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

Lake left his horse at the hitch rail and followed Pace’s motioning rifle into the office.

  He saw Jess and swept off his hat. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” he said. “You must be the marshal’s lady wife.”

  “She’s my prisoner,” Pace said. “Now shuck your gun belt and lay it there on the desk.”

  Lake did as he was told.

  “Why are you in Requiem?” Pace said.

  “Strange name fer a town,” Lake said. “Makes me think o’ death and Judgment Day.”

  He read the irritation in Pace’s face and said quickly: “I’m just passing through, Marshal, comin’ from one nowhere, goin’ to another nowhere.”

  Lake scratched a bearded cheek. “Well, that ain’t the whole story. I also got a hanging posse on my back trail.”

  “Why for that?” Pace said.

  “Killed me a crooked gambler.”

  “Hell, gunning a base dealer ain’t breaking the law. Nobody’s going to blame you for that.”

  “Ah, well, his four brothers don’t think that way. Narrow-minded gents, an’ no mistake.”

  Lake’s eyes strayed to the window. “They’ll come for me, if’n they ain’t here already.”

  Chapter 16

  Beau Harcourt was worried. It was now full dark and Heap Leggett should’ve gotten back hours ago.

  Hell, did the crazy man bushwhack him?

  “Did the crazy man bushwhack him, boss?” Ben Trivet echoed Leggett’s thought.

  “Ain’t likely,” Harcourt said. “Heap is no pilgrim. He can take care of himself.”

  Trivet smiled. “Maybe he found himself a wil-lin’ woman.”

  “In a ghost town?”

  His slow brain turning, Trivet said, “Maybe a ghost woman.”

  “Trivet,” Harcourt said, “you’re an idiot.”

  If the puncher was offended, he didn’t let it show.

  “You sure the deacon said he’d have his herd here tomorrow?” Harcourt said.

  “Them’s his exact words, boss.”

  “How does his herd look?”

  “A bit winter-worn, but in fairly good shape. It’s mostly young scrubs, maybe only a third of them beeves.”

  “The army will pay ten dollars a head, no matter what they are.”

  Trivet nodded. “The herd is good enough for Apache beef and most of them are strong enough to make the drive.”

  “When he gets here, you’ll take all the hands and drive the deacon’s herd to the Rio Puerco. You’ll meet up with the army there.”

  “I take our thousand head along as well?”

  “Of course. What do you think I’m gonna do? Leave them here?”

  “I dunno, boss.”

  Harcourt sighed. “Get out of here, Ben. You’re giving me a goddamned headache.”

  Heap Leggett preyed on Harcourt’s mind.

  Where the hell was the man?

  There was nobody around faster than Heap, and sure as hell the crazy man couldn’t shade him.

  Or could he?

  Finally, dark or no, he decided to go look for Leggett.

  He saddled a good night horse, a slate-colored grulla, and told Trivet and the other riders that if he wasn’t back by sunup to come looking for him.

  The moon was full up, the sky ablaze with stars, when Harcourt took the trail to Requiem, coyotes yipping around him in the lilac and silver night.

  He rode with his Winchester across the saddle horn, his searching eyes ranging far. Something about the moon-dappled darkness made him uneasy and the wind smelled like lead.

  Was he going to find a dead man in a dead town?

  Did Leggett discover, too late, that the crazy man was still good with the iron?

  Harcourt spat away the bad taste in his mouth and the concern in his belly.

  Ol’ Heap had probably found whiskey in one of the saloons and gotten drunk.

  Yeah, that was it.

  He was drunk, damn him.

  And loco Sam Pace was dead.

  That was how it could only be. How it had to be.

  Chapter 17

  The slender sound of a flute spilled into the silence of Requiem, each note dropping like a silver coin into a crystal dish.

  Inside the marshal’s office, Mash Lake took the Apache courting flute from his lips and said to Jess, “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  The girl smiled and wiped a tear from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’d fall for any Apache brave who played like that for me.”

  “A Mescalero courting flute’s made from the bloom stalk of an agave,” Lake said. “That’s what gives it such a sweet sound.”

