Ghost Towns

by Louis L'Amour

  And when he eased the curtain back with the barrel of his pistol, he saw the man he’d been looking for. James with the red star birthmark sat in the bed, his eyes shut. A slattern with black hair lay against his chest, his hand stroking her head as one might a cat.

  It would be easy enough just to push his way into the room and empty every round and be done with it. But he’d have to kill the woman to do it. He didn’t ride all this way to kill a woman.

  Looking upon that rosette-marked face he saw a single scene from their past, when James was just a small kid running around in a hardscrabble yard chasing chickens, flinging rocks at them. Even then the boy had a cruel streak in him. The old man whipped James with his strap, trying to beat the meanness out of him, but it could be he’d just beaten more meanness into the boy than out. And maybe the old man knew the family secret, that James wasn’t of his own seed, but the seed of another man and that’s why he beat him so terrible.

  There on the bed’s post hung a gun rig within easy reach. A holster with a fine ivory-handled Colt. It was the sort of gun a man used to gunfighting might own. Not your typical twelve-dollar single action bought in some hardware store to let rust on your hip.

  And in spite of everything, he suddenly felt a strange connection to the boy, but not one that could be described exactly as brotherly love—more a simple indebtedness of same bloodlines.

  James suddenly shifted his weight and the woman fell away from him, exposing the stain of blood on James’s hairless white chest. Wes could see now the gaping wound of her exposed neck, the straight razor lying open and bloody on the floor next to the bed.

  He drew back the curtain fully now and stepped quickly into the room aiming the revolver right where the woman’s head had rested. James’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Wes,” he said as casually as if they’d just seen each other yesterday, that there’d never been any separation between them. “I figured you’d be along some day, and now here you are.”

  “And now I’m here,” he said.

  “They sent you, didn’t they? Them who want me dead?” James looked at the still form of the woman beside him.

  “Her name is Chloe,” he said. “She was real nice to me for a time. Then she got like the others—like Ma used to get. You don’t remember none of that, I bet. You was up in the prison doing your time whilst I was at home doing mine with Ma once the old man passed and she went in search of another. Gambling man he was…and a pimp to boot. Made sure we earned our keep, Ma and me.” A smile drew the boy’s lips up at the edges. “He was the first son of a bitch I ever killed.”

  So there it was, some of the reason at least, if James could be believed, and maybe he could and maybe he couldn’t.

  “Call me sinner, Wes, call you the saint. Heard you went to preaching and married yourself a fine woman. How’s that working out for you, Wes?”

  “Never said I was nothing but what I am, but I never killed a woman or anyone else that was innocent.”

  “Innocent! Ha, ain’t none of us innocent, Wes. You think she was? You think any son of a bitch in this place is?”

  “I only came just for you, James.”

  “Then you’re a fool, Wes.”

  “Maybe so. I guess time will tell.”

  “I guess maybe it will.”

  “I’ll give you a chance to defend yourself,” Wes said. “We’re kin of some sort according to the heavens, otherwise I’d already have shot you.”

  “Jesus Christ, Wes, but that’s awfully white of you.”

  “You can defend yourself or not, either way, I’m going to pull this trigger.”

  “Hell, Wes, you’re wasting your sweet time, boy. We’re already dead, men like you and me, been dead since we first drew breath. Same God that made you, made me. Go on and pull your trigger, Wes. I’m ready to go. Question is, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Wes said.

  James was snake quick, just like Wes thought he would be.

  Both men fired at once. Witnesses said it sound like a single gunshot, but they were wrong.

  At last he felt a great peace, for the first time since he’d fallen in love with Anne and his days of winter became days of summer. He saw James buck on the bed, then his hand empty of the smoking gun, and close his eyes as if falling asleep, a bright ribbon of blood flowing from his heart.

  Good-bye, James.

  Wes found himself ankle deep in new snow playing with Anne and the kids, throwing snowballs, laughing. Her smiling face made him happy. Then she faded into mist—all of them.

  He opened his eyes and found himself standing on a rocky windswept ridge glassing the town below and the road that cut through it and saw not a solitary thing moving. Somewhere down there in that place they named Los Muretos was the man he was looking for—his kid brother.

