The Ghost of Apache Creek

Chapter 2

“Who the hell are you?”

Pace opened his eyes, squinting against the glare of the harsh morning sun. Inches from his face were the front legs of a horse, a steeldust with two white socks.

“I’ll ask you again,” the man’s voice said. “There won’t be a third time.” A pause, then: “Who the hell are you?”

Pace struggled to his feet and held on to a post for support. His head throbbed and the sunlight spiked viciously at his eyes. He tried to speak, but his voice was a dry croak.

Five men sat their horses, studying him. The man who had spoken—big, blond, and flashily handsome—was smiling. But it was a smile of contempt, not humor.

Pace put his fingers to the back of his head and they came away bloody.

“Did one of you rannies buffalo me?” he said.

“Hell no,” the blond man said. “Near as I can tell you got drunk, fell down, and hit your damn fool head.”

He looked beyond Pace to the bank porch. “You shoot that coyote, did ye?”

Pace turned and saw what the big man had seen. “I reckon so.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I see things sometimes. I guess I mistook him for an outlaw, a bank robber.”

“There are no banks to rob in a ghost town, mister.”

“No. I reckon not,” Pace said.

The man on the steeldust grinned. “God, you’re a sight.”

“And he stinks,” another man said.

“What are you doing here?” the blond man asked.

Pace grabbed the bottom of his left sleeve between fingers and palm and rubbed sand off the star on his chest. “I’m marshal of this town.”

The big man looked around him, and then his men joined in his laughter. His horse tossed its head, the bit chiming.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed . . . Marshal, but there’s nobody here, ’cept you,” he said.

“They’ll be back. One day the people will come back to Requiem.” He pointed to the far end of town. “They’ll come off the trail yonder and head into town and their wagons will stretch for a mile and the kids will be running beside them. Then they’ll change the name back to what it once was, Apache Creek. That’s what they’ll do all right.”

“That’s what you think, huh?” the big man said.

“That’s what I know,” Pace said.

“And this place is now called Requiem?”

“Yes. Just that.”

“Good. It’s an apt name for a dead town.”

The big man shifted position in the saddle. “My name’s Beau Harcourt.” He waved a hand. “All of this is my range, and you’re on it. So what do we do about that?”

Pace saw his Colt lying on the ground several feet away, a fact that brought him no comfort.

“Mr. Harcourt, this is my town. You may own the range around it, but you don’t own Requiem.”

“I’ve got a different opinion on that. What happened here anyhow?”

“Three years ago we got took by the cholera. Four score citizens and more now lie in the graveyard. The rest lit out. But they’ll be back and find their lawman waiting for them.”

“You?”

“Me.”

That last brought guffaws from Harcourt’s hardfaced riders.

Talking above the laughter, the big man said, “You cut your hair, shaved, or bathed in them three years . . . Marshal?”

“Maybe. But not that I recall. Sometimes I get loco, tetched in the head, and then I don’t remember to do things. I don’t remember anything, except the cholera. But sometimes I can tell a hawk from a handsaw, when the wind is right.”

“Hell, what do you eat? Lizards?”

“When the store owners pulled out, they left stuff behind. I eat from cans. I eat peaches and beans and meat sometimes.”

Harcourt grinned. “No matter, a man should remember to take a bath.” He tilted his head to the side and his grin faded to a smile. “You got a horse?”

“Yes, at the livery.”

“Then saddle up and get out of here while you still can.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Because all them dead people will come back and expect to find you here?”

“No, the folks who left will come back.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Man, you’re even crazier than I thought you were. What’s your name, wild man?”

“Do you care?”

“No. But I still want to hear it.”

“Sam Pace.”

A tall rider wearing a fringed buckskin jacket stiffened in the saddle and said, “Well, I’ll be.”

“Something bothering you, Heap?” Harcourt said.

The man called Heap ignored the question and said, “Were you the Sam Pace out of Cochise County?”

“There and other places,” Pace said.

Heap nodded, then answered the question on Harcourt’s face. “Gunfighter. Or he was. He wore a Ranger’s star when he killed Dixie Tavern back in seventy-five, and Dixie was fast on the draw.”

“He sure don’t look like much now.”

“No, he don’t, boss. That’s fer sure.”

Heap watched absently as Harcourt shook out his rope.

Finally, as though he’d just fitted words to a thought, he said, “Back in the day, Pace was hell on wheels with a gun; killed his share. Even a crazy man don’t lose that.”

Harcourt frowned at Pace. “Is that right? You good with a gun?”

“I manage,” Pace said.

Harcourt sat back in the saddle, the rope swinging idly in his right hand.

“For some reason you worry me,” he said, “and I don’t like being worried.”

The rope snaked out and the loop dropped neatly over Pace’s shoulders, then dropped to his ankles.

“But all that changes right now,” Harcourt said. “Time to read to you from the book.”

He kicked the steeldust into a gallop.

Pace was yanked off his feet and sent tumbling into the dirt. His body spun as Harcourt let rip with a rebel yell and dragged him into the street.

Pace’s world narrowed to the billowing cloud of yellow dust that enveloped him and the pain that scraped mercilessly at his belly, back, and thighs. He opened his mouth and tried to roar his outrage and anger. But his mouth filled with sand and he could only croak. His throat clogged and he vomited green bile on himself.

Somewhere he heard men laugh.