The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 26

Pace and Lake bypassed the herd by riding well to the south. They kept to the timbered valley country where there was no chance of getting skylined on a bare ridge.

The day was hot, the sun well up in the sky, and there was no cloud. Even among the pines and wild oak, the heat pounded at the riders mercilessly, and their shirts were black with sweat.

Only the mountains looked cool, green and lilac in the distance.

Pace kept an eye on the dust cloud to the north.

The cattle seemed to be moving steadily, driven close and hard, but at noon the dust halted and Lake reckoned the herd had bunched up to drink the silty, riffled waters of Silver Creek.

Pace led the way east for three miles, then swung due north again. He and Lake were now well ahead of the deacon.

After another fifteen minutes, they rode through a stretch of brush country, then into pines that led all the way to the top of a rocky hogback.

Pace drew rein. He was hot and irritated, and there was enough scare in him to tighten his throat when he spoke.

“Hell, Mash,” he said, “we’re riding blind. We could be heading right into a bellyful of lead.”

“Figured that my own self a while back,” Lake said.

“But it don’t scare you none?”

“Scares me plenty. Anything to do with Deacon Santee scares me plenty.”

Pace studied the crest of the rise. If he and Lake dismounted and worked their way to the top, they could get the lay of the land and the likely destination of the herd.

He ran his plan past Lake and the oldster nodded. “Suits me. I got nothing else to do this morning.”

Pace tied their horses in a small hollow surrounded by brush where they’d be out of sight. Then he and Lake began their climb.

The slope was a lot steeper than it looked from the flat and they had to climb part of the way on all fours, to the delight of the little claret cup cactus that hid in the grass and ripped mercilessly at their hands.

Lake vented his lungs a couple of times when spines stung him, until Pace hushed him into an irritable silence.

Their bellies hugging the ground, Pace and Lake looked down onto a wide bench that sloped upward a few feet from an S-shaped creek.

A sizeable herd grazed on both banks of the stream and along the edge of a pine and oak forest that bordered the bench to the west.

A second herd that looked to be about a thousand strong was bunched several hundred yards from the creek, the punchers keeping the cattle closed up tight.

But what drew Pace’s attention was the tent pitched in one bend of the S. Nearby was a campfire and at a distance a couple of dozen glossy horses cropped grass.

“Jess could be in the tent,” Lake said.

Pace nodded. “It’s a possibility.”

“How we gonna play it, Sam?”

“We wait and we watch and hope something breaks.”

Lake turned on his right side, his eyes scanning the horizon.

“Dust cloud is close,” he said.

“Yeah, this is where the deacon is headed, sure enough. You were right, Mash. He’s throwing in with Harcourt and his bunch.”

Mash gave a slow grin. “Something tells me it won’t be a happy marriage.”

From their perch above the bench, Pace and Lake saw the deacon’s herd arrive. Later they watched the death of Ben Trivet and the departure of the combined herds and could make no sense of either.

Lake pegged Trivet’s killer as Deacon Santee.

“Has to be him,” he said. “Ain’t nobody else hereabouts wears a frock coat, a stovepipe hat, and shucks a gun that fast.”

Pace nodded. “He’s fast all right, real slick on the draw-and-shoot.”

“He ain’t a man to mess with, Sam.”

“I just came to that conclusion my own self,” Pace said.

A few minutes before noon, appearing out of dust and a shimmering haze, rode four men in black, sitting tall on blood horses.

Lake watched the deacon walk toward them, then turned to Pace.

“The Peacock brothers,” he said. “I left a broken trail behind me, but they tracked me down. Now they know fer sure that I’m somewhere in this neck of the woods.”

“All right, so now we got another bridge to cross,” Pace said.

“I got a bad feeling about . . . ,” Lake began. His voice faltered to a halt.

“Don’t say it, Mash,” Pace said. “They’re only men, like the rest of us, and I’ve seen their kind before. Ever catch sight of the Earp brothers? I reckon them and the Peacocks are cut from the same cloth.”

Lake was no coward. He’d proved that often enough in the past. But suddenly he looked old and tired, a man who’d long before played out his string.

“Sam, you ever hear tell of the angel of death?” he said.

“I heard a tent preacher talk about that one time.”

“Well, the angel just spoke to me.”

A shiver ran down Pace’s spine. “There ain’t no angel of death, Mash. It’s all in a man’s mind.”

As though he hadn’t heard, the old man said, “I’m wrote down in the angel’s book in letters of fire. That’s what he tol’ me, plain as day.”

Pace looked at him. “Mash, get away from here. Ride south for the west Texas country where you have friends.”

Lake smiled. “Too late for that, Sam. I’m like the ranny who jumped off the cliff. No matter how much he regretted it on the way down, he knew there was no goin’ back.”

Pace moved his gaze to the men talking with the deacon.

And it dawned on him with terrible certainty that he was looking at four ambassadors from hell.