Ralph Compton the Ghost of Apache Creek (9781101545560) Read online

  “Maybe you should rest,” Pace said. “I’ll get you something.”

  “Somehow I don’t think I’d want to eat what you gave me, Sammy.”

  A jumbled pile of canned food was stacked up in a corner to the right of the cell door.

  Jess kneeled and picked up the cans one by one, studying the labels that were still intact.

  “Armour beef and gravy,” she said. “A puncher told me about that.”

  Pace nodded. “It’s not half bad. A little tough sometimes.”

  “Tomatoes.”

  “Kinda mushy.”

  “Beans.”

  “I eat a lot of those.”

  “Peaches.”

  “I like peaches.”

  Jess looked up at him. “Where do you do your cooking, Sammy?”

  Pace was puzzled. “Cooking? I don’t cook. I just open the cans and eat.” He took a folding knife from his pocket. “Here, let me show you.”

  “Later, Sammy,” Jess said.

  She gave Pace a long-suffering, female look, then said, “Get some wood for the stove in your office.”

  “Damn, it’ll get hot in here.”

  “It’s already hot in here. We’ll only keep the fire lit long enough to heat the food and bile coffee.” She frowned. “That’s if Jed What’s-his-name left coffee behind?”

  “Yes, a few sacks. I don’t drink much coffee.”

  Jess shook her head. “They don’t come much stranger than you, Sammy.” She rose to her feet. “We’ll have breakfast, and then I’ll be moving on.”

  “You’re leaving?” Pace said.

  “That comes as a surprise to you?”

  “Yes—I mean, no. I just thought you’d rest up some.”

  “Maybe you planned on having your wicked way with me, Sammy?”

  Pace was shocked. “No, no. I never even thought about such a thing.”

  “Hell, I must be losing my touch,” Jess said. “I saw you look at my tits, you know.”

  “Well, I mean, you’re a very pretty woman.”

  “If you don’t study me too close, Sammy. Now get me some wood and bring a sack of coffee. It’ll be stale, but any kind of coffee is better than no kind of coffee.”

  Pace stepped to the office door, stopped, and turned. “You can stay, if you want.”

  Jess smiled. “Thanks, Sammy. But Deacon Santee will come after me, him and his sons. I reckon you’ve got enough problems of your own without adding mine.”

  “I’m still the law here.”

  This time the woman smiled like a mother who’d just listened to a boasting child.

  “Get the wood, Sammy,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  Heap Leggett sat his horse on a rise above the gently shelving valley that had once helped nurture the town of Requiem.

  He kept to the cover of a stand of wild oak as he watched Sam Pace pick up pieces of wood from the street and boardwalk, shed skin from the decaying stores and saloons.

  Leggett felt a vague pang of disappointment. As a matter of professional courtesy, he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to draw down on the man.

  Not too many years before, Pace had been something, his name mentioned whenever westerners gathered to talk of guns and the men who lived by them.

  More lawman than a member of the gunfighting fraternity’s restless breed, he had never been numbered among the ranks of the elite. But, as a named man, Pace had had to contend with more than a few hard cases who had gone out of their way to step around him.

  Now, well, he was just a dead man haunting a dead town.

  Odd, that, since Pace was still alive and Leggett didn’t really want to kill him. But business was business and as far as Leggett was concerned, whatever had made Pace the man he was had died years before.

  Beau Harcourt planned to tear down Requiem and build his ranch house on the site, close to the running creek.

  Now Sam Pace stood in the way of progress and, unfortunate as it was, he must be forced to step aside.

  Leggett, in no hurry, hooked a leg over the saddle horn and built a cigarette. He lit his smoke and watched Pace disappear into a shadowed alley.

  The man appeared a few moments later, carrying a bundle of firewood as he walked toward the marshal’s office.

  Cooking something, Leggett decided.

  But what the hell did Pace find to eat in Requiem? Rats maybe. Plenty of those around. He was surprised; figured a wild man like Pace would eat them raw.

