Ralph Compton the Ghost of Apache Creek (9781101545560)

by Compton, Ralph; West, Joseph A.

  The younger man stared out into the street, expecting the dead to rise. Or was he watching for the return of the scattered citizens of Requiem?

  Pace answered that question.

  “I can feel something, Mash,” he said. “The wind is telling me things.”

  “The only thing the wind is telling you, boy, is that you’ve gone crazy again.”

  Pace shook his head. “Can’t you feel it? Smell it? The dead walking in the wind?”

  Lake said nothing. He put the revolvers together, then reloaded the cylinders.

  He held out Pace’s Colt.

  “Here, take this,” he said. “If them dead folks come after you, you can hold ’em off for a spell.”

  Pace stepped to the desk, took the gun and dropped it into his holster. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

  “You are mad, son. As crazy as a loon. But only when you’re in this damned town.”

  “The dead are about, Mash. I can tell they are.”

  The wind rose and the windows rattled in their frames.

  Someone pounded on the door.

  Pace’s face froze and he backed away from the window, his hand on his gun.

  “Damn it, boy,” Lake said, pushing past him.

  “Don’t open it, Mash!”

  Lake turned the key and grabbed the handle.

  “No!” Pace drew his Colt.

  The door swung open.

  Jess fell into Lake’s arms.

  He half carried, half dragged her to the chair by the desk.

  The woman’s face was badly scraped by tree branches and she had a huge purple welt on the right side of her face. Her dress was torn and somewhere along the way she’d lost a shoe.

  Pace had recovered from his fright.

  “I’ll get her something to eat,” he said.

  “Get the whiskey,” Lake said. “Only danged fools like us eat peaches and bean stew.”

  Pace poured whiskey into a glass and Lake held it to Jess’s mouth.

  “Drink this,” he said. “It will make you feel better.”

  The woman took a swallow and her eyes fluttered open.

  “What damned fool locked the door?” she said. Her voice was weak, barely a whisper.

  “Sam is the damned fool,” Lake said. “He’s afeared o’ dead folks.”

  “Have you gone crazy again, Sammy?” Jess said.

  “Yeah, seems like I’m tetched,” Pace said.

  “Then God help us all.”

  Lake moved to lay the glass on the desk, but the woman stopped him.

  “Pour some more whiskey in there, Mash,” she said. “And bring it back.”

  Pace built a cigarette and thumbed a match into flame. Through a spiral of blue smoke, he said, “Did Beau Harcourt do that to your face?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Was he trying to . . .” Pace couldn’t find the words.

  “Rape me?”

  “Yes . . . that.”

  “He raped me.” Jess’s fingertips moved to the bruise. “He gave me this because he didn’t enjoy it.”

  A quiet fell on the room as Pace and Lake fumbled for something comforting and reassuring to say. Women could have done it, but the men retreated into what they hoped was a sympathetic silence.

  Jess smiled. “I’m a whore, remember? Every time a man pays me two dollars and throws himself on top of me, it’s rape. You could say I’m used to it.”

  “More whiskey?” Pace said.

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Chapter 32

  Rain ticked on the roof and dripped from the eaves of the marshal’s office. It was a light rain, but enough to lay the dust in the street for at least a while.

  Jess stood at the window, her fingertip moving on a pane, tracing the descent of a raindrop.

  “Why are we here?” she said.

  Pace looked at Lake, who shrugged.

  “Where?” Pace said.

  “In Requiem.”

  “It’s my town,” Pace said.

  “But it makes you mad.”

  “Maybe I feel safe here.”

  “You’re not safe. The deacon, Beau Harcourt, the posse that’s chasing after Mash, they all want us dead for one reason or another.”

  “That’s no posse, girl,” Lake said. “It’s the four Peacock brothers. They ain’t human, not by a long shot.”

  “The one who looked in the tent, was he one of them?”

  “Yeah, he was a Peacock.”

