The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 36

Sam Pace racked a round into the chamber of his rifle as his eyes scanned the opposite creek bank where pine tops lifted like obsidian arrowheads into the sky, their trunks lost in mist.

The wolves howled again and Pace felt fear clutch at him.

“Get back to town,” he whispered to Jess. “Tell Mash.”

The woman clutched her clothes to her breast, her face drained of color. “Come with me, Sammy. The wolves will kill you.”

“They’re human wolves,” Pace said. “It’s the Peacock brothers. They’d cut us down in the street before we reached my office.”

He turned his head, and, his voice urgent, he said, “Jess, you git now.”

The woman needed no second bidding. She fled into the night, wolf howls following her.

Pace took cover behind the cottonwood, watching, waiting.

A few moments of sullen silence slunk past, slow enough that Pace had time to dry his fear-sweated hands on his pants and clutch his rifle again.

A bullet thunked into the tree trunk and another chipped bark near Pace’s face, driving splinters into his cheek.

Damn it, them Peacock boys could see in the dark.

A voice rose from the gray and black gloom, hollow and echoing, like a man speaking in a sepulcher.

“Mash Lake, is that you? Step out and take your medicine.”

Pace thought he had a fix on the location of the speaker, but he wasn’t sure. He needed the man to speak again.

“This is Lake,” he said. “State your business.”

He lifted the Winchester to his shoulder.

“You know our business,” the man yelled. “You killed our brother. There is talking to be done, a reckoning to be made.”

Pace aimed into darkness. Now he knew the spot among the trees where the Peacocks were hidden.

His finger took up a quarter inch of slack on the trigger.

“Come out, Lake. We want to—”

Pace fired.

He levered shells into the Winchester and dusted shots to the right and left of the speaker’s location.

Suddenly a man yelped like a wounded cur . . . and kept on yelping, each shriek rising to a higher pitch.

A rifle blasted beside Pace and Lake threw himself to the ground.

“Is it the Peacocks?” he said.

“Yeah, and I winged one of them.”

“I heard him squeal.”

Lake fired in the direction of the yelps, and Pace’s rifle joined in the fusillade.

They shot their rifles dry but there was no return fire.

Gun smoke drifted and became one with the gray mist.

“They quit,” Pace said. “Damn it, they just gave up and left.”

“They haven’t left,” Lake said. “The Peacock boys are sure-thing killers and they didn’t like this ground, was all. They’ll be back.”

“The question is, when?” Pace said.

“The answer is, when it gets light. They know we’re holed up in the ghost town and that’s where they’ll come lookin’.”

“I think we can take them, Mash,” Pace said. “They didn’t seem so all-fired tough tonight.”

“Maybe. So we burned them. All that means is they’ll be more careful next time. I told you afore, Sam, we can’t shade them boys in a close-up gunfight.”

“Then we won’t let them get close.”

Lake nodded. “I got an idea on that score, but we won’t be fightin’. We’ll be hidin’.”

“Until they give up and go away?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Sounds thin, Mash.”

“Hell, boy, it is thin. But is all I’ve got. You?”

“A long-range rifle fight, I reckon. Out in the hills, maybe.”

“Try that and you’ll be dead,” Lake said. “From now on the Peacocks will be prepared and they’ll get close, revolver close. We got lucky tonight. We won’t get lucky a second time.”

“You sure know how to cheer a man, don’t you?” Pace said, turning his head to regard the old man.

“Yep. I do it all the time. You might say that it’s my nat’ral sunny disposition.”