  A man who carries a gun, even a professional, will now and again tap the handle with his fingertips, reassuring himself that his weapon is still where it should be.

  Leggett did that now.

  Was Sam Pace still fast on the draw-and-shoot? He doubted it.

  The man looked half dead on his feet. A sick man doesn’t skin a fast Colt and he can’t take his hits.

  Sweat trickled down Leggett’s cheeks and neck. The morning had grown warmer and the sun was burning the blue from the sky.

  He lifted his watch from his vest pocket, consulted the time, and snapped the case shut again.

  He’d wait another thirty minutes.

  The condemned man deserved to enjoy his last meal.

  Chapter 13

  Sam Pace sat back in his chair, sighed, and built a cigarette, using dry, three-year-old tobacco. “Good stew, Jess. That’s the first hot meal I’ve et in years.”

  “If you can call meat from a rusty can with tomatoes and beans a stew,” the woman said.

  “It came close.”

  “You’re easy to please, Sammy. You’ll make some lucky woman a good husband one day.” Jess flushed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s all right. Three years heals a lot of hurt.”

  “Do you still think about her, your wife?”

  Pace nodded. “All the time. But it’s not an open wound any longer.” He smiled. “Well, except when I go crazy.”

  “You go crazy because you’ve been here by yourself too long, Sammy. You have to move on, as I’m fixing to do right now.”

  “I sure wish you’d stay, Jess. It’s been real nice to have a woman around.”

  Jess rose to her feet. “Sorry, Sammy. I got to be—”

  “Pace! Sam’l Pace.”

  Pace jumped up from his desk. He grabbed his Colt and walked quickly to the window.

  Outside, a man stood in the middle of the street beside his horse, the reins in his left hand. He wore a gun and a bemused smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “Name’s Heap Leggett, and I’m calling you out, Sam.”

  Pace had heard the name before, and who hadn’t?

  Leggett was reckoned to be one of the best, and there were those who said he could shade John Wesley, if the two of them ever got down to it.

  “Ride out, Leggett,” Pace said. “I got no quarrel with you.”

  Leggett grinned and shook his head. “It don’t work that way, Sam. See, Mr. Harcourt told you to get out of this town, and . . . well, you’re still here, old fellow.”

  “You go tell Mr. Harcourt to come throw me out his own self if’n he wants me gone.”

  “That don’t cut it, Sam. He wants you dead.”

  “And you’re the one who’s gonna kill me?”

  “That’s how she shakes out, Sam. I’m real sorry.”

  Leggett slapped his horse away from him.

  “Come on out, Sam, and take your medicine like a man. It’s gettin’ mighty hot out here in the street and I’ve got the breakfast hunger.”

  Pace stepped to the door. Behind him he heard Jess whisper: “No, Sammy.”

  He walked onto the boardwalk, his Colt hanging by his side.

  Leggett stood tense, ready.

  “The warning was posted loud and clear when you were notified, Sam,” he said. “You chose to ignore it.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Pace said. “Not today.”

  Leggett smiled. “Sam, there ain’t much chance of that. Today or any other day.�
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  “Walk away from it, Leggett. For God’s sake, just leave it alone.”

  “My talking is done, Sam.”

  Leggett drew.

  And died.

  Pace’s Colt had not yet leveled when a .44-40 bullet crashed square into Leggett’s forehead, just under the brim of his hat.

  Even with his skull shattered and his brain destroyed, a man can trigger a shot or two before the final darkness takes him.

  Leggett, game to his last heartbeat, was no exception.

  He thumbed off two wild shots before he fell backward and crashed to the ground, dust drifting around his lifeless body.

  For a moment Pace stood where he was, stunned.

  Then he heard heels on the boardwalk behind him.

  Jess held his Winchester in her hands, smoke trickling from the muzzle.

  “You killed him,” Pace said.

  “Seems like.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell, Sammy, to save your life. And I wanted his horse and guns.”

