“He murdered my son and you lied about it.”
She shrugged. “Cax threw the gun down. He told Adam to pick it up, or get out and leave me with him. Adam was always a fool, so he reached for the gun.”
If there was any feeling for the man she had married, it surely didn’t show. I had a picture of Caxton Kelsey standing there waiting for that boy to pick up the gun Kelsey just standing there, knowing how easy it was going to be … then shooting him down before he’d more than laid a hand on the gun.
“You’d better get out of here,” the girl said, “unless you want the same. Cax is coming for me, and he wants the cattle. He’s got Andy Miller and his brother Rad, and he’s got LaSalle Prince.”
Noah Gates stood there with empty hands, his thin shoulders sagging. Two of their men were dead, two more lay on their backs, too hurt to fight. Five men remained—five tired, worn-down men, none of them gunfighters. Even a dozen of them would have been no match for the gunmen she had mentioned. LaSalle Prince was a notorious badman out of Missouri who had come into the feuds of eastern Texas, a coldblooded killer, with a leaning toward the ambush or the surprise shooting.
“We’ve reached Abilene,” I said. “I’m going to sell my cattle.”
They stood silent, their faces stubborn against me, but in their eyes was the doubt and fear left by what Queenie had told them. They were thinking of Caxton Kelsey coming against them with his men.
I was giving that some thought, too, and mean as these fools had acted against me, I wished them no harm. I did not know the full story, but from what Queenie and Noah Gates had said, it seemed clear that she must have been carrying on with Kelsey, and when Adam Gates had come upon them Kelsey had killed him, with her standing by.
“Whatever you figure to do,” I told them, “you’d best be planning. I’ve a notion that Kelsey is a fast-acting man.”
“We can ride into town and get Hickok,” Bowers suggested.
“He won’t leave town,” I said. “His job is keeping peace in the streets of Abilene.”
Queenie was staring at me, her eyes filled with meanness. “He’ll kill you,” she said, “and I’ll stand by to see it.”
“There was a man back in the Nation who had the same idea,” I said, “and he sleeps in a mighty cold bed tonight.”
Gates had no idea what to do. You can’t just up and run with a herd of cattle. They leave too wide a trail, and they are too slow. “He won’t dare,” he said finally. “We’re too close in to a town. Folks wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “It’s your gamble.” They stared at me then.
“What about you?” Gates asked. “You’ve got a stake in this.”
“We’re going to cut out our cattle, and we’re going to sell … part of them, anyway.”
“And the others?”
“Maybe we’ll try for that green valley out yonder.”
“What if they come up to you—just the two of you?”
“We’ll fight,” I said coolly, “and that’s what I’d advise you to do. The first thing I’d do would be to tie up that—”