Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

Pace saw his Colt lying on the ground several feet away, a fact that brought him no comfort.

“Mr. Harcourt, this is my town. You may own the range around it, but you don’t own Requiem.”

“I’ve got a different opinion on that. What happened here anyhow?”

“Three years ago we got took by the cholera. Four score citizens and more now lie in the graveyard. The rest lit out. But they’ll be back and find their lawman waiting for them.”

“You?”

“Me.”

That last brought guffaws from Harcourt’s hardfaced riders.

Talking above the laughter, the big man said, “You cut your hair, shaved, or bathed in them three years . . . Marshal?”

“Maybe. But not that I recall. Sometimes I get loco, tetched in the head, and then I don’t remember to do things. I don’t remember anything, except the cholera. But sometimes I can tell a hawk from a handsaw, when the wind is right.”

“Hell, what do you eat? Lizards?”

“When the store owners pulled out, they left stuff behind. I eat from cans. I eat peaches and beans and meat sometimes.”

Harcourt grinned. “No matter, a man should remember to take a bath.” He tilted his head to the side and his grin faded to a smile. “You got a horse?”

“Yes, at the livery.”

“Then saddle up and get out of here while you still can.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Because all them dead people will come back and expect to find you here?”

“No, the folks who left will come back.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Man, you’re even crazier than I thought you were. What’s your name, wild man?”

“Do you care?”

“No. But I still want to hear it.”

“Sam Pace.”

A tall rider wearing a fringed buckskin jacket stiffened in the saddle and said, “Well, I’ll be.”

“Something bothering you, Heap?” Harcourt said.

The man called Heap ignored the question and said, “Were you the Sam Pace out of Cochise County?”

“There and other places,” Pace said.

Heap nodded, then answered the question on Harcourt’s face. “Gunfighter. Or he was. He wore a Ranger’s star when he killed Dixie Tavern back in seventy-five, and Dixie was fast on the draw.”

“He sure don’t look like much now.”

“No, he don’t, boss. That’s fer sure.”

Heap watched absently as Harcourt shook out his rope.

Finally, as though he’d just fitted words to a thought, he said, “Back in the day, Pace was hell on wheels with a gun; killed his share. Even a crazy man don’t lose that.”

Harcourt frowned at Pace. “Is that right? You good with a gun?”

“I manage,” Pace said.

Harcourt sat back in the saddle, the rope swinging idly in his right hand.

“For some reason you worry me,” he said, “and I don’t like being worried.”

The rope snaked out and the loop dropped neatly over Pace’s shoulders, then dropped to his ankles.

“But all that changes right now,” Harcourt said. “Time to read to you from the book.”

He kicked the steeldust into a gallop.

Pace was yanked off his feet and sent tumbling into the dirt. His body spun as Harcourt let rip with a rebel yell and dragged him into the street.

Pace’s world narrowed to the billowing cloud of yellow dust that enveloped him and the pain that scraped mercilessly at his belly, back, and thighs. He opened his mouth and tried to roar his outrage and anger. But his mouth filled with sand and he could only croak. His throat clogged and he vomited green bile on himself.

Somewhere he heard men laugh.

Chapter 3

Sam Pace lost count of how many times Harcourt dragged him up and down the street behind his running horse. A lot. That much he knew. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Pace’s cartwheeling body came to a stop and he felt the pressure of the rope around his ankles ease.

Harcourt’s voice came from a long way off, from somewhere beyond the settling dust cloud.

“Boys,” the big rancher said, “Marshal Pace will take his bath now. And a shave and a haircut.”

Four of Harcourt’s grinning riders, hooting and hollering, scrambled off their horses and grabbed Pace, dragging him to his feet.

“Fill a horse trough,” one of the men said. He nodded. “Over there, outside the saloon.”

The trough was of zinc-lined wood, green with algae and slime. A couple of Harcourt’s riders took turns to shuttle a bucket from the well, stopping only when the water was an inch from the top.

Pace slowly understood what was about to happen to him. He glanced across the street to where his Colt lay, half buried in sand. He tried to stagger toward the gun. He was abraded bloody from head to toe, the front of his left thigh gouged by a broken whiskey bottle Harcourt had gone out of his way to gallop over.

Pace struck out at a man trying to drag him to the trough. His fist connected solidly with the man’s chin and the cowboy went down like a felled ox.

Pace paid dearly for that.

He was wrestled to the ground and the boots went in, thudding into his ribs and face. He tried to cover up, but the kicks found their target every time, thumping into his body, beating like the sound of a muffled drum.

“Enough. I don’t want the crazy nut dead.”

Harcourt’s voice.

Pace was hauled to his feet. Through swollen, half-shut eyes, he saw the rancher sit his horse, grinning.

Almost unconscious from the beating he’d taken, his head reeling, Pace had enough awareness to realize that he wanted to kill Beau Harcourt real bad.

“Mr. Pace’s bath now, if you please,” Harcourt said.

“Still want us to give him a shave an’ a haircut, boss?” a man asked.

“Of course. Can’t you see? It’s what the gentleman needs.”

Pace was stripped of his filthy rags and tossed into the horse trough. Somebody found a mostly bald scrubbing brush, but there were bristles enough left to shred the already sand-scoured skin of Pace’s belly and back. Pace growled and roared and fought, striking out at his tormentors, but he was weak from loss of blood and the pounding Harcourt’s riders were still dishing out with their fists and the heavy wooden brush.

After a few minutes, there was blood in the water of the trough and fury in Pace’s eyes, the black, all-consuming anger of a crazy man.

The cowboys laughed and joshed each other, enjoying the sport. Then they took out their knives. They were Barlow folders for the most part. Nevertheless, their carbon steel blades were honed sharp and their owners wielded them with enthusiasm. The punchers started on Pace’s hair, sawing at thick clumps they yanked upward and gathered in their fists. Skeletal fingers of blood trickled from Pace’s head as ragged bunches of hair joined the crimson gore in the trough, making a vile stew of the man’s misery. The keen blades dug deep as they scraped along Pace’s cheeks and chin, shaving off skin along with beard. Now his face bled and crimson drops dripped off his chin.

Pace made a lunge for a man’s knife, but the puncher hit him with a vicious left and his eye swelled closed.

He heard Harcourt’s voice.

“How’s he looking, boys?”

“Real purty,” a man said.

“Well, he’s had enough, I reckon,” Harcourt said. “Get him out of there.”

Finally it was over. Dragging him, dripping wet, from the trough, the Harcourt riders threw Pace in front of their boss’s steeldust.

“Haul him to his feet,” the rancher said.

Harcourt stared at Pace for a long time. Then he said, “Well, Marshal Pace, you don’t worry me any longer, you being so nicely bathed and groomed an’ all.”

Men laughed and Harcourt said, “You got a day to rest up, a day to get your shit together, and a day to contemplate the errors of your ways. After that, I don’t want to see you in this town anymore.”