Ralph Compton - The Ghost of Apache Creek

“Speak up,” he said. “What do you see?”

Louder this time, the girl said, “Sally. I see Sally.”

“And why is she hanging there?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Nancy whispered.

The deacon threw up his arms, tilted his head back, and roared at the night sky. “She doesn’t know!”

His prominent blue eyes popping out of his head, he ran down the line of women, stopping briefly in front of each one.

“Claire, do you know?”

“Leah, do you know?”

“Sarah, do you know?”

He halted when he reached the oldest woman in the group, a worn redhead with dead eyes.

“Maxine, tell me.”

“Because she helped the Leslie girl escape your clutches, Deke.”

“No!”

Santee shifted the whip to his left hand and backhanded Maxine across the face with his right. The woman fell, and he stood over her.

“Because she betrayed me!” he screamed down at her. “You hear that? She betrayed me.”

The deacon stepped back and took a Bible from the pocket of his frock coat. He held the book against his chest and bowed his head.

He remained in that posture for ten minutes, and those around him stayed right where they stood, scarcely daring to breathe.

Deacon Santee cut an incongruous figure. He was dressed like a man of the cloth, a battered top hat on his head, yet under his coat two heavy Smith & Wesson revolvers hung from his hips in crossed gun belts.

He was small, skinny, pale, round-shouldered, thin-lipped, bald—and as fast and deadly with the iron as a rattlesnake.

Far off, among the wild oaks, an owl glided silently through the branches like a phantom and small things saw its fleeting shadow and squeaked and gibbered in the underbrush.

The lamps set around the cottonwood guttered in a breeze that pushed the dead woman’s body back and forth and made the tree limb creak.

Finally, like a man waking from sleep, the deacon stirred.

He blinked, looked at the men and women around him, and said, “God has spoken to me. He said the woman betrayed my trust and my punishment was just. He said woe betide any other who is so inclined, for she will surely perish as did Sally, the whore of Babylon.”

The deacon glared at his wives. “So saith the Lord. So saith me.”

“Amen,” Maxine said.

Santee stared hard at the woman for a full minute, but Maxine’s face was empty of all but innocence and he let it go.

“You women get back into the wagons,” he said. “There will be no wedding feast this night.”

The deacon watched his wives climb into the wagons, then said, “You, Gideon and Zedock, get back out there with the herd. Enoch, Jeptha, come here.”

Jeptha, the deacon’s youngest son, was a slack-mouthed youth of limited intelligence and filthy habits. Enoch, the oldest, was smarter and addicted to the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and the works of Dickens. He also kept both volumes of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in his saddlebags. He’d actually read the tomes several times.

Both he and Jeptha were vicious killers, and eager.

The deacon said, “I want you boys to find Jessamine. Bring her here so that she may feel the lash for her iniquity.”

He stepped closer to his sons, his eyes blazing with the righteous fire of a witch-hunter. “This time I’ll make sure she lasts longer than the whore hanging from yonder tree.”

He pointed to the horse line. “Now mount up and go. If ye don’t bring Jessamine Leslie back to me alive, it would be better for you two that you’d never been spawned.”

Chapter 10

The rising sun slanted through the small cell window, throwing the shadow of its four iron bars on the floor.

“Ma’am,” Pace said, “it’s sunup. Maybe time you were awake.”

The girl’s eye fluttered, then opened, and this time Sam Pace kept his distance, standing with his back against the far wall.

“I’m the marshal,” he said quickly, before she fainted again.

The girl sat up in the cot and touched fingers to her forehead.

“I feel so dizzy,” she said. “Where am I? What town is this?”

“Requiem,” Pace said. He stayed right where he was, afraid to move.

“The coyotes . . . ,” the girl said.

“Yeah. I scared them away.” He took a step closer to the cot. “Sometimes they’ll do that if they’re really hungry, attack a person.”

The girl looked at him from head to toe, and her eyes widened, then brightened with alarm.

“ Uh-huh . I look a sight, don’t I?” Pace said, trying to throw a loop on her fear. “I had a run-in with some cowboys.”

“You’re the marshal?” the girl said, a gasp of disbelief.

Pace smiled. “What’s left of him.”

“What did you call this town?”

“Requiem.”

“Strange name for a town.”

“Well, it’s a strange town.”

“My name is Jessamine. Jessamine Leslie.”

“Sam Pace. Right pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

“And yours, too, I’m sure.”

The girl rose and her skirts rustled as she stepped from the cell into the office.

Pace followed, carrying the glass of whiskey he’d poured earlier.

Jessamine stood at the window and looked out.

After a long while she said, “The town is empty.”

“Should be,” Pace said. “Requiem is a ghost town.”

“Oh my God,” Jessamine said. “It seems like I ran away from one hell and landed in another.”

“It’s just a town,” Pace said.

He extended the glass. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Jessamine took the glass in an unsteady hand, drained the whiskey in a gulp. She passed the glass back to Pace. “What happened here?”

“Cholera,” Pace said. “Three years ago. It took my wife and child and half the town.”

“How did it happen?”

“The well water was poisoned.”

“The well I saw last night? In the middle of the street?”

“Yes. I think it’s still poisoned. I draw my water from the creek.”

“I was going to drink from it,” Jess said.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Hell, so am I.” The girl looked puzzled. “Why are you still here?”

“The people who didn’t die up and left. But they’ll be back, and I’ll be here to greet them.”

“When are they coming back?”

“I don’t know. Sometime.”

Jess’s gaze searched Pace’s face. “I don’t know you from Adam, mister, and the whiskey has loosened my tongue, but I want to tell you something.”

“Tell away. Call me Sam.”

“I’ll call you Sammy. I’ve always been partial to that name.”

Jess moved from the window to the desk where Pace was sitting.

“It seems to me that you’ve stayed put right here for three years, but you’ve been running all that time,” she said.

“From what?”

“Your memories. But you hope one day to recapture them and see things go back to what they were. That’s why you think the townspeople will return.”

Pace sat at his desk, suddenly irritated. “That’s not the way of it at all.”

“The people might come back, but your wife and child won’t.”

“Don’t you think I already know that?” Pace said. “I’m not that crazy.”

“I think you are,” the woman said.

“And you, Miss Leslie, what are you running from?” Pace said, anger touching his eyes.

“You can call me Jess. It isn’t like we’re kin, but ‘Miss Leslie’ doesn’t sit real well with me.”

“What are you running from, Jess? Your ma and pa?”

The woman smiled and shook her head. “What do you think I am?”

“A frightened, innocent young lady running from something . . . or somebody.”