Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

Jess fell into Lake’s arms.

He half carried, half dragged her to the chair by the desk.

The woman’s face was badly scraped by tree branches and she had a huge purple welt on the right side of her face. Her dress was torn and somewhere along the way she’d lost a shoe.

Pace had recovered from his fright.

“I’ll get her something to eat,” he said.

“Get the whiskey,” Lake said. “Only danged fools like us eat peaches and bean stew.”

Pace poured whiskey into a glass and Lake held it to Jess’s mouth.

“Drink this,” he said. “It will make you feel better.”

The woman took a swallow and her eyes fluttered open.

“What damned fool locked the door?” she said. Her voice was weak, barely a whisper.

“Sam is the damned fool,” Lake said. “He’s afeared o’ dead folks.”

“Have you gone crazy again, Sammy?” Jess said.

“Yeah, seems like I’m tetched,” Pace said.

“Then God help us all.”

Lake moved to lay the glass on the desk, but the woman stopped him.

“Pour some more whiskey in there, Mash,” she said. “And bring it back.”

Pace built a cigarette and thumbed a match into flame. Through a spiral of blue smoke, he said, “Did Beau Harcourt do that to your face?”

“What do you think?”

“Was he trying to . . .” Pace couldn’t find the words.

“Rape me?”

“Yes . . . that.”

“He raped me.” Jess’s fingertips moved to the bruise. “He gave me this because he didn’t enjoy it.”

A quiet fell on the room as Pace and Lake fumbled for something comforting and reassuring to say. Women could have done it, but the men retreated into what they hoped was a sympathetic silence.

Jess smiled. “I’m a whore, remember? Every time a man pays me two dollars and throws himself on top of me, it’s rape. You could say I’m used to it.”

“More whiskey?” Pace said.

He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Chapter 32

Rain ticked on the roof and dripped from the eaves of the marshal’s office. It was a light rain, but enough to lay the dust in the street for at least a while.

Jess stood at the window, her fingertip moving on a pane, tracing the descent of a raindrop.

“Why are we here?” she said.

Pace looked at Lake, who shrugged.

“Where?” Pace said.

“In Requiem.”

“It’s my town,” Pace said.

“But it makes you mad.”

“Maybe I feel safe here.”

“You’re not safe. The deacon, Beau Harcourt, the posse that’s chasing after Mash, they all want us dead for one reason or another.”

“That’s no posse, girl,” Lake said. “It’s the four Peacock brothers. They ain’t human, not by a long shot.”

“The one who looked in the tent, was he one of them?”

“Yeah, he was a Peacock.”

“He looked like death.”

Lake smiled slightly. “He is death. All four of them are death.”

Jess crossed the floor, took the burning cigarette from Pace’s fingers, and inhaled deep. “We’re living on borrowed time, but this doomed town keeps calling us back. It wants to keep us here, wants us to die here and join the others in the graveyard.”

“Things will change,” Pace said. “When the folks come back.”

“Sammy, this is a ghost town,” Jess said. “And you’re a ghost marshal. Soon Requiem will crumble into dust and blow away in the wind.”

She looked at Lake. “Mash, talk some sense into him.”

The old man shook his head. “I’ve tried, and oncet or twicet I even thought he’d listened. But, like you said, as soon as he gets back in Requiem, he goes crazy again.”

Lake laid a hand on Jess’s shoulder.

“Sam can’t leave Requiem because it’s worked some kind of evil spell on him,” he said. “I can’t leave because the Peacocks will gun me for sure. But you can make a break for it, put some git between you and this place.”

“You think so, Mash?”

“I’ll bring a horse around front.”

“No matter where I went, the deacon would hunt me down. He’ll blame me for the deaths of his sons, just like he’ll blame you two. I can’t go far enough or fast enough to escape a man like that.”

“There’s the law. I mean, real law.”

“Yes, Mash, you’re right. But the law for whores isn’t the same as the law for respectable folks.” She shook her head. “No, I’m trapped, just like you”—she looked at Pace—“and the poor crazy man.”

Jess glanced at the old railroad clock on the wall, its hand stilled at three twenty-seven.

“When did you last wind the clock, Sammy?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Pace said. “Three years ago, I guess.”

“Then wind it and set the time by Mash’s watch. It will measure the hours we have left, all of us.”

The ticking railroad clock sounded like water dripping one drop at a time into a tin bucket. The oil lamp guttered in the wind, casting shifting shadows around the room, and the windows showed only darkness, as though the panes were covered with tarpaper on the outside.

The rain had stopped for now and no longer made its soft music.

Jess and Lake drowsed while Sam Pace worried.

The woman had been right about something. When he was in his office with the door closed, it felt as if he’d locked out the world and nothing could harm him.

He knew how wrong a thought that was.

Arrayed against him were some formidable enemies.

On his own, the deacon was a handful. Add his surviving sons and the border trash that rode for him, and it summed up to a dangerous combination.

Harcourt, a fast gun, had his punchers, all of them tough, hard-bitten men who would know how to fight.

And then there were the Peacock brothers.

But their fight was with Mash Lake, not himself.

Pace flushed at the traitorous thought.

Old Mash had laid his life on the line for him. To desert him now would be an unforgivable act of betrayal. He knew if he sold out Mash now, he could never again hold his head high in the company of men.

Ah well, the odds were insurmountable.

That’s what it all boiled down to.

Pace glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes had passed since he’d gotten it running. Half an hour of his life already gone. How long did he have left?

He looked at Jess, then Lake. Suddenly they seemed vulnerable.

They depended on him, and he couldn’t understand why.

No one should put their trust in a crazy man.

Pace rubbed a hand over his dry mouth, his blue eyes bleak.

The trouble was, in the scheme of things, none of it mattered.

The world didn’t give a damn about the lives of a whore, a madman, and a creaky old-timer whose best days were long behind him.

If they all died today, tomorrow, the next day, who would care enough to mourn them?

Pace knew the answer to that question: not a living soul.

He sighed deep, shuddering, like an asthmatic trying to catch a breath.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, at the black hands of time that measured the hours of his life.

“Ah, the hell with it. Dying is easy,” Pace said aloud. “It’s the waiting that’s hard.”

The wolf howls woke Sam Pace from uneasy slumber.

He rose to his feet, stood, and listened into the night.

Had he been dreaming again, of wolves?

But once more the haunting howls ran through the darkness like rivers of quicksilver.

Alarmed, Pace shook Lake awake, nodded at Jess, and held a forefinger to his lips.

“Listen,” he whispered.

As Pace had done, Lake stood, his face concerned.

The wolves howled and again the troubled night rang with their hollow cries.

Any man who’s heard a pack hunt close and says he was not afraid is a liar and he knows it. Only the mountains are unafraid of wolves. A man lies in his blankets, stares at the hunting moon, breathes quiet, and makes no sound, cursing the heart that beats so loud in his ears.