Black Horse Creek (9781101607466)

by West, Charles G.

  Louis got down from the buckboard and tied up to a fence post; then he extended his hand to help his wife down. Among the last to arrive, they moved up to the downhill side of a freshly dug grave to stand next to Shep Barnhill and his wife, Cora. The Barnhills turned to exchange quiet greetings with them, and Cora raised an eyebrow and smiled mischievously at Eunice Reiner. “Glad to see you made it to the ceremony,” she whispered to Cora.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Cora whispered in return. “He was such a saint.”

  Eunice snickered, trying to hide it with her hand, but it caught the attention of Slate Blanchard, who was standing solemnly on the upside of the grave, the Mexican woman, Maria Sanchez, standing beside him. He cast a stern frown in Eunice’s direction and was about to reprimand her when his father spoke.

  “All right, we’d best go ahead and put Billy’s casket in the ground. It don’t look like that storm is gonna hold off much longer.” He turned to the pastor of the town’s one church. “Go ahead, preacher, while the boys are lowerin’ the casket.”

  It had proven quite difficult for the preacher to create a laudatory message in memory of Billy Blanchard, but he had managed to come up with some general phrases, based in most part on the forgiving nature of God and his Son, Jesus, for all sinners, no matter how great their sins. It was obvious by the rancorous expression on the old man’s face that he wasn’t pleased with the pastor’s message. “Enough about that,” Jacob interrupted. “Say more about Billy, and how he was murdered by that son of a bitch.”

  The first rumble of thunder came tripping across the line of hills to the west of them, and the sky darkened. In no time at all it was like night instead of midday, and the rain began to fall. Eunice Reiner commented later that night that it was a direct sign that the Lord didn’t want Billy Blanchard. No one moved to get out of the rain, neither the Blanchard clan on one side of the grave, nor the small gathering of the town’s merchants and their families on the other. None dared to provoke Jacob Blanchard’s wrath.

  It was just as the preacher ran out of words to describe the wonderful relationship between a father and son when it happened. The funeral party was suddenly startled by a sudden crash directly overhead and a jagged streak of lightning flashed across the sky. Cora Barnhill let out a shriek when all eyes were drawn by the flash to the top of the hill. There, like a dark angel of death, stood the image of the dreaded bounty hunter, Grayson. It was there for only an instant, for when the next flash of lightning split the dark cloud above the hill the image was gone.

  The gathering of wet souls was cast into shocked silence. What had they seen? The image looked so ominous with the jagged bolt of lightning behind it. Was it real, or was it just imagined? But everyone had seen it—everyone but Jacob Blanchard, who was staring down into the grave, and the preacher, whose eyes were closed in prayer. Stunned almost to the point of paralysis, Slate Blanchard felt the shock of the lightning run the length of his spine. “It was him!” he gasped.

  “Or his ghost!” Troy responded, for he had seen Grayson die. He looked at his brother for explanation, but there was none in the ashen face that stared back at him. Completely shaken, for now he realized that his brother had seen the same image he had seen, he blurted, “We killed him!” Having no stomach for dealing with the supernatural, he ran for his horse in a panic to leave the graveyard. Convinced that he had seen Grayson’s ghost come back to haunt him, he felt he had to get away from Billy’s grave and hope that Grayson’s spirit was confined to the cemetery.

  “Troy!” His father yelled after him. “I ain’t said the service is over!” Troy ignored him and kept running, jumped on his horse and galloped off toward town. Jacob stood there perplexed for a moment by his son’s failure to obey him. He turned to look at Slate. “What the hell is goin’ on?” he demanded. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I ain’t never seen one before,” Slate said, “but I’m pretty sure I have now.” Maria Sanchez crossed herself and moved closer to him for protection.

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Jacob demanded again. “What’s got into Troy?” He paused long enough to look at the town folk, none of them moving, all staring openmouthed toward the top of the hill. “The service is over,” he announced roughly, his civility having given way to his impatience. “Get on outta here!” Only then did they move back toward their horses and wagons, drenched to the bone, and wondering if what they had just witnessed was real or imaginary.

