Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

“Right, that’s it,” she said. “I’m climbing down the rope.”

“Wait!” Pace said.

He smelled it now. The sulfurous stink of rotten eggs.

“Mash, was that you?” Jess said, her nose wrinkling.

“Hell no. I—”

“It’s coal oil,” Pace yelled. “Damn it, they’re going to burn the church out from under us.”

Pace smelled smoke, then saw the first flames lick the side of the church. The fire reached higher. And higher.

The timber that framed the building, especially the heavier beams that supported the roof, had baked beneath four summers of relentless sun and they were tinder dry. The fire quickly took hold and the church torched, blazed, roared as though in mortal pain.

Black smoke shrouded the belfry, and the air became hard to breathe.

“Damn it,” Lake said, “I’m gonna jump.”

“No!” Pace yelled. “You damned fool, you’ll break your legs.”

He dragged Lake toward the bell rope. “Climb down.”

“How the hell do I manage that?” Lake said.

Behind him, flames were shooting through the floorboards.

Pace shoved the rope into Lake’s hands. “Here. Learn as you go.”

The old man aired out his lungs, cursing Pace and the mother who bore him, but he took the rope. He clambered down, using only his hands, and his head bobbed out of sight.

“Now you, Jess,” Pace said.

The woman needed no second bidding. The entire church was ablaze, and the supporting timbers of the bell tower cracked and creaked, threatening to collapse into the inferno.

Pace watched Jess slide down the rope and took one last glance around him.

What he saw chilled him to the bone.

Sparks from the burning church had jumped to the roof of the saloon and the rod and gun store next to it. Both buildings, parched tinderboxes, smoked, and here and there flames fluttered like scarlet moths.

“No!” Pace yelled.

His town was burning to death.

Chapter 53

Sam Pace grabbed the rope and started his downward climb.

He was still ten feet above the ground when the bell tower collapsed.

Flaming timbers plummeted around Pace and a beam slammed into the top of his left shoulder, numbing his arm. He let go of the rope and fell heavily to the smoldering ground.

The weight of the heavy iron bell forced the shattered wreckage of the tower to tumble into the street—and saved Pace from further injury from falling beams or the bell itself.

But fire rippled across the ceiling of the church and hemmed him in on all sides as the walls blazed. Trapped by sheets of flame, Pace felt tongues of fire lashing at him, the heat threatening to scorch out his lungs.

Fire is a good servant but a bad master, and Pace felt a surge of panic as flames lashed at him. Blinded by smoke, he turned to his right and, limping on a left ankle that had taken the brunt of his fall, ran for his life.

Pace lowered his head and hit a shifting scarlet and gold wall. He splintered through burning timbers and what was left of the charred framing and hit the grass rolling.

He felt fire rip at his back, staggered to his feet, and tore off his burning shirt. Then he ran again, away from the church. Behind him the entire building collapsed with a roar, flames shooting high into the night sky.

Pace limped into the street, and the sight that greeted him caught the breath in his throat.

The whole town was on fire, from the saloon all the way to the barbershop. The east wind had picked up and spawned a roaring firestorm that cartwheeled through the buildings.

Worse was to come.

As Pace watched, the fire finally found the stacked barrels of gunpowder in the rod and gun shop. With a tremendous roar, the roof of the store was lifted clean off. The blast leveled the walls and scorched and splintered timbers hurtled across the street.

Pace felt the explosion like a gigantic fist, its punch powerful enough to knock him on his back.

For a couple of minutes he lay where he was, stunned. Then slowly, painfully, he rose to his feet.

The sky above Requiem had shaded from midnight blue to cherry red, barred by a dozen columns of sooty black. The wind fanned flames that devoured Requiem like wolves, picking the town clean to the bone.

Sam Pace groaned and fell to his knees, a sorrowing penitent at a sacrificial altar.

His town was gone. And with it, the reason for his existence.

Pace saw the movement out of the corner of his vision, the slow crawl of a white worm. He lifted his head and his eyes narrowed, focused, clutched at a fistful of night.

The worm crept, slithered, slid away from the burning church, its way lit by fire.

Sam Pace rose to his feet. He drew his Colt and limped toward the worm, tall and terrible, his naked chest splashed by scarlet shadow, the hollows of his eyes deep in darkness.

The worm, pale, covered in filth from its own body, stopped and looked at him. It raised a hand, in a plea for mercy or in defiance, Pace would never know.

“Which of them Peacocks are you?” Pace said, looking down at the man.

The mouth in the skull face opened, smiled. “Pestilence.”

Pace nodded. “Then go back to hell, damn you.”

He emptied his gun into the man, and was still thumbing the clicking hammer when Jess grabbed his arm and gently pulled him away.

Chapter 54

Come daylight, the wind still came from the east. It nosed around the cremated remains of Requiem, now a charred skeleton of ruined buildings that framed crazily leaning spars rising out of a gray sea of ash.

Wisps of smoke still drifted from the wreckage, the sad remnants of the town’s funeral pyre.

Sam Pace and Jess stood in the street and gazed at the carnage the fire had wrought.

Pace was silent, his face like stone, and Jess’s heart went out to him.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” she said, looking at him, “so sorry that your town is gone.” Then, hopefully: “There’s no reason left for you to stay.”

Pace said nothing, but after a few long moments he said, “Are all the Peacock brothers dead?”

Jess nodded. “Mash says he saw one burn in the church. I guess the two others died in the saloon.”

“Where is Mash?”

“He left to go look for the Peacock horses. He told you that.”

“I didn’t hear him.”

Jess put her hand on Pace’s arm. “Are you all right, Sammy?”

“I’m fine, just fine.”

The woman’s face was blackened by smoke, her eyes red-rimmed, still smarting.

“When Mash finds the horses, we can get out of here,” she said. “Mash said Snowflake is a big Mormon settlement and we’ll be safe from the Apaches there.”

Jess put her hand on Pace’s forearm. “I think we could make it, you and me. I mean, be happy together.”

Pace said nothing. He looked around him, his eyes distant.

Then, like a man waking from a dream, he turned and smiled, a vague smile, remote as the far mountains.

“I must stay here because the people will rebuild,” he said. “That is the way of western men and women. They endure. After hard times they straighten their backs, pick up and start all over again. It’s been that way in the past and it will be that way in the future.”

Jess moved a step toward Pace, hesitated a heartbeat, then threw her arms around his neck.

“Sammy, hang on,” she said. “You’ll be fine when we get to Snowflake. You’ll feel better. I know you will.”

Pace gently disengaged the woman and looked around him.

“I thought I’d lost everything,” he said. “But I haven’t. This is still a town, my town, and it will be reborn out of the ashes.”