Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

Santee figured that if there were folks in the tower like the dummy said, they’d be watching the brothers just as closely.

A door at the rear of the church stood ajar, angled outward on just its bottom iron hinge.

The deacon drew his gun and, avoiding a clump of cactus in the doorway, stepped through.

Years before, the church pews had been cleared from the floor and stacked against the walls to make room for dancing. Bats hung from the roof beams and added their fetid smell to the odors of dry rot and decay. The oak pulpit had pulled away from its supports and crashed to the floor, where its panels had blossomed open like a dropped barrel.

The church that had never been a house of worship was rotting inside and out, and it was tinder dry.

The deacon studied the place, his nose wrinkling.

Coal oil be damned. He reckoned he could set the whole shebang ablaze with a single match.

He crossed the limestone floor, quick on his feet. His frock coat flapped around his skinny legs, giving him the look of a tiptoeing crow.

Then he stopped dead in his tracks and doubled over. He felt as though somebody had just rammed a rifle butt into his belly.

The deacon grimaced as he clenched back a knifing spasm of pain in his gut.

Suddenly he felt hot and unwell.

Was he “coming down with something,” as his wives always said?

It had to be the brandy. The bottle had sat in the saloon for years collecting dust and had probably gone bad.

Yeah, that made sense.

He just hoped the damned rotgut was hurting the Peacocks as much as it was him.

It took a minute or so before the deacon felt well enough to pass through the shattered doorway that led to the vestibule.

He looked around, his gun up and ready.

The baptistery lay to his left, and to the right of the main entrance was another doorway that must lead to the bell tower.

Unlike the other doors in the church, this one was intact, its timber panels as solid as the day it was built. Only the tarnished brass handle showed age.

Santee opened the door and walked into a small, rectangular room.

A ladder led upward into the belfry and ended at a closed trapdoor. The bell rope hung almost to the floor, knotted at the end for the convenience of a reverend who had never rung it.

The deacon stepped to the ladder, and then he doubled over as pain stabbed at him. It was a brief, intense spasm that finally passed as the others had done before. But he felt that his bowels were loosening and that worried him.

For a brief moment, he leaned his forehead against the ladder, willing his churning belly to settle. A wave of nausea swept over him and he broke out in a clammy sweat, biting back the urge to vomit all over the floor.

The deacon groaned. What the hell was happening to him?

Too much brandy and too much sun had done for him.

It was as simple as that.

Finally he gathered his strength, grabbed the ladder, and lifted it away from the trapdoor. He angled the ladder against the far wall, well out of reach of the fugitives.

Despite his growing weakness and the green sickness curling in his gut, the deacon managed a smile.

Now that vile whore Jessamine and her protectors were well and truly trapped.

Like rats in a cage.

The deacon stepped to the bell rope and grabbed it with both hands. He cocked his head to one side, listening.

There was no sound.

Up there, above him, they were being as quiet as cowering little mice, afraid of being discovered.

The irony of that pleased the deacon. Soon there would be plenty of noise—when the bell started clanging.

He clutched at his belly and bent over as another spasm slammed at him. This time he threw up, foul-smelling water and booze mixed with green bile splashing at his feet.

After a while, when the final dry heaves ended, he straightened and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. He was trembling, sweat beading on his forehead.

He was sick, very sick, as sick as a pig, and he didn’t know why.

Had the Peacocks slipped poison into his brandy?

He dismissed that possibility as soon as he thought about it. If the Peacocks wanted him dead, they would’ve shot him.

Poison wasn’t their style.

Too much brandy, then. And he’d drunk whiskey beforehand.

There is a serpent in every bottle and he biteth like the viper .

He had overindulged, was all, a mistake the deacon vowed never to make ever again.

As long as he lived.

He took a deep breath, grabbed the rope, and yanked hard.

The bell clamored, clanged, its clashing iron reverberating through the church, a shrill, ear-shattering cacophony that sent the bats shrieking from their roosts.

The deacon screamed laughter, pumping on the rope, his coat flapping behind him like the tail feathers of a bedraggled rooster.

Even when his bowels finally gave way, he went right on screeching.

“Wake up, little mice! It’s time for church!”

Chapter 44

Sam Pace was drowsing when the bell jangled him awake.

“What the hell?” he yelled, springing to his feet.

Jess and Lake had covered their ears, their faces screwed up in pain.

The bell swung back and forth, the clapper clamoring like a tongue in an iron mouth.

Pace threw himself on the bell and circled it with his arms. The hot metal scorched his hands, but he held it still and the sound stilled to a ringing silence.

The rope jerked, jerked again. Pace left the bell alone and grabbed the rope. He pulled, feeling a man’s strength on the other end.

Pace, his brains still scrambled by the sudden racket that had wakened him, drew his Colt and thumbed two fast shots through the trapdoor.

He was rewarded by a yelp of surprise and the sound of running feet.

“Hell, it’s the deacon,” Lake said. He was looking over the top of the rail. “Damn, he’s seen me.”

That last was made obvious when a bullet ting ed off the side of the bell and a second chipped timber close to Lake’s head.

Pace stepped to the rail. Immediately a bullet split the air an inch from his left ear. He caught only a fleeting glimpse of the deacon before Lake reached up and pulled him down.

“Don’t gunfight him, boy,” Lake said. “He’ll kill you fer sure.”

“My God,” Jess said, her nose wrinkling, “what’s that awful smell?”

“It’s the smell of cholera,” Pace said. “The deacon is leaving a trail of it behind him.”

Jess said nothing, but she looked stunned, as though the full horror of the disease had just struck her.

“Where are the Peacock boys?” Lake said.

“I didn’t see them,” Pace said. “They drank the well water and if they’re not sick yet, they will be real soon.”

“Then all we have to do is wait,” Jess said.

Pace nodded. “Seems like. Unless they hurry and come up with something that surprises the hell out of us.”

His face fell. “Damn it, the ladder.”

He waved Jess and Lake away from the trapdoor, then opened it a few inches.

“Like I thought, it’s gone,” he said. “Damn the deacon for a son of a bitch. He moved it.”

“How do we get down from here, Sammy?” Jess said.

“We’ll use the rope.”

“I’ve never done that before,” Jess said. “I mean, climb down a bell rope.”

“Me neither,” Pace said. “But it’s got to beat the hell out of jumping.”

“What do you see, Sam?” Lake said.

“The street’s empty.”

Pace waited a few moments, then said, “Mash, take a look at this.”

Lake peered over the top of the rail. “What am I supposed to see?”

“To the west, in the hills. There it goes again.”

“Yeah, I saw the flash.”

“Reckon it’s the army?”