High Country Horror

18

Fargo trained the Henry on the center of the figure and curled his finger around the trigger. Another instant and he would have fired. But something about the figure gave him pause. He waited for the next bolt to light up the shelf, and when it did, he slowly straightened. As wary as a cougar, he moved into the cave.

It smelled of food odors and woodsmoke and human sweat. He was close enough now that the next flash confirmed what he thought he had seen—the figure had long flowing hair and its arms and legs were outspread. More bolts revealed more details: the blackened embers of a fire; a mess of blankets; a shovel and an ax; the haunch of a deer; a lantern, and beside it a box of lucifers. Hunkering, he soon had the lantern lit.

In its glow Fargo saw the figure clearly. She was young, barely twenty, and as naked as the day she had been born. Her wrists and ankles were bound to poles imbedded in the cave floor. Her head hung low, her hair half over her face, and her eyes were closed. Either she was unconscious or she was dead. A gag suggested the former.

Fargo raised the lantern higher. The cave went back another ten feet and ended at a rock wall. Lying over near the right wall were female undergarments and a pair of shoes. The woman’s, he suspected. He went up to her, set the lantern down, and lightly touched a finger to her throat. There was a pulse, weak but steady. He was lowering his hand when her eyelids fluttered and her eyes slowly opened. They were dull and vacant.

“Are you Myrtle Spencer?”

At the sound of his voice she stiffened and stark terror wiped away the dullness. She mewed in fear and weakly tugged at the ropes. Her wrists and ankles, he saw, were caked with dried blood.

“It’s all right. I’m here to help you.”

The woman stopped mewing and blinked. Tears started to flow and she quaked from head to toe.

“Where is the man who did this to you?” Fargo asked. “Where is the Ghoul?”

The woman went on quaking. Her tears went on flowing.

Fargo set down the Henry and drew the Arkansas toothpick from his ankle sheath. “I’ll have you down in a moment.” He cut the rope on her right ankle and then on her left, careful not to cut her. Rising, he sliced the rope on her left wrist and she sagged and would have collapsed if he hadn’t hooked an arm around her to support her. She was still quaking. He cut the rope on her right wrist and she fell against him. With great care he carried her to the blankets and went to lay her on them.

Myrtle Spencer, if that is who she was, looked down and broke into violent convulsions. She shrieked and struck at his chest and kicked but she was so weak he hardly felt the blows. Baffled, he drew back.

“What’s the matter? I need to put you down.”

The woman grew still. But when he went to lay her on the blankets she whimpered and kicked. At last he understood. Backing away from the blankets, he eased her to the ground. She didn’t resist. He pried at the gag but the knots were so tight he had to resort to the toothpick. “Are you Miss Spencer?”

She stared at him without answering. Or, rather, past him, at the roof of the cave.

“Myrtle Spencer?” Fargo tried once more.

The vacant quality was in her eyes. They lacked any spark of vitality whatsoever.

“I’m with a posse. We’re after the Ghoul.”

She might as well have been on another world.

“Do you know where he got to?”

Nothing.

“Would you like water or food?”

Nothing at all.

Fargo stood and brought the undergarments over and with a lot of lifting and him doing all the work, he slipped a chemise over her head and shoulders and pulled it down as low as it would go. He had just finished and stepped back when Marshal Tibbit bellowed.

“A cave, by God, boys!”

Boots thudded and scraped.

Into the cave rushed Joseph Spencer. He came to Fargo’s side, and groaned. His face was pale as a sheet. “Myrtle, honey? It’s your pa.”

She showed no more life than she had with Fargo.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Joseph knelt and gently clasped her hand. “You’re safe now, girl.”

Fargo was aware of other men ringing them. Tibbit was on his left, dripping wet and grinning.

“We found her! We actually found her. This will show everyone I’m not worthless.”

Fargo almost hit him.

“Myrtle?” Joseph touched her cheek and her brow. “What’s wrong with her? Why won’t she say anything?”

“Could be she’s in shock,” a man said.

“Could be she’s been scared out of her mind,” said another.

“Myrtle?” Joseph lightly shook her shoulders but all she did was go on staring her eerie empty stare. “God, no.”

“Where’s the Ghoul?” a townsman asked, and the rest of the men began moving about the cave searching when it was plain he wasn’t there.

Marshal Tibbit beamed at Fargo. “You did it. You said you would find him and you did. We’re all in your debt, me most of all.”

“It’s not over,” Fargo said.

Outside, the storm was abating. The rain had reduced to a drizzle and the lightning flashes were fewer and farther between.

“Did you see the Ghoul? Did you get a good look at him?”

Fargo shook his head.

“Well, he can’t have gotten far. We’ll get him yet. With your help he’s as good as caught.”

Fargo could have pointed out that the rain had washed away any tracks.

He reclaimed the Henry and went to the cave mouth. The worst of the thunderhead was to the east and the clouds overhead had gone from black to gray.

Sam Worthington came over and stood staring into the drizzle. “He’s gotten clean away, hasn’t he?”

“He has,” Fargo said.

“Damn.” The big farmer looked over his shoulder. “That poor girl. She’s a friend of my daughter’s. You should have known her. Always so sweet and kind and forever smiling.” He ran a callused hand across his brow. “What could he have done to her?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do. I just don’t want to admit it. It goes against everything that is decent in this world. I don’t understand how a thing like this can happen.”

“Ask God,” Fargo said.

The farmer scowled. “That’s a terrible thing to say. The parson would call it blasphemy.”