  “He looked like death.”

  Lake smiled slightly. “He is death. All four of them are death.”

  Jess crossed the floor, took the burning cigarette from Pace’s fingers, and inhaled deep. “We’re living on borrowed time, but this doomed town keeps calling us back. It wants to keep us here, wants us to die here and join the others in the graveyard.”

  “Things will change,” Pace said. “When the folks come back.”

  “Sammy, this is a ghost town,” Jess said. “And you’re a ghost marshal. Soon Requiem will crumble into dust and blow away in the wind.”

  She looked at Lake. “Mash, talk some sense into him.”

  The old man shook his head. “I’ve tried, and oncet or twicet I even thought he’d listened. But, like you said, as soon as he gets back in Requiem, he goes crazy again.”

  Lake laid a hand on Jess’s shoulder.

  “Sam can’t leave Requiem because it’s worked some kind of evil spell on him,” he said. “I can’t leave because the Peacocks will gun me for sure. But you can make a break for it, put some git between you and this place.”

  “You think so, Mash?”

  “I’ll bring a horse around front.”

  “No matter where I went, the deacon would hunt me down. He’ll blame me for the deaths of his sons, just like he’ll blame you two. I can’t go far enough or fast enough to escape a man like that.”

  “There’s the law. I mean, real law.”

  “Yes, Mash, you’re right. But the law for whores isn’t the same as the law for respectable folks.” She shook her head. “No, I’m trapped, just like you”—she looked at Pace—“and the poor crazy man.”

  Jess glanced at the old railroad clock on the wall, its hand stilled at three twenty-seven.

  “When did you last wind the clock, Sammy?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Pace said. “Three years ago, I guess.”

  “Then wind it and set the time by Mash’s watch. It will measure the hours we have left, all of us.”

  The ticking railroad clock sounded like water dripping one drop at a time into a tin bucket. The oil lamp guttered in the wind, casting shifting shadows around the room, and the windows showed only darkness, as though the panes were covered with tarpaper on the outside.

  The rain had stopped for now and no longer made its soft music.

  Jess and Lake drowsed while Sam Pace worried.

  The woman had been right about something. When he was in his office with the door closed, it felt as if he’d locked out the world and nothing could harm him.

  He knew how wrong a thought that was.

  Arrayed against him were some formidable enemies.

  On his own, the deacon was a handful. Add his surviving sons and the border trash that rode for him, and it summed up to a dangerous combination.

  Harcourt, a fast gun, had his punchers, all of them tough, hard-bitten men who would know how to fight.

  And then there were the Peacock brothers.

  But their fight was with Mash Lake, not himself.

  Pace flushed at the traitorous thought.

  Old Mash had laid his life on the line for him. To desert him now would be an unforgivable act of betrayal. He knew if he sold out Mash now, he could never again hold his head high in the company of men.

  Ah well, the odds were insurmountable.

  That’s what it all boiled down to.

  Pace glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes had passed since he’d gotten it running. Half an hou
r of his life already gone. How long did he have left?

  He looked at Jess, then Lake. Suddenly they seemed vulnerable.

  They depended on him, and he couldn’t understand why.

  No one should put their trust in a crazy man.

  Pace rubbed a hand over his dry mouth, his blue eyes bleak.

  The trouble was, in the scheme of things, none of it mattered.

  The world didn’t give a damn about the lives of a whore, a madman, and a creaky old-timer whose best days were long behind him.

  If they all died today, tomorrow, the next day, who would care enough to mourn them?

  Pace knew the answer to that question: not a living soul.

  He sighed deep, shuddering, like an asthmatic trying to catch a breath.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall, at the black hands of time that measured the hours of his life.

  “Ah, the hell with it. Dying is easy,” Pace said aloud. “It’s the waiting that’s hard.”

  The wolf howls woke Sam Pace from uneasy slumber.

  He rose to his feet, stood, and listened into the night.

