The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 17

The slender sound of a flute spilled into the silence of Requiem, each note dropping like a silver coin into a crystal dish.

Inside the marshal’s office, Mash Lake took the Apache courting flute from his lips and said to Jess, “Pretty, ain’t it?”

The girl smiled and wiped a tear from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’d fall for any Apache brave who played like that for me.”

“A Mescalero courting flute’s made from the bloom stalk of an agave,” Lake said. “That’s what gives it such a sweet sound.”

“Play something else, Mash,” Jess said.

“Well, on account of how you fed me and biled me up a gallon of coffee, I’ll play something just fer you.”

Lake brought the flute close to his lips. “This ain’t Apache—it’s Cheyenne—but it’s another courtin’ song an’ right purty all the same.”

“Mash, no more tonight,” Pace said. “Miss Leslie is going to help me bury her hurting dead.”

Lake’s hands dropped and his shaggy eyebrows crawled up his forehead like gray caterpillars.

“Sam, now, you listen to me, boy,” he said. “Miz Jess here told me you was tetched in the head, and I didn’t believe her. But when you talk about buryin’ a dead man in the middle of the night, well, I got to believe your guitar ain’t tuned right.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that graveyard in the dark,” Jess said. She shivered. “It’s where the cholera dead are buried.”

“I know,” Pace said.

“People who die like that . . . walk.”

“Sure do,” Lake said. “Seen that my own self in El Paso town. Feller by the name of Husky Evans got hung for stage robbery. Day after they planted him, he walked right past the Butterfield office, still in his buryin’ shroud. I seen him plain as I’m seeing you. His face was a kinda blue color and his head hung on one side on account of how his neck was broke. Thinking back, ol’ Husky’s ghost didn’t look too good. Course, ol’ Husky didn’t look too good even afore he was a spook.”

Lake laid a hand on Jess’s shoulder. “Let the little lady stay here. I’ll help you plant the dead man. Buryin’ Heap Leggett is an honor anyhow. He was a fast man with the Colt’s gun, the fastest west of the Mississippi. Everybody knew that.”

Pace rose to his feet and shoved his revolver into his pants pocket.

“The little lady is my prisoner,” he said. “Where I go, she goes.”

Jess stood and put her fists on her hips. “Sammy, if you want me in the graveyard tonight, you’ll have to drag me there.”

“That can be arranged,” Pace said.

“Why you in such an all-fired hurry to bury Heap anyhow?” Lake said. “You got a guilty conscience or something?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Pace said.

“I know. But he would’ve fer sure killed you, sonny. There wasn’t a man alive was a match for Heap Leggett when he was on the prod. Jess saved your life and if you wasn’t so tetched in the head you’d realize it.”

Pace let that go and said, “The man needs a decent burying. But he’s got friends and I don’t want them to catch me in the cemetery come daylight.”

“Then you and me will do it,” Lake said. “Leave the girl out of it.”

To Jess, Pace said, “You’ll give me your word you won’t try to escape?”

“Escape from what, Sammy? You? This ghost town?”

“I’ll narrow it for you,” Pace said. “Don’t try to leave this office tonight.”

“And if I do leave?”

“I’ll hunt you down and bring you back.”

Jess waited as a silence fell on the room. Then she said, “Hear that noise outside? It’s coyotes, and I’m scared of them. I’ll stay here.”

Lake scratched his bearded cheek.

“Sounds like the dead calling to one another,” he said. “Restless and sad, like.”

Pace managed a smile. “Mash, don’t scare Jess worse than she’s already scared.”

“Sure thing, Sam. I was just sayin’, was all.”

“Well, don’t say it again. The night is always full of sounds.”

He moved to the door. “Let’s go. We have a burying to do.”

Sam Pace and Lake dug the hole deep, then laid Heap Leggett to rest.

The two men stood beside the mounded earth, heads bowed, their pants flapping in a soughing wind as Pace said the words for the dead.

The moon drifted lower in the sky and gave center stage to the stars, and a thin light lay across the graveyard and silvered the canopies of the wild oaks.

After the wind tossed away Pace’s final words like blown leaves, Lake looked at him and said, “Ain’t much of a send-off to give a man.”

“I got nothing better,” Pace said. “I didn’t know the feller.”

“Then I’ll try. I can always come up with something good to say about a dead man.”

Lake dropped his arms in front of him, crossed his hands, then looked up at the night sky.

“Lord,” he said, “please accept the soul of Heap Leggett, the fastest man with a gun there ever was. Lord, you know he kilt Long Tom McCloud over to the Brazos River country, and Long Tom was a son of a bitch and reckoned to be the fastest gun west of the Mississippi until Heap came along and called him out. Give him credit for that, Lord, because Long Tom was a man who needed killin’.”

Lake bowed his head and his voice rose.

“I recollect ol’ Heap kilt Matt Agnew and John Judith and them two were polecats and would’ve been hung anyhow, so don’t hold them killings agin him either. Same with that rancher feller Luke Battles, Lord. Remember him? He was what you might call a prayin’ and psalm-singing man, so all Heap done was hasten him into a better world than this’n.”

Lake shuffled his feet, like a man who knows he’s overstayed his welcome.

“Well, I ain’t got much left to say, Lord, ’cause I didn’t know ol’ Heap that well. But I’m sure he loved ladies and little children and the beasts of the field and said his prayers when he remembered.”

Lake tossed a handful of dirt onto the grave. “He’s all yours now, Lord, and if’n you ever have a range war with the Devil and need a fast gun, ol’ Heap is your man. Amen.”

Lake turned to Pace, his eyebrows lifting. “Well? Ain’t you gonna say something?”

“About what?”

“Hell, how did I do?”

“I just wish his white-haired old mother could’ve heard that speech.”

Lake’s grin was lost in darkness.

“Damn right. Sam, I think you’re a loco galoot, but you ain’t as crazy as you make yourself out to be.”

“But I am, Mash. Trust me, I am.”

Lake put his flute to his mouth. “This is a lament for the dead called ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ and it’s real purty. We’ll see Heap off in style.”

“Apache?”

“Nah. A Scottish feller waitin’ to be hung teached it to me.”

Lake played and the notes of the melody drifted in the wind . . . all the way to the listening ears of Beau Harcourt.