  He waited until dark, then rode his horse down the slope in the moonlight and entered the town from the east and and went on up the street to the only establishment open—a saloon with the words LAST STOP—painted on a hanging sign out front that the wind blew back and forth, the two small chains holding it creaking with rust.

  He tied off and went in and worked his way through the smoky crowd until he saw the stairs, the private boxes on the upper level. A woman in a bloodred dress cut him off and asked if he wanted to buy her. He swept her aside with a hard look and went up the wood steps leading to the upper boxes.

  He tried each chamber until he came to the last and found James marked by the red star cheek and a dead woman. And for a moment it was uncertain as to what he would do and what James would do, but now that they had faced the storm, there was nothing to be done. James’s pistol was in his hand just that quick, a wicked grin like the devil’s own followed in a split second by a resounding blast of gunfire.

  And in the white storm that followed he opened his eyes and found himself again standing on the same windswept spine of rock overlooking the ramshackle town below, the shimmering mountains beyond, the dying sun in a glazed sky off to the west.

  He had a deep and abiding sense he had been here before, that he had ridden in the moonlight down the slope of loose rock and entered the town and found James, but how was that even possible?

  He thought he heard Anne’s voice calling him and looked around but no one was there. And when he looked back down toward the town again, he saw a lone man riding a white horse ascending the ridge.

  The rider came on steady, the hooves of his mount clattering on the stones until at last the rider and his horse topped the ridge and rode along it to where Wes stood. The rider dismounted. He had a red star cheek.

  “You might as well give in to it, Wes,” James said.

  “Give in to what?”

  “To the fact you’re dead.”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “Yes, you are dead and so am I. We killed each other that night in the Last Stop—don’t you remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember nothing except I shot you.”

  “And I shot you,” James said rolling himself a shuck and lighting it with a match pulled from his waistcoat pocket, the wind snuffing out the flame almost as quickly, carrying away the first exhalation of smoke.

  “I was goddamn fast, but you weren’t too slow.”

  He saw it then, James, quick as a snake strike, jerking his pistol free of the hanging holster, felt faintly the bullet’s punch even as James bucked back on the bed, eyes rolled up white in his head.

  “It ain’t as bad as you’d a thought,” James said. “Is it?”

  Wes turned round and round looking in all directions at the world spread out—the sky, the mountains, the town. He felt like if he’d had wings he could fly.

  “We’re still down there,” James said pointing to Los Muretos. “We’re down there with all the others who died there in those glory years when the mines were still giving up their silver. We’re still down there with the whores and the gamblers, the merchants and the pimps who came for the easy money. Some w
ere lucky and left when the silver ran out, but you and me and some of the others weren’t so lucky, Wes. We came and never left.”

  The wind sang over the ridge like angel voices.

  “Come on, Wes, let’s go back down—they are waiting for us—Chloe, the one you found me with that night, and that whore who wanted you to buy her a drink and you wouldn’t—she killed herself that same night, Wes. When a whore can’t sell herself for the price of a drink, she’s got nothing left.

  “Me, it was my time to go. Sooner or later, some law dog or bounty hunter would have run me to ground if you hadn’t. In that way, I’m glad it was you, Wes, and not some stranger. I’m sorry I killed you. You were always the better of us two. You didn’t give me no choice. I guess it was meant to be like everything is—like brother slaying brother, Cain and Abel. It’s in us to kill when we feel we have to. We’re a lonesome bunch to be sure…”

  “No,” Wes said. “I was hoping you would. I let you do it because I didn’t have nothing more to go home to. I just wanted to go home to them is all.”

  “There’s nothing for any of us to go home to, Wes. Yonder is your home. Down there in Los Muretos. It’s home, not some other. No heaven and no hell—just the place we died in—where our corpses rot and our bones turn to dust again, and our spirits are once more free. That’s what going home is, Wes.”

  Along the road something raised up the dust.

  “What is that?” Wes said.

