The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 52

Sam Pace lifted his rifle to his shoulder.

He aimed just to the right of the saloon door where the wall met the boardwalk.

Levering the Winchester from his shoulder, he dusted shots along the angled shadow from the door to the end of the boardwalk. His bullets splintered timber from the walk and thudded into the saloon wall.

The racket of the rifle roused Requiem from slumber.

The Peacock brothers’ high-strung horses yanked away from the saloon hitch rail. The startled animals uprooted the supporting posts and galloped down the street, dragging the rail with them.

Echoes slammed through the alleys and town buildings, booming like muffled drums.

Lake’s eyes probed the darkness, his ears ringing.

“Did you get him, Sam?” he said, too loudly.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Pace said. “It’s too dark to see. Where’s the damned moon?”

He listened into the night, heard nothing.

“Like Jess says, maybe it was just a coyote,” Lake said.

Pace said nothing, and the woman said, “Sammy, you’re scaring the hell out of me. Let’s get down from here.”

“I don’t want to dangle from a rope with the Peacocks taking shots at me,” Pace said. “We’ll wait for a spell.”

“Damn it, Sammy, wait for what?” Jess said.

“I don’t know.”

The woman was silent for a moment, as though she’d just been slapped.

“Right, that’s it,” she said. “I’m climbing down the rope.”

“Wait!” Pace said.

He smelled it now. The sulfurous stink of rotten eggs.

“Mash, was that you?” Jess said, her nose wrinkling.

“Hell no. I—”

“It’s coal oil,” Pace yelled. “Damn it, they’re going to burn the church out from under us.”

Pace smelled smoke, then saw the first flames lick the side of the church. The fire reached higher. And higher.

The timber that framed the building, especially the heavier beams that supported the roof, had baked beneath four summers of relentless sun and they were tinder dry. The fire quickly took hold and the church torched, blazed, roared as though in mortal pain.

Black smoke shrouded the belfry, and the air became hard to breathe.

“Damn it,” Lake said, “I’m gonna jump.”

“No!” Pace yelled. “You damned fool, you’ll break your legs.”

He dragged Lake toward the bell rope. “Climb down.”

“How the hell do I manage that?” Lake said.

Behind him, flames were shooting through the floorboards.

Pace shoved the rope into Lake’s hands. “Here. Learn as you go.”

The old man aired out his lungs, cursing Pace and the mother who bore him, but he took the rope. He clambered down, using only his hands, and his head bobbed out of sight.

“Now you, Jess,” Pace said.

The woman needed no second bidding. The entire church was ablaze, and the supporting timbers of the bell tower cracked and creaked, threatening to collapse into the inferno.

Pace watched Jess slide down the rope and took one last glance around him.

What he saw chilled him to the bone.

Sparks from the burning church had jumped to the roof of the saloon and the rod and gun store next to it. Both buildings, parched tinderboxes, smoked, and here and there flames fluttered like scarlet moths.

“No!” Pace yelled.

His town was burning to death.