Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

“And they scream, brother. They shriek and wail and gambol about in a dance and it always makes me laugh.”

The man clutched on to the table, clenched his teeth against pain and the sudden, abominable flux that gushed, spluttering, from his body. It was a full five minutes before he could find the strength to talk again.

Finally he said, “Not long now before all the fires of hell descend on this accursed place.”

Above the saloon, a red-tailed hawk quartered the sky and its shrill hunting cry slashed through the evening quiet like a razor.

Chapter 48

Deacon Santee heard the screech of a hawk above the tree canopy, but did not lift his head to look. Nor could he.

He was sick, sicker than he’d ever been in his life.

Right now he should be in bed, tended by his women, not lying across the neck of a horse, trusting that the animal was less lost than he was.

He was traveling toward the setting sun, in the right direction.

Once out of these infernal trees, he’d know where he was headed.

Camp couldn’t be too far away now.

He sniffed, sniffed again.

Wood smoke. Praise the Lord, it was wood smoke!

Not far, then. A mile. Maybe less.

The horse stopped dead in its tracks, so suddenly that the deacon had to grab on to its neck to avoid a tumble.

He tried to kick the animal into a walk, but it stood stock-still, refusing to budge.

Then he smelled it, a stench different to his own rotten-fish stink. Sweeter. And close.

It took a tremendous effort of will, but Santee managed to raise himself into a sitting position in the saddle.

Then he saw what his horse had seen.

His sons Gideon and Zedock.

Or what was left of them.

There was not a shred of human decency in Deacon Santee, nor any depth of paternal feeling. His sons had been sired on whores and he’d always believed he had the ability to hammer out more should the need arise.

But something stirred in him as he watched his boys twist in the wind, their hands rawhide-tied to a tree limb.

Love, pity, empathy, all were alien emotions to the deacon, yet, in small measure certainly, he felt them now, fragile and faint, like a butterfly fluttering its wings in his belly.

He kneed his horse closer to the tree. Nearby, a wisp of smoke rose from an ashy fire. The burning sticks that had been rammed into his sons’ eyes had been lit there.

Their bellies had been cut open and curling blue entrails tangled down their legs and spilled onto the ground.

Was it then, or before, that they screamed? Their mouths were still open now, but the screams were silent.

Gideon and Zedock had been given a death worse than cholera. Worse than anything.

His breath wheezing in his chest, Santee pulled his knife, leaned out of the saddle, and cut his sons down. The bodies thudded to the grass, one on top of the other, sprawled and untidy, and lay still.

The smoldering fire told the deacon that the Apaches were close.

He knew that their sense of smell was keener than a white man’s and that they followed the scent the way a wild animal does.

The stench of rotting fish that clung to his body would leave an easy trail.

He had to get back to the wagons. Surely some of the hands had made it through with the herd.

Once again, Santee gave his horse its head, vaguely aware that it followed an old game trail through the wild oaks.

The grass and trees were greener than he ever remembered them. Above the leaf canopy the sky had shaded into a lemon color, and the final flare of the dying sun tinted the few clouds burnished gold.

After . . . the deacon didn’t know how long . . . the trees gave way to brush, and then to grass.

Ahead of him spread the valley with its S-shaped creek. Harcourt’s tent still stood and he saw a few grazing cattle.

It was a peaceful scene, and the deacon raised his voice in a joyful shout of hallelujah. The good Lord had shown him the way.

He was home.

The Apaches knew the smell of cholera and stayed well away from the white man who tainted the earth with his fish stink.

But they watched him, their black eyes glittering, as they let him pass through their ranks to the valley.

Chapter 49

Deacon Santee found two dead men in the grass, separated by about twenty paces. Both had been shot multiple times, most of their wounds in the back.

He drew rein and looked around him.

It took a while because his sight was blurred, but he spotted the bodies of three more punchers, like the others widely spread apart.

Several cows grazed by the river, one of them a longhorn, but the rest of the herd was scattered to hell and gone, as though they’d dropped off the edge of the world.

The signs were written in burning letters four feet tall and the deacon had no trouble reading them.

There had been a running fight with Apaches, and his sons had been killed early. The rest of the punchers had tried to make it back to camp and had died after they crossed the creek.

As for the herd, it had spooked and most of the cattle would still be running.

His eyes had once been far-seeing, but now, as the cholera ravaged him, the deacon couldn’t make out his wagons.

But they’d be there, he knew. He had no illusions about what he’d find, but then, hope is often the last thing to die in a man.

Santee kneed his horse forward, riding through the long summer twilight and the silence that lay softly on the land.

The breeze felt cool on his face and tasted of pine and he heard coyotes yip in some faint, faraway place.

The deacon rode on, fearful of what he’d find, fearful of the death that awaited him. Fearful of what might come thereafter.

It was worse than he’d imagined, worse than anyone could have imagined.

A man can use a woman hard, but in the end, if he’s considerate, little harm is done.

But Apache warriors had ways of using a woman where much harm was done and consideration for the woman’s well-being didn’t enter into their way of thinking.

And so it was with the deacon’s wives.

The women lay on their backs, legs spread wide, their naked bodies bone white in the half-light except where dried blood crusted black.

Among them lay the body of the vaquero who’d helped Santee shoot Beau Harcourt into collops. The scrap iron head of a war lance was buried deep in the man’s chest and he’d been scalped.

But he’d sold his life dearly, the ground around his body littered with empty shells from his Winchester.

The deacon half stepped, half fell from the saddle.

He moved from body to body, forcing himself to experience the horror in full measure to feed his growing anger.

He felt no grief. No sense of loss.

He took women only for the physical pleasure they provided. Emotional bonds did not interest the deacon in the least.

But ownership did.

The gals had been his’n. And the Apaches had taken them away from him.

Now he would exact the women’s blood price in lead.

That day Deacon James J. Santee sought redemption of a sort, trusting that belted men would talk of him in later days as a man who had sand enough to exact a reckoning.

He drew his guns and looked to where the Apaches had gathered, sensing that true nobility lies in being superior to your previous self.

As he sought revenge for his dead wives and braced himself for his last fight, the deacon was about to do something finer than he’d ever done before in his hunted, violent existence.

And in the end he perhaps found, at least in small measure, his lost nobility.

Chapter 50

The deacon staggered across the short grass, a gun in each hand, muzzles pointing to the painted sky.

As though anger had cleared his vision, he saw the Apaches now, gathered on the bank of the creek.