  Had he been dreaming again, of wolves?

  But once more the haunting howls ran through the darkness like rivers of quicksilver.

  Alarmed, Pace shook Lake awake, nodded at Jess, and held a forefinger to his lips.

  “Listen,” he whispered.

  As Pace had done, Lake stood, his face concerned.

  The wolves howled and again the troubled night rang with their hollow cries.

  Any man who’s heard a pack hunt close and says he was not afraid is a liar and he knows it. Only the mountains are unafraid of wolves. A man lies in his blankets, stares at the hunting moon, breathes quiet, and makes no sound, cursing the heart that beats so loud in his ears.

  His own heart thudding like a drum, Pace led the way to the door and stepped outside. He and Lake walked into the street and their eyes immediately turned to the west where a fire burned.

  The blaze was atop the rise on the outskirts of town, close enough for the two men to see eyes reflecting ruby red near its flames.

  Four pairs of wolf eyes smoldered in the night . . . staring down at Pace. At Lake. At the town of Requiem.

  “It’s the Peacocks,” Lake said. “They know I’m here.”

  “Wolves. Only wolves,” Pace said.

  “Wolves don’t light fires.”

  Wolves don’t light fires.

  Pace drew his gun and motioned to Lake that he should do the same.

  “Aim for the eyes,” he said. “Empty your revolver at the sons of bitches.”

  “We can’t hit nothin’ at this range and in the dark.”

  “I know. But if it is the Peacocks, I want those boys to know that we ain’t loafing around here, a-settin’ on our gun hands.”

  Pace cut loose and Lake followed.

  Instantly the fire was extinguished and the eyes vanished.

  The racketing echoes of the gunshots died away . . . and once more an uneasy quiet descended on Requiem.

  Chapter 33

  “Is it done?” the deacon said, standing in darkness near his wagons.

  The vaquero nodded. “Sí, señor. It is done.”

  The man’s face was strained, and that troubled Santee.

  “Cutting a man’s throat bother you?” he said.

  “Only the throat of the puncher. He lived in the saddle and nursed cows as I do. Now he is dead and I feel a little sad for him. As for the other one, it is no big thing to cut the throat of a cook.”

  “Our work isn’t done yet,” the deacon said. “There’s one more.”

  “The man in the tent?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “He doesn’t like vaqueros, calls us lazy greasers. Him, it will be a pleasure to kill.”

  “He’s still got his gun hand and he’s slick with the iron, so we’ll step careful,” the deacon said.

  “I will get the job done, señor.”

  “No, we both will,” Santee said.

  He whispered something into the Mexican’s ear that made the man grin.

  The deacon slapped the vaquero on the shoulder. “All right, let’s gun that son of a bitch.”

  “Wait,” the vaquero said. “Do you hear it?” He hesitated, then said, “There it is again.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like wolves.”

  “I thought all the wolves were gone from this valley, many years ago.”

  “Maybe they’re from up north, passing through to visit kin.”

  “It is strange, though,” the vaquero said. “I mean, the wolves being here.”

  Irritated, the deacon stepped toward the tent.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t want to talk anymore about the damned wolves.”

  Harcourt’s tent glowed dull orange in the darkness. The fading moonlight made the surrounding shadows deeper, darker—more ominous.

  The deacon heard no sound from the herd. Around midnight he’d heard the cattle rise and graze for a few minutes before bedding down again.

  With all his punchers out, the last thing he wanted was for the herd to run when he started shooting.

  Unlike the longhorn scrubs he’d driven up the trail from Texas, Harcourt’s cattle were white-faced shorthorns, placid creatures less inclined to stampede. But still, it was a worrisome thing.

  He could use the knife on Harcourt, of course.

  But Deacon Santee had never been much of a hand with the blade, though he’d cut uppity women a few times. Besides, the manner of Harcourt’s impending death amused him.