  “It was him, Pa—Grayson,” Slate said, still shaken, but unlike his brother, he wasn’t sure it would do any good to run. “Only it wasn’t him—at least I don’t see how it coulda been him.”

  “Grayson? You ain’t makin’ a damn bit of sense,” Jacob bellowed. “You tryin’ to tell me you saw a ghost? Where?” he demanded.

  “Up there,” Slate declared, and pointed, “at the top of the hill.”

  Jacob turned at once and looked toward the top of the hill at the empty darkness. In a moment, another flash of lightning lit the sky, revealing nothing but a dead tree that had been struck by lightning years before. “There ain’t nothin’ up there. You and Troy got spooked by a dead tree,” he railed. Turning to the obviously frightened woman standing pressed against Slate, he demanded, “What about you, girl? Did you see anythin’?” He was growing angrier by the minute, furious that something had spoiled Billy’s memorial service, and he couldn’t get to the bottom of it. He glowered at Maria, waiting for an answer.

  Reluctant to answer, but afraid not to, Maria responded fearfully, “There was a man standing there when the lightning came, and then he was gone.”

  “A tree,” Jacob insisted. “You all saw a damn tree.”

  “No, señor,” she countered timidly, “someone was standing beside the tree.”

  “Hogwash!” he exploded. “Come on,” he ordered Slate. “We’ll go up to the top and find him if there’s a man up there. A ghost,” he muttered in disgust. “I ain’t scared of no damn ghost. If there is a man up there, I’ll make a ghost out of him quick enough for spoilin’ Billy’s service.”

  Slate was still reluctant to go, torn between two fears—that of his father, and that of ghosts. He tried to convince himself that what he saw, and everybody else saw, was in fact no more than a man who had for some reason climbed to the top of the hill. In the poor light of the storm, he reasoned, and at that distance, he just looked like Grayson. That had to be it, he told himself, and at once felt a little sheepish for his initial reaction. His resolve strengthened, he told Maria, “You go on down to the buggy. I’ll be down directly.”

  Jacob Blanchard didn’t believe in ghosts, but he was not a careless man, so he signaled to his two hired hands to follow him and Slate up the hill to look around for the supposed intruder upon Billy’s funeral. One of the hired hands, the one known as Stump, was as leery about climbing the hill as Slate had been, but he was far too timid to say so. He was one of the few people there who had actually seen Grayson up close, and he, too, was struck by the resemblance to the figure at the top of the hill. The climb up the slope, made more difficult by the falling rain, took a little time, but upon reaching the dead tree there was no one to be seen. One of his men, a rawboned man called Slim, looked around until he discovered tracks. “Over here, Mr. Blanchard,” he sang out. “There was somebody up here all right.” He pointed to the boot prints near the dead tree. “Probably weren’t no ghost, though,” he japed to Slate, “’cause ghosts don’t leave no tracks.”

  Jacob was in no mood to appreciate Slim’s humor. He regarded the footprints as a personal affront to him and Billy. “Stump,” he ordered, “he musta rode up here from the other side. See if you can find some tracks.”

  Stump hurried down the gentle slope of the other side until he came to a level spot a quarter of the way down from the top. “Yes, sir,” he called out. “He left his horses here. Looks li
ke there was two of ’em.”

  “See if you can tell where he came from,” Jacob said. “I wanna know what the hell he was doin’ up here.”

  “Most likely somebody just passin’ by and wanted to see what everybody was doin’ on the side of the hill,” Slim suggested, unable to understand all the fuss being made over somebody stopping to watch a funeral.

  “Get on down there and help Stump find that trail,” Jacob ordered.

  After about a quarter of an hour’s scout, there was little to learn from the fresh tracks, except the fact that they had evidently come from town. So the scouting party returned to the cemetery to retrieve their horses. Still determined to find the man who left the tracks on the hill, Jacob sent Stump back to the ranch with the wagon and the tools used to dig Billy’s grave while he rode back to Black Horse Creek to check on any strangers who may have passed through town. “Slate,” he said, “you take your little play-pretty back to the hotel and get rid of that buggy. I’ll meet you at your office.” There was no satisfaction in Jacob’s soul after the burial of an empty box, and he needed satisfaction from some source, even if taken from some innocent stranger whose only affront to him was his curiosity to see Billy’s funeral.