  “Play something else, Mash,” Jess said.

  “Well, on account of how you fed me and biled me up a gallon of coffee, I’ll play something just fer you.”

  Lake brought the flute close to his lips. “This ain’t Apache—it’s Cheyenne—but it’s another courtin’ song an’ right purty all the same.”

  “Mash, no more tonight,” Pace said. “Miss Leslie is going to help me bury her hurting dead.”

  Lake’s hands dropped and his shaggy eyebrows crawled up his forehead like gray caterpillars.

  “Sam, now, you listen to me, boy,” he said. “Miz Jess here told me you was tetched in the head, and I didn’t believe her. But when you talk about buryin’ a dead man in the middle of the night, well, I got to believe your guitar ain’t tuned right.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near that graveyard in the dark,” Jess said. She shivered. “It’s where the cholera dead are buried.”

  “I know,” Pace said.

  “People who die like that . . . walk.”

  “Sure do,” Lake said. “Seen that my own self in El Paso town. Feller by the name of Husky Evans got hung for stage robbery. Day after they planted him, he walked right past the Butterfield office, still in his buryin’ shroud. I seen him plain as I’m seeing you. His face was a kinda blue color and his head hung on one side on account of how his neck was broke. Thinking back, ol’ Husky’s ghost didn’t look too good. Course, ol’ Husky didn’t look too good even afore he was a spook.”

  Lake laid a hand on Jess’s shoulder. “Let the little lady stay here. I’ll help you plant the dead man. Buryin’ Heap Leggett is an honor anyhow. He was a fast man with the Colt’s gun, the fastest west of the Mississippi. Everybody knew that.”

  Pace rose to his feet and shoved his revolver into his pants pocket.

  “The little lady is my prisoner,” he said. “Where I go, she goes.”

  Jess stood and put her fists on her hips. “Sammy, if you want me in the graveyard tonight, you’ll have to drag me there.”

  “That can be arranged,” Pace said.

  “Why you in such an all-fired hurry to bury Heap anyhow?” Lake said. “You got a guilty conscience or something?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Pace said.

  “I know. But he would’ve fer sure killed you, sonny. There wasn’t a man alive was a match for Heap Leggett when he was on the prod. Jess saved your life and if you wasn’t so tetched in the head you’d realize it.”

  Pace let that go and said, “The man needs a decent burying. But he’s got friends and I don’t want them to catch me in the cemetery come daylight.”

  “Then you and me will do it,” Lake said. “Leave the girl out of it.”

  To Jess, Pace said, “You’ll give me your word you won’t try to escape?”

  “Escape from what, Sammy? You? This ghost town?”

  “I’ll narrow it for you,” Pace said. “Don’t try to leave this office tonight.”

  “And if I do leave?”

  “I’ll hunt you down and bring you back.”

  Jess waited as a silence fell on the room. Then she said, “Hear that noise outside? It’s coyotes, and I’m scared of them. I’ll stay here.”

  Lake scratched his bearded cheek.

  “Sounds like the dead calling to one another,” he said. “Restless and
sad, like.”

  Pace managed a smile. “Mash, don’t scare Jess worse than she’s already scared.”

  “Sure thing, Sam. I was just sayin’, was all.”

  “Well, don’t say it again. The night is always full of sounds.”

  He moved to the door. “Let’s go. We have a burying to do.”

  Sam Pace and Lake dug the hole deep, then laid Heap Leggett to rest.

  The two men stood beside the mounded earth, heads bowed, their pants flapping in a soughing wind as Pace said the words for the dead.

  The moon drifted lower in the sky and gave center stage to the stars, and a thin light lay across the graveyard and silvered the canopies of the wild oaks.

  After the wind tossed away Pace’s final words like blown leaves, Lake looked at him and said, “Ain’t much of a send-off to give a man.”

  “I got nothing better,” Pace said. “I didn’t know the feller.”

  “Then I’ll try. I can always come up with something good to say about a dead man.”