“Have the parson ask Myrtle Spencer how she feels.”

Worthington looked at him and said, not without admiration, “You’re a hard man.”

“It’s a hard life.”

Marshal Tibbit bustled over looking as happy as if he had just eaten a fresh-baked apple pie. “We can’t get a word out of her but I bet the doc can.” He scanned the wet wasteland and nudged Fargo. “The rain has about stopped. How soon can you head out after the Ghoul?”

“He’s long gone.”

“He can’t have more than half an hour start on us,” Tibbit said. “Forty minutes at the most. Find which direction he took and me and five or six others will go with you. The rest are taking Myrtle back to town.”

“I’ll look around,” Fargo said. Now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any sign the Ghoul kept his mount in the cave. It had to be elsewhere. He hiked to the north end of the shelf. The slope beyond was too steep for a horse. He walked to the south and was thirty feet past the cave when he spied a game trail leading toward the crest. Made, no doubt, by whatever used the cave before the Ghoul moved in. Fargo headed up, the footing treacherous on the wet rocks. In spots the climb was almost sheer. Eventually he gained the summit and found what he was looking for: a stake and a rope.

Essentially flat, the top of the mesa was sprinkled with brush and boulders. The ground was mostly dirt, not rock. Old tracks, extremely faint but not entirely washed away, pointed to the south.

Fargo turned and hurried down the mesa to the Ovaro. As he was crossing the shelf someone called his name.

Most of the posse had gathered outside the cave, apparently waiting for Joseph Spencer and his daughter.

Marshal Tibbit had spotted him and came over. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

“With luck I can end this by nightfall.” Fargo continued walking, forcing the lawman to keep up if he wanted to keep talking.

“What do you mean by end it?”

“Don’t play stupid.”

Tibbit gripped his arm. “Hold on. Why must I keep repeating myself? If we can, we’re to take the Ghoul into custody.”

“If you can,” Fargo said.

“Damn it. You’re the most pigheaded individual I’ve ever met. You can’t go around killing people because you feel like it.”

“The Ghoul does.”

“But you’re not him!” Tibbit exclaimed in exasperation. “You are obligated by law to take him alive.”

“Your law, not mine.”

Tibbit puffed out his cheeks in anger. “You’re a citizen of the United States, are you not? As such, you are under her jurisdiction, and the law of the land is that you can’t go around killing folks because they cross you or you blame them for nearly being lynched.”

“Save the speech.”

Marshal Tibbit jerked on Fargo’s arm. “Goddamn you. No one is above the law. Not me, not you, not anyone.”

Fargo patted his Colt. “Out here the only law is this.”

“I refuse to bandy words. If you go after the Ghoul you’re to bring him back alive if it is at all possible. I mean it.”

Fargo looked at him. “You don’t get it yet, do you?”

“Get what?”

“You never mean anything. You have no more backbone than mud.”

“That’s not true.”

Fargo pulled his arm from the lawman’s grasp and was over the side before Tibbit could object.

By now the storm was miles away. Here and there a golden shaft pierced the clouds. Fargo came to the stand and climbed on the Ovaro and descended to the bottom of the mesa. He rode to the south and was at the extreme southern end when his face lit with a smile. “Got you,” he said.

The tracks were so fresh some had rainwater in the bottom. They came down off the mesa and went off across the wasteland, passing close to the charnel pit. Fargo averted his face and held his breath until he was well past it.

Save for the clink of the Ovaro’s hooves and the creak of Fargo’s saddle, silence reigned. Again and again he rose in the stirrups but he failed to spot his quarry.

The clouds broke apart and the sun shone steady, as hot as ever. Steam rose from the ground and the air shimmered to invisible waves. In no time the puddles had burned away and the land looked as parched and barren as ever.

So far off they were stick figures, Fargo spotted a man on a horse. He brought the Ovaro to a trot. Soon the distance narrowed. He slowed after a while to spare the stallion but he chafed at the need.

The wasteland gave way to forest. By Fargo’s reckoning he was ten to twelve miles west of Haven. He found the Ghoul’s tracks easily enough and was surprised to discover that the Ghoul had turned east. He’d figured the killer would stay away from human habitation but it appeared that the Ghoul was in fact making a beeline for town. At first it made no sense. Why would the Ghoul risk being lynched? Fargo wondered. Then it hit him. No one knew who the Ghoul was. The killer could mingle with the townsfolk with no one the wiser.

Fargo rode faster but it was several hours after sundown when he finally reached the outskirts. He lost the tracks in the jumble of prints in the main street, and swore.

Fargo doubted the posse had returned yet. Haven lay quiet and deceptively peaceful under the stars. Two men were talking in front of the livery and an older woman was enjoying the night air in a chair on her front porch. Those were the only people he saw.

Fargo went to the boardinghouse. He tied the Ovaro to the picket fence and walked up the steps to the front door. He didn’t knock. He was about to take the stairs to his room when he heard voices in the parlor. One was Helsa’s. Thinking she might be willing to fix him a meal, he walked down the hall and stopped in the doorway.

Helsa was in the rocking chair, her knitting in her lap. She had a strange expression on her face and appeared almost as white as her picket fence, as if all the blood had drained from her body. The skin under her eyes glistened with recently shed tears. On seeing him she gave a tiny shake of her head as if to suggest he was intruding.

“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

“You did,” said a male voice, and a man rose from behind the rocking chair with a Spencer in his hands. He wore a black hat and a black jacket and was in need of a shave. “Permit me to introduce myself,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “Most everyone hereabouts calls me the Ghoul.”