Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

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.”

“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.