Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

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’.”