  * * *

  He had ridden into town prepared to take his bloody vengeance in the sheriff’s office, or in the street if necessary, but the town was deserted. He saw no one on the street as he walked his horses boldly up to the sheriff’s office and dismounted. There was no one in the office and a sign on the door said CLOSED FOR FUNERAL. He looked around at the stores, and discovered them padlocked. Thinking the saloon would surely be open, he went back to the Black Horse. It, too, was locked up tight, as was Reiner’s next door. The whole damn town closed for a funeral, he thought. It must be for someone pretty important.

  After trying Reiner’s door, he had looked down toward the stable in time to see someone come out and look up the street at him. He was holding a shotgun. Grayson stepped off the stoop and climbed in the saddle. Burt McNally watched the stranger as he approached. As a matter of habit, he noticed the gray gelding the stranger rode, as well as the sorrel packhorse. “Howdy,” he offered when Grayson pulled the gray up before the stable door and dismounted.

  “Howdy,” Grayson returned. “Looks like you’re the only one in town that didn’t go to the funeral.”

  “That’s a fact,” Burt replied, eying Grayson carefully. “Sheriff Blanchard left me to look after things here while the funeral’s goin’ on.” He was wearing the deputy’s badge Slate had given him when he and Troy had ridden to Fort Smith to get Billy.

  “Who’s gettin’ buried? Somebody important?”

  “Nobody, really,” Burt replied. “It’s more like a memorial service for the sheriff’s brother Billy. He was shot in the back by a bounty hunter.”

  “Is that a fact?” Grayson responded, not surprised by the story. “They know for sure that’s who shot him?”

  “Sheriff Blanchard said it couldn’ta been nobody else. The bastard was bringin’ Billy in to the jail, but Billy was dead when he got there.”

  “I reckon the fellow was a bastard to shoot an unarmed man,” Grayson remarked. “Where’s the graveyard? I might go pay my respects.”

  Greatly relieved that the stranger seemed to have no evil intentions, since he had the look of someone capable of causing harm, Burt had been happy to direct him to Cemetery Hill. The weather had turned sour as Grayson rode out of town. After about half a mile he came to the hill and rode his horses about halfway up. Dismounting to finish the climb on foot, he reached the top just as the storm moved over the small gathering of people huddled on the other side. Moving up to stand behind the trunk of a dead tree, he was able to see the service going on below him. He at once identified the two men he had come to kill, and it would have been easy to shoot both of them with two quick rifle shots, but he hesitated to pull the trigger. There were too many people gathered together, innocent people, and he hesitated to execute the two murderers in front of women and children. That would not be a pleasant sight for them to see. There was also the possibility of an innocent casualty from a stray shot. He was certain he would not miss at that range, but he decided not to risk it. He would wait for a better opportunity. The decision made, he started to turn away when he was almost blinded by a brilliant flash of lightning directly overhead. It was followed almost immediately by a powerful rumble of thunder. It served as a not so subtle signal, telling him that the top of a lone hill was not a good place to stand in a violent thunderstorm. The dead tree was testimony enough to support that warning, so he started to go back down the slope to pick up his horses, but hesitated when he saw Troy Blanchard jump on his horse and race away. Slate, however, remained, so he decided he would call on the sheriff in town and worry about Troy after that was taken care of.

  * * *

  Slate dropped Maria Sanchez off at the hotel before taking the buggy back to the stable. “I’ll be back to see you after I make sure everythin’s all right,” he told her. Still somewhat shaken by the image he had seen at the funeral, his preference would have been to return to her bedroom immediately after he took the buggy back. But his father had told him that he would meet him back in his office, so he had little choice but to comply.

  “How’d the funeral go?” Burt McNally asked when Slate drove the buggy inside the stable doors so Burt could unhitch the horse without having to stand in the rain to do it.