  Lake dropped his arms in front of him, crossed his hands, then looked up at the night sky.

  “Lord,” he said, “please accept the soul of Heap Leggett, the fastest man with a gun there ever was. Lord, you know he kilt Long Tom McCloud over to the Brazos River country, and Long Tom was a son of a bitch and reckoned to be the fastest gun west of the Mississippi until Heap came along and called him out. Give him credit for that, Lord, because Long Tom was a man who needed killin’.”

  Lake bowed his head and his voice rose.

  “I recollect ol’ Heap kilt Matt Agnew and John Judith and them two were polecats and would’ve been hung anyhow, so don’t hold them killings agin him either. Same with that rancher feller Luke Battles, Lord. Remember him? He was what you might call a prayin’ and psalm-singing man, so all Heap done was hasten him into a better world than this’n.”

  Lake shuffled his feet, like a man who knows he’s overstayed his welcome.

  “Well, I ain’t got much left to say, Lord, ’cause I didn’t know ol’ Heap that well. But I’m sure he loved ladies and little children and the beasts of the field and said his prayers when he remembered.”

  Lake tossed a handful of dirt onto the grave. “He’s all yours now, Lord, and if’n you ever have a range war with the Devil and need a fast gun, ol’ Heap is your man. Amen.”

  Lake turned to Pace, his eyebrows lifting. “Well? Ain’t you gonna say something?”

  “About what?”

  “Hell, how did I do?”

  “I just wish his white-haired old mother could’ve heard that speech.”

  Lake’s grin was lost in darkness.

  “Damn right. Sam, I think you’re a loco galoot, but you ain’t as crazy as you make yourself out to be.”

  “But I am, Mash. Trust me, I am.”

  Lake put his flute to his mouth. “This is a lament for the dead called ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ and it’s real purty. We’ll see Heap off in style.”

  “Apache?”

  “Nah. A Scottish feller waitin’ to be hung teached it to me.”

  Lake played and the notes of the melody drifted in the wind . . . all the way to the listening ears of Beau Harcourt.

  Chapter 18

  Harcourt drew rein at the edge of town, and his eyes reached into the darkness. The street was deserted, the only light the rectangles of orange that were the marshal’s office windows.

  The notes of the flute fell around Harcourt like a ticking rain and brought him no joy and less comfort.

  Pace wasn’t a flute player, nor was Leggett. So who the hell was the musician? An element of the unknown had intruded on Harcourt’s plan and he didn’t like it one bit.

  He shivered, but not from cold or fear. From something else. “Dread” was the word that described it, as though the black eyes of the night watched him, weighed him, and found him wanting.

  The grulla pawed the ground, uneasy, impatient to be going. Harcourt quieted the horse and considered his next move.

  The flute music came from the other end of the town, by the old graveyard. It would be dark there, way too dark for accurate shooting if it came to that.

  Also, how many men were with Pace?

  The answer dawned on him with terrible certainty.

  The crazy man was burying Heap Leggett, and he’d at least one other with him, maybe more.

  Despite the coolness of the night, Harcourt felt sweat bead on his forehead.

  He couldn’t chance a ride down there in darkness, into the guns of Pace and his cronies. It would be courting death.

  Harcourt slid his rifle back into the leather and gave his situation some thought.

  Finally he decided to go back to camp and round up his men. Come dawn, they’d return shooting and end this thing once and for all.

  But suddenly Harcourt saw something that brought a smile to his lips—a woman alone—and his course of action became crystal clear.

  The door of the marshal’s office opened and Jess Leslie stepped onto the boardwalk, the timbers creaking under her feet.

  She stood for a couple of minutes, listening into the night, then turned and walked back inside.

  A canny man lets his first impulse pass and acts on the second.

  But Beau Harcourt was not a canny man.

  He rode the grulla to the marshal’s office, swung out of the saddle, and jumped onto the boardwalk. He kicked the door open and charged inside.

  Jess made a dive for the Winchester in the gun rack.

  Harcourt had a fleeting impression of the woman.

  Young . . . thick yellow hair, huge eyes, a wide mouth, narrow waist . . .

