Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

Jess said nothing. Suddenly she felt an emotion that was a close kin to despair and it cut through her like a blade.

Mash Lake shook his head. “Nary a sign of them, Sam. Apaches would’ve jumped at the chance to nab them big American studs.”

“Mash, what do we do now?” Jess asked, alarm in her voice.

Lake smiled. “We walk, little lady.”

“Without horses you’ll never make it,” Pace said. “How many Apaches do you think there are between here and Snowflake?”

“Well, hell, boy, we can’t stay where we’re at,” Lake said.

The two men had accompanied Jess to the creek. They sat on the bank while she kneeled by the water, splashing her face, neck, and breasts.

“You can stay right here, Mash,” Pace said. “When the folks come back, you and Jess can find work helping them rebuild.” He smiled. “I might even make you my deputy if you steer clear of the whiskey.”

Now it was Lake’s turn to show alarm.

“Are you goin’ crazy on me again, boy?” he said.

“Mash,” Jess said, “leave him alone.”

“But he’s cuttin’ loco close again, Jess,” Lake said.

The woman dried her hands on her dress, then did up the buttons over her breasts.

“Sammy is coming with us to Snowflake,” she said. “He’ll be fine once he’s away from this awful place.” She hesitated just a moment, then said, “I’ll take care of him.”

Pace shook his head. “No, I told you, I’m staying right here. Requiem is my town and now it needs me more than ever.”

“Son,” Lake said, his voice gentle, “there is no town.”

Pace smiled. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong, old man.”

He rose to his feet and looked toward the piled ruins.

“I can see it,” he said, his gaze glowing. “I can see the new buildings, all the tall stores and saloons and maybe a new church. The signs will be fresh painted and hang on chains outside every door and people will go in and out, the womenfolk with packages in their hands, the men stopping in the street to talk crop yields and cattle prices.”

Pace grinned and pointed. “Jess, Mash, look. Can’t you see it? The town of Requiem, new-aborned from the ashes. It’s there. All you have to do is look.”

Mash got to his feet and stood beside him.

“Sam, if they’re to last, buildings need a firm foundation,” he said. “And so does a man. If he don’t have that, he’ll sink into the ground and be lost forever.”

He turned and waved in Jess’s direction. “Over there is a woman who can give you that foundation, boy. Go with her so you don’t sink any deeper into craziness.”

Pace shook his head. “You just don’t see it, do you, Mash?”

The wrinkled planes of Lake’s face stiffened. “I see what I see, boy. An’ I don’t like any of it.”

Chapter 55

Mash Lake carried a burlap sack over his shoulder, bulging with the blackened cans of food he’d scavenged from the burned-out husk of the general store. He carried his rifle in his left hand.

Beside him, Jess had a couple of blankets tied to her back and she wore a battered hat Pace had given her.

“Change your minds,” he said. “You won’t make it.”

Lake shook his head. “Sam, I’ve fit Apaches afore and I reckon I’ve got their measure. We can’t stay here, boy. We’d starve to death if’n the cholera didn’t get us first.”

Pace looked at the woman. “Jess?”

“I’m going with Mash, Sammy. This is a terrible, cursed place. I can’t stay here a minute longer.”

Her face was strained, the plea in her voice almost a sob.

“Sammy, come with us. I’ll be a good woman to you, I promise.”

Pace smiled. “I reckon not. This is where I belong.”

Jess had realized hours before that further argument was useless. Now she accepted what was happening and gave up the struggle.

“Then take care of yourself, Sammy,” she said.

Pace nodded. “You too, Jess.”

Lake stuck out a hand. “Good luck, boy. Don’t go too crazy, you hear?”

“I’ll try not to,” Pace said. He held Lake’s hand a moment longer than a handshake demanded.

He watched them go, kept his eyes on them until they dissolved into shimmering distance and passing time.

Pace knew they wouldn’t make it to Snowflake alive.

He was sure Mash Lake, an old Indian fighter, knew as well.

Maybe Jess had a different idea, but he’d never been any good at reading women and couldn’t guess what was in her mind.

She’d lived a hard, degraded life and Pace felt she deserved better than that. But worst of all, her death would go unnoticed and unmourned, and that was the greatest tragedy of all.

He looked into the distance, empty now, and lifted a hand in farewell.

“Good luck, my friends,” he said.

Pace walked along the street, past blackened heaps of charred timber, all that was left of his town. Only the livery stable still stood. The fire had been content to scorch its roof and walls and do no other damage.

He looked inside and noticed a can of red paint, and that gave him an idea.

Pace kicked out a pine board from the stable wall, then found a paintbrush. He laid the plank flat on the ground, kneeled, and wrote DANGER CHOLERA WELL.

He stood and admired his handiwork. It would do just fine.

Pace walked back to the well and laid the board across the parapet.

He nodded, satisfied. Now nobody else would drink the damned water.

The sun began its climb into the morning sky as Pace walked down the street, past the livery and in the direction of the cemetery.

Now all he could do was wait, and there was no better place than a shady spot near his wife and child.

When he reached the site of the mass grave, he unbuckled his gun and let it drop to the ground. Then he sat, his chin on his knees, and began his vigil.

The sun left and the moon found him there.

Then the sun again.

But Sam Pace did not move.

He was waiting . . . for the return of the living . . . or the dead.

Historical Note

Cholera was an ever-present danger in Western cow towns, where outhouses and cattle pens were often situated too close to the water supply.

The great Asiatic cholera outbreak of June and July 1867 killed three hundred people in booming Ellsworth, Kansas, and helped hasten the town’s demise as a major cattle center.

Wagon trains were particularly susceptible to the disease. In bad years, two-thirds of the emigrants on the Oregon Trail succumbed to cholera, a greater mortality rate than from any other cause.

There was no cure and people could go from healthy to dead in a matter of hours.

Sometimes the pioneers received a proper burial, but many were simply abandoned in their beds by the side of the trail, to die alone.

Emigrant John Clark later described such a scene: “One woman and two men lay dead on the grass and some more ready to die. Women and children crying, some hunting medicine and none to be found. With heartfelt sorrow, we looked around for some time until I felt unwell myself. Got up and moved forward one mile, so to be out of hearing of crying and suffering.”

To prevent the disease, emigrants were advised to “carry a small bottle of tincture of camphor and a few lumps of sugar in your pocket . . . and when you have any pain or disorder in your bowels, take three or four drops (of the camphor) on sugar.”

Of course, by the time you had “pain or disorder in your bowels,” you were already dead.

The Mormon settlement of Snowflake, Arizona, was established in 1878 by William J. Flake and Erastus Snow. Hence the name Snowflake.

In the 1880s, serious overgrazing in Texas resulted in catastrophic cattle losses and range deterioration. This is what drove ranchers like Beau Harcourt into the previously unexploited grasslands of the Little Colorado River Basin.