  “About as good as any funeral, I reckon,” Slate answered. “Everythin’ all right here in town?”

  “Yes, sir,” Burt replied. “I kept a good eye on everythin’. You know you can depend on me, Sheriff.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s good. I didn’t figure there’d be much for you to worry about,” Slate said. “I’ll be goin’ back to my office for a spell.” He planned to go see Maria as soon as his father left town, but he saw no reason to tell Burt that. “If anybody needs me for anythin’, I’ll most likely be in my office.” He could usually count on Troy to sleep in the sheriff’s office, but he wasn’t sure when he’d see him again, since he took off like a stampede of longhorns. He expected that his brother was going to catch a generous amount of hell when his father caught up with him. One thing Jacob Blanchard would not tolerate in any man was cowardice, especially when it came to one of his sons.

  “Say,” Burt said, recalling his unusual visitor, “did that feller show up at the funeral?”

  Already on his way out the door, Slate stopped. “What feller?”

  “Some feller passin’ through town,” Burt replied, “lookin’ for a drink of likker, I expect, ’cause he looked disappointed to find the saloon closed. He said he was gonna go pay his respects at the funeral. He may have been japin’ me, though.”

  Slate thought about it before answering. Grayson? Maybe, but more likely a drifter just passing through like Burt said. That could explain the man standing on the hilltop at the graveyard—it had to, because Grayson was dead. Aware then of Burt waiting for his reply, he said, “Yeah, I think I saw him, but he never came down to the grave.” He pulled his hat down, stepped out the door into the rain, and started toward his office. The more he thought about it, the more he castigated himself for initially thinking he had seen a ghost. He even chuckled when he pictured Troy’s fearful retreat from the graveyard. Pa’s gonna take a whip to him, he thought.

  Hurrying down the muddy street, he stepped up on the short length of boardwalk before the sheriff’s office to discover the door halfway open, evidently blown open by the storm. Damn Troy, he thought, he was supposed to lock the damn door when he left for the funeral. He didn’t know how long his father would linger at Billy’s grave, but his horse was not tied out front, so he suspected the door had been left standing open ever since the storm struck. Why in hell didn’t Burt catch it, if he was so all-fired careful about watching the town?

  He stepped inside the d
arkened office and closed the door behind him. Then he took his hat off and beat it against his leg a couple of times to knock some of the water off it. The light was so dim from the window in front that he struck a match to light the lamp on his desk. He turned up the wick in the lamp, unaware of the dark shadow standing in front of the one cell door behind him. There was not a sound, yet something made him turn around to look, and when he did, he dropped the lamp, stunned by the deadly specter standing there. “Grayson!” he uttered without conscious thought, thinking he was seeing another ghost. Terrified, he backed away from the desk, oblivious to the flames from the burning lamp oil spreading in a widening circle under his desk. Recovering somewhat from the initial shock, his brain began to function again, and his next reaction was to reach for his pistol. It served only to speed up the inevitable. The sharp bark of Grayson’s Winchester, already leveled at him, resonated against the walls of the tiny room as Slate doubled over with a bullet in his gut.

  Grayson walked over to stand before the mortally wounded man. Writhing in pain, Slate fumbled for his six-gun again, but Grayson pinned his wrist to the floor with his boot. “You know who I am, I reckon,” he said. “You shoulda made sure of your kill—I am.” He put a bullet in Slate’s forehead, ending the wounded man’s suffering. “That’s one of you,” he stated, thinking now of the brother who fled from the cemetery. He took a moment more to gaze at the horrified eyes, still wide with fright from having seen certain death, and the drawn face reflected in the light of the flames still licking the pine planks of the floor. He started for the door, then paused to sweep a pile of papers off the desk to feed the flames eating away at the legs of the desk. Satisfied, he eased the door open and took a look up and down the street. There was no one in sight, so he stepped out on the boardwalk. It was a Sunday, so most of the business establishments were closed. Perhaps, he thought, the old man made it an official holiday as well, in honor of his worthless son. At any rate, it made the execution much more private without a mob of bystanders.