  Pace kneeled beside Leggett. The gunfighter was as dead as he was ever going to be, his eyes staring at the indifferent sky.

  He felt the brush of Jess’s skirt as she stood beside him.

  “He would’ve killed you, Sammy.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. He didn’t get his chance to prove it.”

  “Well, that’s good for you and too bad for him.”

  Pace rose to his feet.

  “Leggett didn’t die in a fair fight,” he said.

  “He wanted to kill you, Sammy. So who cares what kind of fight it was?”

  “I do.”

  Pace wrenched his rifle from the woman’s hands. “You murdered him, Jess. You murdered Heap Leggett for his horse and guns.”

  “You didn’t stand a chance against him, Sammy. He was way faster than you.”

  “You told me you killed him for his horse and his rifle and revolver.”

  “Yes, I know I did, and that’s true. But I was also trying to save your life.”

  “Jessamine Leslie, I’m arresting you for the willful murder of Heap Leggett.”

  The woman’s face was shocked. “You have no authority to arrest me, Sammy.”

  “I’m the marshal of this town.”

  “You’re the marshal of nothing.”

  “A judge will decide that.”

  “Where the hell are you going to find a judge?”

  “He’ll be here. When the people come back.”

  Jess stared into Pace’s eyes, searching for madness.

  She found it.

  Chapter 14

  Mash Lake came down from the Padres Mesa country ahead of the four Peacock brothers, more troubles weighing on him than a sixty-eight-year-old man had reason to expect.

  Thinking back on it, Lake blamed Mrs. Peacock, whoever she was, for his present woes.

  Not content like a normal woman to have her babies one at a time, she’d squeezed out five at a single go, all of them boys.

  A week before, in an act of great misfortune, instantly regretted, Lake had gunned one of them boys. Now the rest were on his back trail carrying hatred and coiled hemp.

  That the killing was justified—a deck of cards has only four aces—was neither here nor there.

  The Peacocks lived by a harsh code born of a hard land.

  One of them was dead by the hand of another, and that called for a reckoning.

  Around Lake the country stretched still and silent, hill country forested with cedar and pine. Ahead of him rose the purple peaks of the White Mountains, and somewhere beyond their sentinel ramparts lay the Mogollon Rim.

  Lake had seen his last town five days before, his last ranch three.

  By his own count he was missing at least six meals, but he still needed to put a heap of git between himself and the Peacocks.

  All four of them boys were gamblers, as their brother had been, and they were good hands with the Colt’s revolver.

  And there was no backup in them. They’d keep a-coming, like a pack of starving wolves.

  It is a comfort to a man to have a companion in woe, but Lake had none such.

  Apart from himself, the only other visible living creature in the vast land was his yellow mustang. But the little horse was not much of a talker and pretty much kept his own counsel.

  Lake calculated—rightly, it must be said—that the mustang didn’t give a shit about his woes anyhow.

  The day began its slow shade into evening and Lake rode under a candy cane sky when he came upon the town of Requiem.

  From a distance, it looked like any other town he’d known, a place where no one would be glad at his coming or sad at his leaving.

  He sat the mustang, lit his pipe, and studied the burg.

  The town’s only street was empty of people. More importantly, there was no sign of the Peacock brothers or their big American stud horses.

  Truth to tell, there were no horses at the hitch rails, and, as far as Lake could tell, the street was unmarked by the passage of rigs and wagons.

  He puffed on his pipe, a careful man thinking things through.

  It was almost suppertime, so that explained the empty street. People would be home, settin’ around the table or singing around the piano or whatever civilized folks did of an evening.

  Lake had no way of knowing. He’d spent little time under a roof and none within the sound of church bells.

  In the past he’d been an army scout, stagecoach guard, tin-pan gold prospector, lumberjack, railroad-track layer, cow-town peace officer, and for three months, before he’d given it up as a dead-end career, train robber.