  “Automobile, Wes—it’s what they ride these days, the curiosity seekers, the historians, the tourists. They want to see how we once lived, to see a town that is as dead as us. A ghost town. What better place than Los Muretos where we got ghosts aplenty? They come because they read about the gunfight, about how two brothers killed each other in a whorehouse—over a woman or over gold—the story keeps changing with time and every telling. They tell how one was a good Christian man and the other was an outlaw. And they like to believe we’re still there, in the town, raising a little hell, scaring the kids, the hucksters selling us like boiled peanuts and ice cream, putting our photographs on picture postcards.

  “They even stage the gunfight—paid actors—men with bellies hanging over their belts—only they do it out in the street and not inside in that little whorebox where it happened. They bring folks in on buses just to see you and me kill each other again—three shows a day except on holidays.

  “They must have written a hundred stories about that night and that town. And we’ll be here always—as long as the sun rises and sets over the mountains. We’ll be here long as it rains and the snows fall and the oceans curl against the shore.

  “We are legend, Wes. They’ll never let us die or rest in peace. We’ll live forever as punishment for our sin.

  “You and me.

  “Come on down, Wes. Ride with me for a little while.”

  Iron Mountain

  Candy Moulton

  The darn fool boy never should have been on his Pa’s bay that morning, nor wearing his slicker, even though misty rain dripped from a slate sky. I told LeFors it was the best shot I ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done. But that wasn’t the way of it. Not at all.

  I sat my own bay in the rocks above the roughhewn homestead, saw the boy’s peach-fuzz face although he kept it dipped low so the rain flowed off his hat to puddle at his feet instead of down his neck. It was clear the work I had to do wouldn’t get done this day, and so I’d reined around and leaned into a ground-eating trot headed north.

  Didn’t take long for word to get around about the killing. It would have spread quickly no matter who lay in the dirt. But this tale burst forth like a wildfire because Willie had been the one found faceup, stone-cold by the gate. Most everybody at Iron Mountain knew immediately the bullet that got the boy had been intended for his Pa. Kels was burly and mean, had a sharp temper, and fast hands with a knife or his fists. His Irish wife handled their pack of kids as effortlessly as he landed an uppercut to the chin of a rival. I never paid much mind to the younger children, but that Katie, now she had caught my attention months before, and since I’m a truthful man, I’ll tell you she was an eyeful and the reason I liked to hunker down in the rocks and brush above their cabin.

  She’d come out in the morning carrying a milk pail, making her way to the four-stall barn. Sometimes I’d creep close enough that I could hear the squirt of warm milk against the tin pail, hear her hum to the old cow and talk to the cats. Certain days, Mondays I’m sure because I pay attention to such details, she’d roll up the sleeves of her blue dress—she only seemed to have one dress—and do the wash. The brown ringlets she’d piled up on her head would look ever so tidy when she started, but after scrubbing shirts and wool pants, socks and undergarments, they’d start tumbling and flying like spiderwebs, sticking to the back of her damp neck, lying across her honey-colored cheek. After scrubbing and scouring, rinsing and wringing, she’d put the wet garments in a heavy wicker basket, then haul it over to a rope line strung between two trees that shaded the west side of the house. One by one, she shook out the dripping clothes, draped them over the line, forcing wooden pins in place to hold them in the wind that always seemed to flow through the canyon.

  Katie’s sister, Ida, and her mother seldom helped with the washing, never with the milking. But I saw them gathering the eggs, butchering chickens, working in the garden, wrangling the youngsters. And staying out of Kels’s way. He had built a solid house of stout logs, showing some real craftsmanship by notching the corners into a double dove. And he’d added the barn, some corrals, a privy far enough from the house to be private, and, more important, downwind. There was a root cellar and a shed where I’d heard him and Willie pounding iron and seen the black smoke pour out when the forge got hot.

  I knew right off when I saw the place they were at Iron Mountain to stay and to be truthful again, that was fine with me, especially if Katie might somehow come into my personal picture.

