Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

Harcourt held up his bleeding hand. “What the hell do you think?”

The puncher glanced at Santee, looked away, and said, “How do I play this, Mr. Harcourt?”

“You don’t, boy,” the deacon said. “Not if you want to go on living.”

The cowboy was young and there was a recklessness in him.

“You don’t scare me none, mister,” he said.

The almost benign expression on the deacon’s face didn’t change.

“I should,” he said.

Harcourt kicked out at the puncher’s leg. “Damn it, don’t stand there trying to prove how brave you are. Tear up a shirt or something and bind my hand before I bleed to death.”

The cowboy walked away and the deacon smiled. “I’d say that young man likes to live dangerously. What do you think, Beau?”

“Go to hell,” Harcourt said, wincing against the pain.

“That won’t happen, Beau. My destiny is to enter paradise and sit in a golden throne on the right hand of God. Such is the reward for piety and a life of prayer.”

Chapter 30

Beau Harcourt sulked in his tent, drinking whiskey to dull the pain of the wound and the greater pain of his humiliation.

He’d folded after the deacon drew down on him. He hadn’t even tried to make a play.

The raw whiskey burned Harcourt’s throat. He watched a white moth flutter around the oil lamp, playing with fire.

His gun hand hadn’t been injured.

Damn it, he should’ve tried.

Then he remembered.

“I’ll take the other one off at the wrist, Beau.”

Harcourt watched the moth and his eyes glazed. Growling like an animal, he tore the deacon apart, limb by limb . . . but only in his pain-tangled mind.

A vaquero rode into camp just before midnight.

Harcourt watched the Mexican trot to the deacon’s wagons and step from the saddle.

Santee tumbled from the back of a wagon, yanking up his pants. An angry woman stuck her head out of the canvas and yelled something at him that Harcourt couldn’t hear.

But she was mad as hell.

“The army wasn’t at the river, señor,” the vaquero said.

The deacon’s anger flared. “What the hell do you mean?”

“No army. No money.”

The man was silent for a while, then said, “Plenty of Apache sign in the hills, though. Maybe twenty, thirty bucks, no women or children.”

“What do Gideon and Zedock say?”

The vaquero shrugged. “What the rest of us say, señor. The Apaches have broken out and the army is chasing them. They won’t be buying beef anytime soon.”

“Where is the herd?”

“On the Rio Puerco. The water is not good to drink and the graze is thin on both banks, señor. If we don’t move the herd soon, we’ll have big losses.”

“Harcourt’s men still alive?”

The vaquero nodded. “Sí, ellos todavia viven . ”

“Speak American, damn your papist eyes.”

“They still live.” Then he felt the need to explain. “A big fight over no money is a useless thing.”

The deacon saw his thirty thousand dollars rapidly slip through his fingers.

Damn the Apaches and damn the damned army.

The Mexican pushed it as far as he dared. “ Patrón , we must move the herd.”

“Give me time to think, damn you,” the deacon said.

South. He’d move south and take a chance that the Texas Rangers hadn’t followed him this far.

“We’ll bring the herd back here,” he said. “We’ll pick up Harcourt’s thousand head and push south.”

“To where?”

“Due south to Fort Apache. We need army money and that’s where it’s at.”

The vaquero was appalled. “Señor, the fort is nearly thirty miles south of the Rim, across high country. We can’t drive a herd due south over mountains.”

“Then we’ll keep to the valleys,” the deacon said. “It’ll only add five, six days to the drive if we push it.”

“But many of the cows are already dying on their feet. We’ll lose half of them.”

“So? There will be enough of them left to make a profit. We take the money and keep on going into Old Mexico.”

“The Apaches are out,” the vaquero said. “We may have a big fight.”

But the deacon was all through talking. “We’ll do as I say. Do you hear me?”

He pulled the Mexican closer to him by his shirtfront. “Will you stick?”

The man nodded. “I ride for the brand, señor.”

Deacon Santee smiled. “Good. Now listen well because we’ve got some killing to do.”

Chapter 31

The wind had lain low all day, but now as night fell it gathered its strength and prowled restlessly around Requiem, its wandering path delineated by creaking timbers, the dry rustle of fallen leaves, and the thud-thud of unlatched doors.

Down by the graveyard the wild oaks tossed their branches and whispered ghostly stories to the attentive, bending pines.

The moon sailed high in the sky, scudding through billows of cloud, and small, timid things scurried among the buildings and added their hushed voices to the darkness.

Sam Pace stood at the window of his office and looked outside.

“A night for dead men to walk,” he said.

Lake took a long time before he said anything, then said, “You goin’ all loco on me again, boy?”

“I saw them, old man. Out there in the street.”

“You saw them in a dream, Sam.”

Without turning, Pace said, “Was it a dream? Or was I awake?”

“Dead men don’t walk down Requiem’s street.”

“They do if they’re hungry.”

“Dead men don’t get hungry. They don’t get anything, except deader.”

A quiet fell between the two men. Lake broke it.

“Sam, you don’t go crazy in the head until you’re back in this town,” he said. “It’s time you left and never came near the place again.”

Pace turned and looked at the older man. “The people will return, Mash. They’ll drive right down the street in wagons and after that, all the dead people will be gone.”

Lake shook his head. “It’s the town fer sure, making you crazy.”

“You’ll see,” Pace said. “They’ll come.”

Lake had cleaned his and Pace’s revolvers and now he began to reassemble the oiled parts lying on the desk in front of him.

He watched Pace lock the office door, then move to the window again.

The town was evil, Lake decided, or at the very least it exerted an evil spell over Sam Pace.

The younger man stared out into the street, expecting the dead to rise. Or was he watching for the return of the scattered citizens of Requiem?

Pace answered that question.

“I can feel something, Mash,” he said. “The wind is telling me things.”

“The only thing the wind is telling you, boy, is that you’ve gone crazy again.”

Pace shook his head. “Can’t you feel it? Smell it? The dead walking in the wind?”

Lake said nothing. He put the revolvers together, then reloaded the cylinders.

He held out Pace’s Colt.

“Here, take this,” he said. “If them dead folks come after you, you can hold ’em off for a spell.”

Pace stepped to the desk, took the gun and dropped it into his holster. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

“You are mad, son. As crazy as a loon. But only when you’re in this damned town.”

“The dead are about, Mash. I can tell they are.”

The wind rose and the windows rattled in their frames.

Someone pounded on the door.

Pace’s face froze and he backed away from the window, his hand on his gun.

“Damn it, boy,” Lake said, pushing past him.

“Don’t open it, Mash!”

Lake turned the key and grabbed the handle.

“No!” Pace drew his Colt.

The door swung open.