  Nothing he’d ever done was easy and nothing had come to him easy either. Some folks get life handed to them on a plate, but the plate had always been washed clean before it ever came around to Mash Lake.

  He’d never lived with a woman who might have tamed him and helped him settle down in one place. He’d shared a bed with whores, of course, but they weren’t the marrying kind.

  Now, about to enter the seventh decade of his existence, life and the living of it had whittled him down to skin, bone, and whipcord muscle. He was tough, enduring, with no softness in him.

  And he was a hard man to kill.

  If he’d been asked, Lake could name four men who’d tried.

  There was Bill Foran, a wannabe bad man back in the Nations. Foran had drawn down on Lake and it was the last mistake he’d ever made.

  He’d outdrawn and killed Cedar Creek Hamp Lawson up Tin Cup way in Colorado, and three years later the Texas gunman John T. Walters, who’d called him out on Christmas Eve in El Paso over a two-dollar gambling debt.

  Earl Peacock was the most recent, and at thirty years old he should have been of an age enough to know better than to draw down on a mean, grumpy geezer with the whiskey on him.

  Peacock had pulled his gun after Lake spotted his crooked deal at Chuck-A-Luck.

  The gambler had cussed him for a doddering old fool who didn’t know his ass from a gin whistle and ordered him to skin iron.

  An instant later the young man learned the hard way that in a belly-to-belly gunfight, age doesn’t matter a damn.

  Only one lamp burned in the town, a firefly in the darkness, and Lake thought that mighty unusual, since the night was starting to crowd closer and the shadows were stretching long.

  But he needed a meal and a place to sleep, and both beckoned to him.

  “The hell with it,” he said aloud, to no one but himself, as is the habit of men who ride lonely trails. “Let’s see what’s shakin’ in this burg.”

  He kneed the mustang into motion and headed into Requiem.

  Later he would curse himself for not riding on and taking his chances along the Rim country.

  Chapter 15

  Mash Lake drew rein at the marshal’s office, where a lamp burned, its two front-facing windows rectangles of orange light.

  Around him the town lay dark and dead and only the prowling wind took any interest in his bein
g there, sniffing him all over before moving on.

  A horned moon began its climb into the sky, and the buildings along the street took on a ghostly sheen, their false fronts looming over Lake as though they were going to reach down and grab him.

  Somewhere a door banged on its hinges. A feral dog barked. Blown sand sifted against the mustang’s legs. Lake’s saddle creaked. He heard his own breathing in the quiet. The dog barked again.

  And suddenly the marshal’s office went dark.

  Lake’s hand rested on the ivory butt of the Remington holstered across his belly.

  “What the hell do you want? State your business.”

  A man’s voice from inside the cabin—rough, unfriendly, and demanding.

  “Lookin’ fer a square and a bed for the night,” Lake said.

  “I got faith in this here rifle gun,” the man said. “She shoots right where I aim her.”

  Deciding that the circumstances demanded a fast burnish of his bona fides, Lake said, “It’s only me, ol’ Mash Lake as ever was. Friend to all, enemy to none.”

  The marshal, or whoever he was, had the good grace to put a grin in his voice.

  “Real true blue, ain’t you, fer a night rider?”

  “Lost my way,” Lake said. “Seen your light. Pegged this burg as a place where I could get a bit o’ supper an’ a bed. Seems like I pegged it wrong.”

  “That depends,” the man inside said.

  “On what?”

  “On me,” the man said.

  The office door opened and Lake saw a tall, thin feller walk out, then immediately step into shadow.

  “Light,” the man said. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

  A moment’s pause, then, “Mister, right now I’m nervous and when I’m nervous I get scared and when I get scared bad things happen.”

  Lake stepped out of the saddle, his hands high.

  “No reason to be sceered of ol’ Mash Lake, as mild-mannered a cove as you’ll find in a day’s ride in any direction.”

  “Around here, that don’t cover a lot of folks,” Pace said. “Come on in slow and grinnin’, like you was bringing a fruitcake to Grandma.”