  Course I was quite a bit older than she and I’d been around some. Had scouted with and packed mules for General Crook down Arizona way, helped rout old Geronimo out of the hills and sent him off to the swamps in Florida. I darned well knew how to tie a good knot, and it always irritated me to see Kels take a load in to Cheyenne City. He’d pitch a butchered hog or some sacks of potatoes into his wagon not caring whether they stacked neatly or not. Then he’d bark at Willie to cover it with some osnaburg before pitching ropes over the top and tying them down in a set of knots that weren’t no better than what I tied when I was barely six.

  The first chance I had to see Miss Katie up real close was at Iron Mountain School. It was near Christmas and as always happened, the townsfolk at Iron Mountain gathered for a pageant put on by the children. In fact, that was the first time I saw Glendolene Kimmell too. She’d moved up to Iron Mountain in the fall and began instructing the children in reading and writing and arithmetic. She had pinned her black hair back into a neat bun at the base of her neck, and that pulled her face tight over her high cheekbones and accented her dark, almond-shaped eyes, making her look exotic. She intrigued me right off because I could tell she was no homesteader’s daughter. She wore a dress that stretched tightly across her bodice and drew in at the waist. Now I suppose a man shouldn’t notice things like that, but let me tell you, she wore it in such a way that it was obvious she wanted a man to notice things like that.

  After putting the students through their drills, she had us push back the desks, Otto got out his fiddle, and the fun began as we all danced until dawn. When I think back on it, I realize that was the only time I ever saw the Nickells and the Millers in the same room, hell, the first time I saw them in the same town, where they was getting along and not fighting. Course now that I think on it, I realize that’s because at Christmas Kels was raising kids and pigs, cattle and horses.

  Iron Mountain life started going haywire in the spring. Kels trailed some of his horses to Cheyenne City and came home with range maggots. He was just too belligerent, and I�
��d have to say ignorant, to realize that bringing sheep into cattle country was going to cost him more than the value of some horses.

  Jim Miller struck the first blow, killing several of the sheep when they strayed onto his range. Kels hammered back, taking down more than a mile of fence between the two places. Then the Miller and Nickell boys got into it, throwing insults and taunts in the schoolroom, and following with their fists during lunch break. Miss Glendolene Kimmell had more than attracted my attention at the Christmas event, and so I rode over by the school pretty regular to check on her, make sure the boys weren’t causing too many problems, occasionally stealing a kiss when we thought nobody was looking, especially Katie. For I sure didn’t want her to think I had any regular gal.

  I wasn’t the only man around those parts visiting the schoolteacher. More than once I’d meet someone else leaving the schoolroom as I arrived, making me wonder how she kept her beaus apart. Even though I wasn’t interested in any long term alliance with Miss Kimmell, I do think I led her affections. Most of the others were cowboys who’d never been far from Iron Mountain. Having been to other places in the West, I could talk geography with her. I could tell her about the big saguaro of Arizona Territory and the rocky crags of Colorado. I could talk with her about the Apaches and scouting for a military expedition.

  As I turned my horse away from Iron Mountain one spring day, I knew I’d have some more geography to discuss before long. I’d been asked by my employers to ride down to Brown’s Park and deal with a couple fellas who’d been throwing long loops and using a running iron.

  In my line of work, you can’t move too quickly, or too carefully, so I was away from Iron Mountain several weeks. It took me that long to locate Matt Rash and Isom Dart, monitor their cow work, finally get a bead, and take care of the problem. This was a particularly difficult situation because Rash and Dart were seldom alone. They worked the cattle with other riders and had people in and out of their two-room log cabin like they were hosting a party. I’d never risk taking a shot if someone might see or hear me do so and that delayed my work, but of course, I’m a patient man so eventually my preparation met opportunity and I caught them alone. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, but knowing my employers would not pay me if I did not mark the end of the job, I carefully placed a rock beneath each of their heads as they stared with lifeless eyes at a cloud-filled sky. Then I rode north along the Little Snake and spent some time at the Dixon Club where the whiskey was smooth and the girls pretty. I did a little day work to establish myself as a fitting hand should I ever need to return to this country for a job before crossing the Sierra Madre and the Laramie Range on my return to Iron Mountain.