Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

“But it seemed so real, that dream. Like they were right here, in the street, so close I could smell them.”

“Well, a dream would seem real to a crazy man. It’s the same kind of real that makes you think you’re the marshal of a ghost town.”

“I am the marshal. Nobody in Requiem ever said I wasn’t.”

“Sam,” Lake said, “you just ain’t right. And that’s a pity because you’re a real nice young feller when you ain’t nuts.”

“I didn’t see them, the dead people?”

“No, you didn’t, and that’s the honest truth.”

Lake put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, his voice taking on a sharp edge. “No more dreams about dead people, boy. Dreams take you nowhere, but a good kick in the ass will take you a long way. Understand?”

Pace smiled. “You mean if I dream about dead people again, you’ll kick me up the ass?”

“Exactly. You’ve got the picture, Sam.”

This time Pace laughed out loud, and it felt good. “Then I promise, Mash. No more bad dreams.”

“Good, because at my age I don’t think I can raise my boot high enough to kick a tall feller like you up the ass.” He smiled. “At least, not as a regular thing.”

Lake had night eyes and as they walked back to the marshal’s office, he saw the two riders before Pace did.

And his old lawman’s gut instinct warned him to treat them for what they were—trouble.

“Riders coming,” he said. He stopped in his tracks and eased the Remington in its cross-draw holster.

“Trouble?” Pace said.

“That’s what it shapes up to be, boy—trouble in pairs.”

Unless a man is cavalry-trained to revolver-fight off the back of a horse, he’ll always dismount to get his work in.

Enoch and Jeptha Santee were no exceptions.

The brothers stepped out of the leather, slapped their horses aside, and walked toward Pace and Lake.

They moved easily, with none of the horseman’s stiff-kneed gait. Both men were smiling, self-assured, confident of their gun skills.

Pace took a single step away from Lake.

“On your left, Mash,” he said.

He smiled. “Howdy, boys, looking for a place to rest up?” He waved a hand. “You got the whole town to choose from.”

“Where the hell is everybody?” Enoch said. He noticed the star on Pace’s shirt and added, “Lawman.”

Lake answered for Pace.

“This here is a ghost town, boys. Nobody here but us two, poor old Mash Lake as ever was, and Marshal Sam Pace, who ain’t right.”

“Ain’t right in the head, you mean?” Enoch said.

“Now, would he think he’s the marshal of a ghost town if’n he wasn’t tetched?”

“He do look tetched, with that shaved head an’ all,” Jeptha said. “Don’t he, Enoch?”

“Shut your trap, Jeptha. I got business to attend to here.”

“Here, hold up a minute,” Lake said. “Enoch and Jeptha. I know them names. Ain’t you young gentlemen good ol’ Deacon Santee’s sons?”

“What’s it to you, old man?” Enoch said.

“Why, ’cause I’m a friend of yore daddy, fine, churchgoin’ feller that he is. Surely you heard him talk about ol’ Mash Lake and what a true-blue friend of his’n I am?”

“Pa ain’t never mentioned you,” Enoch said.

He looked on edge, hard in the mouth, his eyes lost in shadow.

“I’m looking for a girl,” he said.

“None of them in this town,” Pace said. “You want a woman, go someplace else where there are sich.”

“I want one partic’lar woman, crazy man,” Enoch said.

“Well, she ain’t here,” Pace said.

Pace knew he was being pushed and he didn’t like it. A gunfighter’s pride is a touchy thing. It’s like a stick of dynamite. All it takes is a pushing man to light the fuse and it’ll explode.

Enoch Santee was on the prod and he already had a match burning.

“Mister,” Enoch said, “I say you’re a damned liar.”

“Here,” Lake said, “that’s a hard thing to say to a man.”

“You shut up, you old coot,” Enoch said. “I won’t tell you a second time.”

He turned his head slightly, his voice rising.

“Jeptha, search the place, starting with the marshal’s office. The girl is here. I can smell her. These two idiots got her stashed somewhere.”

“Stay out of my office, Jeptha,” Pace said.

His voice held an edge sharp enough to shave with.

“An’ if’n he don’t?” Enoch said.

Pace would be pushed no further.

“If’n he don’t, I’ll kill him,” he said.

Chapter 22

“Well,” Mash Lake sighed, “I guess that just about tears it.”

He was right.

“What will I do now, Enoch?” Jeptha said, hesitating with one boot on the boardwalk.

“You’ll do as I say.”

“Stay right where you’re at, Jeptha,” Pace said.

“Mister, I’m getting mighty tired o’ you,” Enoch said. “I’m ending this right now.”

He went for his gun, a practiced, fast movement that blurred his right hand.

Pace was faster.

Enoch’s gun was leveling when Pace’s bullet hit him, high in the left shoulder.

Enoch absorbed the bullet shock, fired, missed, and took a step back, blood on his buckskins.

Beside him, Pace heard Lake shoot. He was vaguely aware that Jeptha had fallen to one knee, screaming, but was still trying to get his work in.

Enoch thumbed off a second round. But he’d been hit hard and was unsteady on his feet. His bullet plucked futilely at the left arm of Pace’s shirt.

Pace steadied. Fired. Fired again. Two shots that sounded as one.

This time Enoch went down, sudden blood on his lips.

He sprawled on his back, chested a couple of great, heaving gasps, and lay still, all the life that was in him fled.

Mash Lake kneeled beside Jeptha, and Pace joined him.

The boy was dying, but he grabbed Lake by his shirtfront and whispered, “You got any pretty young gals with bows in their hair in this town?”

“A few,” Lake said. “And they’re real purty, an’ all.”

“I knowed they was here. I just knowed it.”

“Did you want to meet a little purty gal?”

Jeptha nodded, smiling, his eyes fading. “Hell yeah. I wanted to fuck her, then blow her brains out fer bein’ so damned uppity.”

“Boy,” Lake said, “you’re a credit to the mama that bore you.”

But Jeptha was already dead and didn’t hear him.

Lake rose to his feet, his knees cracking. “Well, Sam, we know it wasn’t the deacon took Jess. These boys of his’n were on the scout for her.”

“Seems like.”

Lake gave Pace a speculative look. “You’re good with the iron, Sam. As fast on the draw as any I’ve known.”

“You throw some fast lead your own self, old man.”

“I never throwed it at a feller more deserving than Jeptha. The boy was a sorry piece o’ white trash.”

“He was a mean one all right.”

Lake stretched a crick out of his back. “Damn it, Sam, now there’s more buryin’ to be done.”

“The hell there is. We’ll throw a loop on their feet and drag them out of town. Them two Santee whelps don’t deserve a proper buryin’.”

“You’re a hard, unforgiving man, Sam.”

“I reckon. But only when I ain’t crazy.”

A thick mist arrived with the dawn, hugging the ground, and when Pace led the way out of town it looked as though he and Lake were riding through a gray sea.

“We ain’t gonna find tracks in this fog,” Lake said.

“It’ll burn off when the sun comes up,” Pace said.

Lake peered ahead of him, the mist curling around his horse. “So, where do we go in the meantime?”

“Pick a bearing, Mash. Any direction that takes us away from Requiem.”