The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 44

Sam Pace was drowsing when the bell jangled him awake.

“What the hell?” he yelled, springing to his feet.

Jess and Lake had covered their ears, their faces screwed up in pain.

The bell swung back and forth, the clapper clamoring like a tongue in an iron mouth.

Pace threw himself on the bell and circled it with his arms. The hot metal scorched his hands, but he held it still and the sound stilled to a ringing silence.

The rope jerked, jerked again. Pace left the bell alone and grabbed the rope. He pulled, feeling a man’s strength on the other end.

Pace, his brains still scrambled by the sudden racket that had wakened him, drew his Colt and thumbed two fast shots through the trapdoor.

He was rewarded by a yelp of surprise and the sound of running feet.

“Hell, it’s the deacon,” Lake said. He was looking over the top of the rail. “Damn, he’s seen me.”

That last was made obvious when a bullet tinged off the side of the bell and a second chipped timber close to Lake’s head.

Pace stepped to the rail. Immediately a bullet split the air an inch from his left ear. He caught only a fleeting glimpse of the deacon before Lake reached up and pulled him down.

“Don’t gunfight him, boy,” Lake said. “He’ll kill you fer sure.”

“My God,” Jess said, her nose wrinkling, “what’s that awful smell?”

“It’s the smell of cholera,” Pace said. “The deacon is leaving a trail of it behind him.”

Jess said nothing, but she looked stunned, as though the full horror of the disease had just struck her.

“Where are the Peacock boys?” Lake said.

“I didn’t see them,” Pace said. “They drank the well water and if they’re not sick yet, they will be real soon.”

“Then all we have to do is wait,” Jess said.

Pace nodded. “Seems like. Unless they hurry and come up with something that surprises the hell out of us.”

His face fell. “Damn it, the ladder.”

He waved Jess and Lake away from the trapdoor, then opened it a few inches.

“Like I thought, it’s gone,” he said. “Damn the deacon for a son of a bitch. He moved it.”

“How do we get down from here, Sammy?” Jess said.

“We’ll use the rope.”

“I’ve never done that before,” Jess said. “I mean, climb down a bell rope.”

“Me neither,” Pace said. “But it’s got to beat the hell out of jumping.”

“What do you see, Sam?” Lake said.

“The street’s empty.”

Pace waited a few moments, then said, “Mash, take a look at this.”

Lake peered over the top of the rail. “What am I supposed to see?”

“To the west, in the hills. There it goes again.”

“Yeah, I saw the flash.”

“Reckon it’s the army?”

“Could be, but Apaches also use mirror signals.”

“There’s plenty of dust kicking up,” Pace said.

Lake nodded. “Twenty, maybe thirty riders.”

“They’re not moving in our direction.”

“Army or Apache, seems like they found something more interesting than us to occupy their time.”

Jess kneeled beside Pace. “We could signal them, fire some shots.”

“We could,” Pace said, “if it’s the army. But suppose it’s Apaches? We’d be in even more danger than we are now.”

Jess had no answer for that and again lapsed into silence.

The long summer day burned on. The sun seared its way across the sky, and to the west buzzards lazily rode the air currents.

The bell tower smelled of pine resin, hot iron, and human sweat.

Pace sat and fetched his back against the rail.

“It’s all quiet at the saloon,” he said. “We’ll wait until just before dark and make our move.”

“What’s your plan?” Lake said.

“Apart from getting down from here, I don’t have one.”

Neither Lake nor Jess commented on that, and Pace smiled.

“If all’s quiet until dark, then I’ll reckon the cholera has done our work for us.”

“Is it really so quick?” Jess said, shivering despite the heat of the day. “Alive in the morning. Dead come suppertime.”

“It depends on the strain, or so Doc Anderson told me before he was finally took. When the cholera was killing a dozen people a day in Requiem, the doc said he’d seen the disease in Baltimore, Memphis, Washington, and a couple of other cities, but he reckoned the cholera in the well down there was the most”—Pace racked his memory for the right word—“the most virulent he’d ever come across.”

“What’s that word mean, Sam?” Lake said.

“‘Virulent’? I guess it means real bad for a person.”

“Then why didn’t he just say ‘real bad for a person’?”

“Because he was a doctor, and doctors use words nobody’s ever heard before. That’s why they become doctors, so they can use words like ‘virulent.’”

“Do you think they’re all already dead down there, Sammy?” Jess said.

“Yes. I believe they are, or close to it.”

But then the sound of gunshots gave the lie to Pace’s confident statement.