  He beat Jess to the rifle, grinned, then backhanded her hard across the face. The girl bounced away from him and crashed, unconscious, onto the floor.

  Harcourt, a big man and strong, picked up Jess effortlessly, carried her outside, and threw her across his horse.

  He stepped into the saddle and galloped out of Requiem.

  As the grulla covered ground with its sure canter, the situation Harcourt had left behind amused him.

  Obviously Pace was sleeping with the girl—and what man wouldn’t?

  Like a rat, the loon would wait until first light and then dart from his hole and come looking for her.

  Out in the open he’d be easy to kill.

  Chapter 19

  “She skedaddled, Sam, just as you said.” Mash Lake shook his gray head. “Little gal sure had me fooled.”

  “Seems like.”

  Pace glanced around the office; then his eyes caught and held on a patch of floor near the gun rack.

  “Mash, come here, quick,” he said. “Look at this.”

  Lake studied the warped timbers for a moment, then said, “It’s blood. And there are other spots on the wall.”

  “Yeah. And I’m willing to bet that it’s Jess’s blood.”

  Lake’s eyes wandered to the door. “What do you reckon happened?”

  “Somebody came in here and took her, is what happened.”

  Pace rubbed a smear of dry blood between his fingers. “You ever hear of Deacon Santee?”

  “Hell yeah. Everybody’s heard of the deacon. I was told he got hung years ago down Texas way.”

  “He didn’t. He’s alive and well, sprightly and horny enough to take Jess as his seventh wife. But she ran away and when she stumbled on Requiem she warned me that Santee would come after her.”

  Lake whistled through his teeth. “The Deacon Santee I heard about, if it’s the same one, ain’t nobody to mess with, Sam. He’s got a bunch of sons who are just as wild as he is and they’re known for cuttin’ up folks with bullwhips. The deacon his own self is pure pizen with a gun and he’s as crazy as a loon.”

  The old man’s eyes showed his concern. “Hell, Sam, he’s even crazier than you, and that’s sayin’ something. Mind you, that only goes if this deacon is the original article.”

  “He’s the original article all right. There’s no doubt about t
hat.”

  “What will he do to the girl?” Lake said.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Mash.”

  Pace stepped to the window and leaned the top of his shaved head against one of the cool glass panes.

  “You know Jess is a whore?” he said without turning. “Been selling it since she was fourteen, she says.”

  Lake was old enough and experienced enough to take that in stride.

  But he didn’t answer, his face betraying nothing.

  “I reckon there ain’t a thing the deacon and his sons can do to Jess that men haven’t done to her before,” Pace said.

  “Except kill her,” Lake said.

  “Right. Except kill her.”

  “What will we do, Sam?”

  “Not we, Mash. There’s only me on this one.”

  “What will we do, Sam?”

  “She’s my prisoner and I’m responsible for her. I’m going after her.”

  “And I’ll ride with you,” Lake said. “Whore or no, I like that little gal. She kinda grew on me, like.”

  “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it.”

  “That’s the way of it, Sam.”

  Pace crossed the room and opened a drawer in his desk. He took out a holster and cartridge belt.

  “Leather is still supple,” he said. “Even when I was at my craziest, I never forgot to oil them.”

  He filled the cartridge loops and shoved his Colt into the holster.

  “We’ll leave at first light,” Pace said. He smiled. “I’m not much of a hand at tracking folks in the dark. I don’t see that good. You?”

  “I’ve never done it, Sam. But we’ll track better come morning.”

  Lake studied Pace from his scuffed, down-at-the-heels boots to the top of his bristled head.

  “Know something, Sam? You’d look a sight saner if you ditched them rags you’re wearing and got yourself some better-lookin’ duds.”

  Pace glanced down at himself. “I guess that’s what three years of living rough can do to a man. I look like a railroad bum, don’t I?”

  “You do an injustice to bums everywhere, Sam. You look way worse.”

  “Bring the lamp. There are a pile of men’s duds in the general store, if they ain’t been et by moths by now.”