  He wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  On cat feet the deacon and the vaquero moved to the tent.

  There was nothing to see from the front, so they moved to their right—and struck gold.

  Harcourt sat on his cot, a dark silhouette against the background lamplight. His right arm moved occasionally, bringing a glass to his mouth.

  The deacon smiled.

  Lordy, Lordy, this was perfect.

  He drew his guns and beside him the vaquero did the same. The young puncher grinned, enjoying this as much as his boss.

  “Good evening, Beau,” Santee said, quietly, like a man starting a conversation.

  He fired as Harcourt jumped up from his cot.

  Between them, the deacon and his vaquero pumped fifteen shots through the tent canvas. All but two of them hit their target.

  Harcourt’s body jerked like a rag doll as the heavy .45 balls tore into him, shredding his back and chest. Blood spattered the inside of the tent canvas as Harcourt’s dying shrieks spiked into the night.

  The deacon stepped out of a cloud of smoke and walked to the front of the tent.

  He lifted the flap and looked inside, grinning.

  Miraculously Harcourt was still alive. He lay on his back on the cot, his upper body drenched scarlet with blood. A bullet had torn away his lower jaw, and his eyes were wild.

  Still grinning, the deacon took time to reload a revolver, then stepped beside the cot. He pushed the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson between Harcourt’s terrified eyes.

  “Nobody steals Deacon Santee’s woman,” he said.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The herd was restless, most of them standing, but they showed no inclination to run. Gradually the cattle calmed and began to graze and the deacon was pleased.

  The shorthorns would put on beef for the drive south, and that was all to the good. He could count on fewer losses.

  He reloaded both revolvers, deep in thought.

  The bodies of the men he’d killed could remain where they lay. He’d send the vaquero to his sons and tell them to bring back the army herd for the trail south. They should arrive before noon and the dead men shouldn’t be stinking too badly by then.

  Except the cook.

  Santee grinned. He’d gunned a trail cook once and the man had swelled up overnight and already stunk to high heaven come sunup, probably on account of him eating too much.

  He nodde
d. It just went to show that moderation in all things was the key, something he himself practiced.

  The deacon glanced toward the wagons. He had unfinished business with Maxine, or was it Leah? He couldn’t remember. No matter, once the vaquero was gone he’d do both of them.

  But then the damned Mex sidled up beside him and told Deacon Santee something that ruined his plans and his evening.

  Chapter 34

  “That’s what I seen and I figured you should know,” the vaquero said.

  “Where the hell was this?” Santee said.

  “About a mile north of the old ghost town.”

  “You saw them for sure?”

  “With my own eyes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

  “I didn’t think it so important.”

  “The buzzards could be circling my sons,” the deacon said. “Did you think that wasn’t important?”

  The vaquero shrugged. “It is not likely. Señor Enoch is a pistolero and so is Jeptha. They would not fear the Apaches.”

  “Then why aren’t they back here?”

  The vaquero said nothing. The question was impossible to answer.

  But the deacon pushed it. “Why aren’t they here?”

  “They toy with women, perhaps,” the vaquero said, taking a stab at it.

  “Maybe. Jeptha, my youngest, has a . . . fixation, I guess you’d call it . . . about blond women with bows in their hair.”

  “But just maybe he found one,” the vaquero said. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or an Apache bullet found him.”

  The deacon ordered the vaquero to mount up and tell Gideon and Zedock to return with the herd.

  “I’ll leave at first light and take a look for them buzzards you saw,” he said. “If somebody killed my boys, Apache or white man, I’ll tear this country apart until I find him.”

  “Maybe the killer, if such exists, lives in the ghost town,” the vaquero said.

  “Yeah, and that’ll be the first damned place I’ll look,” the deacon said.

  After the vaquero rode out, Santee stepped toward the wagons.

  “Maxine!” he yelled. “You get ready.”

  He heard the woman give a pleasurable little squeal and it pleased him.